Four Days with Hemingway's Ghost (9 page)

As I sipped my second Daiquiri, I felt as if I were back in time.  It was like being at a mid-19
th
Century Gala or Academy Awards ceremony.  And I swear, just as the latter crossed my mind,
who
walks in side-by-side but Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy.  Gable looked as dashing as ever.  He had on a white tuxedo and the same ear-to-ear, gleaming smile that had driven generations of women wild.  As Spencer Tracy shook hands with Ernest, he was beaming as well.  I imagined Mister Tracy must have smiled that very same way the first time he’d met his longtime sweetheart, Katherine Hepburn.

After wishing Ernest a happy birthday and mingling a bit, some of the happy faces retreated to the patio.  I saw through the windows that vintage lawn furniture had been set up out there.  Tables and chairs had been arranged in a semi-circle facing the band, and some folks were dancing to the tunes.  I watched Marlene Dietrich do the swing with tall, bearded Waldo Peirce,
Ernest’s artist friend who’d painted several portraits of him.  Pretty Zelda Fitzgerald was out there, too, swinging away with a man I didn’t recognize.  Other couples danced the jitterbug while white-shirted waiters made sure the guests had drinks of their choices and plenty of hors d’oeuvres.  As I watched the goings-on outside the window, I noticed two men in my periphery.  They were walking toward me.  It was Ernest and a handsome man with hair parted in the middle.  The grand party suddenly felt like a Great Gatsby, East Egg bash.

“Scotty, meet my new friend Jack Phelan . . . Jack, Scott Fitzgerald.”

We shook, and his hand was smooth as a baby’s.  A heart attack had ended his life when he was but forty-four, and he, along with his wife, were two of the youngest looking guests at the party.

“It’s an honor to meet you Mister Fitzgerald.”

“The honor is mine, Jack.  Please, call me Scott.”

“Okay.  Sure.”

“Ernest here tells me that you just might become a fledgling author.”

Feeling a small rush of pride from such a possibility, I said, “Yes, that’s what it sounds like if I have what it takes.”

“Well, if you do, don’t be like our mutual friend here,” he said giving
Hem
a devilish look.  “Don’t be going out and getting yourself a new woman every time you write a big book.”

“Go ahead, Scott,” Ernest said in a half-joking manner, “I’d love to find out exactly how
you
kept Zelda so happy all those years.”

“Touché, Ernest,” Fitzgerald came back, giving him a playful pat on the back.  “Nice stab, lots of thrust.  I award you a point for that one.”

“In about two minutes, I’m going to award you with a right hook.”

The close friends shared a good laugh; then Fitz said to me, “Alright, on with it then.  Jack, if you do attempt to write something worthwhile, you must live inside your book the entire time you work on it.  You must take it to sleep with you.  It needs to be on your mind when you go to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and to the market.  The best ideas will come when you least expect them.  And they will be short-lived.  Write them down immediately.  They are always fleeting and usually irretrievable.  They will abandon you as quickly as they appear.  You do not want to squander those golden revelations.”

All in all, our talk lasted about ten minutes, about as long as it took Scott to polish off the Gin Rickey he was working on.  But before he went for a refill, I picked up a few more invaluable writing tips.  I also learned something else.  F. Scott Key Fitzgerald was named after a famous song writer.  His second cousin thrice removed was Francis Scott Key, the lawyer and poet who wrote the lyrics to
The Star Spangled Banner
. 

Though Scott had spoken in a stilted manner, I liked him.  And it was easy to see that his thoughts were every bit as stilted as his words.  I knew, had I the opportunity to spend more time with him, I could have learned an awfully lot from this man.

A short time later, Ernest deserted me when poet Wallace Stevens stepped into the house.  Since I’d read somewhere they’d once had a nasty fistfight, I watched their reunion very closely.  I feared it might put an end to the festivities, but it didn’t.  They shared a rousing hello, spoke calmly for a few minutes, and then went their own ways.

I didn’t have the opportunity to meet Pauline or Martha because they disappeared somewhat early.  However, I did get to meet Hadley and Mary, the first and the last of Ernest’s wives.  Both were very friendly and interesting ladies.

But, odd as it may sound, the person who fascinated me most was someone I’d never heard of nor read about.  Henry “Prof” Tobias was one of Ernest’s more obscure Key West pals.  About Ernest’s age but in much better shape, he was almost as tall as Big Skinner but wiry.  When Ernest called me over to introduce us, I immediately thought that here is a man who’s been around.  Dressed in blue jeans, a white tee, and work boots, he looked like the type of guy who not only could handle himself through any kind of tough situation but had.

“Prof” Tobias in no way looked like a professor.  He had a strong chin and a lean-but-sturdy neck.  His short, parted hair had kept its brown color except for a bit of white infiltrating his sideburns and temples.  There were no scars on his face, but it was still a face that told you its owner had no room for nonsense.  His eyes, always the most revealing feature, were intelligent but at the same time wary.  And there were good reasons for that.  There were also good reasons for Prof’s four aliases.

Because his mysterious mortal life was over, he didn’t mind Ernest telling me about it.  He even stopped him a few times and interjected a few details himself.

Right after the one-hundred-and-sixty mile per hour winds of The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 had subsided, Ernest trekked up the Keys to survey the damage.  He saw the worst of it when he arrived at
Matecumbe
Key, eighty miles north of Key West.  Seventeen feet of water had washed over the small island, killing two-hundred-and-sixty-five men who’d been laying tracks for a new railroad.  Those down-and-out veterans, who’d been working for The Public Works for Veterans Program, lost their lives when the ocean washed over the small island. 

“It was a horrific scene,” Ernest said.  “There were bodies strewn all over the place.  We located sixty-nine, and Prof, here, almost became number seventy.  Many of the dead were entangled in the mangrove trees that lined the shoreline.  The men were gray and limp as old dishtowels.  Their bones were broken, and, by the time we arrived, flies were all over their bodies.”

“Yes, and I was out cold,” Prof said.

“We checked them all,” Ernest went on, “but it was too late.  I was just about to walk away from Prof when I noticed a bit of seawater expel from his mouth.  His breathing was so shallow I didn’t even notice.  But when I saw that water, I realized he could be alive.  We went to work on him, and he suddenly came to.  Then, when I wanted to rush him down to the hospital, he refused to go.”

“That’s right,” Prof said turning to his friend, “I told Ernest I’d only go to Key West if I had a chance of remaining anonymous there.  And going to a hospital would blow that chance.  I’d go to see a doctor but not at a hospital.  Otherwise I was prepared to die right there in those mangroves.”

Together they went on to tell me how Prof had joined the Public Works Program to get out of Chicago—eleven years after he’d killed two men in a New York alley.  Prof fled to Chi Town four months after the incident when the law in New York was closing in on him.  Then ten years later he left Chicago for the same reason.  In both cities he spent most of his spare time locked up in a small apartment, reading the classics. 

“He’s read as much or more than I have,” Ernest said.

And that was quite obvious.  Rough and tumble as the former fugitive’s appearance was, and despite having just a fifth grade education, Prof spoke with the knowledge and eloquence of an Ivy League professor.

He went on to tell me that his first and only wife died of tuberculosis when they were both in their early 20’s and that he’d never married again.  She was an American Indian, a full-blooded
Mohegan who’d grown up in Montauk Long Island.  And that is why he wound up killing those men years later. 

Boisterous and drunk, they’d been cracking Indian jokes in a seedy Hell’s Kitchen bar.  When one of them howled with laughter and listed to one side, he splashed a glass of nickel beer all over Prof who was quietly sitting by himself.  He didn’t get all pissed about the beer but calmly asked them to please stop the Indian jokes.  He told them that someone once very dear to him had been an Indian and that such talk salted his wounds. 

They became rambunctious and started giving him a hard time. Seeing the situation was quickly deteriorating, he simply up and left. 

“Left a full glass of nickel beer right there on the bar,” Prof said. “There was no talking to those mindless cretins.” 

The two men followed him out of the bar and dragged him into an alley.  That was where their lives ended.  With Prof’s rage uncontrollable, he killed them with just a few punches each.  He told Ernest and me it wasn’t he who had killed them; it was the enraged adrenaline inside him.

It was getting late by now, and I’d been so enthralled in our conversation that I hadn’t noticed that the party was all but over.  Most everyone inside the
Finca
was gone.  Joe and the
mob
were at the front door getting ready to pack it in, so Ernest went to say goodbye to them.  I watched him take a few steps toward the men then turn back to Prof.  He wasn’t there.  He’d simply vanished.

Scratching my head now, I turned back around toward Ernest.  His mob had just filed out the door, and he was standing there alone.  For some reason he suddenly didn’t look all that good.  No pun intended, but he looked as if he’d seen a ghost.  Still near the bar, his body and eyes seemed to have frozen.  As he stared through that open doorway, his face and eyes seemed a jumble of conflicting emotions.  The most obvious was disbelief.

Then someone stepped over the threshold and into the house.  It was a woman.  And she had the same overwhelmed, wordless stare that Ernest had.   

The woman, like everybody else at the party that night, looked to be the age she was when her mortal life had ended.  She was ninety-two at the time.  Tired as Ernest had looked in his final years, the lady he was now looking at looked considerably older.

Suddenly, as if meant to serenade them, the band outside came to life again.  They started playing the very old song
I’ll be
Seeing
You.

The lady entrancing Ernest Hemingway was none other than Agnes von
Kurowsky
—the only woman to ever tear away a piece of his heart.  They had not seen each other since 1918—since the day nineteen-year-old Ernest left a Milan hospital on crutches.   Agnes, who’d been seven years older than he, was a nurse at that Red Cross facility at that time.  And when she helped him convalesce from his war injuries, she’d gone far beyond the call of duty.  The ironic part is that after she helped him heal, she injured him all over again.  And she wounded him badly. 

Once Ernest returned home, he believed the nurse he’d fallen in love with would soon join and marry him.  But he was wrong.  Shortly after coming back to the States, he received a letter from nurse
Kurowsky
.  It was a Dear John letter.  And it must have pierced Ernest twice: first when she jilted him and again when she mentioned she’d soon be marrying another man.

From what I’d read about their relationship, I’d always believed the scars that sheet of paper left on his soul were every bit as deep and painful as the scars all that exploding shrapnel left on his legs.

As I now watched, the two of them turned and walked out the door together.  I wanted to go to the doorway to see what they were doing and to where they might be going.  But I didn’t—not right away anyhow.  Still standing in the empty room, I just listened to the lyrics.

                     I’ll be seeing you in every lovely summer’s day;

                     In everything that’s light and gay.

                     I’ll always think of you that way.

                    I’ll find you in the morning sun

                    And when the night is new,

                    I’ll be looking at the moon,

                    But I’ll be seeing you.

Finally the temptation became too much.  I couldn’t help myself.  I just had to see what was going on.  I made my way across the living room and looked out into the dark Cuban night.  I could not believe my eyes.  What I saw sent cold goose bumps up and down my arms. 

Though the band still played, I could not see the musicians in the darkness.  I couldn’t see anything other than Ernest and Agnes.  They were in each other’s arms and dancing slowly in a cone of white light.  It was as if a spotlight from heaven were shining down on them.  It came from what appeared to be a pinhole high atop of the nighttime sky.  Though it was very much like the light that beamed on the
Pilar’s
bow that very afternoon, this time it was even more astonishing.

As I watched them dance, I had to blink my eyes several times.  I also shook my head a few times—hard, as if trying to rid myself of a hallucination.  But nothing changed.