by Paula McLain
“I’d love to see it,” I said.
“You might find it hard to watch,” he said.
“Maybe, but it sounds like something I wouldn’t want to miss. The fights might even be a good influence on the baby,” I said.
“Yes, he’ll be a real man before he’s even born.”
“What makes you so sure it’s a boy?”
“What else would it be?”
We made plans to go back together in July, to the Fiesta de San Fermin in Pamplona, where Gertrude and Alice had gone the summer before. It was supposed to be the very best arena for bullfighting, drawing the most murderous bulls and highest-skilled toreros. Although I’d expressed only excitement at the prospect, Ernest was determined to prepare me for the violence.
“Not everyone can stomach it,” he said. “McAlmon drank brandy all through his first bullfight. Every time the bull rushed the horses, it made him go green. He said he couldn’t imagine anyone ever finding anything to love about it, and if they did, they were deranged.”
“I don’t think the two of you are meant to be friends.”
“Maybe not, but it’s looking like he and Annie want to do a book of stories for me. Or maybe stories and poems.”
“Really? If you hate him so much, why would you want him to do the book?”
“Someone’s got to. Now I only have to write the damned thing.”
• • •
All of Pamplona was awake when our bus lumbered into the walled city in the middle of the night. The streets were so crowded with bodies that I wondered how the bus could budge at all, but the dancers moved in a ripple away from the rumbling engine and then filled in again once we’d passed. We continued to climb the narrow streets toward the public square, and when we reached it there was such a blur of noise and motion—dancers whirling, musicians drumming and blasting reed pipes, fireworks exploding in loud bursts of white smoke—we nearly lost our luggage. Once we had it securely in hand and found our hotel, our reservations, which Ernest had made weeks before, had been given away.
Back on the street again, Ernest told me to stay and wait for him while he looked for lodging. I watched him borne away by the crowd without feeling much hope that he’d find a room, much less make his way back to me. The streets themselves seemed to be shifting. I backed against a thick stone wall and tried to stand my ground as dancers spun by in blue and white. The women wore flaring full skirts. They circled each other, snapping their fingers and stamping their black-heeled shoes on the cobblestones. Their hair was loose and beautiful. Some carried tambourines or bells, and though the music sounded chaotic to me, with shrill fifing and drumming that shook the bones of my knees, the women seemed to hear a clear rhythm and move to it perfectly, their legs lifting in time, their arms arcing out from their sides. The men wore blue shirts and trousers, with red kerchiefs at their necks, and danced together in large groups. They called out to one another with happy yelps that were instantly absorbed. It was all like nothing I’d ever seen.
Somehow Ernest navigated the madness. He returned to collect me, and though all the hotels were booked and had been for weeks, he’d managed to secure us a room in a private house nearby, six nights for twice what we paid in rent each month in Paris.
“So much?” I said, feeling a bit ill at the amount. “How can we possibly afford it?”
“Chin up, Tiny. We’ll be paid back in sketches. I need to be here. I feel that so powerfully.”
I couldn’t argue with his instinct and was dead on my feet besides. We took the room and were grateful for it, but in the end we might as well have stayed on the streets all night like everyone else. The whole city had been waiting all year for this week, this joyful night. They could dance forever, it seemed, and it struck me as funny that we’d been keen to come here to escape the chaos of Bastille Day in Paris, when this was as frenetic if not worse.
I finally got out of bed near 6:00 a.m., knowing there would be no rest for me, and walked out onto the balcony. On the street beneath me, there were as many people about as the night before, but they seemed more focused and directed. It was nearly time for the running of the bulls, but I didn’t know that. I only knew something was happening. I went inside and dressed quietly, but Ernest woke anyway from his very light sleep, and by the time we were back at the balcony together, a cannon had sounded with a crack. We saw its white smoke scatter above the public square, and then the crowd gathered there began to sing. Our room was perfectly situated. We could see and hear everything from where we stood at the railing. A group of men and boys sang a passionate song in Spanish. I understood nothing, but didn’t really need to.
“I think it’s about danger,” I said to Ernest over the din.
“Happy danger,” he said. “They’re excited to test themselves. To see if they can outrun their fear.”
He knew the bulls would be released soon. Gertrude and Alice had relayed in great detail all they’d seen at the fiesta the year before, and so had Mike Strater. But Ernest wasn’t content to hear what it was like; he wanted to know it firsthand. And if I hadn’t been there with him, I knew he wouldn’t be standing on the balcony at all. He really wanted to be down in the square, preparing himself to run.
“Viva San Fermin,” the crowd shouted. “Gora San Fermin!”
The cannon sounded again as the bulls were set loose, and we saw the runners coming very fast along the cobbled streets below. Everyone wore white shirts and pants with bright red scarves around their waists and necks. Some carried newspapers to wave the bulls away and all wore an expression that seemed ecstatic. After the runners, six bulls thundered past with such power the house shook under our feet. Their hooves rang on the cobblestones and their thick dark heads ducked low, looking murderous. Some of the men were overcome and had to scramble up the side of the barricades lining the street. Onlookers reached to help them escape, but there was also a palpable anticipation as the crowd waited to see if some unlucky one wouldn’t be fast or limber enough.
There was no goring that day, at least not that we saw, and I was very relieved when the bulls were safely in the arena. The entire ritual took only a few minutes, but I realized I’d been holding my breath.
We breakfasted on wonderfully sweet café con leche and dense rolls, and then I tried to nap in our room while Ernest walked the streets of Pamplona taking notes on everything he saw. It was all poetry to him, the heavily lined faces of the old Basque men, each one with the same blue cap. The young men wore wide-brimmed straw hats instead and carried hand-sewn wine skins over their shoulders, their arms and backs well muscled from hard labor. Ernest came back to the room excited by it all, and talking about the lunch he’d just eaten, perfectly crisped river trout stuffed with fried ham and onions.
“The best fish I’ve ever eaten. Get dressed. You have to try it.”
“You really want to go back to the same café and watch me eat?”
“Watch nothing. I’m going to have it again.”
Later that afternoon when the first fight began, we sat in good barrera seats right up next to the action. Ernest had paid a premium to make sure we had an excellent view of the action, but he was also protective of me.
“Look away now,” he said when the first horseman set the long, barbed banderilla into the withers of the bull, and the blood ran freely. He said it again when the first horse was gored badly, and again when the fine young torero, Nicanor Villalta, killed his bull with deft precision. But I didn’t look away.
We sat in the barrera seats all that afternoon and saw six bulls die, and the whole while I watched and listened and felt swept up by it all. Between fights, I cross-stitched a white cotton blanket for the baby.
“You’ve surprised me,” Ernest said, near the end of the day.
“Have I?”
“You weren’t brought up to know how to watch something like this. I guessed you’d go weak. I’m sorry, but I did.”
“I wasn’t sure how I’d feel, but I can tell you now. Safe and strong.”
I’d come to the end of a row of stitches and tied a neat, flat knot, the way my mother had taught me to do when I was a girl. As I smoothed the floss with my fingertips, satisfied with my work, I couldn’t help but think how shocked she would be to see me in this passionate, violent place and not cringing the least, but weathering it like a natural.
“When I was very young, I used to be fearless. I’ve told you.”
He nodded.
“When I lost it, I think my family was happy.”
“I don’t know that you ever really lost it. I see it in you now.”
“I’m stronger because of the baby. I can feel him moving when the pipes sound and the crowd roars. He seems to like it.”
Ernest smiled with obvious pride, and then said, “Families can be vicious, but ours won’t be.”
“Our baby will know everything we know. We’ll be very honest and not hold anything back.”
“And we won’t underestimate him.”
“Or make him feel terrified of life.”
“This is getting to be a very tall order, isn’t it?” Ernest said, and we laughed happily, buoyed by our wishing.
Late that same night, when again we weren’t sleeping for the fireworks and the drumming and the riau-riau dancing, Ernest said, “What about Nicanor as a name for the baby?”
“He’ll be a fine torero with that name. He can’t help it.”
“We’ve had some fun, haven’t we?” He squeezed me tightly in his arms.
“It’s not all over.”
“No, but I figure I have to be steady when the baby comes. I’ll earn the bread and be the papa and there won’t be time to think about what I want.”
“For the first year, maybe, but not forever.”
“A year of sacrifice, then. And then he’ll have to take his chances with the rest of us.”
“Nicanor,” I repeated. “It rings, doesn’t it?”
“It does, but that doesn’t mean the little bugger gets more than a year.”
TWENTY-FIVE
wanted muskmelons and a really nice piece of cheese, coffee and good jam and waffles. I was so hungry thinking about this I couldn’t sleep.
“Waffles,” I said to Ernest’s curled back near dawn. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
When he didn’t rouse, I said it again, louder, and put my hand on his back, giving him a friendly little shove.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” he said, rolling out of bed. “It’s gone now.”
“What’s gone?”
He sat on the edge of the thick mattress, scratching one knee. “The right words for the sketch.”
“Oh, sorry then,” I said.
I watched him dress and move toward the kitchen. Within minutes I could hear the coffee boiling and smell it and it made me hungrier. I heard him get his coffee and then heard the chair squeak back as he sat at the table. Silence.
“Tiny?” I said, still in bed. “What do you think about the waffles?”
He groaned and pushed his chair back. “There it all goes again.”
The months were closing in on us. Our baby was due at the end of October and we were set to sail for Canada in late August. That would give us six or seven weeks to find an apartment and prepare. As the time grew closer, Ernest worked hard and worried harder. He was panicked he’d never have time to set down the rest of the miniatures for Jane Heap and the Little Review. He was working on five new ones simultaneously, each describing some aspect of bullfighting. When he came home from his studio, he often needed several drinks back to back before he could tell me about his work, which was going well, but seemed to be taking everything he had.
“I’m trying to keep it alive,” he said. “To stay with the action, and not try to put in what I’m feeling about it. Not think about myself at all, but what really happened. That’s where the real emotion is.”
This was one of his newest ideas about writing, and because the miniatures would test it, he was killing himself to get them right. I had no doubt they would hit and be perfect, but in the meantime, it was hard to see him so overworked.
He was also slaving over proofs for Bob McAlmon. Even after their prickly time in Spain, Bob had made good on his offer to do a book for Ernest through Contact Editions. The volume would be titled Three Stories and Ten Poems, and although Ernest was crowing with excitement at the prospect, he was worried he’d never get the proofs corrected on time. He worked by candle late into the night; when he’d finally finished his notes and mailed everything back to McAlmon, it was time for good-byes.
In a series of sad dinners, we saw the Straters, the Pounds, Sylvia, Gertrude and Alice—each time saying we’d be back in a year, when the baby was ready to travel.
“Mind it’s not longer,” Pound said ominously. “Exile weighs on the mind.”
“It’s not quite exile, is it?” Ernest said.
“Limbo then,” Pound said, retreating slightly.
“A softer word only if you don’t bring in the Old Testament,” Ernest said with a grumble.
Ten days later, we sailed.
It was early September when we arrived in Quebec, and by the time we got to Toronto, there was an enthusiastic note waiting from John Bone and another from Greg Clark, a reporter friend from Ernest’s past, welcoming us warmly to town. All seemed to be boding well, but when Ernest reported for work on September 10, he learned that Bone wouldn’t be his immediate supervisor, as he expected, but Harry Hindmarsh, who was the Star’s assistant managing editor. After one meeting, Ernest knew the relationship would be a troubled one. Hindmarsh was heavy physically and also in word and deed; he liked to throw his weight around.
“Right off, he sized me up,” Ernest said when he returned to our room at the Hotel Selby. “I hadn’t said three words before he decided I was too big for my britches.” He paced the room, scowling. “What about him? If he weren’t married to the publisher’s daughter, he’d be sweeping sidewalks.”
“I’m sorry, Tiny. I’m sure he’ll come around to your wonderfulness,” I said.
“Fat chance. He seems bent on treating me like some cub reporter. I won’t be getting a byline, and he’s sending me out of town.”
“When?”
“Tonight. To Kingston to cover some escaped convict. It’s only five or six hours on the train, but I don’t know how long the story will keep me there.”
“Does Hindmarsh know this baby could turn up anytime?”
“I don’t think he cares.”
I sent Ernest off with a kiss and repeated assurance that all would be well. He made me swear to find reinforcements, and I did. Greg Clark had a lovely wife, Helen, who warmly agreed when I asked her for help in finding an apartment. Money was as much of a concern for us as it had always been, even more so because we were putting away every possible dime for the baby. We couldn’t afford some of the nicer neighborhoods she recommended, but we did find something that would do on Bathurst Street. It was a railroad flat on the fourth floor, with a claw-foot tub and a pull-down Murphy bed in the bedroom, which was oddly squeezed between the kitchen and living room. Although the apartment itself lacked warmth and charm, it looked down on one corner of a ravine on the Connables’ estate.
Ernest had known Ralph and Harriet Connable since just after the war, when he’d come to Toronto to try and find newspaper work. Ralph owned the Canadian chain of Woolworth five-and-dime stores and was as wealthy as a god as far as we were concerned. He and his wife were both very kind to me as soon as they learned we were neighbors, and I was happy to have someone, anyone, close by as I neared my due date.
Ernest came home from Kingston looking tired and irritable, and then left again, just days later, to do a mining story in Sudbury Basin, easily twice as far from Toronto as Kingston. He barely had time to visit and approve of the apartment.
“Oh, Cat. I feel terrible I won’t be here to help you get settled.”
“There’s not much to do. I’ll hire someone to do the lifting.”
“I can’t help
but think we were foolish to come here. You’re alone all the time. I’m working like a slave for what? Spotty bits of news in nowhere locations? What a bust.”
“I know you’re overworked, Tiny. But everything will make sense once the baby comes.”
“I hope to Christ you’re right.”
“I am. You’ll see,” I said. And kissed him good-bye.
I was doing far too much of that for my comfort, it was true, but I did believe coming to very cold and lonely Toronto would be worth it once our baby was born healthy and well. In the meantime, I tried to make the new space as homey as I could. We’d brought crates from Paris with our clothes and dishes and pictures packed inside. I hired a cleaning woman and an ancient-looking janitor to cart our things up the four flights. We didn’t have much in the way of furniture, and for the first weeks, as Ernest crisscrossed Ontario like some kind of traveling salesman, I camped out on the Murphy bed, wrapped in blankets against the dropping temperatures and finishing the letters of Abélard and Héloïse.
I was keen for any distraction, and it was easy to lose myself in their words and their story. Some days I only got up to make tea or stuff blankets under the doors and windowsills where the chill crept in. I also wrote letters to Paris, to the friends we were missing there, and home to the States. Fonnie had been trying to muster happiness for me about the coming baby, but she was close to the breaking point on many fronts. Roland had recently suffered a nervous breakdown and was recuperating in a mental hospital in Massachusetts. It’s a highly regarded facility, Fonnie said in a letter, as those places go. But the children are confused and ask if he’ll ever come home again. I don’t know what to tell them. I felt very sorry for them all, but not surprised that such a thing could happen. There had always been too much unrest between them, as with my own parents. And when tensions are that high for so long, something has to snap. How can it not?
I also wrote to Ernest’s parents. He was too busy to answer his own letters, but his stinginess with his parents was more complicated than that. He’d never wanted them overly involved in his life, particularly Grace. When he left for Paris, I think he felt he had freedom for the first time to completely reinvent himself. His parents reminded him of his beginnings, which he would rather have thrown off altogether. I understood his need for independence, but here we were a few weeks away from the baby’s arrival, and Ernest hadn’t said a thing to them. I felt they had a right to know, and I continued to tell him so when he came home ever so briefly between assignments.
