Ernesto Read online

  “That varies,” he answered. “Sometimes you can write a lot and some days you can’t write…Have you ever tried any of those exercises we talked about?”

  “No. I want to write, but every time I try I have the feeling I can’t do it.”

  Ernest reassured him not to get discouraged: “You’ve got a chance. Anybody’s got a chance if he sets out to be the greatest writer that ever lived…The important thing is to keep using your eyes and ears…”181 Dictating daily annotations into the logbook of his new boat, Ernest taught Arnold to observe like a good naturalist protégé and collect life’s raw material in service of their literary art. In a manuscript that remained unpublished until after Samuelson’s death, he transcribed the action aboard the Pilar, the people in Havana, and the places he had lived. That night, the Pilar was bustling, and camaraderie aboard was electrified on Sunday by the arrival of an extraordinary trio: Venezuelan painter Luis Lopez Mendez, and Cuban painter Antonio Gattorno and his lively, petite, and adorable wife from France, Lillian.

  Out to sea again on the Monday before Pauline’s return home to Key West, this time without their friends, the Pilar listlessly combed the sea without a marlin to be seen, then witnessed a miracle—a migration of six thousand porpoises in a herd two miles wide and perhaps six miles long, leaping as high as thirty feet in the air when they played in the waves of the boat. Snapping pictures madly with his Kodak, Arnold hollered, “Yi! Yi! Yi! Three of them at a time! Lookit! Oh, boy! Oh boy! Wow! Eeeeyi! Yi!” and Ernest, Pauline, Arnold, Juan, and Carlos bore witness to the wondrous scenes until stunned in a state of silence.182 The novelist told his trainee that such a scene might never repeat itself, and it certainly could not be written, as nobody could ever do it justice, though a piece of it would appear later in The Old Man and the Sea, when Ernest’s protagonist near his death dreamed “of a vast sea of porpoises” during their time of mating.183

  Reading a morning newspaper, they learned that the president of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, had died, sparking a series of editorials concerned about the path his passing would clear for Adolph Hitler’s rise to power. In some Havana news, Ernest read that the home of a fellow ex-Chicagoan in Vedado had been bombed. Dr. M. R. Leeder had practiced law in Havana for twenty years. Amid the rubble of their home, the lawyer and his wife discovered a number of printed circulars chillingly marked the “Terror Squad” and instructing Dr. Leeder to resign as administrator of the property of the former president, Gerardo Machado, at Rancho Boyeros and to leave the island at once.184 A few lines on the front page would also announce that three Americans had been jailed by the Cuban authorities.185 Batista cawed that he would be dedicating ten Cuban airplanes and seven warships to hunting down all rumrunners in violation of international law, while strikes, arrests, and bombings continued to complicate the peace.

  Dining with the Masons on the eve of a new holiday named “Batista Day” (to honor the Sergeants’ Revolt one year before), Ernest was caught unaware as student protesters, incensed by the mysterious deaths of classmates, attacked and succeeded in inciting strikes interrupting tram, telephone, and postal services.186 Declaring martial law, Colonel Batista posted soldiers at every street corner, reinforced the presidential palace, La Cabaña, and Morro Castle with sandbags and artillery, and ordered searchlights to comb the streets. As student rebels and revolutionaries armed with machine guns attacked city hall and the American-owned Cuban Telephone Company to incite employees to strike, President Mendieta’s cabinet did nothing and soon after tendered their resignations: “I never dreamed my cabinet was made up of cowardly persons,” the president said. “I no longer trust them.” The rebels demanded Mendieta’s resignation in turn, suggesting a replacement, and Batista’s junta issued a statement: “We want to avoid a repetition of the coup d’état performed by the top sergeants against Carlos Manuel de Céspedes a year ago, tomorrow.”187

  The next day, fifteen bombs exploded across Havana in movie theaters and in the homes of government officials, such as the ones belonging to an army captain and the chief of police. The bombs killed one person and wounded twelve others, including the son of a high government official, when a detonation ripped apart their family home. Among the perpetrators was Humberto Wilfred, an American, and the son of newspaper publisher John T. Wilfred.188 The Secretary of the Presidency responded with riot squads, attacking the students in Parque Central, and imposing severe conditions of martial law, to attempt to restore order in the streets.189 As Cuban students fought the army in armed combat, rioting spread to the outer provinces of Santiago and Camaguey; workers across the country were striking in solidarity and under threat from terrorist factions with guns.190

  The government suspended the constitution and dispersed soldiers to keep the peace. At the end of the first week of October, Hemingway scribbled in the Pilar log book: “The town is full of arms, ammunition [sic], dynamite. When the fighting starts will be part of all the factions against Batista and the loyal part of the army and a general dog fight afterward if the revolution is successful.” A few days later he added, “Big Bomb last night at 1.45, much promiscuous shooting in town.”191 Undeterred, Ernest continued to fish and to shut himself into the Ambos Mundos to write scenes that would combine to become Green Hills of Africa. In the evenings, the Hemingways met the Gattornos in town to have dinner or drinks.192

  In late September, Ernest met Loló de la Torriente, an attractive female lawyer and respected journalist whom he had met during a previous soirée in the company of her colleague José Antonio Fernández de Castro. Having argued for the release of students imprisoned on the Isle of Pines during Machado’s reign, Loló was a lady who was not afraid to go after what she wanted, particularly on behalf of people she cared about or for a cause in which she believed. So it was that she asked Ernest to read the work of a writer she considered to be a prodigy, and she made him promise that once he had read it he would call her to tell her what he thought.193

  Enrique Serpa had made a reputation for himself in Cuban literature when he published the short story “The Swordfish”—about an old man, his grandson, and an unconquerable fish. Loló was quite sure that Ernest, as a fisherman, would appreciate stories like “The Marlin” or “Shark Fins,” depicting the life of fisherman at sea, in addition to the manuscript Contraband, illustrating the dark underworld of piracy and prostitution originating along the wharves and brothels of the docks of San Francisco de Paula at that time. When he had read it, Ernest asked Loló where the author was hiding out and to arrange a meeting with him in the Floridita bar.

  The manuscript of Serpa’s novel Contraband parodied a protagonist who had admired a “well-known American writer who spent his summers marlin fishing in Havana” and who had tacked his picture up to lend himself an air of credibility with his crew. Having caricatured a writer whose reputation for hypersensitivity and temper preceded him, Serpa was apprehensive about the meeting. He saw Hemingway’s bulky frame sitting atop a bar stool at the other end of the Floridita and anxiety mounted.

  With a hard look on his face, Hemingway led Serpa to a table and asked him: “Listen friend, why are you wasting your time working as a newspaper reporter?”

  The Cuban responded, “Because here they don’t pay me twenty thousand dollars for a short story to make a movie. You know? And my family and I also eat.”

  “Hombre, you are the best novelist in Latin America,” Hemingway countered. “You should forget about everything else and write novels.”194

  Late that night, just after the two writers had said their goodbyes and parted ways, Serpa found himself, notepad in hand, chasing a story on the beat, while Ernest was in the Ambos Mundos getting the rest required to battle marlins aboard his boat for the better part of the next day. Serpa would encounter countless stories at that time that were too dangerous to print in a Havana newspaper. Their friendship, as well as a mutual influence between a Cuban and an American writer, would continue for several years afterward, such that on the shelves of
Hemingway’s home one can find every one of Serpa’s books, with a dedication from his friend.

  Amid student demonstrations and growing unrest on September 25, 1934, the police and soldiers raided offices belonging to the opposing party and journalists in order to round up and imprison forty of them who were loyal to the leader of the “Authentic Party” and former president Grau San Martín.195 This action caused the Secretary of Defense, acting in good conscience, to tender his resignation, though he underlined that he would not turn against President Mendieta or take part in further conflict. Advised that his life was in danger, Grau San Martín and seven members of his family boarded a Pan Am plane two days later and escaped Cuba to Miami, out of the lion’s mouth.196

  Solidifying his position by speaking directly to the American people, Batista got a significant boost in a full-length article by J. D. Phillips appearing in the New York Times: “Batista Links His Destiny with Cuba’s…The ex-sergeant who heads a growing army says that he is guided to do his utmost for the republic.”197 In the interview, Batista would make his case rather compellingly through the favorable descriptions of his significant charms, “I am an idealist, but a practical one. To me all ideals are useless unless they can be put into practice; all theories are without value unless they can be applied. The group who surrounded Dr. Grau San Martín were in the majority earnest, idealistic students who lacked orientation, practicality and knowledge of applying their theories of government.”198 His role, as he saw it, was not dictator, but maintainer of the public order.199

  What about relations with the United States? Well, due to the size of its northern neighbor and its influence, Cuba was duty bound to maintain amiable relations whether they liked it or not, and it was only natural, normal, and in their interests to do so. One had to recognize that the United States had respected Cuban autonomy, refrained from intervention, and granted many concessions and opportunities, he explained.200

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  A handsome young Cuban gentleman in a white linen suit and a coiling black mustache appeared in the lobby of the Ambos Mundos and presented Ernest Hemingway a letter of introduction from the other “greatest American author” of the day. After a year spent in Louisiana winning some recognition and prizes for his painting, this caballero cubano from another time201 had decamped with an easel to paint along the banks of the Mississippi and called upon William Faulkner at nearby Rowan Oak.202 Courtly, considerate, and articulate, he had eyes bright with intelligence, and his manners were as gentle as his name, Fernando G. Campoamor.203 Ernest and Dos Passos liked him at once and invited him to join them for a drink at the Floridita. As time passed, this same kid would become a close friend, particularly as the author’s Havana residence became more permanent.

  In October 1934, Fernando G. Campoamor was just the sort of fine-looking, serious, and noble young man that Ernest had been at twenty-one years of age. The son of a Spanish merchant from Coaña, Asturias, Spain, Campoamor had been born and raised in Artemisa, a village still in the Havana Province, just to the east of the capital. When Campoamor became involved in student organizations against Machado’s dictatorship, the police pursued him and his father. Fearing for his safety, he would arrange for an emergency student exchange visa so that he could spend a year at Lake Charles High School in Louisiana, veiled by the Spanish moss draping serenely in the shade from aging and immutable oaks.

  By the end of October, Ernest wrote Perkins that he had finished a seventy-thousand-word manuscript that he was calling “The Highland of Africa,” and asked him to visit to retrieve the thing and celebrate with a victory lap aboard his new boat.204 After the Hemingways had spent Christmas in Piggott, Perkins came down to Key West in January, and writer and editor fixed the title Green Hills of Africa.

  While “One Trip Across” had included scenes of revolution that were making the news, in Green Hills of Africa he was “sick of revolutions” and instead aspired for formal innovation. Drawing on elements specific to his apprenticeship, Ernest painted the country as Cezanne, striving as Ezra Pound’s disciple to transcend the styles of his day, by moving through time and space in a stream of consciousness rivaling Joyce’s Ulysses and hunting what he called “the fifth dimension.”205 Many critics, failing to appreciate as much, reflexively attacked this work, even former allies, such as Edmund Wilson, who said it was the “only book [he] had ever seen that makes Africa and its animals seem dull.”206 History would absolve the work, however; the author known for short sentences and journalism received subsequent praise for his innovation: as Richard Brody wrote in the New Yorker, Papa became the “godfather of the long-form” when he fused “fiction and nonfiction” in Green Hills of Africa.207

  Accidentally shooting himself in the leg in April, Ernest wrote about the ordeal for Esquire in June. For his carryings-on and for writing about subjects like bullfighting and hunting during a highly political time, Ernest was becoming the author that his critics loved to hate while he pontificated liberally about literature, politics, and many subjects in between. Wilson suggested that his works were “detached from the great social issues of the day.”208 Hicks requested openly that he write about the subjects considered essential at the time: class conflicts, riots, and strikes.209

  In turn, his articles and full-length nonfiction works became platforms for the author to counterattack a growing crowd of critics attempting to make their careers by taking the big man down. Consequently, in the Esquire article, “An Old Newspaperman Writes: A Cuban Letter,” Hemingway shot back at the group he now referred to as “the literary revolution boys”: “Don’t let them suck you in to start writing about the proletariat if you don’t come from the proletariat just to please the recently politically enlightened critics…if you know and write truly and tell them all where they can place it.”210

  In the pages of Green Hills of Africa, he also cast down the gauntlet for any fashionably progressive New York critics whom he did not consider to be writers, but “angleworms in a bottle…afraid to be alone in their beliefs…lice who crawl on literature.”211 Nine months later, he boiled down the formula in a letter to a friend: “A true work of art endures forever; no matter what its politics.”212 As detractors seemed to spawn and sales on his last two books fell short of his expectations, deeper disillusionment channeled itself into a war against all naysayers, a delight in combat engagements with New York critics, expanding in disproportion until they became a trademark. Though the differences were real enough, Ernest appeared both to become very upset about them and to egg them on.

  A deleted passage in his recently completed manuscript of Green Hills of Africa exposed the root of his anger: a father who was a “coward” because he had abandoned him “without necessity” by shooting himself.213 Failing and killing oneself were nonsense. He need not have any part of it, nor wallow, nor lie to himself, like Scott Fitzgerald, “a coward of great charm.”214 In contrast, Dos Passos was “brave as a buffalo” and a true friend. To show his courage, Ernest would get his work done and live life on the grandest terms imaginable.215 Yet even after these declarations of freedom and integrity, the presence of his critics loomed and pressure to respond to their politics intensified.216

  CHAPTER 4

  An Island like a Ship (1934–1936)

  As Cuba seethed with unrest, Key West underwent a transformation as well. Ernest’s home was no longer at the edge of the American frontier, for the ruggedness and the seclusion that had drawn the Hemingways there were disappearing while the island tried to become something else.

  As Hemingway walked from the port, past the lighthouse, to his Whitehead Street residence, he could see the work parties, rows of men in ragged clothes, bending at the waist to clear the weeds beneath the decrepit shacks, which the city had seized for its restoration initiatives. He saw them in clusters clearing rubbish from the beaches.1 While he wrote in the early mornings, he could hear their hammers tapping along the house frames of their worksites several blocks away. In Josi
e’s bar, he drank with them and with the veterans who were building bridges for the WPA and who kept their camp on Matecumbe Key.

  As he read his newspaper, he could overhear two of them bickering at the other end of the bar. He watched Josie reach for the sawed-off billiard cue he kept behind the cash register and waited to see where it would lead.2 When one of the men asked Ernest if he was that writer, Ernest looked up expressionless until his face flickered. He glanced at Josie, then responded, “Hemingway…? Sorry, never heard of him,” then he stood up, said, “See you later, Josie,” and exited the bar—slamming the door behind him with a bang.

  As Key West struggled to pull itself out of poverty during the Great Depression, engineers of the New Deal in Washington, DC, hoped that the town could reinvent itself by attracting tourism. Intent on achieving their aims, leaders of the Key West Administration (KWA) shamelessly exploited the writer’s celebrity in their attempt to put the city back on the map.3 Key West in Transition: A Guidebook for Visitors ranked Hemingway’s home as a tourist attraction and identified its location on maps for tourists.4 Soon, crowds gathered outside his residence, with sightseers peering in and young boys dancing for dollars to work the tourists over.5 Enraged, Hemingway fired off a letter to Arnold Gingrich, asking the editor to protest, partly in jest and for his readers’ entertainment in Esquire. At home, he ordered chauffeur and handyman Toby Bruce to build a six-foot wall around his property.6

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  At that time, Cuba was splashing across the pages of American newspapers, first in January, when a Commission on Cuban Affairs (composed of ten experts from diverse fields, such as economics, politics, education, and agriculture) released their report concluding that future political stabilization and economic prosperity on the island demanded agrarian reform, diversification of agriculture, and a “hands-off” policy by her northern neighbor, including withdrawal from the Guantánamo base.7 While Roosevelt proposed a “New Deal for Cuba” that would turn the island into the garden spot of the Western Hemisphere, islanders feared such initiatives would result in more of the United States’ “finger in their pie.”8