The Crook Factory

by Dan Simmons

  Hemingway’s birthday was as pleasant as we could make it while stuck on the Pilar on the ass end of nowhere amidst the mangrove roots and pepperbush forests. Patrick and Gregory had brought brightly wrapped presents for their Papa, Winston Guest presented Hemingway with two bottles of very fine champagne, Fuentes had carved a small wooden figure which amused the writer deeply, and we had a special dinner that evening. I had brought nothing for the man, of course, but I raised a glass of champagne in his honor that evening.

  I remember the meal, which I’d watched the first mate cook. The appetizer was a spaghetti dish. Fuentes took an entire roll of spaghetti and broke it in half before dropping it into the boiling water. He had taken a chicken out of the icebox, and he cooked it in a special broth made with beef and pork bones. When the chicken was done, he strained the broth, took the crisp crumbs left in the strainer, and added the concoction to the chicken. Then he added salt and ground it up. Already the tiny galley was beginning to smell so good that I could have started eating right then.

  Fuentes then took some Galician ham and chorizo—a type of Spanish sausage—and ground that as well. He mixed that with the ground chicken and simmering broth, added paprika, and cooked everything over the low flame on the tiny stove. Then he removed the spaghetti from the boiling water and served it with a few pinches of sugar. He poured the sauce into a separate dish, set all this on the table, and bellowed for everyone to drop what they were doing and get their asses into the galley to fill their plates.

  While we were all eating this amazing spaghetti dish, Fuentes was finishing up the main course. We had caught a swordfish that morning, and earlier he had cut off six large slices and marinated them. Now, as we ate spaghetti and talked and drank good wine, Fuentes melted half a pound of butter and started frying those swordfish slices over a low flame. Still taking part in the conversation, he would squeeze lemon on the slices and turn them to keep them evenly browned. The aroma was amazing, better than steak cooking. Then he set each slice on a plate, added a pinch of salt, and served each plate with fresh salad and vegetables he had been simmering. For Hemingway, he had made a side dish of a special sauce made with peppers, parsley, black pepper, raisins, and capers, cooked next to the swordfish in a frying pan with very finely chopped asparagus.

  “I am sorry, Ernesto,” said the first mate and cook as we all dug into this delicious meal. “I had planned to make you fresh crabs with lemon and fricassee of octopus, but we have seen no crabs and have caught no octopus this week.”

  Hemingway clapped Fuentes on his back, poured him a tall glass of wine, and said, “This swordfish is the best I have eaten, compadre. It is a birthday gift worthy of a king.”

  “Sí,” agreed Fuentes.

  IT WAS THE NIGHT of the day after his birthday that Hemingway and I shared the dog watch and he talked more to me than ever before. At first it was a dialogue, discussing the chances against us finding the Southern Cross again and plans if we did find it, soft comments on the strange turns that the Crook Factory surveillance had taken in the past few weeks, then softly bitter comments about his missing wife—Gellhorn had taken off on her Caribbean cruise for Colliers—and finally a monologue there in the cockpit, dark except for the softly glowing binnacle lamp and the slowly wheeling stars that hung over us like a canopy and did not dim even where they dipped down and shone between the shrubs and mangrove trees that surrounded our little bay.

  “So what do you think, Lucas? Will this splendid little war last a year… two years… three?”

  I shrugged in the dark. We were drinking bottles of beer that were still cold from the Pilar’s ice chest. The night was quite warm and the bottles were beaded with cool sweat.

  “I think it will last at least five years,” said Hemingway, speaking softly, perhaps so as not to wake the boys and the two sleeping men, more probably because he was tired and a little drunk and essentially speaking to himself. “Maybe ten. Maybe always. It depends what we’ve promised as war aims. One thing’s for sure… it will cost a goddamn fortune. This country can pay the bill… we haven’t tapped our resources in the United States… but countries like England, they’re fucked even if they aren’t overrun by the Germans. This sort of war will bankrupt their empire even if they win, Lucas.”

  I sat in silence, looking at the writer in the dim light. Hemingway had given up shaving in the past two weeks—he said that the constant sun had irritated his skin too much to allow shaving—and his beard was growing in dark and piratical. I suspected that the piratical part was the true reason for the shrubbery.

  “I’m doing my part to pay for the goddamn war that I never wanted,” continued the writer, enunciating carefully in the slow way that told me that he had drunk far too much. “Had to borrow twelve thousand bucks just to pay my hundred-and-three-thousand-dollar income tax last year. Pardon me for mentioning money, Lucas. Never do. But… Jesus fucking Christ… a hundred and three thousand dollars in income tax. Can you believe that? He whom the gods will destroy, first they make successful at his trade. I mean, I have to pay that loan back and get enough ahead this summer, next winter, whenever, that I won’t be completely wiped out and broke when I come back from the war. If I ever go to this goddamn war.”

  He drank his beer and leaned farther back against the cockpit cushions. Some night bird called from the mangrove thicket thirty yards astern of us.

  “My second wife, Pauline, gets five hundred bucks a month from me every month, Lucas. Tax free. This year I haven’t done much writing… shit, I haven’t done hardly any… so that’s a serious drain on capital. In ten years that would take… what? Sixty thousand dollars. I’d be wiped out in less than five years. So it’s not all so simple, being a successful writer.”

  The Pilar creaked at her moorings, and Hemingway got ponderously to his feet, checked the stern anchor, and slouched back to his place in the cockpit next to me. The binnacle light illuminated his dark eyes and sunburned nose.

  “Marty knows nothing about money,” he said slowly, softly. “She saves terrifically on pennies and lets large sums go without a thought. She has a brave child’s attitude toward it, but she doesn’t know that when you get older you have to have a steady something to live on between books—books get further apart as you get older, Lucas. At least they do if you write only good books.”

  Several minutes passed in silence except for the lapping of waves against the hull and the soft creakings that were the sounds of any small ship.

  “Hey,” he said at last, “did you see the gold medal that the shooting club gave Gigi?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Damned impressive,” said Hemingway, his voice suddenly lighter. “It says, ‘To Gigi as a token of admiration from his fellow shooters, Club de Cazadores del Cerro.’ Christ, Lucas, you should have been there last week. At nine years old he beat twenty-four good men, all good shots, and many of them very fine shots, shooting live pigeons. He was using a four-ten against men using twelve-gauges. And live pigeon shooting isn’t just trick shooting like skeet. Every bird is different. And you don’t have to just hit them, you have to kill them dead inside a certain distance. And Patrick is even better as a wing shot. Right now Patrick is outshooting Gigi, but he does it so modestly and quietly, and with so little form or style, that nobody notices it except the old-timers and the bookmakers, while Gigi is known in the papers as el joven fenómeno Americano, and the day before we left on this patrol… I think it was the day before… an article in the paper called him el popularísimo Gigi.”

  Hemingway fell silent for a minute. Then he repeated, “El popularísimo Gigi,” and his voice was thick. “So now I have to say, Go down to the post office and get the mail, popularísimo. Or, Time for bed, popularísimo. Or, Don’t forget to brush your teeth, popularísimo.”

  A meteorite streaked from the zenith toward the horizon. We both sat silent for several minutes, heads back, watching the sky, waiting for another one. The sky did not disappoint us.

  “I wish I
could see some of the warmongers who brought on this war go fight in it before I have to, or before my boys have to,” said Hemingway very softly. “Bumby… you know Bumby’s my oldest… he’ll be in it. He bought an old car. That’s all we talked about when Bumby was here in the spring. His mother, Hadley, my first wife…”

  Hemingway seemed to lose his train of thought and trailed off for a moment.

  “His mother just wrote me that Bumby wants to drive the wreck across country, bring it all the way back east,” he said finally. “But I’m going to write her and tell her that it doesn’t make any sense. He’d use the tires up driving it back east, and gas rationing’s so severe up there these days that a car really wouldn’t be of much use once he got there. Besides, Bumby says that it doesn’t even have a spare, so I doubt if it would survive a transcontinental trip. Better that he leaves it where it is and has it there when he goes back… or when he comes back from the war. If he comes back from the war.”

  The writer seemed to hear what he had just said, for he paused, shook his head, and swallowed the last of his beer.

  “Wasn’t that swordfish good, Lucas?”

  “It was.”

  “Isn’t fishing lovely, though? I would hate to die, Lucas, ever, because every year I have a better time fishing and shooting. I like them as much as when I was sixteen, and now I’ve written enough good books so that I don’t have to worry about that, I would be happy to fish and shoot and let somebody else lug the ball for a while. My generation carried it plenty, and if you don’t know how to enjoy life, if it should be only one life we have, you are a disgrace and don’t deserve to have it.”

  Somewhere beyond the bow, a large fish jumped. Hemingway listened a while and then turned his face back toward me. His eyes were bright but vague in the yellow light from the binnacle lamp.

  “Of course, it’s just my luck, Lucas, that I happen to have worked hard all my life and made a fucking fortune at a time when whatever you make is confiscated by the government. That’s bad luck. But the good luck is to have had all the wonderful things and good times I had… we had… especially Hadley and me. Especially when we were so poor that we literally didn’t have a pot to piss in. Young and broke and writing well and living in Paris and drinking at the cafés with friends until the sky got light and the men or boys in white aprons began hosing down the sidewalks outside the bistros, and then staggering home to make love and then up early and black coffee… if we had any coffee… and then writing all day and writing well.”

  Hemingway leaned farther back against the cockpit cushions. He was looking at the sky as he talked. I do not think he remembered that I was there.

  “Christ, I remember the races out at Enghien and the first time we went to Pamplona by ourselves, that wonderful boat… the Leopoldina… and Cortina D’Ampezzo and the Black Forest. I’ve been lying awake the last few nights… can’t sleep… and I just keep remembering these things, all these things, and the songs.

  A feather kitty’s talent lies

  In scratching out the other’s eyes.

  A feather kitty never dies

  Oh, immortality.

  Hemingway had a pleasant tenor singing voice.

  “You notice my cats at the finca, Lucas?” He was looking at me again, aware that I was there and listening.

  “Yes,” I said. “They’re hard to miss.”

  Hemingway nodded slowly. “You don’t really notice them during the day… they’re all over the damn place… but when it’s feeding time, it’s a goddamn migration, isn’t it? When I can’t sleep at night at the finca, I bring three cats into the room and tell them stories. The last night before the patrol, I invited in Tester—she’s the smoke-gray Persian—and Dillinger, the black-and-white male whom we also call Boissy D’Anglas, and that half-Maltese kitten we call Willy. And I tell them stories about other cats that I’ve had… that we used to have. I tell them about F. Puss and about our greatest and largest and bravest cat, Mooky, whom we had out west, and who once fought a badger. And when I say ‘The badger!’ Tester has to get under the sheets, she’s so frightened.”

  We sat there in rocking silence for a while. Clouds were slowly moving in to occlude the stars. The small breeze had died but the waves continued slow and regular. There were no mosquitoes.

  “Are you still awake, Lucas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry about all this nostalgia crap.”

  When I said nothing, Hemingway added, “It’s a prerogative of living forty-three years. If you live that long, Lucas, you’ll know what I mean.”

  I nodded very slightly and watched the tired man finish his beer.

  “Well, another day of this screwing around out here chasing radio phantoms,” he said, “and we’ll head in. Gigi and I shoot in the Championship of Cuba on Sunday, and I want him to have a good night’s sleep ashore before the competition.” He grinned suddenly. “Did you see that the boys have armed themselves for when we find the sub, Lucas? Pat has his three-oh-three Lee Enfield, and Gigi’s cleaned and oiled his mother’s old Mannlicher Schoenauer. I remember when Pauline used that in Africa, hunting lions…”

  “Why did you let them come along?” I said. “The boys.”

  Hemingway’s grin faded. “Are you questioning my judgment, Lucas?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m just curious.”

  “When the patrols get serious,” said the writer, “we’ll leave the boys at the little Cuban naval base on Cayo Confites while we go out sub-hunting during the day. Until then, they might as well enjoy the adventure. God knows, life is serious enough without bleeding all the fun out of it.”

  I sipped the last of my beer. It was late. The stars were almost completely hidden by low clouds. It felt late. It smelled late.

  “Christ,” whispered Hemingway, “I wish Bumby was going to be here this weekend. He shoots pigeons beautifully. Almost as well as the little popularísimo. One of the Havana shooting critics wrote that there aren’t four shots in Cuba who can beat the combination of Bumby, Papa, Gigi, and Mouse. I only wish Bumby could be here on Sunday, because he shoots as coolly as he is nervous playing tennis.”

  Hemingway got to his feet, and for the first time on the boat, I saw him struggle for a brief second to find his balance. “I’m going below, Lucas. Going to check on the boys and turn in. Wolfer will be up to relieve you in an hour or so. We’re going to head out north of Cayo Romano a little after first light… see if we can pick up the Southern Cross just by luck and by God.”

  The writer moved forward, under the covering of the bridge, into the darkness, down the few steps to the forward compartments. I could hear him humming softly in the night and I could hear the words:

  A feather kitty’s talent lies

  In scratching out the other’s eyes.

  A feather kitty never dies

  Oh, immortality.

  THE BOYS HAD SHOWN UP in the second week of July, shortly before Gellhorn had left. I knew nothing about children except that they usually fell into two categories—impossibly irritating and mildly irritating—but Hemingway’s two boys seemed all right. Both were thin and freckled, with tousled hair and open smiles—although Gregory, the younger boy, was much quicker to show a smile or any other emotion than was his older brother. Patrick was fourteen that summer of 1942—his birthday had been in late June—and he was just attaining that serious gawkiness of adolescence. Despite Hemingway’s comments to me about his nine-year-old son’s beating everyone at pigeon shooting, Gregory was ten that summer. The boy told me that his birthday was November 12 and that he had been born in 1931. I did not know if it was common for parents to lose track of their children’s ages, but I could see how it could happen to Hemingway—especially if he saw them only once or twice a year.

  The Southern Cross had taken forever to repair her driveshaft and was back in the Casablanca docks twice for further repairs, so it was July before she ventured out to sea, and for three weeks her captain put her through careful sea trials that
rarely took her out of sight of land. Nonetheless, Hemingway was anxious and eager to tail the big yacht, so the boys were drafted onto the crew of the Pilar almost immediately.

  I happened to be walking behind the finca on a warm night in mid-July, heading up to la casa perdita and dinner with Xenophobia there, when I heard Gellhorn and Hemingway discussing the fact that he would be taking the boys on patrol with him. Gellhorn’s voice had reached that vicious, glass-shattering tone that women seem to find so useful in domestic arguments, and Hemingway’s voice started out soft and contrite, building in volume only as the discussion continued. I did not pause to eavesdrop, but between the backyard and the road, I heard enough.

  “Are you out of your mind, Ernest? What if your stupid sub-chasing game flushes a real submarine with the boys aboard?”

  “Then they get to watch us sink it with grenades, I guess,” came Hemingway’s voice. “Their names will be in every paper in the States.”

  “Their names will be in a lot of papers if you make a sub angry at you and it pulls away to a thousand yards or so and blows the Pilar right out of the water with its six-inch deck gun.”

  “Everybody says that,” grumbled Hemingway. “It’s not going to happen that way.”

  “How do you know how it’s going to happen, Ernest? What do you know about war? Real war?”

  Hemingway’s voice was agitated now. “Don’t you think I know the realities of war? I had enough time to contemplate those realities while the doctors picked two hundred thirty-seven pieces of fucking shrapnel out of my leg in the hospital in Milan—”

  “Don’t you dare use that sort of language with me,” snapped Gellhorn. “And the last time you told that story, it was two hundred and thirty-eight pieces of fucking shrapnel…”

  “Whatever,” growled Hemingway.

  “Love,” said Gellhorn flatly, “this time, if your silly little grenades miss that thirty-inch hatch you’re so desperate to get close to, they won’t find two hundred and thirty-eight pieces of you. Or of the boys.”