Islands in the Stream

by Ernest Hemingway

  “Spitfires.”

  “Spitties. I shall think of him then in a Spitty.”

  “That’s a lot of bother to go to.”

  “No, no it isn’t. I’ve seen them in the cinema. I’ve several books on the RAF and we get the publications of the British Information Bureau. They have excellent stuff, you know. I know exactly how he would have looked. Probably wearing one of those Mae Wests and with his chute and his flying togs and his big boots. I can picture him exactly. Now I have to be getting home to lunch. Will you come with me? I know Lutecia would love to have you.”

  “No. I have to meet a man here. Thanks very much.”

  “Goodbye, old boy,” Ignacio Natera Revello said. “I know you’ll take this thing the way you should.”

  “You were kind to help me.”

  “No, I wasn’t kind at all. I loved Tom. As you did. As we all did.”

  “Thanks for all the drinks.”

  “I’ll get them back from you another day.”

  He went out. From beyond him, down the bar, one of the men from the boat moved up to Hudson. He was a dark boy, with short, clipped, curly black hair, and a left eye that had a slightly droopy lid; the eye was artificial but this did not show since the government had presented him with four different eyes, bloodshot, slightly bloodshot, almost clear, and clear. He was wearing slightly bloodshot, and he was already a little drunk.

  “Hi, Tom. When did you get in town?”

  “Yesterday,” then speaking slowly and almost without moving his lips, “Take it easy. Don’t be a fucking comedian.”

  “I’m not. I’m just getting drunk. They cut me open they find security written on my liver. I’m the security king. You know that. Listen, Tom, I was standing up next to the phony Englishman and I couldn’t help but hear. Did your boy Tommy get killed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh shit,” the boy said. “Oh shit.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Of course not. But when did you hear?”

  “Before the last trip.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “What are you doing today?”

  “I’m going to eat over at the Basque Bar with a couple of characters and then we’re all going to get laid.”

  “Where are you going to have lunch tomorrow?”

  “At the Basque Bar.”

  “Ask Paco to call me up from lunch tomorrow, will you?”

  “Sure. Out at the house?”

  “Yes. At the house.”

  “Do you want to come around with us and get laid? We’re going up to Henry’s Sin House?”

  “I might come around.”

  “Henry’s hunting girls now. He’s been hunting girls ever since breakfast. He’s been laid a couple of times already. But he’s trying to beat the two tomatoes we had. We got them at the Kursaal and they look pretty bad in the daylight. We couldn’t find a goddam thing. This town’s really gone to hell. He’s got the two tomatoes up at the sin house just in case and he’s out hunting girls with Honest Lil. They’ve got a car.”

  “Were they doing any good?”

  “I don’t think so. Henry wants that little girl. The little one he sees all the time at the Fronton. Honest Lil can’t get her because she’s afraid of him because he’s so big. She said she could get her for me. But she can’t get her for Henry because she’s spooked of his size and his weight and things she’s heard. But Henry doesn’t want anything else now because the two tomatoes topped him off. So now it’s this little girl and he’s in love with her. Just like that. In love with her. He’s probably forgotten about it now and is banging the tomatoes again right now. He’s got to eat, though, and we’re going to meet at the Basque Bar.”

  “Make him eat,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “You can’t make him do anything. You can. But I can’t. But I’ll beg him to eat. I’ll plead with him to eat. I’ll set him an example by eating.”

  “Get Paco to make him eat.”

  “Wouldn’t you think he would be hungry after that?”

  “Wouldn’t you?’

  Just then the biggest man that Thomas Hudson knew, and the most cheerful and with the widest shoulders and the best manners came in through the door of the bar with a smile on his face, which was beading with sweat even on the cold day. His hand was out in greeting. He was so big he made everyone at the bar look stunted and he had a lovely smile. He was dressed in old blue trousers, a Cuban countryman’s shirt, and rope-soled shoes. “Tom,” he said. “You bastard. We’ve been in search of the lovelies.”

  His handsome face, as soon as he was out of the wind, sweated even more.

  “Pedrico. I’ll have one of those, too. The double size. Or larger if you make them. Imagine seeing you here, Tom. And I’ve forgotten. Here’s Honest Lil. Come over here, my beauty.”

  Honest Lil had come in the other door. She looked her best when sitting at the far end of the bar when you saw only her lovely dark face and the grossness that had come over her body was hidden by the polished wood of the bar. Now, coming toward the bar from the door, there was no hiding her body, so she propelled it, swaying, to the bar as rapidly as she could without visibly hurrying and got up onto the stool Thomas Hudson had occupied. This moved him one stool to the right and gave her the covered left flank.

  “Hello, Tom,” she said and kissed Thomas Hudson. “Henry is terrible.”

  “I’m not at all terrible, my beauty,” Henry told her.

  “You’re terrible,” she told him. “Every time I see you, you are more terrible. Thomas, you protect me from him.”

  “What’s he being terrible about?”

  “He wants a little tiny girl that he is crazy for and the little tiny girl can’t go with him. But she wouldn’t go anyway because she is frightened of him because he is so big and weighs two hundred and thirty pounds.”

  Henry Wood blushed, sweat visibly, and took a big sip of his drink.

  “Two hundred and twenty-five,” he said.

  “What did I tell you?” the dark boy said. “Isn’t that exactly what I told you?”

  “Just what business is it of yours to be telling anyone anything?” Henry asked him.

  “Two tramps. Two tomatoes. Two broken-down waterfront broads. Two cunts with but a single thought: the rent. We lay them. We trade cunts and re-lay them. It’s strictly from wet decks. I say one friendly understanding word now and I am not a gentleman.”

  “They weren’t really awfully good, were they?” Henry said, blushing again.

  “Awfully good? We ought to have poured gasoline on them and set them on fire.”

  “How horrible,” Honest Lil said.

  “Listen, lady,” the dark boy said. “I am horrible.”

  “Willie,” Henry said. “Do you want the key to Sin House and go over and see if everything is all right?”

  “I do not,” the dark boy said. “I have a key to Sin House as you have evidently forgotten and I do not want to go over there and see if everything is all right. The only way everything is all right there is whenever you or I kick those cunts into the street.”

  “But suppose we can’t get anything else?”

  “We have got to get something else. Lillian, why don’t you get off that stool and onto that telephone. Forget that little dwarf. Get that gnome out of your mind, Henry. You keep on with things like that and you’ll be psycho. I know. I’ve been psycho.”

  “You’re psycho now,” Thomas Hudson told him.

  “Maybe I am, Tom. You should know. But I don’t fuck gnomes.” (He pronounced the word Guhnomays.) “If Henry has to have a guhnomay that’s his business. But I don’t believe he has to have one any more than he has to have one-armed women or one-legged women. Let him forget the goddam guhnomay and get Lillian there onto the telephone.”

  “I’ll take any good girls we can get,” Henry said. “I hope you’re not mixed up, Willie?”

  “We don’t want good girls,” Willie said. “You start on that, right away you’ll g
et psycho in a different way. Am I right, Tommy? Good girls is the most dangerous thing of all. Besides they will get you either on a contributing to delinquency or on a rape or attempted rape. Out with that good girls stuff. We want whores. Nice, clean, attractive, interesting, inexpensive whores. That can fuck. Lillian, what is keeping you away from that telephone?”

  “One thing is that a man is using it and another is waiting by the cigar counter for him to finish,” Honest Lil said. “You’re a bad boy, Willie.”

  “I’m a horrible boy,” Willie said. “I’m the worst goddam boy you’ll ever know. But I’d like us to get better organized than we are now.”

  “We’re going to have a drink or so,” Henry said. “Then I’m sure Lillian will find someone that she knows. Won’t you, my beauty?”

  “Of course,” Honest Lil said in Spanish. “Why couldn’t I? But I want to telephone from a telephone in a booth. Not from here. It isn’t proper to call from here and it isn’t fitting.”

  “A delay,” Willie said. “All right. I accept it. Just another delay. Let’s drink then.”

  “What the hell have you been doing?” Thomas Hudson asked.

  “Tommy, I love you,” Willie said. “What the hell have you been doing yourself?”

  “I had a few with Ignacio Natera Revello.”

  “That sounds like an Italian cruiser,” Willie said. “Wasn’t there an Italian cruiser named that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “It sounds like it, anyway.”

  “Let me see the tabs,” Henry said. “How many were there, Tom?”

  “Ignacio took them. I won them from him rolling.”

  “How many were there really?” Henry asked.

  “I think four.”

  “What did you drink before that?”

  “A Tom Collins coming in.”

  “And at home?”

  “Plenty.”

  “You’re just a damned rummy,” Willie said. “Pedrico, three more double frozen daiquiris and whatever the lady wants.”

  “Un highbalito con agua mineral,” Honest Lil said. “Tommy, come and sit with me at the other end of the bar. They don’t like me to sit at this end of the bar.”

  “The hell with them,” Willie said. “Great friends like us that never see each other and then we can’t have a drink with you at this end of the bar. The hell with that.”

  “I’m sure you’re all right here, beauty,” Henry said. Then he saw two planter friends of his farther down the bar and went to speak to them without waiting for his drink.

  “He’s off now,” Willie said. “He’ll forget about the guhnomay now.”

  “He’s very distrait,” Honest Lil said. “He’s awfully distrait.”

  “It’s the life we lead,” Willie said. “Just the ceaseless pursuit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Goddammit, we ought to pursue pleasure seriously.”

  “Tom’s not distrait,” Honest Lil said. “Tom is sad.”

  “Cut out that shit,” Willie said to her. “What are you pissed off about? First somebody is distrait. Then somebody is sad. Before that I’m horrible. So what? Where does a cunt like you get off criticizing people all the time? Don’t you know you’re supposed to be gay?”

  Honest Lil began to cry, real tears, bigger and wetter than any in the movies. She could always cry real tears any time she wanted to or needed to or was hurt.

  “That cunt cries bigger tears than mother used to make,” Willie said.

  “Willie, you shouldn’t call me that.”

  “Cut it out, Willie,” Thomas Hudson said.

  “Willie, you are a cruel wicked boy and I hate you,” Honest Lil said. “I don’t know why men like Thomas Hudson and Henry go around with you. You are wicked and you talk vile.”

  “You’re a lady,” Willie said. “You shouldn’t says things like that. Vile is a bad word. It’s like spit on the end of your cigar.”

  Thomas Hudson put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Drink up, Willie. Nobody’s feeling too good.”

  “Henry’s feeling good. I could tell him what you told me and then he’d feel awful.”

  “You asked me.”

  “That isn’t what I mean. Why don’t you split your goddam grief? Why did you keep that by yourself the last two weeks?”

  “Grief doesn’t split.”

  “A grief hoarder,” Willie said. “I never thought you’d be a goddamned grief hoarder.”

  “I don’t need any of this, Willie,” Thomas Hudson said to him. “Thank you very much, though. You don’t have to work on me.”

  “OK. Hoard it. But it’ll do you no damn good. I tell you I was brought up on the goddamned stuff.”

  “So was I,” Thomas Hudson said. “No shit.”

  “Were you really? Then maybe your own system’s best. You were getting to look pretty screwy, though.”

  “That’s just from drinking and being tired and not relaxed yet.”

  “You hear from your woman?”

  “Sure. Three letters.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Couldn’t be worse.”

  “Well,” Willie said. “There we are. You might as well hoard it so as to have something.”

  “I’ve got something.”

  “Sure. Your cat Boise loves you. I know that. I’ve seen that. How is the screwy old bastard?”

  “Just as screwy.”

  “He beats the shit out of me,” Willie said. “He does.”

  “He certainly sweats things out.”

  “Doesn’t he, though? • If I suffered like that cat does I’d be nuts. What are you drinking, Thomas?”

  “Another one of those.”

  Willie put his arm around Honest Lil’s ample waist. “Listen, Lilly,” he said. “You’re a good girl. I didn’t mean to get you sore. It was my fault. I was feeling emotional.”

  “You won’t talk that way any more?”

  “No. Not unless I get emotional.”

  “Here’s yours,” Thomas Hudson said to him. “Here’s to you, you son of a bitch.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Willie said. “Now you’ve got the old pecker pointed north. We ought to have that cat Boise here. He’d be proud of you. See what I meant by sharing it?”

  “Yes,” Thomas Hudson said. “I see.”

  “All right,” Willie said. “We’ll drop it. Put out your can, here comes the garbage man. Look at that damn Henry. Get a load of him. What do you suppose makes him sweat like that on a cold day like today?”

  “Girls,” Honest Lil said. “He is obsessed with them.”

  “Obsessed,” Willie said. “You bore a hole in his head anywhere you want with a half-inch bit and women would run out. Obsessed. Why don’t you get a word that would fit it?”

  “Obsessed is a strong word in Spanish anyway.”

  “Obsessed? Obsessed is nothing. If I get time this afternoon I’ll think up the word.”

  “Tom, come down to the other end of the bar where we can talk and I can be comfortable. Will you buy me a sandwich? I’ve been out all morning with Henry.”

  “I’m going to the Basque Bar,” Willie said. “Bring him over there, Lil.”

  “All right,” Honest Lil said. “Or I’ll send him.”

  She made her stately progress to the far end of the bar, speaking to many of the men she passed and smiling at others. Everyone treated her with respect. Nearly everyone she spoke to had loved her at some time in the last twenty-five years. Thomas Hudson went down to the far end of the bar, taking his bar checks with him, as soon as Honest Lil had seated herself and smiled at him. She had a beautiful smile and wonderful dark eyes and lovely black hair. When it would begin to show white at the roots along the line of her forehead and along the line of her part, she would ask Thomas Hudson for money to have it fixed and when she came back from having it dyed it was as glossy and natural-looking and lovely as a young girl’s hair. She had a skin that was as smooth as olive-colored ivory, if there were olive-covered
ivory, with a slightly smoky roselike cast. Actually, the color always reminded Thomas Hudson of well-seasoned mahagua lumber when it is freshly cut, then simply sanded smooth and waxed lightly. Nowhere else had he ever seen that smoky almost greenish color. But the mahagua did not have the rose tint. The rose tint was just the color that she used but it was almost as smooth as a Chinese girl’s. There was this lovely face looking down the bar at him, lovelier all the time as he came closer. Then he was beside her and there was the big body and the rose color was artificial now and there was no mystery about any of it, although it was still a lovely face.

  “You look beautiful, Honest,” he said to her.

  “Oh, Tom, I am so big now. I am ashamed.”

  He put his hand on her great haunches and said, “You’re a nice big.”

  “I’m ashamed to walk down the bar.”

  “You do it beautifully. Like a ship.”

  “How is our friend?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “When am I going to see him?”

  “Any time. Now?”

  “Oh no. Tom, what was Willie talking about? The part I couldn’t understand?”

  “He was just being crazy.”

  “No, he wasn’t. It was about you and a sorrow Was it about you and your señora.”

  “No. Fuck my señora.”

  “I wish you could. But you can’t when she is away.”

  “Yeah. I found that out.”

  “What is the sorrow, then?”

  “Nothing. Just a sorrow.”

  “Tell me about it. Please.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “You can tell me, you know. Henry tells me about his sorrows and cries in the night. Willie tells me dreadful things. They are not sorrows, so much as terrible things. You can tell me. Everyone tells me. Only you don’t tell me.”

  “Telling never did me any good. Telling is worse for me than not telling.”

  “Tom, Willie says such bad things. Doesn’t he know it hurts me to hear such words? Doesn’t he know I’ve never used those words and have never done a piglike thing nor a perverted thing?”

  “That’s why we call you Honest Lil.”