Papa Hemingway (34 page)

All of San Francisco de Paula was at the airport with banners to greet Ernest. He was well loved by his little village whose residents treated him like a benign feudal lord. He was generous and inconspicuous in his charities and he enjoyed occasional evenings in the village bar, talking with the men whom he had known for more than two decades.

Ernest reported that Mary was not interested in the pin but was being friendly toward him and cordial and hospitable to Antonio and Carmen. Also, in view of the fact that on Ernest's desk there were ninety-two letters awaiting answers, she had agreed that he should import Honor to be his secretary. Until this time he had never had full-time secretarial help.

Ernest and I talked on the phone before he left for Ketchum. "Things at
finca
under control," he said. "Antonio and Carmen are having a grand time. I act cheerful as always but am not."

"Why? I thought you said things . . ."

"At the
finca.
But the Castro climate is something else. Not good. Not good at all. Can't tell what it will be when I come back to work in January, and what I want most is to get back to writing. I just hope to Christ the United States doesn't cut the sugar quota. That would really tear it. It will make Cuba a gift to the Russians. You'd be amazed at the changes. Good and bad. A hell of a lot of good. After Batista any change would almost
have
to be an improvement. But the anti-United States is building. All around. Spooks you. If they really turn it on, I'm sure they will put me out of business."

"Well, not really. You could always set up in Ketchum."

"Twelve months of the year? Summers without the boat?"

"You could summer in Key West."

"No, that belongs to the kids. And besides, there are too many ghosts. No, hell, I'll just get one of those 'Going Out of Business' signs and hang it around my neck:
After 25 Tears at This Location Everything Must Be Sold at a Sacrifice.''''
There was a pause at the other end of the wire. "A hell of a sacrifice."

From Ernest's account of it, the motor trip with Antonio and Carmen from Key West to Ketchum was not a success. Nor was the stay in Ketchum, where none of the 746 inhabitants spoke Spanish or, with the exception of the Lords, had ever seen a bullfight. Ernest tried valiantly to entertain him, but nevertheless Antonio returned to Spain much sooner than scheduled.

The other negative event of that Ketchum sojourn was that while shooting ducks one afternoon, Mary fell and shattered her left elbow. Vernon Lord had to piece the bone together like a jigsaw puzzle and his prognosis was for a long haul in a cast and a longer haul in therapy. Ernest rallied, as he always did in physical emergencies, and devoted all his time to caring for Mary and running the house. When I came to Ketchum in early December, Ernest was so concerned with his chores that he only got out hunting once.

By January, Ernest was back in Cuba hard at work on his
Life
account of the
mano a mano,
which he was calling
The Dangerous Summer.
From January until June we telephoned each other quite often about the television plays I was working on and about the summer in Spain he was writing about. In February he reported that he was over seventeen thousand words into the article.

On one occasion he called because he was worried that the commentator's piece, just published in
Esquire,
might have made the
Life
editors think he had given away what was rightfully theirs. He said that in giving him a ten-thousand-dollar advance they had a right to expect him to protect them, and he
asked
me to call Ed Thompson, the editor of
Life,
and explain that the commentator was just the usual character who comes to lunch and stuffs his pocket with your ideas instead of your silver.

In March, Ernest telephoned to say that the piece was running much longer than expected, that it would be about thirty thousand words, and that I should tell
Life
he was shooting for an April 7th deadline. He also told me that Gary Cooper had spoken to him about
Across the River
and was in the process of preparing contracts for its purchase.

The next time I heard from Ernest he sounded tired and his voice was tense. The article for
Life,
which now stood at 63,562 words, had missed its April deadline with the end not in sight.

"I wrote Ed Thompson today," Ernest said, "to explain why the piece is running so long, that what I'm attempting to do is to make a real story which would be valuable in itself and worth publishing after there had been no deaths or dramatic endings to the season. As you may remember, when I hired on to write the piece it looked like one or other of the men might be killed and
Life
wanted coverage of it. Instead, it turned out to be the gradual destruction of one person by another with all the things that led up to it and made it. I had to establish the personality and the art and the basic differences between the two great artists and then show what happened, and you can't do that in four thousand words.

"If I could have done it shorter I certainly would have, but it was necessary to make the people come alive and to show the extraordinary circumstances of what we both saw last summer and to make something which would have some unity and be worth publishing. Certainly the price that
Life
was paying was worth more than the simple account of the
mano a manos,
which were no longer news and had been picked over by various vultures and large-bellied crows. What I was writing was worth much more than thirty thousand dollars but I thought the hell with that since I only know how to write one way: the best that I can."

'But now that it's longer, don't you intend to up the price?" "Well, actually what I did was to give them an out on both deadline and price. I told Thompson that I could jam through and finish by the April deadline as said I would, but thought that was unfair to
Life,
Literature and the Pursuit of Happiness. I explained it needs a month more solid work and then typing, correcting and retyping to be what I want it to be. So I gave them an out and offered to return the advance, but I said that if they still wanted it with a May deadline, then they would have to renegotiate the contract. I offered them forty thousand words for ten thousand dollars more than the five thousand words they contracted for. This is the minimum price I have been paid per word for any writing since before the Spanish Civil War. But offered to let them off the hook if they preferred."

"They'll take it. It's a bargain."

"I wrote young Scribner and told him to scratch the Paris book from the fall list due to this overextension on
The Dangerous Summer."

"You sound tired."

"I'm dead-house. Try to slow it down but can't. Has been building up too long. Do you think I am charging
Life
enough? It should divide into three parts."

"I'd say it should be at least three times the original price."

"And a limit of forty thousand words."

"When do you think you'll be finished?"

"By the end of May, if my eyes hold. I haven't wanted to worry you, but old eyes started getting bad in February and the doctors here say it's a rap called
keratitis sicca.
Cornea is drying up. Tear ducts dried up already. Only book in the joint with type big enough for me to read is
Tom Sawyer."

"But what are they doing for you?"

"Medication, but doctors say if it doesn't arrest I'll be blind in a year."

"What! Oh, I can't believe-"

"So haven't been running as a cheerful these days."

"But that's Cuban medicine. When you come to New York I'll get you to the best man—"

"So I'm down to one glass of booze, two glasses of wine and 
Tom Sawyer,
which is a great book but begins to pale on the ninth reading."

On the fourth of May I was awakened in the early hours of the morning by the overseas operator. Ernest had just heard
on
the radio that Cooper had had a prostate operation in
a Boston
hospital and there was speculation that it was malignant. I assured him that from what I had heard it was not malignant and that Cooper was scheduled to make a picture in Naples
that
summer. Ernest asked question after question about Cooper,
most
of which I couldn
't
answer. He was very upset; Cooper was one of his oldest friends, and although they did not see each other very often, their bond was strong.

Ernest was also perturbed over
The Dangerous Summer.
It had reached 92,453 words and he figured it would finish out around 110,000. What bothered him was how it could be brought down to 40,000 for
Life.
I advised him not to think about cutting until he had completely finished it, but he said he had nightmares over its emasculation of 70,000 words.

I clearly recall my reaction to that phone call: For the first time since I've known him, I thought, Ernest is unsure of himself. He had always been completely the master of what he wrote and how he wrote and where and when it would be published. But on the phone that morning that sense of control was missing. Perhaps the news about Cooper had undone him for the moment, or the worry over his eyes. Actually, I did not doubt that by the time
The Dangerous Summer
was finished he would be in command again.

Ernest finished
The Dangerous Summer
on May 28th and it came to 108,746 words. He said he had to go back to Spain to get what he needed for a coda that would bring it up to date, and to check certain things nobody would risk putting in a letter. The main thing he had to find out about was whether the practice of shaving the bull's horns, which he alleged was being done to bulls fought by Dominguin, was still going on. He also wanted to search out additional pictures.

But his immediate problem was excising seventy thousand words. Between June 1st and June 25th he telephoned me twelve times, with mounting anxiety at his inability to cut the manuscript.
Life
had offered to cut it for him, but he did not trust their judgment. After twenty-one days, working from early morning all through each day, Ernest had cut a total of two hundred and seventy-eight words. When he phoned on the twenty-fifth his voice was husky with fatigue. "I have been over every page a dozen times," he said, "and all I have is five hundred and thirty words to show for it. I can't see another word I can cut. I can't cancel out on
Life
because they've already advertised the piece. But I just can't go over it again, Hotch; it all seems locked-in to me and I can't use my eyes any more; I can't see the damn words—in the morning I can but by ten o'clock I can't see the goddamn words any more. So I was thinking this morning—I know it's a hell of an imposition— but could you possibly come down and work on it with me? You'll have your sharp head and your good eyes and it won't take more than a few days and we'll get the piece off to
Life
and then we can go out on
Pilar
and relax and catch some fish and it will be like old times."

I flew down to Havana on the morning of June 27th. Ernest was waiting at the airport and Juan drove us directly to the
finca.
It was very hot and humid; as we drove through the streets of Havana I noticed anti-United States slogans scrawled everywhere on the walls, and there were
cuba
 
si!
 
yankee no!
banners stretched across the street tops. A big anti-Yankee demonstration was in the works for July 4th, and for its climax Castro was scheduled to harangue a giant rally in the heart of the city.

Ernest sat in the front seat, as he always did, looking straight ahead, keeping his eyes off the signs. "You can see," he said, "this is the last summer."

The villagers waved to him as we passed through San Francisco de Paula and he smiled and waved back. We ate lunch with Mary quietly and pleasantly in the high-ceilinged dining room, with its horned beauties watching us from the walls, and Ernest complimented Mary on the cold-fruit soup and the
bonito.
But he ate very little and filled half his wine glass with water. He closed his eyes frequently and often pressed his fingers against them. His beard had not been trimmed for
months;
the forward part of his head had become bald but he covered it successfully by combing forward the long hair at the back of his head, giving himself the mien of a Roman emperor.

After lunch he gave me the 688-page typed manuscript of
The Dangerous Summer
and I took it up to the study at the top of the tower and started to read. It was so hot I had to hold my handkerchief in my hand to keep the perspiration out of my eyes. (There were no fans or air conditioners in any part of the
finca.
) I read and made notes all that afternoon and evening. At night it seemed to get even hotter and it was difficult to sleep.