And it was beginning to dawn on me fully just what all this meant. The book already glowed with a rare incandescence most writers would have killed for—to stand in that light for even a moment. It was a dark and shimmering star, creating its own atmosphere and gravity. It was the biggest thing in our lives.
* * *
—
Now that Ernest had finished writing, he could turn his energy to other things, like harassing Pauline about the final details of the divorce, and talking about our own wedding, which was on his mind more and more. I had always known it would happen eventually, and had aimed a lot of my own energy at wanting the worries with Pauline to finally be settled so we could be together completely, without any barriers or strife. But it was strange and surprising, now that our marriage finally felt imminent, how I began to feel anxiety and rising dread. I didn’t understand it, exactly, which troubled me even more.
Ernest seemed not to notice—he was too immersed in his own whirlwind—but Mother did. When I drove her into Havana for her ferry to Fort Lauderdale, I knew right away she was intent on speaking her mind.
“If you’re having second thoughts, you should honor them. Your intuition is there for a reason.”
“I don’t want to lose him.”
“I’m not suggesting you leave him altogether. Enjoy the interlude. This is paradise…I see that. But paradise never lasts.”
“Please don’t say that. Not now. I’m feeling too fragile as it is.”
“Well, tell me what you’re worried about. What do you want?”
“I want him, but he’s such a force of nature. He pulls everything into his orbit and seals off the corners and any route of escape. He does it all without trying, and with very little self-awareness. And this book. He might be finished with the writing, but it’s not going away, not in the least. Some sort of wave is beginning. I can feel it.”
“What does your heart tell you?”
“That’s just the thing. I seem to have two hearts where Ernest’s concerned, and at least two minds.”
“He’s a big person, that’s certain. But so are you, my darling. Don’t sell yourself short. You’re as strong as anyone I know inside. And whatever happens, you can take it on.”
“I love you, you know that?” I said, and kissed her. “Are you sure you can’t stay?”
* * *
—
All the rest of that day, I chewed on my thoughts. Ernest had already been through two wives, both of them strong women if I could believe his stories. And yet they hadn’t been strong enough, or their love hadn’t been. Either way, the end had come sadly and irrevocably. Could I bear it, if that’s what fate had in store for us as well? Could I bear walking away in fear, not having tried at all?
“I’ve been thinking I need more time,” I finally told Ernest, having spun on questions over and over, reaching no answer. I meant to be gentle, but Ernest flinched just the same.
“You sure know how to hurt a guy.”
“That’s what I’m trying not to do,” I protested. “I love you, I just want to be sure this is the right and wisest thing.”
“Wise? Since when has love been anything of the sort?” There was a scoffing tone to his words, and his mouth had hardened and seemed almost cruel in this light. “Marriage isn’t science class, you know. It can’t be reasoned out. And anyway, you sound awfully cold to me. Actually, you sound calculating.”
“Oh, Rabbit, no. Not that. I only want to be sensible and listen to myself.”
“Enjoy yourself, then,” he said flatly. “I’ve heard enough.” He went off to bed, slamming the door as he entered our room.
I was afraid to push things any further, and so stayed up later and later, the words of my book swimming in dim light. I nursed a small scotch, then another larger one, and finally fell into bed past two, muffle headed and morose.
In the morning, I didn’t hear him get up, though I guessed it was before dawn. When I woke myself, there was a fat letter on the nightstand, saying how gutted his heart was, and that I’d felled him just when he needed me most. It was hard to read the rest, particularly when the letter began to list all the ways I should be grateful that he’d helped my career. Even in Spain he’d been helping me, he wrote, believing in my work long before I believed in it myself. He’d read every word of A Stricken Field ten times over, and urged me to work on stories. Then he said that if I was sure I didn’t want to go through with the wedding, I should come clean now. He was going to have to take Pilar to the mainland in September, and that would give him ninety miles and plenty of hard, empty time to think about how goddamned busted open he was. That was if he made it to the mainland. Maybe he wouldn’t this time.
I held the letter, which seemed to quiver and smoke in my hands. It was every one of his moods, all his sides on full display—bitter, wheedling, threatening, guilt mongering. But all of that only very thinly covered a profound loneliness and fear. I saw that and understood that any awful thing he said only pointed squarely at the fact that he didn’t want to lose me. Didn’t want to lose us. In the end, I didn’t want that either. I wasn’t trying to walk away, only to keep myself from being so sucked in by him—his wants and needs, his friends, his appetites. His books. His books, which glowed and soared and roared into the world while mine faltered, even with his encouragement.
I bathed and dressed slowly—still nauseated from the scotch and my ever-more-jumbled thoughts, and from what I knew I was about to do.
I found him at the dining table reading through piles of mail, and though I waited for him to look up, he went on gutting the letters with a vengeance, slicing through seals with the opener in small decisive bursts of violence.
I forced myself to come nearer anyway, the ceramic tiles cool under my bare feet, my eyes swimming with unshed tears. “I can’t lose you, Rabbit. I won’t. That would be pure idiocy and I’m no idiot. I want us to be married.”
He finally turned his gaze on me, his eyes glassy and unyielding. “I don’t believe you.”
“Please don’t punish me. I’ve been punishing myself enough as it is.”
He stilled his hands, then, softening infinitesimally, but softening. I knew he would listen now, and forgive me for hurting him, but part of me was angry with myself for seeking that forgiveness—for capitulating—when I’d only been trying to honor my own very real doubt. And that doubt was still there, the same as ever.
“We’re each so independent,” I said as gently as I could, “so bent on having our own way. How is that going to sort itself out?”
“I never feel you get in the way of anything,” he said, missing the thrust of my point. “You just make it all better.”
“I don’t know any happy marriages. Even between lovers who know how to compromise.”
“We’ll make our own rules, then, and damn everyone else. We’re the best thing going, and we’re going to be so stinking happy no one will be able to stand us. We’ll barely be able to stand ourselves. You’ll see.”
How, how, how can it work? I should have cried out. You’re the sun and I’m the moon. You’re iron and I’m steel. We can’t bend and we can’t change. But what I did was go to him. I put my head on his broad, impossible shoulder, and I nodded and I kissed him, swallowing back all my doubt and fear. My wisdom. “I love you so much,” I said.
51
For Whom the Bell Tolls launched to reviews that weren’t raves so much as paroxysms. Even the staunchest critics couldn’t deny the power of what Ernest had done, and the effectiveness of the book. The Atlantic called it “rare and beautiful,” full of “strength and brutality.” The New York Times said it was “the fullest, truest and deepest” thing Ernest had written. The Saturday Review thought it “one of the finest and richest novels of the last decade.” But the notice that seemed to make Ernest happiest, and the one that rang out all through that fall, was from
Edmund Wilson. For years and through several books, he’d been loudly disappointed with Ernest’s writing and Ernest himself, it seemed, but now he was equally emphatic in sounding the prodigal trumpet, saying, “Hemingway the artist is with us again; and it is like having an old friend back.”
Because I had the closest vantage point, it was impossible to miss how the success of this novel worked to cure every other publishing disappointment. Hurt fell away like iron scales—and not because everyone loved the book, though that was wonderful, but because he had doctored his own ills. For nearly a decade, he’d been accused of macho posturing, of writing prose that was akin to wearing false hair on the chest—as Max Eastman had so meanly scolded in print for all of America to read. But Ernest knew there was more inside him, and he’d gone to Spain to find it, to access the raw and elemental sort of experience that he knew would bring him to life again as a writer. And it had worked brilliantly. He’d written the precise book that would rocket him past any further doubt from the critics as to his ability, and to quiet the demons in his own mind.
It also didn’t hurt that the book was flying off the shelves.
“Like frozen daiquiris in hell,” Ernest said of the sales figures Max Perkins sent on.
“Just as it should be when the gods are actually on our side. Now you can rest.”
“Rest nothing. It’s time to enjoy myself.”
* * *
—
It was high season in Sun Valley when we arrived. The publicity campaign seemed to have worked, because the lodge was swimming with socialites and celebrities. It looked like a film set and might well have been. No one talked about Hitler or the latest cataclysm coming over the wire—or about anything, really, but the movies they had just seen or had just made, or wanted to make. I thought it was all incredibly shallow and shortsighted, but since Hollywood had grown keen on adapting Ernest’s book for the screen, it was the only thing he could think about, so I knew to keep my opinions to myself.
Dorothy Parker was hoping to write the script.
“Over my dead body,” he said when she was out of earshot.
“Her writing’s very clever,” I allowed.
“Which is the opposite of what anyone should value.”
“Yes,” I agreed, privately thinking that Sun Valley was a strange place to even mention values.
One day Gary Cooper arrived with his very beautiful and very groomed wife, Rocky. Everyone thought he was a shoo-in for Robert Jordan, but the part of Maria was up for grabs.
“What about Ingrid Bergman?” Cooper suggested over drinks. When he leaned toward his overfull martini, his suit jacket followed his every movement, and my eyes trailed along appreciatively. Ernest wore the same shirt for days on end. I’d almost forgotten how good a man could look in the right clothes. Cooper would have looked even better if he knew how to be quiet, but he and Ernest had just gotten started.
“How about Marty for the part?” Ernest said. “She’s the real Maria.”
“What do I know about acting?”
“You’d be grand. You’d play her straight and simple and true.”
Rocky’s eyes grazed over me. She wore a net hat and gleaming sable jacket, a deep-red stain on her lips. “Hmm. Who else? Garbo would be marvelous.”
“With those false eyelashes? I can’t see that.” Ernest motioned to the waiter with two quick tugs of his hand through the air. Our drinks were still half full, but that was how things went now that Ernest wasn’t writing. The clock went unwatched. Hangovers didn’t factor in if you could sleep the day away.
“Without the eyelashes, then,” Cooper said smoothly. Everything about him was smooth, I had to admit, but the talk went on this way for hours, dull and empty and artificial. I had to stop listening.
“Does the movie really matter so much?” I said to Ernest later. “The book is wonderful all by itself.”
“The money won’t hurt,” he said. “You know Pauline’s going to keep exacting alimony until I’m dead. And my taxes are suddenly so outrageous I might need a tourniquet.”
“Well, all right. I just think writers who cater to Hollywood end up soft and spineless. Too well fed. Please tell me you won’t get sucked into all that. I couldn’t bear it.”
“I don’t think I could after what happened to Scott out there.” He meant Fitzgerald. Everyone knew that as soon as he’d indentured himself to MGM, he’d written almost nothing and turned into a sad and spongy impostor of himself, drinking and drinking and trying too hard to please everyone, forgetting altogether what had driven his work, and what really mattered. I couldn’t think of anything more tragic.
But even if Ernest did privately hold up Scott for himself as a cautionary tale, the moment we were among others, he raced to be the first with a drink in his hand, talking louder and more forcibly than anyone else, never dimming even in the wee hours when I could barely hold my head up. The endless gossip and the highballs and the elaborate menus felt frantic to me, like angels dancing wildly on the head of a pin while the larger world was in chaos.
* * *
—
Once Hitler had conquered France, he’d turned his gaze across the Channel and sent his bombers streaming over London in an attack we would later know as the Blitzkrieg. All through September and October, the attacks went on, night after night, week after week, decimating the city, while we played doubles tennis and fished and complained about the coming rain. It was almost too much to believe.
I tried to work on the stories I’d brought with me but had a hard time focusing. I couldn’t concentrate with so much going on, and felt myself growing dangerously edgy. But Ernest didn’t want to listen to my fears or anxieties. He’d earned his break, he insisted. Could we just get through this holiday?
Finally, the boys arrived to save the day. When the rain cleared, we organized a long pack trip along the Salmon River, taking our horses over twenty-three miles of trail, as the fall colors burst and then bled, and the air went crisp as an apple. I’d never loved camping, but the boys made anything better, even sleeping on the ground. Gigi taught us an elaborate card game to play around the fire in the evenings, and Patrick read out portions of The Call of the Wild with such feeling and sensitivity I got a lump in my throat.
Bumby was quieter than usual, even pensive. He was about to turn seventeen and had just started his senior year of high school, but he still didn’t know what to point himself at, or what he should care about beyond fishing and the occasional role in a school play.
“Don’t be so sure you need college,” Ernest told him. “At least not right away. You can work awhile, can’t you? Catch up to yourself?”
“Sure,” Bum agreed. “That would leave a lot more time for getting after steelhead.”
“You bet. There’s only one life, as far as I’ve been told. Why not get as many as you can?”
“The war could land here and turn everyone’s plans over,” I cautioned. Just that week, Japan had joined the Axis powers, signing a treaty that said an enemy to any one of their countries was an enemy to all. It was a prophetic moment. America had avoided conflict so far, but now it seemed obvious that we could be forced into the theater at any moment. Japan was awfully, eerily close to the South Pacific, where we had a strong military presence.
“It’s not here yet,” Ernest said.
“I think I’d make an all-right soldier,” Bum said, and I felt a chill pass over me, head to toe.
“Don’t grow up before you have to,” I told him. “Not a minute before.”
* * *
—
The more time I spent with the boys, the luckier I felt to have fallen in with them. Like their father, they surrendered to the natural world, becoming absolutely alive in whatever they were doing—flicking for trout, wading through yellow eelgrass, catching mallards on the wing. Ernest had taught them what to do, as his father h
ad taught him—where to stand, how to hold a knife, how to walk through grass without a sound—but he also made plenty of room for them to make their own discoveries and mistakes. He left them the plum shot, even if they might miss. He moved downstream so one of them could have the prime location for fly-fishing. He also listened to them intensely—all their stories, their funny schemes and long-winded jokes. And when I saw him this way, with them and at his best, I felt guilty and disloyal for doubting him. This life I was building with Ernest and his boys was a good one. And I was about to be married, wasn’t I? To make all the promises that would mean I wasn’t only myself anymore, but part of a family, this family, the one that wanted to make me feel whole and loved and just where I belonged. If only I would give in and believe it.
* * *
—
On November 21, 1940, in the gently moth-eaten dining room of the Union Pacific Railroad in Cheyenne, Wyoming, I became the third Mrs. Hemingway. We had roast moose for supper and passable champagne, the very best that could be found in Cheyenne or for a hundred miles, probably, and we were giddy, both of us—giddy and rash and determinedly hopeful.
Ernest had been divorced for only two weeks, but I did my best not to think about that. I tried not to remember my mother saying how Ernest didn’t seem to know how not to be married, either, or how these last months had been so difficult, with him and Pauline fighting and clawing over money, because that was the only thing left to fight about.