No Relation (27 page)

“I don’t know how to express my thanks,” he started, holding both Marie’s hand and mine. “I could never have done it alone. I was foolish to think I could. But it is done. Robert is where he wants to be. Thank you. Thank you.”

Marie hugged him. He handed me a card with his name and address on it.

“If you are ever in Vancouver, you’ll always have a bed in our home. In the meantime, you’ll always have a place in my heart. You have restored my faltering faith in humanity.”

With that, he walked out the door, his now lighter leather satchel hanging from his shoulder. As he passed, he glanced at the still-smouldering and smoking garbage can and nodded at the four firefighting waiters surrounding it. Then he sauntered up Saint-Germain and disappeared from view.

“Okay, spill,” I said to Marie after we’d made good our escape a few minutes later. “What were you spinning with the waiter?”

“I just told him that Hugh was a Harvard professor and a leading authority on magots. I said that we suspected that the one Hugh was ‘examining’ might well have been made by the greatest Japanese magot artist of them all, Yamamoto, and that it could be worth millions of euros if we were right.”

“I see. And ‘the professor’ discovered it wasn’t the real McCoy.”

“Regrettably, yes. I guess the artistic discovery of the century was not to be.”

“Very impressive. While my head was supporting Hugh’s butt, your quick thinking was actually saving it.”

After an amazing three-hour dinner that passed in the blink of an eye in a tiny restaurant on rue de Seine, we wandered back to Hotel de Buci. Marie wanted to see it for future reference, for those times when her friend’s apartment might not be available. She loved my room. In fact, she didn’t leave until morning.

The sun was streaming into my room. Marie had left early to make it to her course. She had two days remaining, which meant that I had two days to complete the Paris leg of my little Hemingway tour and sort through just what the hell had unfolded the previous night. After lying in bed for another hour, I decided that there really wasn’t much to figure out. It had all happened. I felt better than I’d ever felt before. There was a comfort and a calm that seemed to cradle me. I liked the feeling. Then I wondered how I was going to make it through the entire day until I could see Marie again that evening. I also wondered what was going through her head and heart. I tend to overanalyze.

After showering, I pulled out my laptop and stared at the screen for a while. Chapter 12. Nope. Not today. Was it too much to ask that I might just write a few words on the novel? Yes, I guess it was. Despite communing with Hemingway’s past for the last few days on two continents, I still seemed no closer
to breaking my psychological logjam and constructing sentences again. I gave up and checked my email.

There was an email from Susan at the University of Chicago Library and Archives. She wanted to let me know that they’d purchased a packet of letters from an estate sale following the passing of the daughter of the woman who had been the housekeeper for Earnest Hemmingway I. They were actually carbons of letters EH1 had sent to various people over a fifteen-year span. The archivists had not yet read the letters, but Susan just wanted to let me know about this addition to the family archive. In accordance with my father’s instructions, she had informed only him and me, even though it was Sarah who was the family history buff. I wasn’t particularly interested in a stray set of letters written by the family patriarch, but I thought Sarah might be. I flipped her the email. There were no other emails of any consequence other than the standard spam promises of a Nigerian prince’s fortune, and enhanced sexual performance, which immediately made me think of Marie again. Although, almost everything made me think of Marie.

I spent Monday walking all around Montparnasse. Hemingway spent a lot of time in this artistically diverse and rich part of Paris, hanging around in cafés with other writers and artists. He and his friend, the Canadian writer Morley Callaghan, apparently met F. Scott Fitzgerald in the Dingo Bar in the heart of Montparnasse. It’s no longer there, but many of the cafés Hemingway frequented and wrote in for hours on end were still
in operation. So I spent time in each one of them, including Le Dôme, La Closerie des Lilas, La Rotonde, Le Select, and La Coupole. I tried. I really tried. I sat there just as he would have nearly a hundred years earlier, my Moleskine notebook open, my pen poised, willing and wanting to write. But I couldn’t even scrawl a few primitive phrases. There was still nothing there. Was this working? Would it ever work? I reserved judgment. I decided, based on no evidence whatsoever, that it would take time. Courtesy of my day of café-hopping, by late afternoon, I was so wired on caffeine I didn’t think I’d ever sleep again. Then I thought of Marie, again, and stopped worrying about sleep.

On Tuesday evening, standing on the platform of Gare d’Austerlitz, I said goodbye to Marie. Monday night had been even better than Sunday night, and we hadn’t had to scatter anyone’s ashes anywhere. We just ate, drank some more wine, and headed back to the hotel. It was lovely. She was lovely. There were feelings and emotions I don’t ever recall having when I’d been with Jenn. I hoped Marie felt the same way, but couldn’t quite bring myself to ask. The evidence was positive, however. Like that she was still there beside me in the morning and was not in a hurry to leave. All good signs. Marie was heading home on Wednesday, so I was on my own for Spain.

I boarded a southbound overnight train for Vitoria, just over the border. Marie waved as the train pulled out. I waved back, and she was gone. I suddenly had second thoughts about Pamplona.
What was to be achieved by hanging out in more of Hemingway’s haunts? Hadn’t I done enough of that already? And what had it reaped so far? Nothing on the writing front. I was still blocked. The best part of the trip so far was walking out of the Gare d’Austerlitz alone, while I steamed in the opposite direction toward Spain.

As the sun sank and the train rattled south, I opened a file I’d brought and read about Hemingway’s time in Spain. When I awoke, we were already in the station in Vitoria. I’d been out cold for nearly the entire journey. By the time I’d grabbed my bag and walked out of the station, it was just after 5:00 a.m. It was still dark but the first blush of dawn was rising in the east. My bus for Pamplona left at 6:15.

I’d timed this leg of the tour to coincide with Pamplona’s annual Fiesta de San Fermin, best known around the world for the famous running of the bulls, a tradition dating back to the fourteenth century. And I was arriving in Pamplona in the middle of it all. In fact, my bus was packed with young men already dressed in the white pants and shirts and red sashes and neckerchiefs that were standard fare. Oh yes, not surprisingly, they all wore expensive-looking running shoes. No wonder.

I’d seen enough YouTube clips of the running of the bulls to know that I would steer well clear of the route. Every morning at eight, half a dozen bulls are chased out of a corral and through the streets of the old part of the town up to the bullring a mere nine hundred yards away. But what a chaotic, frenetic, terrifying,
and dangerous nine hundred yards they can be. As soon as the bulls hit the streets, they are met by hundreds of runners who, as the word suggests, run in front of, behind, even beside the terrified bulls. It is absolutely insane, yet tradition dictates that the bulls and runners make the same mad dash each morning for the duration of the festival. Runners being killed in action are not uncommon. Bulls being killed in action are guaranteed, if not on the route, without fail in the bullring.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall centuries ago when some bright light cooked up the idea of the running of the bulls. I picture a group of town elders seated around a table at a local Pamplona cantina. The mayor takes control of the meeting.

“Okay, guys, we need to get the bulls from the corral in the centre of the village up to the bullring for the festival. I suggest we lead them up there early in the morning, around eight, when it’s quiet. The streets would be pretty well deserted at that hour. Are we all agreed?”

“Wait a second,” says another guy at the table. “Wait just one second! I’ve got a great idea. This could be big! This could be really big!”

“Enough with the hype,” someone says. “Just spill the idea, already!”

“Okay, okay. Here it is. Instead of just leading the bulls through the streets, why don’t we rile them up, taunt them, tease them? We’ll get them angry. We’ll agitate and aggravate the bulls. Hey, we could even hit them with sticks and make loud noises so they
start to stampede in terror and rage. Okay but wait, there’s more. Here’s the kicker. Then, instead of the bulls running alone, we add several hundred men to run behind them, beside them, and in front of them, slapping them, and generally enraging the bulls for the entire sprint to the bullring.”

“Gee, that sounds kind of dangerous,” notes another elder.

“Nonsense. Sure, there could be some injuries, I guess – tourists trampled, heads cracked, blood spilled, bones broken. But think how exciting it would be for the bulls, for the runners, and for the townsfolk. And people would flock here for the festival. Well? What do you think?”

“I like it,” concludes the mayor. “All in favour?”

Hemingway loved festival time in Pamplona. The action, the danger, the blood, all called out to his macho sensibilities. Pamplona has always been a place where young men test their mettle. There’s a famous old photo of Hemingway, clad in the classic white and red garb of the runner, taunting a bull in the middle of the bullring. As much as I wanted to walk in Hemingway’s footsteps, my feet would not be taking me anywhere near the centre of the bullring. The stands, maybe, but not in the ring itself. I would do a lot to rid myself of this writer’s block, but I do have my limits.

I was famished after my long train and bus journey. Even at this early hour, there were dozens of food stands already open for business, catering to the bull-run participants and spectators.
I ordered what seemed to be called a San Jacoba, a very popular snack, or tapa, in Spain, particularly in Pamplona. It’s quite basic, really. You put a slice of salty cheese between two pieces of meat (I’m not sure what kind of meat) and then deep-fry the whole concoction to guarantee every last ounce of myocardial malevolence. It tastes amazing but it ought to come with a health warning and a defibrillator.

I had just taken my first heavenly bite when I heard the famous eight o’clock rocket go off in the distance, signalling that the corral gates had been opened and the bulls were on the move.

I had purposely retreated to a less crowded street running parallel to the bull-running course. I could feel the tension in the air and hear the runners’ chants. I was walking up this little lane gnawing away at my glorious sandwich when they appeared. Bulls? Nope. Three, yes three, brown Chihuahuas on leashes, being walked by a small, round, older woman with white hair. The dogs were barking up a storm and doing their best to drag their owner toward me. I looked at the very aromatic sandwich in my hand. They were now about forty feet away from me, still straining at their leashes. Then, in slow motion, a five-year-old boy trying to escape his mother darted out of a side alley and smashed headlong into the dog woman. They both went down. I didn’t actually see the old woman hit the ground because in the midst of her fall, she let go of her three leashes and released her hounds, er, Chihuahuas. Thoughtless tiny dogs that they were, they had no interest in ensuring that their owner was all
right. No. All three of them had my San Jacoba in their crosshairs. I took off, just ahead of the Chihuahuas.