Authors: A. E. Hotchner
The first time Mr. Scribner and I met, it was to discuss Ernest's medical statement which he had sent to Scribner from Italy for release to the press. Ernest suggested that this statement might take the pressure off. "Especially off me, here in the hospital, making my fight and under siege of news hawks like Hector was be-Greeked at Troy."
The statement was: "It certainly is odd, though not particularly I suppose, for people to think you are a phony. I would not let the photographers nor any reporters in because I was too tired and was making my fight and because face was incrusted like after a flash burn. Had streptococcus infection, straphilo-coccus (probably misspelled) infection plus erysipelas, thirteen and one half million units of Penicillium, plus three and one half million when it started to relapse. The doctors in Cortina thought it might go into the brain and make a menengitis since the left eye was completely involved and closed completely tight so that every time I opened it with boric solution a big part of the eye-lashes would pull out.
"It could have been from the dust on the secondary roads as well as from fragments from the wad.
"Still can't shave. Have tried it twice and up come the welts and patches and then the skin peels like postage stamps. So run a clippers over face every week. That way it looks unshaven but not as though you were sporting a beard. All above is true and accurate and you can release it to anybody, including the press."
Ernest was back in Cuba by the summer of 1949, and in late July he telephoned to report that the
Cosmopolitan
two-story project had taken another turn and suggested I visit him in September. I said that this time I would take a cottage at the Kawama Club at Varadero Beach and not inconvenience them.
"No inconvenience," Ernest said, "but Varadero beauty place. When you come down I will knock off work for two or three days and bring the boat to Varadero and we can have some fun. Will work hard for balance of July and August so that will rate the vacation."
"Arthur wants to know," I said, referring to Cosmo's editor, Arthur Gordon, "if you want the additional ten thousand."
"No. Tell Arthur thanks very much, but am okay on dough. Our fighting chickens won thirty-eight out of forty-two fights. The joint is producing what we need to eat. The Deep-Freeze is full. I'm shooting hot on pigeons and should be able to pick up three to four G's. The kids are all suited, Italian moneyed, and leave on Tuesday. My oldest boy, Jack, is back as a captain of infantry in Berlin and self-supporting—so far. If Kid Gavilan wins over Robinson, am okay through Christmas. He'll probably lose, though, and am covering."
I asked if I could bring him anything. "Well, yes." he said. "If you can manage it, bring a tin of beluga caviar from Maison Glass and a Smith-Corona portable, pica type. About the stories, believe I have a pretty nice surprise for you. Have been hotter— working—than the grill they roasted San Lorenzo on."
The surprise was that Ernest had started one of the
Cosmopolitan-promised
stories, originally titled "A Short Story," when he was hospitalized in Italy; he said he had started it to pay for his imminent funeral expenses. As he improved, however, the story grew until now it gave every indication of becoming a novel. Ernest was calling it
Across the River and into the Trees.
"All of my books started as short stories," he said. "I never sat down to write a novel."
We were on the
Pilar
when he gave me the first chapters to read, sitting beside me, reading over my shoulder. (It was impossible with him breathing in my ear, and I was only vaguely aware of what I was reading. In years ahead I was to learn that all works-in-progress would be shown to me in this manner; although it wasn't easy, I eventually learned to detach myself from the author at my shoulder.) Now, however, Ernest completely distracted me with his reactions to the manuscript-laughing at places, commenting at others, as if it were someone else's book. He started to put it away (Ernest always treated the pages of a manuscript-in-progress as Crown Jewels), but I asked whether I could go through it a second time; and so later I succeeded in really reading it.
"Did Papa tell you," Mary asked, "that he's back at the cotsies again?"
"I thought you swore off," I said, surprised.
"Momentary relapse. This was a big cat, five years old. Worked him when the trainer quit on account of the cat was getting bad and I think I did okay. Takes your mind off things."
"Papa, I really think it's foolish to go in with cats when you're not training them and yourself every day," I said.
"You're right. For me to work cotsies is foolish, of course. I only do it to show off in front of some woman or for straight fun. The fun is to see how they react to discipline without provocation. But you can't work more than two at once because it is dangerous to let them get behind you. Same thing applies to some people I know."
Great black cumulus puffs were forming in the sky to the west, and the sea was getting choppy. The four lines trolled efficiently but there were no takers. The black sky began to infect the north and the water took on a luminous sheen.
"What month Gerry in?" Ernest asked.
"Fourth."
"Then not a good idea to risk hurricane or even all-out storm. If it weren't for being pregnant, we would head up into this and ride it out. Can be wonderful fun." He told Gregorio to turn the
Pilar
around, and I suggested that we all have lunch at the Kawama Club. During the two hours it took us to get there we did not have a single strike.
Gregorio anchored the boat several hundred yards from the beach. The water was very turbulent now, but the Kawama Club had no launch facilities, so we had to swim ashore. Mary could borrow clothes from Geraldine, but Ernest looked me up and down with narrowed eyes and shook his head. "Hotchner, an exchange of pawnts is hopeless. I'll carry mine." I thought he meant he would put a pair in a watertight bag and tow it in—but that was the easy way.
The women dived off and started to swim. Ernest had taken a pair of shorts and a shirt, rolled them up tightly, with a bottle of good claret inside because he didn't trust the Kawama wine, and secured the roll with his
gott mit uns
leather belt. He descended the boat's ladder and lowered himself carefully into the water. He had the roll in his left hand, which he held straight up over his head to keep it dry, and began to swim powerfully against the tossing sea, keeping the upper part of his torso out of the water, using only his right arm and kick for locomotion. It was a remarkable exhibition of balance and strength; I swam alongside him and even with two arms found it arduous going.
I arrived on the beach a few moments in advance of Ernest, and as I stood and watched him negotiating the last few yards, his left arm relentlessly aloft, holding the dry pants-roll like a tubular pennant on the top of a muscled mast, he was an immortal sea god, not from Oak Park, Illinois, at all, but Poseidon, emerging from his aquatic kingdom. He came out of the sea dripping, smiling happily at his dry pants, not even short of breath.
Ernest phoned frequently about
Across the River.
"Been jamming hard," he said on one occasion. "Black Dog is tired too. He'll be glad when the book is over and so will I. But, by Christ, I'll miss it for a while. Just wrote a goddamn wonder chapter, the man says modestly. Got it all, to break your heart, into two pages. Yesterday Roberto counted. He hates to count but counts accurately, and through this morning it is 43,745. This is so you know what you have as effectives. Think it should go sixty or just under.
"About the monies, please advise me. We ought to make a contract before it is finished. It is really the best book that I have written, I think, but I am prejudiced, of course. Have only two more innings to pitch and I plan to turn their caps around."
Cosmo's
reply about the contract was that Ernest was such an old and valued friend of the Hearst organization that he was to name his own price; when I telegramed him that remarkable information he phoned me about it. He wanted to know the most
Cosmopolitan
had ever paid for a serialized novel. I told him seventy-five thousand dollars. "Okay," he said, "I figure I ought to top that by ten. Please tell them I've been throwing in my armor worse that Georgie Patton ever did and there isn't a plane on the ground that can fly. Brooklyn Tolstoys, grab your laurels and get out of that slip stream. I even throw in the taking of Paris for free. Will probably never live to finish the long book anyway. So what the hell?" Irwin Shaw, Brooklyn-born—an enduring target for Ernest's shafts—had just published
The Young Lions.
Although I did not know it at the time, since I had not known him for long, this rather frequent use of the telephone was highly unusual for Ernest. He later explained to me that there were only a few people he felt comfortable with on the telephone. Marlene Dietrich was one. Toots Shor was another. Ordinarily Ernest advanced upon a telephone with dark suspicion, virtually stalking it from behind. He picked it up gingerly and placed it to his ear as if to determine whether something inside was ticking. When he spoke into it his voice became constricted and the rhythm of his speech changed, the way an American's speech changes when he talks with a foreigner. Ernest would invariably come away from a telephone conversation physically exhausted, sweated, and driven to stiff drink. But he liked to phone Toots Shor from Paris or Malaga or Venice and throw a few lefts at him before placing a bet, through Toots' auspices, on an impending fight or a World Series. Ernest liked to phone Dietrich because, as he said, they had loved each other for a long time and they always told each other everything that happened and they never lied to each other except when very necessary, and then only on a temporary basis.
Later on, when I got to know Marlene quite well, she told me: "I never ask Ernest for advice as such but he is always there to talk to, to get letters from, and in conversation and letters I find the things I can use for whatever problems I may have; he has often helped me without even knowing my problems. He says remarkable things that seem to automatically adjust to problems of all sizes.
"For example, I spoke to him on the telephone just a few weeks ago. Ernest was alone in the
finca;
he had finished writing for the day, and he wanted to talk. At one point he asked me what work plans I had—if any—and I told him that
I had just had a very lucrative offer from a Miami night club but I was undecided about whether to take it.
" 'Why the indecision?' he asked.
" 'Well,' I answered, 'I feel I should work. I should not waste my time. It's wrong. I think one appearance in London and one a year in Vegas is quite enough. However, I'm probably just pampering myself, so I've been trying to convince myself to take the offer.'
"There was silence for a moment and I could visualize Ernest's beautiful face poised in thought. He finally said, 'Don't do what you sincerely don't want to do. Never confuse movement with action.' In those five words he gave me a whole philosophy.
"That's the wonderful thing about him—he kneels himself into his friends' problems. He is like a huge rock, off somewhere, a constant and steady thing, that certain someone whom everybody should have and nobody has.
"I suppose the most remarkable thing about Ernest is that he has found time to do the things most men only dream about. He has had the courage, the initiative, the time, the enjoyment to travel, to digest it all, to write, to create it, in a sense. There is in him a sort of quiet rotation of seasons, with each of them passing overland and then going underground and re-emerging in a kind of rhythm, refreshed and full of renewed vigor.
"He is gentle, as all real men are gentle; without tenderness, a man is uninteresting."
"The thing about the Kraut and me," Ernest said after I told him what Marlene had said about him, "is that we have been in love since 1934, when we first met on the
lie de France
, but we've never been to bed. Amazing but true. Victims of un-synchronized passion. Those times when I was out of love, the Kraut was deep in some romantic tribulation, and on those occasions when Dietrich was on the surface and swimming about with those marvelously seeking eyes of hers, I was submerged. There was another crossing on the
lie,
years after that first one, when something could have happened, the only time, but I had too recently made love to that worthless M––, and the Kraut was still somewhat in love with the equally worthless R––. We were like two young cavalry officers who had lost all their money gambling and were determined to go straight."
New York ♦ 1949
Ernest came up to New York at the end of October, 1949, with the manuscript of
Across the River and into the Trees.
New York City was just a way station for Ernest, a place to stay for a week or so on the move to or from some serious place. There was a small core of New York regulars whom he invariably contacted on arrival and a large peripheral group who contacted him. For years his favorite hotel was the Sherry-Netherland (he liked their "good protection"—no name on the register, phone calls all screened, newsmen and photographers thrown off the scent); but in 1959 he gave up the Sherry-Netherland for a three-room
pied a terre
at 1 East Sixty-Second, a once-fabulous town house which had been divided into not-especially-fabulous apartments.