GARDEN OF EDEN by Ernest Hemingway

All your father found he found for you too, he thought, the good, the wonderful, the bad, the very bad, the really very bad, the truly bad and then the much worse. It was a shame a man with such a talent for disaster and for delight should have gone the way he went, he thought. It always made him happy to remember his father and he knew his father would have liked this story.

It was nearly noon when he came out of the room and walked barefoot on the stones of the patio to the entrance of the hotel. In the big room workmen were putting up a mirror on the wall behind the bar. Monsieur Aurol and the young waiter were with them and he spoke to them and went out in the kitchen where he found Madame.

“Have you any beer, Madame?” he asked her.

“Mais certainement, Monsieur J3ourne,” she said and brought a cold bottle from the ice chest.

“I’ll drink it from the bottle,” he said.

“As Monsieur wishes,” she said. “The ladies drove to Nice I believe. Monsieur worked well?”

“Very well.”

“Monsieur works too hard. It’s not good not to take breakfast.”

“Is there any of that caviar left in the tin?”

“I’m sure there is.

“I’ll take a couple of spoonsful.”

“Monsieur is odd,” Madame said. “Yesterday you ate it with champagne. Today with beer.”

“I’m alone today,” David said. “Do you know if my bicyclette is still in the remise?”

“It should be,” Madame said.

David took a spoonful of the caviar and offered the tin to Madame. “Have some, Madame. It’s very good.”

“I shouldn’t,” she said.

“Don’t be silly,” he told her. “Take some. There’s some toast. Take a glass of champagne. There’s some in the ice box.”

Madame took a spoonful of caviar and put it on a piece of toast left from breakfast and poured herself a glass of rose.

“It is excellent,” she said. “Now we must put it away.

“Do you feel any good effect?” David asked. “I’m going to have one more spoon.

“Ah, Monsieur. You mustn’t joke like that.”

“Why not?” David said. “My joking partners are away. If those two beautiful women come back tell them I went for a swim will you?”

“Certainly. The little one is a beauty. Not as beautiful as Madame of course.”

“I find her not too ugly,” David said.

“She’s a beauty, Monsieur, and very charming.”

“She’ll do until something else comes along,” David said. “If you think she’s pretty.”

“Monsieur,” she said in deepest reproof.

“What are all the architectural reforms?” David asked.

“The new miroir for the bar? It’s such a charming gift to the maison.”

“Everyone’s full of charm,” David said. “Charm and sturgeon eggs. Ask the boy to look at my tires while I put something on my feet and find a cap, will you please?”

“Monsieur likes to go barefoot. Me too in summer.”

“We’ll go barefoot together sometime.”

“Monsieur,” she said giving it everything.

“Is Aurol jealous?”

“Sans bla gue ,” she said. “I’ll tell the two beautiful ladies you’ve gone swimming.”

“Keep the caviar away from Aurol,” David said. “A bient6t, chere Madame.”

“A tout l’heure, Monsieur.”

On the shiny black road that mounted through the pines as he left the hotel he felt the pull in his arms and his shoulders and the rounding thrust of his feet against the pedals as he climbed in the hot sun with the smell of the pines and the light breeze that came from the sea. He bent his back forward and pulled lightly against his hands and felt the cadence that had been ragged as he first mounted begin to smooth out as he passed the hundred-meter stones and then the first red-topped kilometer marker and then the second. At the headland the road dipped to border the sea and he braked and dismounted and put the bicycle over his shoulder and walked down with it along the trail to the beach. He propped it against a pine tree that gave off the resin smell of the hot day and he dropped down to the rocks, stripped and put his espadrilles on his shorts, shirt and cap and he dove from the rocks into the deep clear cold sea. He came up through the varying light and when his head came out he shook it to clear his ears and then swam out to sea. He lay on his back and floated and watched the sky and the first white clouds that were coming with the breeze.

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