Papa Hemingway

by A. E. Hotchner

  For Whom the Bell Tolls had never been published in Spain but copies were bootlegged in English, and a British Embassy friend of Rupert's lent me his. I thought I knew the book well, but I could not recall "the blood-drinking old women of the Madrid slaughterhouse. They were there, all right. Pilar says she can smell death, and Robert Jordan disputes her: death has no smell, he says; fear maybe, but not death. If death has an odor, what is it?

  Pilar describes the smell of death: first, it is the smell that comes when on a ship there is a storm and the portholes are closed up. She tells him to put his nose against the brass handle of a porthole on a rolling ship that has made him faint and hollow in the stomach, and that is a part of that smell. The next part of the smell she says he will find at the Puente de Toledo early in the morning; she tells him to stand there on the wet paving when there is a fog from the Manzanares and wait for the old women who go before daylight to drink the blood of the slaughtered beasts. When one of these old women comes out of the matadero, Pilar tells him, holding her shawl around her, her face gray, her eyes hollow, the whiskers of age on her chin sprouting from the waxen white of her face as sprouts grow from bean seeds, pale sprouts in the death of her face; then he must put his arms around her, and hold her against him and kiss her on the mouth and he will have the second part of the odor of death.

  After his visit to the doctor, Ernest ate sparingly, rested more, and talked about reducing his drinking. He would invariably get into bed after the afternoon corrida and stay there, reading, until nine or ten o'clock, when he'd get up to dress for dinner. Some nights he did not get up at all and ordered dinner in his room, eating it off a bed tray. He resumed keeping urine specimens in drinking glasses in the bathroom, and occasionally a sample was dispatched to Dr. Madinoveitia.

  Ernest was a prodigious reader and his bed table at the Palace, like his bed tables everywhere, was piled high with a wide assortment of reading matter. To approach a magazine stand with him was a unique experience. He would carefully go down the lines of magazines on display and choose just about one of everything, except what he called the ladies'-aid magazines: Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, etc. He would cart off twenty or more magazines, but the amazing part of it was that he actually read them through and would discuss their contents. Spanish, French and Italian kiosks were treated with equal patronage. At the finca he regularly subscribed to Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, Holiday, Field £s? Stream, Sports Afield, True, Time, Newsweek and The Southern Jesuit; two British publications, Sport and Country and The Field; a Mexican jai-alai magazine, Cancha; and a number of Italian and Spanish weeklies. In addition, Scribner's sent him an unceasing supply of books in response to lists he sent them; and he received a steady flow of unsolicited books from all other publishers who hoped he might say something that could be quoted on a dust jacket.

  One evening while Ernest was propped up on his Palace Hotel bed, deeply immersed in a Spanish bullfight magazine, he received an unexpected visit from Luis Miguel Dominguin— at that time Spain's number-one matador. He was a lithe, magnificently handsome man who came from a family of bullfighters; even his beautiful sister Carmen had once performed brilliantly in the ring. Dominguin had not fought for over a year, following a severe stomach cornada, but he had recently received highly lucrative offers from South America and was thinking of returning to the bullfight wars. He came to the Palace to ask Ernest to visit his girl, Ava Gardner, who was hospitalized with a very painful gallstone. Ava had appeared in The Killers, which Ernest considered his only good movie, and a film which he called The Snows of Zanuck.

  After he had left, Ernest said, "Christ, but Luis looked awful, didn't he? At his peak he's a combination Don Juan and Hamlet, but now looked beat up and drained. Probably logging too much time at Miss Ava's bedside."

  Ava was surrounded by hospital nuns when we went to see her. They were fixing her bed, taking her pulse, marking her chart and cleaning her room; she was on the long-distance telephone to Hollywood, talking to the head of a studio. In a commanding voice.

  "I don't give a goddamn how many scripts you send. I am not, repeat not, not, NOT going to play Ruth Etting!"

  Five-second listening pause.

  "And you can take that contract and shove it up your heinie!"

  A sister smoothed the sheets and pulled them up a bit higher on Ava's shoulders.

  "Don't give me that crap about commitment and you'll get. . . and don't interrupt me; it's my call! What in Christ's name are you trying to do to me? Great part? I stand there mouthing words like a goddamn goldfish while you're piping in some goddamn dubbed voice!"

  A sister plumped up the pillows behind Ava's back, and smiled upon her.

  "I said a dramatic part, for Christ's sake, and you send me Ruth Etting! It's no wonder I've got this attack. I ought to send you the bill . . . Oh, shut up!"

  Ava hung up, swept her hand out to Ernest, smiled beautifully, and said, in a soft, lyric voice, "Hello, Ernest."

  "I take it the sisters are not bilingual," Ernest said, taking her hand.

  "The sisters are darling," Ava said, patting one and smiling at her, whereupon all of them smiled upon Ava, "and I love this hospital so much I almost don't want to pass this goddamn stone. Sit here on the bed, Papa, and talk to me. I'm absolutely floored you could come." Their work done, the sisters withdrew. Dominguin and I sat on chairs.

  "Are you going to live in Spain?" Ernest asked.

  "Yes. I sure am. I'm just a country girl at heart. I don't like New York or Paris. I'd love to live here permanently. What have I got to go back to? I have no car, no house, nothing. Sinatra's got nothing either. All I ever got out of any of my marriages was the two years Artie Shaw financed on an analyst's couch."

  "Tell you the truth, Daughter, analysts spook me, because I've yet to meet one who had a sense of humor."

  "You mean," Ava asked, incredulously, "you've never had an analyst?"

  "Sure I have. Portable Corona number three. That's been my analyst. I'll tell you, even though I am not a believer in the Analysis, I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish so I won't kill myself. When a man is in rebellion against death, as I am in rebellion against death, he gets pleasure out of taking to himself one of the godlike attributes, that of giving it."

  "That's too deep for me, Papa."

  Dominguin told Ernest that he had arranged a tienta to see what kind of shape he was in, and invited us to attend. Ava promised she'd make it even if the nuns had to push her there in her hospital bed.

  The tienta, which is a testing of calves for bravery, was held in a glistening plazita (miniature bull ring) on the bull-breeding ranch of Antonio Perez, which was located in the magnificent high country at Quadusaura in the Escorial, in the lee of the Guadaramus. We left Madrid in a procession of three cars, a Vauxhall, Dominguin's custom Cadillac, and Ernest's Lancia, and arrived at the ranch around noon. Dominguin would work the calves with the muleta, and they would be slightly pz'c-ed to get their heads down, but there would be no killing. By testing a few of the animals, an owner can determine characteristics of the herds from which they come, enabling him to make decisions on future breeding. There was an undercurrent of excitement not ordinarily associated with a tienta, for Dominguin would be testing himself as well as the calves to determine whether he would continue his career.

  "These calves," Ernest explained to Ava, "are sometimes more difficult than bulls; they whip around faster and have better co-ordination. Don't let the name 'calf fool you. I've seen a lot of guys run through at tientas.n

  Ava stood with Ernest at the ring wall, behind a wooden barrera, as they watched Dominguin work the first cow that came charging into the ring. After Dominguin's remarkably graceful performance, Ernest turned to Ava and said, "Did you see what Luis Miguel did to that cow? He made it into something. He convinced it. He gave it a personality and then made a star out of it. That cow went out of here proud as hell."

  "He's a lovely man, isn't he?" Ava said.
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  "Are you serious about him?" Ernest asked.

  "How do I know? We've been together for two months now, but I speak no Spanish, he speaks no English, so we haven't been able to communicate yet."

  "Don't worry—you've communicated what counts," Ernest said.

  At this point the cow Dominguin had been working, a mean little beast with a three-foot horn spread, suddenly lost interest in the muleta and decided to charge Ernest instead. Ernest had been leaning against the wall, a good distance away from the protective barrera. Everyone, and especially Mary, shouted at him to break for cover, but he did not budge and as the calf came charging into him he grabbed one of its horns with one hand and its nose with the other and flung it away from him. Dominguin then ran over and made the quite, leading the cow back to the center of the ring. "Not bad for a guy who's supposed to be beat up," Ava said to Ernest.

  "I'm beat up," Ernest answered, "but not in the clutch."

  Dominguin worked five calves, and when he was finished he was perspiring and tired. "Ah, Papa," he said, "if only I had your arms. Feel his arm," he said to Ava, pointing, and she did, approvingly. "Ah, the arms and the legs after so long a vacation," Dominguin said sadly.

  "Use double muletas and a big sword," Ernest said. "That'll build up the arms." Dominguin sat down against the wall to rest. Ava asked Ernest how he thought Dominguin had worked. "Never worry about him," Ernest said. "He is a prince among matadors. He is like the great matador Maera, who never worried because he knew more about the bulls than the bulls themselves knew. There are bullfighters who do it just for the money—they are worthless. The only one who matters is the bullfighter who feels it, so that if he did it for nothing, he would do it as well. Same holds true for damn near everyone else."

  I left Madrid for Paris toward the end of May, but Ernest and I spoke on the telephone before I returned to the States in June. Mary and he were in Naples, where they were about to board the Morosiu for a long, slow voyage back to Cuba.

  Ernest said he had seen a new matador, Antonio Ordonez, whom he liked very much. This was the first time I heard Ordonez's name. He was married to Dominguin's sister Carmen —the beautiful one who as a teen-ager had been acclaimed for her bravura and style in the ring. Antonio was the son of the matador Cayetano Ordonez, who in the Twenties fought under the name Nina de la Palma; Cayetano and Ernest had been good friends and he had been the prototype for Pedro Romero, Lady Brett's matador-lover, in The Sun Also Rises.

  "I wish you had seen him," Ernest said, speaking of Antonio. "Classic. If he keeps on and doesn't get put out of action, he can be as good as his father. Maybe better. Rupert thought so too. The only thing worries me about young Ordonez, having known his father so well and so many other fine matadors, some of whom were killed, and some who lost out to fear and other such occupational afflictions—I long ago resolved never to be friends with a matador again because the agony for me was too great on those days when my friends could not handle the bull because of fear. On any given day, any matador, no matter how great or how young, can suffer an attack of fear and be virtually incapacitated. When it used to hit my friends I suffered right along with them, but it was an idiotic torture since I was not hired for the job and its agonies. So I swore off matadors as friends. But now, with young Antonio, I am tempted—I think I have learned some things that have helped me write off fear as a personal problem. That would make it easier to be friends with Antonio. He has such a great sense of ale grid?

  "What's alegria.?"

  "It's a deep-going happiness that nothing can kill. When you'll meet him you'll see why I'm tempted. Of course, any given afternoon my hold over fear can be broken. Then I'll be in the soup again. But maybe it's worth the risk. I thought about it quite a lot during the drive to Naples after we left Madrid."

  "How was that trip?"

  "Wonderful."

  "How are you feeling?"

  "Think will beat this rap okay if kidneys straighten out. The right one was hurt bad. Just beginning to find out how bad. But am following doctor's orders. Had only four drinks of whiskey and water in fifteen days in Spain. Then had a couple in Bayonne, a couple yesterday, six in all. No gin. It is a lousy bore for everybody else and for me. After you left, Mary and I skipped the fights one day and went up and picnicked at the bridge. Next time I'll take you there."

  "You mean the For Whom the Bell Tolls bridge?"

  "Nothing's changed. Just as it was. They put it back together after the war, reassembling all the stones that had fallen into the river bed after we blew it."

  "Tell me, Papa—did you finish up the Capitaine Cook's? And what about the cases of champagne and the foie gras and pickled mushrooms and all the rest?"

  "Just left it all in the closet in the room. Told the chambermaid to take it home to her kids."

  Chapter Eight

  Havana ♦ 1954-55

  Ernest had no sooner returned to Cuba in the summer of 1954 than the pressure of the Nobel Prize began to build. What should have been a quiet time to recuperate from his physical troubles became instead one of the most concentrated assaults he had ever been subjected to. And never in his life was he less able to cope with it.

  When he had won the Pulitzer Prize the year before for The Old Man and the Sea, he had easily beaten off the publicity assaults. But now he was in no shape for this tougher Prize-combat and it took something out of him he never got back.

  The assault started in September, when the newspapers began speculating that Ernest would get the Prize. He phoned me to say that he had received, among many magazine inquiries, a request from Doug Kennedy, the editor of True, for me to write an article about the sports he had played from boyhood on. I said I would if he wanted me to.

  "No," he said. "What I'd like you to do is go see Kennedy and explain that I'm working and would like to put off such a piece until a later time. That all right with you?"

  "Sure. How are you feeling? The back any better?"

  "Well, for your own information, and yours only, I have not been without considerable pain ever since I saw you. My back still hurts so badly that when I move it too much it brings the sweat out. I try to be good about this and I ignore it to the limit of my abilities but I think it would get on almost anybody's nerves. It gets on mine anyway. I can make the back and head feel better by taking a drink. But if I took a drink every time I hurt or felt bad I could never write, and writing is the only thing that makes me feel that I'm not wasting my time sticking around."

  He said the constant assault of visitors was brutal. He had finished a short story and was thirty-seven pages into another one when Bill Lowe showed up with a proposal to make an African documentary film in the fall. This seemed like a good idea until Lowe put out a press release to the effect that Ernest had agreed to write, act in and co-produce an original full-length feature. End of film project. Then right after Lowe left, Ava Gardner appeared, and she had no sooner left than Winston Guest arrived, and then Dave Shilling, the flyer. Next, the U.S. Air Force brought out some enlisted personnel who had won an award as Aircraftsmen-of-the-Month, which included visiting the Hemingways as part of their award. Then Luis Miguel Dominguin showed up and had been there for nine days; Sinsky turned up at the same time and was drunk for four days.

  "I go into my bedroom and work no matter what," Ernest said, "but it is murder. Roberto, who as you know is my right arm, gets sick. He is now convalescing on a voyage on Sinsky's ship. Sinsky never drinks at sea. Only at our house. And I am a son-of-a-bitch who needs to be let alone to write.

  "It is about as restful and favorable to the production of literature as Hiirtgen Forest. But have started the counterattack. Won't take any phone calls from anyone. Long distance neither. If we had any brains we should have been killed in Africa at Murchison Falls and come back under some other names and I could have continued to write posthumously. Will begin to write you sensible letters, soon as I get the joint cleaned out. Hope they don't clean me out of it first."

  On Octob
er 28th the award was formally announced by the Swedish Academy: "For his powerful style-forming mastery of the art of modern narration, as most recently evinced in The Old Man and the Sea . . . Hemingway's earlier writings displayed brutal, cynical and callous signs which may be considered at variance with the Nobel Prize requirements for a work of ideal tendencies. But on the other hand he also possesses a heroic pathos which forms the basic element of his awareness of life, a manly love of danger and adventure, with a natural admiration of every individual who fights the good fight in a world of reality overshadowed by violence and death."

  Ernest excused himself from attending the ceremonies in Stockholm, giving as the reason his unhealed crash injuries, but even if he had been in the best of health I seriously doubt that he would have gone. Ernest had made very few public appearances in his lifetime, attributable to his intense shyness and his smoldering hatred of The Tuxedo. "Wearing underwear is as formal as I ever hope to get," he once told me—and to my knowledge he never wore any.

  But he did send an acceptance message, which was read for him at the ceremonies in Stockholm by the United States Ambassador, John M. Cabot: "Members of the Swedish Academy, ladies and gentlemen. Having no facility for speech-making and no command of oratory, nor any domination of rhetoric, I wish to thank the administrators of the generosity of Alfred Nobel for this prize. No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience. It would be impossible for me to ask the Ambassador of my country to read a speech in which a writer said all of the things which are in his heart. Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes and in this, sometimes, he is fortunate, but eventually they are quite clear and by these, and a degree of alchemy that he possesses, he will endure or be forgotten. Writing at its best is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone, and if he is a good enough writer, he must face eternity or the lack of it each day. For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed. How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him. I have spoken too long for a writer. A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it. Again I thank you."