A Farewell to Hemingway

A Farewell to Hemingway

Eric C. Hartlep

Hemingway never had to beat his so he could get to sleep, there were always girls along the Boulevard du Montparnasse at the Select or the Jockey Club. And if late at night the words wouldn’t come, and he couldn’t sleep and let the creative well fill again, to have something new to write in the morning, he could go out, even cross the Seine near Notre Dame if he had to, no longer a good place for a writer to go, and always find a girl.

And later, there was Hadley, the temporary wife. The starter wife. Of course there was Hadley.

Now Montparnasse looks exactly the same. They’ve restored it, a feast for devoted, reverent, paying tourists, and management makes sure that nothing changes, matching old photographs with Hemingway in situ. The street detail is so exact, your eyes hurt if you look at one spot too long. So instead you step into the frame, becoming one with His immutable, yet moveable display. This illusion of stable, stylish realism is of course the main attraction, and why you and George are here.

Once the cafes and bars shut down at 3 AM, forcing tourists back to their hotels so the streets can be cleaned, the big, autonomous vacuum machines lunge along in the dark, not showing any lights unaided eyes can see, and you try to sleep. When sleep won’t come, you put on the night vision goggles George bought for you at a French military surplus store, a place you never guessed could even exist. He found them on Rue St. Denis, but won’t say how he came up with the money to buy them. When pressed he only smiles bleakly, saying “Don’t ask, Nick” and strides stoically out.

As he did tonight – “I’ve got to, Nick…we need the money” - to roam the dark streets, leaving your questions unanswered. So you put on the night vision goggles and watch the machines. Now revealed, their purple beams cut through the night, bodies bulking like strange super-rhinos. You watch until the sun rises, the goggles making the sky surge with phosphorescent hues, welling up between the buildings, all wrong and yet beautiful, and then you sleep.

On a good night, when George stays with you but falls asleep on the artfully distressed chaise lounge, you sit up, open the window and drink in the darkness, winter being the best time to write because the nights are longest. At least the darkness is real, with neon banned in this part of Paris. Neon reminds the tourists too much of Tokyo or Singapore. Or Las Vegas. And they won’t stand for that. They want to walk through yellow pools of antique light where Hemingway walked, hoping a fragile, black Citroen turns a corner, stoking the ambiance. You heard that someone saw the Model T Ford ambulance driven by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in World War One, but could such a thing still exist? Perhaps it does. They abandoned it along the Seine when the Great War ended, and someone must have taken it for their own. Perhaps it, like Montparnasse, has been lovingly restored? Perhaps in another old hotel, in a nearby quarter, another young woman, also dressed androgynously like a Parisian waif, looks out her window and watches as Gertrude Stein, at the wheel of her Model T, turns a corner…

Sitting up, removing the goggles, you force that vision from your mind, and see George has crept back, crumpled asleep on the lounge. He looks defeated in sleep. You must do your part, earn what you can. It cost too much to come here, costs too much to stay, but you can’t go home again. Not wanted at home. So you put pencil to paper, never typing on the scarred, soiled Smith-Corona at night, because it might wake him. You scribble simple, declarative sentences, rejecting modern narrative modes that dare not speak their names. Bad luck, that. Breaking Hemingway’s spell, dispersing his manly aura. And you cannot break that spell, it pays the bills in Paris.

So you buckle down, play at being an ex-pat, at least until life comes to you, or you to it. Same for George. But this exile that bound you together frays a little more each night, as he goes out seeking his own narrative, his own escape, which you suspect is no longer the same as yours.

You pause and look down. The book nestled between your thigh and the arm of the padded chair came from a real bookstore, one morning when George returned late, and lay snoring, and you had to get out and see something new. This new-old thing was shockingly a first edition, printed in 1933, with silver words glowing on the black cloth binding, a mantra calling you away: Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose…

Last night you opened the book and Picasso asked Alice B. Toklas if he looks like President Lincoln. Someone said he did, but she can’t see it. Pablo re-arranges his hair and feels they share a forehead, at least. Already he was de-constructing his face, adding fragments of the admired, assassinated dead. He was not famous at the time, not in 1907, but the urge to become something else, someone else, which never left him, was already carved into his being. Because of this one thing, for now you like him.

Dawn arrives and you have written nothing. But pondering Picasso-Lincoln filled you with a happy sense of freedom and becoming. Hemingway’s creative well refilled while he slept – and you have not slept. So you are not like him, no matter what you must do here to survive, and this makes you smile. George anchored himself to Hemingway, and you anchored yourself to George, and together you sailed away. But anchors have a way of slipping, when a sea change comes. You feel you no longer follow anyone’s wake except your own, and wonder where that wandering you went, sailing alone in the dark, while the pondering you sat here, without night vision goggles, without writing, while George - smelling of Turkish cigarettes, masculine curries, strange oils and attars - dreams whatever dreams arise for him now in Paris.

A paper slides beneath the door, meaning the night is over. You shut the book reluctantly, all the heat you invested in the comfy chair bleeding away as you stand and close the window. George stirs, opens one eye, mumbles: “Is that - ?“

“Yes,” you say. “Go back to sleep,” and he does.

You retrieve the single sheet of embossed hotel stationery and read tonight’s program. Management feels you are a draw, and has moved your open mic performance back another slot. George comes just before you now – you have swapped places – and you feel a mild regret. Then you shrug, since George no longer cares about anything. Lately his readings have displeased management, veering off course. You wonder if the maître d’ will wish to “have a word” again, “Purely for your own good, I assure you,” as he says.

You shiver, not from cold, but recalling the smooth, vowel-laden tones of the maître d’ - unwelcomed, invasive and creepily caressing - particularly when, raising one eyebrow in suspicion, he finishes with “Eh, monsieur?” to see how you react. But you don’t react, leaving him to sigh, shrug and depart.

It will be hours before the crowd arrives and you take the stage, and you know you must sleep. The chair cushion still feels slightly warm under your palm. You place the performance schedule where George will see it upon waking, tuck the hem of your robe under your knees and curl up like a cat with your head on your paws. You dream in odd colors as if wearing the night vision goggles has permanently altered your retinas. Is this how a cat sees? Is this how Picasso saw? Did Picasso have night vision goggles? Did Paris have military surplus stores in 1907? Is that where Gertrude Stein’s ambulance is parked? Picasso is dancing the night away to Kaleidoscope Eyes and then you fall asleep.

And awake to George shaking your shoulder, smiling sweetly. You stretch luxuriously, remembering the attention he paid you those first weeks in Paris. Then you smell alcohol on his breath, sit up sharply, notice its dark outside. You have slept the day away. He hands you your beret.

“I hate this beret,” you say.

“But it’s your signature look, Nick. Besides…“ He brushes a fallen bang back into place. “…you need it to keep this mess under wraps. Grab your stuff.”

It’s very late, almost time to be on stage, and the maître d’ will not be pleased. Your front row chairs have sat empty, and perhaps some customers, expecting to hear you, have already left. After elevating you on the roster, he will take it as an insult, not an accident.

The crowd is large, spilling out into the street despite the winter air. A waiter guides you, parting the throng, and you are seated. Andre’, the maître’s assistant, approaches, looking grim, then suddenly worse as he says “Why that book?”

In the rush you have brought The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas with you, which is not an approved text. Though reading from Hemingway is forbidden, his spirit must be maintained, or at least not opposed. Readers must carry his books on stage, like talismans, speak over them with poetic oaths of fealty. At first you and George thought it would be freeing, to claim another’s freedom as your own, the aura of gay Paris, circa 1926, draping lightly across your shoulders. But every night the going gets harder, this eternal chore of propping up the dead, filling their lungs with your own breath.

“You may leave Miss Stein on your seat, if you wish,” Andre’ sniffs. “I can bring you another text, another tome. Which would you prefer? The Sun Also Rises, perhaps?”

“Have you a copy of Men Without Women?”

“Yes, indeed. An excellent choice. From 1927 – an early work.” Now Andre’ beams, delighted. “In the meantime, may I bring you something to drink?”

George has already had enough, he practically stinks of it, and you pray there will not be another scene, and another lecture from management. But you certainly need a drink yourself, and order champagne. Andre’ nods. “And for you, monsieur?”

“Cognac,” George slurs - thickly, theatrically.  

“But sir, it is nearly time for you to read.” On stage behind Andre’, a gaunt young man is just finishing up his act, to grumbles and mild booing. Two more wait in the wings, trembling with fright. The crowd seems restless tonight, hungry for something stronger than liquor.

“I said cognac!”

Andre’ rushes off and you adjust your hated beret slowly, letting your hand linger across your face to hide your embarrassment, wishing you were anywhere else. A woman seated behind you leans forward, puts her hand on your shoulder and whispers, “I can hold your book for you, if you wish.” And the gentleness of her voice, the kindness of her offer, like something George might have said and done, really not so long ago, keeps your hand covering your eyes a little longer. Flashes of kaleidoscopic color rotate in the darkness behind your clamped eyelids. You wish you might live in that vortex of jewel-hued light and unexpected kindness forever, or let it out for everyone to see. Finally, after pinching away the seepage from your eyes, you whisper, “That’s very good of you. Thank you.”

By the time she removes her hand, you feel it is safe to turn, but decide the best course, the only course that gives the necessary distance any writer must have to face the world with a dry eye, is to concentrate first on description. Later, perhaps, you will welcome the revelation of character implicit in her voice and actions. But for now you simply turn, with what you hope is a winning smile. And this is what you see:

The woman has a long, unadorned face, and a prominent aquiline nose separating a pair of entrenched eyes that would tend toward sadness, were it not for the slightly upturned corners of her lips. Her dark hair forms a loose bun at the base of her neck, a style popular in England in the 1930s, which the French call a chignon. She wears a dress of simple design from the same era, and a tasteful string of pearls. She is older than you, yet somehow ageless. She extends a hand, and you take it. It is warm and briefly the kaleidoscope spins again, while your eyes meet. You look down, seeing that she carries a finely bound copy of Orlando.

Before you can ask her name, or about the Woolf book, a bellow erupts from the back of the crowd. A cluster of tall young men in Hawaiian shirts, blonds with jaws like Easter Island statues, jabber, boo and jeer at the stage, waving their arms as if they held pitchforks. Previous readers displeased them, and their patience has reached the breaking point. But the woman with Orlando in her lap simply says, “California is no longer California.”

As the jeering increases, you feel your stomach go suddenly cold, and realize you can’t remember the last time you had something to eat. You feel light headed, and the room spins, like the first time you were made drunk – George thought it would be funny to get a drinking virgin drunk. You close your eyes, but the spinning grows worse, with you at its center, enveloped in a fractured pastiche of tropical shirts, lantern jaws, grim waiters, hands gripping Hemingway novels, gesticulating maître d’s.

That time, only pressing your foot down, hard, on the wooden floor, as George held a saucepan to your retching mouth, made the room stop spinning. This time, it is the lightest touch of a hand from behind that renders the room behind your eyelids a quiet space. You open your eyes in time to see a wave of black and white figures pushing into the crowd, breaking the pattern, as the spinning stops. A phalanx of waiters, led by Andre’, forces the hecklers out onto the winter streets. Other patrons cheer, and you would as well, but you have no breath.

In any case, your reprieve is short lived, because another cheer bursts from the crowd:

“We want Nick! We want Nick!”

A wave of sickness flows over you, until the most unexpected thing occurs: You find yourself, for the first and only time, pleased to hear the voice of the maître d’.

“Mesdames et messieurs…ladies and gentlemen…please take your seats. Thank you.” You witness the true skill of the maître, calming the crowd even while building expectation. His oily voice is like a soothing balm. But it sooths only them, not you. You must go on stage. You notice your hand is shaking.

“I can’t do this, George,” you say. “Not anymore.” George stirs, making his chair creak, but he hasn’t understood you. He belches, rises unsteadily, moves toward the spotlight. You reach for him, fall short. He mounts the stage, just as Andre’ brings your book and champagne.

“She won’t be needing those,” the woman with Orlando says.

“Pardon?” says Andre’. She is right, of course. He looks at her, then at you, and you nod. Somehow the sound of her voice has broken the spell, banishing both shaking hand and roiling stomach.

Without thinking, you take up her hand again, press it to your lips. Andre’ swallows heavily, shrugs in French resignation, and slinks away. George has begun his monologue, and the crowd begins to howl. He is not saying things that please them. But you are happy. A glint overhead catches the gaze of Orlando’s owner, so you look also: the crowd is throwing trash at George. She releases your hand and you stand and mount the stage and the crowd goes quiet. George, who once rescued you, is covered in eggshells, spit balls, globs of tortured pastry dough.

“They didn’t like my comments on Hemingway,” says George, to a backdrop of hisses and boos.

You laugh, and hold the Toklas autobiography overhead to an avalanche of cat calls. “Once Hemingway wrote that Gertrude Stein knew what was good in a painting by Cezanne,” you say. “Do you know what she replied?”

“No – what?” says George, dripping from below like an over-filled dumpster in the hotel’s back alley.

“She said, ‘Hemingway, remarks are not literature.’”

Out of the darkness, a deep voice booms: “Stick to the canon!”

But they cannot hurt you now. You turn, illuminated, facing a sea of fractured, bobbing faces, each just moments from going under. Should you give them a merciful shove beneath the waves? Or let them drown slowly as they struggle against the undertow? Stealing from Andre’, you mime his shrug of French resignation. Knowing George will get the joke, you smile at him, wickedly, and say:

“Wasn’t it Truman Capote who said, ‘When the canon is silent, the muses are heard?”

Before the boos rain down, a pair of hands begin to clap for you, held close to eyes no longer sad, no longer entrenched. With a sweeping gesture, you blow a kiss to Orlando’s mistress; she traps and holds it against one cheek, like the dearest thing in heaven or on earth and you feel that you must melt. But her gaze is like a scaffold holding you aloft.

“I’ll give you cannon fire!” booms the same voice across the cresting waves. Turning slowly, you see arcing your way, as though in slow motion, a sphere like a miniature sun. As it spins in the light, you realize that it will not hit you, but will strike George. And further that George, who no longer cares, will simply let this happen.

Later, you will struggle to recall whether you moved across the stage to make the catch, or if – as somehow seems more likely, more real – you simply bent the strands of space and time by force of will, to bring a small ripe orange directly to your hand. You do recall the gasp from the cheap seats. And in the stunned silence the sound of your fingers peeling away the rind, revealing sweet segments within, one of which you ate. Ate before tossing it lightly in your hand, all your hungers gone, and saying, “Surely this is not the only fruit you have?”

You look for approval from Orlando’s muse, but she has, of course, departed. Outside in the cold winter air, she clambers into the back of a Model T Ford ambulance. The rotund woman at the wheel, wrapped to the neck in woolen coat and scarf, inclines her serious-jovial face toward you, smiling ever so slightly. Then she releases the brake, increases the throttle, and they are away.