By Ernest Hemingway

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds flew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains. We were all at the hospital every afternoon. The hospital was very old and very beautiful, and you entered through a gate and walked across a courtyard and out a gate on the other side. There were usually funerals starting from the courtyard. Beyond the old hospital were the new brick pavilions, there we met every afternoon and were all very polite and interested in what was the matter, and sat in the machines that were to make so much difference. The doctor came up to the machine where I was sitting and said: “What did you like best to do before the war? Did you practice a sport? ” I said: “Yes, football.” “Good, ” he said. “You will be able to play football again better than ever.” My knee did not bend and the leg dropped straight from the knee to the ankle without a calf, and the machine was to bend the knee and make it move as in riding a tricycle. But it did not bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the bending part. The doctor said: “That will all pass. You are a fortunate young man. You will play football again like a champion.”

In the next machine was a major who had a little hand like a baby’s. He winked at me when the doctor examined his hand, which was between two leather straps than bounced up and down and flapped the stiff fingers, and said: “And will I too play football, captain-doctor? ” He had been a very great fencer, and before the war the greatest fencer in Italy. The doctor went to his office in the back room and brought a photograph which showed a hand that had been withered almost as small as the major’s, before it had taken a machine course, and after was a little larger. The major held the photograph with his good hand and looked at it very carefully. “A wound? ” He asked. “An industrial accident, ” the doctor said. “You have confidence? ” “No, ” said the major.

There were three boys who came each day who were about the same age I was. They were all three from Milan, and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier, and after we were finished with the machines, sometimes we walked back together to the Café. Another boy who walked with us sometimes and made us five wore a black silk handkerchief across his face because he had no nose then and his face was to be rebuilt. He had gone out to the front from the military academy and been wounded within an hour after he had gone into the front line for the first time. They rebuilt his face, but he came from a very old family and they could never get the nose exactly right. We all knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it any more. We all had the same medals, except the boy with the black silk bandage across his face and he had not been at the front long enough to get any medals. We were all a little detached, we had lived a very long time with death, and there was nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital. We all liked the Cova cafe, where it was rich and warm and not too brightly lighted, and noisy and smoky at certain hours, and there were always girls at the tables and the illustrated papers on a rack on the wall. The girls at the Cova were very patriotic, and I found that the most patriotic people in Italy were the café girls – and I believed they are still patriotic. The boys at first were very polite about my medals and asked me what I had done to get them. I showed them the papers, which were written in a very beautiful language and full of fratellanza and abnegazione, but which really said that I had been given the medals because I was an American. After that their manner changed a little toward me, although I was their friend against outsiders. I was a friend, but I was never really one of them after they had read the citations, because it had been different with them and they had done very different things to get their medals. I had been wounded, it was true; but we all knew that being wounded, after all, was really an accident.

The major, who had been the great fencer, did not believe in bravery, and spent much time while we sat in the machines correcting my grammar. He had complimented me on how I spoke Italian, and we talked together very easily. One day I had said that Italian seemed such an easy language to me that I could not take a great interest in it; everything was so easy to say. “Ah, yes, ” the major said. “Why, then, do you not take up the use of grammar? ” So we took up the use of grammar, and soon Italian was such a different language that I was afraid to talk to him until I had the grammar straight in my mind. The major came very regularly to the hospital. I do think he ever missed a day, although I am sure he did not believe in the machines. There was a time when none of us believed in the machines, and one day the major said it was all nonsense. The machines were new then and it was we who were to prove them. It was an idiotic idea, he said, “a theory, like another.” I had not learned my grammar, and he said I was a stupid impossible disgrace, and he was a fool to have bothered with me. He was a small man and he sat straight up in his chair with his right hand thrust into the machine and looked straight ahead at the wall while the straps thumped up and down with his fingers in them.

“What will you do when the war is over if it is over? ” he asked me. “Speak grammatically! ” “I will go to the States.” “Are you married? ” “No, but I hope to be.” “The more of a fool you are, ” he said. He seemed very angry. “A man must not marry.” “Why, Signor Maggiore? ” “Don’t call me ‘Signor Maggiore’.” “Why must not a man marry? ” “He cannot marry. He cannot marry, ” he said angrily. “If he is to lose everything, he should not place himself in a position to lose that. He should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose.” He spoke very angrily and bitterly, and looked straight ahead while he talked. “But why should he necessarily lose it? ” “He’ll lose it, ” the major said. He was looking at the wall. Then he looked down at the machine and jerked his little hand out from between the straps and slapped it hard against his thigh. “He’ll lose it, ” he almost shouted. “Don’t argue with me! ” Then he called to the attendant who ran the machines. “Come and turn this damned thing off.” He went back into the other room for the light treatment and the massage. Then I heard him ask the doctor if he might use his telephone and he shut the door.

When he came back into the room, I was sitting in another machine. He was wearing his cape and had his cap on, and he came directly toward my machine and put his arm on my shoulder. “I am so sorry, ” he said and patted me on the shoulder with his good hand. “I would not be rude. My wife has just died. You must forgive me.” “Oh –” I said, feeling sick for him. ”I am so sorry.” He stood there biting his lower lip. “It is very difficult, ” he said. He looked straight past me and out through the window. Then he began to cry. “I am utterly unable to resign myself, ” he said and choked. And then crying, his head up looking at nothing, carrying himself straight and soldierly, with tears on both his cheeks and biting his lips, he walked past the machines and out the door. The doctor told me that the major’s wife, who was very young and whom he had not married until he was definitely invalided out of the war, had died of pneumonia. She had been sick only a few days. No one expected her to die. The major did not come to the hospital for three days. Then he came at the usual hour, wearing a black band on the sleeve of his uniform. When he came back, there were large framed photographs around the wall, of all sorts of wounds before and after they had been cured by the machines. In front of the machine the major used were three photographs of hands like his that were completely restored. I do not know where the doctor got them. I always understood we were the first to use the machines. The photographs did not make much difference to the major because he only looked out of the window.