The Sun Also Rises - Chapter 14

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Episode Transcript

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Chapter fourteen. I do not knowwhat time I got to bed. I
remember undressing, putting on a bathrobe, and standing out on the balcony.
I knew I was quite drunk,and when I came in, I put
on the light over the head ofthe bed and started to read. I
was reading a book by Turgenev.Probably I read the same two pages over

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several times. Was one of thestories in a Sportsman's Sketches. I'd read
it before, but it seemed quitenew. The country became very clear,
and the feeling of pressure m Ihad seemed to loosen. I was very
drunk, and I did not wantto shut my eyes because the room would
go round and round. I kepton reading that feeling would pass. I

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heard Breton Robert Kohane come up thestairs. Koane said good night outside the
door and went on up to hisroom. I heard Brett go into the
room next door. Mike was alreadyin bed. He had come in with
me an hour before. He woke. As she came in and they talked
together. I heard them laugh.I turned off the light and tried to

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go to sleep. Was not necessaryto read any more. I could shut
my eyes without getting the wheeling sensation, but I could not sleep. There's
no reason why. Because it isdark you should look at things differently from
when it is light. The hellit isn't. I figured that all out
once, and for six months Inever slept with the electric light off.

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That was another bright idea. Tohell with women, anyway, to hell
with you, Bread, Ashley.Women make such swell friends, awfully swell.
In the first place, you hadto be in love with a woman
to have a basis of friendship.I've been having bred for a friend.
I had not been thinking about herside of it. I had been getting

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something for nothing that only delayed thepresentation of the bill. The bill always
came. That was one of theswell things you could count on. I
thought I had paid for everything,not like the woman pays and pays and
pays. No idea of retribution orpunishment, just exchange of values. You

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gave up something and got something else, or you worked for something. You
paid some way for everything that wasany good. I paid my way into
enough things that I liked so thatI had a good time. Either you
paid by learning about them or byexperience, or by taking chances, or
by money. Enjoying living was learningto get your money's worth, and knowing

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when you had it you could getyour money's worth. The world was a
good place to buy in. Seemedlike a fine philosophy. In five years,
I thought it will seem just assilly as all the other fine philosophies
I've had. Perhaps that wasn't true, though, Perhaps as you went along
you did learn something. I didnot care what it was all about.

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All I wanted to know was howto live in it. Maybe if you
found out how to live in it, you learned from that what it was
all about. I wished Mike wouldnot behave so terribly to kne though Mike
was a bad drunk. Brett wasa good drunk. Bill was a good
drunk. Cone was never drunk.Mike was unpleasant after he passed a certain

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point. I like to see himhurt Cone. I wished he would not
do it, though, because afterwardit made me disgusted of myself. That
was morality. Things that made youdisgust it afterward. No, that must
be immorality. That was a largestatement. What a lot of bilge.
I could think up at night?What rot? I could hear Brett say

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it? What rot? When youwere with English, you got into the
habit of using English expressions in yourthinking. The English spoken language, the
upper classes, anyway, must havefewer words than the Eskimo. Of course,
I didn't know anything about the escuaeKimon. Maybe the Eskimo was a
fine language, Say the Cherokee.I didn't know anything about the Cherokee either.

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The English talked with inflected phrases,one phrase to me and everything.
I liked them, though I likedthe way they talked. Take Harris.
Still, Harris was not the upperclasses. I turned on the light again
and read. I read the Turgenev. I knew that now, reading it
in the oversensitized state of mind,after much too much brandy, I would

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remember it somewhere, and afterward itwould seem as though it really happened to
me. I would always have it. That was another good thing you paid
for and then had. Some timealong toward daylight, I went to sleep.
The next two days in Pamplona werequiet, and there were no more
rows. The town was getting readyfor the fiesta. Workmen put up the

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gate posts that were to shut offthe side streets when the bulls were released
from the corrals and came running throughthe streets in the morning on their way
to the ring. The workmen dugholes and fitted in the timbers, each
timber numbered for its regular place.Out on the plateau beyond the town,
employees of the bull ring exercised picadorhorses, galloping them stiff legged on the

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hard, sun baked fields. Behindthe bull ring, the big gate of
the bull ring was open, andinside the amphitheater was being swept. The
ring was rolled and sprinkled, andcarpenters replaced weakened or cracked planks in the
barrera. Standing at the edge ofthe smooth, rolled sand, you could

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look up into the empty stands andsee old women sweeping out the boxes outside.
The fence that led from the laststreet of the town to the entrance
of the bull ring was already inplace and made a long pen. The
crowd would come running down with thebulls behind them. On the morning of
the day of the first bullfight.Out across the plain where the hoar and

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cattle fair would be, some gypsieshad camped under the trees the wine and
are guardedbient. These cellars were puttingup their boots. One booth advertised Annis
del Toro. The Closs sign hungagainst the planks in the hot sun in
the big square that was the centerof the town, there was no change
yet. We sat in the whitewicker chairs on the terrace of the cafe

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and watched the motor buses come inand unload peasants from the country coming into
the market. We watched the busesfill up and start out with peasants sitting
with their saddle bags full of thethings they had bought in town. The
tall, gray motor buses were theonly life of the square, except for
the pigeons and the man with thehose who sprinkled the graveled square and watered

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the streets. In the evening wasthe paseo. For an hour after dinner,
everyone, all the good looking girls, the officers from the garrison,
all the fashionable people of the townwalked in the street on one side of
the square, while the cafe tablesfilled with a regular after dinner crowd.
During the morning, I usually satin the cafe and read the Madrid papers,

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and then walked in the town orout into the country. Sometimes Bill
went along. Sometimes he wrote inhis room. Robert Cone spent the morning
studying Spanish or trying to get ashave at the barber shop. Brett and
Mike never got up until noon.We all had a remouth at the cafe.
It was a quiet life and noone was drunk. I went to

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church a couple of times, oncewith Brett. She said she wanted to
hear me go to confession, butI told her not only was it impossible,
but it was not as interesting asit sounded. Besides, it would
be in a language she did notknow. We met Koane as we came
out of the church, and althoughit was obvious he had followed us,
yet he was very pleasant and nice, and we all three went for a

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walk out to the gipsy camp,and Brett had her fortune told. It
was a good morning. There werehigh white clouds above the mountains. It
had rained a little in the night, and it was fresh and cool on
the plateau, and there was awonderful view. We all felt good,
and we felt healthy, and Ifelt quite friendly to Koene. We could

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not be upset about anything on aday like that. That was the last
day before the fiesta. End ofchapter fourteen.