"The Compañero" a Tribute to "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" (1933) / Ernest Hemingway
The old man fingered the fresh scar
running around his neck but would not think about it. This was not the time.
There was brandy de Jerez. Tonight was the Cardinal Mendoza, dark and huge with
raisins and burnt caramel. The glass was overfull and sticky. The disdain in
the young bartender’s voice was noise to him.
He could hear, but there was so little
reason to let others know that, these days. After a certain age, you no longer
needed to hear. He could feel the world creeping closer. He could feel the
bricks under his feet and in the wall of the building – cooling and settling in
the evening air after a full day of baking in the hot sun. The night lay on him
like his years. There was still the brandy de Jerez, the Cardinal Mendoza.
Behind him in the bar, the two waiters
watched him while they cleaned. One young. One middle-aged. The middle one
lived in the gray – saw the approaching night and knew the value of a clean
well-lighted place, the old man thought. He looked out across the flagstones of
the terrace into the dark square and waited for the man to come. A couple
hurried by. A flash of brass. A soldier and a woman touching in the intimate
and serious way the young have. Knowing without knowing how temporary the flesh
is.
Suddenly, the man was there, sitting
on the wrought iron chair next to his. The darkness kept the old man from ever seeing
his face, this companion that had come to visit more and more on these quiet
evenings. The street light did not reach the tables. The leaves were in shadow,
also.
“There are few pleasures,” the man
said and nodded toward the Cardinal.
“The pleasure comes from tasting the
years in the cask,” the old man replied. He took another careful sip.
“For me it is the evening.”
“It is the same thing.”
“I like the dew on the grass. I sometimes
feel like it is weeping for the day.” The man settled deeper into the shadows
and remained unnoticed by the waiters. A slight wind moved the leaves of the
tree, stirring memories within the old man.
“I had a wife, once,” he said.
“I know.”
“She preferred cava. The bubbles. She
even danced in her sleep.”
“So few dance.”
The old man could see the golden bubbles
rising from the bottom of a glass, swirling. Like his esposa’s hair as she
returned flushed from the dance floor.
“I never danced. I just watched.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps I was embarrassed. Perhaps it
was never fitting for a man in my position. She would say that she danced for
both of us.”
“The leaves dance now. Yet they need
no reason.”
“The leaves dance for the wind and the
night.”
“It is the same thing.”
“Will she be there if I come with
you?”
“I cannot say.”
The old man looked across the square
for some time. He remembered the energy, the confidence of his youth. Yet he
had not danced. His glass was empty. He looked back at the waiters and saw that
the man was gone. The young waiter came to him impatiently.
“Another brandy,” he said.
The young waiter shook his head and
the old man stopped pointing at his glass. The waiter moved with finality. He
didn’t bother to listen to the words. What did the young believe? Everything.
Everything, but this.
The old man counted out his coins
carefully, leaving a tip. There was no point in complaining or being cheap –
punishing the young for their youth. Perhaps he should tell him to dance while
he could. No. He would be dismissed as loco, a crazy one. Only the leaves
dance, these days.
In the end all there was – he staggered,
the point of the table striking his thigh – and he felt a weakness run up the
right side of his body like an electric current. He was gratified the bartenders
did not see the movement, it was slight, a tremor in the gait of an old man.
But, yes, as he went into the night he was grateful they did not see even if
all he had was an empty glass and the rope.
posted by Dan @ 1:21 AM
0 comments
