A farewell to arms

by Ernest Miller Hemingway

  “All right.”

  “I’ll never say a dirty thing about her.”

  “Don’t strain yourself.”

  He drank off the cognac. “I am pure,” he said. “I am like you, baby. I will get an English girl too. As a matter of fact I knew your girl first but she was a little tall for me. A tall girl for a sister,” he quoted.

  “You have a lovely pure mind,” I said.

  “Haven’t I? That’s why they call me Rinaldo Purissimo.”

  “Rinaldo Sporchissimo.”

  “Come on, baby, we’ll go down to eat while my mind is still pure.”

  I washed, combed my hair and we went down the stairs. Rinaldi was a little drunk. In the room where we ate, the meal was not quite ready.

  “I’ll go get the bottle,” Rinaldi said. He went off up the stairs. I sat at the table and he came back with the bottle and poured us each a half tumbler of cognac.

  “Too much,” I said and held up the glass and sighted at the lamp on the table.

  “Not for an empty stomach. It is a wonderful thing. It burns out the stomach completely. Nothing is worse for you.”

  “All right.”

  “Self-destruction day by day,” Rinaldi said. “It ruins the stomach and makes the hand shake. Just the thing for a surgeon.”

  “You recommend it?”

  “Heartily. I use no other. Drink it down, baby, and look forward to being sick.”

  I drank half the glass. In the hall I could hear the orderly calling. “Soup! Soup is ready!”

  The major came in, nodded to us and sat down. He seemed very small at table.

  “Is this all we are?” he asked. The orderly put the soup bowl down and he ladled out a plate full.

  “We are all,” Rinaldi said. “Unless the priest comes. If he knew Federico was here he would be here.”

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “He’s at 307,” the major said. He was busy with his soup. He wiped his mouth, wiping his upturned gray mustache carefully. “He will come I think. I called them and left word to tell him you were here.”

  “I miss the noise of the mess,” I said.

  “Yes, it’s quiet,” the major said.

  “I will be noisy,” said Rinaldi.

  “Drink some wine, Enrico,” said the major. He filled my glass. The spaghetti came in and we were all busy. We were finishing the spaghetti when the priest came in. He was the same as ever, small and brown and compact looking. I stood up and we shook hands. He put his hand on my shoulder.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” he said.

  “Sit down,” the major said. “You’re late.”

  “Good-evening, priest,” Rinaldi said, using the English word. They had taken that up from the priest-baiting captain, who spoke a little English. “Good-evening, Rinaldo,” the priest said. The orderly brought him soup but he said he would start with the spaghetti.

  “How are you?” he asked me.

  “Fine,” I said. “How have things been?”

  “Drink some wine, priest,” Rinaldi said. “Take a little wine for your stomach’s sake. That’s Saint Paul, you know.”

  “Yes I know,” said the priest politely. Rinaldi filled his glass.

  “That Saint Paul,” said Rinaldi. “He’s the one who makes all the trouble.” The priest looked at me and smiled. I could see that the baiting did not touch him now.

  “That Saint Paul,” Rinaldi said. “He was a rounder and a chaser and then when he was no longer hot he said it was no good. When he was finished he made the rules for us who are still hot. Isn’t it true, Federico?”

  The major smiled. We were eating meat stew now.

  “I never discuss a Saint after dark,” I said. The priest looked up from the stew and smiled at me.

  “There he is, gone over with the priest,” Rinaldi said. “Where are all the good old priest-baiters? Where is Cavalcanti? Where is Brundi? Where is Cesare? Do I have to bait this priest alone without support?”

  “He is a good priest,” said the major.

  “He is a good priest,” said Rinaldi. “But still a priest. I try to make the mess like the old days. I want to make Federico happy. To hell with you, priest!”

  I saw the major look at him and notice that he was drunk. His thin face was white. The line of his hair was very black against the white of his forehead.

  “It’s all right, Rinaldo,” said the priest. “It’s all right.”

  “To hell with you,” said Rinaldi. “To hell with the whole damn business.” He sat back in his chair.

  “He’s been under a strain and he’s tired,” the major said to me. He finished his meat and wiped up the gravy with a piece of bread.

  “I don’t give a damn,” Rinaldi said to the table. “To hell with the whole business.” He looked defiantly around the table, his eyes flat, his face pale.

  “All right,” I said. “To hell with the whole damn business.”

  “No, no,” said Rinaldi. “You can’t do it. You can’t do it. I say you can’t do it. You’re dry and you’re empty and there’s nothing else. There’s nothing else I tell you. Not a damned thing. I know, when I stop working.”

  The priest shook his head. The orderly took away the stew dish.

  “What are you eating meat for?” Rinaldi turned to the priest. “Don’t you know it’s Friday?”

  “It’s Thursday,” the priest said.

  “It’s a lie. It’s Friday. You’re eating the body of our Lord. It’s God-meat. I know. It’s dead Austrian. That’s what you’re eating.”

  “The white meat is from officers,” I said, completing the old joke.

  Rinaldi laughed. He filled his glass.

  “Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m just a little crazy.”

  “You ought to have a leave,” the priest said.

  The major shook his head at him.

  Rinaldi looked at the priest.

  “You think I ought to have a leave?”

  The major shook his head at the priest. Rinaldi was looking at the priest.

  “Just as you like,” the priest said. “Not if you don’t want.”

  “To hell with you,” Rinaldi said. “They try to get rid of me. Every night they try to get rid of me. I fight them off. What if I have it. Everybody has it. The whole world’s got it. First,” he went on, assuming the manner of a lecturer, “it’s a little pimple. Then we notice a rash between the shoulders. Then we notice nothing at all. We put our faith in mercury.”

  “Or salvarsan,” the major interrupted quietly.

  “A mercurial product,” Rinaldi said. He acted very elated now. “I know something worth two of that. Good old priest,” he said. “You’ll never get it. Baby will get it. It’s an industrial accident. It’s a simple industrial accident.”

  The orderly brought in the sweet and coffee. The dessert was a sort of black bread pudding with hard sauce. The lamp was smoking; the black smoke going close up inside the chimney.

  “Bring two candles and take away the lamp,” the major said. The orderly brought two lighted candles each in a saucer, and took out the lamp blowing it out. Rinaldi was quiet now. He seemed all right. We talked and after the coffee we all went out into the hall.

  “You want to talk to the priest. I have to go in the town,” Rinaldi said. “Good-night, priest.”

  “Good-night, Rinaldo,” the priest said.

  “I’ll see you, Fredi,” Rinaldi said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Come in early.” He made a face and went out the door. The major was standing with us. “He’s very tired and overworked,” he said. “He thinks too he has syphilis. I don’t believe it but he may have. He is treating himself for it. Good-night. You will leave before daylight, Enrico?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good-by then,” he said. “Good luck. Peduzzi will wake you and go with you.”

  “Good-by, Signor Maggiore.”

  “Good-by. They talk about an Austrian offensive but I don’t believe it. I hope not. But anyway it wo
n’t be here. Gino will tell you everything. The telephone works well now.”

  “I’ll call regularly.”

  “Please do. Good-night. Don’t let Rinaldi drink so much brandy.”

  “I’ll try not to.”

  “Good-night, priest.”

  “Good-night, Signor Maggiore.”

  He went off into his office.

  26

  I went to the door and looked out. It had stopped raining but there was a mist.

  “Should we go upstairs?” I asked the priest.

  “I can only stay a little while.”

  “Come on up.”

  We climbed the stairs and went into my room. I lay down on Rinaldi’s bed. The priest sat on my cot that the orderly had set up. It was dark in the room.

  “Well,” he said, “how are you really?”

  “I’m all right. I’m tired to-night.”

  “I’m tired too, but from no cause.”

  “What about the war?”

  “I think it will be over soon. I don’t know why, but I feel it.”

  “How do you feel it?”

  “You know how your major is? Gentle? Many people are like that now.”

  “I feel that way myself,” I said.

  “It has been a terrible summer,” said the priest. He was surer of himself now than when I had gone away. “You cannot believe how it has been. Except that you have been there and you know how it can be. Many people have realized the war this summer. Officers whom I thought could never realize it realize it now.”

  “What will happen?” Istroked the blanket with my hand.

  “I do not know but I do not think it can go on much longer.”

  “What will happen?”

  “They will stop fighting.”

  “Who?”

  “Both sides.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “I don’t believe both sides will stop fighting at once.”

  “I suppose not. It is too much to expect. But when I see the changes in men I do not think it can go on.”

  “Who won the fighting this summer?”

  “No one.”

  “The Austrians won,” I said. “They kept them from taking San Gabriele. They’ve won. They won’t stop fighting.”

  “If they feel as we feel they may stop. They have gone through the same thing.”

  “No one ever stopped when they were winning.”

  “You discourage me.”

  “I can only say what I think.”

  “Then you think it will go on and on? Nothing will ever happen?”

  “I don’t know. I only think the Austrians will not stop when they have won a victory. It is in defeat that we become Christian.”

  “The Austrians are Christians—except for the Bosnians.”

  “I don’t mean technically Christian. I mean like Our Lord.”

  He said nothing.

  “We are all gentler now because we are beaten. How would Our Lord have been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?”

  “He would have been just the same.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “You discourage me,” he said. “I believe and I pray that something will happen. I have felt it very close.”

  “Something may happen,” I said. “But it will happen only to us. If they felt the way we do, it would be all right. But they have beaten us. They feel another way.”

  “Many of the soldiers have always felt this way. It is not because they were beaten.”

  “They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.”

  He did not say anything. He was thinking.

  “Now I am depressed myself,” I said. “That’s why I never think about these things. I never think and yet when I begin to talk I say the things I have found out in my mind without thinking.”

  “I had hoped for something.”

  “Defeat?”

  “No. Something more.”

  “There isn’t anything more. Except victory. It may be worse.”

  “I hoped for a long time for victory.”

  “Me too.”

  “Now I don’t know.”

  “It has to be one or the other.”

  “I don’t believe in victory any more.”

  “I don’t. But I don’t believe in defeat. Though it may be better.”

  “What do you believe in?”

  “In sleep,” I said. He stood up.

  “I am very sorry to have stayed so long. But I like so to talk with you.”

  “It is very nice to talk again. I said that about sleeping, meaning nothing.”

  We stood up and shook hands in the dark.

  “I sleep at 307 now,” he said.

  “I go out on post early to-morrow.”

  “I’ll see you when you come hack.”

  “We’ll have a walk and talk together.” I walked with him to the door.

  “Don’t go down,” he said. “It is very nice that you are back. Though not so nice for you.” He put his hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s all right for me,” I said. “Good-night.”

  “Good-night. Ciaou!”

  “Ciaou!” I said. I was deadly sleepy.

  27

  I woke when Rinaldi came in but he did not talk and I went back to sleep again. In the morning I was dressed and gone before it was light. Rinaldi did not wake when I left.

  I had not seen the Bainsizza before and it was strange to go up the slope where the Austrians had been, beyond the place on the river where I had been wounded. There was a steep new road and many trucks. Beyond, the road flattened out and I saw woods and steep hills in the mist. There were woods that had been taken quickly and not smashed. Then beyond where the road was not protected by the hills it was screened by matting on the sides and over the top. The road ended in a wrecked village. The lines were up beyond. There was much artillery around. The houses were badly smashed but things were very well organized and there were signboards everywhere. We found Gino and he got us some coffee and later I went with him and met various people and saw the posts. Gino said the British cars were working further down the Bainsizza at Ravne. He had great admiration for the British. There was still a certain amount of shelling, he said, but not many wounded. There would be many sick now the rains had started. The Austrians were supposed to attack but he did not believe it. We were supposed to attack too, but they had not brought up any new troops so he thought that was off too. Food was scarce and he would be glad to get a full meal in Gorizia. What kind of supper had I had? I told him and he said that would be wonderful. He was especially impressed by the dolce. I did not describe it in detail, only said it was a dolce, and I think he believed it was something more elaborate than bread pudding.

  Did I know where he was going to go? I said I didn’t but that some of the other cars were at Caporetto. He hoped he would go up that way. It was a nice little place and he liked the high mountain hauling up beyond. He was a nice boy and every one seemed to like him. He said where it really had been hell was at San Gabriele and the attack beyond Lom that had gone bad. He said the Austrians had a great amount of artillery in the woods along Ternova ridge beyond and above us, and shelled the roads badly at night. There was a battery of naval guns that had gotten on his nerves. I would recognize them because of their flat trajectory. You heard the report and then the shriek commenced almost instantly. They usually fired two guns at once, one right after the other, and the fragments from the burst were enormous. He showed me one, a smoothly jagged piece of metal over a foot long. It looked like babbitting metal.

  “I don’t suppose they are so effective,” Gino said. “But they scare me. They all sound as though they came directly for you. There is the boom, then instantly the shriek and burst. What’s the use of not being wounded if they scare yo
u to death?”

  He said there were Croats in the lines opposite us now and some Magyars. Our troops were still in the attacking positions. There was no wire to speak of and no place to fall back to if there should be an Austrian attack. There were fine positions for defense along the low mountains that came up out of the plateau but nothing had been done about organizing them for defense. What did I think about the Bainsizza anyway?

  I had expected it to be flatter, more like a plateau. I had not realized it was so broken up.

  “Alto piano,” Gino said, “but no piano.”

  We went back to the cellar of the house where he lived. I said I thought a ridge that flattened out on top and had a little depth would be easier and more practical to hold than a succession of small mountains. It was no harder to attack up a mountain than on the level, I argued. “That depends on the mountains,” he said. “Look at San Gabriele.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but where they had trouble was at the top where it was flat. They got up to the top easy enough.”

  “Not so easy,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “but that was a special case because it was a fortress rather than a mountain, anyway. The Austrians had been fortifying it for years.” I meant tactically speaking in a war where there was some movement a succession of mountains were nothing to hold as a line because it was too easy to turn them. You should have possible mobility and a mountain is not very mobile. Also, people always over-shoot downhill. If the flank were turned, the best men would be left on the highest mountains. I did not believe in a war in mountains. I had thought about it a lot, I said. You pinched off one mountain and they pinched off another but when something really started every one had to get down off the mountains.

  What were you going to do if you had a mountain frontier? he asked.

  I had not worked that out yet, I said, and we both laughed. “But,” I said, “in the old days the Austrians were always whipped in the quadrilateral around Verona. They let them come down onto the plain and whipped them there.”

  “Yes,” said Gino. “But those were Frenchmen and you can work out military problems clearly when you are fighting in somebody else’s country.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “when it is your own country you cannot use it so scientifically.”