The Complete Short Stories Of Ernest Hemingway

bonne bouche
. Henry was nice too. You know how much we all liked him.
None of those spiders take drugs either, he thought. Of course that’s what I should remember
about this child, exactly as you should remember the stalling speed of a plane, that her mother was her
mother.
That’s all very simple, he thought. But you know your own mother was a bitch. But you also
know you are a bastard in quite different ways from her ways. So why should her stalling speed be
the same as her mother’s? Yours isn’t.
No one had ever said it was. Hers I mean. What you said was that you should remember her
mother as you would remember and so forth.
That’s dirty too, he thought. For nothing, for no reason, when you need it most you have this girl,
freely and of her own will, lovely, loving and full of illusions about you, and with her asleep beside
you on the seat you start destroying her and denying her without any formalities of cocks crowing,

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twice nor thrice nor even on the radio.
You are a bastard, he thought and looked down at the girl asleep on the seat by him.
I suppose you start to destroy it for fear you will lose it, or that it will take too great a hold on
you, or in case it shouldn’t be true, but it is not very good to do. I would like to see you have
something besides your kids you did not destroy sometime. This girl’s mother was and is a bitch and
your mother was a bitch. That ought to bring you closer to her and make you understand her. That
doesn’t mean she has to be a bitch any more than you have to be a heel. She thinks you are a much
better guy than you are and maybe that will make you a better guy than you are. You’ve been good for
a long time now and maybe you can be good. As far as I know you haven’t done anything cruel since
that night on the dock with that citizen with the wife and the dog. You haven’t been drunk. You haven’t
been wicked. It’s a shame you’re not still in the church because you could make such a good
confession.
She sees you the way you are now and you are a good guy as of the last few weeks and she
probably thinks that is the way you have been all the time and that people just maligned you.
You really can start it all over now. You really can. 
Please don’t be silly
, another part of him
said. You really can, he said to himself. You can be just as good a guy as she thinks you are and as
you are at this moment. There is such a thing as starting it all over and you’ve been given a chance to
and you can do it and you will do it. 
Will you make all the promises again?
Yes. If necessary I will
make all the promises and I will keep them. 
Not all the promises? Knowing you have broken them?
He could not say anything to that. 
You mustn’t be a crook before you start
. No. I mustn’t. 
Say what
you can truly do each day and then do it. Each day. Do it a day at a time and keep each day’s
promises to her and to yourself
. That way I can start it all new, he thought, and still be straight.
You’re getting to be an awful moralist, he thought. If you don’t watch out you will bore her.
When weren’t you always a moralist?
At different times. 
Don’t fool yourself
. Well, at different
places then. 
Don’t fool yourself
.
All right, Conscience, he said. Only don’t be so solemn and didactic. Get a load of this,
Conscience old friend, I know how useful and important you are and how you could have kept me out
of all the trouble I have been in but couldn’t you have a little lighter touch about it? I know that
conscience speaks in italics but sometimes you seem to speak in very boldfaced Gothic script. I
would take it just as well from you, Conscience, if you did not try to scare me; just as I would
consider the Ten Commandments just as seriously if they were not presented as graven on stone
tablets. You know. Conscience, it has been a long time since we were frightened by the thunder. Now
with the lightning: There you have something. But the thunder doesn’t impress us so much any more.