The little winery in the Hemingway way
[Finca Vigia-de Cuba]
Who better than me to tell this story, I thought about it and no one else but me came to my mind. I was in Havana Cuba in the months of March and April 1948. I liked to toast and eat at the bar-café-club, called La Bodeguita del Medio, I knew the manager a little bit, and my wife Delia, she loved to sit with me at the front bar, while the musicians played against the wall, and the crowd stood halfway outside the door: –all singing together.
James would take a photo of me from time to time; sell them to me for a dollar and save the rest. He had me sign some, he was a writer then, or trying to be, now I’m retired, that’s when I met Mr. Hemingway in that very bar. He was standing behind me. In fact, it was on three different occasions that I met him, once at the front, that day with my wife sitting at the bar when James took all the photos, also in the back room where another up-and-coming writer was, named Gabriel Garcia. Brand; Or at least I thought it was him. He was there one night and James took a picture of him, they put it up on the wall the next day, just like they did Hemingway’s.
Anyway, Hemingway was back once in April when I was eating, and once in front, behind me, as he said. And then there was the time I saw him in March there, it looked like he was talking to the bartender, or maybe he was the manager.
I introduced myself to him and my wife, he was huge compared to me, he was 5’8″, 160lbs, he was also very rustic looking. In 1948, I was a young man, in his late fifties, I think, I was Thirty-three, I say again trying to be a writer, as I explained to him. I had been living in San Francisco, California for a while, coming from the Midwest, and working for Lilly Ann, a dress designer and notch label. Oh, well, that didn’t work out. I work for Adof Shoeman, an anxious fellow, a Jew with a sensitive disposition. He once told me not to throw away the fabrics, he actually fired me, but the general manager of the three-story store turned me back to hire, instantly, I mean, as soon as he walked out the door, and he had his models chasing him around the place again. This huge pearl ring, man. She held the door tight and asked me to hold it. drink and I said no, because I had already gotten into enough trouble with him. it was the end of my career as a dress designer. R.
But in old Havana, Mr. Hemingway was very kind with his time for me. And even though this was our only real conversation, because when he saw me before he just nodded, that was when I was eating, and the time I saw him with the manager he looked up, and that was it, he acted. as if I did not exist. But I guess he was a very busy man writing all these books and drinking and so forth, and I know our conversation went well.
Like I was saying, he was behind me at the bar, and I was talking to the bartender, and my wife and I had a business in Minnesota, a rental business. I had several things on my mind at the time, wanting to be a business person and looking to design fabric, but being a writer was thicker than blood for me, and Havana was just a spring break hangout.
My property is what supported me in my long travels and writing. I had three books, all self-contained. I was more hopeful than anything. And here was the man of the century speaking to me. It reminds me of when Jack Benny bumped into me, I mean, he bumped into my arm when I was in Erie, Penn, a while back, at the Russian Club, I was sitting at the counter and he bumped into me, I said ‘ouch’, you know how you get when you have a few drinks then i didn’t pay attention, when i was turned around and i kept drinking, i turned around and the guy walked away: jack benny. I really only knew a little of the name Jack Benny as a comedian on TV, not much else, said the drunk next to me.
“…it’s just Jack Benny again, he never talks to anyone, he thinks he’s too nice.”
I also paid little attention to it. When I got to a TV again a few days later, he was on it, and I checked it out, he was fine. Then I found out it was a place he went to when he came to Erie every time, a drinking well, one of his drinking wells; and he was Russian like me.
It’s funny how you meet people sometimes: well, while Hemingway was making some of his famous drinks, he asked me for one, they called it a Mojito and while we were talking and I guess now we were drinking together, he mentioned a farmer who was a baseball player. , or could be one someday. But he needed a job in the United States to start, you know, while he was looking for the equipment. Well, I told him that I was not a player of this sport, that I liked boxing, karate and other one-on-one sports, and I think it was the Saints, at that time that played in St. Paul, Minnesota, and not I knew them well.
As the night wore on, he asked me for my address, and if I was sending a Cuban boy to Minnesota, if he could rent him an apartment, while he was looking for possibilities, and if possible, even call the manager of Los Santos for him, if the boy wanted. I said sure. And we exchange handshakes; I gave him a card from me. And that was that.
The farm boy never showed up, and I never went through with it, so I can’t tell you the rest of the story, except that one time I stopped by Ernest’s apartment, sat in his wooden chair, and typed on his typewriter. Before writing, he looked at the street from his fifth floor, that was in April 2002, when I returned to Cuba with my wife and visited the Ambos Mundos Hotel, where I had passed his apartment 100 times before, without ever going up. the ceiling.
Notes: Historical fiction: never before printed, and some real events that took place. Written in 2001, based on information collected from a letter written by Hemingway, now preserved in England, of which the author received a copy and was going to purchase the original. The author went to Cuba in 2002, to investigate, and to the bar mentioned here, and to the hotel where he stayed in Havana itself; he collected additional information about this event, and here is the story, with his fictional characters added. In 1972, Jack Benny ran into the author at a Russian club in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Reissued on 6/2006 Pink