A Farewell to Arms

by Ernest Hemingway

That night at the mess I sat next to the priest and he was disappointed and suddenly hurt that I had not gone to the Abruzzi. He had written to his father that I was coming and they had made preparations. I myself felt as badly as he did and could not understand why I had not gone. It was what I had wanted to do and I tried to explain how one thing had led to another and finally he saw it and understood that I had really wanted to go and it was almost all right. I had drunk much wine and afterward coffee and Strega and I explained, winefully, how we did not do the things we wanted to do; we never did such things.

He had always known what I did not know and what, when I learned it, I was always able to forget.

It evidently made no difference whether I was there to look after things or not.

Evidently it did not matter whether I was there or not.

The whole thing seemed to run better while I was away.

“It’s very odd though. Why did you do it?” “I don’t know,” I said. “There isn’t always an explanation for everything.” “Oh, isn’t there? I was brought up to think there was.”

I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into.

I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.

I pressed her hand, “Dear Catherine.” “It sounds very funny now—Catherine. You don’t pronounce it very much alike. But you’re very nice. You’re a very good boy.”

Well, I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me myself than war in the movies.

I went out the door and suddenly I felt lonely and empty. I had treated seeing Catherine very lightly, I had gotten somewhat drunk and had nearly forgotten to come but when I could not see her there I was feeling lonely and hollow.

I put my Saint Anthony back in the capsule, spilled the thin gold chain together and put it all in my breast pocket. “You don’t wear him?” “No.” “It’s better to wear him. That’s what it’s for.” “All right,” I said. I undid the clasp of the gold chain and put it around my neck and clasped it. The saint hung down on the outside of my uniform and I undid the throat of my tunic, unbuttoned the shirt collar and dropped him in under the shirt. I felt him in his metal box against my chest while we drove. Then I forgot about him. After I was wounded I never found him. Some one probably got it at one of the dressing stations.

“I believe we should get the war over,” I said. “It would not finish it if one side stopped fighting. It would only be worse if we stopped fighting.” “It could not be worse,” Passini said respectfully. “There is nothing worse than war.” “Defeat is worse.”

“I know it is bad but we must finish it.” “It doesn’t finish. There is no finish to a war.”

I ate the end of my piece of cheese and took a swallow of wine. Through the other noise I heard a cough, then came the chuh-chuh-chuh-chuh—then there was a flash, as when a blast-furnace door is swung open, and a roar that started white and went red and on and on in a rushing wind. I tried to breathe but my breath would not come and I felt myself rush bodily out of myself and out and out and out and all the time bodily in the wind. I went out swiftly, all of myself, and I knew I was dead and that it had all been a mistake to think you just died. Then I floated, and instead of going on I felt myself slide back. I breathed and I was back. The ground was torn up and in front of my head there was a splintered beam of wood. In the jolt of my head I heard somebody crying. I thought somebody was screaming. I tried to move but I could not move.

“Oh I love to tease you, baby. With your priest and your English girl, and really you are just like me underneath.” “No, I’m not.” “Yes, we are. You are really an Italian. All fire and smoke and nothing inside. You only pretend to be American. We are brothers and we love each other.” “Be good while I’m gone,” I said. “I will send Miss Barkley. You are better with her without me. You are purer and sweeter.” “Oh, go to hell.” “I will send her. Your lovely cool goddess. English goddess. My God what would a man do with a woman like that except worship her? What else is an Englishwoman good for?”

“What’s the matter, father? You seem very tired.” “I am tired but I have no right to be.” “It’s the heat.” “No. This is only the spring. I feel very low.” “You have the war disgust.” “No. But I hate the war.” “I don’t enjoy it,” I said. He shook his head and looked out of the window. “You do not mind it. You do not see it. You must forgive me. I know you are wounded.”

“You rank as an officer. I am an officer.” “I am not really. You are not even an Italian. You are a foreigner. But you are nearer the officers than you are to the men.” “What is the difference?” “I cannot say it easily. There are people who would make war. In this country there are many like that. There are other people who would not make war.” “But the first ones make them do it.” “Yes.” “And I help them.” “You are a foreigner. You are a patriot.” “And the ones who would not make war? Can they stop it?” “I do not know.”

But there in my country it is understood that a man may love God. It is not a dirty joke.” “I understand.” He looked at me and smiled. “You understand but you do not love God.” “No.” “You do not love Him at all?” he asked. “I am afraid of Him in the night sometimes.” “You should love Him.” “I don’t love much.” “Yes,” he said. “You do. What you tell me about in the nights. That is not love. That is only passion and lust. When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.” “I don’t love.” “You will. I know you will. Then you will be happy.” “I’m happy. I’ve always been happy.” “It is another thing. You cannot know about it unless you have it.” “Well,” I said. “If I ever get it I will tell you.”

“No, darling. I won’t ever leave you for some one else. I suppose all sorts of dreadful things will happen to us. But you don’t have to worry about that.”

Napoleon would have whipped the Austrians on the plains. He never would have fought them in the mountains. He would have let them come down and whipped them around Verona. Still nobody was whipping any one on the Western front. Perhaps wars weren’t won any more. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years’ War.

“All right. I’m afraid of the rain because sometimes I see me dead in it.” “No.” “And sometimes I see you dead in it.” “That’s more likely.” “No, it’s not, darling. Because I can keep you safe. I know I can. But nobody can help themselves.”

“It’s all nonsense. It’s only nonsense. I’m not afraid of the rain. I’m not afraid of the rain. Oh, oh, God, I wish I wasn’t.” She was crying. I comforted her and she stopped crying. But outside it kept on raining.

“Then we won’t get three thousand lire,” Catherine said. “I don’t like this crooked racing!” “We’ll get two hundred lire.” “That’s nothing. That doesn’t do us any good. I thought we were going to get three thousand.” “It’s crooked and disgusting,” Ferguson said. “Of course,” said Catherine, “if it hadn’t been crooked we’d never have backed him at all. But I would have liked the three thousand lire.”

He said the offensive in Flanders was going to the bad. If they killed men as they did this fall the Allies would be cooked in another year. He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.

“Good-by,” he said. Then cheerily, “Every sort of luck!” There was a great contrast between his world pessimism and personal cheeriness.

I wondered if America really got into the war, if they would close down the major leagues. They probably wouldn’t.

“You’re pretty wonderful.” “No I’m not. But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.” “How do you mean?” “Nothing. I was only thinking how small obstacles seemed that once were so big.” “I should think it might be hard to manage.” “No it won’t, darling. If necessary I’ll simply leave. But it won’t come to that.” “Where should we go?” “I don’t care. Anywhere you want. Anywhere we don’t know people.”

“You aren’t angry are you, darling?” “No.” “And you don’t feel trapped?” “Maybe a little. But not by you.” “I didn’t mean by me. You mustn’t be stupid. I meant trapped at all.” “You always feel trapped biologically.”

“We won’t fight.” “We mustn’t. Because there’s only us two and in the world there’s all the rest of them. If anything comes between us we’re gone and then they have us.” “They won’t get us,” I said. “Because you’re too brave. Nothing ever happens to the brave.” “They die of course.” “But only once.” “I don’t know. Who said that?” “The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?” “Of course. Who said it?” “I don’t know.” “He was probably a coward,” she said. “He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he’s intelligent. He simply doesn’t mention them.”

“You’re brave.” “No,” she said. “But I would like to be.” “I’m not,” I said. “I know where I stand. I’ve been out long enough to know. I’m like a ball-player that bats two hundred and thirty and knows he’s no better.” “What is a ball-player that bats two hundred and thirty? It’s awfully impressive.” “It’s not. It means a mediocre hitter in baseball.” “But still a hitter,” she prodded me. “I guess we’re both conceited,” I said. “But you are brave.” “No. But I hope to be.” “We’re both brave,” I said. “And I’m very brave when I’ve had a drink.”

Look, baby, this is your old tooth-brushing glass. I kept it all the time to remind me of you.” “To remind you to brush your teeth.” “No. I have my own too. I kept this to remind me of you trying to brush away the Villa Rossa from your teeth in the morning, swearing and eating aspirin and cursing harlots. Every time I see that glass I think of you trying to clean your conscience with a toothbrush.”

“Go something yourself,” I said.

“They don’t like me.” “Why not?” “I am the snake. I am the snake of reason.” “You’re getting it mixed. The apple was reason.” “No, it was the snake.” He was more cheerful. “You are better when you don’t think so deeply,” I said.

But there are only the two things and my work.” “You’ll get other things.” “No. We never get anything. We are born with all we have and we never learn. We never get anything new. We all start complete.

“I’ll go get the bottle,” Rinaldi said. He went off up the stairs. I sat at the table and he came back with the bottle and poured us each a half tumbler of cognac. “Too much,” I said and held up the glass and sighted at the lamp on the table. “Not for an empty stomach. It is a wonderful thing. It burns out the stomach completely. Nothing is worse for you.” “All right.” “Self-destruction day by day,” Rinaldi said. “It ruins the stomach and makes the hand shake. Just the thing for a surgeon.” “You recommend it?” “Heartily. I use no other. Drink it down, baby, and look forward to being sick.”

“That Saint Paul,” Rinaldi said. “He was a rounder and a chaser and then when he was no longer hot he said it was no good. When he was finished he made the rules for us who are still hot.

“I don’t give a damn,” Rinaldi said to the table. “To hell with the whole business.” He looked defiantly around the table, his eyes flat, his face pale. “All right,” I said. “To hell with the whole damn business.” “No, no,” said Rinaldi. “You can’t do it. You can’t do it. I say you can’t do it. You’re dry and you’re empty and there’s nothing else. There’s nothing else I tell you. Not a damned thing. I know, when I stop working.”

“No one ever stopped when they were winning.”

It is in defeat that we become Christian.”

“We are all gentler now because we are beaten. How would Our Lord have been if Peter had rescued him in the Garden?”

“You discourage me,” he said. “I believe and I pray that something will happen. I have felt it very close.” “Something may happen,” I said. “But it will happen only to us. If they felt the way we do, it would be all right. But they have beaten us. They feel another way.” “Many of the soldiers have always felt this way. It is not because they were beaten.” “They were beaten to start with. They were beaten when they took them from their farms and put them in the army. That is why the peasant has wisdom, because he is defeated from the start. Put him in power and see how wise he is.”

“It has to be one or the other.” “I don’t believe in victory any more.” “I don’t. But I don’t believe in defeat. Though it may be better.”

There was a battery of naval guns that had gotten on his nerves. I would recognize them because of their flat trajectory. You heard the report and then the shriek commenced almost instantly. They usually fired two guns at once, one right after the other, and the fragments from the burst were enormous. He showed me one, a smoothly jagged piece of metal over a foot long. It looked like babbitting metal. “I don’t suppose they are so effective,” Gino said. “But they scare me. They all sound as though they came directly for you. There is the boom, then instantly the shriek and burst. What’s the use of not being wounded if they scare you to death?”

I said I thought a ridge that flattened out on top and had a little depth would be easier and more practical to hold than a succession of small mountains. It was no harder to attack up a mountain than on the level, I argued. “That depends on the mountains,” he said. “Look at San Gabriele.” “Yes,” I said, “but where they had trouble was at the top where it was flat. They got up to the top easy enough.” “Not so easy,” he said. “Yes,” I said, “but that was a special case because it was a fortress rather than a mountain, anyway. The Austrians had been fortifying it for years.” I meant tactically speaking in a war where there was some movement a succession of mountains were nothing to hold as a line because it was too easy to turn them. You should have possible mobility and a mountain is not very mobile. Also, people always over-shoot downhill. If the flank were turned, the best men would be left on the highest mountains. I did not believe in a war in mountains. I had thought about it a lot, I said. You pinched off one mountain and they pinched off another but when something really started every one had to get down off the mountains.

Something is wrong somewhere. There should be plenty of food.” “The dogfish are selling it somewhere else.” “Yes, they give the battalions in the front line as much as they can but the ones in back are very short. They have eaten all the Austrians’ potatoes and chestnuts from the woods. They ought to feed them better. We are big eaters. I am sure there is plenty of food. It is very bad for the soldiers to be short of food. Have you ever noticed the difference it makes in the way you think?” “Yes,” I said. “It can’t win a war but it can lose one.”

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

“Tell me, I have never seen a retreat—if there is a retreat how are all the wounded evacuated?” “They are not. They take as many as they can and leave the rest.” “What will I take in the cars?” “Hospital equipment.” “All right,” I said.

I was very angry. “The whole bloody thing is crazy. Down below they blow up a little bridge. Here they leave a bridge on the main road. Where is everybody? Don’t they try and stop them at all?” “You tell us, Tenente,” Bonello said. I shut up. It was none of my business; all I had to do was to get to Pordenone with three ambulances. I had failed at that. All I had to do now was get to Pordenone. I probably could not even get to Udine. The hell I couldn’t. The thing to do was to be calm and not get shot or captured.

My knee was stiff, but it had been very satisfactory. Valentini had done a fine job. I had done half the retreat on foot and swum part of the Tagliamento with his knee. It was his knee all right. The other knee was mine. Doctors did things to you and then it was not your body any more. The head was mine, and the inside of the belly. It was very hungry in there. I could feel it turn over on itself. The head was mine, but not to use, not to think with, only to remember and not too much remember.