The Fifth Column
Chapters (16)
Cover
Colophon
The Hemingway eBook Collection
BOOKS BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY
NOVELS
The Torrents of Spring
The Sun Also Rises
A Farewell to Arms
To Have and Have Not
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Across the River and Into the Trees
The Old Man and the Sea
Islands in the Stream
The Garden of Eden
True at First Light
A Farewell to Arms: The Hemingway Library Edition
STORIES
In Our Time
Men Without Women
Winner Take Nothing
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War
The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
The Nick Adams Stories
The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
NONFICTION
Death in the Afternoon
Green Hills of Africa
Selected Letters 1917-1961
A Moveable Feast
The Dangerous Summer
Dateline: Toronto
By-Line: Ernest Hemingway
A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition
ANTHOLOGIES
On Writing
Hemingway on Fishing
Hemingway on Hunting
Hemingway on War
Title Page
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 by Mary Hemingway
First Scribner ebook edition 2002
All inquiries about print and electronic permissions (use of excerpts) for books and other works by Ernest Hemingway can be sent by email to:
[email protected],
or by regular mail to Simon & Schuster, Inc., Permissions Dept., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020, or by fax to (212) 698-7284.
ISBN-10: 0-7432-3716-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-3716-1
Contents
The Fifth Column
The Denunciation
The Butterfly and the Tank
Night Before Battle
Under the Ridge
Part one
The Fifth Column
Act One • Scene One
It is seven-thirty in the evening. A corridor on the first floor of the Hotel Florida in Madrid. There is a large white paper hand-printed sign on the door of Room 109 which reads, “Working, Do Not Disturb.”TWO GIRLSwithTWO SOLDIERSin International Brigade uniform pass along the corridor. One of theGIRLSstops and looks at the sign.
FIRST SOLDIER. Come on. We haven’t got all night.
GIRL. What does it say?
[The OTHER COUPLE have gone on down the corridor]
SOLDIER. What does it matter what it says?
GIRL. No, read it to me. Be nice to me. Read to me in English.
SOLDIER. So that’s what I’d draw. A literary one. The hell with it. I won’t read it to you.
GIRL. You’re not nice.
SOLDIER. I’m not supposed to be nice.
[He stands off and looks at her unsteadily]
Do I look nice? Do you know where I’ve just come from?
GIRL. I don’t care where you come from. You all come from some place dreadful and you all go back there. All I asked you was to read me the sign. Come on then, if you won’t.
SOLDIER. I’ll read it to you. “Working. Do Not Disturb.”
[The GIRL laughs, a dry high, hard laugh]
GIRL. I’ll get me a sign like that too.
CURTAIN