Papa Hemingway (41 page)

"Beautifully observed and incredibly conceived, this account of a self-imposed ordeal has the chilling quality of a true nightmare. It is the dark side of the moon of Walter Mitty."

Thus, bad and well-being in Ernest were now in cross-current with no clear indication as to which would predominate.

A telegram had been delivered to Ernest that morning inviting Mary and him to be President-elect Kennedy's personal guests at the inaugural. Ernest was pleased and moved by the invitation, and we spent some time composing a proper reply of declination.

When it came time for me to leave to catch my plane, Ernest walked with me to the elevator; when it arrived he held the doors, reluctant to let me go. "This coming spring we'll be back at Auteuil," he said, "the Hemhotch colors striking terror in the hearts of the touts." He chuckled. "Remember that tout who saw me counting my winnings and said, 'One can see Monsieur is of the
metier
'?" He patted my shoulder. "Good old Hotch. Put you through a lot, haven't I, boy?"

"Put me through the best times I ever had."

"And this?"

"Hell, Papa, you're the one who once said when you go the distance you've got to expect to get dumped on your ass once in a while. You've been decked before."

"Sure have. But
Was
always up at the count of three."

"Swinging."

"Sure. But we're up to six this time. Maybe seven."

"There's a mandatory eight now."

"Goddamn but I wish we were out at Bud's now, jump-shooting the canals. But Auteuil in the spring is a promise. I'll write Georges to start working on the form. Save your money, Hotch, for the ghost of Bataclan rides again." The elevator buzzed insistently. I became aware that Ernest's nurse had been standing in back of him. I stepped into the elevator.

"Thank you very much for coming," he said.

To my surprise, Ernest was released from the Mayo Clinic on January 22nd, nine days after I had seen him there. He called me in Hollywood to say how delighted he was to be home in Ketchum and back at work. He had gone hunting the day after his return, he said, and there were eight mallards and two teals now hanging over the woodpile outside the kitchen window. He sounded fine.

When I hung up, I felt relieved that he was out of his prison and back where he belonged; but when I recalled our conversation during that walk I felt an overriding uneasiness.

A few days later Ernest decided to accept the long-standing Twentieth Century offer on the Nick Adams stories; his letters during February, and his phone calls, were succinct and businesslike. We phoned each other every week; his only expressed worry was about his weight, which at one seventy was too low, he complained, to permit him to operate with his old steam. I urged him to put on a few pounds, but he refused to budge one calorie from the strict diet the doctors had given him. Ernest treated this diet like a military order, and I doubt if those doctors ever had a patient who so rigidly conformed to their commands.

On February 18th Ernest called me in New York to discuss disposition of his hundred twenty-five thousand dollars of movie money. His primary concern was about taxes. "I called my lawyer on the phone," he said, "to tell him to deposit seventy percent in the tax account and thirty percent in the checking account. He thought that was too high a percentage but I don't think he figured me having a book due in the fall and so forth. Plus how taxes may rise."

"But taxes are scheduled to be cut, Papa." I sympathized with the problem of trying to keep Ernest's top-heavy tax account from getting even heavier.

"One thing I do not count on in life is the diminishing tax. So with seventy percent in the tax account and ten off to the lawyer for agenting I am banking only $20,250, which is a rather slim take for getting hit for ten stories."

Toward the beginning of March the handwriting in Ernest's letters began to change again, and so did the content. The writing became severely cramped, the letters so small and tight it was difficult to read the words. The letters themselves began to be more complaining, with less reference to work.

It was about this time that Ernest suggested that instead of sending letters to him directly, I address them to Vernon Lord at the Sun Valley Hospital. I was to use a return address that had a name that began with an 0; Vernon would thereby know that the letter was for Ernest. I was to tell Honor to write to him in the same manner.

During the last week in March, when I spoke to Ernest on the phone, he sounded listless and, I thought, rather discouraged. "I wish I could make some plans," he said, "but I can't until I finish the Paris book. Have to go day to day on this health business; the weight is awful low, so want to be sure on that end of it before planning further work and movements. Don't want to worry Mary on that nor anything else, nor worry myself. I'm learning to be strong at one sixty-nine but it is too low to fool with. I tell you this so you know the true gen." His voice sounded very old. The ends of sentences tailed off as if he didn't have the energy to finish them. "Am following doctors' orders exactly and pressure is good. But weight reaction's a little spooky."

"Can't you put on a little? What does Vernon say?"

"Don't mind being spooked if I could find a way to get my mind off it and have a little fun. Guess I'm spoiled. Always had such a damn good time."

By the beginning of April, Ernest had started to be wary of the telephone again, and he did not mention Honor either in his letters or in conversations. It had become difficult to talk to him on the phone. He was getting depressed about his work, although I could never clearly determine whether it was because he did not like what he wrote or because of difficulty he was experiencing in writing. I would mention friends and try to tell him about them, but he really wasn't interested. I tried to discuss the general form of the Nick Adams screenplay I was about to start on, but he wasn't interested in that either.

On April 18th I went to a cocktail party in New York which Harvey Breit had given to celebrate the publication of George Plimpton's book. It was a good party with good people and at one point Harvey suggested we call Ernest and all talk to him. I did not want to say that Ernest was in no condition to chat on the phone with the hubbub of a gay cocktail party in the background, so I tried to prevent the call by pretending I didn't have Ernest's unlisted phone number with me; unfortunately Harvey found it in his address book.

First Harvey spoke to him, then George, and they were merry and funny and George told him how well his book was going. When I came on, Ernest said, "Hotch, please try to hold off these calls." His voice was dead, the words coming at me like rocks falling down a well. "It's gotten pretty rough. I can't finish the bloody book. I've got it all and I know what I want it to be but I can't get it down." Harvey and George, looking happy, were watching me, so I curved my mouth up and tried to keep my eyes down on the phone.

I said some terrible inanity like, "Well, it's good that you're that far."

"Hotch, I can't finish the book. I
can't.
I've been at this goddamn worktable all day, standing here all day, all I've got to get is this one thing, maybe only a sentence, maybe more,

I don't know, and I can't get it. Not any of it. You understand, I
can't.
I've written Scribner's to scratch the book. It was all set for the fall but I had to scratch it."

"Then they'll do it in the spring."

"No, no they won't. Because I can't finish it. Not this fall or next spring or ten years from now.
I can't.
This wonderful damn book and I can't finish it. You understand?"

When I hung up, Harvey said, "He sounds fine, doesn't he?"

That was April 18th. At eleven o'clock Sunday morning, April 23rd, I received a call from Ketchum. Ernest was in the Sim Valley Hospital under heavy sedation, sodium amytal every three hours, nurses around the clock.

When Mary had come into the living room that morning, she had found Ernest standing in the vestibule, where the gun rack was; he was holding a shotgun in one hand, with the breech open; he had two shells in his other hand. There was a note propped up on top of the gun rack addressed to her. Mary knew that Vernon Lord was due to come by to take Ernest's blood pressure, so she just tried to hold Ernest's attention until he got there. She knew he had been terribly depressed about his inability to write, but she had had no inkling that his depression had driven him this far.

Ernest was calm and did not make a move to put the shells in the chamber, so Mary did not mention the gun at all but asked for the note. Ernest refused to give it to her but read her a few sentences here and there. There was a reference to his will and how he had provided for Mary and she wasn't to worry. Also, that he had transferred thirty thousand dollars to her checking account. Then he got off the letter and onto his latest worry, which concerned filing income taxes for the cleaning woman; talking on and on about how the Feds were sure to get him for the cleaning woman's taxes, and then Vernon arrived. When Vernon took hold of the gun Ernest let him have it without a protest.

Vernon had already put in a call to the Mayo Clinic and I was asked whether I would contact Dr. Renown and brief him on the situation.

Vernon phoned at four-thirty that afternoon. He reported that the Mayo doctors were insisting that Ernest go to Rochester voluntarily but that Ernest absolutely refused to go.

"I called Dr. Renown," I said, "and he was to call Mayo and then call you."

"He has. He made all the Mayo arrangements and discussed procedures, but I don't think he knows about this condition they've imposed, that Ernest go of his own free will. Hell, he doesn't have any
free
will! What are they talking about? I have my associate, Dr. Ausley, helping me with Ernest, but we're fighting the clock. We don't have proper facilities for this kind of thing and, Hotch, honest to God, if we don't get him to the proper place, and
fast,
he is going to kill himself for sure. It's only a question of time if he stays here, and every hour it grows more possible. He says he can't write any more—that's all he's talked to me about for weeks and weeks. Says there's nothing to live for. Hotch, he won't ever write again. He can't. He's given up. That's the motivation for doing away with himself. At least, on the surface. And that's what I have to accept because I'm not equipped to deal with anything beneath the surface. But that's strong enough motivation as far as I'm concerned, and I can tell you I'm worried sick. We've got him shot full of sodium amytal, but how long can we keep him in that state? I can tell you it's a terrible responsibility for a country doctor. It's not just that he's my friend, but he's
Ernest Hemingway.
We've
got
to get him to Mayo."

For the rest of that day we phoned back and forth between New York, Ketchum, Hollywood and Rochester, but the Mayo doctors could not be induced to come to Ketchum or vary in any way from their adamant policy that patients must enter the clinic voluntarily. Dr. Renown suggested to Vernon Lord several procedures to be tried on Ernest to induce his co-operation. I wanted to go to Ketchum to help out, but Dr. Renown thought I should wait and go as a second echelon if Vernon failed.

The following day Mary phoned, terribly shaken. There had been a nightmarish incident. Vernon had finally gotten Ernest to consent to re-entering Mayo, and the charter plane had been summoned from Hailey. Ernest said, however, that before he went there were some things he had to get from the house. Vernon said he would send Mary for them, but Ernest said they were things he had to get himself and he would not go to Mayo without them. So Vernon reluctantly consented, but first he called Don Anderson, who is six foot three and over two hundred pounds, to come along. Vernon took the nurse and Mary also.

They drove up to the house, the five of them, and Ernest started toward the door, followed by Don, then the nurse, then Mary and Vernon. Suddenly Ernest cut loose for the door, slammed it and bolted it before Don could get there. Don raced around to the other door, charged into the house and spotted Ernest at the gun rack, holding a gun and ramming a shell into the chamber. Don hurled himself at Ernest and knocked him down. There was a terrible struggle over the gun. Vernon had to help. Luckily, the safety had been on so it did not go off. Ernest was now back at the hospital, more heavily drugged.

He was now saying he would not return to Mayo's, but Vernon was keeping the plane at the Sim Valley airstrip in the hope that he could change Ernest's mind. In the meantime, discussions were being held with people at Menninger's.

The next morning Mary phoned to say that Ernest had suddenly consented to go and the plane had just taken off for Rochester. Vernon and Don Anderson had gone with him. Mary was just barely holding herself together. She promised to have Vernon call as soon as he got back.

It was after midnight when the call came through. Vernon said that he had given Ernest a heavy sedation before taking off but that shortly after they had become airborne, Ernest had made a strenuous effort to get the door open and jump out of the plane. It had taken all of Don's and Vernon's combined strength to get him away from the door. Vernon had then given Ernest a large injection of sodium amytal, and soon thereafter he had become drowsy.