Ernesto Page 40
Although Ernest prided himself on being loyal to his own country, a good American—as a longtime resident of the island, he had also forged deep bonds with Cuban people, family and friends, to whom he was unable to remain indifferent at a time when they were finally attaining what he felt was their “decent moment in history.” Consequently, Hemingway did not abandon his residence or speak out against Fidel Castro, but instead invited him and Che Guevara to go fishing. The annual Hemingway Marlin Fishing Tournament scheduled for May 16 would attract sports enthusiasts from across the world during one of the first international events since the Cuban Revolution. Disregarding Ambassador Bonsal’s disturbing warning, Hemingway fraternized with the young revolutionaries and allowed reporters to photograph him by Castro’s side.
Deep sea fishing is a skill learned with years of practice. Fidel was not a fisherman, but he would enjoy a stroke of beginner’s luck: following the rules and not cheating, he managed to hook two marlins the first day and another the second. Watching through their binoculars from the Pilar as Fidel fished and Che read Stendhal’s Le rouge et le noir, Mary and Ernest could hardly believe their eyes when Fidel brought the two marlins in and stopped his assistant from gaffing them until Fidel could grasp the leader himself (rather than the line—just as the rules specified).
Despite his busy schedule during the fragile first months of the revolution, Fidel would make a point of attending the competition all week. When asked if he planned to continue until the end of the contest, Fidel responded that the competition was organized by the National Institute of Tourism, so he participated to show his support and to promote tourism on the island: “The tournaments are very good, very well organized and many foreign fishermen have come to the international competition. I don’t presume to be a great fisherman, but I was invited and told that Hemingway would take part as well, I believe tomorrow, and as you know, he has always defended Cuba and the Revolution. He is a writer whose presence here is of great satisfaction for us.”20
Fidel managed to win numerous individual prizes. Moreover, the comandante met one of his heroes eye to eye at the awards ceremony: Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel Prize winner, who had been gallant enough to support his cause. Castro took the silver trophy cup, which the writer presented him that evening at the dock.
“I am a novice at fishing,” said Fidel, unexpectedly shy in the company of the white-bearded writer, looking thinner than in any picture he had ever seen.
“You are a lucky novice,” Hemingway replied. “I congratulate you Comandante. On the other hand, I am rarely as fortunate. I never have any luck during competitions. In general, I am very unlucky!”
They chuckled. Afterward, Hemingway and Castro conversed for about thirty minutes somewhat separated from the rest of the crowd.
“He said he’d read The Bell in Spanish and used its ideas in the Sierra Maestra,” Ernest mumbled uneasily to his wife on the way home, possibly doubting Castro’s sincerity after meeting him in person. Having optimistically proclaimed his support for Castro in public, Hemingway now perhaps found himself over his head in Cuban politics and uncertain how the revolution and his role in it would turn out.21
During the tournament, Ernest Hemingway and the other fishermen would have had ample opportunity to look back from the water at the Havana skyline, at the harbor and the peninsula where the fortress, El Morro, and the prison, La Cabaña, still stood. La Cabaña’s prison cells now swelled with dissidents, people who opposed Fidel Castro’s Revolution. Behind the fortress and the prison stood a new addition carved in Carrera Marble in Rome, blessed by Pope Pius XII, and inaugurated on Christmas Day in 1958 by President Batista and his wife, only one week before they fled the island in haste and two weeks before the last liberator, or conqueror, of Cuba, Castro, arrived triumphantly home, in the capital city of Havana.22
After her family—and her husband’s presidency—survived the attack on the Presidential Palace on March 13, 1957, Fulgencio Batista’s wife, Martha Fernández Miranda, vowed to erect a statue of Christ that could be seen by the entire city of Havana, so she initiated a competition. Presenting her terrestrial sketch of the Christ figure, artist Gilma Madera won the competition and the statue’s commission. As popular legend remembers today, Mrs. Batista vowed to complete the statue even if it required using her own funds. Thereafter perched on the spine of the peninsula and towering over La Cabana stands a gigantic statue of Christ, El Cristo de la Habana, watching and presiding over the old city, Habana Vieja, and raising a stone hand to bless new arrivals, even if his wrinkled brow appears to express also an appropriate measure of hesitation. Madera said that she attempted to depict a figure full of “vigor and human firmness with a face of integrity and serenity, certain in his ideas, not a little angel flying in the clouds, but someone with his feet firmly on the ground.”23 In an interview, the sculptor also explained that she attempted to create a Christ with distinctively Cuban features, originating in the blend of African and indigenous traits, inspired not by a specific model, but by her ideals of male beauty—oblique eyes, fleshy lips—the perfect harmony of a racial mix in her part of the world.24 Given the skyrocketing fame of Cuba’s Nobel Prize winner, Ernest Hemingway, and his recent depiction of an earthly, Christ-like, protagonist, Santiago, in The Old Man and the Sea, one cannot help but wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Batista, who were very unpopular at the time, were influenced by Hemingway’s work in their decision to also offer an earthly Christ to el pueblo cubano25 by selecting an artist who would portray him in their own likeness.
Having converted to Catholicism more than thirty years earlier to marry Pauline, Ernest would have surely appreciated the Divine Trinity expressed by the statue’s extended index finger, middle finger, and folded thumb. Even before the time of Christ, this gesture had evoked a trinity in a supernatural family—a mother, a son, and a spirit of light—in Aphrodite, Zeus, and Chronos—in Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn—terrestrial beings and celestial sources, mystical origins for falling stars, their state of purgatory, and aspirations to return. As he ascended in his literary universe, Ernest included an epitaph which also served as title for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose” (Ecclesiastes 1:4–7).26 Fishing from her coastal water and gazing back at El Cristo as he watches over the grand old city of Havana, one can only reflect upon his epitaph, and wonder about Cuba’s future.
CHAPTER 15
Hemingway Never Left Cuba: A Lion’s Suicide (1960–1961)
Complaining of an inability to write and struggling to cut down and finish his article for Life magazine, Ernest, unable to focus, appeared so perceptibly anti social and withdrawn that Mary asked George Saviers, her husband’s doctor from Idaho, to come down to Havana. The author’s eyesight was deteriorating quickly, and his weight was dropping at an alarming rate.1 To Charles Scribner, his editor, Ernest confided as he eased off the pursuit of the memoirs that would become A Moveable Feast, “Feel terrible about post-poning book but if I do not rest a little as I work the Dr. says I will blow a gasket. Haven’t been able to sleep more than 2 ½ to 3 hrs at a time. Get about 4 a night—five at most. Weigh 200 this morning.”2
In television interviews, Fidel Castro had been repeating that the Americans who had not exploited the Cuban people would not be touched by his regime, but bearded revolutionaries seemed often outside his control, appropriating the businesses of North Americans, rich Spaniards, and rich Cubans, under the radar or outside his purview. As the Hemingways pulled up in their American automobile, San Francisco de Paula villagers still yelled out “Mismary, Mismary” in a neighborly way, but everywhere the couple went, there were signs declaring “¡Cuba sí! ¡Yanqui no!”3 Nonetheless in the quiet of their village and at the Finca, the aging Hemingways led a monastic life, including sunset walks around the grounds with Valerie, writing, reading, gardening, tending their cats a
nd dogs, swimming, fishing, and dining with friends.
Even though they had contributed, by Mary’s count, close to $750,000 to Cuba’s economy by employing their staff and living there, they were “beginning to feel unwelcome” as North Americans in the middle of a revolution that had an ever more antagonistic relationship with the United States. Faced with the problem of remaining as foreigners in Cuba, Ernest would still not entertain Mary’s suggestions that they abandon the Finca and their servants there or remove some easily portable paintings and the more valuable possessions.4
Seemingly rebounding after Dr. George Saviers’s departure as spring ended and marlin season continued, Hemingway would have over 100,000 words of his mano a mano for Life who had asked for only 10,000 words. Mary’s arm, which had had to be reset, had not yet fully healed, but she was working hard on it and showing much progress. In a letter to Hotch, Ernest said he thought it would be “perfectly safe for [Mary] to take fish like dolphin or bonito with it now,” and “Val had caught 2 white marlin.”5 His fair-faced young secretary was handling the rod very well, said Ernest, and swam one hundred round trips in the pool on her birthday.
On June 27, Hotch flew down to help Papa cut 60,000 out of 120,000 words from the manuscript. While Ernest grumbled throughout theprocess, eventually he would agree to the changes. The magazine paid him ninety thousand dollars for the article but printed only part of what “Pecas”—as Ernest called Hotchner for his freckles—sent in.6 By June, other worries crept into the author’s mind: “Been doing Income Taxcopying and re-writing since Mary is in a big bind with the Income Tax.”7
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By June 16, Cuban police had arrested two American diplomats, Edwin L. Sweet and William G. Friedman, at a meeting of counterrevolutionaries—and charged them with encouraging terrorism, granting asylum, financing subversive publications, and smuggling weapons. Under pressure from Eisenhower’s administration, Shell, Esso, and Texaco refused to refine Soviet oil, and US companies stopped selling fuel to Cuba. Thus Castro’s government confiscated the refineries on June 29 and July 11. Retaliating on July 3, the US Congress, after an all-night session, passed the “Sugar Act,” empowering the president to cut the quota of sugar bought from Cuba as he saw fit—to slap the island on the wrist—so he cut it by seven hundred thousand tons.8 Two days later, Castro thumbed his nose at the “economic aggression” by nationalizing all American businesses and commercial property on the island, a “decision justified by the necessity to indemnify the nation for the damages caused to the economy and to affirm the consolidation of the economic independence of the country.”9 Two days after that, the Soviet Union announced that it would buy the sugar that the United States did not, and China followed with a similar pronouncement by the end of the month.10
Taking leave of trade-war tensions, Mary, Ernest, and Valerie departed Havana for Key West and New York. When summer came, and a new bullfighting season began, the writer returned to Spain—leaving Mary and Valerie behind in New York—to complete an additional installment covering tauromachia for Life magazine. If he could see a few more bullfights, he thought, perhaps then he could set the words down on paper convincingly once again. But there Hemingway began to unravel at the seams, suffering headaches, paranoia, and delusions, complaining frequently of the IRS, the FBI, and the CIA, who he believed were following him—and who were, in reality, investigating him at that time. Perhaps attributable to a history of mental illness in his family, numerous concussions, or other health problems, Ernest would seem to be losing his sanity.
Planning to go to Cuba to check on their affairs as soon as she had made her New York “nest livable,” Mary encountered daunting new hurdles for “foreign residents regardless of nationality to secure military permits for departure.”11 When Mary called René, he informed her that thieves had broken into their property, that the pool and other renovations needed money and attention, and that all letters were being opened and reviewed. She asked him what he thought of her coming down to help him for a week or two: “No, no, Miss Mary,” he warned. “Much better to stay there. Much.”12
From Spain, Ernest wrote his wife, “Honey I miss you so and our old lovely life,” but “would not go to Cuba in September.”13 He was “sick of the whole [bullfighting] racket,” “fearing a complete physical and nervous crack up” with a “worn out head—not to mention body,” and pursued by nightmares: “I wish you were here to look after me and help me out and keep me from cracking up. Feel terrible and am just going to lie quiet now and try to rest…Lots of problems…Not sleeping, tricky memory etc. bad—any drinking bad for me except lightest claret. Plenty others [problems] but we will work them out and I’ll get healthy and write fine.”14
Concerned about her husband’s well-being, Mary answered, “I wish I could give you something wonderful and refreshing and renewing—3 weeks of our old-style holidays at Paraíso.” She sent Valerie to help him in Spain.
While the FBI kept tabs on Ernest Hemingway—indeed J. Edgar Hoover kept the Hemingway file open until the author’s death—the CIA was attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro. The agency staged hundreds of failed attempts, such as the exploding cigar they planned to give him when he visited the United Nations in New York in 1960.15 Another cigar was laced with botulinum toxin, and another with LSD to confuse him during the speech. They also tried to give him thallium salts with a depilatory effect so powerful it would cause his iconic beard to fall out—like Samson’s hair in the Bible.16
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In early September, tensions between Cuba and the United States escalated sharply when Castro nationalized the tobacco factories, plants, and warehouses, including H. Upmann and Partagas, and all the US banks on the island: First National City Bank of New York, First National Bank of Boston, and Chase Manhattan Bank. Then, later in the month, he led a Cuban delegation on a trip to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. Like his first visit, it was a media blitz, but tensions had increased significantly with his northern neighbor since then. Now the public relations grandstanding looked more like a warpath.
When Castro’s entourage was barred from the elitist hotels of Midtown Manhattan and from attending President Eisenhower’s Latin American leaders’ luncheon, they stayed in Harlem at the Hotel Theresa; lunched with working-class African Americans; met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Langston Hughes, Allen Ginsberg, and Malcolm X. Astutely, Fidel brought with him Comandante Juan Almeida, a black man who was one of his highest ranking officers, to underline the opportunities in Cuba for Negroes that did not yet seem to exist in America. His landmark speech at the United Nations first pointed out how expensive it was for a third-world delegation to come to New York to have its voice heard. He promised to be brief yet spoke for four and a half hours (after all, he had paid for it), narrating history from Cuba’s perspective, denouncing American imperialism and exploitation, and refusing to be marginalized or silenced.17
Fidel cited from the “Declaration of Havana.” Ratified on September 2, the Declaration of Havana was Cuba’s response to the Declaration of San José, when Latin American ministers, gathering in Costa Rica, yielded to financial pressure from the United States (who refused loans to countries favoring Cuban autonomy) and opposed Cuba’s self-determination.18
Although these Latin American ministers had voted against him and in favor of the United States, said Fidel, over 1 million Cubans had gathered to approve his Declaration, in a National General Assembly at the José Martí Revolution Square, and he was confident that Latin American oppressed peoples of the world would also vote in its favor. To protect themselves, oppressed nations had the right to arm and defend themselves against their oppressors. After his address, Fidel Castro received a standing ovation.
On the same day Fidel spoke at the UN, four boats left Miami carrying two hundred men poised to invade Cuba. The mission—funded by the C
IA and led by Rolando Masferrer Rojas—failed miserably.19 After only one of the boats made it across and landed in Cuba, twenty-eight men were captured: eighteen were sent to Cuban prison, and ten were executed by firing squad. Three of them, Allan D. Thompson, Anthony Zarba, and Robert O. Fuller, were Americans. When Castro returned to Cuba, he continued to nationalize banks, sugar mills, farms, and industry supported by Urban Reform Law no. 890, and the United States responded by levying a partial embargo on all imports except medicines and food.
Campaigning for president in October 1960 at the Democratic dinner in Cincinnati, Ohio, Senator John F. Kennedy rebuked his opponent, Vice President Nixon, for his misreading and mishandling of foreign policy regarding Cuba, specifically his confidence in Batista’s regime and his alienation of Castro’s government that caused one of America’s closest neighbors and former allies to slip behind the Iron Curtain: “And Fidel Castro seized on this rising anti-American feeling, and exploited it, to persuade the Cuban people that America was the enemy of democracy—until the slogan of the revolution became ‘Cuba, sí, Yanqui, no’—and Soviet imperialism had captured a movement which had originally sprung from the ideals of our own American Revolution.”20
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From Spain, Papa wrote Hotch that he was sorry he had not written: he had “been in really lousy shape but feeling better…Never was so dead in the head in my life but it is starting to bull out of it. The head I mean.”21 Worried, Hotchner flew to Spain in October to check in on his buddy and business partner. Discovering the extent of the writer’s paranoia, Hotch brought Papa immediately back to New York.