by Naomi Wood
More often than not Mrs. Hemingway spent the day indoors or up at the toolhouse. She said she didn’t like the heat.
One morning Martha stepped into the house for a glass of something cold. “Bring me one too!” Ernest shouted and she noticed a shadow pass the toolhouse window.
In the kitchen she poured herself a lemonade and wandered over to the photographs of the Hemingways, neatly set out in their frames on the side table. There were lots of pictures of their sons, as well as the boy from the first marriage, Bumby. She wondered what Ernest was like as a father: probably absent most of the time and then, when present, exhilarating.
At the end of the table was a group shot with Ernest in the middle. Martha recognized Gerald and Sara and Fife, who looked rather startled in the magnesium flare. The other woman must be Hadley. Ernest had told her that they’d spent a holiday together in Antibes: wife, husband, mistress; the whole kit and caboodle. To Martha, it sounded as if they were all knocked out of their heads. This situation, she felt, did not even compare. After all, she was bedding down with a handsome Swede she’d found at her hotel. And even if Ernest did have romantic feelings for her, she did not have any for him. Martha replaced the strange photograph back on the side table and wondered why Fife allowed it in the house.
Then from another room came the sound of weeping.
In the living room the curtains were closed and at first Martha could only see the animal skulls. Then she saw Fife on the sofa, facing the cushions. A big pile of Vogue magazines piled up behind her. When Mrs. Hemingway turned around, her eyes were raw and hopeless. “For God’s sake,” Fife said, very slowly, “why are you still in my house?”
Outside, where the white light sang again in her eyes, Martha said to Ernest, “I think you need to see to your wife. I think she is upset.”
The next day she had herself well shot of Key West, of her Swede, of the Hemingways. It had not been her intention for Ernest to catch up with her for steak and fries and a bottle of merlot in Miami. Nor had it been her intention to start what began in Spain.
25. PARIS, FRANCE. AUGUST 26, 1944.
Martha heads south on the Champs-Élysées toward the Left Bank and Shakespeare and Co. If Ernest’s been anywhere in Paris, he’ll have been to rue de l’Odéon to find a good book.
Where the Louvre meets rue de Rivoli, there is a barricade at one end smoking, just visible in the streaked light of the summer morning. When Martha draws close she sees the dam is made up of bedsteads, park railings with roots still attached, and a door with its handle scorched. There are holes in the ground where cobbles have been lifted for the barricades. On the wind is the smell of the lavatory. A man motions for her to stop. He has a leathery face and an easy snarl. “Can I pass?”
“You’re French?” he asks.
“American.”
He smiles at her warmly. “But what a fine accent for a little American! What are you doing in Paris?”
“Reporting on the war.” And, she thinks, divorcing a husband. “I’m a journalist.”
“Journalist for whom?”
“Collier’s.”
He places his hand on her forearm. “Tell them what is happening here,” he says. “Leave nothing out.” Dirt has gathered in his nails, and his hands are black with oil.
She says, “Vive la France!” and walks away, trying to wipe off the muck from his touch.
“Vive les Américains!” he shouts back.
The source of that latrine smell is just up ahead: a urinal, pulled from the metro, has been lifted onto the embankment of scraps. Its pearled hole gleams with a yellowy wash. Martha walks by it—but when she turns to share the joke with the Resistance man, he’s staring openly at her retreating behind. It’s not dissimilar to the look in Italy her officer gave her a few weeks ago. Oh yes, she has had her own affairs these past few months. Ernest merely had to bare his teeth and his ex-wives and mistresses would be willingly swallowed whole if that were his pleasure. But she is different from the rest of those women, those lapdog wives.
Soon she’s close to the river and can see the oily flash of sunlight on the Seine. On the Île de la Cité there are crowds of people, sitting and drinking on the grass in the shade of Notre Dame. Breakfast picnics have been made from whatever food they have. Accordionists compete against each other for thrown coins. A man in a low-brimmed hat stands on one corner, chanting: Chocolate, American cigarettes, matches, chocolate, American cigarettes …
As Martha walks over the last bridge, she rehearses the lines Ernest will in all probability use on her to win her back. “Rabbit … come back to me, we are stronger together … we can’t live through the horrors without each other.” She thinks of all the hateful things he’s ever said to her: the times he’s called her worthless, ambitious, on the make, a bitch. She remembers the time he slapped her after she’d driven his Lincoln Continental into a tree, the time he’d cabled her when she’d been on assignment: ARE YOU A WAR CORRESPONDENT OR A WIFE IN MY BED? (And she’d written back: WILL ALWAYS BE A WAR CORRESPONDENT STOP WILL BE A WIFE IN YOUR BED WHEN I CHOOSE STOP YOUR WAR CORRESPONDENT, YOUR WIFE, YOUR MARTHA.)
She thinks of how, months ago, he had cadged a flight with the RAF over to England, leaving her to make her own way to Liverpool from America on a freighter packed with dynamite. What a kind gift that had been from her dearest husband. Every hour spent on the ocean crossing she had worried the dynamite would blow up. She wasn’t even allowed to smoke on the deck. But it was seventeen days to think things over, seventeen days to realize her marriage had come to its end.
After she docked in Liverpool Martha traveled south to London, where Ernest was in hospital. He’d been admitted after an automobile accident, probably motoring along in the blackout like a drunk loon. She had been ready to tell him they were through: that she was sick of his drunken accidents, his misadventures, his precious little care for her, or himself. But for minutes she watched him asleep in the dusty room. A great bandage circled his head and made a thicket of his hair. How tired he looked, poor thing—and how different from the man she had met in Sloppy Joe’s, who had charmed her with that electrifying smile over a cocktail named after him. Now, his face was fleshier. He was no longer so handsome; he could no longer turn a room.
Ernest slept under a vase of tulips and Martha pulled a petal from one of the heads, wondering who had brought them. Despite all of Ernest’s faults, he was always quick to charm people, quick to love those who were real and honest and genuine. Blood smeared the bandage, and Martha wondered just how he was going to survive himself. And, without having said a word, she slipped away.
Now, as she walks over to the Left Bank, she knows today must be the end for them. As she heads toward Shakespeare and Co., Martha lets all of the other bad memories run their course. Ernest is a great talker; she must not be seduced into staying.
Today, books return to Paris. Two women cart boxes and clothes baskets down to the sidewalk. A man follows them with light fittings, paintings, manuscripts, tables, chairs. Martha keeps herself from view as she watches them go up and down to a third-floor apartment above the shop. The letters of the shop’s sign are only just visible: SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY. Everyone looks hot and rather happy.
Martha and Ernest had come to Shakespeare’s on one of their breaks from the Spanish war and Sylvia had embraced Ernest as if he were a man resurrected. It was in this store that Martha had fallen in love with him. For a year or so she’d thought that having each other in Spain was only about survival. Maybe it was the books on the walls, the way Sylvia looked at him adoringly, the way he said “Marty, Paris,” when they looked over the city’s gray sloping roofs, but it was in this place that everything seemed to fit. Ernest had captured her heart not in Sloppy Joe’s or in Madrid, but among the books of Paris. Nesto, she’d later written on the book of hers he’d bought from Shakespeare’s: be mine forever. And at that point she had meant it: the word forever.
A bell rings her entry. For a moment Sylvia Beach stare
s at her blankly. Sylvia is famously warm to everyone but today, evidently, she can’t remember who this is standing on her doormat.
“Martha!” she says, remembrance coming back quickly. There’s a hint of mustache as Sylvia kisses her. “Adrienne, come here quick, Martha Gellhorn is here!”
A tall woman with a stiff smile enters the room carrying a basket full of books. “Martha, dear,” she says, putting down her load. “How good it is to see you. Let me get you something to drink.” She returns from the pantry with a glass of water spiked with grenadine. “Sorry there’s nothing more potent. Pas de gin, pas de whiskey, pas de vodka.”
Martha laughs. “Pas de problème.”
Adrienne seats herself by the cash register. The carpenter is still installing it onto the desk, and the keys jingle as if he is putting through receipts for thousands of francs. “What happened here?”
Sylvia raises her quite bushy brows. “An unfortunate episode with a man from the Gestapo.”
“How do you mean?”
“Let’s just say he thought he deserved his copy of Finnegans Wake more than me.”
“I never knew Fascists went in for Joyce.”
“Oh, yes. He asked how much it was and I said it was my own personal copy. Then he said if he couldn’t have this book, he would remove all of them.”
“And?”
Adrienne laughs: it’s rich, mischievous, smoky. “In two hours we put everything into hiding. We cleaned out the whole shop—les boches never found a thing.”
The carpenter announces he’s finished and Sylvia settles the bill. Sylvia, in particular, seems older, her features a little harder, as if she has known hunger these past few years. “How has the war treated you?”
“Kind in some respects. Unkind in others.”
There are some moments of silence before Sylvia speaks again.
“We had a fine system during the war, didn’t we, Adrienne? I’d forage for berries and fruit. Adrienne would line up at the bakers. We became as obsessed with food as we had been with books. And even books didn’t matter so much anymore. We considered eating them, at one time. Or smoking them, at least.”
“You were in Paris for it all?”
“A brief spell in Vittel—”
“The watering hole?”
“Well, it’s not quite the spa experience when you can’t get out.”
“An internment camp?”
“For American Lady Expatriates.” Sylvia says it delicately, as if she is mocking herself. “It wasn’t so bad. First they drove us out of Paris but they didn’t know where to put us. So they put us in the zoo at the Bois de Boulogne.”
“The zoo?”
“No idea where the animals had gone. I was in the baboon house, which I quite liked. All that monkeying around.”
“That,” Adrienne snorts with French derision, “is a ridiculous joke.”
Sylvia cracks a smile. Perhaps this was why Ernest had always warmed to her, this refusal to take anything seriously. Though he has made so many enemies from friends, Sylvia Beach he had always loved. “They eventually moved us to a converted hotel in Vittel. English aristocrats, artists, tarts and nuns … countless chambermaids too—I never did work out what they were there for. They considered the whole thing a rather luxurious holiday. Rightly so.”
Martha notices Adrienne has looked away, unable to keep up with the comedy of Sylvia’s storytelling. “Adrienne has been here, however, keeping stock of things. Just to make sure we’ll always have one foot in the marketplace of suppressed literature.”
Martha wonders how bad it was for Adrienne, stuck in Paris without Sylvia; she seems to find the whole story decidedly less comic. “And you, Martha? Where have you been?”
“Oh. Anywhere the Front is.”
“You’re still reporting?”
“Of course.”
“Now listen, Martha, Ernest’s been here.” The mention of his name makes her feel strange. Shakespeare’s is a treasured place, and it’s beginning to dent her resolve. Suddenly she feels an urgent need to find Ernest and make sure he is all right. Her emotions all morning have veered between outrage and a mad desire to be close to him; she wishes she could feel more constant in her thoughts. “I knew he’d come here first.”
“Why, of course, dear. ‘Paris without a good book is like a pretty girl with only one eye.’ Who said that, Adrienne?”
Adrienne rolls her eyes and takes the empty glass back into the pantry. “Balzac, chérie,” she says, with the sound of the faucet running in the back. “But he said it about dinner without cheese.”
“Martha,” Sylvia continues, still excited, “your husband practically liberated the shop! I heard a familiar voice shout, ‘Sylvia! Sylvia!’ then I heard the whole street begin to chant my name. It was joyous, dear: really so thrilling. He went up to the attic to clear the rooftops of German snipers. Then he made sure the store was completely secure and afterward we all celebrated with brandy—then he said he was off to liberate the Ritz cellar. Wonderful!”
That longing Martha felt moments ago seems to have sunk somewhere near her ribs. Everywhere she goes she finds herself in the shadow of Ernest’s propaganda. It is exhausting: her husband’s need to self-aggrandize. In her articles she writes about small stories, about things observed up close: in his reportage there is always Ernest, the great writer, standing in the middle of the story like a fat dictator orating in a square somewhere.
Sylvia asks where she is staying. “Oh. We’re staying separately.” Sylvia’s eyes look nervously to Adrienne. “It was a mutual decision. And Ernest? Where is he?”
“The Ritz,” says a male voice from the back of the shop. “I hear he saved them as well.” The man she had seen outside the shop walks into view.
“Oh, Harry,” Sylvia bursts into a smile. “I forgot you were there! Have you been eavesdropping all this time?”
“You didn’t hear me come down?”
“Martha, do you know Harry Cuzzemano? He’s a book collector. He’s known your husband for years.”
“Only by reputation.”
Harry Cuzzemano steps out from the bookshelves. A long scar runs from eye to chin, the sutures still visible. “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Hemingway.”
“Any success yet on Ernest’s suitcase?”
He gives a hasty laugh. “Oh, I gave up on that quite a while ago. Apparently it may not have even happened.”
“Oh, I doubt that. I think it’s very true indeed. Gosh, just imagine if someone finds it before you. What a waste of time that would have been.”
He flushes. Sensing danger, Sylvia intervenes. “If I found it, I’d sell it back to Ernest for a mint. We’d own our own island in Antigua. Imagine, Adrienne!”
Martha has been caught by Cuzzemano inspecting his wound. “Mortar attack by the Americans a few days ago,” he says, quite quietly. “Friendly fire.” He raises his eyebrows as if his words carried some private meaning between them.
“I must go, Sylvia. Must intercept Ernest before he rescues another damn landmark.”
“Trop tard,” Adrienne almost sings.
Sylvia picks out Finnegans Wake. “At least take something to read.”
“Isn’t it your only copy?”
“One of many,” she grins. “No one should be cajoled into the selling of their books.”
“A happy lesson for us all,” Martha says, looking at Cuzzemano, whom she has only ever spoken to on the telephone in the most colorful language she remembered from her playground days in St. Louis, and which her father, Dr. Gellhorn, would never have countenanced at home. Martha thanks Sylvia, gesturing with the book.
“Just remember not to try too hard with understanding it,” Sylvia says. “Like people, they’re best not to be too thoroughly understood.”
Martha crosses the sidewalk and stands at the barricade of rue de l’Odéon, behind a pile of old furniture, an oven, and some garbage bins. She watches Sylvia and Adrienne deep in conversation behind the shop front. Sylvia is furio
usly shaking her head and mouthing the word “Non!” Martha’s presence has somehow upset the balance of the shop.
She shoves the Joyce into her satchel and strides over the Pont Neuf in the direction of the Ritz. Funds of contempt are readily there for Ernest, but in this shop is the memory of how wonderful they had been together, all bundled up like refugees from Madrid, their faces flushed with lunch of red wine and partridge, their love lean from Spain. As long as they were shot at, as long as the food was dusty mule sausages, and they could hold each other in the nights as houses blew apart around them, they were happy.
In Madrid, Martha had felt a little shy of him. It was as if his wife’s presence in Key West, months before, had made them feel at ease with each other in Fife’s tropical garden. But in Madrid Ernest watched her over dried bread and coffee in the hotel, and when the shelling came after breakfast he’d say: “Aha!” wiping his lips with a napkin. “Here comes dessert.”
Soon, as a matter of habit, she would follow him up to his room in the mornings because it was in here, he said, that they would be out of the sight lines of the snipers. As the bombs began to dance in Madrid, Ernest put on a mazurka. Sometimes they would talk and sometimes they listened to the music. On the breeze through the window came the smell of cordite, blasted granite, mud. Though nothing yet had happened these past two weeks, Martha began to feel as if the other reporters looked at her knowingly. She basked a little in the limelight he lent her. Otherwise, she was a nobody: she hadn’t yet written a single article about Spain.
Weeks in she knew to walk carefully around the dark shapes of the men cleaned from the flagstones. In a destroyed house one morning she found a boy. Sandbags stood by the door but the bomb had forced the roof in and she found the child under the table in the kitchen. The boy’s extinction made Martha quiet that night. Though the other correspondents seemed to notice, no one pressed her on it; who knew what anyone had seen that day? She kept herself separate from the others as if her aloneness were the only way to honor the dead child. At some point she fell asleep while the rest of the gang drank whiskey and some of them danced. When she woke she saw everyone had gone and Ernest asleep in the other bed. Three floors down, the death carts rattled.