Papa Hemingway

by A. E. Hotchner

  I thought with the right pictures, the fatigue and overwork to point of destruction was justified because we would have the results. Does no good to explain that promises to me were not kept. Nobody would believe that. Would shoot myself if it would do any good. But would have to get things neatened up for any such luxury as that. When I got a letter from Mary saying that the second number was fine, I quit worrying and was figuring on starting to have the fatigue beat and that everything would work out fine. Now this."

  "But why don't you send an explanation and apology to Antonio and Luis Miguel?"

  "I guess I could send a cable to Antonio. He's in Aries. But what the hell good can I do with a cable when he's in France for only one day and probably dressing at some friend's house instead of at the hotel?"

  "But it's worth a try. And maybe you'll find that he and Miguel aren't as sensitive about the pictures as you think."

  "That's what Bill said—what difference do a few pictures make? But the work that went into getting those pictures right and my obligation to be straight and see things through makes me sick right through my bones. Would rather be smashed up like in Africa any number of times than have the feeling that page of pictures gave me."

  He went into the bedroom. I turned to look at the others; from their attitude of complete resignation I could see that this was something they had been enduring for a long time.

  I went into the bedroom and said, "Papa, no matter how bad the situation is, there's no sense beating yourself to death over it. You know you had nothing to do with it." He was sitting on the edge of the bed.

  "I have been trying to convince myself that am not destroyed as an honest guy, but it is not easy. If I can only make the people involved believe it was not done by me in carelessness or malice. You mean to say nobody in the States picked me up on that picture?"

  "Not to my knowledge."

  "I ought to write Lennie Lyons and get the true gen. He'll level with me."

  "Well, why don't we forget it all for now and go over to the Callejon and have a good dinner like old times?"

  "I don't know. I haven't been going out much . . ."

  "Come on. It will do you good."

  "We were supposed to go to Nimes but we canceled that because Luis Miguel was there and I couldn't face him after the Life picture."

  "Why don't we have a drink at the bar here—your diet will permit one drink, won't it?—and I'll phone the Callejon and have them reserve your table?"

  "I'm too beat to go, Hotch, but you take Honor and go with Bill and Annie. It hasn't been much fun for Honor. I haven't been going anywhere."

  He went over and shut the door and took me by the arm and led me to the corner of the room farthest from the door. "You watch yourself," he said in a low, ominous voice. "Keep your eye on all of them. Especially Bill. He has been trying to crack up the car again. He missed killing me the first time and he's waiting for another opening. That's one of the reasons I've been staying put. Last time out he tried to run me off a cliff. There's no sense discussing it with Honor because she tries to make excuses for him."

  "Oh, come on, Papa. What are you saying? You're joking, of course."

  He tightened his hold on my arm and his face grew more tense. "Would I kid about a thing like that? I don't know what he's up to but if you go to the Callejon, don't take the car. Take a taxi. Maybe he'll be all right with you. But it's been hell the whole month of September. I've got to get out of here as soon as I can. I asked Bill to make a reservation but you better check on it. Don't want reservation in my name. You've got to keep me off the manifest until just before take-off."

  Bill and I had a drink at the bar while Annie and Honor dressed for dinner. "Jesus," Bill said, the words tumbling out of him, "am I glad to see you! I don't think I could have lasted another week. Ernest came over here so nervous and fatigued and right away plunged into traveling and collecting hundreds of photographs from all over Spain, and then worked night and day writing captions for Life and worrying about them, and arguing with Will Lang, and down on everyone, and . . . Christ, I don't know, Hotch. What's wrong with him? Is there something wrong with him? He talks about his kidneys, constantly about his kidneys, or maybe it's one kidney, I don't know, but that's all you hear all day long. Did the doctors give him bad news about his kidney? What's he got that it would turn him this way? He never smiles or even looks pleasant. You remember how he always talked when we traveled, always talking about the countryside or the cattle or the old days and the places he fought? Now he doesn't say a word. Not one word. Just sits there tense as hell and looks straight ahead. At first I tried to do the talking, asking questions to get him to talk, but he barely answered so I gave up. And no wine bag. Can you imagine Ernest in the front seat without the wine bag?"

  It was a glum dinner; nobody ate much. Annie was convinced that Ernest had been told that he had a fatal kidney ailment. I asked whether Ernest had also been complaining about his eyes. Honor said he had not once mentioned them. "But now he carries on about his kidneys the way he used to carry on about his eyes," she said.

  "We must help him to get back to the States," Bill said. "He keeps making reservations—I make them in my name—but then he changes his mind. You see, what I'm afraid of is that the Spaniards will start to get on him for the Manolete stuff. Can you imagine what that will do to him? That Dominguin picture doesn't mean anything, but in the Life piece he says that Manolete used cheap tricks and all that, and a lot of Spaniards are going to get on him for that. Manolete is their most revered hero and it's bad for a foreigner to spit on his grave. Ernest has to be out of here before that hits him."

  "It's just fatigue," Annie explained. "He's so exhausted he can't think straight or eat or sleep or be cheerful or anything.

  Bill's right. We have to get him away from bullfights and Luis Miguel and all the rest. Maybe he'll listen to you. We can't seem to . . . well, interest him any more. Try to help him, Hotch."

  "He has a thing about Bill and the car," Honor said.

  "He sure has," Bill agreed.

  "He talks to me about it all the time," Honor said.

  "I guess it goes back to the accident," Bill said.

  "It's best that we not use the car at all," Honor said.

  "What's happening to Ernest?" Annie asked. "Sometimes the way he gets scares me. Really scares me. What in the world is happening to him?"

  Ernest came into my room early the following morning and we had breakfast together. He said his kidney had kept him up most of the night and his hand was unsteady when he raised his teacup. He was very anxious to know about the movie offer and the projects with Cooper. He said it figured to be a very bad year and repeated the financial fears expressed on previous occasions. I told him that Twentieth had informed me that the most they would pay was a hundred twenty-five thousand. This infuriated him.

  "Look, Papa, I told them I thought you'd call the whole thing off, so why don't we?"

  "No! We can't!"

  "But why?"

  "Got to have the money. I want you to get the dough for the screenplay and I don't want to pass up a hundred twenty-five thousand dollars."

  "But, Papa, I have other things to do. I certainly don't need the screenplay . . ."

  "How much are they offering you?"

  "Seventy-five thousand."

  "We can't pass it up. Tell them I'll come down to five hundred thousand. They like to bargain. It's their way of life."

  "They won't pay it. I've already said—"

  "You try. You can't tell. But don't let the hundred twenty-five thousand get away."

  We also discussed the Across the River project, for which Gary Cooper had been negotiating, and I put in a call to Cooper, who was then in London. Ernest asked me to check on the airline reservation and to be sure it was in Bill's name. While he talked he massaged his right kidney with the fingers of his right hand. The call to Cooper came through and Ernest enjoyed talking to him; his voice became animated and he laughed several times. B
y the time he hung up he was a little like his old self.

  "Coops sounds fine. From what he says, don't think they tipped him the black spot on the prostate. Do you think he's too old to play Colonel Cantwell?"

  "No, not if we got a certain Italian lady to play Renata."

  "Who?"

  "Sophia Loren."

  "Who's she?"

  "You've never seen her? Or heard of her?"

  "I lead a very sheltered life."

  "You've got a lot coming to you."

  He snapped his eyes at me. "That's out of 'The Battler.' Did you realize that?" His voice was hard and threw me off balance. I hadn't been aware I had said anything out of anything, and I said so.

  "I'm sorry," he said, meaning it. "I don't usually go around hearing dialogue from my published works. Why don't we all have an early lunch at the Callejon? A piece of broiled calves' liver might be good for kidney."

  I had a copy of Ernest's volume of short stories in my luggage because it contained the Nick Adams stories that Twentieth wanted to buy. I looked up "The Battler," which is an account of Nick's meeting with a punch-drunk fighter and his Negro companion, Bugs, at a camp site next to a railroad embankment.

  "Where you say you're from?"

  "Chicago," Nick said.

  "That's a fine town," the Negro said. "I didn't catch your

  name."

  "Adams. Nick Adams." "He says he's never been crazy, Bugs," Ad said.

  "He's got a lot coming to him," the Negro said.

  I closed the book and buried it deep in my luggage.

  Lunch at the Callejon started out pleasantly. It was a lovely fall day and we had walked to the restaurant through the heart of Madrid along busy and interesting streets. The proprietor had Ernest's usual table ready when we arrived. We all drank vino tinto and Ernest ate his broiled calves' liver approvingly and drank the vino tinto without watering it. He talked to Honor, who was next to him, and to Annie, who was across the table, and he seemed to be enjoying himself as he always used to.

  It was while the salad was being served that it happened. I don't know what preceded it; I had been talking with Bill and the first I knew, Ernest had a waiter by the sleeve and was shouting at him, in English to begin with, and then in Spanish. The waiter was terrified. He tried to balance the large wooden salad bowl while attempting to free the sleeve that Ernest had hold of. I do not to this day know what the waiter had done. Probably the waiter himself did not know. At one point Ernest demanded to know his name, which sounded like "Pollock," and Ernest demanded to know whether he was Spanish or Polish, and when the waiter said Polish he lit into him about that.

  The restaurant was crowded and everyone by now had stopped eating and was watching Ernest. The owner, whom Ernest had known since his first days in Madrid, came to make peace, but Ernest turned on him too and accused him of having turned Shylock that summer when Ernest and I had tracked down Rupert Belville at the Callejon, drunken almost to the point of expiration. In order to get him on an airplane that would immediately take him back to London, where he could be taken to a clinic, Ernest had asked the proprietor to advance him the air fare until he returned that evening. The proprietor had advanced the sum but apparently not in the spirit that Ernest had approved of, and now, four years later, Ernest gave him both barrels of this long-smoldering grudge. The altercation with the waiter ended abrubtly. Ernest rose suddenly, threw a large amount of pesetas on the table, and left. He never went back.

  The afternoon he returned to the hotel from the Callejon, Ernest got undressed and went to bed and stayed there for four days. Every day he was scheduled to fly back to New York, but every day he postponed his departure. The morning after the Callejon incident, he called us—Bill, Annie and I were sorting photographs in the sitting room—and he said he had just had a terrible thought: What if Iberia had a rule against excess baggage and would not let him take the photographs with him?

  I could not believe my ears. For as long as I had known him, Ernest had traveled with an amount of luggage which had exceeded in baggage fees the cost of his air ticket. He once came up to New York from Havana with thirty-six pieces of luggage. I pointed this out to him.

  "Yes, but this midnight plane isn't a jet and maybe they don't allow excess baggage on prop planes. If the photos don't get on, neither do I."

  Ernest had collected hundreds of bullfight pictures, and he was referring to the three small suitcases that held them. The more we said we were sure it was all right, the more Ernest stiffened, so I suggested we phone the airline and get the word direct.

  "Okay," Ernest said, "but first we've got to weigh everything. They'll want to know total weight and we've got to be exact." Bill and I glanced at each other; then while Ernest held a heating pad against his ailing kidney, we started to pack his bags. It took us over an hour; when we had everything in valises, Bill called the desk and asked for two porters. They took all the things down to the luggage room and weighed each piece. Ernest tipped them lavishly and then added up the precise number of kilos.

  Bill called Iberia on the bedroom telephone and after giving the number of the flight which Ernest was taking, he asked whether a passenger on that flight would be permitted that amount of excess luggage. The reply was in the affirmative. Annie and Honor, who had since joined us, began unpacking Ernest's things.

  "Who were you talking to?" he asked.

  "That was Iberia itself," Bill answered.

  "That's just it," Ernest said. "Some nameless flunky who doesn't know his ass from his elbow and I'll show up and they'll turn me away."

  No amount of discussion would dissuade Ernest from this new doubt, so that afternoon I went over to the Iberia ticket office and got a written statement, signed by the manager of the Madrid office, that a passenger bearing that amount of excess luggage would be permitted aboard. Ernest took the letter, folded it carefully, and placed it inside his passport.

  The flight that Ernest was insisting upon taking was one of the few nonjet transatlantic flights from Madrid. It was an ancient Constellation that required fourteen airborne hours whereas the jets made it in seven. I tried to talk Ernest out of taking it, but he said it would give him "better security" since no one would be looking for him on that flight, and also he preferred a slower descent when going into the drink, a calamity he was anticipating.

  Antonio unexpectedly came to see Ernest the evening before he left. Ernest was sitting up in bed reading when Antonio came in. He sat on the edge of the bed to talk to Ernest, and they were happy to see one another. Antonio, I thought, looked pale and drawn, and Ernest, in the harsh reading light, looked terribly old. Ernest told Antonio about his kidney ailment and Antonio described the liver trouble he was having, and each sympathized with the other. Then Antonio complimented Ernest on The Dangerous Summer.

  "Did you look at the photos?" Ernest asked.

  "Yes, they're wonderful."

  "Has Luis Miguel seen them?"

  "Yes, when we were in Nimes."

  "And he liked them? The ones in the second issue? Including the pase ayudado?"

  "He thought it was all very nice. As did I."

  After Antonio had left, Ernest came into the sitting room, where Bill and I had gone to give them privacy, and sat down heavily, his shoulders slumped forward. "Antonio is thinking of retiring," Ernest said. "He asked my advice."

  "Did he say why?" Bill asked.

  "The grind. He says it is now an effort to get himself 'up' for a fight. He is troubled by his liver and his energy is not what it should be. And he says that sometimes now he is spooked by a bull. That's what really bothers him."

  "What did you tell him?" I asked.

  "Said it had to be his decision. No one can advise you on something as delicate as your own machinery. But did tell him that when you're the champ, it's better to step down on the best day you've had than to wait until it's starting to leave you and everyone notices it."

  Ernest's flight was scheduled to depart at eleven in the eveni
ng but did not get off until after midnight. Ernest waited in the automobile with Honor and Annie until the last moment, while Bill and I took care of various matters at the Iberia counter, including the switch of name and passport. Ernest wanted to take the suitcases that contained the photographs into the cabin with him and that presented certain complications which were eventually worked out.

  When we returned to the car Ernest said to me, "I sure as hell hate to go back to New York after what my lawyer did to me."

  "What did he do?"

  "The last thing I told him before I left was to pay my Aber-crombie bill, but yesterday in the mail that was forwarded to me from Ketchum there was this Abercrombie bill with an unpaid balance. Been a customer there for forty years and never had an unpaid balance. Now I can't show my face in there any more. Have to go to the gun department to check on my guns, and have to buy shoes and wool socks, but he's fixed it so I can't do any of it."

  I pointed out that department-store bills are often slow in reflecting payments, and that, besides, an unpaid balance was a very common billing condition and would in no way affect his status there; but he was unconvinced. I asked whether I could see the bill. "Papa, look at the date—this was billed September first. It's now October. It's an old bill. I think you'll find it's been taken care of."

  "I'm not so sure. It's getting so I have to do everything myself."

  Bill motioned to us that it was time to board the aircraft and we started to walk toward the plane. "Papa," I said, "please don't get down on everyone. Your friends are just as much your friends as they ever were. You're tired and upset now, but you'll be all right once you get to Ketchum and breathe that good mountain air and get some rest; then everything will start to look okay again."