Papa Hemingway

by A. E. Hotchner

  "That's damn nice of John. Is it all right if I keep this?"

  "Sure. Lillian told me she sent you the proofs and you approved them."

  "Sure she did. They arrived in Cuba on a Monday morning when the piece was already locked into the next issue. Ask Mary. But, anyway, what was there to correct? The whole damn thing was awful. Awful. Everything telescoped to fit into The New Yorker distortion machine. I'm never going to have another piece about me ever if I can help it. I had a nice private life before with a lot of undeclared and unpublished pride and now I feel like somebody crapped in it and wiped themselves on slick paper and left it there. I ought to move to Africa or stay at sea. Can't even go into the Floridita now. Can't go to Cojimar. Can't stay home. It can get on your nerves really badly, Hotch. I know some of it is my fault, but some of it isn't too. If I had had any brains, once Miss Mary was safely out I should have stayed in that second kite at Butiaba. Anyway, that's how I feel after that Cuneo mob has raked me over. Sorry to be Black-Ass. I'll look at the scenery and try to cheer up."

  "Marlene phoned me the day The New Yorker came out," I said, "in an absolute fury. She was incensed that no one had told her who Lillian Ross was and that she was doing a piece, and then more incensed that it was so distorted."

  "Can you imagine," Ernest said, "that after having spent the whole night with the Kraut and me, hearing all the things we discussed, all Lillian could write about was that the Kraut sometimes cleaned her daughter's apartment with towels from the Plaza. Hope you talked Kraut out of lawsuit."

  "She's over it."

  "So am I," Ernest said. "Lillian writes well—I thought her Hollywood pieces were superior, didn't you? And the piece on Sidney Franklin—well, I judged her on that—but my judgment blew up in my face."

  In my opinion, what had happened was this: when Lillian had begun the Sidney Franklin profile, Ernest had told her she was as unqualified as anyone he could think of, since she knew nothing about bullfighting or bullfighters, had never been to Spain and did not even have any interest in American sports. She was equally unqualified to write about Ernest, for she knew as little about this kind of man as she did about bullfighters, but the difference was that in writing about Sidney Franklin she had Ernest to guide her, and in doing Ernest she had no one.

  By the time we reached the Limone check point at the border, Ernest had restored his spirits with the pleasures of the Alp-winding scenery. The Limone customs guards, however, gave us the kind of reception they must reserve for the more obvious gold-runners. They ordered us out of the car, and we stood in the road while they went through the baggage, checked the upholstery of the car, probed the tires, and even examined the contents of the spare cans of oil that Adamo carried in the trunk. The name Hemingway meant nothing to the chief guard, who quite obviously couldn't read and who was convinced that the pillow Ernest had been using to give support to his lame back contained shredded plutonium.

  Ernest was amused by the performance. "You can't blame them," he said. "Did you take a good look at the three of us? Adamo in that oversized pink safari jacket of mine, me in my stocking cap and beard, and you in your gangster slouch? Three of the gamiest bastards I ever saw. If I were the guard, I'd line us up against the nearest wall and shoot us."

  The trip over the Alps into Nice was exhilaratingly beautiful. The Lancia took the corkscrew turns with the rhythm of a fast pendulum, which Ernest enjoyed greatly.

  "When I first came to France from Italy," Ernest said, "I came third-class on the train. There was a pretty Swiss girl in my car, and since the train was going very slowly on the ascent, I decided to solidify my position with her by jumping off the train and picking some of the beautiful mountain wildflowers that were growing by the track, while running alongside the train. But what I didn't know was that there was a tunnel a short distance ahead around a curve, and also didn't know it was the custom to lock the train doors when going through tunnels. So I couldn't get back in and I had to cling to the side of the train all the way through that black tunnel. There was very little clearance and I was all skinned and bleeding and my clothes were torn when the conductor finally unlocked the doors and I climbed back in. Through it all, somehow managed to hang onto the bouquet of flowers. Despite blood, soot and rips, Swiss girl very impressed. Dressed my wounds. Made out okay."

  In Nice we checked in at the Ruhl, a magnificent seaside hotel. Ernest immediately sent for the barber and instructed him to shave off his beard, trim his mustache severely and shape up what postburn hair existed. "It might avert another Cuneo," Ernest explained.

  We had planned to overwhelm Monte Carlo that night, but Ernest's injuries, particularly his back, were troubling him so much that he asked me to handle the wheel while he planned to set up headquarters in the Casino's bar. We each put up ten thousand francs and Ernest suggested the number seven if that was okay with me. "Play it with red and impair," he said, "and make them fear us the way they now fear us at Auteuil."

  Adamo brought the car around after dinner; Ernest asked him if he knew the way to Monte Carlo (foolish question). He said yes, yes indeed, he had driven there many times. "Would it be all right," he asked, "if I opened it up this once to show you what she can really do?" Ernest said okay. Monte Carlo is about thirty kilometers from Nice, and Adamo had his foot on the floorboard the whole way. It was a wild ride. With a screech of brakes he pulled up at what he thought was the Monte Carlo seaside, but in reality we had made a giant loop and landed right back at the Ruhl. Adamo looked up at the hotel, blinked, and said, "What do you know about that? They have a Hotel Ruhl in Monte Carlo too!"

  Seven was the number all right, usually in combinations, and impair did all right, but red was cold from the start and I laid off. Around eleven-thirty, with about a hundred eighty thousand francs in front of me, I could feel the board begin to go so I cashed in. I went into the bar. Ernest was asleep in a leather chair, an unfinished drink on the table beside him. I gave him his split and he was very pleased, as he always was with good performance against heavy odds.

  On our way out of Nice the following morning we passed a road direction to Cap d'Antibes, and Ernest said, "One June I was at Cap d'Antibes with a group that included Charley MacArthur and his wife, Helen Hayes. It was the custom then for the Riviera to shut down for the summer, considered too hot, but Charley and I persuaded some of the places at the Cap to stay open for the first time. Charley was wonderful fun and we had a fine time. He was the master of the baroque practical joke and there was nothing from mother's milk to

  Pope's ring that Charley held sacred. First-class gent. Well, one balmy evening Charley and I staged a prize fight, all in fun of course, with seconds in each corner and buckets of champagne instead of water. We had a pact not to hit at heads.

  "But Charley, in a flurry of champagne and mistaken strength, tried to cream me. Twice while we were in clinches I warned him to cut it out, but two more times he threw roundhouse rights to my head. I then dumped him for keeps with a right chop. We had to carry him out of the ring. Well, I didn't see Charley much after that, but, one day in Cuba, years later, I received a cable from him asking whether he and Helen could stop by to see us. Naturally I invited him. Poor Charley was by then very sick and knew he was going to die. We had lunch and it was pleasant, but sad. Mary took Helen on a tour of her vegetable garden, leaving Charley and me alone. 'Hem,' he said, 'it's not true that we were just passing through. I came down here especially to see you. Listen, Hem, something's been bothering me for a long time. You remember that night at Cap d'Antibes? Well, they've got me on pretty short rations and I wanted to ask you something—sort of a last favor—that prizefight of ours—would you promise me never to write about it?' That was Charley for you—came all the way to Cuba to ask me that."

  We stopped in Cannes, which is about twenty minutes from Nice, because Ernest was feeling rocky; he said he doubted whether, the pain being what it was, he could make it to Aix-en-Provence, which was our day's destination. He had two Scotches,
two fried eggs, unbuttered white toast and a piece of pickled herring; that lifted him enough for us to continue.

  The window of a charcuterie caught Ernest's eye when we were passing through Bourgogne, and he asked Adamo to stop. "If I'm not mistaken," he said, "they're showing tins of Capi-taine Cook's mackerel in white wine. Haven't seen Capitaine Cook since 1939." Ernest invested all his Monte Carlo winnings in tins of the Capitaine's mackerel, containers of pate de fois gras, bottles of Cordon Rouge champagne, and jars of pickled mushrooms and pickled walnuts. We could barely fit all of it into the Lancia.

  That night in Aix-en-Provence, Ernest and I dined at the four-forked, one-flowered Vendome, where the specialite was carre d'agneau arlesienne; afterward we sat for a long time over coffee and wine; Ernest consumed more wine than I had ever before seen him drink. He talked steadily and with a curious immediacy as if the talk somehow alleviated his pain, which I knew intensified at night. He was talking about books, how many worthless ones he had read on the boat.

  "Did you read John O'Hara's A Rage to Live?" I asked. "I thought it was very good. First book of his I've liked in a long time."

  "No, haven't read John's book yet. Mean to. When I first read him, it looked like he could hit: Appointment in Samarra. Then, instead of swinging away, for no reason he started beating out bunts. He was fast and he had a pretty ear but he had the terrible inferiority complex of the half-lace-curtain Irish and he never learned that it doesn't matter a damn where you come from socially; it is where you go. So he kept beating out bunts instead of trying to learn to hit, and I lost interest. Am awfully glad if he has a good book. I'd written him off and am always happy to be wrong. The writing Irish cannot stand either success or failure, so if book is good we can expect him to become fairly insufferable, but we can always keep away from his joints and if he writes good, that is all that matters. It was damn pretty the way he put the shiv in The New Yorker.

  "But look at what's being written. The guy who wrote The Naked and the Dead—what's his name, Mailer—was in bad need of a manager. Can you imagine that a general wouldn't look at the co-ordinates on his map? A made-up half-ass literary general. The whole book's just diarrhea of the typewriter. The only truly good novel, maybe great, to come out of World War II is The Gallery. I say 'maybe great' because who in the hell can tell? Greatness is the longest steeplechase ever run; many enter; few survive.

  "I logged a lot of reading time on the S.S. Africa and reread Huckleberry Finn, which I have always touted as the best American book ever written and which I still think is. But I had not read it for a long time and this time reading it, there were at least forty paragraphs I wished I could fix. And a lot of the wonderful stuff you remember, you discover you put there yourself."

  "Do you think you'll write another book about the last war— with that background?"

  "No, I don't think so. Across the River is my book. I only write once on any one theme; if I don't write it all that one time, then it is not worth saying. You know that old Greek gent Heraclitus? 'One cannot step twice in the same river, for fresh waters are forever flowing in upon you.' I never start out with a plot in mind, and I've never yet set out to write a novel— it's always a short story that moves into being a novel. I always make it prove that it can't be written short. There's only one requirement to being a successful writer if you have talent-stay healthy."

  "Also to work every day, or damn near every day, don't you think?"

  "Yes. That's why I like to start early before I can be distracted by peoples and events. I've seen every sunrise of my life. I rise at first light—the wars ruined my sleep, that and my thin eyelids—and I start by rereading and editing everything I have written to the point I left off. That way I go through a book I'm writing several hundred times. Then I go right on, no pissing around, crumbling up paper, pacing, because I always stop at a point where I know precisely what's going to happen next. So I don't have to crank up every day. Most writers slough off the toughest but most important part of their trade—editing their stuff, honing it and honing it until it gets an edge like the bullfighter's estoque, the killing sword. One time my son Patrick brought me a story and asked me to edit it for him. I went over it carefully and changed one word. 'But, Papa,' Mousy said, 'you've only changed one word.' I said, 'If it's the right word, that's a lot.'

  "I like to write standing up to reduce the old belly and because you have more vitality on your feet. Who ever went ten rounds sitting on his ass? I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

  "But I've had my writing problems; don't think I haven't. When I asked Mary to marry me, I had a gaping hole in my head from having smashed a car into a water tower during a London blackout and I didn't know if I could write again, or do anything else. I had tried to write but no go. Mary gave up her career as a London Time correspondent, and in two and a half months everything began to fall in place. Except the writing. Tried for one year, but still no go. The turning point was out in Sun Valley when we were tracking a big elusive buck for Miss Mary, and for eight days we trudged through the deep snow from first light to dusk. On the eighth day Mary shot him, and the next day I started to write.

  "There are only two absolutes I know about writing: one is that if you make love while you are jamming on a novel, you are in danger of leaving the best parts of it in the bed; the other is that integrity in a writer is like virginity in a woman— once lost, it is never recovered. I am always being asked about my 'credo'—Christ, that word—well, credo is to write as well as I can about things that I know and feel deeply about."

  "Papa, you've often talked about maybe writing a book with an American locale . . ."

  "I always wanted to, but had to wait till after my mother's death. You understand? Now I don't know. My father died in 1928—shot himself—and left me fifty thousand dollars. There's a paragraph in For Whom the Bell Tolls that. . . well . . . took me twenty years to face his suicide and put it down and cathar-size it. The thing that bothered me the most was that I had written him a letter that was on his desk the day he shot himself, and I think if he had opened that letter and read it he wouldn't have pulled the trigger. When I asked my mother for my inheritance, she said she had already spent it on me. I asked her how. She said on my travel and education. What education? I asked her. Oak Park High School? My only travel, I pointed out, had been taken care of by the Italian army. She didn't answer, but instead took me to see the lavish new music wing she had built on the house. Of course, that's where the fifty G's had gone. My mother was a music nut, a frustrated singer, and she gave musicales every week in my fifty-thousand-dollar music room. When I was in school she forced me to play the cello even though I had absolutely no talent and could not even carry a tune. She took me out of school one year so I could concentrate exclusively on the cello. I wanted to be playing football out in the fresh air and she had me chained to that knee-box. Even before her music-room period she was in constant pursuit of musical personalities, trying to lure them to her soirees. On one such occasion I found myself being dawdled on the knees of Mary Garden. Since I was big for my age, it was a tossup just who would dawdle who, but she dressed out at one eighty-five and got the nod.

  "Well, as for that fifty-thousand-dollar music salon, I got a small return on my inheritance by putting up a punching bag in the middle of it and working out there every afternoon until I left Oak Park. And that time when I left, it was for keeps. Several years later, at Christmastime, I received a package from my mother. It contained the revolver with which my father had killed himself. There was a card that said she thought I'd like to have it; I didn't know whether it was an omen or a prophecy."

  Along toward midnight, all the other diners having left a good hour before, I mentioned to Ernest that the waiters wanted to close up. He had begun to repeat stories he had told me that afternoon—a thing he had never done befo
re—but there was no other manifestation of how much he had been drinking.

  He insisted on finishing the bottle of wine. "I was healthy and in really good shape," he said, "before they banged me up in this one. Was down to two hundred six and had pressure down to one sixty over seventy. Before that, had it down to one forty over sixty-five but Doc said was too low. Now it's all shot to hell and how can you write out of that? Or do anything else?"

  "Papa," I said, indicating the two forlorn waiters who

  were maintaining a vigil, "I think they want to go home."

  "Boy," he said, "you have to learn to drink under the withering fire of the fixed stare or the guided missile. During the war I had set up headquarters for my Irregulars in a farmhouse that was smack on the front line. It was designated at command headquarters as Task Force Hem. The Germans frequently sent patrols right into our front yard. Well, you know the artist John Groth? He came one night on his way to some assignment and we put him up. During dinner the German eighty-eights opened up and hit around us pretty good, shattering plaster and window glass; when it cleared, Groth crawled out from the potato cellar, where he had dived with the other eaters when the first pieces of plaster started flying around, and he said, 'Mr. Hemingway, how could you sit there eating cheese and drinking wine when they had us under fire?'

  " 'Groth,' I said, 'if you hit the deck every time you hear a pop, you'll wind up with chronic indigestion.' You going to finish your wine?"

  I pushed my half-filled glass over to him. His speech was getting slurred at the edges.