Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway, The

“Let’s see I got up and went down the stairs and spoke to the concierge and she asked me about madame. She was worried because the police had been to the flat and had asked her questions but she was still cordial. She asked me if we had found the valise that had been stolen and I said no and she said it was dirty luck and a great misfortune and was it true that all my works were in it. I said yes and she said but how was it there were no copies? I said the copies were there too. Then she said Mais ça alors. Why were copies made to lose them with the originals? I said madame had packed them by mistake. It was a great mistake, she said. A fatal mistake. But monsieur can remember them surely. No, I said. But, she said, monsieur will have to remember them. Il faut le souvienne rappeler. Oui, I said, mais ce n’est pas possible. Je ne m’en souviens plus. Mais il faut faire un effort, she said. Je le ferais, I said. But it’s useless. Mais qu’est-ce que monsieur va faire? she asked. Monsieur has worked here for three years. I have seen monsieur work at the café on the corner. I’ve seen monsieur at work at the table in the dining room when I’ve brought things up. Je sais que monsieur travaille comme un sourd. Qu’es-ce que il faut faire maintenant? Il faut recommencer, I said. Then the concierge started to cry. I put my arm around her and she smelled of armpit sweat and dust and old black clothes and her hair smelled rancid and she cried with her head on my chest. Were there poems too? she asked. Yes, I said. What unhappiness, she said. But you can recall those surely. Je tâcherai de la faire, I said. Do it, she said. Do it tonight.

“I will, I told her. Oh monsieur, she said, madame is beautiful and amiable and tous le qui’il y a de gentil but what a grave error it was. Will you drink a glass of marc with me? Of course, I told her, and, sniffing, she left my chest to find the bottle and the two small glasses. To the new works, she said. To them, I said. Monsieur will be a member of the Académie Française. No, I said. The Académie Americaine, she said. Would you prefer rum? I have some rum. No, I said. Marc is very good. Good, she said. Another glass. Now, she said, go out and get yourself drunk and, since Marcelle is not coming to do the flat, as soon as my husband comes in to hold down this dirty loge I will go upstairs and clean the place up for you to sleep tonight. Do you want me to buy anything for you? Do you want me to make breakfast? I asked her. Certainly, she said. Give me ten francs and I’ll bring you the change. I’d make you dinner but you ought to eat out tonight. Even though it is more expensive. Allez voir des amis et manger quelque part. If it wasn’t for my husband I’d come with you.

“Come on and have a drink at the Café des Amateurs now, I said. We’ll have a hot grog. No I can’t leave this cage until my husband comes, she said. Débine-toi maintenant. Leave me the key. It will all be in order when you get back.

“She was a fine woman and I felt better already because I knew there was only one thing to do; to start over. But I did not know if I could do it. Some of the stories had been about boxing, and some about baseball and others about horse racing. They were the things I had known best and had been closest to and several were about the first war. Writing them I had felt all the emotion I had to feel about those things and I had put it all in and all the knowledge of them that I could express and I had rewritten and rewritten until it was all in them and all gone out of me Because I had worked on newspapers since I was very young I could never remember anything once I had written it down; as each day you wiped your memory clear with writing as you might wipe a blackboard clear with a sponge or a wet rag; and I still had that evil habit and now it had caught up with me.