In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway Page A

Besides he did not really need a girl. The army had taught him that. It was all right to pose as though you had to have a girl. Nearly everybody did that. But it wasn’t true. You did not need a girl. That was the funny thing. First a fellow boasted how girls mean nothing to him, that he never thought of them, that they could not touch him. Then a fellow boasted that he could not get along without girls, that he had to have them all the time, that he could not go to sleep without them.
    That was all a lie. It was all a lie both ways. You did not need a girl unless you thought about them. He learned that in the army. Then sooner or later you always got one. When you were really ripe for a girl you always got one. You did not have to think about it. Sooner or later it would come. He had learned that in the army.
    Now he would have liked a girl if she had come to him and not wanted to talk. But here at home it was all too complicated. He knew he could never get through it all again. It was not worth the trouble. That was the thing about French girls and German girls. There was not all this talking. You couldn’t talk much and you did not need to talk. It was simple and you were friends. He thought about France and then he began to think about Germany. On the whole he had liked Germany better. He did not want to leave Germany. He did not want to come home. Still, he had come home. He sat on the front porch.
    He liked the girls that were walking along the other side of the street. He liked the look of them much better than the French girls or the German girls. But the world they were in was not the world he was in. He would like to have one of them. But it was not worth it. They were such a nice pattern. He liked the pattern. It was exciting. But he would not go through all the talking. He did not want one badly enough. He liked to look at them all, though. It was not worth it. Not now when things were getting good again.
    He sat there on the porch reading a book on the war. It was a history and he was reading about all the engagements he had been in. It was the most interesting reading he had ever done. He wished there were more maps. He looked forward with a good feeling to reading all the really good histories when they would come out with good detail maps. Now he was really learning about the war. He had been a good soldier. That made a difference.
    One morning after he had been home about a month his mother came into his bedroom and sat on the bed. She smoothed her apron.
    â€œI had a talk with your father last night, Harold,” she said, “and he is willing for you to take the car out in the evenings.”
    â€œYeah?” said Krebs, who was not fully awake. “Take the car out? Yeah?”
    â€œYes. Your father has felt for some time that you should be able to take the car out in the evenings whenever you wished but we only talked it over last night.”
    â€œI’ll bet you made him,” Krebs said.
    â€œNo. It was your father’s suggestion that we talk the matter over.”
    â€œYeah. I’ll bet you made him,” Krebs sat up in bed.
    â€œWill you come down to breakfast, Harold?” his mother said.
    â€œAs soon as I get my clothes on,” Krebs said.
    His mother went out of the room and he could hear her frying something downstairs while he washed, shaved and dressed to go down into the dining-room for breakfast. While he was eating breakfast his sister brought in the mail.
    â€œWell, Hare,” she said. “You old sleepy-head. What do you ever get up for?”
    Krebs looked at her. He liked her. She was his best sister.
    â€œHave you got the paper?” he asked.
    She handed him The Kansas City Star and he shucked off its brown wrapper and opened it to the sporting page. He folded The Star open and propped it against the water pitcher with his cereal dish to steady it, so he could read while he ate.
    â€œHarold,” his mother stood in the kitchen