Papa Hemingway (14 page)

"We stood there, helplessly watching the de Havilland burn up, and I made several scientific notations that might interest you, Cipriani, as a student of the alcoholic occult. First noted there were four little pops, which I chalked up as belonging to our four bottles of Carlsberg beer. Then there was a more substantial pop, which I credited to the bottle of Grand MacNish. But the only really good bang came from the Gordon's gin. It was an unopened bottle with a metal top. The Grand MacNish was corked and besides was half gone. But the Gordon's had real
eclat.
I did sixteen thousand words about the crashes for
Look
, but it wasn't easy. Sometimes I wish I had a ghost writer. By Ernest Hemingway as told to Truman Capote."

A large, tawny cat came up to the table and Ernest picked her up and snugged her against him, rubbing in back of her ears. "I got a letter from Rene yesterday that Friendless and Ecstacy had a serious fight and completely disappeared." Ernest continued to rub the tawny cat's neck and told her in a low, sincere voice how beautiful she was.

A blue tin of caviar the size of a small hatbox was brought to the table, and Ernest patted Cipriani on the shoulder in approval. Then he held up the cat, looked at it thoughtfully for a moment and gently placed it on the table.

Again we crossed the Piazza San Marco, its blanket of pigeons barely parting for our feet. There were only a few tourists buying corn from the elderly vendor. Ernest watched the pigeons as they strutted about our feet. "One thing about a pigeon," he said, "he's always ready to screw."

As we passed the corn vendor, Ernest said, "You see that old fellow? Well, he had a fifty-four-year-old parrot that caught cold one day and said 'I'm going to heaven' three times over and died."

Two young men wearing fur hats and giggling passed us. "One thing I've learned," Ernest said, "never hit a fairy—he screams." One of the pigeons flew up and perched on Ernest's arm for a moment. Ernest stopped and gentled him. "I once had a room at the St. James et Albany in Paris," he said, "and at the bottom of the porcelain toilet bowl there was a pair of blue lovebirds. Made me constipated."

The hamburger dinner at the Ivancich
palazzo
was a great success. It was easy to see that Adriana was someone special in Ernest's life. I later discovered that Ernest often inducted into his coterie a striking young girl whom he apotheosized as he did the heroines of his novels. This Romantic Girl was never a clandestine affair but always an open consort, someone for whom Ernest could preen.

After the hamburger dinner, Adriana returned to the Gritti with us for the getaway party; Federico and a group of well-wishers were already waiting. Although I could tell he was occasionally in pain, Ernest stretched out on the couch and managed to enjoy himself. There was plenty to drink and someone had thoughtfully brought a portable phonograph. Along about midnight, for what reason I cannot now remember, I was called upon to demonstrate American baseball. It had something to do with a discussion Ernest was having with a British friend who was a cricket nut. Ernest suggested that a pair of his wool socks be rolled up and used as the baseball, and it was my bright idea to use the ornamental doorstop as a bat. The doorstops at the Gritti, like everything else there, are very elaborate. They are hand-carved mahogany with a heavy leaded base and a thin upright shaft that resembles a table leg. This shaft, when grasped at the end, with the round base at the top, made an excellent bat. Federico, who had seen baseball played, undertook the pitching assignment and I stationed myself at an improvised home plate.

I smacked the first pitch on a deadline to center field, and to my shocked surprise the baseball socks went sailing through the highly arched glass window and out into the Venetian night. The glass broke with a terrible clatter, and from the sidewalk below we heard angry voices. For a few minutes I basked in the glory of having belted a pair of wool socks so hard that they had shattered a glass window, but then we discovered that what had really happened was that the leaded base of the doorstop had come loose and gone flying out of the window along with the socks. I still have a piece of that glass, autographed by everyone who was there.

That was the end of the party; the next day when we checked out Ernest offered to pay for the broken glass.

"Ah, yes, the window," the manager said. "The flying saucer barely missed the nose of a gentleman who unfortunately is a member of the City Council. This gentleman, trembling with rage, came in with the disk, but we calmed him successfully. As for paying for the window, in the three-hundred-year history of the Gritti, no one, to our knowledge, has ever played baseball in any of its rooms, and in commemoration of the event, Signor Hemingway, we are reducing your bill ten percent."

Ernest invited the manager into the bar to have a glass of departure champagne; we clinked glasses all around and Ernest looked very sad. He often said he was reluctant to have to leave any place and this was especially true of Venice.

Ernest boarded the motor launch slowly and painfully, Adamo helping him. As we started along the canal on our way to pick up the Lancia, he said, "How can anyone live in New York when there's Venice and Paris?"

I watched the squat cargo barges and the graceful gondolas crisscrossing against the majestic background of Santa Maria della Salute, the air filled with the warning cries of the boatmen emerging from the Rio del Albero onto the Canale Grande, and I realized that Ernest's prediction had come true—it was my home town, all right—thanks to him.

"Gritti was pretty damn chic about that window," Ernest mused. "Reminds me of the time I fired a pistol shot through my toilet at the Ritz—they were just as chic. Which just goes to prove that it pays to stay at the best places."

The Riviera ♦ 1954

The route to Madrid was to take us first to Milan, via Padua and Verona, for a visit with Ingrid Bergman. Adamo drove smartly and proudly, but to our growing dismay we learned that he had absolutely no sense of direction. We were only a few miles out of Venice when he started making wrong turns, although the road was clearly marked, and from then on, for the entire six days of the trip, Ernest, who had an excellent sense of direction, and infinite patience, had to operate as full-time navigator—a post that he always relished.

As we drove along the autostrada past Verona, Ernest watched, or rather
tried
to watch, the countryside but with growing annoyance. "This would be pretty scenery if you could see it," he said, referring to the signboards that solidly cluttered the sides of the road, "but you can't even see the signs because of the signs. Back in the days when American billboard-advertising was in flower, there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, 'Spit Is a Horrid Word—but Worse on the End of Your Cigar,' and 'Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste.' You don't get creative writing like that any more. All the geniuses are gone."

As we approached Milan, Ernest began to talk about Ingrid Bergman. "The Swede's battling her way out of it," he said, "but in the beginning, when she had first thrown in with Ros-sellini and was really taking her lumps, it did not occur to Signor Rossellini to do anything more chic and gallant than to read my private letters to her to the press. When the famous become infamous it's pathetic. But Miss Ingrid has taken everything they could throw at her and that always mollifies the angered mob."

"What is she doing in Milan?" I asked.

"What she's always doing—playing Joan of Arc. You'd think she would have run out of Joans, having done her in the movies and on Broadway, but Signor Rossellini has found a novel way of squeezing the turnip for -a last drop. He has written the libretto for an opera version, with music by Honniger, and directed same at La Scala."

"But can Bergman sing well enough for La Scala?"

"Of course not, but Maestro Rossellini has even got around that—everybody sings but the Swede, whose entire role is spoken in Italian, which she has mastered."

Although we got to Milan in the early afternoon, Adamo's keen sense of direction kept us in constant circlement for an hour and a half, searching for the Hotel Principe & Savoia, where Ingrid and Rossellini were staying. Since Adamo considered asking directions an irreparable loss of face, there was nothing to do but circle and hope for the best.

Around four-thirty, after Adamo had made three complete tours of the city, he finally found the hotel; Ingrid was waiting for us in the hallway as we stepped off the elevator. She was radiantly beautiful in a high-necked white silk blouse, the top six buttons of which were undone. Her Jeanne d'Arc haircut was very becoming. She hugged Ernest and they were very happy to see each other. We went into the living room of her suite, where every possible surface was ablaze with long-stemmed red roses.

"You are riddled with roses, Daughter," Ernest said.

"They were sent by an official on the Stock Exchange. I have never met him but he was so moved by the performance he sends roses every day. There is so much wealth in this city. The homes I have been in, Ernest, why, in comparison the houses in Beverly Hills are shacks. Even the ash trays are by Renaissance masters."

Ingrid Bergman was one of the few women in his life whom Ernest called "Daughter" who refused to call him "Papa" in return. "I don't have Papa feelings about him," is the way Ingrid explained it. But Mary called him Papa, and so did Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich. Some of his old cronies like Toots Shor called him Ernie, but for the most part the name "Ernest" in spoken form, was anathema to him. He was very rough on people who called him Papa without meriting such intimacy.

"Where is Signor Rossellini?" Ernest asked.

"In there having a nap."

"You going to make any more Hollywood pictures?"

"No, no more Hollywood. Not that I'm not grateful; I am. I loved much of Hollywood while I was there and I know how much I owe them. But life is short and the years run away and you must do everything you really want to. The only part I ever had with dialogue that was all there was in
For Whom the Bell Tolls.
I would like to perform elsewhere now, places I have not been to. I get movies to read all the time, same old plots bent a little this way or that."

"They plan to redo
A Farewell to Arms?
Ernest said. "I will receive nothing for it since it was sold outright. They are also about to make
The Sun Also Rises
, which was long ago sold for a pittance, and another version of
To Have and Have Not
and maybe
The Killers
, for which they'll also pay nothing, so my hand is virtually palsied from not receiving any monies."

"I read about the movie version of 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro,' " I said, "and how there was only one minor alteration— the man lives instead of dying."

"We must look on that as a very minor change, don't you think?" Ernest asked. "Now all we need is to have some Hollywood gag-writer take that poor bloody colonel of
Across the River
out of the back of that Buick and let him hike back to Venice and walk down the middle of the Grand Canal (this is a symbol, natch) and into Harry's Bar dry-shod. They will probably call it
Across the Selznick and into the Zanuck."

"Once they make a purchase," Ingrid said, "they don't care how they defile the thing they've purchased. They only care about box office but they don't know what creates that. They buy a book that has sold a huge number of copies and they don't have faith in its content. And the last person they value is the writer."

"True. But sometimes you can peg them," Ernest said. "There was the time we were living in a remote ski cabin in Sun Valley. We had been out skiing all day and had just come back, very tired, feeling wonderful, taken off our clothes in front of a beauty fire, the drinks just being stirred, when there was a knock on the door. It was the man who ran the little general store, who had trudged up on snowshoes because there was a very important Hollywood call; been calling all day. So I shelved drink, got dressed and dragged my sagging ass over the drifts. It had started to snow like a son-of-a-bitch.

"A very excited operator's voice told me that Darryl F. Zanuck himself of Twentieth Century-Fox was going to speak to me. And by golly he did! 'Hello, Ernest?' he said (you could tell it was Hollywood because here he was calling me Ernest and we only knew each other from having exchanged my story for his dough). 'Ernest, we are in executive session here in my conference room, and we've been wrestling all day with a crisis that only you can resolve. We have made a truly wonderful picture of your wonderful story "The Short Happy Live of Francis Macomber" and we're ready for distribution but we feel that the title is too long for the average movie marquee, so we would appreciate it very much if you could change it to something short with eye appeal—you know, a title that would create on-sight excitement—something that'll appeal to both sexes and make them feel they
have
to see the movie."

"I told Zanuck to hold on while I gave the matter some thought. The storekeeper mixed me a drink and every once in a while I'd go back to the phone to tell the operator not to cut us off because I was engaged in emergency thinking. Finally, when I felt my A.T. and T. stock had gone up at least three points, I said that I thought I had just what the doctor ordered. Zanuck said he had his pencil at the ready. 'Now,' I said, 'you want something short and exciting that will catch the eye of both sexes, right? Well, then, here it is:
F
as in Fox,
U
as in Universal,
C
as in Culver City and
K
as in R.K.O. That should fit all the marquees, and you can't beat it as a sex symbol."