by H. K. Bush
“Well, in fact, it does not. You write a crisp prose, Yu-san. I hope you will manage to keep from spoiling that. But the style is not the issue at all. Your account of those events is predictable enough. But allow me to ask a few minor questions about this story, ne?” I nodded my consent.
“Why would a thief take only a small valise, when there are other larger pieces of luggage?”
“I had wondered about that myself. I suppose due to the weight of the other pieces, and just wanting to get away less conspicuously?”
He smiled my way. “Yes, perhaps. What about the advertisement in the Paris newspapers? Have you seen this ad yourself?”
I shook my head no.
He nodded. “And what about the night train back to Paris? Can you tell me the specifics of that trip? Which train did he take? Or, why did his friends Jack Hickok and Lincoln Steffens visit the Lost and Found a few days later, if Hemingway did so himself?”
I now had a look of confusion, and said, “Sensei, I don’t know about Hickok and Steffens. As for the train, well, no, I can’t give any specifics, of course. But these are all facts from the biographies, generally speaking.”
“Not facts, Yu-san. These are simply the commonplace details of the biographies. Actually, I will say that these literary legends commonly develop over time. And surely you know who was the greatest artist of the Hemingway myth, yes?”
“Hemingway?”
“Precisely.”
Now another long break, for sipping tea and for me to turn these ideas over in my mind. After some time, Sensei continued.
“Some of the biographers have lately begun to realize what Carlos Baker had been saying for many years, namely that decades later, Hemingway himself would turn the story of the stolen manuscripts into a tragic moment in his young life in Paris, a tragedy whose pain was nearly unbearable. Poor Hemingway, the tragic hero-writer of Paris! It was a tempting opportunity for Hemingway to generate pity for himself. He could help generate the mythic elements by which the very greatest writers should be remembered by their followers.”
“And so, according to your theory, these events never actually occurred? If so, how could one go about showing this theory to be true?”
“Oh, yes, some of those events did, in fact, occur, Yu-san. The valise containing certain manuscripts was taken to the trains by Hadley, and it was promptly carried off, perhaps even stolen by one of the many petty thieves who lurk about the Paris stations. Or perhaps,” he smiled, “that valise was the object of some other person’s attention.”
I looked at him, puzzled. “Well, maybe it was. But how could we ever know if that were the case?”
“Yes, how could we know?” He was in his element, a long-time professor teasing the truth out of his curious student. He was in no hurry to divulge his secrets.
But I was getting a little tired of the game, and wanted a direct answer. So I asked for one. “You expect me to believe that all the biographers are wrong, and that you alone have discerned the truth? Sounds a bit shady to me, Sensei.” I smiled as I said this, but I meant it.
He was polite despite my cocky tone, but he managed to remain evasive. “Yu-san, you still misunderstand a little, and sound a bit naïve as well. Allow me to explain a few things, first. I must remind you again that a person with true devotion, time, and money can arrange almost any kind of acquisition, or find almost any information. Sometimes it means that one must be willing to … to make certain decisions, or request certain acts, that are not always … how can I put it? Not always acceptable under normal circumstances.” He wiped his forehead with a napkin. “If you wish to say that the ends justify the means, then by all means, do say that.”
I looked him in the eye at this. Was he making some sort of confession? I thought of my trip to Manila. Was it part of certain decisions or acts in which the ends justified the means?
“But if you must know. Yes, Yu-san. I, too, have stooped low, in order to find out things about authors that I have wished to discover. It became a kind of obsession for me at one period in my life to discover secret things that nobody knew—except me. And I have also done things, or more accurately arranged to have done on my behalf, acts that were—what shall we say?—somewhat outside the blurry lines of human ethics, not to mention the rule of law?”
He regarded me with a precocious grin and must have noticed the quizzical look in my eye. “Yes, I am admitting this to you now, because for a long time I have wished that you would know what kind of person I truly am, and have been. I have felt some guilt about many of these matters, in fact. Perhaps you feel that guilt somewhat yourself, Yu-san? There is a kind of voyeuristic thrill, isn’t there, when you find something in an archive that nobody else has ever noticed? Isn’t there a bit of a seductive pleasure, when reading the private thoughts of an author, concealed in a diary, or a notebook, thoughts never meant to be seen by another human’s eyes? Surely you know this erotic feeling, yes?”
A long pause ensued as Sensei sipped more tea, and ate more sembei. Then he delicately unwrapped a fine piece of Swiss chocolate, popping it into his mouth, and closed his eyes. I was almost stunned by his frank intimation of acts that were immoral, if not illegal, in attaining these kinds of literary treasures. But it was hard for me to think about how to broach such a topic. So instead I said, “In your wide experience, Sensei, where do we draw the line in terms of the ethics of collecting and examination? Is all fair in love and war, or something like that? Because that sounds a little naïve to me!” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I was dangerously close to crossing some unseen line in our relationship.
He glowered at me a moment. Tensions were rising, if only slightly. He held the chocolate in one side of his mouth. “Yu-san,” he began, emotionlessly, “I had thought that you would feel flattered to be the first one to hear of all these new discoveries, besides Mika, of course. I can handle some skepticism—we are both scholars, and trained to think this way. But I would have also thought that you might have some faith in me as well.”
Now he waited, allowing some moments to settle us both down. “Please excuse me for challenging you,” I said.
“I expect to be challenged, Yu-san. But I require your respect as well, and your patience. And I must tell the story in my own way. I assure you, all my evidence is at hand, and within these walls. All your questions will be addressed, I promise.”
He brushed his hands together, and looked from side to side. Then he headed off into uncharted waters, one of his habits that often infuriated me. “Now. Do you know the story of the old Boston sea captain who retired to live out his last years in Florence? He was, of all things, a passionate devotee of Percy Shelley, whom he believed to be the greatest poet of all time, a romantic bard who delivered the dictations of the gods, as he saw it. This salty, old captain was rather obsessive in his great devotions, you see. It was in the 1870s, I believe.” He talked slowly while still working the chocolate around in his mouth as it melted, covering his mouth with his right hand in the Japanese style. Finally, he swallowed the remnants of the candy.
“Well, the story goes that this sea captain discovered that an elderly lady, once intimate with Lord Byron, was living in a villa nearby, just on the other side of a door he passed almost daily. Through the grapevine he learned that this old lady held a large cache of papers from both Shelley and Byron: letters, old drafts of poems, perhaps even unknown diaries and journals. Well, the captain made it his mission in life to bring these papers to light, and to secure for himself a place in literary history. So he disguised his purposes and approached the woman about renting rooms in her large, mostly empty villa. Do you know of this old tale?”
I shook my head no. He wiped his hands on a napkin, and sipped still more tea. “History does not tell us whether this old captain ever succeeded or not. His name was Silsbee, by the way, and he had been a proper New England man for most of his life. The woman was called Claire, an old lover of Byron’s, advanced in age, who lived in the
Via Romana in the middle of Florence in a dilapidated building from the Renaissance. Captain Silsbee became excited to think that, everyday as he walked by her building, hidden behind its mossy walls was a woman whose lips had pressed the face of Lord Byron, and whose ears had listened with rapt attention to the voices of the other great British poets of Byron’s time. It was indeed a heady brew of temptation. Can you forgive old Captain Silsbee for trying to communicate with this legendary figure, Yu-san?
“Sadly, we do not know to what extremes Silsbee was willing to go. What we do know is that he was hypnotized by the idea of holding in his hands the old letters of the dead poet. He was tempted by the very same things that tempt both you and me. And sometimes, in being tempted,” he said, as he brushed some crumbs off of his robe, “we do things that other people consider improper, or not quite ethical. Yes, I would admit to that. But wouldn’t you agree that the world deserves to see any letters and diaries of Shelley that remain to be discovered? In this case, don’t the ends of literary knowledge and wisdom overcome any questionable means of producing them?”
With this Sensei got to his feet and slowly worked his way to the hallway and then toward the back of the house. Several minutes later he returned with an old book, which he handed to me. “This is for you. Perhaps it will help you to understand my own obsessions on these points.” He smiled in saying “obsessions,” in a kind of ironic joke to himself. I looked at the volume. The Complete Tales of Henry James, Volume 6: 1884-1888 was on the binding. It was musty and weathered, and from the looks of it, came from the 1950s or ’60s, or thereabouts.
I leafed through it. “James, huh? To tell you the truth, he was never one of my favorites.”
This also amused Sensei. “I felt exactly the same—that is, when I was younger, like you. But James is one of those acquired tastes, I think. Like fine wine, he improves with age. When you get to be my age, perhaps your view of Henry James will change.
“In any event, I must insist that you take this and read it. I assume you have not read The Aspern Papers, then?” He took the book back, and began looking through it. There were faded pencil markings in the margins, and evidently he had a particular passage in mind. “Ah yes. Anyway, this is the story James wrote after he had heard the tale of our Captain Silsbee from Boston. He was so intrigued that it became the germ for what I think is one of James’s most perfect fictions. He invented a dashing romantic poet, Jeffrey Aspern, to be the principal subject of admiration for the story’s nameless narrator, who would do almost anything, or even perhaps die, for the joy of discovering new manuscripts by his idol. I know of no other story that captures both the joys and the horrors of this sort of literary fascination—perhaps a kind of mania—for collecting.”
He looked at a marked passage, studying it for a moment. “James captured perfectly the feelings of grandeur about literary relics, and he knew the moral qualms that one might have about doing whatever it takes to find and secure those relics. James understood the, shall we say, narcotic effect of collecting. But perhaps you do not quite understand, Yu-san.”
Sensei closed the book, offered it to me with both hands, and regarded me intently. “You see, these writers are for me like gods. And their papers are like relics of their greatness, even those they wished to burn. Yes, it is a kind of lifelong infatuation. But as James says so truthfully, I really have no need to try and defend this position. It is for me very much like a kind of religion, you see.” He was now looking me dead in the eye, almost rapturous.
I smiled just a fraction, which Sensei must have caught. He smiled right back, in that funny, enigmatic Japanese way of his. Then after a moment his smile vanished, and he added, “Does it all sound so funny to you? If so, it only means that you have not fallen completely under the spell of the narcotic. However, one day you may very well find that you are like me and like Captain Silsbee, and even like Ahab.” He paused and then added, “Yes, just three old sea captains, drifting about on the oceans of our lengthy days, searching for the words of life by which we might be saved.” He stood, and bowed. “Please excuse me for now, Yu-san. The time has gotten away from me, and I must deal with other matters just now.” He began backing himself ceremoniously from the room.
The idea of becoming like old Silsbee, run aground in Florence in the 1870s and looking for an anchorage, was sobering, but my mind was churning away at the enigmas surrounding Hemingway’s early manuscripts. I nearly fainted when he said he had to leave. “Sensei, you must finish telling me about Hemingway.”
“Yes, well, of course. Next time. And you will read the stories by James?”
“Yes, of course, but—”
“Then perhaps we can discuss them as well—next time.” He turned his head slightly to check the large clock on one of the bookshelves behind him. “Yes, James does tend to grow in stature as time ticks away. But all that is for another day, I think.”
I now stood up as well.
“Let’s continue with that story next time. It hinges on Pound, and my rather odd conversations with him near the end of his life.”
“What?! You met Ezra Pound?”
He smiled at my outburst. “Why yes, Yu-san. I have suggested to you repeatedly, the magic that money is capable of performing. I think you should have suspected that a man of my means and passions would have arranged meetings with many of the great writers of my lifetime. In fact, besides Pound, I have visited with the likes of Robert Frost, Pearl Buck, John Steinbeck. I spoke with T.S. Eliot in London after a lecture he gave, and bought him a drink afterwards as we discussed the Marx Brothers, of all things. In fact, I attended his memorial service in Westminster Abbey. That’s where I first laid eyes on Pound, who also attended, though I did not meet him until a few years later, in Italy. Sadly, I never met Hemingway,” he said, shaking his head in disappointment. “It was not for lack of trying, I can assure you. But by the time I became truly serious about such things, he was in great decline and hard to pin down.” He paused and his gaze clouded. Then he looked up at me. “But I did manage to meet Hadley and had a very pleasant afternoon chatting with her, up in New Hampshire.”
He was momentarily inspired to continue when he detected my wide-eyed amazement at these last revelations.
“Yes, Yu-san. Hemingway’s first wife. And I also made up for my failure to shake hands with Hemingway by meeting many others. I had lunch with Dorothy Parker, whose booming voice actually scared me a little. She was a formidable figure indeed. I even met Alfred Hitchcock. He attended a reception I gave for an artist friend. I can still picture the room—one of those over-decorated ballrooms at the Bel Air Hotel, in Los Angeles. It was back when the Japanese were still not welcome in good society. I believe it was only my wealth that enabled many of the Americans I met to overlook my heritage.”
My jaw must have been hanging open because he chuckled. “Do you find all of this so hard to believe, Yu-san? These are just people, like you and me. And I must admit I was always drawn, at least in my younger days, to glamour and celebrity. I was stargazing, yes, it’s true! You see, money, to be crass, opens almost any door in life, and I was not above using it for just that purpose.” He enjoyed the moment, though it was in the form of a confession.
He checked his wristwatch once again. “Now, I must be rushing off. But believe me, my knowledge comes directly from the lips—and documents—of Ezra Pound.”
“You actually met him.” I could hear the childish awe in my voice.
“Twice, in fact. Or at least some distant part of him. I can assure you that by that time in his life, he was a rather distraught and bewildering figure. He was old, dying, and largely in another world psychologically, I would say, and had gone many years barely speaking to anyone. But it was Pound all right.”
He was finding his shoes, and putting on his coat, with me trailing behind him. Mika stood in another doorway, watching us both with great curiosity.
“It was in Venice, 1967. He’d been out of the St. Elizabeth mental asylum for abo
ut a decade by then. But forced incarceration takes its toll. He rarely spoke, as I said, and was living with an old friend, Olga Rudge, a violinist. She owned a decrepit old villa in the San Gregorio section of Venice, not far from the train station. Perhaps my remarks are unkind, for he was gracious enough in talking with me, and about certain things, his mind was clear and sharp as ever. He knew all about Paris in 1922, for example, even if he could not recall what he had for lunch that day!”
He was ready now and heading out the door. I couldn’t believe he would leave me hanging like this. But in a flash, he had vanished into the back seat of his Mercedes, with the silent Omori at the wheel, and then they were gone. I moved as if in a dream, and soon realized I was halfway down the hill heading toward the train station, and wondering how I would manage until our next meeting.
These were shocking revelations, to be sure. Regarding the biographies of famous figures, I can verify that certain legends are repeated endlessly as facts—scholars obviously depend on the work of earlier scholars, creating a sort of echo chamber of received wisdom with much of it rarely, if ever, called into question.
I put down Jack’s pages, stood to stretch my back, and looked out the window at the barren trees in the courtyard beyond my office. It was darkening, and I thought perhaps I should head home to finish the manuscript in front of a warm fireplace. The sun was disappearing and the moon rising, both suspended in the frosty air.
Like everything else, people are born and they die. Lives—even extraordinary ones—are fragile things fraught with everyday conceits and frailties. Regarding Twain and Hemingway, it is well known that they both worked diligently to establish and shape their own legends. These were obsessive personalities who cared deeply what others thought about them, and so they worried over and tended to their own legacies.
I know far less about Ezra Pound—though I do recall he is said to have rarely, if ever, spoken during and after his time at the asylum. What a sad depiction of the once great mind that in those final years of his life he was reduced to a mere shadow of his former self. And yet, I find it difficult to muster much sympathy for this forlorn character, a traitor, in fact. He is a hard person for me to like. His devotion to Mussolini, his subsequent condemnation for the United States, and his blasting of Jews, especially bankers, all well documented in his countless radio broadcasts during WW II, turned him into an enemy of the state—and a bit of a clown. After a brief stay in a military prison near Pisa, he was shipped home and then confined to a facility for the insane outside of Washington D.C. for over twelve years. Though publicly he recanted many of his hideous beliefs, privately he maintained a hateful prejudice and a gargantuan, imperial conceit.
