Project 2
The hills across the valley of the Ebro’ river were long and white. On this side, there was no shade and no trees and the station was between two lines of rails in the sun. Close against the side of the station there was the warm shadow of the building and a curtain, made of strings of bamboo beads, hung across the open door into the bar, to keep out flies. Jig and I were sitting at a table in the shade, outside the building. It was very hot and the express we were waiting for from Barcelona should come in forty minutes. It should stop at this junction for two minutes and then we would go on to Madrid afterward.
“What should we drink?” Jig asked. She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.
“It’s pretty hot,” I said.
“Let’s drink beer.”
“Dos cervezas,” I said into the curtain.
“Big ones?” a woman asked from the doorway.
“Yes. Two big ones.”
The woman brought two glasses of beer and two felt pads. She put the felt pads and the beer glasses on the table and looked at Jig and I. Jig was looking off at the line of hills. They were white in the sun and the country was brown and dry.
“They look like white elephants,” she said.
“I’ve never seen one,” I said while drinking my beer and wondering why she said that.
“No, you wouldn’t have.”
“I might have,” I said. “Just because you say I wouldn’t have doesn’t prove anything.”
Jig looked at the bead curtain. “They’ve painted something on it,” she said. “What does it say?”
“Anis del Toro. It’s a drink.”
“Could we try it?”
I called “Listen” through the curtain. The woman came out from behind the bar.
“Four reales.”
“We want two Anis del Toro.”
“With water?”
“Do you want it with water?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jig said. “Is it good with water?”
“It’s all right.”
“You want them with water?” asked the woman.
“Yes, with water.”
I saw Jig reaching for her glass.
“It tastes like licorice,” Jig said and put the glass down.
“That’s the way with everything.”
“Yes,” said Jig. “Everything tastes of licorice. Especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.”
“Oh, cut it out.”
“You started it,” Jig said. “I was being amused. I was having a fine time.”
“Well, let’s try and have a fine time.”
“All right. I was trying. I said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn’t that bright?”
“That was bright.”
“I wanted to try this new drink. That’s all we do, isn’t it — look at things and try new drinks?”
“I guess so.”
Jig looked across at the hills.
“They’re lovely hills,” she said. “They don’t really look like white elephants. I just meant the coloring of their skin through the trees.” “Should we have another drink?”
“All right.”
The warm wind blew the bead curtain against the table.
“The beer’s nice and cool,” I said.
“It’s lovely,” Jig said
“It’s really an awfully simple operation, Jig,” I said. “It’s not really an operation at all.”
Jig looked at the ground the table legs rested on.
“I know you wouldn’t mind it, Jig. It’s really not anything. It’s just to let the air in.”
Jig did not say anything and I wondered what bothered her so much but then I thought about the operation and I got worried once again.
“I’ll go with you and I’ll stay with you all the time. They just let the air in and then it’s all perfectly natural.”
“Then what will we do afterward?”
“We’ll be fine afterward. Just like we were before.”
“What makes you think so?”
“That’s the only thing that bothers us. It’s the only thing that’s made us unhappy.”
Jig looked at the bead curtain, put her hand out, and took hold of two of the strings of beads.
“And you think then we’ll be all right and be happy.”
“I know we will. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ve known lots of people that have done it.”
“So have I,” said Jig. “And afterward they were all so happy.”
“Well,” I said, “if you don’t want to you don’t have to. I wouldn’t have you do it if you didn’t want to. But I know it’s perfectly simple.”
“And you really want to?”
“ I think it’s the best thing to do. But I don’t want you to do it if you don’t really want to.”
“And if I do it you’ll be happy and things will be like they were and you’ll love me?”
“I love you now. You know I love you.”
“I know. But if I do it, then it will be nice again if I say things are like white elephants, and you’ll like it?”
“I’ll love it. I love it now but I just can’t think about it. You know how I get when I worry.” I said as I worried about the operation. I was just too nervous to really think about white elephants right now.
“If I do it you won’t ever worry?”
“I won’t worry about that because it’s perfectly simple,” I said. After the operation, everything would be fine I thought, hopefully.
“Then I’ll do it. Because I don’t care about me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t care about me.”
“Well, I care about you,” I said as I wondered why she was saying this.
“Oh, yes. But I don’t care about me. And I’ll do it and then everything will be fine.”
“I don’t want you to do it if you feel that way,” I said as I wished she did not think that I was forcing her to do this.
Jig stood up and walked to the end of the station. Across, on the other side, were fields of grain and trees along the banks of the Ebro. Far away, beyond the river, were mountains. The shadow of a cloud moved across the field of grain and she saw the river through the trees.
I choose to modify this piece because I wanted to provide another POV for the man and why he seemed to not understand the girl’s thoughts in the story. The challenge I faced was trying to think about the man's thought process and what he would think about when Jig said something like “I don’t care about me.” or when she said nothing at all. I resolved this by thinking about his responses to Jig and what lead him to think that way. I learned through this project how to better think about and understand a character’s thoughts and their viewpoint on what is going on in the story.