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"In another country" by Ernest Hemingway (1927)
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4 months ago
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This is a public domain reading of Ernest Hemingway's 1927 war story from a Milan hospital. I AI enhanced it, and created a sound intro and outro.
Historyradio.org, a literary net radio stream, is available online at the website, or via phone apps 24/7.
#firstworldwar #hemingway #americanfiction #shortstory #historyradio.org #audiobook #audiobooks
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Transcript
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00:00
Now, on HistoryRadio.org, a World War I short story, by Ernest Hemingway.
00:07
In another country.
00:30
In the fall, the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore.
00:54
It was cold in the fall in Milan, and the dark came very early.
01:01
Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets, looking in the windows.
01:07
There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes,
01:15
and the wind blew their tails.
01:17
The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind.
01:24
And the wind turned their feathers.
01:27
It was a cold fall, and the wind came down from the mountains.
01:32
We were all at the hospital every afternoon, and there were different ways of walking across
01:38
the town through the dusk to the hospital.
01:41
Two of the ways were alongside canals, but they were long.
01:47
Always, though, you crossed a bridge across a canal to enter the hospital.
01:51
There was a choice of three bridges.
01:55
On one of them, a woman sold roasted chestnuts.
02:00
It was warm, standing in front of her charcoal fire, and the chestnuts were warm afterward in
02:06
your pocket.
02:07
The hospital was very old and very beautiful, and you entered through a gate and walked across
02:14
a courtyard and out a gate on the other side.
02:18
There were funerals, usually, starting from the courtyard.
02:22
Beyond the old hospital were the new brick pavilions.
02:25
And there we met every afternoon, and were all very polite and interested in what was the
02:32
matter, and sat in the machines that were to make so much difference.
02:36
The doctor came up to the machine where I was sitting and said,
02:42
What do you like best to do before the war?
02:45
Did you practice a sport?
02:47
I said, Yes, football.
02:51
Good, he said.
02:53
You will be able to play football again better than ever.
02:56
My knee did not bend, and the leg dropped straight from the knee to the ankle without a calf, and
03:06
the machine was to bend the knee and make it move, as in riding a tricycle.
03:11
But it did not bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the bending part.
03:17
The doctor said, That all will pass.
03:22
You are a fortunate young man.
03:24
You will play football again like a champion.
03:29
In the next machine was a major who had a little hand like a baby's.
03:34
He waped at me when the doctor examined his hand, which was between two leather straps
03:40
that bounced up and down and flapped the stiff fingers, and said,
03:45
And will I, too, play football, Captain Doctor?
03:50
He had been a very great fencer, and before the war, the greatest fencer in Italy.
03:57
The doctor went to his office in a back room and brought a photograph,
04:02
which showed a hand that had been withered almost as small as the major's,
04:07
before it had taken a machine course, and after was a little larger.
04:11
The major held the photograph with his good hand and looked at it very carefully.
04:18
A wound? he asked.
04:21
An industrial accident, the doctor said.
04:25
Very interesting, very interesting, the major said, and handed it back to the doctor.
04:31
You have confidence?
04:34
No, said the major.
04:36
There were three boys who came each day who were about the same age as I.
04:43
They were all three from Milan, and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter,
04:49
and one had intended to be a soldier.
04:52
And after we were finished with the machines, sometimes we walked back together to the Café Cova,
04:59
which was next door to the Scala.
05:01
We walked the short way through the Communist Quarter because we were four together.
05:07
The people hated us because we were officers,
05:11
and from a wine shop someone would call out,
05:14
Abasso gli ufficiale!
05:17
as we passed.
05:20
Another boy who walked with us sometimes, and made us five,
05:24
wore a silk handkerchief across his face because he had no nose then,
05:29
and his face was to be rebuilt.
05:33
He had gone out to the front from the military academy
05:36
and had been wounded within an hour after he had gone into the front line for the first time.
05:42
They rebuilt his face,
05:44
but he came from a very old family,
05:46
and they could never get the nose exactly right.
05:49
He went to South America and worked in a bank.
05:54
But this was a long time ago,
05:56
and then we did not any of us know how it was going to be afterward.
06:02
We only knew then that there was always the war,
06:05
but that we were not going to it anymore.
06:09
We all had the same medals,
06:13
except the boy with the black silk bandage across his face,
06:17
and he had not been at the front long enough to get any medals.
06:21
The tall boy with a very pale face,
06:24
who was to be a lawyer,
06:26
had been a lieutenant of our deity,
06:29
and had three medals of the sort we each had only one of.
06:32
He had lived a very long time with death and was a little detached.
06:39
We were all a little detached,
06:41
and there was nothing that held us together
06:42
except that we met every afternoon at the hospital.
06:47
Although, as we walked to the cove through the tough part of town,
06:51
walking in the dark,
06:53
with light and singing coming out of the wine shops,
06:56
and sometimes having to walk into the street
06:58
when the men and women would crowd together on the sidewalk
07:01
so that we would have had to jostle them to get by,
07:05
we felt held together by there being something
07:08
that had happened that they,
07:11
the people who disliked us,
07:13
did not understand.
07:16
We ourselves all understood the cove,
07:19
where it was rich and warm and not too brightly lighted,
07:23
and noisy and smoky at certain hours,
07:26
and there were always girls at the tables
07:28
and the illustrated papers on a rack on the wall.
07:31
The girls at the cove were very patriotic,
07:35
and I found that the most patriotic people in Italy
07:38
were the cafe girls,
07:40
and I believe they are still patriotic.
07:44
The boys, at first, were very polite about my medals,
07:48
and asked me what I had done to get them.
07:50
I showed them the papers,
07:53
which were written in very beautiful language
07:56
and full of fratellanza and abnegazione,
08:01
but which really said, with the adjectives removed,
08:05
that I had been given the medals because I was an American.
08:10
After that, their manner changed a little toward me,
08:13
although I was their friend against outsiders.
08:15
I was a friend,
08:17
but I was never really one of them,
08:20
after they had read the citations,
08:22
because it had been different with them,
08:24
and they had done very different things to get their medals.
08:27
I had been wounded, it was true,
08:29
but we all knew that being wounded,
08:32
after all,
08:33
was really an accident.
08:34
I was never ashamed of the ribbons, though,
08:39
and sometimes, after the cocktail hour,
08:41
I would imagine myself having done all the things they had done
08:44
to get their medals.
08:46
But walking home at night through the empty streets
08:49
with the cold wind,
08:50
and all the shops closed,
08:53
trying to keep near the streetlights,
08:55
I knew that I would never have done such things,
08:58
and I was very much afraid to die,
09:01
and often lay in bed at night by myself,
09:03
afraid to die,
09:06
and wondering how I would be
09:07
when I went back to the front again.
09:11
The three with the medals were like hunting hawks,
09:14
and I was not a hawk,
09:16
although I might seem a hawk
09:17
to those who had never hunted.
09:20
They, the three, knew better,
09:22
and so we drifted apart.
09:25
But I stayed good friends with the boy
09:26
who had been wounded his first day at the front,
09:29
because he would never now know
09:31
how he would have turned out.
09:32
So he could never be accepted either,
09:36
and I liked him because I thought perhaps
09:38
he would not have turned out to be a hawk either.
09:42
The major, who had been the great fencer,
09:45
did not believe in bravery,
09:46
and spent much time while we sat in the machines
09:49
correcting my grammar.
09:51
He had complimented me on how I spoke Italian,
09:54
and we talked together very easily.
09:58
One day I had said that Italian
10:00
seemed such an easy language to me
10:02
that I could not take a great interest in it.
10:05
Everything was so easy to say.
10:07
Ah, yes, the major said.
10:11
Why then do you not take up the use of grammar?
10:15
So we took up the use of grammar,
10:17
and soon Italian was such a difficult language
10:20
as I was afraid to talk to him
10:22
until I had the grammar straight in my mind.
10:25
The major came very regularly to the hospital.
10:27
I do not think he ever missed a day,
10:30
although I am sure he did not believe in the machines.
10:32
There was a time when none of us believed in the machines,
10:36
and one day the major said it was all nonsense.
10:39
The machines were new then,
10:41
and it was we who were to prove them.
10:44
It was an idiotic idea, he said.
10:47
A theory, like any other.
10:49
I had not learned my grammar,
10:51
and he said I was a stupid, impossible disgrace.
10:54
And he was a fool to have bothered with me.
10:57
He was a small man,
10:58
and he sat up straight in his chair
11:00
and his right hand thrust into the machine,
11:03
and looked straight ahead at the wall
11:04
while the straps thumped up and down
11:06
with his fingers in them.
11:08
What will you do when the war is over,
11:10
if it is over, he asked me?
11:13
Speak grammatically.
11:15
I will go to the States.
11:17
Are you married?
11:19
No, but I hope to be.
11:21
The more of a fool you are, he said.
11:23
He seemed very angry.
11:25
A man must not marry.
11:28
Why, signor Maggiore,
11:30
don't call me signor Maggiore.
11:33
Why must a man not marry?
11:35
He cannot marry.
11:36
He cannot marry, he said angrily.
11:39
If he is to lose everything,
11:41
he should not place himself
11:42
in a position to lose that.
11:44
He should not place himself
11:46
in a position to lose.
11:48
He should find things he cannot lose.
11:51
He spoke very angrily and dearly,
11:53
and looked straight ahead while he talked.
11:55
But why should he necessarily lose it?
11:59
He'll lose it,
12:01
the Major said.
12:02
He was looking at the wall.
12:04
Then he looked down at the machine
12:05
and jerked his little hand out
12:07
from between the straps
12:08
and slapped it hard against his thigh.
12:11
He'll lose it,
12:12
he almost shouted.
12:13
Don't argue with me.
12:15
Then he called to the attendant,
12:17
who ran the machines.
12:18
Come and turn this damn thing off.
12:20
He went back into the other room
12:22
for the light treatment and the massage.
12:25
Then I heard him ask the doctor
12:27
if he might use his telephone,
12:28
and he shut the door.
12:29
When he came back into the room,
12:31
I was sitting in another machine.
12:33
He was wearing his cape
12:34
and had his cap on,
12:36
and he came directly toward my machine
12:37
and put his arm on my shoulder.
12:40
I'm so sorry, he said,
12:42
and patted me on the shoulder
12:43
with his good hand.
12:45
I would not be rude.
12:46
My wife has just died.
12:48
He must forgive me.
12:50
Oh, I said,
12:53
feeling sick for him.
12:55
I am so sorry.
12:58
He stood there,
12:59
biting his lower lip.
13:01
It is very difficult, he said.
13:02
I cannot resign myself.
13:05
He looked straight past me
13:06
and out through the window.
13:08
Then he began to cry.
13:10
I am utterly unable to resign myself,
13:13
he said, and choked.
13:16
And then crying,
13:17
his head looking up at nothing,
13:18
carrying himself straight
13:20
and soldierly,
13:21
with tears on both his cheeks
13:23
and biting his lips,
13:25
he walked past the machines
13:26
and out the door.
13:28
The doctor told me that the major's wife,
13:32
who was very young
13:33
and whom he had not married
13:34
until he was definitely invalided
13:36
out of the war,
13:38
had died of pneumonia.
13:40
She had been sick only a few days.
13:43
No one expected her to die.
13:46
The major did not come to the hospital
13:48
for three days.
13:50
Then he came at the usual hour,
13:52
wearing a black band
13:54
on the sleeve of his uniform.
13:57
When he came back,
13:58
there were large frame photographs
14:00
around the wall
14:00
of all sorts of wounds
14:03
before and after
14:04
they had been cured
14:05
by the machines.
14:07
In front of the machine
14:08
the major used
14:09
were three photographs
14:10
of hands like his
14:11
that were completely restored.
14:14
I do not know
14:15
where the doctor got them.
14:17
I always understood
14:18
we were the first
14:19
to use the machines.
14:21
The photographs
14:22
did not make much difference
14:24
to the major
14:25
because he only looked
14:27
out the window.
14:49
You have just heard,
15:18
in another country
15:20
by Ernest Hemingway.
15:37
We willed it not.
15:45
Wake up, England.
15:47
Doce et decorum est
15:51
pro patria mori.
16:03
This is HistoryRadio.org,
16:06
a free educational radio stream,
16:08
remembering the first world war.
16:17
ism...
16:17
for the clip.
16:39
This is HistoryRadio.org,
16:39
a free educational radio stream,
16:41
which is a constructASH.
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