Papa Hemingway (36 page)

Charles Scribner, Jr., arrived at the apartment with one of his editors, L. Harry Brague, Jr. They took the uncut manuscript of
The Dangerous Summer
, along with two copies of all the Paris sketches, and said they would be there Monday morning to discuss which should be published first.

We also heard from Alfred Barr that arrangements were being made for a representative from The Museum of Modern Art to go to the
finca
and crate Miro's "Farm" preparatory to flying it up to New York.

I had hoped that with the favorable resolution of the
Life
money and the Miro painting, and with the burden of the publishing dilemma temporarily shifted, Ernest would relax a bit and enjoy some of his New York places, but he said gloomily, "How can I go into Toots' without drinking, or the Old Seidel-burg, or Sherm's joint or anywhere else?" Mary cooked for us and we ate most of our meals in the apartment; Ernest drank only Sancerre wine, in moderation.

He mostly discussed
The Dangerous Summer,
worrying about whether he had been completely fair to Luis Miguel, fearing that Miguel would be offended, worrying about how the Spaniards would react to his criticism of their great hero, Manolete, worrying about whether he would harm Antonio by describing his arrest and the
scandale
of his pics, worrying, worrying, worrying.

I did manage to get his mind off
The Dangerous Summer
for a short while with a new offer which had come from movie producer Jerry Wald at Twentieth Century-Fox: the studio wanted to buy the seven short stories that had been used in my teleplay
The World of Nick Adams,
add three more, and make a movie of it. They were offering a hundred thousand dollars for the stories. This infuriated Ernest. "Christ, that's what they paid for
one
story! 'Snows of Kilimanjaro,' they paid that, and for 'My Old Man.'"

I pointed out that the stories involved here were very fragmentary, that many of them had already been seen on television, and that they were getting the rights to do only one movie. "Once yosu set a price in Hollywood, you can't back down," Ernest said definitively. "They can have the ten stories for nine hundred thousand."

On Monday morning Charles Scribner, Jr., and Harry Brague, Jr., returned. Charles Scribner, Jr., said that both works were simply wonderful; he thought that
The Dangerous Summer
should be published first so as to capitalize on the
Life
publication. He also thought that not too much time should elapse between the summer it happened and the publication. Harry Brague, Jr., said he had not read all
The Dangerous Summer
but that on the basis of what he had read, he agreed with his boss. Ernest smiled and said that was fine, for he inclined toward that decision himself. I was shocked to realize that it was the first time I had seen Ernest smile since I went down to Cuba.

After they departed he said, "Guess they like product. Maybe won't have to close down machine for repairs after all. Let's go over and have a dish at Toots' to remind ourselves how good Mary's cooking really is."

Ernest enjoyed his lunch at Shor's. He had a couple of drinks, cracked rough jokes with Toots, as always, and exchanged pleasantries with Leonard Lyons and sports columnist Jimmy Cannon, who was also a long-time friend. We walked back to the apartment, Ernest stopping to inspect windows along the way. "It's good to be back on the town," he said. I felt hugely relieved at his resurgence of spirit; unfortunately it was shortlived.

We were barely in the door when the telephone rang. It was easy to follow the conversation from Ernest's end of it. Charles Scribner, Jr., had had another conference with Harry Brague, Jr., who had finished
The Dangerous Summer
during his lunch hour, and they now had decided to reverse themselves and recommend that the Paris sketches be published first.

"Well, I sent off a lot of cables for bullfight pictures and a hell of a lot of other stuff," Ernest said testily. He listened and then said: "I don't say it isn't good thinking, Charles, but it isn't very constructive to mount one offensive in the morning and then mount another in the afternoon with the same troops in the opposite direction . . . No, hell, if you and Harry see it that way, I'll go along with it."

Ernest ate no dinner that evening. He got into bed early with all the New York papers and a pile of magazines he had bought on our way home from Shor's. He also had a note pad and pencil, and when I left he was writing in that.

The following morning we went to the eye specialist, and Ernest was there for almost two hours. He had brought with him a large manila file folder that contained reports, records and test results from the Havana ophthalmologists who had been treating him. Part of the two hours was spent sitting in the waiting room while various drops that had been put into his eyes did their work. Ernest was very impressed with the doctor, who he said was wizard, and even more impressed with his equipment, which, he said, made the Cuban stuff look like it had been left behind by Louis Pasteur.

When we departed the nurse handed Ernest a prescription, but he did not say anything about the results of the examination until we were almost back at the apartment. "Turned out pretty good," he said matter-of-factly. "Haven't got the dire crud diagnosed by Cuban medicos. Just need stronger glasses."

Ernest never mentioned his eye trouble again; nor was I aware that after that he had any further trouble reading. And to my knowledge he never used the prescription for stronger glasses.

That afternoon while Mary was out shopping, the telephone rang, and when I picked it up, the voice sounded familiar— from out of the past—but it was so slurred and incoherent that it took me a few moments to place it. It was Jigee. She had been out of our lives a long time. Ernest got on the extension and we had a three-way conversation; Jigee had trouble forming her words and often didn't complete her sentences. She was calling long distance but was evasive about telling us just where she was. She wanted to know how long Ernest and I planned to be in New York, for she was thinking of coming there, she said, since she hadn't seen us for so long; Ernest told her he was sorry as hell not to be able to see her but that he was leaving in a day or two for Spain.

After we hung up, Ernest couldn't say anything. I had known about Jigee's drinking for a long time, but it had come as a shock to Ernest. Finally he said, "I'm the son-of-a-bitch who gave her her first drink. You remember that Scotch sour that day at the Ritz?"

"Now, Papa, if it hadn't been you it would have been someone else."

"Maybe, but I was the one and I could kick my brains out for that!"

"Papa, you can take the rap for a lot of things, but not for that. Whatever we are we are—does it matter who turns it on?"

"It matters to me! It goddamn well matters to me!" He walked over to the windows and for a long time watched the pigeons strutting along the rain spouts.

Charles Scribner, Jr., and Harry Brague, Jr., came to lunch at Ernest's place the following day and apologized for upsetting him with their change of mind. They then said that they had arrived at an absolutely final and irrevocable decision, which was that they were right in the first place and that
The Dangerous Summer
should be published just as soon as possible.

Ernest calmly said that he would take their third change of mind under advisement and that's how it was left.

Ernest had planned to leave the following day for Spain but it took him three more days to get organized. He wrote many lists: some lists detailed chores he had to perform before leaving, some he left with me as reminders of various things we had discussed, and I think he left still other lists for Mary. An item on one of my lists was "Re 20th offer, will settle for $750,000." I had never been aware, before my last trip to Havana, that he had ever before made lists like these. His highly organized and retentive mind was all the list he had ever needed; all I could think was that quite suddenly he didn't trust it any more.

I had not planned on going abroad that fall but after I mid-wifed the last of
The Dangerous Summer
installments Ernest, who was in Madrid, became unnaturally anxious to get to an immediate agreement with Twentieth Century-Fox on the Nick Adams stories. It was enigmatic that after assiduously discouraging movie projects all of his life Ernest should suddenly be so solicitous about them.

I arrived in Madrid the evening of October 2nd, looking forward to a happy reunion with Ernest's mob (now reduced to Bill, Annie, Honor and Antonio) and the kind of fun we had had the summer before. I checked into the Suecia and went to Ernest's suite. The door was open. Annie and Honor were seated side by side on a sofa, talking and drinking wine from a bottle of
rosado
that rested in a silver cooler on the table, and Bill, who saw me first, was packing photographs into a small suitcase. Worry hung in the room like black crepe.

As Bill came toward the door to greet me, Ernest emerged from the bedroom. He was wearing his old woolen bathrobe, secured by his
gott mit uns
belt, with a sweater underneath the robe, his elkskin slippers, and a white tennis visor that was pulled far down over his eyes. Annie had risen and I was crossing the room to give her a welcome hug, but Ernest stepped in front of her and said rather accusingly, "Been sweating you out since nine thirty-four this morning."

"I got routed into Barcelona and had to fight my way out of there."

"Barcelona? You had me plenty worried. Thought you had gone down in the drink. Couldn't get any gen from the goddamn Spanish airline. Figured they were covering up."

"We were really sort of in mourning," Annie said. "Ernest was so worried it was already reality for me. Now, of course," she said reproachfully, "I'll have to get drunk."

"My state of mourning got me half-drunk already," Honor said.

"I have some Scotch in our room," Bill said, and he started out.

"And what am I supposed to do while you all are having drinks?" Ernest asked in a cutting voice. "Hit myself over the head?"

No one said anything. There was an awkward silence. Then Bill went back to packing the photos. "How was Antonio?" I asked.

Ernest had gone to stand in the doorway, and I didn't think he was going to answer. "He was super in Ronda," he said, finally, coming back into the room. "The fights in Tarifa were blown out by a near hurricane, and they almost called off Jerez de la Frontera because of the high wind, but the civil governor said fight or jail so they fought. Antonio was wonderful with his final bull. Then Salamanca two days, bulls worthless, Antonio very good, and we saw the new boy, Camino, twice." He came very close to me and looked into my eyes piercingly. "Have you seen the
Life
s? Did you see those pictures? I'll bet all hell has broken loose."

"About what? As far as I could tell . . ."

"About
what?
The way
Life
crossed us up on the pictures in the second issue. That's what!" (
Life
had run eight photographs of Antonio and Luis Miguel in action to demonstrate the various basic passes used in bullfighting.) "After me working literally weeks for them to get wonderful pictures, fair to both boys, showing things at their best and okayed by
Life's
Paris man, Will Lang, after arguments—after all that, they used the most inferior of the okayed pictures and one of Miguel that they took last year in Bayonne . . ."

"Which one?"

"The one labeled
pase ayudado—he\\,
that's the kind of picture photographers use to blackmail bullfighters. After all the hours and days of checking and rechecking . . ."

"But wasn't that photo okayed by you?"

"No, of course not! I'm the laughingstock of anyone who knows anything about bullfighting and has seen the piece. I'm regarded as the crook and double-crosser of all time. Didn't that photo knock you down when you saw it?"

"Frankly, Papa, no. But I don't have your knowledge about »

"Didn't Mary say something?"

"It seemed all right to her, too."

"Then you weren't looking. Neither of you. Just like Bill. Why don't you use your goddamn eyes? Well, I can tell you when I saw that page of pictures, it made me feel worse than any kind of wound or disaster. I guaranteed the pictures would be accurate and good and show both men at their best, and instead that picture is malicious. To be made both an all-time fool and a double-crosser! There is nothing to explain, as Antonio and Miguel know how carefully I went over the pictures, and the hours put in. Nobody had a copy to show me at Salamanca though the
Time-Life
people had seen it. If they had only shown it to me, I could have made some explanation to Antonio and tried to have him make Miguel understand. Never felt so completely sunk. Head was getting in good shape and

I thought with the right pictures, the fatigue and overwork to point of destruction was justified because we would have the results. Does no good to explain that promises to me were not kept. Nobody would believe that. Would shoot myself if it would do any good. But would have to get things neatened up for any such luxury as that. When I got a letter from Mary saying that the second number was fine, I quit worrying and was figuring on starting to have the fatigue beat and that everything would work out fine. Now this."