"So now we are thirty-five": imaginary letters on a milestone.

Curnutt, Kirk

ABSTRACT

To celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Hemingway Review, this collection of fictional letters explores Ernest Hemingway's mindset on 21 July 1934, the day he turned that exact age. The milestone arrived during a generally happy period for the writer: He was drafting Green Hills of Africa, his nonfiction account of his 1933-1934 safari, and only two days earlier he had crossed from Key West to Havana for the inaugural marlin season aboard his recently acquired cabin cruiser, the Pilar. As always with Hemingway, however, darker undercurrents swirled. This imaginary correspondence finds his feelings about aging complicated by the legacy of his fathers suicide; by his rivalry with Scott Fitzgerald; by his ambivalence toward his wife, Pauline, and his putative mistress, Jane Mason; and by his resentment toward his mother. Drawing from imagery and motifs prevalent in Hemingway's prose from this period, the letters find Hemingway struggling to construct a definition of aging that embraces the life cycle instead of lamenting lost youth.

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NOTE: 2016 marks the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Hemingway Review, which began in 1981 under the editorship of Charles M. Oliver and has continued through the tenures of Susan F. Beegel (1992-2014) and Suzanne del Gizzo (2014--). There are many ways to celebrate a milestone, but we thought it might be interesting--and perhaps even fun--to explore what Ernest Hemingway himself thought about reaching that age and about aging and the relationship between age consciousness and mortality in general. The summer of 1934 was arguably one of the happier periods in the writer's life. Only a few months earlier, he had returned from his first safari on the Serengeti, and the initial draft of what would become Green Hills of Africa, his nonfiction account of the experience, had recently broken the two-hundred-page mark. Although few would argue that Hemingway was at a creative peak as he entered his mid-thirties, his first Harry Morgan installment, "One Trip Across," had appeared that April in Cosmopolitan to popular and critical acclaim. The story reaffirmed his prowess with hardboiled action and salved memories of the negative response to Winner Take Nothing the previous fall. Most importantly, Hemingway was breaking in his beloved cabin cruiser, the Pilar, on its inaugural crossing to Cuba. The events of 21 July 1934 are drawn from two excellent sources: Paul Hendrickson's Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost 1934-1961 (2011) and Brewster Chamberlin's The Hemingway Log: A Chronology of His Life and Times (2015). Additional allusions and references are acknowledged in the endnotes and works cited.

To CLARENCE HEMINGWAY

Saturday, Sunrise

[written on Hotel Ambos Mundos stationery]

Dear Dad:

It feels funny writing you since you've been gone--what?--almost six years now, but today is my birthday (as you know) and on every birthday that I have a memory of I've thought of you. The early memories, of course, are all about cakes and parties at Walloon Lake. The ones I can't shake come later, after I left home and we were apart and you weren't with me to celebrate. There were maybe ten or twelve of those while you were alive and like I said already six since you had your meeting with Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson. (1) On every one of those sixteen or eighteen birthdays I've had since I've been a man, I've pictured what you did the same day you turned the age I've become. One day, if I live longer than you did, I won't be able to play this game. You made it to fifty-seven, so this game will go on twenty-two more [begin strikethrough]goddamn[end strikethrough] times before I'm free. (Sorry for cussing). Maybe I won't get anywhere near fifty-seven. That means the game will have played me, I think.

So now we are thirty-five, and what does it mean?

Probably nothing more than we made it one step past thirty-four. That's the thing about milestones. They're supposed to have meaning, but the only meaning I can see is that they make us feel like hell by making us count crazy. Look forward, look back, and always a number is there like a noose waiting to string us from a tree limb and dip our toes in a boiling cauldron of DEEP STUFF. Today I am a kid, today I am an adult, today I am officially an old man, even though I don't feel a damn bit different mind-wise than I have any other day of my life. It's enough to make a guy wish numbers had never been invented.

So here's how today's birthday has me dangling, even though the day is barely six hours old and light is just now coming over the old cathedral, the harbor entrance, the Casablanca peninsula on the east, the rooftops, and everything else you can see of La Habana Vieja from this hotel window (not a bad view for a $2 room). Just looking out this window I realize that I have eighteen hours to go in this introduction to being trienta-cinco or trente-cinq depending on your preference for language up there in heaven. (2) If nothing else, Dad, you'll know I still think of you. I always think of you.

It's September 4, 1906. You are thirty-five. You have five kids (Lester the Pester a long way off yet) and even though the gang should be back in Oak Park by now for school somehow the two of us, you and me, are still at Walloon Lake. We are on the lake, in fact, in the Marcelline. (3) Did you ever read my story "Indian Camp"? Maybe not. You sent back the first version of in our time, calling it "such filth," and then when the capital-letter I-O-T came out you told me not to be brutal and always look for the joyous in life, the optimistic and spiritual, etc., etc. (4) So maybe you never read the one about the boy and his father in the rowboat, but this memory is where that story came from. I couldn't tell it the way it really happened, so I made up the Indian father who cuts his own throat. But on this milestone of yours that is today mine, I am at bow staring at you aft as you work the oars. You work them so gently, without disturbing the water, that when you stop and let them rest dipping through the surface I don't even realize you've stopped paddling. Without a word you stand up, button your coat, and disappear. In a blink you're out of the boat, just stepping over the side as if strolling through a doorsill, gone with only a plop of bubbles for a goodbye. For a long time when I look for you in the lapping, all I see is my reflection. Swear to God, you are gone two whole minutes. I don't know whether to dive in after you or row to shore for help. But then you surface, hair plastered to your forehead, treading and spitting into the ripples, not looking at me. Even though the water beads streaming from your mustache give you a thick beard I can see it, your expression. Disappointment. You didn't want to come back up.

The boat starts to drift away, but you stay in the spot where you went in, keeping your head in the air by circling your arms and working your legs like you're pedaling a bicycle. When you do finally swim to me you grip the Marcelline's side and tell me to brace to keep the boat balanced. I put one foot on the port ribs and the other on the starboard, but I'm no match for your weight. We take on so much water you almost capsize us hoisting yourself back in. When you sit up and start wringing your coat sleeves you still won't look at me. You just stare at the slosh running between my feet and yours.

"Was that a drill, Daddy?"

I ask this because in those days you often took Old Ivory and me into the water to practice lifesaving. (5)

"Yes, that's what that was. A drill."

"But you didn't take off your clothes. That's what you tell us to do when you throw us in. If the boat turns over we're supposed to crawl on top, but if it doesn't we're to strip down and swim for shore. Wet clothes will drag us under, you've taught us, sink us straight to the bottom."

After a while of not speaking you say, "That's true. 1 should've pulled my coat and pants off immediately. Coat and pants, always first and in that order, because they're the heaviest. But I forgot, son. I panicked and forgot. You have to learn how not to panic."

Did this story really happen?

I don't know, but I can picture it happening. I know it could happen because it almost happened to me, only with me as you and not as the boy. Thursday as we brought the Pilar over to Havana I kept watching her wake, thinking how easy it would be to be swallowed inside it. (6) The wake wasn't even that big, Dad. The pump that cools the main Chrysler motor on this beaut of a boat wasn't working, so we had to rev up the auxiliary Lycoming, which meant puttering along. Took us two hours longer to cross from Key West than it should've taken. Even so, the wake was wide and white and rolling and even though this boat was everything I wanted in the world I kept thinking about going under. I'm not sure why the urge was there. Maybe deep down I thought that if I took myself to soundings the black ass couldn't get me. Maybe at soundings there's no sense of time, nobody measuring you, saying, "Today you're thirty-five--do you feel any different now that you've hit the midpoint? Are you as good as you were at twenty-seven? And, oh, by the way, it's been five years now since your last novel, bud, and while all this writing about bullfights and fishing and hunting is a nice way to pass the time, the clock is ticking!" All those fathoms down where the keen fish swim there's no before or after. You see it when one of these black buggars bursts head and shoulders out of the water. She'll come up (and the black marlin is always a she, according to the market fishermen over here) and she's ugly headed, thick-billed, and bulky compared to the younger ones of her species, which are always silver, only the black she is as graceful and confident as these silver upstarts, her competitors, never once looking as if she wished her colors had never darkened. (7) A black marlin never regrets growing old because down in her world there is no bucking the cycle of life to stay young. There is just acceptance, and with that acceptance, a connection to the eternal that makes the aging, the process of a life span, seem puny and insignificant. I like to think that's what you were doing in the lake that day, Dad. You wanted to sink down into the stillness of time and escape the hook and gaff of the minute hand.

Unlike you, I didn't go overboard to test that theory. I'm not sure why. All I know is that that morning you turned thirty-five I didn't say, "Is dying hard?" the way the boy in "Indian Camp" does. I didn't have to because I could see on your face how hard it was. If dying were easy you'd have done it on that birthday instead of waiting for more than twenty more before you called upon Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson for answers.

So what kept me from going over yesterday, you ask? What will (hopefully) keep me from doing a Hart Crane today? (For your benefit, Dad, see Crane, Hart [b. whenever d. two years ago, I think], poet, rummy, and other things I can't mention, flung himself into the Gulf of Mexico from a steamship on the way to New York when the urge got to him, so successfully going to soundings his body was never recovered. I give him credit: much less messy than blasting a hole in your head). (8)

What keeps my head above water, Dad, is the boat. This [begin strikethrough]goddamn[end strikethrough] beautiful boat. I wish you could see the Pilar. Today will be our first day fishing from her on the Havana side of the Gulf Stream. She hasn't even had her first marlin caught from her yet over here.

Maybe when I do that later today I will be happy.

Love, Ernest

To F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

[written on slips from a waiters order pad printed with the logo of the Cafe de la Perla de San Francisco (9)]

July 21, 1934

Dear Scott:

Don't worry. I'm not back to tell you more about how I liked it and I didn't like it [Tender Is the Night], We've said everything we need to say on the subject. (10) And thanks in your last letter for saying you liked the "Chinamen-running story" ["One Trip Across"]. Nice way of giving me the knife, Bo, saying it was lively enough to make up for the decomposing corpse called Winner Take Nothing. You never could take advice or honest insight from a friend without giving guff back. I hope your new book is going well. You are working on a new one, aren't you, Bo? (11)

But I'm not here to stir the pot. I'm here to tell you I've been thinking of you today. Not in a sentimental way, although I feel a hell of a lot of affection for you, friend. I realized just now over breakfast that you're to blame for this black mood that's bitching me today. You and your devil's dance with getting old. Today I turn thirty-five, and ever since I woke up it's been on my mind that it should mean something. A MILESTONE! I never cared a jaybird's ass about milestones, you know, until I read Gatsby. That business about turning thirty, about that "promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair." (12) Boy, you could ladle the sadness on like gravy back then, couldn't you? Only now I'm half-past all that thinning, and the brief-case is still packed pretty tight. The black thatch sits on the old rooftop, not a touch of gray yet, never mind falling out, a full mustache on the kisser, a full belly of enthusiasm for this life on the water that I live. (You should see my boat, Scott. You should get yourself a boat, Scott). Except that all morning as I've been sitting here getting ready to fish, I feel as glum as dear Mr. Onthefritzgerald. Feeling cracked if not broken in a way I have no right to. Good god, man, why did you have to give our generation such a bad case of the heebie-jeebies about getting older? Why couldn't you write a novel about a guy who wasn't bitched by growing old? One who can't wait to sail into his sunset?

You know the dumbest line I ever wrote? It was in The Sun when Brett says to Jake, "I'm thirty-four you know. I'm not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children." (13) The bitch part was all right, but the age thing--that sounds as if I cribbed it straight from you. You're the only guy I know who has his characters take a long drop from a tall window just because they hit one of these milestones. Jesus, man, I was barely twenty-six when I made Brett say that. The others in that book (Mike, Cohn, Bill) are all thirty-four, thirty-five, too; they had a full decade on me back then, but now I'm as old as they are. Soon enough I'll be old enough to be their father's fathers father. Even thinking about this stuff worries me that when I'm finally stooped and bald, I'll still be caught up in this little children's, immature, misunderstood, whining for lost youth-death dance--just like I feel like I am this morning. (14)

So this is my revenge for you ruining my birthday. I'm going to tell you what you did the day you turned thirty-five. You're--what?--three years my elder? Born in September, I remember, just like my old man. Three years ago is 1931. So September 1931 if memory serves you were bringing Zelda home from the sanitarium in Switzerland. You did some fine work that year with "Babylon Revisited" and "One Trip Abroad," but when I saw you before you sailed home all you could think and talk about was whether you were equipped well-enough to yence Zelda back to sanity. (15) So in this memory you and the woman ruining you are in Alabama. Scumgomery if my memory still serves. Or, better yet: Pondscumgomery. I know you didn't live with her parents while you were there, but let's pretend you did. Makes for a better story. Even better, make the setting her mom and dads sitting room. You courted Zelda there more than a decade earlier, but now neither of you is any longer a bright young thing. You are sitting in a chair reading the Saturday Evening Post and thinking of a $4,000 plot about a middle-aged man who marries a not-as-young-as-she-once-was girl who turns out to be the Sibyl of Cumae from the masterpiece The Waste Land by Mr. T. S. Eliot (who admires you so much, you always said): "I asked for eternal life but forgot to include eternal youth. I want to die." (16) So yes, this plot of yours is autobiographical.

Zelda (entering room): I have written a novel. I finished it in two weeks. It reads like a novel that was finished in two weeks, but I want to publish it anyway, just to remind you that you haven't finished two sentences in the past two weeks.

Scott (studying reflection in mirror): So now I am thirty-five, but I look fifty-three.

Zelda (ignoring you): My novel is about a vampire who drinks the creativity of men. Her victims think she is crazy, but in reality she is cunning. In truth it's not that hard to steal the creativity of a man who has nothing going for him but writing--when he is writing, that is. I'm very glad that your only hobby is being a rummy, husband o'mine. If you fished instead of getting tight all the time, writing my novel in two weeks would have been much harder. Also if you fished instead of getting tight all the time, my novel might've actually made sense.

SCOTT (face still in mirror): Was I pretty when I was only thirty? Please tell me I was.

Zelda: There is just one part of my plan left that I need you for. I need you to send my novel to Max. Be sure to tell him that every writer's wife should get to publish a novel, too.

Scott (face suddenly pocked and scarred enough to be mistaken for Mr. Sinclair Lewis): Eczema must be a symptom of aging because now I am streaming with the pus of my lost youth. Of course I will send your novel to Max. How can I say no to you, wife o'mine? I might accidentally save myself and not let you make me old before my time. I am thirty-five, but I look sixty-five ... seventy ... seventy-five.

Zelda: Stop your countdown and listen. I'm not finished. There's one more thing. When you send my novel to Max, you have to tell him it's to come out the same season as Ernest's next book. He has one on bullfighting coming out next year on September 23. My novel must come out no later than October 7. Let the man have two weeks, not a word from Max, then by complete surprise we kick his legs out from under him by poaching on his publishing season. (17) He will never expect it because he would never do it to you, husband o'mine.

Scott (complexion clearing up, looking fairer and more delicate than at any moment since he was only twenty-nine): You know me too well, you devil. You know the only thing that makes me spry and anywhere near to feeling well is to screw over a pal. Knife a buddy in the back and I am Benjamin Button, growing younger every day ... thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven ....Yes, if we can give Ernest just one last sucker punch to the back of the skull I will be sixteen for centuries to come!

Well, Bo, maybe that's not how you spent your thirty-fifth birthday. I only wonder if you had finished Tender that year if you would have published it in the same season as Death in the Afternoon. Nice job letting your wife do your dirty work. I only know that after writing this letter I'm not spending my birthday thinking one more bit about you. In two hours we will take the Pilar, my boat, into the Gulf Stream, and I'll land the first marlin in Cuban waters from it. That will make up for the hours I've spent wondering why this damn birthday has me wondering why I am so Fitzgerald blue. How about you do some good work today, Scott?

Always your friend,

Ernest

To JANE MASON

Mid-afternoon

[written on a page torn from the initial Pilar log]

Dear Mrs. M:

Mrs. H and I plan to dine this evening at El Pacifico. Since it is my birthday and I get a wish, my wish is for you to join us. I suppose Mr. M will have to accompany you, although that is not my wish. Most wishes end up wishy-washy anyway, so I can make nice and tolerate Old Stoneface. (18)

Had a nice morning walking the Prado with Pauline and this kid I'll introduce you to, Arnold. (19) (Whatever you do, don't get eyes for him. He is too young even for you). Would have gone out on the water earlier but coming over the water pump on the Chrysler motor broke. A toeless cripple on the wharf named Cojo said he knew a mechanic who could fix it, but not until noon. So the three of us spent the morning on stroll before beer at Hotel Inglaterra where tourist photographer took nice tourist photo of us. I will show it to you, Jane, but only if you promise not to tell me this kid Arnold, down from Minnesota, looks like my long-lost son.

Brought the Pilar out about 11:30. Just now finished lunch at Playa Bacuranao where Mr. Sing gets his neck snapped in the "One Trip Across" story you liked so much. Party today includes--in addition to yours truly, Mrs. H, and Mice the Maestro (Arnold, that is, who is useless for just about everything but dictating the log to)--Carlos and Juan the cook. Beach nice, weather nice, but Papa on verge like Harry Morgan of snapping a neck or two. I don't like birthdays, and this one has me hopping with a special case of the hot foot. Woke up in black-ass mood thinking of my old man. Then started thinking of what everybody I know did when they turned thirty-five. Mrs. M being one of the few people I know yet to turn that fogey age I've tried to keep my mind on you but no good--the wrinkly, stoop-shouldered, bent-backed bastards of old keep elbowing their way into my thoughts. Think of Fitz, think of Dos and Archie McL, Waldo, and the Mob, think of my mother. Black thoughts, too. Nada de nada. Only hope for light getting on the water and catching the Pilar's first marlin Havanaways. First marlin caught, all right. Not five minutes off the Morro. Forty-four pounds, six-foot-eight. Took all of twelve minutes to gaff.

Only one problem:

First marlin not caught by Papa. First marlin caught by Mrs. H. (20)

Not sure why she had to go and ruin my day, Mrs. M. Maybe Momma thinks her moneys paying for this boat, but it's not. Squeaking out reports of the good life for Mr. Arnold Gingrich of Esquire is. Motives don't matter anyway, only consequences. Somewhere in the hours after Mrs. H slacked her forty-pounder I said, "We need to invite the Masons to dinner with us tonight." The comment caught her off-guard. She thought the Heminghavanaways were through with the Masons, after all. Couples tend not to socialize as much after one of them tries to kill the others kids. (21) But it's my birthday--how could Mrs. H refuse? I could see the fear in her eyes. She didn't bring peroxide with her to blond her hair this trip. No time for a beauty trip to the Prado, either. For the first time, I knew Pauline had seen that page in the Anita log where someone (not me, probably you) wrote "Ernest loves Jane." (22) It's not true, but let's let her believe it. Because you know what Papa does really love? Catching marlin. So there.

Like I said, I've played this game all day, thinking of where friends were when they turned thirty-five. You and Mice are the only people I know who have not reached this milestone yet. You told me once we had the perfect symmetry of a decade between us since you were born in 1909 and me in 1899. So let's see ten years into the future. Mrs. M is a fine, lovely woman of thirty-five recently become an international celebrity thanks to her depiction in a novel by one Ernesto S. K. (for "Sweet Kitty") Hemingway called A Fine, Lovely Woman of Thirty-Five. To celebrate her fame Mrs. M throws a glamorous birthday party at the Club de Cazadores to which Mr. and Mrs. H are, of course, invited. Marlin steaks are the main fare, carved from a catch by Mrs. H herself. Mr. M is long out of the picture, having reassumed his natural form as a granite boulder and having been parked next to Stonehenge somewhere around 1941. When Mr. and Mrs. H arrive, Mrs. H is upset by her hosts beauty. Fine, lovely Mrs. M wears her copper-colored hair smoothed-back and middle-parted so her blond Madonna-quality beams like sunshine. All Mrs. H can whisper to her husband is, "If she's thirty-five, then I am almost fifty." Because if July 21 is Papa's birthday, July 22 is Poor Old Mama's. She is four years my senior, which means she's fourteen yours, Janie. Tomorrow she will be thirty-nine, and sometimes when our eyes meet I can see she wishes she had never married a younger man. At this party of yours, I can see she wishes she'd never made friends with a younger woman.

"I knew I should have bleached my hair before we came," Mrs. H tells her faithful husband.

"Your hair is lovely, darling. Blondes may lay claim to the sun, but gray hair glows with starlight and moonbeams."

Mrs. H, I neglected to say, is more salty than pepper-y these days. And bastard I am, I can't help reminding her of it. Because Papa is convinced that every one of those gray hairs stands for every marlin Mrs. H has poached from him. See, Janie, it's been ten years since Mr. H last struck a single fish. Never caught one from the Pilar even--the poor slob's own boat. Mrs. H, meanwhile, has become a world-class angler. Beats the pants off Zane Grey in tournaments at Long Key even. Mr. H has tried to ignore the situation, but that's not easy to do when a guy not only lives off his wife's money but gets his cojones handed to him by her on a daily basis.

"There's only one sun," this humbled friend of yours tries to tell his richer, more successful spouse. "That's why blondes always burn out in the end. Like the sun, they're doomed for extinction. But there will always be gray stars in the sky. That's what I think of when I see your gray hair, dear. I think of the constellations you could fill."

This is meant to be romantic in an F. Scott Fitzgerald sense, but it comes off mean and vindictive. That's what happens to Papa when he goes a whole decade without catching a fish. When he's still a virgin on his own boat. To lighten the mood, Mrs. M, you suggest a pigeon shoot. Even at thirty-five, you still have crackerjack aim. As always happens at the Club de Cazadores a line of men forms drooling at the chance to hold your drinks and your special light-loaded shells. Mrs. H doesn't know what she envies more, the number of birds spiraling out of the sky thanks to the carawong! of your trigger or the fact you don't give the men one ounce of attention. The only target Papa hits, meanwhile, are the cumulus clouds that drift overhead.

"Get your leads down," Mummy says. "The shot won't hit the moment it fires. It takes a second or a half-second at least to travel to the bird, so you want to aim in front of its breast, just outside of the plumage."

Mrs. M and Mrs. H drop so many birds the feathery plunge could be a thundershower. Pigeons pile up at old man Hemingwayofffargefs feet.

"Step forward," instructs Mrs. H. "Stand tall, stand firm. You're anticipating the recoil and that's preventing you from holding the stock square against your shoulder."

Mr. H, who does not enjoy instruction from anyone, not Mrs. H or any woman or man for that matter, begins to fire wildly. So much so that you might mistake his shotgun for a Tommy gun. He peppers the sky under the theory that the plug will nail something. And it does. A single pigeon about as meaty as Mrs. M's skinny-smooth leg flutters, spins, and begins to dive for our targetmeister. Papa can see the wicked eyes in its on-coming head, the beak opening in hopes of avoiding its fate long enough to nick a bastard's carotid artery and drop him spurting blood, right there among the Cuban waiters and gigolos hot for Mrs. M. Your crack shot here takes one final aim, ready for one final carawong!--only what he feels isn't the butt of the stock kick into the bone above his armpit but the back of his head explode with a sudden, white-hot flash of light that is the last thing the old bastard ever feels.

"Of course it's an accident," Poor Old Mama says.

"Of course," agrees Mrs. M. "Any knowledgeable shooter would know not to step into a woman's line of fire. Do you think he suspected anything?"

"Of course not," insists Mrs. H. "He could only see us as separated by the difference in our ages. What's thirty-five plus forty-nine? Eighty-four? If he were smart he'd have added us together instead of subtracting me from you. At least then he'd have known what he was up against. Poor sap."

Mrs. M toes the body of the former writer who now lies face down not two yards from where sprawls the wounded, struggling-for-breath pigeon, fluttering its wings with recognition at the women.

"I wouldn't turn him over," you, Janie, say. "It's never pretty. Not even when their heads were empty to begin with."

Well, that's the waking dream I've had ever since Mummy stole the Pilar's first marlin. Maybe El Pacifico will take the bad taste out of my mouth. See you and Mr. M at six.

Affectionately,

Ernest

P.S. Don't nick anything of my story for your budding literary efforts, Janie Austen-Mason. I might borrow parts of it myself for a story someday. (23)

To JACK O'BRINE, Havana Post

6:40 p.m.

[written on the back of a menu from El Pacifico, Hemingway's favorite Cuban restaurant]

Dear O'Brian [sic],

My associate, Mr. Arnold Samuelson, aka "The Maestro," aka "Mice," has just shown me your article called "Ernest Hemingway Returns to Cuban Fishing Grounds," which appeared in your paper under your byline this morning. (24) I'm guessing when you wandered down to the San Francisco docks to "research" this masterpiece yesterday, you mistook Mr. Samuelson for the sort of aspiring kiddo from Minnesota who would hop a rail to Key West after reading a short story called "One Trip Across" in a magazine called Cosmopolitan. In fact, Mr. Samuelson is not only a budding author and my engineer on my cabin cruiser, the Pilar, but a known associate of Mr. Al Capone of Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Samuelson may have a wooden leg that allows him to drink a dozen Hatuey beers and still look like a harmless, fresh-faced kiddo who loves his mother and praises Roosevelt, but you'd be mistaken. Like Mr. Capone, he is a killer, and being misquoted sticks in his craw. So you should be scared, O'Brine. Very scared.

Listen, I know your Havana Post is the only paper in Habana in English, but what I don't know is why you even bother writing in English if you don't care about facts. From what I learned on the Kansas City Star and then the Toronto Star facts are what newsmen are meant to write about. Like when I interviewed Mussolini in 1923. (25) I made sure to get it right that he was Italian, not French, Turkish, or Greek. That seemed important, O'Brine. But maybe I'm naive. Maybe I'm such an old newsman the game has changed. Your story has so many not-truths I would almost tell you you're better off writing novels, but then you'd ask me to read yours and give you advice, and I'd end up wasting more time with your lousy words.

Here for your convenience is a handy list of not-so's so you can learn to recognize a fact:

The Pilar is not a "yacht." A "yacht" is generally 40+ feet in length and stinks of money. A boat under 40 feet is a cruiser. A "yacht" is a luxury craft and as such rarely is there this thing happening on it we call "work." The Pilar itself is 39 feet (maybe 38; I can't remember) and a fishing boat, fishing by definition being work and not luxury. You can tell my boat is a working boat because when I go out into the sun I don't have a steward in tuxedo tails and a bowtie to apply coconut oil to my schnozzle to keep it from crisping in the sun. My schnozzle has only me to rely on. (26)

I did not design the Pilar. It was designed by Wheeler Shipyards of Brooklyn NY. If I designed it the Pilar would have four wheels so I could drive it onto land and run you over.

The Pilar is not named after my daughter. Mrs. Hemingway and I do not have a daughter. We have three boys, not one of whom goes by the girl's name Pilar, in case you're interested.

I did write a book called Death in the Afternoon a few years back, but it is not a novel. It is the true story of the bullfight in Spain. Every word in it is the opposite of fiction.

I did not catch 54 marlin "along Cuba's palm-fringed coasts" last year. I caught 52 marlin and 2 sailfish. Sailfish are indeed fish but are not marlin.

I did catch a 468-pound fish last year, but it was not a swordfish as you write. It was a marlin. Just as a marlin is not the same as a sailfish, a swordfish is not a marlin. I know it's complicated, but stick with me. These are facts and facts are hard.

All this said, though, my 468-pounder was a record in Cuba for a rod-and-reel catch, so at least you got that right. Bully for you.

I'll give you credit for what else you got right, too, O'Swine. You say along the waterfront I'm known not as A Writer but as "a good sport and an extraordinarily good fisherman." That's all a man should hope for in life, I suppose. Bully for me.

Still, you get more cockeyed than cockright in this blob-blob of yours, friend. (27) And you miss a pretty big scoop that would really sell your paper: today I am thirty-five. My mutual friend of A1 Capone's, Mr. Samuelson, and I are at El Pacifico marking this milestone. If you would kindly show your face I would be happy to buy you thirty-five drinks to celebrate the publication of your novel, "Ernest Hemingway Returns to Cuban Fishing Grounds." Then I will give you thirty-five bops to the nose for getting so much so wrong, Mr. No-Brain.

Sincerely,

Ernest Hemingway, More of a Good Sport than a Writer

To GRACE HALL HEMINGWAY

9:40 p.m.

[written on an El Pacifico cocktail napkin]

Dear Mother,

Maybe you forget, but today is my birthday. Today I am thirty-five. Where were you on your birthday in 1907 when you turned this age? I played this game with Dad in a letter earlier this morning. (Not a real conversation, of course. No Ouija board baloney from the great beyond). Now over dinner I am playing this with Pauline, Grant and Jane Mason, and Kid Arnold, who is not one of your numerous children but a kid here for the summer, no relation to the Hemingways or the Halls. Kid Arnold hails from Minnesota.

Wherever you were, Mom, I'm guessing you weren't at a restaurant called El Pacifico that operates out of a four-story building with a hash house on the ground floor and a brothel on the top. I'm guessing that even if you had been in this fine establishment you wouldn't be thinking of sneaking upstairs to that brothel for an after-dessert treat, would you? Not as much as you hated that story of mine about the soldier who prays to Jesus to deliver him from the trenches in Fossalta, only to celebrate his deliverance in Mestre by going upstairs at the Villa Rossa with a girl. (28)

That's the difference between us, though. One of us grew up and lives in the real world where the whores work closer to heaven than the godly people.

But don't worry, Mom. I'm only thinking of sneaking up there.

Happy birthday to me,

Ernest

To PAULINE HEMINGWAY

11:55 p.m.

Dear Pfife:

How long has it been since I've called you that? Almost ten years now, in the time of the 100 days when Hadley insisted we couldn't see each other so I would know our love was real and that I wasn't throwing her away over a romp. (29) It was only natural when I started having people call me Papa that you'd become Mummy, but I'm not sure you've ever liked it. Sometimes when I say it I think you think I'm teasing you for being older. Well, I'm not. I've always been grateful you're older. I've never chased youth or thrown money after it. When we met I liked that at twenty-six I looked thirty-six. Today I'm thirty-five and I've almost caught up with what my face and body look like ageways. Maybe I'm a little worried about where I go from here. Do I want to look forty-six next year? If I make it to fifty, will I look sixty? Eighty at sixty? I guess what I'm asking is what's the peak? No life is a straight line. We go up and down and at some point one of those ups is the highest we'll go, whether physically, artistically, or in any other department, including happiness. Maybe for all the fun we had today that's the reason I couldn't shake the stinker mood that's had me itchy and grouchy: I can't look forward without looking back and wondering whether I'm on the downhill slide now. When will the writing go to pot? Has it already? The Africa book is good but not as good as it must be, not yet. "One Trip Across" was really good and the action maybe even too perfect. Once your hero cracks a guy's voice box and dumps the body at Playa Bacuranao there's nowhere left to take him. Maybe I'll never be better than Caporetto in Farewell. God, I hope not.

Anyway, all this rot is my way of saying I'm sorry we fought tonight. I should've stopped drinking at dessert. Maybe then my mouth wouldn't have run away from me. You're right to be mad that I told Jane about your letter. About what was in that letter. When she asked me what I thought of that silly Pond's face cream ad she sent me I knew you'd be upset. I don't know why Jane sent it to me, much less why she mentioned it. Maybe I'll use the ad in a story someday, but it means nothing to me. I could feel you flinch when Jane asked what I thought of her picture, though, whether it was beautiful and what rot, and I guess I'd had enough Hatuey in me by then for your flinch to set me off. I shouldn't have told Jane that last summer when Josie Russell and I (and yes, sometimes, Jane) were on the Anita that you sent me an ad, too. And I for certain shouldn't have told the whole table that the ad was for a plastic surgeon you were thinking of going under the knife with. (30) For Christ's sake, Mummy, I never implied that you posed for the ad. But you did send the damn thing, and you did joke about having your "large nose, imperfect lips, protruding ears, warts and moles all taken off" when nothing about you is large or imperfect or protruding and when you have no reason to be jealous. You were also right when you said I was cruel tonight because I was mad you caught the first Havana marlin on the Pilar. I shouldn't have let that bother me. Any catch of mine should be yours and yours mine because we are one. You're a beautiful woman, Pfife, and you're my wife and that should be the beginning and end of everything.

Maybe it's a good thing we fought. If we hadn't, we'd have gone back to the Ambos Mundos and it would have been a night of hotel sleep. Instead you said I could go to Jaimanitas to Jane and Grant's place if I was so enamored with face cream models, and you marched straight to the Pilar. I wasn't going to let you go alone, Pfife. I'm glad I didn't, too. This is a good boat to rest on. I can hear you breathe below deck and I can feel the rhythm of the little lapping in the wharf and they're almost in time together. The silence feels whole and eternal. It makes me think we've got this aging thing all wrong. There's a line in the Africa book where Koritschoner (I give him a different name, Kadinsky) asks me what goes wrong with American writers and I say, "They become Old Mother Hubbard." (31) They go back to the cupboard over and over until it's bare. It's one thing for a writer to do that with material; it's another for us to do it with experience so the using up of it makes us old and depleted. Think of M'Cola when he took off his shirt. How used-up his body looked with the oldman biceps and fallen pectoral muscles, and yet he was strong as an ox. (32) Think of Bra or think of Carlos. They are close to sixty and both are grizzled and time has withered them down as skinny as tree limbs, but they're both still stronger than tree limbs. (33) Those guys are like marlin themselves; they swim east to west against the current of what we call time but is really only clock-time, our time, not the time of the Gulf Stream, which isn't time at all but eternity. Because Bra and Carlos are part of the Gulf Stream, because they understand the Gulf Stream by living in it, learning from it, loving it, a part of them is as permanent as the Stream itself. (34) That's what we need to do, Pfife, then we won't worry about fighting milestones with face creams and face surgeries. Otherwise we carry these milestones as if they were millstones, breaking our back with the weight of time. And once we let them become millstones we're trapped in the mill-race, just carried along in the current, unable to do anything other plunge forward, helplessly. (35) What we've got to do, Pfife, is be like the marlin. We've got swim east to west against the flow of time.

So here's how we do it. It's two minutes now before my birthday ends and yours begins. In the morning I'll make you a fine breakfast to wake up to. Only when you wake up I want you to pretend you've just turned ninety-nine, not thirty-nine. You're ninety-nine and I'm ninety-five and instead of seven years we'll have been married for almost seventy. We won't worry about counting numbers, though. We'll only slide enough beads on the abacus to remember two things:

We've been together a long time, Time enough to know we'll be together forever.

I love you, darling. Sleep tight.

Ernest

Kirk Curnutt

Troy University

NOTES

(1.) Clarence Hemingway committed suicide on 6 December 1928 by shooting himself in the head with a .32 Smith and Wesson revolver. His death was, of course, one of the formative events of Ernest Hemingway's life, with the writer overtly confronting the meaning of taking one's own life in Robert Jordan's reflections on his father's suicide in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). Even eerier are allusions that crop up in unexpected places, such as Hemingway's culminating reference to his father's gun in the litany of suicide options pondered by the corrupt sixty-year-old grain broker in the yacht scene in To Have and Have Not (1937): "[S]ome took it quietly in two car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well-constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up" (238).

(2.) Hemingway describes the view from his room at the Hotel Ambos Mundos in "Marlin Off the Morro: A Cuban Letter," the first of the two dozen essays he wrote for Esquire between 1933 and 1936 (BL 137).

(3.) "Lester the Pester" was Hemingway's nickname for his youngest sibling, Leicester (1915-1982). The Marcelline was the family boat at Windemere, the Hemingways' cottage on the lake.

(4.) For the feelings of rejection Hemingway suffered when his father and mother returned copies of the original Three Mountains Press version of in our time, see Reynolds, The Paris Years 199. As the biographer notes, Hemingway may have been upset when informed five copies of the small edition were sent back to Paris in May 1924, but Clarence and Grace Hall Hemingway had actually ordered ten copies when preorders for the then-untitled book became available. For Clarence's admonition that his son should write stories with uplift, see Reynolds, The Paris Years 341-42.

(5.) In her memoir, At the Hemingways (originally published in 1961 and in expanded form in 1998), Hemingway's older sister, Marcelline Sanford, nicknamed "Old Ivory" (1898-1963), describes the lifesaving drills Clarence conducted at Walloon Lake: "Dad would take us out in the rowboat into deep water. He would say, 'Now, when I tip the boat over, swim for shore!' Other times he would call out, 'When I tip the boat over, climb on top of it as quickly as you can--and hang on!' Then he would deliberately rock the boat until it capsized. It was exciting. Later we learned to undress in water over our heads, and Dad would time us to see how quickly we would take off clothing and tennis shoes and get to shore" (75).

(6.) Hemingway piloted the Pilar to Havana for the first time on Thursday, 19 July 1934 with the help of navigator Charles Lund of the P8tO Steamship Line. Once there Carlos Gutierrez, his preferred Cuban mate for the next four years, joined his crew, which also included Arnold Samuelson (1912-1981), an aspiring Minnesota writer who talked his way into Hemingway's entourage for the summer. Despite the fact that he had no experience at sea or on boats, Samuelson was officially listed as the Pilar's engineer on customs documents.

(7.) Hemingway outlines his theory that the colors of a marlin--the female of the species, anyway--change as they age in "Out in the Stream: A Cuban Letter," published in Esquire in August 1934 (BL 176). The theory has long since been debunked. See Skorupa.

(8.) Hemingway voices his antipathy toward Crane most viciously in the original manuscript of To Have and Have Not when his alter ego Tommy Bradley blasts the poet alongside F. Scott Fitzgerald and Black Sun Press founder Harry Crosby (1898-1929) as symbols of the Lost Generation's moral weakness. The passage was part of the large section of the novel excised in June-July 1937 as Hemingway hastily suppressed references to Tommy and his wife, Helene, fearing a libel suit from Grant and Jane Mason, upon whom the characters were partially based. In the process, Tommy virtually disappeared from the plot, making only a minor cameo, his personality drastically changing from a Hemingway-styled adventurer to an effete observer of his wife's infidelities. It is not widely remembered that Hemingway and Hart Crane shared a birthday: the poet would have turned thirty-five on 21 July 1934, as well.

(9.) The Pearl of San Francisco was one of Hemingway's favorite bars due to its proximity to the San Francisco docks where Joe Russell's Anita moored during the Havana fishing trips of 1932 and 1933. Hemingway docked the Pilar here as well. The bar is the setting for the opening scene of "One Trip Across," later employed as the opening chapter of To Have and Have Not.

(10.) In an oft-quoted letter dated 28 May 1934, Hemingway had rather condescendingly critiqued Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night, which had finally appeared after nine years of intermittent writing around the same time Cosmopolitan published "One Trip Across": "Goddamn it you took liberties with peoples' pasts and futures that produced not people but damned marvellously faked case histories.... Scott for gods sake write and write truly no matter who or what it hurts but do not make these silly compromises" (SL 407). Fitzgerald had previously written on 10 May begging for feedback on the novel; Hemingway was likely annoyed by not only his former friend's neediness but also Fitzgerald's critique of Winner Take Nothing, which the author of The Great Gatsby found inert and lifeless. After receiving Hemingway's dismissive comments on Tender, Fitzgerald felt compelled to reply. On 1 June, he sent another letter defending his novel and adding that Winner would have proved a far better collection had Hemingway included "One Trip Across." See Fitzgerald, Letters 307-10.

(11.) In his 28 May letter, Hemingway addressed Fitzgerald by this flippant nickname: "You see, Bo, you're not a tragic character. Neither am I. All we are is writers and what we should do is write" (SL 408).

(12.) During the climactic confrontation between Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, narrator Nick Carraway suddenly announces that he forgot he turns thirty that particular day in June 1922. The passage Hemingway references comes a moment later during a reflective moment as he returns to Long Island with Jordan Baker (Gatsby 143).

(13.) See The Sun Also Rises 259.

(14.) Hemingway used the phrase "little children's, immature, misunderstood, whining for lost youth-death dance" in a contemporaneous letter to Maxwell Perkins in which he admits that, despite what he wrote Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night is a "splendid book" (Bruccoli 177).

(15.) Scott Donaldson dates the infamous "matter of measurements" meeting between Hemingway and Fitzgerald described in A Moveable Feast (1964)--in which, after inspecting it, Ernest assured Scott that his penis was sufficiently sizable to please Zelda--to 1931 (162), Because A Moveable Feast is ambiguous about the date, noting only that the incident took place after Zelda's first breakdown (MF 187), most critics decline to assign a specific date to the story, some even openly doubting it ever happened.

(16.) Eliot wrote a letter of appreciation to Fitzgerald shortly after the publication of The Great Gatsby, calling it "the first step that American fiction has taken since Henry James" (Eliot 813), a comment later reprinted on the back cover of Tender Is the Night. (Eliot did not note that in his inscription in the copy of Gatsby he received Fitzgerald had misspelled his name as "Elliot"). Given that Hemingway had once fantasized in print about sending the author of The Waste Land through a meat grinder (BL 133), he would have likely greeted Fitzgerald's boasts about Eliot's praise of the novel with an eye roll.

(17.) As Fitzgerald encouraged Scribner's to publish the heavily revised version of Zelda's novel, Save Me the Waltz, he warned Maxwell Perkins not to mention its existence to Hemingway because the latter had once warned him they should never publish a book in the same season. As Donaldson notes, the warning was too late: Perkins had already told Hemingway that Zelda's debut was forthcoming only two weeks after Death in the Afternoon (164-65).

(18.) Jane Mason (1909-1981), of course, remains a figure of speculation in Hemingway studies, mainly because no one can prove definitively whether she and Hemingway were lovers or merely platonic, flirtatious friends during their 1931-1936 acquaintance. Jane's husband, George Grant Mason Jr. (1904-1970), known as "Grant," was a founding partner of Pan Am airlines who oversaw the company's Caribbean operations from his estate in Jaimanitas, a western suburb of Havana. Hemingway was generally dismissive of Grant, bemused by the freedom he granted his socialite wife to carouse with men out of his presence. Hemingway based two characters on him: Tommy Bradley, the indifferent husband of the promiscuous Helene Bradley in To Have and Have Not, and Francis Macomber, the weak and cowardly safari tourist in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." "Old Stoneface" was Jane Mason's secret nickname for her husband, reflecting her frustration with his emotional aloofness. In reality, Mason's taciturn personality reflected his inability to cope with Jane's mood swings and depression.

(19.) Hemingway's influence on Samuelson, whose dreams of becoming a professional writer never came to fruition, is explored exhaustively in Hendrickson (105-36). Samuelson's posthumously published memoir, With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba (1984), is an informative if non-essential account of life aboard the Pilar. Hemingway's most overt acknowledgment of the young man's presence in his entourage is the October 1935 Esquire essay, "Monologue to the Maestro: A High Seas Letter" (BL 213-20), in which Samuelson is dubbed "Maestro" and "Mice." The events of Hemingway's morning walk with Pauline and Samuelson are drawn from Hendrickson 167-69.

(20.) As Hendrickson notes, Samuelson's varied accounts of the Pilar's first catch are inconsistent: his preliminary attempt at writing about his time with Hemingway, a 1935 Motor Boating essay called "Marlin Fishing with Rod and Reel," does not quite jibe with the later account in With Hemingway. Hendrickson argues the Pilar log is the most reliable source (485).

(21.) In an oft-commented incident from the previous summer, Jane Mason had suffered a car crash outside Havana with two of Hemingway's sons, Jack and Patrick, in the backseat (along with her own adopted son). Although no one was injured when her Packard rolled down a ravine, the accident badly unnerved her, and two days later Jane either jumped or fell from a balcony at her home, breaking her back. Leery of her emotional instability, Hemingway somewhat ungenerously wrote a Nick Adams story called "A Way You'll Never Be" to show her what true depression was (Kert 249-50).

(22.) This ambiguous entry in the Anita's 1933 log, as biographers inevitably note, is not in Hemingway's hand. Its authorship has never been established. See Kert 242.

(23.) Mason had attempted to sell a short story called "A High Windless Night in Jamaica," which Hemingway edited, to the New Yorker, which rejected it for sounding too reminiscent of Hemingway. Hemingway's fantasy of Pauline shooting him here borrows details from Francis's death scene in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (CSS 27).

(24.) Hendrickson discusses in detail the inaccuracies in this poorly reported newspaper story (169-70).

(25.) Hemingway depicted the fascist leader as an insincere political opportunist in his early 1923 Toronto Daily Star article "Mussolini: Biggest Bluff in Europe" (BL 61-65).

(26.) Using the word "schnozzle," Hemingway describes the damage done to his nose by fishing for days on end in the sunshine reflecting off the Gulf Stream's surface in "Out in the Stream: A Cuban Letter" (BL 172-73).

(27.) Hemingway uses the word "blob-blob" to describe the work of daily newspaper columnists in his December 1934 Esquire contribution "Old Newsman Writes: A Letter from Cuba" (BL 179).

(28.) Hemingway refers here to chapter VII of In Our Time (CSS 109).

(29.) Hemingway uses the nickname "Pfife" for Pauline frequently in his fall 1926 correspondence. For the guilt and anguish the couple suffered over the adulterous origins of their relationship in that period when first wife Hadley Hemingway forbid them from seeing each other for one-hundred days, see Kert 182-91 and Hawkins 56-67.

(30.) Hawkins discusses this 14 April 1933, letter from Pauline to Ernest in which she encloses the ad from the plastic surgeon and describes herself in unflattering terms (152). Jane Mason's short career as a Pond's model dates back to two 1929 appearances (January and July) in Ladies Home Journal and Vogue ads by noted photographer Edward Steichen. Johnston analyzes them in interesting detail, completely outside of Mason's connection to Hemingway, noting Steichen's use of modernist iconography in them (186-88). Of course, Hemingway would allude to the ads in his negative portrait of Margaret Macomber in "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" (CSS 6).

(31.) See Green Hills of Africa 18.

(32.) Hemingway discusses the disparity between the weathered, aged body of M'Cola and the African guide's physical strength in Green Hills (35).

(33.) Captain Edward "Bra" Saunders (1876-1949) was Hemingway's original Key West fishing guide and one inspiration for Harry Morgan in To Have and Have Not, already in his fifties when he introduced the writer to the Gulf Stream. As previously noted, Gutierrez, Saunders's Cuban contemporary, served as Hemingway's chief mate aboard the Pilar from 1934 to 1937. Hemingway later claimed that Jane Mason hired Carlos away to serve as her yacht captain, irate at having been replaced in his affections by Martha Gellhorn. In truth, Gutierrez was replaced by another Cuban mate, Gregorio Fuentes, who would work aboard the Pilar until Hemingway's death in 1961.

(34.) This passage is meant to echo Hemingway's luminous tribute to the timelessness of the Gulf Stream in Green Hills of Africa (148-50).

(35.) Hemingway invokes the millrace (spelled as two words or sometimes hyphenated in his time), the channel that swift water flows along to turn mill paddles, several times in his 1930s' writings, including both in correspondence and in To Have and Have Not. Usually used to describe the inexorable flow of the Gulf Stream's current, it also suggests the flow of the mind. See Cirino, who contrasts its use in Hemingway to the metaphor of the "stream of consciousness" coined by William James and associated in literature with James Joyce: "James posits a stream of consciousness; however, to most Hemingway heroes, a stream equates to a millrace, a swift, overwhelming current. Instead, one finds that Hemingway's characters wish that consciousness were a faucet, by which the flow can be controlled, made more or less intense, hotter or colder, and ultimately, turned off entirely" (16-17).

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Sanford, Marcelline Hemingway. At the Hemingways: With Fifty Years of Correspondence Between Ernest and Marcelline Hemingway. Moscow: U of Idaho P, 1998. Print.

Skorupa, Joe. "Debunking Hemingway's Marlin Theories." Popular Mechanics 166.10 (October 1989): 44. Print.