Papa Hemingway (43 page)

In these phone talks Ernest was very businesslike and uncharacteristically crisp. I had the distinct impression he had in front of him a list of items to be discussed and he seemed to hurry from one to the next without paying too much attention to my responses, as if the list were an end in itself. Also, the natural slow rhythm of his speech had changed and his voice was a tape being run through the machine too fast.

As for
Across the River
, I simply put him off by saying I would look into it, but I didn't.

In the beginning of June, on my way back from Hollywood, I rented a car in Minneapolis and drove the ninety miles to Rochester through lovely spring countryside. The town seemed a little less forbidding decorated with green leaf. The nature of Ernest's hospitalization had been well publicized.
Time
magazine had wormed its way into the hospital's confidential records and had smeared its pages with the contents of the file on Ernest, including the number of shock treatments he had received. Where the facts were missing,
Time
filled the gaps with conjecture.

When I approached Ernest's room, he was standing at an elevated hospital table with a newspaper spread before him; I stood at the open door, not able, for the moment, to enter; whereas on my previous visit he had appeared attenuated, now the man he once was had disappeared and the man before me was only a marker to show where he had been.

He was very happy and, in a peculiar and incomprehensible way, proud that I had come. He called in nurses and other floor personnel, and introduced them to me, each introduction followed by an effusive endorsement of my past, present and future. When the doctors came they readily gave their consent to Ernest's request to go for a drive.

In the car I started to tell Ernest about Honor, who had obtained her first job, but he cut me off quickly. To my dismay it was as before: the car bugged, his room bugged, all the same persecutions. He directed me onto a small road that carried us through a wooded section and then climbed steadily up to the summit of a blunt hill. We parked the car and walked a short distance through woods along a trail that emerged upon a clearing. The view was a three-quarters sweep of all the surroundings; the sky was cloudless and busy with birds cavorting in the green-scented air.

Ernest noticed none of it; he immediately took me through a catalogue of his miseries: first, poverty complaints; then accusations against his banker, his lawyer, his doctor, all the fiduciary people in his life; after that, his worries over not having the proper clothes; and then the taxes. There was a great deal of repetition.

My first inclination was to let him talk himself out, hoping that perhaps that would help release the pressures within him, but as I watched him pace about, his eyes on the ground, his face contorted by the miseries he was recounting, there rose in me a kind of anger, and finally not able to hold back, I stepped into his path, causing him to look up, and said: "Papa, it's spring!"

He looked at me blankly, his eyes fuliginous behind his old glasses.

"We missed Auteuil again." Reality. Make him come into my world. Restate the reality. "We missed Auteuil again, Papa."

The eyes stirred. He moved his hands into his pockets. "And we will miss it and miss it and miss it," he said.

"Why?" My words pounced on his. I didn't want to lose the wedge. "Why not next fall? What's wrong with a good fall meet? Who says Bataclan can't run in autumn leaves?" Mention the good associations.

"There won't be another spring, Hotch."

"Of course there will. I can guarantee it. . ."

"Or another fall." His whole body had relaxed. He went over and sat on a busted fragment of stone wall. I stood before him with one foot up on an overturned rock. I felt I should get to it quickly now, and I did, but I said it very gently: "Papa, why do you want to kill yourself?"

He hesitated only a moment; then he spoke in his old, deliberate way. "What do you think happens to a man going on sixty-two when he realizes that he can never write the books and stories he promised himself? Or do any of the other things he promised himself in the good days?"

"But how can you say that? You have written a beautiful book about Paris, as beautiful as anyone can hope to write. How can you overlook that?"

"The best of that I wrote before. And now I can't finish it."

"But perhaps it is finished and it is just reluctance . . ."

"Hotch, if I can't exist on my own terms, then existence is impossible. Do you understand? That is how I've lived, and that is how I
must
live—or not live."

"But why can't you just put writing aside for now? You have always spent a long time between books. Ten years between
To Have and Have Not
and
For Whom the Bell Tolls
and then ten years more until
Across the River.
Take some time off. Don't force yourself. Why should you? You never have."

"I can't."

"But why is it different now? May I mention something? Back in 1938 you wrote a preface for your short stories. At the end of it you said you hoped you could live long enough to write three more novels and twenty-five more stories. That was your ambition. All right—
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Across the River and into the Trees
and
The Old Man and the Sea
, not to mention the unpublished ones. And there're more than twenty-five stories, plus the book of Paris sketches. You've fulfilled your covenant—the one you made with yourself—the only one that counts. So for God's sake why can't you rest on that?"

"Because—look, it doesn't matter that I don't write for a day or a year or ten years as long as the knowledge that I
can
write is solid inside me. But a day without that knowledge, or not being sure of it, is eternity."

"Then why not turn from writing altogether? Why not retire? God knows you have earned it."

"And do what?"

"Any of the things you love and enjoy. You once talked about getting a new boat big enough to take you around the world, fishing in good waters you've never tried. How about that? Or that plan about the game preserve in Kenya? You've talked about the tiger shoot in India—Bhaiya's invitation—there's that. And at one time we talked about your going in with Antonio on the bull ranch. There's so damn many things . . ."

"Retire? How the hell can a writer retire? DiMaggio put his records in the book, and so did Ted Williams, and then on a particular good day, with good days getting rarer, they hung up their shoes. So did Marciano. That's the way a champ should go out. Like Antonio. A champion cannot retire like anyone else."

"You've got some books on the shelf . . ."

"Sure. I've got six books I declare to win with. I can stand on that. But unlike your baseball player and your prize fighter and your matador, how does a writer retire? No one accepts that his legs are shot or the whiplash gone from his reflexes. Everywhere he goes, he hears the same goddamn question— What are you working on?"

"But who cares about the questions? You never cared about those phony tape measures. Why don't you let us help you? Mary will go anywhere you want, do anything you like. Don't shut her out. It hurts her so."

"Mary is wonderful. Always and now. Wonderful. She's been so damn brave and good. She is all that is left to be glad for. I love her. I truly love her." A rise of tears made it impossible for me to talk any more. Ernest was not looking at me; he was watching a small bird foraging in the scrub. "You remember I told you once she did not know about other people's hurts. Well, I was wrong. She knows. She knows how I hurt and she suffers trying to help me—I wish to Christ I could spare her that. Listen, Hotch, whatever happens, whatever . . . she's good and strong, but remember sometimes the strongest of women need help."

I couldn't manage any more. I walked a short distance away. He came over and put his hand on my shoulder. "Poor old Hotch," he said. "I'm so damn sorry. Here, I want you to have this." He had the horse chestnut from Paris in his hand.

"But, Papa, that's your lucky piece."

"I want you to have it."

"Then I'll give you another."

"Okay."

I stooped down to pick up a bright pebble but Ernest stopped me. "Nothing from here," he said. "There's no such thing as a lucky piece from Rochester, Minnesota."

I had a key ring that one of my daughters had given me, that had a carved wooden figure attached to it, so I removed the figure and gave him that.

"If I could get out of here and get back to Ketchum . . . why don't you talk to them?"

"I will, Papa, I will." I felt suddenly elated. "And you should work hard to think about the things you care about and like to do, and not about all those negative things. That's the best thing that can happen."

"Sure. Sure it is. The best things in life and other ballroom bananas. But what the hell? What does a man care about? Staying healthy. Working good. Eating and drinking with his friends. Enjoying himself in bed. I haven't any of them. Do you understand, goddamn it? None of them. And while I'm planning my good times and worldwide adventures, who will keep the Feds off my ass and how do the taxes get paid if I don't turn out the stuff that gets them paid? You've been pumping me and getting the gen, but you're like Vernon Lord and all the rest, turning state's evidence, selling out to them . . ."

I lashed into him. "Papa! Papa, damn it! Stop it! Cut it out!" A heavy quiver shook him, that thin old lovely man, and he held his hand against his eyes for a moment before he started to walk slowly back along the path to the car; we didn't say another word all the way back to the hospital.

I stayed with him for a few hours in his room. He was pleasant but distant. We talked about books and sports; nothing personal. Late in the day I drove back to Minneapolis. I never saw him again.

On the flight back to New York I thought about Mary's suggestion about a place that had access to the out of doors where Ernest could enjoy good air and scenery while receiving treatment. I knew now that he could be reached. On the hilltop he had been momentarily clear and lucid about his troubles. Sitting there in the plane, I could not help but try to reason out, from what he had said, what the forces had been that had crushed him. He was a man of prowess and he did not want to live without it: writing prowess, physical prowess, sexual prowess, drinking and eating prowess. Perhaps when these powers diminished, his mind became programed to set up distorted defenses for himself. But if he could only be made to adjust to a life where these prowesses were not so all-important . . .

I found myself thinking about his
dicho:
man can be defeated but not destroyed. Maybe it could work that way, even though Ernest favored its contrary brother. Ernest Walsh's words came back to me: "It will take time to wear him out. And before that he will be dead."

Mary was living in New York now, and we both consulted Dr. Renown about a new place that would be better suited to Ernest's needs. He suggested The Institute of Living in Hart
ford, Connecticut—small cottage residences, open grounds in a scenic setting, fine staff, long-term intensive care a specialty. Mary flew up to inspect it and consult with the director.

She thought that in all aspects the institute would be splendid for Ernest and brought back brochures and literature for me to look at, but again she faced the problem that transfer was not possible without Ernest's consent. Since this was a psychiatric institution and there was no way to disguise that fact, his resistance to it was foreordained. She wrote to the Mayo doctors, asking their assistance in influencing Ernest, but they replied that they would not aid in such a transfer since they did not feel it was to the patient's best interest. On the other hand, the institute was very deferential to Mayo's and insisted on playing a completely passive role.

On the evening of June 14th Mary came to dinner at my apartment. She had arranged a conference call with the Mayo doctors, and when it came through she asked me to listen in on an extension. The Mayo doctors said that Ernest was showing marked improvement and would suffer a lack of confidence in treatment if he were transferred. Mary asked what the marked improvements were. She was told that he was swimming every day, that he had promised to give up worrying about clothes, that he was making more mental effort, as evidenced by the fact that he had started to read a book—the first book he had read in the six weeks he had been there—and he was writing down notes about it. Mary asked the name of the book. She was told it was
Out of My League
by an author named George Plimpton. (The doctors had obviously not noticed Ernest's endorsement of the book on its dust jacket. Mary let it pass.) The doctors said that another good sign was Ernest's heightened interest in getting back to Ketchum and getting to work. Mary asked whether they planned to give any more shock treatments; they answered vaguely and it was my impression that they did not.

Mary then said that she was planning to go to Ketchum for the summer and asked whether, on the way, she could visit Ernest without upsetting him. To the contrary, the doctors said. It would be highly beneficial for Ernest to see her, and perhaps it might not be a bad idea to let him return to Ketchum for the summer to see whether he really could get to work. Mary became very disturbed at that suggestion, and said that she did not want to take on such a responsibility, that Ernest's letters did not reflect the degree of progress that would make her feel secure in having him back home. She said she did not want to come to the clinic on that basis. The doctors acquiesced, and said they would not promote Ernest's return just yet.