A Moveable Feast (6 page)

'Don't you ever go out?'

'Sometimes to see a big race. One with great horses.'

We spread pate on the good bistro bread and drank the white wine.

'Did you follow them a lot, Mike?'

'Oh yes.'

'What do you see that's better?'

'Bicycle racing.'

'Really?'

'You don't have to bet on it. You'll see.'

'That track takes a lot of time.'

'Too much time. Takes all your time. I don't like the people.'

'I was very interested.'

'Sure. You make out all right?'

'All right.'

'Good thing to stop,' Mike said.

'I've stopped.'

'Hard to do. Listen, kid, we'll go to the bike races sometime.'

That was a new and fine thing that I knew little about. But we did not start it right away. That came later. It came to be a big part of our lives later when the first part of Paris was broken up.

But for a long time it was enough just to be back in our part of Paris and away from the track and to bet on our own life and work, and on the painters that you knew and not try to make your living gambling and call it by some other name. I have started many stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are both on the indoor and outdoor tracks and on the roads. But I will get the Velodrome d'Hiver with the smoky light of the afternoon and the high-banked wooden track and the whirring sound the tyres made on the wood as the riders passed, the effort and the tactics as the riders climbed and plunged, each one a part of his machine; I will get the magic of the
demi-fond,
the noise of the motors with their rollers set out behind them that the
entraineurs
rode, wearing their heavy crash helmets and leaning backwards in their ponderous leather suits, to shelter the riders who followed them from the air resistance, the riders in their lighter crash helmets bent low over their handlebars, their legs turning the huge gear sprockets and the small front wheels touching the roller behind the machine that gave them shelter to ride in, and the duels that were more exciting than anything, the
put-puting of
the motorcycles and the riders elbow to elbow and wheel to wheel up and down and around at deadly speed until one man could not hold the pace and broke away and the solid wall of air that he had been sheltered against hit him.

There were so many kinds of racing. The straight sprints raced in heats or in match races where the two riders would balance for long seconds on their machines for the advantage of making the other rider take the lead, and then the slow circling and the final plunge into the driving purity of speed. There were the programmes of the team races of two hours, with a series of pure sprints in their heats to fill the afternoon, the lonely absolute speed events of one man racing an hour against the clock, the terribly dangerous and beautiful races of one hundred kilometres on the big banked wooden five-hundred-metre bowl of the Stade Buffalo, the outdoor stadium at Montrouge where they raced behind big motorcycles, Linart, the great Belgian champion that they called 'the Sioux'

for his profile, dropping his head to suck up cherry brandy from a rubber tube that connected with a hot-water bottle under his racing shirt when he needed it towards the end as he increased his savage speed, and the championships of France behind big motors of the six-hundred-and-sixty metre cement track of the Pare du Prince near Auteuil, the wickedest track of all where we saw that great rider Ganay fall and heard his skull crumple under the crash helmet as you crack a hard-boiled egg against a stone to peel it on a picnic. I must write the strange world of the six-day races and the marvels of the road-racing in the mountains. French is the only language it has ever been written in properly and the terms are all French and that is what makes it hard to write. Mike was right about it, there is no need to bet. But that comes at another time in Paris.

8 Hunger Was Good Discipline

You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg Gardens where you saw and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg Museum and all the paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cezanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry.

Later I thought Cezanne was probably hungry in a different way.

After you came out of the Luxembourg you could walk down the narrow rue Ferou to the Place St-Sulpice and there were still no restaurants, only the quiet square with its benches and trees. There was a fountain with lions, and pigeons walked on the pavement and perched on the statues of the bishops. There was the church and there were shops selling religious objects and vestments on the north side of the square.

From this square you could not go farther towards the river without passing shops selling fruits, vegetables, wines, or bakery and pastry shops. But by choosing your way carefully you could work to your right around the grey and white stone church and reach the rue de l'Odeon and turn up to your right towards Sylvia Beach's bookshop and on your way you did not pass too many places where things to eat were sold. The rue de l'Odeon was bare of eating places until you reached the square, where there were three restaurants.

By the time you reached 12 rue de l'Odeon your hunger was contained but all of your perceptions were heightened again. The photographs looked different and you saw books that you had never seen before.

'You're too thin, Hemingway,' Sylvia would say. 'Are you eating enough?'

'Sure.'

'What did you eat for lunch?'

My stomach would turn over and I would say, 'I'm going home for lunch now.'

'At three o'clock?'

'I didn't know it was that late.'

'Adrienne said the other night she wanted to have you and Hadley for dinner. We'd ask Fargue. You like Fargue, don't you? Or Larbaud. You like him. I know you like him.

Or anyone you really like. Will you speak to Hadley?'

'I know she'd love to come.'

'I'll send her a
pneu
.
Don't you work so hard now that you don't eat properly.'

'I won't.'

'Get home now before it's too late for lunch.'

'They'll save it.'

'Don't eat cold food either. Eat a good hot lunch.'

'Did I have any mail?'

'I don't think so. But let me look.'

She looked and found a note and looked up happily and then opened a closed door in her desk.

'This came while I was out,' she said. It was a letter and it felt as though it had money in it. 'Wedderkop,' Sylvia said.

'It must be from
Der Querschnitt.
Did you see Wedderkop?'

'No. But he was here with George. He'll see you. Don't worry. Perhaps he wanted to pay you first.'

'It's six hundred francs. He says there will be more.'

'I'm awfully glad you reminded me to look. Dear Mr Awfully Nice.'

'It's damned funny that Germany is the only place I can sell anything. To him and the
Frankfurter Zeitung.'

'Isn't it? But don't you worry ever. You can sell stories to Ford,' she teased me.

"Thirty francs a page. Say one story every three months in the
Transatlantic.
Story five pages long makes one hundred and fifty francs a quarter. Six hundred francs a year.'

'But, Hemingway, don't worry about what they bring now. The point is that you can write them.'

'I know. I can write them. But nobody will buy them. There is no money coming in since I quit journalism.'

'They will sell. Look. You have the money for one right there.'

'I'm sorry, Sylvia. Forgive me for speaking about it.'

'Forgive you for what? Always talk about it or about anything. Don't you know all writers ever talk about is their troubles? But promise me you won't worry and that you'll eat enough.'

'I promise.'

'Then get home now and have lunch.'

Outside on the rue de l'Odeon I was disgusted with myself for having complained about things. I was doing what I did of my own free will and I was doing it stupidly. I should have bought a large piece of bread and eaten it instead of skipping a meal. I could taste the brown lovely crust. But it is dry in your mouth without something to drink. You God-damn complainer. You dirty phony saint and martyr, I said to myself. You quit journalism of your own accord. You have credit and Sylvia would have loaned you money. She has, plenty of times. Sure. And then the next thing you would be compromising on something else. Hunger is healthy and the pictures do look better when you are hungry. Eating is wonderful too and do you know where you are going to eat right now?

Lipp's is where you are going to eat, and drink too.

It was a quick walk to Lipp's and every place I passed that my stomach noticed as quickly as my eyes or my nose made the walk an added pleasure. There were few people in the
brasserie
and when I sat down on the bench against the wall with the mirror in back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer I asked for a
distingue,
the big glass mug that held a litre, and for potato salad.

The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The
pommes a l'huile
were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draught of beer I drank and ate very slowly. When
the pommes a l'huile
were gone I ordered another serving and a
cervelas.
This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with a special mustard sauce.

I mopped up all the oil and all of the sauce with bread and drank the beer slowly until it began to lose its coldness and then I finished it and ordered a
demi
and watched it drawn. It seemed colder than the
distingue
and I drank half of it.

I had not been worrying, I thought. I knew the stories were good and someone would publish them finally at home. When I stopped doing newspaper work I was sure the stories were going to be published. But every one I sent out came back. What had made me so confident was Edward O'Brien's taking the
My Old Man
story for the
Best Short
Stories
book and then dedicating the book for that year to me. Then I laughed and drank some more beer. The story had never been published in a magazine and he had broken all his rules to take it for the book. I laughed again and the waiter glanced at me. It was funny because, after all that, he had spelled the name wrong. It was one of two stories I had left when everything I had written was stolen in Hadley's suitcase, that time at the Gare de Lyon when she was bringing the manuscripts down to me to Lausanne as a surprise, so I could work on them on our holidays in the mountains. She had put in the originals, the typescripts and the carbons, all in manilla folders. The only reason I had the one story was that Lincoln Steffens had sent it out to some editor who sent it back. It was in the mail while everything else was stolen. The other story that I had was the one called
Up in Michigan,
written before Miss Stein had come to our flat. I had never had it copied because she said it was
in-afcrocbable.
It had been in a drawer somewhere.

So after we had left Lausanne and gone down to Italy I showed the racing story to O'Brien, a gentle, shy man, pale, with pale blue eyes, and straight lanky hair he cut himself, who lived then as a boarder in a monastery up above Rapallo. It was a bad time and I did not think I could write any more then, and I showed the story to him as a curiosity, as you might show, stupidly, the binnacle of a ship you had lost in some incredible way, or as you might pick up your booted foot and make some joke about it if it had been amputated after a crash. Then, when he read the story, I saw he was hurt far more than I was. I had never seen anyone hurt by a thing other than death or unbearable suffering except Hadley when she told me about the things being gone. She had cried and cried and could not tell me. I told her that no matter what the dreadful thing was that had happened nothing could be that bad, and whatever it was, it was all right and not to worry. We would work it out. Then, finally, she told me. I was sure she could not have brought the carbons too and I hired someone to cover for me on my newspaper job. I was making good money then at journalism, and took the train for Paris. It was true all right and I remember what I did in the night after I let myself into the flat and found it was true. That was over now and Chink had taught me never to discuss casualties; so I told O'Brien not to feel so bad. It was probably good for me to lose early work and I told him all that stuff you feed the troops. I was going to start writing stories again I said and, as I said it, only trying to lie so that he would not feel so bad, I knew that it was true.

Then I started to think in Lipp's about when I had first been able to write a story after losing everything. It was up in Cortina d'Ampezzo when I had come back to join Hadley there after the spring skiing which I had to interrupt to go on assignment to the Rhineland and the Ruhr. It was a very simple story called
Out of Season
and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.

Well, I thought, now I have them so they do not understand them. There cannot be much doubt about that. There is most certainly no demand for them. But they will understand the same way that they always do in painting. It only takes time and it only needs confidence.