The only man I ever loved
Said good bye
And went away
He was killed in Picardy
On a sunny day.
—“Poem” by Ernest Hemingway (1922)
In 1955, I was an Army PFC stationed in Würzburg, Germany, and with my first three-day pass I did what any 22-year-old with writerly ambitions would do: Soon as I was off duty I hopped on a train, a paperback copy of The Sun Also Rises in my bag. At the Gare du Nord, I changed out of my uniform in the Toilette pour Hommes — in front of a stern matron sitting inside the entrance — and headed out into the magical night streets of Paris. I sat down at the first café I came across and pretended to be Ernest Hemingway.
Putting on my most worldly face, I carefully mispronounced, Un pernod, s’il vous plaît. I was hungry, exhausted, and completely happy.
Hemingway was still alive at the time. His friend F. Scott Fitzgerald had died young, in 1940; a sick Hemingway would commit suicide in 1961. They had their problems, but their styles and stories influenced all the generations to follow. And not just writers: They made Americans, women as well as men, want to travel and experience the world outside America in a different way. More style, more art, more risk. More fun.
I loved Paris, and still do, and Jeanne does, too; and I thank Hemingway for prodding me to go there. But the other Hemingway destination that I love, without ever having seen it, is Cuba. Hemingway began going to Cuba in the 1920s. His farm, Finca Vigia, is now a museum there. His boat, El Pilar, and many of his favorite hangouts are tourist attractions: Cubans love Hemingway, whom they call “Ernesto” (Hemingway’s nickname, “Papa,” is too close to Fidel Castro’s).
The great writer was no Communist — he donated his 1954 Nobel Prize money to the Cuban people before the Cuban Revolution (1959) — but he told the New York Times he was “delighted” with Castro’s overthrow of the American-supported dictator Fulgencio Batista (I do love that name!), who was basically a criminal. William Wieland, an American diplomat at the time, admitted, “Batista’s a son-of-a-bitch — but he’s our son-of-a-bitch.”
We put our embargo on Cuba when Castro nationalized American property and businesses, many of which had been funneled into American hands by company payoffs to Batista. From then on, America punished Castro by strangling Cuba with various embargoes, and making Americans afraid that the Cubans would come over and attack our women and children. We never seem to learn that Communism is such a bad system that it will collapse — or change, like China’s — when left alone. Just as our presence in Iraq empowered Muqtada al-Sadr, and our troops in Afghanistan swell the ranks of the Taliban, our 50-year embargo strengthened Castro but weakened the Cuban people who loved him for, in their eyes, standing up to their neighboring bully.
We don’t mean this to happen, but it does. So it’s good to see some loosening of this self-defeating Cuban policy, and a few flights going out of Tampa to Havana. We need more, and it would mean more jobs for both countries. After all, Castro will soon be dead; if they’d just let us all go, Cuba would be an instant tourist mecca, and our close friend once again. (Pay no attention to our self-serving, truth-dodging Senator Rubio, as well as the remaining Republican candidates, except the heartwarming Ron Paul.)
One of my ambitions is, after a morning of writing, to settle down at a table in El Floridita, Hemingway’s favorite bistro in Old Havana. I’d be gruff but polite, and say, like Papa, Un daiquiri grande, por favor. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tourist trap now. Jeanne and I would clink glasses and thank the old rascal for writing so well. That would be both true and good.
So now
Losing the three last night,
Taking them back today,
Dripping and dark the woods…
—“Poetry” by Ernest Hemingway (1944)
Unable to go to Cuba, Jeanne & Peter went to Paris last year, enjoying an occasional café créme at La Rotonde, where Hemingway used to sit and write.
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2012.