Papa Hemingway (6 page)

When I went back to the Sherry-Netherland later that evening, Ernest was sitting in an armchair, wearing a white tennis visor and reading a book. As I walked into the room, without looking up he said: "When are you leaving?"

Paris ♦ 1950

Ernest and Mary stayed in their favorite room on the Vendome side of the Ritz. Jigee had a room two down from them, but I, out of a sense of bizarre nostalgia, stayed at the Hotel Opal, a small, cheerless establishment on Rue Tronchet, where I had been briefly quartered during the war, and whose intense discomfort had not registered at the time. They had traveled on the
lie de France
and I had gone by air a few days later, so we arrived simultaneously. Ernest was delighted to discover that the fall steeplechase meet at Auteuil—the emerald race track in the heart of the Bois de Boulogne—was to start the following day, and he suggested that we do something he had always wanted to do but never had—attend every day of an entire meet. "You get a wonderful rhythm," he said, "like playing ball every day, and you get to know the track so they can't fool you. There's a beauty restaurant at the top, hung right over the track, where you can eat good and watch them as though you were riding in the race. They bring you the
cote jaune
with the changing odds three times for each race, and you can bet right there, no rushing up and down to the bet cages with your unsettled food jiggling. It's too easy, but wonderful for scouting a race." We each contributed a sum of money to form what Ernest called The Hemhotch Syndicate, with the understanding that we would maintain the syndicate's capital at its inception level. (In later years, when our activities became more diversified, Ernest had us formally incorporated in New Jersey as Hemhotch, Ltd.) To commemorate this liaison and to conform to the European custom of carrying calling cards in one's billfold, we had the following card struck off in a neat, smug type:

Mr. Ernest Hemingway
&
Mr. A. E. Hotchner, Esquires announce the formation of a partnershi
p
, Hemhotch, L
td
. dedicated to the Pursuit of the Steeplechase, the Bulls, the Wild Duck, and the Female Fandango.

But that fall in Paris we were at the simpler partnership level of a racing syndicate. Our routine for Auteuil was to convene in the Little Bar of the Ritz every race day at noon, and while Bertin, the maestro of that
boite,
made us his nonpareil Bloody Marys, we would study the form sheets and make our selections. Sometimes Georges or Bertin or one of the other barmen in the big bar would put some money on our mounts and we would bet it for them. Bertin was an indefatigable student of the track, more occult than scientific, and on one occasion he handed Ernest a list of eight horses which he had brained out as winners of the eight races on the card that day. Ernest studied the list and said, "Okay, tell you what I'll do, Bertin—I'll bet ten thousand francs on each and we'll split the winnings." All of Bertin's horses ran out of the money, but when we returned that day Ernest gave Bertin five thousand francs. "One of your horses got scratched," he told him, "and we saved the loss."

I do not expect ever to duplicate the pleasure of those Paris steeplechase days. The Degas horses and jockeys against a Renoir landscape; Ernest's silver flask, engraved "From Mary with Love" and containing splendidly aged Calvados; the boisterous excitement of booting home a winner, the glasses zeroed on the moving point, the insistent admonitions to the jockey; the quiet intimacy of Ernest's nostalgia. "You know, Hotch, one of the things I liked best in life was to wake early in the morning with the birds singing and the windows open and the sound of horses jumping." We were sitting on the top steps of the grandstand, the weather damp, Ernest wrapped in his big trench coat, a knitted tan skullcap on his head, his beard close-cropped. We had eaten lunch at the Course restaurant: Belon oysters, omelette with ham and fine herbs, cooked endives, Pont-l'Eveque cheese and cold Sancerre wine. We were not betting the seventh race and Ernest was leaning forward, a pair of rented binoculars swinging from his neck, watching the horses slowly serpentine onto the track from the paddock. "When I was young here," he said, "I was the only outsider who was allowed into the private training grounds at Acheres, outside of Maisons-Laffitte, and Chantilly. They let me clock the workouts—almost no one but owners were allowed to operate a stopwatch—and it gave me a big jump on my bets. That's how I came to know about Epinard. A trainer named J. Patrick, an expatriate American who had been a friend of mine since the time we were both kids in the Italian army, told me that Gene Leigh had a colt that might be the horse of the century. Those were Patrick's words, 'the horse of the century.' He said, 'Ernie, he's the son of Badajoz-Epine Blanche, by Rockminster, and nothing like him has been seen in France since the days of Gladiateur and La Grande Ecurie. So take my advice-beg, borrow or steal all the cash you can get your hands on and get it down on this two-year-old for the first start. After that there'll never be odds again. But that first start, before they know that name, get down on him.'

"It was my 'complete poverty' period—I didn't even have milk money for Bumby, but I followed Patrick's advice. I hit everyone for cash. I even borrowed a thousand francs from my barber. I accosted strangers. There wasn't a sou in Paris that hadn't been nailed down that I didn't solicit; so I was really 'on' Epinard when he started in the Prix Yacoulef at Deauville for his debut. His price was fifty-nine to ten. He won in a breeze, and I was able to support myself for six or eight months on the winnings. Patrick introduced me to many insiders of the top French race-set of that time. Frank O'Neill, Frank Keogh, Jim Winkfield, Sam Bush and the truly great steeplechase rider Georges Parfremont."

"How can you remember their names after all these years?" I asked. "Have you seen them since?"

"No. I have always made things stick that I wanted to stick. I've never kept notes or a journal. I just push the recall button and there it is. If it isn't there, it wasn't worth keeping. Take Parfremont. I can see him as plainly as I see you, and hear him as I heard him the last time he spoke to me. It was Parfremont who scored the first French victory in the Liverpool Grand National astride James Hennessey's Lutteur III. That's one of the toughest steeple courses in the world and Georges had seen it for the first time the day before the race. He told me how the English trainers had taken him around and shown him the big jumps, and he repeated to me what he had told them: 'The size of the obstacle is nothing—the only danger in steeplechasing is the pace.' Poor Georges. It was his own prophecy. He was killed at the final hedge in a cheap race at Enghien, a hedge that was barely three feet high.

"The old Enghien—the antique, rustic, conniving Enghien before they rebuilt the stands in
pesage
and
pelouse
and all that unfriendly concrete—that was my all-time-favorite track. It had a relaxed, unbuttoned atmosphere. One of the last times I went there—I remember it was with Evan Shipman, who was a professional handicapper as well as a writer, and Harold Stearns, who was 'Peter Pickum' for the Paris edition of the Chicago
Tribune
at the time—Harold and Evan were relying on form and drew a blank on the day's card. I hit six winners out of eight. Harold was rather testy about my wins and asked me for the secret of my success. 'It was easy,' I told him. 'I went down to the paddock between races, and I smelled them.' The truth is, where horses are concerned the nose will triumph over science and reason every time."

Ernest stood up and turned and watched the people crowding to the bet windows. "Listen to their heels on the wet pavement," he said. "It's all so beautiful in this misty light. Mr. Degas could have painted it and gotten the light so that it would be truer on his canvas than what we now see. That is what the artist must do. On canvas or on printed page he must capture the thing so truly that its magnification will endure. That is the difference between journalism and literature. There is very little literature. Much less than we think."

He took the racing form out of his pocket and studied it a moment. "This is the true art of fiction," he said. "Well, we haven't done very well today. I wish I still had my nose, but I can't trust it any more. I can trace the decline of my infallible-nose period to the day John Dos Passos and I came out to this track to make our winter stake. We were both working on books and we needed enough cash to get us through the winter. I had touted Dos onto my paddock-sniffing as a sure thing and we had pooled everything we had. One of the horses in the seventh race smelled especially good to me, so we put our whole stake on him. He fell at the first jump. We didn't have a sou in our pockets and had to walk all the way back to the Left Bank from here."

Two touts, one of whom spoke with a cockney accent, came up and offered Ernest something juicy in the next race, but he graciously declined their offer. A handsome young man in a trench coat had been standing in the aisle, looking at Ernest; he came over rather hesitantly. "Mr. Hemingway;" he asked in French, "do you remember me?" Ernest studied him for a moment, a puzzled look on his face. "I'm Richard." Ernest's face exploded in recognition. "Rickey!" He threw his arms around the boy and hugged him. "Rickey!" He took another look at the boy. "No wonder," Ernest said. "First time I ever saw you out of uniform—or should I say out of somebody else's uniform."

Ernest explained that Rickey had been in his Irregular troops, a member of the celebrated band which Ernest had assembled after the Battle of the Bulge. Although Ernest was supposed to be functioning solely as a war correspondent for
Collier's
magazine, he had in fact put himself on full combat status and he and his band of French and American Irregulars were credited with being the first Allied unit to enter Paris. In fact, Ernest and his boys had already liberated the Ritz Hotel and were properly celebrating the event with magnums of champagne at the bar when General Jean Leclerc came marching into Paris with what he thought was the first expeditionary force.

Ernest asked Rickey about the various members of his pickup unit, and when Rickey told him that one of his favorite boys was in serious trouble, Ernest wrote down his address so that he could go to his aid.

As Ernest and Rickey were talking, I recalled what Robert Capa, the combat photographer, had once told me about Ernest's Irregulars. He had traveled with them for a while and found thai the men had a hard time believing that Ernest was not a general, because he had a public relations officer, a lieutenant as an aide, a cook, a driver, a photographer and a special liquor ration. Capa said that the unit was equipped with every imaginable American and German weapon, and that he had the impression they were carrying more munitions and alcohol than a division. When Capa was with them, Ernest's men were all dressed in German sergeant's uniforms, which they had decorated with United States insignia. But Capa was with them for only a short time. Much later when he came zipping into Paris in a jeep, sure that he was miles ahead of anyone else, he pulled up at the Ritz and found he was face to face with Archie Pelkey, Ernest's driver, who was standing guard at the Ritz entrance, a carbine slung over his shoulder. "Hello, Capa," Pelkey said in Hemingwayese. "Papa took good hotel. Plenty good stuff in cellar. Go on up."

After Rickey left we went into the bar, where Ernest ordered Scotch with half a lime squeezed into it and I ordered a split of champagne. "Hell of a boy, that Rickey," he said. "He did some things ..." His thoughts took him away and he sipped his Scotch, holding each sip in his mouth to warm it and taste it before swallowing. He took from his pocket the pencil stub that he had been using to mark his racing form, and he began to write on the back of a paper napkin. The last race ended and the bar filled and got noisy, but Ernest wrote in deep concentration, oblivious to the post-race commotion. He ordered another Scotch and continued to write, balling up one napkin after another and tossing them under the table. There were only a few of us left in the bar when he finally put the pencil back into his pocket. He handed me the napkin. He had written a sixteen-line poem, "Across the Board," which interwove his remembrance of Rickey with the sounds of the track.

So affected was Ernest by Rickey's sudden appearance that other ghosts of the bygone war began to haunt him, and a few days later he wrote "Country Poem with Little Country," which was an ode to his boys who had died on the line. This sort of brief, impulsive poem, clumsily written, often served Ernest as a response to a direct hit on his emotions. The most memorable was an eleven-line eulogy which he wrote to his all-time favorite cat, Crazy Christian, on the day he was murdered by his brother cats. Ernest claimed that they were jealous of Crazy Christian because he was gay-hearted, young and handsome and knew all of life's secrets.

On days when there was no racing at Auteuil we went on excursions around the city. One cold December afternoon, with the sky a low canopy of gray muslin and the insolent wind slapping the last of the leaves off the trees, Mary, Ernest, Jigee and I made our way up the Montmartre hill to the Place du Tertre. No tourists, no post cards, not an easel anywhere. At one corner of the square, where the Rue Norvins starts, was Au Clairon des Chausseurs, the old restaurant where Ernest had sometimes eaten, when he had money to eat, during his early Paris days. Set into the building, above the entrance to the restaurant, was a marble plaque that proclaimed in gold letters:
ici etait en
1790
la premiere mairie de la com
mune
de montmartre.