Ernesto

  15 William Cote, “Ernest Hemingway’s Murky World War II ‘Combat’ Experience,” The Hemingway Review (September 22, 2002): 88–104.

  16 Hemingway, How It Was, 158.

  17 DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, 8.

  18 “Cuba: Batista at Work,” Newsweek, March 24, 1952, 60, 62.

  19 Allie Baker, “Luck, Pluck, and Serendipity: Bumby’s Wartime Experience,” The Hemingway Project, February 13, 2014. See also Hemingway, Misadventures of a Fly Fisherman.

  20 He complained of headaches and colds to Lanham and to Mary Welsh in his letters from this period. Hemingway Personal Papers, cited in Michael Reynolds, “A Brief Biography,” in Wagner-Martin, A Historical Guide to Hemingway, 42–43.

  21 “I got in 8 months, 26 Krauts (armed) sures. No way of counting possibles and did nothing I was ashamed of except when we were athwart their escape route…I shot at what looked like a usual kraut with an M-1 and turned out to be a 17-year-old boy when we checked him for papers.” Ernest Hemingway to Archibald McLeich, August 27, 1948, box 7, folder 23, Carlos Baker Collection of Ernest Hemingway, cited in Cote, “Ernest Hemingway’s Murky World War II ‘Combat’ Experience.” In interviews, two senior officers from the First Army would tell Ernest Hemingway’s first biographer that the writer distinguished himself through acts of bravery repelling German soldiers with a machine gun during an ambush and killing “a few.” Cololnel Charles Lanham and General John F. Ruggles, quoted in Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 433, 436, 638.

  22 “I have 22 wounds that are visible (probably beside the hidden one) and have killed 122 sures besides the possibles. The last, not the last, but the one made me feel the worst, was a soldier in German uniform with helmet rideing [sic] on a bicycle along their escape route toward Aachen they [that] we had gotten astride of above St. Quentin.” Ernest Hemingway to Arthur Miezner, June 2, 1950, Selected Letters, 697–8. The manuscript of the unpublished short story “Black Ass at a Crossroads” (Hemingway Personal Papers) contains a similar story. See also Ernest Hemingway to Charles Scribner, August 27, 1949, Selected Letters, 672.

  23 Fuentes, Hemingway in Cuba, 19.

  24 Rodenberg, The Making of Ernest Hemingway, 33.

  25 Fuentes, Hemingway in Cuba, 60.

  26 “I am as committed as an armoured column in a narrow defile where no vehicle can turn and without parallel roads…Please love me very much and always and take care of me Small Friend the way Small Friends take care of Big Friends—high in the sky and shining and beautiful.” Ernest Hemingway to Mary Welsh, September 13, 1944, Selected Letters, 558–69. See also Reynolds, Hemingway: The Final Years, 127–28.

  27 Martha Gellhorn, Mario Menocal, and Patrick Hemingway, quoted in Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 635, and Kert, The Hemingway Women, 411.

  28 “He insisted that I have dinner with him; I did think we could talk about divorce. Instead he had a band of his younger soldier pals from ‘his’ regiment and in front of them insulted and mocked me throughout dinner. They were miserable and slowly left and when I could, I got up from the banquette seat where I’d been hemmed in and fled.” Martha Gellhorn, quoted in Kert, The Hemingway Women, 411.

  29 Kert, The Hemingway Women.

  30 “All smashed up with terrible headaches she would not do anything for a man that we would do for a dog…I made a great mistake on her—or else she changed very much—I think probably both—But mostly the later. I hate to lose anyone who can look so lovely and who we taught to shoot and write so well. But I have torn up my tickets on her and would be glad to never see her again…Thought I would write you about Marty so that you would know what the score is.” Ernest Hemingway to Buck Lanham, September 15, 1944, Museum Ernest Hemingway Collection.

  31 Martha Gellhorn to Edna Gellhorn, quoted in Moorehead, Gellhorn, 264.

  32 Noel Monks to Mary Welsh, February 8, 1945, Mary Hemingway Personal Papers.

  33 Ernest Hemingway to Hadley Richardson, April 24, 1945, Selected Letters, 592.

  CHAPTER 9

  1 A year before, facists officials had executed fifteen partisans and displayed their bodies in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto, so Partisans retributed by hanging the bodies of Mussolini and his entourage from their boots and later renamed the square Piazza Quindici Martiri to honor those who died there: Fifteen Martyrs’ Square.

  2 “My thick northern Europe army uniform was much too heavy for those latitudes; but I wore it to Havana as Ernest had instructed me to do. He was shaved, combed, and crisp in a white guayabera.” Hemingway, How It Was, 154.

  3 “Inside the Finca’s wooden gate we drove through a bower of scarlet flowers, up a little rise and half around a circular driveway from which rose a prodigious tier of broad old stone steps, with an enormous [Ceiba] tree growing out of one rise. The house seemed to have grown gradually out of its hilltop. Its roof and a projecting terrace were laden with flowers and the air smelled of plants growing. I thought of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott and country vicars’ manses and fell instantly in love. ‘A ruin,’ Ernest said. ‘It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful.’ Afternoon sunlight was brightening the inside, making the house look hospitable through its open doors and windows. Juan and the butler were bringing my bags into the sitting room. ‘You can stay in the Little House if you like,’ said Ernest. ‘It’s where the children stay, but it’s ready for you.’ He was polite and distant. ‘Where you prefer.’ Hemingway, How It Was, 154–55.

  4 Hemingway, How It Was, 155.

  5 Hemingway, How It Was, 200.

  6 Hemingway, How It Was, 156.

  7 Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 453.

  8 Hemingway, How It Was, 157.

  9 Hemingway, How It Was.

  10 Mary Hemingway to Buck and Pete Lanham, July 1945, quoted in Kert, The Hemingway Women, 420.

  11 Jack, Patrick, and Gregory Hemingway, quoted in Kert, The Hemingway Women, 420.

  12 Hemingway, How It Was, 182.

  13 Hemingway, How It Was, 162.

  14 Hemingway, How It Was, 169.

  15 Hemingway, How It Was.

  16 “‘Soy como soy, / I am as I am. Y no como Papa quiere, / And not as Papa wishes, Qué culpa tengo yo / What fault have I? De ser así? / To be like this? Was it the lament of a local whore?’ Mary mused aloud, and Papa, putting his arm around his ‘Pickle,’ told her that it was ‘just the invention of the conjunto.”’ Hemingway, How It Was, 163.

  17 Hemingway, How It Was, 167.

  18 Hemingway, How It Was, 177.

  19 “Leopoldina claimed that she was a descendant of Maximilian, the Emperor of Mexico, eighty years before, and she had the lovely green-tinted skin of Latins and the large lugubrious dark eyes of the offspring of deposed or murdered potentates. I found her conversation less alluring than her looks […]

  ‘Do you enjoy living in Havana?’

  ‘No. It’s an evil city. Depravada.’

  ‘What a shame. I haven’t yet seen that.’

  ‘It’s evil, and it’s too hot,’ Leopoldina declared.

  ‘But not as hot as Paris.’

  ‘No. Not as hot as Paris,’ she agreed. Then she glowered at me, suspicion in her lovely eyes, and told me that her liver was bothering her.” This anecdote from Mary’s memoirs establishes that Ernest and Leopoldina’s “intimate friendship” began long before Mary’s 1945 arrival in Havana.” Hemingway, How It Was, 178.

  20 Hemingway, How It Was.

  21 Hudson remarks that his whipped, frozen daiquiri looks like the wake of a boat doing thirty knots. He wonders how his daiquiri would look if it were phosphorescent, which leads to a discussion of the Cuban custom of eating the phosphorous found in match heads to commit suicide. A morbid discussion of suicide ensues, suggesting Hudson’s own dark thoughts and depression after having lost his sons. Honest Lil insists that drinking shoe ink and iodine are “au fond” gestures, cries for help and not serious suicide attempts like the auto da fé, the classic method of Cuban women in response to betrayed love, pouring alcohol on themselves and setting themselves on fire
as a passionate last expression of rage. Hemingway, Islands in the Stream, 181.

  22 The girl of the regiment. Martha Gellhorn to Allen Grover and the Editors of Collier’s, December 1945. “When I am alone sorrow drowns me. This is a grief I did not know I could feel and it is very hard to bear.” Martha Gellhorn to David Gurewitsch, April 7, 1950, quoted in Moorehead, Gellhorn, 266.

  23 Quoted in Rollyson, Beautiful Exile, 169.

  24 Kert, The Hemingway Women, 423.

  25 “1. On being alone 5 out of 7 mornings. 2. On cultivating sports which bore the shit out of me. 3. One having so little company I don’t know why the hell I try to stay here.” She reasoned, “Whatever else the critics say about them, they certainly [are] right about him and women—he wants them like Indian girls—completely obedient and sexually loose. That I think I might learn to handle. But the…criticism and long intelligent speeches about [the] inadvisability or expense of something—after about 3 samples in one day—I get that smothered feeling.” Mary’s Journal, October 13, 1945, Mary Hemingway Personal Papers, quoted in Reynolds, Hemingway: The Final Years, 133.

  26 Reynolds, Hemingway: The Final Years.

  27 Hemingway, How It Was, 183.

  28 Hemingway, How It Was, 184.

  29 Villarreal and Villarreal, Hemingway’s Cuban Son, 73.

  30 Villarreal and Villarreal, Hemingway’s Cuban Son, 65.

  31 Villarreal and Villarreal, Hemingway’s Cuban Son, 76.

  32 Ernest Hemingway to Buck Lanham, June 30, 1946, quoted in Reynolds, Hemingway: The Final Years, 144.

  33 “Gertrude Stein Dies in France; 72,” The New York Times, July 28, 1946, 40. “Gertrude Stein Dies in Paris; Tumor Cause,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 1946, 1.

  34 Hemingway, How It Was, 188.

  35 Hemingway, How It Was, 189.

  36 Ernest Hemingway to Buck Lanham, August 1946, quoted in Hemingway, How It Was, 189–90.

  37 Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 453; Reynolds, Hemingway: The Final Years, 149.

  38 Villarreal and Villarreal, Hemingway’s Cuban Son, 78.

  39 Hemingway, The Garden of Eden.

  40 The citation read, “Mr. Ernest Hemingway has performed meritorious service as a war correspondent from 20 July to 1 September, and from 6 November to 6 December 1944, in France and Germany. During these periods he displayed a broad familiarity with modern military science, interpreting and evaluating the campaigns and operations of friendly and enemy forces, circulating freely under fire in combat areas to obtain an accurate picture of conditions. Through his talent of expression, Mr. Hemingway enabled readers to obtain a vivid picture of the difficulties and triumphs of the front-line soldier and his organization in combat.” Hemingway Personal Papers.

  41 “You are my most trusted friend.” Ernest Hemingway to Max Perkins, June 10, 1943, quoted in Bruccoli, The Only Thing That Counts, 325.

  42 The Boss, the Benefactor.

  43 Ameringer, Caribbean Legion; Clinton, “The United States and the Caribbean Legion” (dissertation).

  44 Villarreal and Villarreal, Hemingway’s Cuban Son, 78.

  45 “Santo Domingo Will Accuse Cuba, Venezuela, and Guatemala Before the International Tribunal,” Diario de la Marina, October 17, 1947, quoted in Fuentes, Hemingway in Cuba, 225–26. See also Cirules, Hemingway the Stranger, 127–29.

  46 José Luis Herrera Sotolongo, quoted in Fuentes, Hemingway in Cuba, 253–54; Ernest Hemingway to Buck Lanham, April 1947, quoted in Reynolds, The 1930s Through the Final Years, 444; Hemingway, Running with the Bulls, 171.

  47 Villarreal and Villarreal, Hemingway’s Cuban Son, 78.

  48 Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 463.

  49 Villarreal and Villarreal, Hemingway’s Cuban Son, 83.

  50 Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 466.

  51 Ernest Hemingway to Charles Lanham, July 28 and August 8, 1948, and Ernest Hemingway to Charles Scribner, August 13 and 25. “His mood of euphoria lasted through most of the summer. He helped Roberto make up a birthday purse for ‘Leopoldina,’ the aging Havana prostitute.” Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 466, 648.

  CHAPTER 10

  1 Enrique Serpa, quoted in Páporov, Hemingway en Cuba, 9.

  2 Páporov, Hemingway en Cuba, 10.

  3 Author interview with Clara Elena Serpa Aenlle, June 3, 2010.

  4 Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.

  5 Beautiful American car, the sweet life.

  6 Baker, Ernest Hemingway, 372.

  7 Perez-Lopez, The Economics of Cuban Sugar, 7.

  8 The cordial president.

  9 Ivancich, La torre bianca, 9.

  10 Ernest Hemingway to Adriana Ivancich, February 15, 1954, in Meyers, Hemingway, 440.

  11 The intervals listed below, the absence of time spent as a bachelor, and the descriptive pet-names born in the conquest of each new wife provide us with an instructive “tale of the tape”: 1. Hadley “Kitten” Richardson (from 1921 to 1927, six-year marriage; marries, leaves mother, Grace Hemingway, moves to Paris); 2. Pauline “Pilar” Pfeiffer (from 1927 to 1939, eleven-year marriage; leaves Hadley, marries, moves to Key West, Piggott); 3. Martha “Rabbit,” “Bug,” “Mrs. Fathouse Pig,” Gellhorn (from 1940 to 1945, five-year marriage; affair in Spanish Civil War, marries, moves to Havana, persuades husband to move out of hotel into Finca); 4. Mary “Pickle” Welsh (from 1946 until author’s death in 1961, fifteen-year marriage; affair in World War II Paris at Ritz Hotel, Welsh moves to Havana, marries Hemingway).

  12 On the island of Capri, Adriana’s aunt owned Villa L’Ulivo. Ivancich, La torre bianca, 195. The Ivanciches were an old Venetian family though several biographers have suggested that bad investments and postwar years had considerably diminished their holdings if not dulled their character or their façades.

  13 Independent of Ernest Hemingway’s invitation.

  14 Later, Gianfranco perhaps became a “male surrogate” or “vicarious substitute,” a “mirror image” of his sister, inspiring the work in progress and distracting his affection for his sister when his desires could not be fulfilled. Meyers, Hemingway, 429, 442.

  15 Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 4.

  16 Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 8.

  17 Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 6–7.

  18 Hotchner, Papa Hemingway.

  19 Hotchner, Papa Hemingway, 8.

  20 Gabriel García Marquez, “Hemingway—Our Own” (introduction), Fuentes, Hemingway in Cuba, 11, 12.

  21 “We had a great mate before Gregorio, named Carlos Gutierrez, but someone hired him away from me when I was away at the Spanish Civil War. It was wonderful luck to find Gregorio, and his seamanship has saved Pilar in three hurricanes.” Hemingway, “The Great Blue River,” in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, 388–89.

  22 Hemingway, “The Great Blue River,” in By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, 389.

  23 Blessed.

  24 Hemingway, How It Was, 239–40.

  25 Hemingway, How It Was.

  26 “It’s lovely up there. It’s calm and beautiful, and thank you very much for it.” “Something must be wrong with it,” she responded. My husband looked sheepish and bemused. “It’s too lonely. I’m used to the sounds of the house. Miss them—René sweeping the matting. You clicking around.” Hemingway, How It Was.

  27 Hemingway, How It Was, 241.

  28 Interview with Wallter Houk, quoted in Hendrickson, Hemingway’s Boat, 395.

  29 Hemingway’s Boat, 407.

  30 Hemingway, How It Was, 245.

  31 Hemingway, How It Was.

  32 Hemingway, How It Was.

  33 In Cuban Spanish a viejo verde is literally a “green old man,” but it means an older man who is hot for young girls. Ernest Hemingway to A .E. Hotchner, October 3, 1949, in DeFazio, Dear Papa, Dear Hotch, 47.

  34 On October 4, “This noon I go into town to see the oldest and best whore I ever knew. She is the same age I am and I knew her when she was a kid…and we will tell sad stories of the death of Kings and get the local gossip. She tells me everything about everybody and gives me all
the handkerchiefs her boyfriends leave. Have initialed handkerchiefs from every sugar king in the Island. That will kill today and Roberto [Herrera] is bringing the young, new, beautiful whore out tonight. Then will work tomorrow morning and Miss Mary comes on the plane in the evening in her coat on Thursday.” Ernest Hemingway to Charles Scribner, October 4, 1949, Selected Letters, 679.

  35 Ilse Bulit, “Hemingway, Leopoldina, María Ignacia, y yo,” SEMlac Cuba, parts I—II, redsemlac-cuba.net/Criterios/hemingway-leopoldina-mariaignacia-y-yo-i.html.

  36 Hemingway, How It Was, 246–47.

  37 Lillian Ross, “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” The New Yorker, May 13, 1950, newyorker.com/magazine/1950/05/13/how-do-you-like-it-now-gentlemen.

  38 Ross, “How Do You like It Now, Gentlemen?”

  39 Hemingway, How It Was, 249. See also Reynolds, Hemingway: The Final Years, 213.

  40 Nicholas Shakespeare, “The Old Man and His Muse: Hemingway’s Toe-Curling Infatuation with Adriana Ivancich,” The Spectator, September 1, 2018, www.spectator.co.uk/2018/09/the-old-man-and-his-muse-hemingways-toe-curling-infatuation-with-adriana-ivancich.

  41 “Some days later when I told it to Ernest, the cheer drained away from his face. But he rallied himself and me, saying ‘That’s our lousy luck, my kitten. But we’ll share it. It will be our lousy, dark secret which we keep together. No. You won’t have that ‘maybe’ operation. The hell with it. I wouldn’t ask you to jump off a roof with an umbrella for support.” Ernest never referred further to that incapacity of mine, but for years I felt myself a failed member of the human race, being unable to contribute a creature to it.” Hemingway, How It Was, 260–61.

  42 Ivancich, La torre bianca, 96–101.

  43 What he missed most about her was her voice, he wrote Adriana in a lonely letter, “If you were here, Ay as one says in Spanish if you were here…” He made her promise to get her immigration papers in order and “carry them as a gift” to him. Adriana Ivancich to Ernest Hemingway, March 21 and March 22, 1950; Ernest Hemingway to Adriana Ivancich, April 1950, quoted in Kert, The Hemingway Women, 452–53. In his letters he insisted that there was “no remedy if not in the Calle del Rimedio [Adriana’s address],” for he would always love her and could not help it, but he would agree not to write it or say it to her ever again and try only to serve her well and be happy company when they met, but then he added: “Nobody can control what their heart feels if they have any heart.” Ernest Hemingway to Adriana Ivancich, June 16 and June 26, 1950, quoted in Ivancich, La torre bianca, 192, 316, quoted in Knigge, Hemingway’s Venetian Muse Adriana Ivancich, 34.