The Torrents of Spring (1987)/Part 5
Author's Final Note to the Reader
Well, reader, how did you like it? It took me ten days to write it. Has it been worth it? There is just one place I would like to clear up. You remember back in the story where the elderly waitress, Diana, tells about how she lost her mother in Paris, and woke up to find herself with a French general in the next room? I thought perhaps you might be interested to know the real explanation of that. What actually happened was that her mother was taken violently ill with the bubonic plague in the night, and the doctor who was called diagnosed the case and warned the authorities. It was the day the great exposition was to be opened, and think what a case of bubonic plague would have done for the exposition as publicity. So the French authorities simply had the woman disappear. She died toward morning. The general who was summoned and who then got into bed in the same room where the mother had been, always seemed to us like a pretty brave man. He was one of the big stockholders in the exposition, though, I believe. Anyway, reader, as a piece of secret history it always seemed to me like an awfully good story, and I know you would rather have me explain it here an drag an explanation into the novel, where really, after all, it has no place. It is interesting to observe, though, how the French police hushed the whole matter up, and how quickly they got ahold of the coiffeur and the cab-driver. Of course, what it shows is that when you're travelling abroad alone, or even with your mother, you simply cannot be too careful. I hope it is all right about bringing this in here, but I just felt I owed it to you, reader, to give some explanation. I do not believe in these protracted good-bys any more that I do in long engagements, so I will just say a simple farewell and God-speed, reader, and leave you now to your own devices.
Other Hemingway Titles Available in Hudson River Editions:
Across the River and Into the Trees
By-Line: Ernest Hemingway
Death in the Afternoon
A Farewell to Arms
The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Green Hills of Africa
The Hemingway Reader
In Our Time
Islands in the Stream
A Moveable Feast
The Nick Adams Stories
The Old Man and the Sea
The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway
The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories
The Sun Also Rises
To Have and Have Not
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