Hemingway's Notebook

by Bill Granger

  “All right, Harry,” Cohn said quietly.

  “You’re not even drunk,” Harry said. “I admire that. You turn it on and off.”

  “As you did just now.”

  “Maybe it’s only an act with me,” Harry Francis said. Their voices were quiet, full of business.

  Philippe stopped mopping the blood. He tried not to look at them. He tried to hear what they said to each other.

  “You haven’t written for a long time.”

  “Maybe I’ve been writing, maybe I just choose not to send the manuscript to a publisher,” Harry Francis said.

  “But you used to write letters home,” Cohn said.

  “And I’ve stopped. And you want to know why. Maybe because I’m tired of writing to people who don’t read. The illiterate society and the illiterate government agency.”

  “We’re very interested in your letters, Harry,” Cohn said. “They were always informative.”

  “You thought they were lies. You thought I was making it up.”

  “How do you live, Harry?”

  “That’s my fucking business, isn’t it?”

  “Everyone back home is worried about you.”

  “I don’t want them to worry.”

  “Can we make you an offer? On your next manuscript?”

  “You don’t even know what it’s going to be about.”

  “We’d like to look at it, Harry. Whenever you have a few pages ready.”

  “I agree with Hemingway.” A sly smile. “It’s despicable for a writer to show pages until he’s finished.”

  “We’d like to help you get published.”

  “It might be a true story this time.”

  “We always thought they were true stories, Harry.”

  “But this time, it might be even more true. The whole truth. And nothing but the truth. You know what Hemingway said, don’t you?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He wrote it in A Moveable Feast. God, he got back at everyone in that book—he didn’t have to do it but he wanted to. That’s what I admire about him. He was a cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch right up to the end. He stuck it to everyone, even the ones who did him some good. It was the way he was going to end up being better than they were.”

  “Like you, Harry?”

  Harry Francis smiled. “You’re all so damned worried, aren’t you? You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

  “What did Hemingway say?”

  “You’re patronizing me, but I won’t be patronized. I knew him. I knew him in Cuba at Finca Vigía. I was in his army—we attacked the estates with an army with firecrackers and stink bombs. It was damned silly but it seemed fine at the time.”

  “What did Hemingway tell you?”

  “He knew. He knew I was working for Uncle.”

  “Did you tell him?”

  “You never saw him. You never got close to him. You couldn’t lie to him. He saw right through you. He was like a surgeon. He could cut so easily it wouldn’t even cause any pain, even if he didn’t put you under first. Like a chicken waiting for slaughter. We just hung there with our wings out and if he wanted to kill us, he could kill us.”

  “What did he write?”

  “Oh. It’s not that, it’s what he told me. I said I was going to write and he said the only things worth writing were true things and that when I started lying, I would never be able to stop. He said you had to write true things even if no one else would believe you. I did. I did that. I told them what would happen in Cuba. I told them that Castro knew but they went ahead and when it was over, they had to get rid of me. Hemingway knew it was going to turn out that way. That’s why he killed himself.”

  “Is it?”

  “I always thought that. He didn’t want to be ruined. Like his father who killed himself.”

  “What about you, Harry? Are you going to kill yourself?”

  Harry stared at him for a long time and did not speak. When he spoke, his voice was soft and almost purring.

  “I can’t, Cohn. There’s the notebook to finish with.”

  “Would you like a publisher?” Cohn said carefully.

  “I don’t think I would have any trouble getting a publisher,” said Harry Francis.

  “I think we’d be the one for you, to give you the best audience, I mean. We have the resources, you know.”

  “I’ll keep you in mind.”

  “Yes. Do that, Harry,” Cohn said.

  Philippe, who understood some English, listened very intently. He leaned on the mop and waited and it was as though he was not in the room with the two white men.

  “You tell them I’m finishing the manuscript. You tell them that when the manuscript is finished, I’ll keep them in mind. You tell them that.”

  “I will.”

  “You tell them about the line in A Moveable Feast as well.”

  “What line is that?” Cohn said.

  “The one you’ll have to look for,” Harry Francis said.

  The road from the café to the edge of the capital was dark. The street lamps in the south end of the capital usually went off at ten, and then the darkness belonged to the moon and the stars that littered the clear Caribbean sky. The night also belonged to drunken white men, thought Cohn, who could not summon the strength any longer to be sober. He had been too long with Harry Francis and it was too late.

  People here did not go out at night because it was dangerous. The danger might come from thieves and killers, from those who dealt in drugs and moved drugs about. It might come from the secret police whom the people called the gendarmes noirs. But Cohn was not afraid of them. He was an American. He was protected by the consulate.

  Cohn had not said good night to Harry. He left him in the café asleep, snoring, his head down on the table still littered with the remains of dinner, including the chicken. The chicken had survived Flaubert’s slaughter for so long it had become old and tough and tasteless, and even Flaubert’s sauce could not hide that.

  It was past eleven. Flaubert had been in his underpants when he came out of the living quarters at the back of the café to unlatch the door for Cohn. He told Cohn Harry would sleep until four in the morning, that he would awake and drink anything that was left from the dinner, that he would stagger away and leave the door open. Flaubert said Harry always left the door open.

  Cohn stumbled across a piece of driftwood and cursed it. He was walking on the beach. He felt terrible but he was glad to be away from Harry Francis.

  The night was still and cool, and the sand was damp. Half of the moon sparkled on the water. Gentle waves lapped at the beach. Cohn walked along the beach instead of the main road because it was safer. Every now and then, someone would be reported killed on the road at night, struck by a car speeding north from Madeleine to the capital. The road was narrow and dark. Everyone in St. Michel deplored the state of the road, but the island seemed gripped by a fatal inertia and the road was the symbol of it. It ran from a small capital of slums and a few grand buildings to a second city of slums and whores and dealers nine miles south. It had always been like this. It would be this way tomorrow. Only Manet’s soldiers in the hills above the long road did not accept the way it was.

  The sand was wet under Cohn’s bare feet because the beach narrowed at this point and the tide had gone out at sunset. Cohn carried his shoes in his left hand. A little breeze from the sea plucked at Cohn’s dirty tan trouser legs.

  Harry Francis was a sad case. Cohn would put that in his report. It was what they wanted to hear back in Washington.

  “Pardon, monsieur?”

  Cohn stopped, turned, and was surprised by the flashlight that suddenly blinded him. His face was pinched, fatigued, and he was annoyed. He suddenly wanted to relieve himself.

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “Monsieur?”

  He repeated the question in the singsong French acquired at the Army Language School in California.

  “Monsieur,” the voice stated with flat authority.


  Cohn thought he saw two of them.

  They wore midnight-blue uniform shirts with empty epaulets and blue shorts with high black stockings and dark berets. The people of St. Michel did not call them the Special Security Force as President Claude-Eduard had dubbed them; they were the “black police.” The gendarmes noirs.

  “Clowns,” Cohn muttered in English.

  “Monsieur. You are English?”

  “I am an American.”

  “Bonsoir, monsieur.” Politely and without sincerity. “Why are you on the beach?”

  “I saw you yesterday in the capital. On Rue Sans Souci. I know you.” He squinted in the light, which hurt his eyes. “You know me. Cohn. With the American consul general.”

  “Monsieur Cohn.” The black face was very close. The eyes blinked. He stared at Cohn as though he had never seen him before. “Do you have some identification?”

  “What is this about?”

  “A woman was raped.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “It happened yesterday.”

  The second policeman who held the light smiled.

  Cohn took out his wallet with his passport and visa and gave them to the officers. He was a public information officer. The larger policeman opened the wallet and looked at the money inside. He selected a ten-dollar bill. “There is a fine against using the public beaches after they are closed for the night.”

  “I’m not using the beach. I’m walking back to St. Michel. It’s safer than the road.”

  “The road is very dangerous.” The gendarme still held the wallet. “The woman was raped on the road.”

  “Amazing she didn’t get run over.”

  “It was brutal,” the policeman said flatly. “There were markings on her body after she was found.”

  Cohn shivered because of the slight breeze. The whole country was on edge. The tropical forest would take over tomorrow or the day after tomorrow; it would cover the road and there would be no men left on St. Michel.

  No wonder Harry Francis had become crazy. He would say that in his report.

  “I want to take a piss.”

  “The beaches of St. Michel are not a pissoir.”

  “I have to take a piss. I’ll go by the road.”

  The large policeman shrugged. He put the ten-dollar bill back into the wallet and closed it. “It doesn’t matter about the fine. You have diplomatic immunity.”

  “Even if you were to piss on the Palais Gris of the president, it would not matter,” said the second.

  “You could not be fined,” said the first.

  “You may even piss on the beach and not be fined because you have immunity,” said the second.

  “There would be nothing we could do,” said the first.

  Cohn took a step back. “All right then.” He took the wallet and put it in his pants. “All right then,” he repeated. “I can wait until I get back.”

  “No, it’s all right. You have immunity,” said the first.

  “Yes. You are a guest of St. Michel. Please piss on the beach.”

  Had the wind risen? He felt cold.

  “No,” Cohn said.

  “Please, sir,” said the first. “We will turn away.”

  They turned and waited and Cohn felt a strangling sense of panic. He pulled down his fly and urinated on the sand. The sand smothered the sound of his urine striking the ground. When he was finished, he put on his shoes. He would walk along the highway.

  The two policemen stood with their backs to him.

  “I am finished,” he said.

  They turned slowly. They looked at him. The large one said, “Is everything satisfactory then?”

  He began to speak.

  He did not feel the razor. It cut from left to right, just below each earlobe, in a wide and grinning arc like the smile that children carve on a pumpkin at Halloween. Cohn did not feel any pain. He thought of something that Harry had said about Hemingway. He felt that something had happened that could not be reversed. The panic overwhelmed him.

  It would be all right if he said something. He opened his mouth, and it filled with blood. He struggled to remain upright. Blood fell down his shirt and stained it; it soaked the white wet sand at his feet. He blinked because he thought he was going to cry. Perhaps it would be all right if he stood very still.

  But he could not stand still.

  He blinked again to see the gendarmes more clearly. The whiteness of the flashlight had grown to a whiteness that must have come from the blinding rays of the moon. He was certain of it.

  5

  THE IMPORTANT HOSTAGE

  The flight drained Rita because of all that had happened before she left.

  “Run,” she said. “We can run.”

  “We can’t run.”

  They had sat staring at each other in their apartment in Lausanne until dawn, speaking now and then, waiting for morning. They could not sleep; they could not touch each other.

  “Kill him then.”

  “And then Langley will know I’m alive and then, in a little while, KGB will know again and the contract will be let again.”

  “So you’re going to let me go?”

  “He won’t hurt you. He wants a job. It gives us a little time.”

  “It won’t be that easy,” she had said.

  In the end, she had taken the tickets and visas and credentials and taken the long flight from Frankfurt-am-Main airport to Miami to Guadeloupe and transferred to the shuttle to St. Michel. She had been tired but she could not sleep. She had taken the first taxi from the line at the Aerodrome St. Michel.

  The heat made her feel sick. It sapped her strength. Her stomach felt queasy. The ride in the ancient Renault was rough. The driver wore a colorful shirt that pictured palm trees and he spoke of the wonders of the capital city all the way into the town.

  There seemed little wonderful about St. Michel. Cement-and-plaster buildings like dirty gray boxes squatted around narrow streets and squares. The streets were full of people who did not seem to move much. There was a grand promenade on the beachfront but the beach itself was littered with garbage. On the deep side of the harbor, fishing boats bobbed at wooden piers jutting into the water. The water was dark with oil and garbage.

  “On the hill is the Palais Gris, where the president lives.” The driver’s name was Daniel. He said he was a teacher. He said he taught when he had the time and enough money from driving. Many visitors from other countries were coming to St. Michel now for the independence celebration, he said. He seemed proud of it. He was a very light-skinned Negro with reddish hair. He said he spoke very good English but phrased the statement as a question. She did not answer him. Her hair was damp and limp and she felt dirty and she stared out at the gray landscape of the sun-filled city around her.

  “This is where we will build the museum,” said Daniel. He pointed with an elegant hand toward an enormous excavation in the dry, cracked ground next to the road from the aerodrome. There was nothing in the hole. There was no sign of activity; no equipment, no workers, no scaffolding.

  “It’s a hole, just a hole in the ground,” Rita Macklin heard herself saying.

  “It is the idea of the half-empty cup,” said Daniel with a quick smile into the rearview mirror. “Is it half full or half empty? At least the excavation has been made. It is a promise.”

  “What will be in the museum?”

  “Many things. Artifacts of our society. And the traditional weaving of the women who live in the hills. Many things to interest important visitors such as yourself.”

  “Your shirt? Was it woven—”

  “No,” said Daniel. “I speak excellent English? I purchased this shirt when I lived with my aunt one year in Miami. It is from the J.C. Penney store. In time, there will be one such store here. Were you in to the J.C. Penney store in Miami?”

  “No.”

  “The museum will also receive exhibitions.” They were past the excavation, mounting a small rise from the harbor into the heart of
St. Michel. Garbage was piled on the narrow streets. “The exhibitions will come from Paris. From the Louvre, I think. They made many speeches when they began to dig the excavation—this was three years ago. The French consul general said that the Louvre would surely loan an important collection of paintings to the museum of the Republic of St. Michel when the museum was completed.”

  “No one is working on the site,” she said and her voice was far away from her.

  “There are budget shortages and so work must cease. We have many problems on St. Michel, in all republics, like America. Money must be diverted to the army. The fight against the rebel soldiers in the hills must take precedence. Freedom is the constant price of being vigilant.”

  She shook her head to register the mangled quote. She closed her eyes a moment and the car jumped a pothole. The heat glued her blouse to her skin. Her jeans felt tight; she had worn them all her life. She wanted a bath, she wanted to sleep.

  “And the cruise ships will come when the new pier is built,” Daniel chattered on, turning into another side street hidden from the one they had been on. The city was a honeycomb of such streets but there was no great sense of urgency to the street life.

  Devereaux had let her go two days after Colonel Ready left them. Devereaux had permitted her to become a hostage. Devereaux was to come in three more days, to slide into the island while matters were diverted toward the celebration. To probe the problem presented by Colonel Ready. A little job, he had said. And if he could get the book from Harry Francis that much sooner, all the better for both of them.

  Devereaux had let her go.

  The taxi coughed to a stop in front of a five-story building done in the classic French style with tall windows and small balconies. The building was a bright sandstone color. Over the portico was the name Ritz in script on a blue marquee. She smiled at that.

  “This is quite the best hotel in St. Michel,” said Daniel as though he had built it. He got out of the taxi and opened her door. “It is quite comparable to the hotel in Paris, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. I never stayed there.”

  “You will be quite comfortable here,” said Daniel with the air of a proprietor.