The Sun Also Rises

Brett and Mike were coming, they would be on it. At twenty minutes to nine we were not half through dinner. Robert Cohn got up from the table and said he would go to the station. I said I would go with him, just to devil him. Bill said he would be damned if he would leave his dinner. I said we would be right back.
We walked to the station. I was enjoying Cohn’s nervousness. I hoped Brett would be on the train. At the station the train was late, and we sat on a baggage-truck and waited outside in the dark. I have never seen a man in civil life as nervous as Robert Cohn⁠—nor as eager. I was enjoying it. It was lousy to enjoy it, but I felt lousy. Cohn had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.
After a while we heard the train-whistle way off below on the other side of the plateau, and then we saw the headlight coming up the hill. We went inside the station and stood with a crowd of people just back of the gates, and the train came in and stopped, and everybody started coming out through the gates.
They were not in the crowd. We waited till everybody had gone through and out of the station and gotten into buses, or taken cabs, or were walking with their friends or relatives through the dark into the town.
“I knew they wouldn’t come,” Robert said. We were going back to the hotel.
“I thought they might,” I said.
Bill was eating fruit when we came in and finishing a bottle of wine.
“Didn’t come, eh?”
“No.”
“Do you mind if I give you that hundred pesetas in the morning, Cohn?” Bill asked. “I haven’t changed any money here yet.”
“Oh, forget about it,” Robert Cohn said. “Let’s bet on something else. Can you bet on bullfights?”
“You could,” Bill said, “but you don’t need to.”
“It would be like betting on the war,” I said. “You don’t need any economic interest.”
“I’m very curious to see them,” Robert said.
Montoya came up to our table. He had a telegram in his hand. “It’s for you.” He handed it to me.
It read: “Stopped night San Sebastian.”
“It’s from them,” I said. I put it in my pocket. Ordinarily I should have handed it over.
“They’ve stopped over in San Sebastian,” I said. “Send their regards to you.”
Why I felt that impulse to devil him I do not know. Of course I do know. I was blind, unforgivingly jealous of what had happened to him. The fact that I took it as a matter of course did not alter that any. I certainly did hate him. I do not think I ever really hated him until he had that little spell of superiority at lunch⁠—that and when he went through all that barbering. So I put the telegram in my pocket. The telegram came to me, anyway.
“Well,” I said. “We ought to pull out on the noon bus for Burguete. They can follow us if they get in tomorrow night.”
There were only two trains up from San Sebastian, an early morning train and the one we had just met.
“That sounds like a good idea,” Cohn said.
“The sooner we get on the stream the better.”
“It’s all one to me when we start,” Bill said. “The sooner the better.”
We sat in the Iruña for a while and had coffee and then took a little walk out to the bullring and across the field and under the trees at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the river in the dark, and I turned in early. Bill and Cohn stayed out in the café quite late, I believe, because I was asleep when they came in.
In the morning I bought three tickets for the bus to Burguete. It was scheduled to leave at two o’clock. There was nothing earlier. I was sitting over at the Iruña reading the papers when I saw Robert Cohn coming across the square. He came up to the table and sat down in one of the wicker chairs.
“This is a comfortable café,” he said. “Did you have a good night, Jake?”
“I slept like a log.”
“I didn’t sleep very well. Bill and I were out late, too.”
“Where were you?”
“Here. And after it shut we went over to that other café. The old man there speaks German and English.”
“The Café Suizo.”
“That’s it. He seems like a nice old fellow. I think it’s a better café than this one.”
“It’s not so good in the daytime,” I said. “Too hot. By the way, I got the bus tickets.”
“I’m not going up today. You and Bill go on ahead.”
“I’ve got your ticket.”
“Give it to me. I’ll get the money back.”
“It’s five pesetas.”
Robert Cohn took out a silver five-peseta piece and gave it to me.
“I ought to stay,” he said. “You see I’m afraid there’s some sort of misunderstanding.”
“Why,” I said. “They may not come here for three or four days now if they start on parties at San Sebastian.”
“That’s just it,” said Robert. “I’m afraid they expected to meet me at San Sebastian, and that’s why they stopped over.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, I wrote suggesting it to Brett.”
“Why in hell didn’t you stay there and meet them then?” I started to say, but I stopped. I thought that idea would come to him by itself, but I do not believe it ever did.
He was being confidential now and it was giving him pleasure to be able to talk with the understanding that I knew there was something between him and Brett.
“Well, Bill and I will go up right after lunch,” I said.
“I wish I could go. We’ve been looking forward to this fishing all winter.” He was being sentimental about it. “But I ought to stay. I really ought. As soon as they come I’ll bring them right up.”
“Let’s find Bill.”
“I want to go over to the barbershop.”
“See you at lunch.”
I found Bill up in his room. He was shaving.
“Oh, yes, he told