Chapter 13 Chapter Twelve

As soon as I woke up in the morning, I went to the window to look out.The sky has cleared and there are no clouds in the mountains.Outside, under the windows, there were some carts and an old post-coach, the roof boards of which had been cracked by the weather.It should have been abandoned here before the buses were used.A goat hops onto a hansom and then onto the roof of the stage-coach.It stretched its head towards the other goats below, and when I waved to it, it jumped down. Bill was still sleeping, so I got dressed and put on my shoes on the outside porch and went downstairs.There was no movement downstairs, so I unlatched the door and went outside, it was very cold outside in the early morning.The dew that fell after the wind died down has not been dried by the sun.I walked around the shed behind the inn, found a pickaxe, and went to the stream to dig some bait.The stream was clear and shallow, but it didn't look like trout.By the wet, grassy stream, I dug into the ground with the hoe and loosened a patch of sod.There are earthworms below.I picked up the turf and they swam away. I dug carefully and got a lot.I dug along the edge of the swamp, filled two empty tobacco tins, and sprinkled some fine earth over the worms.The goats watched me dig.

When I got back to the hotel, the lady proprietress was downstairs in the kitchen, and I ordered her to bring us coffee and have lunch ready for us.Bill was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I saw you from the window," he said. "Don't want to disturb you. What are you doing? Burying money?" "You slob!" "Working hard for our common good? That's great. I want you to do it every morning." "Come on," I said. "Get up." "What? Get up? I'm never getting up again." He crawled under the covers and pulled the covers up to his chin.

"Try and see if you can convince me to get up." I found the tackle myself and put it all in the tackle bag. "You're not interested?" Bill asked. "I'm going downstairs for breakfast." "Eat breakfast? Why didn't you say that just now? I thought you were joking by waking me up. Eat breakfast? That's great. Now you're making sense. You go out and dig some more earthworms, and I'll go downstairs." "Bah, go to hell!" "Go for everyone's welfare." Bill put on his shirt and underwear. "Come on, show some playfulness and compassion."

I took the tackle bag, the net and the rod bag and went out of the room. "Hi! Come back!" I stuck my head in the door. "Don't you show a little playfulness and compassion?" I put my thumb on the tip of my nose and made a contemptuous gesture at him. "That's not funny." When I came downstairs, I heard Bill singing, "Wicky and pitiful. When you're feeling... Come on, say something witty to 'em, tell 'em some pity. Come on, tell 'em something witty, When they feel . . . just a little witticism like this. Just a little pity like this . . . ” He sang from upstairs to downstairs.It was to the tune of the song "The Bells Are Ringing for the Wedding of My Girl and Me."I was reading a Spanish newspaper from a week ago.

"What's the meaning of all this jest and compassion?" "What? Don't you know what Playful and Mercy is?" "No. Who came up with that?" "Everybody's singing. All New York is obsessed. It's like the old Fratilene circus." The waitress came in with coffee and buttered toast.Or rather a plain slice of bread toasted and buttered. "Ask her if she has any jam," Bill said. "Speak playfully to her." "Do you have any jam?" "That's not funny. I wish I could speak Spanish." The coffee was good and we drank it from large bowls.The maid brought in a glass saucer of raspberry jam.

"Thank you." "Hey! That's not what it said," Bill said. "Say something witty. Say something sarcastic about Primo de Rivera." "I could ask her what kind of jam they got into in the River Mountains." "Not good enough," Bill said. "It's so bad. You can't make a wisecrack. You just can't. You don't know what a wisecrack is. You have no mercy. Say something compassionate." "Robert Cohen." "Not bad. Better. So why is Cohn pathetic? Put it lightly." He took a swig of coffee. "Damn it!" I said. "It's so early in the morning to play tricks."

"Look at you. You think you want to be a writer. You're nothing more than a reporter. A journalist in exile. You have to get up to talk. You have to open your eyes to pity. words." "Go on," I said. "Who did you learn this nonsense from?" "Learn it from everybody. Don't you read the papers? Don't you know the people? You know who you are? You're an exile. Why don't you live in New York? Or you'd know These things. What do you want me to do? Come to France every year to report to you?" "Have some more coffee," I said.

"Good coffee is good for you. It's the caffeine in it. It's all caffeine that got us here. Caffeine puts a man in her saddle and a woman in his grave. You know yours What's the problem? You're an exile. One of the most unfortunate types. Haven't you heard of it? A man can't write anything worth publishing as long as he leaves his country. Even in newspapers A news report." He is drinking coffee. "You're an exile. You've lost touch with the land. You've become artificial. Fake European morals have ruined you. You drink like hell. You can't get sex out of your head. You're not practical. , spend your days talking and talking. You're an exile, understand? You're going back and forth from café to café."

"It's a pretty comfortable life, so far as you're concerned," I said. "So when do I work?" "You don't work. There are some who insist that some bitch is supporting you. Others say you're a worthless man." "No," I said. "I was just in an accident." "Never mention it again," Bill said. "That's the kind of thing you don't want to talk about. You should try to keep it a mystery. Like Henry's bicycle." He talked eloquently, but stopped at this point.He probably thought that the sarcasm that I was a good-for-nothing man just now had stabbed me.I'm going to get him to go on.

"Not a bike," I said. "He was riding a horse." "I heard it was a three-wheeled motorcycle." "Forget it," I said. "A plane is like a three-wheeled motorcycle. The joystick and the steering wheel work on the same principle." "But don't step on it." "Yes," I said. "I don't think there's any need to step on it." "Let's not talk about it," Bill said. "Okay. I'm just defending the tuk-tuk." "I think Henry is a great writer, too," Bill said. "And you, you're a nice guy. Has anyone ever told you to your face that you're a nice guy?"

"I'm not a nice guy." "Listen. You're a nice guy and I like you more than anyone else in the world. I can't tell you that in New York. People will think I'm gay. American Civil War That's what caused it. Abraham Lincoln was gay. He fell in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln freed the niggers just for a bet. The Dred Scott case was Anti-Hotel League scam. The Colonel and Judy O'Grady are gay at heart." He paused. "Do you still want to hear it?" "Go ahead," I said. "I don't know any more. I'll tell you about it at lunch." "You bastard," I said. "You bastard!" We stuffed our cold lunch and two bottles of wine into the rucksack, and Bill carried it on his back.I carried the rod bag and dip net on my back.We took the road, crossed a meadow, and found a path that led through the fields to a grove of woods on the first hillside.We trod across the fields on this sandy road.The fields are rolling and grassy, ​​but the grass has been gnawed bare by the sheep.Cows graze in the mountains.We heard the ringing of bells on their necks in the woods.The path crosses the creek via a single-plank bridge.The top of the log was planed, and the trunk of a young tree was bent and inserted on either side for a railing.There is a shallow pond by the creek, and there are little tadpoles against the sandy bottom of the pond.We walked up steep stream banks and across rolling fields.We look back and see the whitewashed walls and red roofs of Burgot, a dusty truck driving on the white road. Across the fields, we crossed another, more rapid-flowing stream.There was a sandy road that led down to the ferry by the stream and to a wood on the other.The path we took crossed the creek through another log bridge downstream from the ferry, and joined the sandy road, so we went into the woods. It is a beech forest, and the trees are very old.The roots on the ground are intertwined, and the branches of the tree are entangled.We walked on the road between the thick trunks of these old beech trees, and the sun shone through the leaves and dappled the grass.The trees are big and leafy, but the forest is not dark.There are no shrubs, just green, flat grass, with the gray trees spaced in orderly intervals, like a park. "That's what counts as a country scene," Bill said. The road climbed up a hill, and we entered the dense forest, and the road continued to climb.Sometimes the terrain drops, then rises abruptly again.We kept hearing the bells of the cows in the woods.At last the road came out of the woods at the top of the hill.We reached the highest point in the area, the top of the wooded hills we had seen from Burgot.Wild strawberries grew in a little clearing between the trees on the sunny slope of the ridge. The road ran out of the woods along the ridge.There were no trees on the hills ahead, but large patches of yellow gorse.Looking into the distance, we saw a cliff with green trees and limestone towering, indicating that the channel of the Irati River was below. "We've got to follow this road on the ridge, across the hills, through the woods on the far hills, down to the valley of the Irati," I pointed to Bill. "This trip has been a real trek." "The road is too far. It is not comfortable to walk there in one day, and then walk back after fishing." "Comfortable. What a nice word. We even go to bring it back and go fishing, so we don't even have the time to catch our breath." It was a long journey, and the scenery of the mountains and countryside was beautiful, but when we came out of the mountains and followed the steep road down the Fabrika Valley, we were exhausted. The road stretched out from the shade of the trees into the hot sun.Ahead is the valley.A steep mountain rises from the other side of the river.There is a buckwheat field on the mountain.We saw a white house under some trees on the hillside.It was very hot, and we stopped under a tree next to the barrage. Bill leaned the pack against a tree trunk, and we attached the joints, reeled, leaders, and we were ready to fish. "You say there must be trout in this river?" Bill asked. "A lot." "I'm gonna go fly-hook. Have you got a McGinty fly-hook?" "There are several in the box." "You fish with earthworms?" "Yes. I fish right here at the dam." "Then I'll take the fly box." He tied a fly hook. "Where should I go? Up or down?" "The bottom is the best. But there are plenty of fish up there." Bill walked down the river. "Take a can of worms." "No, I don't need it. If I don't bite the hook, I will play a few more places." Bill watched the running water below. "Hello," he called, over the sound of the rushing water from the dam. "How about putting the wine in the spring above the road?" "Yes," I said aloud.Bill waved his hand and started walking down the river.I found the two bottles of wine in my knapsack, took them up the road, and came to a place where a spring flowed from an iron pipe.There was a plank resting on top of the spring, and I raised the plank, knocked on the cork of the wine bottle, and lowered it into the water below.The spring water was freezing cold and my hands and wrists were numb.I put the boards where they were, hoping no one would find the bottles. I picked up the fishing rod leaning on the tree trunk, took the worm pot and dip net and walked to the dam.Dams are built to create a drop in water flow that can be used to transport logs.The sluice gate was closed, and I sat on a square planed log, watching the calm river water in the dam that had not yet formed a waterfall.At the foot of the dam, the foaming river was very deep.While I was baiting, a trout jumped out of the foaming water into the waterfall and was swept down.I hadn't had time to bait yet another trout made for the waterfall, making an equally beautiful arc through the air and disappearing in the roaring rush of the water.I fitted a big lead weight and cast the line into the foaming water just beside the wooden lock of the dam. I don't know how the first trout got hooked.When I was about to reel in the line, I felt that I had caught one. I pulled the fish out of the churning water at the foot of the waterfall. It struggled and almost broke the fishing rod in half. I lifted it up. Put it on the dam.It was a good trout and I banged its head against the wood and it froze a few times before I put it in the game bag. When I caught this one several trout were jumping for the falls.I baited and cast the line back into the water and immediately caught another and I brought it up in the same way.After a while I caught six of them.They were all about the same size. I spread them out on the ground, side by side with their heads facing one direction, and I looked at them carefully.They were beautifully colored, and their bodies were hard because of the cold water.It was very hot, so I cut open the belly of the fish one by one, gutted them, and tore off the gills, and threw them across the river.I took the fish to the river, washed them in the calm, stagnant cold water on the inside of the dam, gathered some ferns, and put them all in game bags: a layer of ferns, three trout, and another Spread a layer of ferns, then three trout, and finish with a layer of ferns.The trout looked beautiful wrapped in ferns, so that the bag puffed up and I put it in the shade. It was very hot on the dam, so I put the tin can with the worms in the shade with the game bag, took a book out of the pack, and sat under a tree to watch while Bill came up for lunch. It was just after noon, and the shade area was not large, but I leaned against two trees growing together and sat reading a book.This is AI love.There's a book by Woo Mason, and I'm reading a wonderful story about a man who freezes up in the Alps, falls into a glacier, and disappears, and his bride wants to see him The body was revealed in the glacier, intended to wait a full twenty-four years, during which time the lover who had truly loved her waited too.They were still waiting when Bill came back. "Did you catch it?" he asked.He was drenched in sweat with one hand on the rod, game bag and net.Because of the rushing water on the dam, I didn't hear his approaching footsteps. "Six. What did you catch?" Bill sat down and opened the game bag and took out a large trout and laid it on the grass.He took out three more fish, one bigger than the other, and he put them side by side under the tree.His face was covered with sweat, but he was very proud. "How old is yours?" "Better than your school" "Take it out and see." "Seriously, how big are they?" "Probably as big as your youngest." "You're not hiding it from me, are you?" "It would be better if I kept it from you." "They were all caught with earthworms?" "yes." "You lazy bastard!" Bill put the trout in the game bag and swung the bag open toward the river.His trousers were wet to the waist, and I knew he must have been in the water. I went over to the road and got two bottles of wine out of the spring.The bottle was cold.When I turned back and walked under the tree, the outside of the bottle was full of water droplets.I spread out my lunch on a newspaper, opened a bottle of wine, and leaned the other on a tree root.Bill dried his hands as he came, his game bag stuffed with ferns. "Let's try this bottle," he said.He uncorked the bottle, held it upside down and drank. "Hey! It's so eye-catching." "I'll try it." The wine was ice-cold and slightly rusty. "It's not so bad," Bill said. "It's a cold relationship," I said. We untied the little packets and ate. "chicken." "And boiled eggs." "Is there any salt?" "First an egg," Bill said. "And chicken. Even Brian understands that." "He's dead. I read it in yesterday's paper." "No. It can't be true, can it?" "Really. Brian died." Bill put down the egg he was peeling. "Gentlemen," he said, taking a chicken leg from a scrap of newspaper. "Let me turn it upside down. For Brian. In honor of this great commoner. First the chicken, then the egg." "I don't know when God created the chicken?" "Hey," Bill said, sucking at the drumstick, "how do we know? We shouldn't ask. We're on this earth for a lifetime. Let's have a good time, trust God, thank God." "Here's an egg." Bill held the drumstick in one hand and the wine bottle in the other, gesturing. "Let's rejoice in God's blessing. Let's eat the birds of the sky. Let's eat the produce of the vineyard. Would you like some, brother?" "You first, brother." Bill took a swig. . "Henry take a little, bro," he said, handing me the bottle. "Let us not doubt, brother. Let us not reach into the hen's coop with ape's paws to pry into divine mysteries. Let us rely on faith, accept the status quo, and just say—I want you to say it with me—but what shall we say Yeah, bro?" he continued, pointing at me with a drumstick. "Let me tell you. We'll say it, and I'll say it for myself, proudly—I want you to kneel down and say it with me, brother. Nobody's going to be ashamed to kneel in the wide mountains .Remember, the jungle was God's earliest temple. Let us kneel and proclaim: 'Don't eat that hen,—it's Mencken.'" "Please," I said. "Enjoy a little of this." We open another bottle of wine. "What's the matter?" I said. "Don't you like Brian?" "I love Brian," Bill said. "We are as close as brothers." "Where did you know him?" "He, Mencken and I all studied together at Holy Cross College." "And Frankie Fritsch." "It's a lie. Frankie Fritsch went to Fordham." "Well," I said, "I went to Loyola with Bishop Manning." "Lie," Bill said. "It was I who studied at Loyola with Bishop Manning." "You're drunk," I said. "Drunk?" "Why not?" "It's a combination of high humidity," Bill said. "The damn high humidity should be removed." "Take another sip." "That's all we brought?" "Just these two bottles." "Do you know who you are?" Bill looked affectionately at the bottle. "I don't know," I said. "You're hired by the Anti-Hotel League." "I studied with Wayne Bee Wheeler at Notre Dame." "Liar," Bill said. "Wayne Bee Wheeler and I were classmates at Austin Business School. He was the class president." "Come on," I said, "the hotel has to be taken down." "You're right, old classmate," Bill said. "The hotel must be banned, I'm going to take it with me," "You're drunk." "Drunk?" "Drunk." "Oh, probably." "Want to take a nap?" "Okay Come on," we lay with our heads in the shade, looking into the depths of the foliage overhead. "Are you asleep?" "No," Bill said. "I was thinking about something." I closed my eyes.It is comfortable to lie on the ground. "Hey," Bill said, "how's Brett?" "What's up?" "You used to love her, didn't you?" "Yes" "how long?" "It dragged on and off for a long time." "Oh, that sucks!" said Bill. "I am sorry friend." "Nothing," I said. "I don't care anymore." "real?" "Really. But I hate to talk about it." "I asked you, are you not angry?" "Why should I be angry?" "I'm going to bed," Bill said.He covered his face with a newspaper. "Listen, Jack," he said, "are you really a Catholic?" "Procedurally, yes." "what does that mean?" "have no idea." "Come on, now I'm going to bed," he said. "Stop nagging me so much that I can't sleep." I fell asleep too.When I woke up, Bill was packing his rucksack.The sky was approaching dusk, and the tree shadows dragged very long, stretching all the way to the dam.I fell asleep on the floor, and I felt stiff all over. "What's the matter with you? Woke up?" Bill asked. "Why don't you sleep well at night?" I stretched my waist and rubbed my eyes. "I had a lovely dream," Bill said. "I don't remember what happened in the dream, but it was a lovely dream." "I don't seem to be dreaming." "You should be dreaming," Bill said. "All our great industrialists are dreamers. You look at Ford. You look at President Coolidge. You look at Rockefeller. You look at Joe Davidson." I unpacked my and Bill's rods and put them in the rod bag.I put the reel in the tackle bag.Bill had packed the knapsack and we stuffed into a trout bag.I carry another one. "Okay," Bill said, "I got the stuff?? "earthworm." "Your earthworm. Put it in your backpack." He had the knapsack on his back, and I stuffed the two worm pots into a lidded pouch on the outside of the knapsack. "Do you have all your stuff now?" I glanced at the grass at the foot of the elms. "yes." We set off down the road into the woods.It was a long walk back to Burgot.When we walked across the fields to the road, and then along the streets lined with houses on both sides of the town, when we arrived at the hotel, there were already thousands of lights and the sky was dark. We spent five days in Burgot and had a great time fishing.Nights are cold and days are hot, but there is a breeze even during the hottest part of the day.In such a hot day, it is very comfortable to carry water in the very cool river.When you sit on the shore, the sun dries your clothes.We found a creek with a deep pool for swimming.In the evening we played bridge of threes with an Englishman named Harris, who had come on foot from St. Jean-Pietroport, and stayed at this inn to go fishing.He was very charming, and went twice with us to the Irati River.Robert Cohn hadn't heard from him at all, nor had Brett or Mike.