GARDEN OF EDEN by Ernest Hemingway

“Had I ought to get a new one?” she asked.

“Christ no. Just let me fix the brakes to start with.”

“We need a larger car with room for all of us,” Catherine said. “This is a fine car,” David said. “It just needs a hell of a lot of work done on it. But it’s too much car for you.”

“You see if they can fix it properly,” the girl said. “If they can’t we’ll get the type of car you want.”

Then they were tanning on the beach and David said lazily, “Come in and swim.

“Pour some water on my head,” Catherine said. “I brought a sand bucket in the rucksack.”

“Oh that feels wonderful,” she said. “Could I have one more? Pour it on my face too.”

She lay on the hard beach on her white robe in the sun and David and the girl swam out to sea and around the rocks at the mouth of the cove. The girl was swimming ahead and David overhauled her. He reached out and grabbed a foot and then held her close in his arms and kissed her as they treaded water. She felt slippery and strange in the water and they seemed the same height as they treaded water with their bodies close together and kissed. Then her head went under and he leaned back and she came up laughing and shaking her head that was sleek as a seal, and she brought her lips against his again and they kissed until they both went under. They lay side by side and floated and touched and then kissed hard and happily and went under again.

“I don’t worry about anything now,” she said, when they came up again. “You mustn’t either.”

“I won’t,” he said and they swam in.

“You better go in, Devil,” he said to Catherine. “Your head will get too hot.”

“All right. Let’s go in,” she said. “Let Heiress darken now. Let me put some oil on her.”

“Not too much,” the girl said. “May I have a pail of water on my head too?”

“Your head’s as wet as it can get,” Catherine said.

“I just wanted to feel it,” the girl said.

“Wade out, David, and get a good cold one,” Catherine said. And after he had poured the clear cool sea water on Marita’s head they left her lying with her face on her arms and swam out to sea. They floated easily like sea animals and Catherine said, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I wasn’t crazy?”

“You’re not crazy.

“Not this afternoon,” she said. “Anyway not so far. Can we swim further?”

“We’re pretty well out, Devil.”

“All right. Let’s swim back in. But the deep water’s beautiful out here.”

“Do you want to swim down once before we go in?”

“Just once,” she said. “In this very deep part.”

“We’ll swim down until we just can make it up.”

136 ’37

Chapter Sixteen

HE WOKE when it was barely just light enough to see the pine trunks and he left the bed, careful not to wake Catherine, found his shorts and went, the soles of his feet wet from the dew on the stones, along the length of the hotel to the door of his work room. As he opened the door he felt, again, the touch of the air from the sea that promised how the day would be.

When he sat down the sun was not yet up and he felt that he had made up some of the time that was lost in the story. But as he reread his careful legible hand and the words took him away and into the other country, he lost that advantage and was faced with the same problem and when the sun rose out of the sea it had, for him, risen long before and he was well into the crossing of the gray, dried, bitter lakes his boots now white with crusted alkalis. He felt the weight of the sun on his head and his neck and his back. His shirt was wet and he felt the sweat go down his back and between his thighs. When he stood straight up and rested, breathing slowly, and his shirt hung away from

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