by Dan Simmons
As if on cue, everyone on the boat—including me—began cursing in a blue cloud of Spanish and English epithets. Ibarlucia had jumped down to the bow and was standing there, legs apart, fist raised, shouting, “Come back and fight, you yellow sons of whores!”
In five minutes, the sub was a small dot on the northwestern horizon. In eight minutes, it was gone.
“Lucas,” said Hemingway, sliding down from the flying bridge, “if you feel like it, come on down with me. We’ll radio in the sighting and give its last position, course, and speed. Maybe there’s a U.S. destroyer in nearby waters or they can send a plane out from Camagüey.”
I went below with him to send the message. After we had transmitted and repeated the same message for ten minutes or so, Hemingway said softly, “I didn’t want to close with it anyway. Not with Gigi and Mouse on board.”
I looked at him. Both of us were dripping sweat in the hot confines of the little room. We could hear the engine note drop as Guest throttled far back and put us on our original course.
“I bet a lot of the U-boat crew are just kids, too,” Hemingway said. “Shit, it’s trite to talk about war. Sherman said it all. War is necessary… sometimes. Maybe. I wonder, though, Lucas. I wonder.”
Suddenly the two boys exploded down the stairway, wondering if the sub might return, hoping that it would, asking if they should act differently next time.
Hemingway put his arms around the boys’ shoulders in the galley. “You both acted fine,” he said. “Very fine.” His voice suddenly rose, imitating an orator or a radio announcer or FDR. “As for me, my lads, someone else will fight for me on the beaches and in the hills and in the whorehouses. December seven, a day that will live in infamy, will be avenged by younger men. Hell, fix me a gin and tonic, will you, Gig? We’re heading home.”
32
PATRICK LEFT FOR SCHOOL ON FRIDAY, September 11. Gregory was ready to leave to visit his mother and go from there to school on Monday, September 14. I flew from Havana to Bermuda on Saturday, September 12.
“All my boys are leaving,” Hemingway said gruffly that Thursday evening we put back into Cojímar and tied up the Pilar for the last time.
I could only look at the writer.
Dr. Herrera Sotolongo and the surgeon, Dr. Alvarez, both came by on Friday evening to check me over. They both recommended another two weeks’ rest before going anywhere. I said that I was going the next day. Both doctors wished me luck and told me that my death would not be on their consciences.
Hemingway offered to drive me to the airport on Saturday morning. “Juan doesn’t coast on the hills,” he explained. “He’s wasting my gasoline.”
The drive to José Martí Airport was not a long one, but Hemingway talked most of the time.
“Tom Shevlin’s back in town,” he said.
“Uh-oh.”
“No, it’s all right. It turns out he did have insurance on the Lorraine. He wasn’t too upset. He says that he’s probably getting a divorce and he would have just had to rename the boat anyway.”
“That’s good,” I said. “I guess.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes.
“I’ve decided to give up running the Crook Factory,” he said suddenly.
“You’re shutting down the operation?” It seemed sensible to me. The amateur espionage operation had served its purpose as a lightning rod.
Hemingway scowled at me from his place behind the wheel of the Lincoln. “Hell no, I’m not shutting it down. I never even considered that. I just want to spend more of my time on Operation Friendless.”
“Chasing subs,” I said.
“Catching subs,” said the writer. “Sinking subs.”
“So who’s going to run the Crook Factory?” I had a surge of hope and nausea at the idea that he was going to ask me to stay and run things. God, I was popular—weren’t Bill Donovan and William Stephenson coming all the way to Bermuda to meet with me? Now this. Screwing everything up and getting shot three times, I realized, had been a great career move.
“I’ve decided to ask my friend Gustavo Durán to come down and run it,” said Hemingway. “I’ve told you about Gustavo. I told Bob Joyce at the embassy that I needed a real pro to run the operation.”
Hemingway had told me about Durán. The former Lieutenant Colonel Gustavo Durán had known the writer in Paris long ago when Durán had been a music student, art critic, and composer. When Hemingway had gone to Spain in the spring of 1937, Durán had been commanding the 69th Division at Torréjon de Ardoz and Loeches, east of Madrid. The two had renewed their friendship and Hemingway’s admiration of the artist-turned-soldier almost seemed to reach the point of hero worship. Hemingway had told me that he had depicted a thinly disguised Gustavo Durán as one of the heroes of his last book, For Whom the Bell Tolls. After Ingrid Bergman’s visit in May, Hemingway had described how he had worked hard to get a Hollywood job for Durán as a technical consultant on the movie version of his book, but the director—Sam Wood—was “scared shitless of the Red Menace” and had refused to hire the Spaniard, even though Durán had never belonged to the Communist Party. Hemingway had sent Durán—who was going through hard times—a $1,000 check instead. The writer had described to me how the check had been promptly returned.
I felt a stab of discomfort from the wound in my side. Only later did I realize that it had not been the wound at all.
“Gustavo will be perfect,” Hemingway was going on. “I’ve already cleared it with Ellis Briggs and Ambassador Braden at the embassy, and Bob Joyce has written a secret letter to the State Department. I kept it secret because we certainly didn’t want J. Edgar Adolf Hoover hearing about it.”
“No,” I said.
“Gustavo’s in New Hampshire right now, in the process of becoming an American citizen. Joyce’s letter and some other things I set in motion should expedite matters. I cabled him just the other day, but I’m pretty sure that he’ll accept the offer. He did a wonderful job with intelligence in Spain. He should be down here by early November, and his wife could join him later. I’ll give him the guest house. He can continue to run things out of there and they’ll both live there.”
“Great idea,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Hemingway. We did not speak any more until we were at the airport.
Hemingway insisted on carrying my single duffel and seeing me through all the formalities of departure. We walked out on the tarmac where the silver DC-4 was waiting, its few passengers lined up at the ramp.
“Well, shit, Lucas,” he said, and held out his hand.
I shook it and took my duffel from him.
I was walking toward the plane and it had started its port engine when Hemingway shouted something at me.
“What?” I said.
“I said you have to come back to Cuba someday, Lucas.”
“Why?”
“Rematch!” he called over the engine noise.
I paused and cupped my hand like a megaphone. “Why? You want to try to get your title back?”
“Fuck that,” called the writer, grinning through his beard. “I never lost it.”
I nodded and walked to the ramp. There was a moment of giving the stewardess my ticket and setting the strap of my duffel over my shoulder, and then I looked back to wave good-bye. Hemingway had gone back into the terminal and I could not see him through the crowds of Cubans and military personnel. I never saw him again.
33
I HAVE RECORDED THE FEW CONVERSATIONS that I had with Ernest Hemingway about writing. The one on the cliff above Point Roma on the night when we were waiting for the German infiltrators is the one I remember best, although the conversation aboard the Pilar the night of his forty-third birthday comes back to me occasionally. One other conversation about writing occurs to me now, however. He was not speaking to me at the time, but was sitting by the pool at the finca with Dr. Herrera Sotolongo. I just happened to be sitting close enough to eavesdrop.
The doctor had asked Hemingway how a writ
er knew when to end a book.
“As much as you want to finish the damned thing,” Hemingway said, “another part of you never wants to end it. You don’t want to say goodbye to the characters. You don’t want the voice inside your head to stop whispering in the particular language and dialect of that book. It’s like having a friend die.”
“I think I understand,” the doctor said dubiously.
“You remember two summers ago when I refused to get a haircut until I’d finished For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
“Yes,” said the doctor. “You looked very terrible with such long hair.”
“Well, I finished the damned book about July thirteenth, but I didn’t quit writing when the book was finished. I kept working through my birthday, writing a couple of chapters as a sort of epilogue, describing Karkov meeting with General Golz after the screwed-up Segovia offensive, the two of them driving back to Madrid together, then a whole chapter telling about Andres visiting Pilar and Pablo’s abandoned camp, Andres looking down at the wrecked bridge in the gorge… that sort of crap.”
“Why is it crap, Ernesto?” said Dr. Herrera Sotolongo. “It was not interesting?”
“It was not necessary,” said the writer, sipping his Tom Collins. “But I carried the manuscript up to New York in the middle of the hottest summer since the Creation and worked on it at the Hotel Barclay, feeling like a blind sardine in a processing factory, sending two hundred pages a day over to Scribners via a kid I hired as a runner. Gustavo Durán was visiting me with his new bride, Bonte, and I had him read the galleys to make sure that the accents were in the right place in the Spanish words and that my grammar was all right.”
“And was it?” asked the doctor, sounding amused.
“Most of it,” growled Hemingway. “But my point was that my editor, Max, just loved it all, including the epilogue chapters that I should have never put in. In Perkins’s usual way, he just said that he loved it all and saved his criticisms for after I had cooled off from the writing. By late August, Scribners was asking me to take out a scene where Robert Jordan jerks off—”
“Jerks off?” said Dr. Herrera Sotolongo.
“Masturbates.” Hemingway grinned. “Performs an act of onanism. But anyway, Max never said a word about the useless epilogue. Finally, when everything else was settled, I realized that Perkins was sending me his usual subliminal messages. ‘I love the final chapters because, naturally, I’m so curious about what happens next, Ernest,’ Max was saying, ‘but in a real way, the book ends with Jordan lying on the pine needles waiting for death to arrive, just as you had him lie there sixty-eight hours earlier in the opening sequence of the first chapter. It is a wonderful symmetry, Ernest. A beautiful circle.’
“ ‘All right, Max,’ I’d said. ‘Drop the last two chapters.’ ”
“Are epilogues not good, then?” asked the doctor.
Hemingway had scratched his beard, watching the boys splash in the pool. “They’re like life, José Luis,” he said then. “Life just keeps going on until you die… one damned thing after another. Novels have structure. They have a balance and design that real life lacks. Novels know when to stop.”
I had watched the doctor nod in agreement, but I do not think he understood.
When I decided to write this narrative, I knew that Hemingway had been correct that night at Point Roma when he said that a good story had to be like the glimpse of a submarine’s periscope. In later years, Hemingway was quoted as saying that a novel was like an iceberg—seven-eighths of it should be invisible. I knew that this was the best way to write our little tale, but I also knew that I would never be good enough as a writer to tell the story that way. I would never be a Zen artist, putting a brush stroke of blue on the canvas to portray the hawk. The only way I knew to tell any story was the way Hemingway had criticized that night at Point Roma—marshaling all of the facts and details and marching them all through the book like prisoners of war through the capital, letting the reader sort out the important details from the dross.
Thus this clumsy epilogue.
TRUE TO HEMINGWAY’S PREDICTION, Martha Gellhorn did catch dengue in her trip up the blue-dot river beyond Surinam. The break-bone fever was so terrible and painful that on her last day in Paramaribo, Gellhorn tried to lift herself from a chair because her legs would not work, slipped, and fractured her wrist. She hardly noticed, wrapping some adhesive tape around the broken wrist before flying away from that jungle hell.
Nonetheless, after receiving a cable from her husband, she flew straight to Washington, D.C., and had dinner at the White House. The fact that Gellhorn’s meeting with the president and his wife did help to shield Hemingway from the wrath of J. Edgar Hoover was attested to by these memos, which I did not see at the time and only recently acquired—some fifty-five years later—through the Freedom of Information Act.
CONFIDENTIAL MEMO
FROM FBI DIRECTOR J. EDGAR HOOVER
TO FBI AGENT LEDDY
DECEMBER 17, 1942
Any information which you may have relating to the unreliability of Ernest Hemingway as an informant may be discreetly brought to the attention of Ambassador Braden. In this respect it will be recalled that recently Hemingway gave information concerning the refueling of submarines in Caribbean waters which proved unreliable. I desire that you furnish me at an early date results of your conversation with Ambassador Braden concerning Ernest Hemingway and his aides and activities.
CONFIDENTIAL MEMO
FROM FBI AGENT D. M. LADD
TO FBI DIRECTOR J. EDGAR HOOVER
DECEMBER 17, 1942
Hemingway has been accused of being of communist sympathy, although we are advised that he has denied and does vigorously deny any communist affiliation or sympathy. Hemingway is reported to be personally friendly with Ambassador Braden, and he is reported to enjoy the ambassador’s complete confidence.
Ambassador Braden, as you will recall, is a very impulsive individual and he apparently has had a “bee in his bonnet” for some time concerning alleged graft and corruption on the part of certain Cuban officials.
Agent Leddy (Havana Field Office) has advised that Hemingway’s activities have branched out and that he and his informants are now engaged in reporting to the Embassy various types of information concerning subversive activities generally. Mr. Leddy stated that he has become quite concerned with respect to Hemingway’s activities and that they are undoubtedly going to be very embarrassing unless something is done to stop them.
Mr. Leddy has advised that Hemingway is apparently undertaking a rather involved investigation with regard to Cuban officials prominently connected with the Cuban Government, including General Manuel Benitez Valdes, head of the Cuban National Police; that he, Agent Leddy, ‘is sure that the Cubans are eventually going to find out about this if Hemingway continues operating, and that serious trouble may result.’
Mr. Leddy stated that he can point out to the ambassador that he, Leddy, has not checked any reports from Hemingway concerning corruption in the Cuban Government; that he does not feel that Bureau agents should become involved in any such investigations, it being entirely without our jurisdiction and a matter in which the Cubans themselves alone are concerned and something that, if we get involved in it, is going to mean that all of us will be thrown out of Cuba “bag and baggage.”
Agent Leddy stated he can point out to the ambassador the extreme danger of having some informant like Hemingway given free reign to stir up trouble such as that which will undoubtedly ensue if this situation continues. Mr. Leddy stated that despite the fact the ambassador likes Hemingway and apparently has confidence in him, he is of the opinion that he, Leddy, can handle this situation with the ambassador so that Hemingway’s services as an informant will be completely discontinued.
Mr. Leddy stated that he can point out to the ambassador that Hemingway is going further than just an informant; that he is actually branching out into an investigative organization of his own which is not subject to any con
trol whatsoever.
CONFIDENTIAL MEMO
FROM FBI DIRECTOR J. EDGAR HOOVER
TO AGENTS TAMM AND LADD
DECEMBER 19, 1942
Concerning the use of Ernest Hemingway by the United States ambassador to Cuba: I of course realize the complete undesirability of this sort of a connection or relationship. Certainly Hemingway is the last man, in my estimation, to be used in any such capacity. His judgement is not of the best, and if his sobriety is the same as it was some years ago, that is certainly questionable. However, I do not think there is anything we should do in this matter, nor do I think our representative at Havana should do anything about it with the ambassador. The ambassador is somewhat hot-headed and I haven’t the slightest doubt that he would immediately tell Hemingway of the objections being raised by the FBI. Hemingway has no particular love for the FBI and would no doubt embark upon a campaign of vilification. You will recall that in my conference recently with the president, he indicated that some message had been sent to him, the president, by Hemingway through a mutual friend [Martha Gellhorn], and Hemingway was insisting that one-half million dollars be granted to the Cuban authorities so that they could take care of internees.
I do not see that it is a matter that directly affects our relationship as long as Hemingway does not report directly to us or we deal directly with him. Anything which he gives to the ambassador which the ambassador in turn forwards to us, we can accept without any impropriety.
CONFIDENTIAL MEMO
FROM FBI AGENT LEDDY [HAVANA FIELD OFFICE]
TO FBI DIRECTOR J. EDGAR HOOVER
APRIL 21, 1943
The writer has been advised in confidence by an Embassy official that Hemingway’s organization was disbanded and its work terminated as of April 1, 1943. This action was taken by the American ambassador without any consultation or notice to representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A complete report on the activities of Mr. Hemingway and the organization which he operated is now being prepared, and will be forwarded to the Bureau in the immediate future.