Papa Hemingway (3 page)

In Ernest's room there was a large desk covered with stacks of letters, newspapers and magazine clippings, a small sack of carnivores' teeth, two unwound clocks, shoehorns, an unfilled pen in an onyx holder, a wood-carved zebra, wart hog, rhino and lion in single file, and a wide assortment of souvenirs, mementos and good-luck charms. He never worked at the desk. Instead, he used a stand-up work place he had fashioned out of the top of a bookcase near his bed. His portable typewriter was snugged in there and papers were spread along the top of the bookcase on either side of it. He used a reading board for longhand writing. There were some animal heads on the bedroom walls, too, and a worn, cracked skin of a lesser kudu decorated the tiled floor.

His bathroom was large and cluttered with medicines and medical paraphernalia which bulged out of the cabinet and onto all surfaces; the room was badly in need of paint but painting was impossible because the walls were covered with inked records, written in Ernest's careful hand, of dated blood-pressure counts, and weights, prescription numbers and other medical and pharmaceutical intelligence.

The staff for the
finca
normally consisted of the houseboy Rene, the chauffeur Juan, a Chinese cook, three gardeners, a carpenter, two maids and the keeper of the fighting cocks. The white tower had been built by Mary in an effort to get the complement of thirty cats out of the house, and to provide Ernest with a place more becoming to work in than his makeshift quarters in his bedroom. It worked with the cats but not with Ernest. The ground floor of the tower was the cats' quarters, with special sleeping, eating and maternity accommodations, and they all lived there with the exception of a few favorites like Crazy Christian, Friendless' Brother and Ecstasy, who were allowed house privileges. The top floor of the tower, which had a sweeping view of palm tops and green hillocks clear to the sea, had been furnished with an imposing desk befitting an Author of High Status, bookcases, and comfortable reading chairs, but Ernest rarely wrote a line there—except when he occasionally corrected a set of galleys.

On this first visit to the
finca
my wife and I were to be quartered in the guest house, but Mary Hemingway, a golden vivacious woman, greeted us with apologies that it was not quite ready. "Jean-Paul Sartre showed up unexpectedly yesterday with a lady friend," she said, "and the sheets haven't been changed yet."

On our way up to the main house Ernest confided: "You know what Sartre told me at dinner last night? That a newspaperman made up the word 'existentialism' and that he, Sartre, had nothing to do with it."

We went into the living room and Ernest looked up at the ceiling a moment. "The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were here last week but they only seemed fascinated by the falling plaster."

I noticed that Ernest had three long, deep scratches on his forearm and I asked about them. "Cotsies," he said. "They had a circus pitched near here with two good five-year-old cats. Brothers. It was wonderful to hear them roar in the morning. Made friends with the trainer. He let me work them and I worked them good with a rolled-up newspaper, but you have to be careful not to turn your back.

"Have a wonderful number to do in public figured out. The trainer is going to announce me as an illustrious
domador del norte,
now retired from the profession, but who, through his
aficion,
dedicates this rather special number to the Cuban public. The climax is when I lie down and both cotsies put their front feet on my chest. I started to practice this but got raked on the arm a couple of times gentling them."

I said I thought lion-baiting was a rather dangerous pursuit for a writer who wanted to continue practicing his trade.

"Miss Mary agrees with you," Ernest said. "Promised her I wouldn't work cotsies any more until the big book is finished. She left when I started gentling them and got raked. I am her security and it is wicked, I guess, to lay it on the line just for fun. But know no other place as good to lay it as on the line."

That evening after dinner, Ernest showed me around the house. From a shelf in the library he took down first editions inscribed to him by James Joyce, Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson, John Dos Passos, Robert Benchley, Ford Maddox Ford, Ezra Pound and many others. He went through a trunk of old photos and scrapbooks. In one vintage photograph album there was a picture of Ernest, age five or six. Written on the back, in his mother's hand, was the notation: "Ernest was taught to shoot by Pa when 2½ and when 4 could handle a pistol."

We also came across a photograph of a very young-looking Marlene Dietrich, inscribed To Ernest With Love. "You know how we met, the Kraut and me?" Ernest asked. "Back in my broke days I was crossing cabin on the
lie,
but a pal of mine who was traveling first loaned me his reserve tux and smuggled me in for meals. One night we're having dinner in the salon, my pal and I, when there appears at the top of the staircase this unbelievable spectacle in white. The Kraut, of course. A long, tight white-beaded gown over
that
body; in the area of what is known as the Dramatic Pause, she can give lessons to anybody. So she gives it that Dramatic Pause on the staircase, then slowly slithers down the stairs and across the floor to where Jock Whitney, I think it was, was having a fawncy dinner party. Of course, nobody in that dining room has touched food to lips since her entrance. The Kraut gets to the table and all the men hop up and her chair is held at the ready, but she's counting. Twelve. Of course, she apologizes and backs off and says she's sorry but she is very superstitious about being thirteen at anything and with that she turns to go, but I have naturally risen to the occasion and grandly offer to save the party by being the fourteenth. That was how we met. Pretty romantic, eh? Maybe I ought to sell it to Darryl F. Panic."

On our way back to the living room, we passed a large inscribed photograph of Ingrid Bergman. I stopped to look at it. "Can post photo of any lady Miss Mary's not jealous of," Ernest said. "So far she's batting a thousand in the no-cause-for-jeal-ousy league."

We settled down in the living room, Ernest sitting in Papa's Chair, a big overstuffed lopsided easy chair with a faded, well-worn slip cover; Black Dog curled up at his feet. Black Dog, who was mostly a springer spaniel, had wandered into Ernest's Sun Valley ski cabin one afternoon, cold, starved, fear-ridden and sub-dog in complex—a hunting dog who was scared stiff of gunfire. Ernest had brought him back to Cuba and patiently and lovingly built up his weight, confidence and affection to the point, Ernest said, that Black Dog believed he was an accomplished author himself. "He needs ten hours' sleep but is always exhausted because he faithfully follows my schedule. When I'm between books he is happy, but when I'm working he takes it very hard. Although he's a boy who loves his sleep, he thinks he has to get up and stick with me from first light on. He keeps his eyes open loyally. But he doesn't like it."

The talk went from Black Dog, to the animal heads on the walls, to Africa. "Had an English friend," Ernest related, "who wanted to shoot a lion with bow and arrow. One White Hunter after another turned him down until finally a Swede White Hunter agreed to take him. Englishman was the kind of Englishman who took a portable bar on safari. Swede, who was a very good hunter, warned against the bow and arrow as effectives, but his Lordship insisted so Swede briefed him on the lion— can run one hundred yards in four seconds, see only in silhouette, should be hit at fifty yards, all that. They finally stalk the lion, set it up, lion charges, Englishman pulls back bow, hits lion in the chest at fifty yards, lion bites off the arrow, keeps coming, eats the ass right off one of the native guides in one gulping tear before Swede can drop him. Englishman is shook up. Comes over to look at the bloody mess of native guide and lion lying side by side. Swede says, 'Well, your Lordship, you may now put the bow and arrow away.' Englishman says, 'I think we might.'

"This was the same Englishman I had met in Nairobi with his wife. She was a young Irish beauty who had come unannounced to my room. The following evening the Englishman asked me to have a drink with him at the hotel bar. 'Ernest,' he said, 'you are a gentleman so you did nothing wrong, but my wife should not make a fool out of me.'"

Mary steered the conversation back to animals. Ernest told about a very big, cocky black bear out West, who had made life miserable for everyone by standing in the middle of the road and refusing to budge when cars came along. It got so that no one could use the road. But Ernest heard about him and drove along the road to seek him out; suddenly, sure enough— there was the bear. A really
big
bear. He was on his hind legs and his upper lip was pulled back in a sneer. Ernest got out of the car and went over to him. "Do you realize that you're nothing but a miserable, common black bear?" Ernest said to him in a loud, firm voice. "Why, you sad son-of-a-bitch, how can you be so cocky and stand there and block cars when you're nothing but a
miserable
bear and a black bear at that—not even a polar or a grizzly or anything worth-while."

Ernest said he really laid it on him and the poor black bear began to hang his head, then he lowered himself to all fours and pretty soon he walked off the road. Ernest had destroyed him. From that time on he used to run behind a tree and hide whenever he saw a car coming and shake with fear that Ernest might be inside, ready to dress him down.

Rene soon appeared with the movie projector and we settled down to a twin bill that was Ernest's favorite: a Tony Zale versus Rocky Graziano slugfest, plus
The Killers
with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. The curtain raiser was the fight, which Ernest followed avidly and commented upon, but five minutes into
The Killers
he was sound asleep. "Never saw him last past the first reel," Mary said.

We had been at the
finca
for three days when Ernest got around to his substitute idea for The Future of Literature article: he would write two short stories instead. Some of his stories, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," for one, had been published in
Cosmo
, he said, and it would be better for him and the magazine if he did fiction, which was his forte, instead of a think piece, which was not. He pointed out, however, that one article did not equal two short stories in value; subsequently the editor increased the payment to twenty-five thousand dollars.

The dinner regulars during those days at the
finca
were Roberto Herrera, a bald, deaf, powerful, unprepossessing, gentle, devoted Spaniard, in his late thirties, who, according to Ernest, had had five years of medicine in Spain and who had come to Cuba after having been imprisoned for fighting on the republican side in the Civil War; Sinsky Dunabeitia, a salty, roaring, boozing, fun-loving Basque sea captain who manned a freighter run from the States to Cuba and was a constant at the
finca
whenever his ship was in port; Father Don Andres, called Black Priest, a Basque who had been in the Bilbao Cathedral when the Civil War broke out. Don Andres had climbed into the pulpit and exhorted all the parishioners to go get their guns and fill the streets and shoot what they could and the hell with spending their time in church. After that, he enrolled as a machine-gunner in the republican army. Of course, when the war ended he was kicked out of Spain. He sought refuge in Cuba, but the Church there took a dim view of his past behavior and assigned him the poorest parish in the worst section. Thus, the name Black Priest. Ernest had befriended him, as he befriended scores of Franco refugees, and Black Priest, wearing a brightly colored sport shirt, would come to the Hemingway
finca
on his days away from his parish and devote himself to eating, drinking, swimming in the pool, and exchanging reminiscences with Ernest and Roberto. There were other guests, too: a Spanish grandee Ernest had known in the Civil War, a gambler from the old days in Key West, an anti-Batista (sub-rosa) Cuban politician and his wife, and a semiretired pelota player, once of great prominence. "Mondays to Thursdays I try to maintain quiet," Mary said. "But the week ends are always on the verge of uproar, and sometimes over the verge. Papa doesn't like to go to other people's houses because he says he can't trust the food and drink. The last time he accepted a dinner invitation was about a year ago. They served sweet champagne which he had to drink to be polite, and it took ten days for him to get it out of his system."

In early 1949, before he left for a trip to Venice, Ernest telephoned me in New York from the
finca.
He began by discussing the triumph of Mr. Truman over Mr. Dewey, but finally got to the point: "About the two stories, agreement is—deadline end of December and I deliver two stories or give back the dough, right? Wrote one story after you left but think it is too rough for
Cosmopolitan
so I better save it for the book."

"What book?"

"New book of short stories. Or book of new short stories— take your pick. Don't think I'll have time in Venice, but plan to get back to Cuba in early May, take the kids on a trip, then write two good stories for you. I may have to let them lay awhile and then go over them, but think if I have no bad luck, I should surely have two before the deadline. The story I just finished is about forty-five hundred words and much better than that Waugh crap they just ran. But I can beat it for you."

All through the spring of 1949 I received letters from Ernest from the Gritti Palace hotel in Venice and from the Villa Aprile in Cortina d'Ampezzo, which is magnificent ski country to the north. He wrote about Mary breaking her leg in a ski accident and about a serious eye infection for which he was hospitalized, but did not mention the stories. It was during this period that Ernest instigated my first meeting with Charles Scribner, Sr.; and afterward he said, "Hope you liked Charlie. He liked you very much and he likes almost nobody. Hates authors." Scribner was a silver-haired, gentle-featured man of charm, wit and good humor, and he loved Ernest as a proud father loves a gloried son. Ernest once said of Scribner: "Now that Max Perkins is gone, Charlie is all I've got left to help keep the franchise."