Mitla Pass (51 page)

Norfolk

October 11, 1936

Dear Miss Abigail,

... A crisis is brewing in my house. I am about to reach my thirteenth birthday, when Jewish kids (boys) get confirmed in a ceremony called a bar mitzvah. My grandmother and grandfather are really after me to be confirmed and want me to make a trip to Baltimore next summer and get instructions. But my father says he’d never forgive me, and besides, he’d get into trouble with the Party... .

Getafe Air Base

Madrid

November 15, 1936

My Dearest Friend Gideon,

... You must realize that even though I’m no longer a member of the Communist Party, I believe, very powerfully, about what we are doing here in Spain. When I became a Communist, I honestly thought I could help change some of the injustices in America. But later I watched the Communists devour each other brutally. And while they preached they had created the ultimate democracy in Russia, they showed themselves to be the most undemocratic organization on the planet. They certainly are not the answer for America.

I have come to love Roosevelt and I realize now that a true democracy doesn’t have a patented answer for every ill in its society. We cannot and do not fear our neighbors, our country, and ourselves as the Communists do, in order to exist.

I am in Spain to fight against Hitler and Italian fascism. I wish to God Americans understood that better.

If you are truly to become a writer, then you must have freedom. The Communist writers I’ve followed have either left the party in protest or have become mimeograph machines and bitter automatic liars. Writers cannot flourish in an atmosphere of tyranny. Free yourself, Gideon ... free yourself!

Norfolk

January 25, 1937

Dear Miss Abigail,

... My family is really shaken up by the purges in the Soviet Union. Thousands of Jewish intellectuals, doctors, artists, and politicians have been put on trial and either banished or killed. A lot of Jewish members of the Party here have quit in protest. My father doesn’t allow the subject to be spoken of in the house, but my mother and Molly are having second thoughts.

After four years of being told to hate Roosevelt, the Party is now telling us to support him. They do that on a lot of issues, say one thing one day and the opposite the next... .

Getafe Air Base

March 15, 1937

My Dearest Friend Gideon,

... We have recently fought two huge battles at Jarama and at Guadalajara and it is difficult to tell who won. As you know, Madrid has been under siege from almost the first day of the war and it is still under siege, only now Fascist artillery can reach the city and it is a pity to see the magnificent buildings, centuries old, being demolished. It is more pitiful to see the starvation because of the blockade. I wish to God the democracies would end their terrible boycott. They are helping squeeze a fellow democracy to death.

Our five international brigades have over thirty-five thousand volunteers now, from everywhere in the world, and are holding the republic together while they build up a Spanish home army. You can be proud of our Abraham Lincoln Battalion. They have fought well on every front although they’ve suffered terrible losses... .

Norfolk

June 12, 1937

Dear Miss Abigail,

... I have just read the new book by John Steinbeck. It is called
In Dubious Battle
and reminds me of your fight in Spain. He is truly going to be the greatest writer of our times. ...

... You certainly remember the boys at the Turney Boys Home Orphanage. You remember how much fighting they did at J. E. B. Stuart? Well, my team played them in baseball and we beat them. I hit a single and a double and stole two bases. Afterward we visited them at the home. I learned that they fight so much out of fear. They’re really scared as I am of things. I wrote a play for them, which was loosely based on
The Front Page,
and it was a riot and went over very well. I’m just like one of them now... .

Getafe Air Base

Madrid

July 7, 1937

My Dearest Friend Gideon,

... It is with terrible sadness that I must tell you my beloved brother, Jeremy, was shot down... .

... Every night since his death I have dreamed not only of him, but of the boys I have shot down, strafed on the ground and bombed. I realize they are Nazis and Fascists but I cannot get out of my mind the sorrow in their homes now, because I realize the sorrow in my home. What might these young men have become? Have I killed a writer, an artist? How many beautiful boys lie under the Spanish soil... .

Oh, Gideon, my dear Gideon, I want to come home, but I continue to be enraged by what they have done to this beautiful land. ... If only I knew that you wouldn’t have to fight a war, it could all be worth it.

Norfolk

August 10, 1937

Dear Miss Abigail,

... I see your mom and dad every chance I get. They are holding up very well, but they wish you’d come home. So do I. You’ve done enough, really enough... .

Getafe Air Base

Madrid

October 20, 1937

Gideon! I HAVE MET ERNEST HEMINGWAY! You know, I’m sort of a curiosity, being a woman flier, and I went into Madrid for him to do a story about me and we’ve fast become drinking pals.

He has a room in the Florida Hotel, as do most of the journalists. The whole Republican territory has been half starved. No one has seen fresh meat for months. Well, Hemingway was on the fifth floor of the hotel (the two top stories have been blown away by artillery). He ushered me in, and there, hanging near the window, was a side of beef.

He covers the war with special maps, binoculars, pistols, compass, hobnail boots, and canteens filled with Scotch. The front lines are only a twenty-minute taxi drive from Madrid, so he showed me what the war looked like from the ground... . “Papa” started off as a neutral, but has gone heavily to the Loyalists. For such a great writer, he’s really strange in his fears about becoming politically involved... .

Remember how we discussed his personality? He does have a terrible masculinity problem. He has a lady friend on call and his escapades are notorious. He tried to collect my scalp but I told him I was desperately in love with a young man of thirteen and intended to be faithful to him.

The problem with “Papa,” as I see it, is that as soon as another person is in his presence, he has to put on a show of his bravado. He has created an image that sometimes makes him, as a person, larger than his writings. Everyone around him caters to him, even up to speaking “Hemingwayese.” I think that deep down inside, he is a very insecure man and had to create a public version of himself to deliberately mask his many fears.

One day “Papa” is going to have to take a long look in the mirror and realize he is not nearly as huge as he has inflated himself. When he realizes he can’t live up to the image he created, he’s going to be in serious trouble.

But he is a thing of beauty to watch at his work. He lets no one or nothing stand in his way when he’s after his story. He sloughs off bureaucrats and red tape and is powerfully arrogant and he is
always
right (in his own mind). I tell you these things because you might have to do the same in order to become a great novelist.

When I told him about the story you had written using the plot of
A Farewell to Arms
and setting it in Mexico, he roared with delight and penned to you the enclosed note... .

Dear Gideon Zadok,

Abigail Winters tells me you are going to become a great writer. Well, you’re off to a good start, stealing my plot. Someday I’ll tell you how many plots I have “borrowed.” Remember, boy, only steal from the best.

A novel takes the courage of a marathon runner, and as long as you have to run, you might as well be a winning marathon runner. Serendipity and blind faith in yourself won’t hurt a thing. All the bastards in the world will snicker and sneer because they haven’t the talent to zip up their flies by themselves. To hell with them, particularly the critics. Stand in there, son, no matter how badly you are battered and hurt. I hope to hear of your success someday.

Your friend,

Papa Hemingway

Gideon entered the kitchen, tossed his books on the oilcloth-covered table, and sampled the icebox. It was mostly empty, as usual. A few lingering packages of sandwich meat looked unappetizing. There was the standard note from Leah pinned to the bulletin board. It read that Momma had to go out on business and wouldn’t be home that night. Molly could fix him a deviled egg sandwich. There was also an apple. Momma loved him very much.

Leah was getting bolder in her outside forays. Gideon shrugged and was turning to his homework when he looked up and saw Molly in the doorway. She looked absolutely awful.

“Hi,” Gideon said. “What’s the matter? You sick?”

“Have you seen a newspaper or listened to the radio today?”

“No.”

“Get a grip on yourself, Gideon.”

“Hey, what’s the matter, anyhow?”

Molly set the afternoon
Ledger Dispatch
on the table, put her hands in her face, and wept. Gideon stared at the headline.

N
ORFOLK AVIATRIX KILLED IN
S
PAIN

Abigail Winters, daughter of WW I Ace, shot down in dogfight

Abigail Winters’s death was the most crushing and tragic experience of young Gideon’s life. For days he was in a stupor, barely eating, barely sleeping. He spent hours on end in the garage loft that held his “office.” Then came a final thunderclap, the news that his mother was going to take him from Norfolk. He all but refused to leave the loft, spending the days and half the nights curled up in a ball, staring blankly at nothing.

Molly came to him often, virtually force-feeding him, demanding he open up with a word or two.

“Are you angry with me?” she’d ask.

“No.”

“Momma probably made the decision to go to Baltimore a long time ago. She was just waiting for an opportunity for Dad to be out of town. I’ve done everything I could, but I can’t change her mind.”

Suddenly Gideon burst out, “I don’t want to leave Norfolk! I’ve got all my pals here. They just made me captain of the baseball team. I hit over three hundred. Some guy wanted to pick a fight with me and four of the kids from the Turney Home jumped him. I’m writing another play for them. Abigail’s dad has taken me flying and wants to teach me how. He treats me like I was his own son, and he really needs me.”

“Gideon darling, it’s not going to be that bad. You’ve got a dozen swell cousins around your age and you know how Uncle Lazar and Uncle Dominick love you.”

“I don’t want to live in that house on Monroe Street. It’s got rats all over and the schoolyards are all made of concrete.”

Tears came to Molly.

“Don’t cry, Molly.”

“I’m so sorry I won’t be with you to take care of you,” Molly wept, “but Bubba loves you so. ...”

“Sure ... sure. ...”

“Honey, I’m nineteen years old. I should have graduated high school a year and a half ago. Every time we moved I got put back a class. I made some of them up, but if I go to Baltimore, they’ll put me back another term. I’m staying here in Norfolk so I can graduate with my class. As soon as I’m out of school, I’ll be able to get a decent job and send for you or come to you.”

He jammed his hands into his pockets and clenched his teeth.

“Okay, baby? Tell me it’s okay.”

“Sure, I understand. I really do. It would be just plain selfish of me.”

Molly put her hands on her brother’s shoulders and looked at him with a half smile. “Hi, blue eyes.”

Gideon stiffened and fought for courage. “God always makes writers suffer. God’s always testing to see if we can take it.
He
wants tough writers.”

“There’s something else I have to tell you, Gideon. Look at me. Danny and I have been secretly married for three months. Not even Momma knows. We both love you very, very much. Danny wants you with us as much as I do.”

“I love Danny,” Gideon said. “I’m glad you have each other.”

“Oh, Gideon! Put your arms around me and squeeze me as hard as you can.”

T
HE NEGRO STEWARD
rapped on the cabin door. Leah slipped into her dressing gown and opened it.

“Your tea and toast, ma’am,” he said, “well be arriving in Baltimore in about an hour.”

Gideon climbed down from the upper bunk, splashed his face in the tiny sink, and brushed his teeth. Momma edged in, pushing him aside. She applied her makeup, a chalky powder to make her appear sallow and dark eye shadow to make her look consumptive. Gideon had seen her put on that special pasty face when she was going to have an argument with Dad, or when she applied for welfare, or a free clinic for him, or to otherwise indicate she was suffering.

“I’m going over for breakfast,” he said.

“Be careful what you order,” she said, “remember, no eggs or bacon and be sure you drink buttermilk.”

Gideon went out on the deck to catch the early morning zest in the air, as the overnight steamer from Norfolk to Baltimore chattered up the bay. The boy was still suffering badly from the death of Miss Abigail. He leaned on the railing and thought about the novel he was going to try, which would let the world know what a great woman Abigail Winters was.