by Winton, Tom
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.
Ernest and Agnes were young again. She was so beautiful in her nurse’s cap and white gown. He was lean and dashing in his ambulance driver’s uniform. And Agnes von Kurowsky supported him as he danced without his crutches. Cheek to cheek, as if they were one, they swayed gracefully in the light from above.
Then Ernest Hemingway leaned his head back slowly and looked into her eyes. He whispered something. She answered him. Then they both smiled.
Chapter 11
With my curiosity and amazement getting the best of me, I continued to stand there watching Ernest and Agnes dance. I knew I was intruding and had no right being there, but I couldn’t help myself. Finally, after feeling my presence had desecrated something sacred for far too long, I forced myself away from the doorway and retreated to the sofa.
I thought I’d wait there for Ernest to come back in. Then I’d ask him about his miraculous reunion. How did it feel being young again? Do you still love Agnes von Kurowsky? Had you married her, do you think it would have lasted? Do the souls beyond the clouds ever marry? Do they love everybody the same? These were but a few of the things I wanted to ask him. But it had been a long, long day, and I quickly fell asleep on the sofa.
I slept through the night but have no idea how much of it I spent on that couch. For when I awoke the next morning, I was in a comfortable bed. But it was not in the Finca Vigia. It wasn’t anywhere else in Cuba for that matter. It was more than a thousand miles away.
Lying on my back, the first vision to register through my squinty eyes was of yet another unfamiliar ceiling. This one had beams. Rolling to my side now, my other senses started kicking in. I recognized the incessant hum of an air-conditioner and felt a smooth satiny sheet beneath my bare thighs. Then I assessed the room. In the new day’s dusky light I could see that the room was large and so were the furnishings.
I rolled over to my other side and saw another king-size bed there. It was empty, and there was not a single ruffle on the duvet that covered it. I’d wondered for three days whether or not Ernest ever slept. Now I knew the answer.
Over the steady whir of the air-conditioner, I heard a horn honk outside. Then another joined in, and they blared in unison. When the grating noise finally stopped, there were other honks but none of them as angry. I listened closely. There were busses and from the distance the shrill whine of a siren.
Beginning to wonder now where the hell Ernest had gone, I stepped out of bed and padded across a carpet thick enough to hide my feet. Pushing the drapes aside, I lifted one side of the window shade. It was lighter outside than I’d thought, but the sun was nowhere to be seen. Down below, a horde of tiny creatures swarmed the sidewalks. Between the wide cement walkways, I saw four lanes of frenetic yellow cars. As far as I could see, cabs were zipping, zapping, cutting each other off. My memory being what it was, I still didn’t know where I was. But it all began to look vaguely familiar. By now the siren I’d heard had gotten louder. And just as a long, red, hook and ladder came into view, the door to the room opened. It was Ernest holding two white paper bags.
“Good morning, Jack. Hey, you’re looking kind of good in your tighty whiteys.”
“Cute Ernest. Real, real funny.”
Lowering the bags onto a desk now digging inside one, he said, “Come on. I’ve got coffee and two of the best bagels in all of New York.”
“That’s where we are? New York?”
“You don’t remember yet?”
“Remember what?”
“You grew up in New York, in Queens.”
Peeking out the window one more time, I said, “I do feel like I’ve been here before.”
“Well,” Ernest said as he removed the top from a Styrofoam cup, “I’ve had a few words with the head man this morning. He’s going to allow some of your past here to come back to you. It will come gradually, in bits and pieces, but as the day wears on, you’ll remember things.”
I walked across the room, fished my coffee out of one of the bags and said, “Where did you get this?”
“At New York’s finest delicatessen. Wait till you taste the bagel. Hope you like onions,” he said, unwrapping them both.
“Sounds good to me, but it must have looked awfully funny when two paper bags were flying along the sidewalk on their own.”
“You know better than that, Jack. I just went for a little stroll. They were sitting outside the door when I got back.”
“Don’t tell me you guys have connections at that deli, too.”
“We’ve got them everywhere. You’d be amazed if you knew how many people you’ve known in your life who are hooked up with us.”
Sitting across the round mahogany table from Ernest now, I went to work on the bagel and asked him, “Well, now that we’re in New York, what do you want to see first?”
Lowering his cup, looking at the dark liquid then looking back at me, he said, “Believe it or not, we’re not here for me. We’re here so that you can see a few things . . . bits of your past.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to remember anything,” I said shaking my head.
“Oh, you will my friend; you will.”
For a moment I wondered what I might learn about myself. But I quickly abandoned that thought and asked Ernest a question that had nothing to do with me. In a gentle, empathetic tone I asked, “What happened last night? With Agnes, I mean? Is it something you can tell me about?”
He took in a deep breath and held it for a moment. Letting it out really slowly he said, “Oh sure, I can tell you, Jack. But you pretty much saw for yourself.”
Now, feeling as guilty as when I’d actually spied on them, I said, “I only watched for a minute or two, Ernest. Really! That was it. I felt like I was intruding.”
“Oh hell, I don’t mind that. To be honest, I didn’t even think about it. I sensed you were watching, but my mind was deep into something else.”
“What did you say to her? It’s been what . . . almost a hundred years?”
“That’s personal, Jack. That’s something nobody other than Agnes and I need to know.”
There was another brief silence. He ran a hand from the back of his head down over his white hair. Then he said, “Let’s forget that for now. Did you have a good time at the party?”
“You bet I did. I met a lot of interesting people. That was nice of Him to throw it for you.”
“It wasn’t only for me. Just like this trip to New York, the reunion was for you as well.”
“For me? Come on, Ernest. You know I never met any of those people before last night.”
“Exactly! There you go. Like I just said, the party was for you, too.”
Finally I realized what he was getting at.
About an hour later, after I’d showered and dressed in clean Dockers, brown shoes, and a powder blue button-down shirt, we locked the fancy room behind us.
We took an elevator down, and when we exited the Waldorf, a cab was waiting at the curb. Close to nine o’clock on a weekday, it seemed all of the people on the bustling Park Avenue sidewalk were running for their lives. Not one of the intent faces looked at any of the others as the charge of humanity sidestepped one another. Everybody was trying to beat the clock this overcast morning.
I opened the back door of the cab, and the driver looked over the seat at me. I ducked my head in. I didn’t know what part of the world he was originally from, but his creamed-coffee face had the most disinterested look in all of New York.
Waiting by the door for Ernest to climb in, the guy barked through a bulletproof partition, “Are you getting in or not?” The impatient edge on his accented voice turned my mood as dark as his black hair.
“Relax, my friend. I’m getting in.” And as Ernest scooted down the seat, I did as well.
“Where to?” he shot back.
He got me with that one. Not having any idea, I flashed a look at Ernest. He was fumbling with a small white slip of paper. As he looked at it he whispered to me, “Tell him to just head out to Flushing for now.”
I did, and the Welcome Wagon candidate whipped away from the curb.
As we made our way toward the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, there was a grim look on the city that never sleeps. Lifeless gray clouds hung so low that the tops of the towering buildings were lost in them. All the pedestrians on the streets and sidewalks looked just as lost. Granted, most of them still walked quickly, but their steps had no bounce.
Just before reaching the tunnel, the lowest cloud opened up. There was no downpour, but the rain was substantial and steady. As it almost always does when rain falls on Manhattan, traffic immediately came to a near standstill. And just as it stopped, something else finally started to move—my memory. The first full recollection of my New York past appeared in my mind.
Wait a minute. I remember this. I remember traffic stopping in the rain. I remember passengers getting out of taxis before reaching their destinations and walking the last legs of their trips rather than sitting idle with the meters running. That’s it . . . I was a cab driver at one time! Let me see. I think I did it for a couple of years. Yeah, I did when I was a younger guy in my early twenties. Hell yes, I remember that.
Entering the Midtown Tunnel by now, we were quickly picking up speed. The tunnel’s tiled walls seemed to squeeze the two narrow lanes as we raced through with our headlights on. But it was a short ride beneath the East River’s polluted waters. In a matter of just a few minutes, we were back in the dim daylight, motoring east on the Long Island Expressway. Ernest and I hadn’t exchanged a word up to this point, and the driver hadn’t given us a single glance in the rearview.
I’d been sitting on the edge of the back seat, peering out the window, and looking for more clues to who I was. They were coming more and more frequently; and by the time we neared Flushing, I was being bombarded with them. Scenes and incidents rushed at me from both sides of the busy highway. As cars, trucks and busses whizzed all around the cab, things were beginning to make sense.
Citi Field rose from a landscape of dusky tenements, and I remembered that Shea Stadium had once stood there. Then we swung onto the Van Wyck Expressway, and I saw the twelve-story-high Unisphere. The remnant from the 1964-65 World’s Fair jogged my memory again. It brought me back to my childhood when my friends and I rode bicycles through the park that sits on the old fairgrounds. A small smile was growing on my face, but the driver quickly put an end to its future.
“Okay,” he snarled without looking back. “Where in Flushing do you want to go? I must know what exit to get off here.”
I pulled out the directions Ernest had given me when we’d left the Waldorf. Unfolding the strange parchment and feeling its smoothness with my thumbs and forefingers, I read the elegant handwriting again. “One-forty-one-dash-eleven Frankfort Avenue,” I snapped as if shoving the address at the driver.
He continued driving without as much as a flinch. I turned to Ernest and gave him a sly little wink, but it didn’t get the rise from him I’d expected. Instead he lifted his white brows and nodded his head pensively. Looking into my eyes as if reading the thoughts behind them, it was plain to see he hadn’t appreciated my sharp comeback to the driver. I was surprised and disappointed by his reaction. But what had he expected me to do? Treat the guy like royalty? He sure as hell hadn’t been nice to me. I just nodded at Ernest and turned toward my window again.
A few miles farther we got off the expressway at the Northern Boulevard exit; and as we entered into Flushing, I suddenly had to squint. A shiny, bright sun was finding its way out from behind the clouds. All the grayness was thinning, and splotches of blue were spreading. But at the same time, it started to rain—insi
de my head, that is. As we sped between Northern Boulevard’s two endless rows of stores and old brick buildings, a deluge of nostalgic memories pelted my mind.
Oh wow! I remember that auto parts store! I fell off Eddie Carlin’s motorcycle right in front of it. He was trying to teach me to drive that monster. Hey, look over there! That’s where Horn and Hardart’s restaurant used to be. We used to cut classes . . . go there for coffee and English muffins. And look at that . . . my school. Good old Flushing High. Hot damn, I remember it! It’s the oldest public high school in all of New York. It still looks the same . . . just like a medieval castle. Yupper, it’s all coming back now. . . .
The cabbie made a sharp right turn by the YMCA, and we were on a quieter, two lane now, surrounded by five- and-six-story brick tenements.
Look at that! Weeping Beech Park! There are the basketball courts behind the high cyclone fence. We used to have some damn good games there. I see the walkway still runs alongside the courts. Oh shit . . . I remember something about that that I wish I hadn’t. After partying in Manhattan one night, me and the guys took a cab all the back way here. All of us were broke, so we got out of the cab, reached in our pockets as if we were going to pay, then ran like hell through the walkway. Poor guy couldn’t drive the cab on it and chase us. Damn! That was a cold thing to do.
A few blocks farther the driver hung a left onto Frankfort Avenue. It seemed like just yesterday that I’d lived in the canyon of tall brick tenements before us. The building I grew up in was only three more blocks away.
We passed the schoolyard where all the bad-asses used to sniff glue and Carbona Cleaning Fluid. Across the street from it, the little Associated Food Store where I had my first part-time job was gone. I’d stocked shelves and lugged heavy egg crates there when I was fifteen. For the first time in many years, I could now see in my mind the pretty blond girl who used to come in three times a day to peek down the aisles at me. But I saw another thing, too. Something I didn’t want to. It was me, planting cold beer and cigarettes in with the trash before taking it out some nights.
