"Don't be silly, Enrique," he said. "We've been gambling, haven't we?"
"Yes. But we know each other quite well."
"Not that well."
"Right," I said. "You're the judge of that. Then what will you drink?"
"What about a gin and tonic? That's a marvelous drink you know."
So we had a gin and tonic and I felt very badly to have broken him and I felt awfully good to have won the money, and a gin and tonic never tasted better to me in all my life. There is no use to lie about these things or pretend you do not enjoy winning; but this boy Luis Delgado was a very pretty gambler.
"I don't think if people gambled for what they could afford it would be very interesting. Do you, Enrique?"
"I don't know. I've never been able to afford it."
"Don't be silly. You have lots of money."
"No I haven't," I said. "Really."
"Oh, everyone has money," he said. "It's just a question of selling something or other to get hold of it."
"I don't have much. Really."
"Oh, don't be silly. I've never known an American who wasn't rich."
I guess that was the truth all right. He wouldn't have met them at the Ritz bar or at Chicote's either in those days. And now he was back in Chicote's and all the Americans he would meet there now were the kind he would never have met; except me, and I was a mistake. But I would have given plenty not to have seen him in there.
Still, if he wanted to do an absolutely damn fool thing like that it was his own business. But as I looked at the table and remembered the old days I felt badly about him and I felt very badly too that I had given the waiter the number of the counterespionage bureau in Seguridad headquarters. He could have had Seguridad by simply asking on the telephone. But I had given him the shortest cut to having Delgado arrested in one of those excesses of impartiality, righteousness and Pontius Pilatry, and the always-dirty desire to see how people act under an emotional conflict, that makes writers such attractive friends.
The waiter came over.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"I would never denounce him myself," I said, now trying to undo for myself what I had done with the number. "But I am a foreigner and it is your war and your problem."
"But you are with us."
"Absolutely and always. But it does not include denouncing old friends."
"But for me?"
"For you it is different."
I knew this was true and there was nothing else to say, only I wished I had never heard of any of it.
My curiosity as to how people would act in this case had been long ago, and shamefully, satisfied. I turned to John and did not look at the table where Luis Delgado was sitting. I knew he had been flying with the fascists for over a year, and here he was, in a loyalist uniform, talking to three young loyalist flyers of the last crop that had been trained in France.
None of those new kids would know him and I wondered whether he had come to try to steal a plane or for what. Whatever he was there for, he was a fool to come to Chicote's now.
"How do you feel, John?" I asked.
"Feel good," said John. "Is a good drink hokay. Makes me feel little bit drunk maybe. Is a good for the buzzing in the head."
The waiter came over. He was very excited.
"I have denounced him," he said.
"Well then," I said, "now you haven't any problem."
"No," he said proudly. "I have denounced him. They are on their way now to get him."
"Let's go," I said to John. "There is going to be some trouble here."
"Is best go then," said John. "Is a plenty trouble always come, even if you do best to avoid. How much we owe?"
"You aren't going to stay?" the waiter asked.
"No."
"But you gave me the telephone number."
"I know it. You get to know too many telephone numbers if you stay around in this town."
"But it was my duty."
"Yes. Why not? Duty is a very strong thing."
"But now?"
"Well, you felt good about it just now, didn't you? Maybe you will feel good about it again. Maybe you will get to like it."
"You have forgotten the package," the waiter said. He handed me the meat which was wrapped in two envelopes which had brought copies of the Spur to the piles of magazines which accumulated in one of the office rooms of the Embassy.
"I understand," I said to the waiter. "Truly."
"He was an old client and a good client. Also I have never denounced anyone before. I did not denounce for pleasure."
"Also I should not speak cynically or brutally. Tell him that I denounced him. He hates me anyway by now for differences in politics. He'd feel badly if he knew it was you."
"No. Each man must take his responsibility. But you understand?"
"Yes," I said. Then lied. "I understand and I approve." You have to lie very often in a war and when you have to lie you should do it quickly and as well as you can.
We shook hands and I went out the door with John. I looked back at the table where Luis Delgado sat as I went out. He had another gin and tonic in front of him and everyone at the table was laughing at something he had said. He had a very gay, brown face, and shooter's eyes, and I wondered what he was passing himself off as.
He was a fool to go to Chicote's. But that was exactly the sort of thing that he would do in order to be able to boast of it when he was back with his own people.
As we went out of the door and turned to walk up the street, a big Seguridad car drew up in front of Chicote's and eight men got out of it. Six with submachine guns took up positions outside the door. Two in plain clothes went inside. A man asked us for our papers and when I said, "Foreigners," he said to go along; that it was all right.
In the dark going up the Gran Via there was much new broken glass on the sidewalk and much rubble under foot from the shelling. The air was still smoky and all up the street it smelled of high explosive and blasted granite.
"Where you go eat?" asked John.
"I have some meat for all of us, and we can cook it in the room."
"I cook it," said John. "I cook good. I remember one time when I cook on ship-"
"It will be pretty tough," I said. "It's just been freshly butchered."
"Oh no," said John. "Is a no such thing as a touch meat in a war."
People were hurrying by in the dark on their way home from the cinemas where they had stayed until the shelling was over.
"What's a matter that fascist he come to that cafe where they know him?"
"He was crazy to do it."
"Is a trouble with a war," John said. "Is a too many people crazy."
"John," I said, "I think you've got something there."
Back at the hotel we went in the door past the sandbags piled to protect the porter's desk and I asked for the key, but the porter said there were two comrades upstairs in the room taking a bath. He had given them the keys.
"Go on up, John," I said. "I want to telephone."
I went over to the booth and called the same number I had given the waiter.
"Hello? Pepe?"
A thin-lipped voice came over the phone. "Que tal Enrique?"
"Listen, Pepe, did you pick up a certain Luis Delgado at Chicote's?"
"Si, hombre, si. Sin novedad. Without trouble."
"He doesn't know anything about the waiter?"
"No, hombre, no."
"Then don't tell him. Tell him I denounced him then, will you? Nothing about the waiter."
"Why when it will make no difference? He is a spy. He will be shot. There is no choice in the matter."
"I know," I said. "But it makes a difference."
"As you want, hombre. As you want. When shall I see thee?"
"Lunch tomorrow. We have some meat."
"And whisky before. Good, hombre, good."
"Salud, Pepe, and thank you."
"Salud, Enrique. It is nothing. Salud."
It was a strange and very deadly voice and I never got used to hearing it, but as I walked up the stairs now, I felt much better.
All we old clients of Chicote's had a sort of feeling about the place. I knew that was why Luis Delgado had been such a fool as to go back there. He could have done his business some place else. But if he was in Madrid he had to go there. He had been a good client as the waiter had said and we had been friends. Certainly any small acts of kindness you can do in life are worth doing. So I was glad I had called my friend Pepe at Seguridad headquarters because Luis Delgado was an old client of Chicote's and I did not wish him to be disillusioned or bitter about the waiters there before he died.
The Butterfly and the Tank.
ON THIS EVENING I WAS WALKING HOME from the censorship office to the Florida Hotel and it was raining. So about halfway home I got sick of the rain and stopped into Chicote's for a quick one. It was the second winter of shelling in the siege of Madrid and everything was short including tobacco and people's tempers and you were a little hungry all the time and would become suddenly and unreasonably irritated at things you could do nothing about such as the weather. I should have gone on home. It was only five blocks more, but when I saw Chicote's doorway I thought I would get a quick one and then do those six blocks up the Gran Via through the mud and rubble of the streets broken by the bombardment.
The place was crowded. You couldn't get near the bar and all the tables were full. It was full of smoke, singing, men in uniform, and the smell of wet leather coats, and they were handing drinks over a crowd that was three deep at the bar.
A waiter I knew found a chair from another table and I sat down with a thin, white-faced, Adam's-appled German I knew who was working at the censorship and two other people I did not know. The table was in the middle of the room a little on your right as you go in.
You couldn't hear yourself talk for the singing and I ordered a gin and Angostura and put it down against the rain. The place was really packed and everybody was very jolly; maybe getting just a little bit too jolly from the newly made Catalan liquor most of them were drinking. A couple of people I did not know slapped me on the back and when the girl at our table said something to me, I couldn't hear it and said, "Sure."
She was pretty terrible looking now I had stopped looking around and was looking at our table; really pretty terrible. But it turned out, when the waiter came, that what she had asked me was to have a drink. The fellow with her was not very forceful looking but she was forceful enough for both of them. She had one of those strong, semi-classical faces and was built like a lion tamer; and the boy with her looked as though he ought to be wearing an old school tie. He wasn't though. He was wearing a leather coat just like all the rest of us. Only it wasn't wet because they had been there since before the rain started. She had on a leather coat too and it was becoming to the sort of face she had.
By this time I was wishing I had not stopped into Chicote's but had gone straight on home where you could change your clothes and be dry and have a drink in comfort on the bed with your feet up, and I was tired of looking at both of these young people. Life is very short and ugly women are very long and sitting there at the table I decided that even though I was a writer and supposed to have an insatiable curiosity about all sorts of people, I did not really care to know whether these two were married, or what they saw in each other, or what their politics were, or whether he had a little money, or she had a little money, or anything about them. I decided they must be in the radio. Any time you saw really strange looking civilians in Madrid they were always in the radio. So to say something I raised my voice above the noise and asked, "You in the radio?"
"We are," the girl said. So that was that. They were in the radio.
"How are you comrade?" I said to the German.
"Fine. And you?"
"Wet," I said, and he laughed with his head on one side.
"You haven't got a cigarette?" he asked. I handed him my next to the last pack of cigarettes and he took two. The forceful girl took two and the young man with the old school tie face took one.
"Take another," I shouted.
"No thanks," he answered and the German took it instead.
"Do you mind?" he smiled.
"Of course not," I said. I really minded and he knew it. But he wanted the cigarettes so badly that it did not matter. The singing had died down momentarily, or there was a break in it as there is sometimes in a storm, and we could all hear what we said.
"You been here long?" the forceful girl asked me. She pronounced it bean as in bean soup.