Hemingway, this is for you

I sat with my friend in the café.

The table was round and smooth, the chairs wooden and hard to the touch. The carpet was also smooth and soft and lovely to walk on.

“Your plane leaves in three hours. How do you feel like?” my friend asked.

The café was full of people in shirts and suits and well-creased trousers and talking in low voices. They were lifting white cups of coffee and eating small sandwiches and not smoking. Behind the counter a man was pouring the coffee in the cups. He had black plastic glasses and was tall and young.

“Coffee?” I replied.

“Cappuccino,” my friend said.

I walked back to the table with the cups of coffee on a tray I held with both hands. My shoes were brown leather and comfortable for walking in. I pushed aside my rucksack, pulled out the chair and sat down. My rucksack was blue and heavy but very new.

We sipped our coffee and stopped talking. My coffee was black and very hot and misted my glasses. It was bitter on my tongue and filled my stomach with warmth. It was excellent coffee, the kind that opens the eyes and brightens the mind and is drank at all times of the day in the heat of the coffee shop and the cool of the café. It smelt good and was very fine.

“Sandwich or toast or a muffin?” my friend asked.

My stomach felt warm and comfortable but I looked at my heavy rucksack beside my feet and the passport with the red ribbed cover and embossed gold and felt the nylon of the money belt and the newness of my shirt against my skin and I had a feeling and could not eat.

“Nothing please just order for yourself.”

“All right.”

People got up from their seats, brushing crumbs off their trousers and buttoning their suits and pushing their chairs in. Some held briefcases with a loose grip, the fingers far apart and thumb lazily ranged beside the four fingers which told me none of them had as heavy as bag as I had. But I was young and strong and my rucksack was very new.

“Now you have a good time. English girls are very pretty,” my friend said.

“Yes.”

“Now you go and fall in love and bring back an English girls and maybe a bouncing English baby.”

“I don’t fall in love.”

“Love isn’t necessary for the girl and the baby.”

“You are right.”

I was remembering. My room on the third floor with a blue table and blue walls and piano chair beside the door opening into a corridor of paneled wood. Windows behind grilles and in the mornings and afternoons always hot and bright but the nights very cool and clean and the books and papers scattered and the bed very clean and warm. The dining table downstairs very large and flat and neat except during meals when it became smaller and also more noisy. But remembering was too easy and made my feeling worse so I stopped and was more happy.

“What is the time to go in?” my friend said.

“It is soon,” I said.

“It is good that I can see you off today.”

“That is so.”

I stood up and my friend helped me get the rucksack onto my back. It was heavy on the shoulders but I was young and strong. I was quite ready to go now and it was very nice because my papers were good and ready and my shoes were bright on the smooth floor and my shirt and trousers pressed and clean and very fine.

I walked to the gate, not finishing my coffee because it had gone cold and was not so good any more.