GARDEN OF EDEN by Ernest Hemingway

He took the bottle of oil out of the rucksack and put a little oil on the girl’s chin and on her cheeks and on her nose and found a blue faded patterned handkerchief in the canvas pocket of the rucksack and laid it across her breast.

“Must I stop?” the girl asked. “I’m having the most wonderful dream.”

“Finish the dream,” he said.

“Thank you.”

In a few minutes she breathed very deeply and shook her head and sat up.

“Let’s go in now,” she said.

They went in together and swam out and then played under water like porpoises. When they swam in they dried each other off with towels and he handed her the bottle of wine that was still cool in the rolled newspaper and they each took a drink and she looked at him and laughed.

“It’s nice to drink it for thirst,” she said. “You don’t really mind being brothers do you?”

“No.” He touched her forehead and her nose and then her cheeks and chin with the oil and then put it carefully above and behind her ears.

“I want to get behind my ears and neck tanned and over my cheekbones. All the new places.”

“You’re awfully dark, brother,” he said. “You don’t know how dark.”

“I like it,” the girl said. “But I want to be darker.”

They lay on the beach on the firm sand that was dry now but still cool after the high tide had fallen. The young man put some oil on the palm of his hand and spread it lightly with his fingers over the girl’s thighs and they glowed warm as the skin took the oil. He went on spreading it over her belly and breasts and the girl said sleepily, “We don’t look very much like brothers when we’re this way do we?”

“No.”

“I’m trying to be such a very good girl,” she said. “Truly you don’t have to worry darling until night. We won’t let the night things come in the day.”

At the hotel the postman was having a drink while he waited for the girl to sign for a large forwarding envelope heavy with enclosed letters from her bank in Paris. There were three letters re-addressed from his bank, too. It was the first mail since they had sent the hotel as a forwarding address. The young man gave the postman five francs and asked him to have another glass of wine with him at the zinc bar. The girl unhooked the key from the board and said, “I’ll go up to the room and get cleaned up and meet you at the cafe.”

After he finished his glass he said goodbye to the postman and walked down along the canal to the cafe. It was good to sit in the shade after walking back bareheaded in the sun from the far beach and it was pleasant and cool in the cafe. He ordered a

vermouth and soda and took out his pocket knife and slit open his letters. All three envelopes were from his publishers and two of them were fat with clippings and the proofs of advertisements. He glanced at the clippings and then read the long letter. It was cheerful and guardedly optimistic. It was too early to tell how the book would do but everything looked good. Most of the reviews were excellent. Of course there were some. But that was to be expected. Sentences had been underlined in the reviews that would probably be used in the future advertisements. His publisher wished he could say more about how the book would do but he never made predictions as to sales. It was bad practice. The point was that the book could not have been better received. The reception was sensational really. But he would see the clippings. The first printing had been five thousand copies and on the strength of the reviews a second printing had been ordered. The upcoming advertisements would carry the phrase Now in Its Second Printing. His publisher hoped that he was as happy as he deserved to be and taking the rest that he so richly deserved. He sent his best greetings to his wife.

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