Papa Hemingway (25 page)

"Probably hasn't eaten solid since Antwerp either," Ernest said. No matter how they shaped up, Ernest always offered hospitality and encouragement to any young person who was a self-avowed writer. Chuck was a monument to this Catholicism.

A plump, pretty girl, who had been sitting with a group of mantilla-decked women, came over and said in solemn Spanish, "Your books have given me so much pleasure I wish to kiss your lips." She did, and returned solemnly to her table.

The American grape-girl had returned, carrying a book which she asked Ernest to autograph. While he was writing in it, she said, "Mother said I'm not old enough to read
For Whom the Bell Tolls."

"How old are you?"

"Nineteen."

After she had left, Ernest said, "You know what frail volume she had for me to sign?
To Have and Have Not,
a teen-age work devoted to adultery, sodomy, masturbation, rape, mayhem, mass murder, frigidity, alcoholism, prostitution, impotency, anarchy, rum-running, Chink-smuggling, nymphomania and abortion."

When you attend an entire
feria
you usually form up what Ernest called "a good
feria
mob," for the rigors of five or six or more days of continual bullfights,
apartados,
drinking, dancing, eating, and partying were such that a lone
aficionado
hardly stood a chance of survival.

The mob for the Zaragoza
feria
consisted of Ernest's old English pal Rupert Belville and his lovely English companion, Polly Peabody; a Scottish couple, Rafe and Baby Henderson; the American writer-photographer Peter Buckley; and the Maharajah of Cooch Behar, an independent Indian principality, and his maharanee.

At dinner that evening I was seated within earshot of clean-shirted Chuck, who proved conclusively that not one day of his three-year semi-worldwide investment had paid off. When he discovered that the handsome, dark-visaged gentleman to my left was a maharajah, he called over in nice clear Chilli-cothese, "Say, Maharajah, I'm headin' Far East. You know any one I can look up in India?"

The maharajah, an Etonian, did not flicker an eyelid but said that he did and that he would give Chuck a letter to the head of the Indian Department of State. Chuck was delighted. "Gee, Maharajah," he exclaimed, "that's awfully white of you!"

Mary immediately announced that coffee and cognac would be served in the bar.

I had hoped that when Ernest overstayed the closing of the bar that first night, it would prove to be an exception, but it wasn't. He drank heavily every night, Scotch or red wine, and he was invariably in bad shape when finally induced to go to his room. He passed up the things that used to attract him— young couples, gay girls, rough cafes, the bullfight people, the fireworks display, the street carnival—preferring to sit for hours in a rooted position, with one or more listeners, not really caring who they were, sipping his drinks and talking, first coherently, then as the alcohol dissolved all continuity, his talk becoming repetitive, his speech slurred and disheveled.

Ernest's mornings, unassailably vibrant all his life, were now silent newspaper-and-tea convalescences. Ernest would joke it off when I came into his room. "Am a little pooped," he'd say. "Went five rounds with the Demon Rum last night and knocked him on his ass in one fifty-five of the sixth." The morning drinks of tequila or vodka would partially restore him in time for his mob lunches, which he enjoyed, and he was back in full form by the time the bull-ring hour rolled around. Good or bad, he enjoyed the bullfights very much. "I once told Scott," he said, "that my idea of heaven was a big bull ring where I had two permanent
barrera
seats, with a rushing trout stream outside that could be fished by me and my pals. It's still my idea of heaven."

But, in truth, the bullfights were a disappointment. On the opening card Antonio, Litri and Ostos all fought without distinction, and one of Litri's
banderilleros
was hooked against the
planchon
of a
barrera
and brutally gored in the groin. The other programs were equally undistinguished.

On the day that Ostos brindied a bull to Ernest, Ernest rose in response to Ostos' outstretched hat and the bull ring gave him a spontaneous standing ovation, roaring his name; it was an awesome and moving sight to see those thousands of Spanish people, who do not express approval easily, on their feet, applauding an American. Unfortunately, this highly emotional brindying lacked a climax, for after fighting the bull rather well, Ostos couldn't kill him; he hacked him about the neck a dozen times until, weak from the blood-letting, the animal dropped to his knees.

On another afternoon Antonio also brindied a bull to Ernest, but this was an even sadder event, for Antonio's entire
faena
was a failure. But by now Ernest had seen Antonio's brilliance too often to rate him out for an occasional bad performance. He had dinner with Antonio the last night of the
feria
and proposed that he and his wife, Carmen, go on safari in Kenya with Mary and him. Antonio, a handsome, bright, fun-loving man, assented immediately. That night after dinner Ernest talked effusively about the safari plans, drank very little and turned in early.

We got a fairly early start for Madrid the following day, with a new driver, Mario, at the Lancia's controls. We had a lunch rendezvous at Fornos with Rafe Henderson, who was driving 
the others (
sans
Chuck) in his Mercedes. Ernest was in splendid spirits, and he talked and sang and told stories all the way. He sang in a tuneless husky voice, his repertoire ranging from "Hello, Frisco, Hello" and "My Sugar Daddy's in No Man's Land" (solo), to "La Cucaracha" and "Que Sera" (duets with Mary).

"Well, Hotch," he said between selections, "it was a half-ass
feria,
but it had its educational aspects. On the first day we learned that contrary to published reports, blood does mix with sand. And, finally, by observing the retinue in the wake of Antonio, Litri and Ostos as they went through the hotel lobby, we learned another lasting truth: undeclared fairies follow bullfighters."

At one point we stopped at a grated crossing and watched a coal-burning train chug by. Ernest began to laugh softly.

"What's funny, lamb?" Mary asked.

"That train. Took that train with Hadley. We'd been to Zaragoza to see Antonio's father, Cayetano, fight a
mano a mano.
What a beauty fighter he was! Hadley was in love with Cayetano and she wanted to go wherever he fought. Or didn't fight. Anyway, we used our last money for the tickets and we got on this train third-class to Madrid. Cayetano had thrown an ear to Hadley and she clutched it, wrapped in one of my handkerchiefs, next to her bosom all the way. The train was overcrowded. We squeezed into a compartment where there were two Guardia Civil with their guns slung across their backs, a boy taking three wicker-bound sample casks of his father's wine to a wholesaler in Madrid, two members of the clergy, and under the slatted wooden seats, three young ticketless bullfighters in hiding from the conductor.

"The boy, who like all Spanish boys dreamed of the day he would be a matador, opened a spigot in one of the casks and let some wine run down into the mouths of the bullfighters, who were hot and cramped under the seat. He also passed wine in a cup to the Guardia Civil and to us, and although they declined the first offer, he finally converted the two clergy. As the conductor approached our third-class vineyard, I discovered I had lost our tickets, so Hadley and I got under the seat occupied by the two clergy, who spread their robes to hide us. By the time we reached Madrid the wine casks were empty and everyone was drunk. But we had a final problem—how to pass the station controller, who demands a surrendered ticket from everyone on exit. The two Guardia Civil put their guns at the ready and, one before and one aft, marched the five of us past the controller, pretending we were under arrest. The two clergy brought up the rear, reading their Bibles like we were marching the last mile."

Listening to the story, I began to think about Hadley and Cayetano. She was in love with him, Ernest had said, and carried the treasured ear in her hand. Ernest had identified Cayetano as the prototype for Pedro Romero in
The Sun Also Rises.
But Lady Brett's passion for him—was it derived from Hadley's infatuation with the lithe and romantic Cayetano? Brett, Ernest had said, had her genesis in Lady Duff Twysden, but Hemingway people, as he had demonstrated with Catherine Barkley, were compounded of many parts and I concluded that that part of Lady Brett that pursued Romero was as much Hadley as Duff. In
The Sun Also Rises
the ear of a bull is "cut by popular acclamation and given to Pedro Romero, who, in turn, gave it to Brett, who wrapped it in a handkerchief belonging to myself . . ."

Identifying Hemingway heroines has been a persistent literary preoccupation and one of the most curious of these identifications centered around Renata, the beautiful young Venetian countessa of
Across the River and into the Trees.
Ernest had withheld publication of the novel in Italy because, he once told me, "too many of the characters in the book are still alive"; but finally, in 1965, fifteen years after its publication in the United States, the book was brought out by Mondadori, Ernest's publisher in Italy. Shortly afterward an article in the weekly magazine
Epoca,
also a Mondadori publication, boldly pronounced over Adriana's prominent by-line, "I am Hemingway's Renata."

In the introduction to the article, written by the Mondadori editors, an elaborate attempt was made to prove Adriana's fictional identity by comparing her to passages about Renata quoted from the book. The article itself told about the first meeting between Adriana and Ernest, and then went on to relate how they saw each other day after day. "At first I was a bit bored with this man," Adriana confessed, "so much older and more experienced than I, who spoke slowly and whom I did not always understand. But I felt that he liked having me near him and liked to talk and talk." Adriana then recounted how their relationship grew, but that she didn't suspect that Mary was worried about her until Mary told her so one day. However, after their talk, Adriana said, Mary understood that her affection would never be transformed into love and that not only was she not a danger but was in fact a help.

Her helpfulness was, Adriana said, in restoring Ernest's writing vigor. "Hemingway told me that he had fallen ill while writing
Across the River and into the Trees
and had had to put it aside because he could no longer write, but after having met me he felt a new energy travel from me into him. 'You have given me back the possibility of writing again, and I shall be grateful to you for it always. I have been able to finish my book and I have given your face to the protagonist. Now I will write another book for you, and it will be my most beautiful book. It will be about an old man and the sea.' "

The curious part of this recitative is that Adriana confesses that when she read the novel she told Ernest that she did not find the dialogue very interesting and that, "as for Renata, no, a girl with that grace and family tradition, and so young as well, does not sneak out of the house to have amorous rendezvous and gulp one martini after another, as if they were cherries. No, she was full of contradictions. She was not real." Adriana says Ernest then told her, "You are too different to understand but I assure you that girls like that do exist. What is more, in Renata there is not one woman only, but four different women whom I have actually met."

This would seem to negate the title and entire theme of the article—as an amalgamated heroine, Renata would be following in the footsteps of her predecessors. Adriana concludes by quoting from a letter she received from Ernest in 1951, in which he told her that if he succeeded in writing well enough, people would speak of the two of them for several centuries because they had worked hard and well together. Ernest mused that perhaps it would have been better for her if he had never met her that day in the rain at Latisana, but he is thankful that he saw her before she was too wet. Then he tells her that it would have been the same if he had never written a book on Venice, that people would have noticed that they stayed together and that they were happy together and that they never spoke of serious things. People are always jealous of others who are happy, he said. And he told her to remember that the best weapon against lies is the truth; that there are no weapons against gossip, that it is like the fog, and the clear wind blows it away and the sun dissolves it.

It is my own belief that Adriana Ivancich is a fourth part of Renata, precisely as Ernest said.

Ernest began talking about the impending safari. "It will be fun showing Africa to Antonio and Carmen. Do you think it would discourage Antonio to learn that on our last trip I had a tick on my prick for four days? All local remedies, such as burning the tick's ass and rubbing lion dung on him, failed. Even tried a pair of tweezers. Finally Philip Percival, our White Hunter, suggested suffocating him in candle wax. We dripped a mound of candle wax on him and, sure enough, it worked. That's one remedy you won't find in
Black's Medical Dictionary."'''

As we drove along, Ernest pointed to the exact places where Civil War battles had been fought; he recalled the number of troops involved, nature of weapons used, strategy employed and result of action. I never ceased to marvel at his powers of retention. "This is where we turned them back . . ." and he described the scene as if he were painting it. "We were slaughtered here—we had Russki tanks with rubber treads but the dame with the signal didn't show at seven-thirty, so air went over and we waited until one-thirty, when the sun was in our eyes, and we were destroyed."