Papa Hemingway

by A. E. Hotchner

  "Mary was lovely the four months on safari, really wonderful, and most of the time quite brave. But after the first crash, when we were down in the jungle with the elephants pretty thick, she got a little testy—refused to believe I could tell the males from the females by the smell. Her other failings were that she never really considered lions dangerous and that the really bad fight we had with a leopard—when I had to crawl on my face into bush thicker than mangrove swamp and kill him with a shotgun—was stunting. Leopard was hurt bad and very dangerous, and I had a piece of shoulder bone in my mouth to keep my morale up. I had to fire at the roar because it was too thick to see. So that was stunting. Actually, what I'm saying is not against her because she was in a state of shock from the crashes, but she doesn't know about shock nor believe in it and she thinks when I am removing impacted feces from a busted sphincter, I am dogging it. But mostly she is loving and wonderful. And, as I say, very brave. But I wish she had some Jewish blood so she would know that other people hurt. But you can't have everything and I married a woman who is one-half Kraut and one-half Irish and that makes a merciless cross but a lovely woman. She is my pocket Rubens."

  "You know, when you were announced dead," Federico said, "your friends here took it very hard. Adriana begged me to take her to Cuba so that she could burn down your finca, so no one would ever sleep in your bed, sit in your chair or ever go up into the white tower. She was seriously going to destroy the swimming pool. Poor damned blessed girl."

  Adriana Ivancich was a tall, nineteen-year-old aristocratic beauty with long black hair and a curiously shaped but not unattractive nose that Ernest said was true Byzantine. Ernest had known her since early 1949; she came from a fine old Venetian family, wrote delicate poetry, painted, and skied expertly. She designed the book jacket for Across the River and into the Trees, and the length of time Ernest knew her corresponded roughly to the period that Colonel Richard Cantwell of the book knew the young Contessa Renata.

  "I haven't told Hotch yet," Ernest said, "but we are going to Adriana's palazzo on the Grand Canal tonight for dinner. It seems that the husband of Adriana's sister, an officer in the Italian navy, is attached to an American naval unit in Norfolk, Virginia, where he has fallen in love with The Hamburger. He's coming home next week and there is great anxiety in Adriana's household because of their total ignorance of The Hamburger. I've been prevailed upon to demonstrate the construction and execution of The Hamburger, but now that Hotch is here, I'll defer to him."

  After Federico had left, Ernest said, "What a damn classy gent he is. Italians are wonderful people. Probably have had the worst press in the world."

  "I'm damn glad to be back here. Our trip in '49 was the best time I ever had anywhere," I said.

  "Don't despair," Ernest said. "There's more where that good time came from." Ernest's confidence in the unending order of good times was founded on a very disciplined point of view toward the hours of his days and weeks. Each day was a challenge of enjoyment, and he would plan it out as a field general plans a campaign. That did not mean that there was no flexibility—two days in Paris quite often meant two months, as I had found out to my delight in 1949. But each of those Paris days was set up carefully before it dawned or, at the very latest, at its dawning. "When in Paris," Ernest had said to me, "the only thing you leave to chance is the Loterie Nationale."

  That day in Venice, Ernest was as usual helping things happen. His plans consisted of a visit to his jeweler's, Cogdognato & Company, to look at some emeralds, then a visit to Harry's Bar to see his old friend Cipriani, the enterprising Italian who is, in fact, Harry. At Harry's we were to pick up a ten-pound tin of beluga caviar to bring to the hamburger dinner. "We can't eat straight hamburger in a Renaissance palazzo on the Grand Canal," Ernest said. "The caviar will take the curse off it." After Harry's we were to meet some of Ernest's duck-shooting Torcello pals whom I had met on my previous trip. The plans seemed an ordeal for a man in Ernest's condition, but when I mentioned this he said, "They've slowed me down, but they haven't stopped me. They'd have to chop off both legs at the knees and nail me to the stake for that—but even then I could probably still get them with my reflex action."

  A hostile Adriatic wind had command of the Piazza San Marco as Ernest and I hunched our way toward Harry's Bar. We had already seen the ten-emerald display at Cogdognato's (Ernest's rating: one possible, three passables, two questionables, four absolute rejects), sent flowers and regrets to a duchessa's dinner invitation, and supervised the grinding of the evening's hamburger meat at a butcher shop on the Calle Barozzi. Now Harry's was refuge and reward.

  We stood at the bar and drank a Bloody Mary but it was not in the same league with Bertin's. The barman asked Ernest what he thought of the previous night's prize fight, a contest that had pitted Tiberio Mitri of Italy against Randy Turpin of England. Ernest gave the barman a detailed analysis of that one-punch fifty-second encounter, and then went on to discuss his own exploits in and around the ring.

  "Any time I was in New York I used to work out at George Brown's Gym," he recalled. "I was working out there one time with George when The New Yorker asked if they could send over St. Clair McKelway to do a 'Talk of the Town' on Hemingway the Boxer. Well, George and I talked it over and decided McKelway ought to have some good authentic color for his piece. At the entrance to George's place there was a big photo blowup of an Abe Attell fight, two faces like raw liver, so bloody you couldn't see the features; when McKelway shows up I say, 'See those guys, Mr. McKelway? They weren't really trying.'

  "Then George and I start to work out in the ring. George kept calling out, 'Maurice!' (The ring boy was named Morris.) 'Maurice! Mr. Hemingway wants to toughen his feet.' (I didn't own boxing shoes, so boxed in my stocking feet.) 'Bring down some pebbles from the roof.' Morris got some pebbles and sprinkled them around the ring. McKelway took notes. We boxed a little; then George yelled, 'Maurice! Strew some broken glass.' McKelway is writing a mile a minute. 'Mr. Brown,' Morris says, we ain't got no broken glass.' 'Then break some,'

  George says. Finally we belted each other a few times for show. McKelway was very impressed. Don't know if The New Yorker ever published the piece."

  Cipriani, a compact, energetic gentleman, all in gray—hair, face, suit and eyes—came in and was delighted to see Ernest. "I have been to Torcello," he said, "and the ducks are beyond description. Ernesto, you must stay a few days longer and shoot."

  "I couldn't raise a gun, much less hit anything," Ernest said.

  "How's your hand?" Cipriani asked.

  Ernest showed him the hand that had been badly burned in the African brush fire. "The new skin is beginning to gain confidence," Ernest said. "I wish I could say the same for the vertebrae, the kidney and the liver."

  "I didn't know about the kidney," Cipriani said.

  "Ruptured," Ernest said. "Do you mind if we sit at that table? Christ, you ever know me to sit at a table when there was a bar to stand at?"

  "What injured you?" Cipriani asked.

  "Crash number two. We went right to fire on that one. When I picked myself up off the floor of the plane I felt busted inside. The rear door was bent and jammed. My right arm and shoulder were dislocated but I used my left shoulder and my head and had good pushing room to get it open. Ray Marsh was up front with Miss Mary. I yelled to him, 'I have it open here. Miss Mary okay?' He yelled back, 'Okay, Papa. Going out the front way.' Was glad to see Miss Mary without a scratch on her and carrying her vanity case. Never been in a crisis yet that a woman forgot her jewels.

  "We stood there, helplessly watching the de Havilland burn up, and I made several scientific notations that might interest you, Cipriani, as a student of the alcoholic occult. First noted there were four little pops, which I chalked up as belonging to our four bottles of Carlsberg beer. Then there was a more substantial pop, which I credited to the bottle of Grand MacNish. But the only really good bang came from the Gordon's gin. It was an unopened bottle with a metal top. The Grand MacNish was cor
ked and besides was half gone. But the Gordon's had real eclat. I did sixteen thousand words about the crashes for Look, but it wasn't easy. Sometimes I wish I had a ghost writer. By Ernest Hemingway as told to Truman Capote."

  A large, tawny cat came up to the table and Ernest picked her up and snugged her against him, rubbing in back of her ears. "I got a letter from Rene yesterday that Friendless and Ecstacy had a serious fight and completely disappeared." Ernest continued to rub the tawny cat's neck and told her in a low, sincere voice how beautiful she was.

  A blue tin of caviar the size of a small hatbox was brought to the table, and Ernest patted Cipriani on the shoulder in approval. Then he held up the cat, looked at it thoughtfully for a moment and gently placed it on the table.

  Again we crossed the Piazza San Marco, its blanket of pigeons barely parting for our feet. There were only a few tourists buying corn from the elderly vendor. Ernest watched the pigeons as they strutted about our feet. "One thing about a pigeon," he said, "he's always ready to screw."

  As we passed the corn vendor, Ernest said, "You see that old fellow? Well, he had a fifty-four-year-old parrot that caught cold one day and said 'I'm going to heaven' three times over and died."

  Two young men wearing fur hats and giggling passed us. "One thing I've learned," Ernest said, "never hit a fairy—he screams." One of the pigeons flew up and perched on Ernest's arm for a moment. Ernest stopped and gentled him. "I once had a room at the St. James et Albany in Paris," he said, "and at the bottom of the porcelain toilet bowl there was a pair of blue lovebirds. Made me constipated."

  The hamburger dinner at the Ivancich palazzo was a great success. It was easy to see that Adriana was someone special in Ernest's life. I later discovered that Ernest often inducted into his coterie a striking young girl whom he apotheosized as he did the heroines of his novels. This Romantic Girl was never a clandestine affair but always an open consort, someone for whom Ernest could preen.

  After the hamburger dinner, Adriana returned to the Gritti with us for the getaway party; Federico and a group of well-wishers were already waiting. Although I could tell he was occasionally in pain, Ernest stretched out on the couch and managed to enjoy himself. There was plenty to drink and someone had thoughtfully brought a portable phonograph. Along about midnight, for what reason I cannot now remember, I was called upon to demonstrate American baseball. It had something to do with a discussion Ernest was having with a British friend who was a cricket nut. Ernest suggested that a pair of his wool socks be rolled up and used as the baseball, and it was my bright idea to use the ornamental doorstop as a bat. The doorstops at the Gritti, like everything else there, are very elaborate. They are hand-carved mahogany with a heavy leaded base and a thin upright shaft that resembles a table leg. This shaft, when grasped at the end, with the round base at the top, made an excellent bat. Federico, who had seen baseball played, undertook the pitching assignment and I stationed myself at an improvised home plate.

  I smacked the first pitch on a deadline to center field, and to my shocked surprise the baseball socks went sailing through the highly arched glass window and out into the Venetian night. The glass broke with a terrible clatter, and from the sidewalk below we heard angry voices. For a few minutes I basked in the glory of having belted a pair of wool socks so hard that they had shattered a glass window, but then we discovered that what had really happened was that the leaded base of the doorstop had come loose and gone flying out of the window along with the socks. I still have a piece of that glass, autographed by everyone who was there.

  That was the end of the party; the next day when we checked out Ernest offered to pay for the broken glass.

  "Ah, yes, the window," the manager said. "The flying saucer barely missed the nose of a gentleman who unfortunately is a member of the City Council. This gentleman, trembling with rage, came in with the disk, but we calmed him successfully. As for paying for the window, in the three-hundred-year history of the Gritti, no one, to our knowledge, has ever played baseball in any of its rooms, and in commemoration of the event, Signor Hemingway, we are reducing your bill ten percent."

  Ernest invited the manager into the bar to have a glass of departure champagne; we clinked glasses all around and Ernest looked very sad. He often said he was reluctant to have to leave any place and this was especially true of Venice.

  Ernest boarded the motor launch slowly and painfully, Adamo helping him. As we started along the canal on our way to pick up the Lancia, he said, "How can anyone live in New York when there's Venice and Paris?"

  I watched the squat cargo barges and the graceful gondolas crisscrossing against the majestic background of Santa Maria della Salute, the air filled with the warning cries of the boatmen emerging from the Rio del Albero onto the Canale Grande, and I realized that Ernest's prediction had come true—it was my home town, all right—thanks to him.

  "Gritti was pretty damn chic about that window," Ernest mused. "Reminds me of the time I fired a pistol shot through my toilet at the Ritz—they were just as chic. Which just goes to prove that it pays to stay at the best places."

  Chapter Six

  The Riviera ♦ 1954

  The route to Madrid was to take us first to Milan, via Padua and Verona, for a visit with Ingrid Bergman. Adamo drove smartly and proudly, but to our growing dismay we learned that he had absolutely no sense of direction. We were only a few miles out of Venice when he started making wrong turns, although the road was clearly marked, and from then on, for the entire six days of the trip, Ernest, who had an excellent sense of direction, and infinite patience, had to operate as full-time navigator—a post that he always relished.

  As we drove along the autostrada past Verona, Ernest watched, or rather tried to watch, the countryside but with growing annoyance. "This would be pretty scenery if you could see it," he said, referring to the signboards that solidly cluttered the sides of the road, "but you can't even see the signs because of the signs. Back in the days when American billboard-advertising was in flower, there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, 'Spit Is a Horrid Word—but Worse on the End of Your Cigar,' and 'Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste.' You don't get creative writing like that any more. All the geniuses are gone."

  As we approached Milan, Ernest began to talk about Ingrid Bergman. "The Swede's battling her way out of it," he said, "but in the beginning, when she had first thrown in with Ros-sellini and was really taking her lumps, it did not occur to Signor Rossellini to do anything more chic and gallant than to read my private letters to her to the press. When the famous become infamous it's pathetic. But Miss Ingrid has taken everything they could throw at her and that always mollifies the angered mob."

  "What is she doing in Milan?" I asked.

  "What she's always doing—playing Joan of Arc. You'd think she would have run out of Joans, having done her in the movies and on Broadway, but Signor Rossellini has found a novel way of squeezing the turnip for -a last drop. He has written the libretto for an opera version, with music by Honniger, and directed same at La Scala."

  "But can Bergman sing well enough for La Scala?"

  "Of course not, but Maestro Rossellini has even got around that—everybody sings but the Swede, whose entire role is spoken in Italian, which she has mastered."

  Although we got to Milan in the early afternoon, Adamo's keen sense of direction kept us in constant circlement for an hour and a half, searching for the Hotel Principe & Savoia, where Ingrid and Rossellini were staying. Since Adamo considered asking directions an irreparable loss of face, there was nothing to do but circle and hope for the best.

  Around four-thirty, after Adamo had made three complete tours of the city, he finally found the hotel; Ingrid was waiting for us in the hallway as we stepped off the elevator. She was radiantly beautiful in a high-necked white silk blouse, the top six buttons of which were undone. Her Jeanne d'Arc haircut was very becoming. She hugged Ernest and they were very hap
py to see each other. We went into the living room of her suite, where every possible surface was ablaze with long-stemmed red roses.

  "You are riddled with roses, Daughter," Ernest said.

  "They were sent by an official on the Stock Exchange. I have never met him but he was so moved by the performance he sends roses every day. There is so much wealth in this city. The homes I have been in, Ernest, why, in comparison the houses in Beverly Hills are shacks. Even the ash trays are by Renaissance masters."

  Ingrid Bergman was one of the few women in his life whom Ernest called "Daughter" who refused to call him "Papa" in return. "I don't have Papa feelings about him," is the way Ingrid explained it. But Mary called him Papa, and so did Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich. Some of his old cronies like Toots Shor called him Ernie, but for the most part the name "Ernest" in spoken form, was anathema to him. He was very rough on people who called him Papa without meriting such intimacy.

  "Where is Signor Rossellini?" Ernest asked.

  "In there having a nap."

  "You going to make any more Hollywood pictures?"

  "No, no more Hollywood. Not that I'm not grateful; I am. I loved much of Hollywood while I was there and I know how much I owe them. But life is short and the years run away and you must do everything you really want to. The only part I ever had with dialogue that was all there was in For Whom the Bell Tolls. I would like to perform elsewhere now, places I have not been to. I get movies to read all the time, same old plots bent a little this way or that."

  "They plan to redo A Farewell to Arms? Ernest said. "I will receive nothing for it since it was sold outright. They are also about to make The Sun Also Rises, which was long ago sold for a pittance, and another version of To Have and Have Not and maybe The Killers, for which they'll also pay nothing, so my hand is virtually palsied from not receiving any monies."