Along the windswept banks of a fishing village a few miles from Havana there is a bust dedicated to the memory of a writer, set there by its inhabitants, the fishermen of Cojímar. When they first heard the news that Hemingway was dead, it felt as if they had received a blow from the long beam of their sail as wind changed and the boat came suddenly about. Still, some of them doubted the validity of the news; after all, the papers had declared his death on more than one occasion and were obliged to retract their stories when Mr. Way (as many of the fishermen, finding his full name difficult to pronounce, called him) returned from the dead, indestructible and immortal, like some hero of ancient lore. Others, sneering at the headlines, rejected the suggestion, repeating itself like a vulgar joke in the newspapers and on the radio, that his death had been a suicide. In this way, they were able for a time to maintain the fiction that their friend, Ernest Hemingway, was alive and that he had never faltered in the face of death. For thirty years, the villagers had shared the sea and fished with Hemingway, so they believed that they knew him well. They came to love him naturally and simply, like a brother, as was their custom, and he came to love them back. Whenever he, in his motored craft, encountered them after a long day of fishing, rowing back beneath the sun, el americano would throw out a line and tow their boats back to port. Often, he would invite them for a drink in La Terraza, the village restaurant-bar beside the docks where they could talk, exchange tips about sea conditions, and enjoy some rum and one another's company. Asking many questions, Ernest Hemingway, the writer, listened intently to their responses, to their sentiments, and to their manner of speaking--slowly gathering details for his work and strengthening ties of friendship with these men. In Cojímar where his first mate Gregorio Fuentes also lived, Hemingway kept his boat, the Pilar. It was safe there. Everyone in the village knew who owned it, and they looked after it as if it were their own. As the years passed, he had become part of their community; when Gregorio Fuentes's daughters married, Hemingway, along with the other fishermen, attended their weddings. Hemingway's experiences in Cojímar provided the material that allowed him to write the novel that rescued his career and restored his readers' faith in his astonishing talent. His previous novel, Across the River and into the Trees , had been considered a failure. This awkward work of "fiction" indulgently explored two of his infatuations: his World War I wounds and nineteen-year-old Venetian beauty Adriana Ivancich, with whom he had become enamored while deep in the throes of a middle-age crisis. The book was ill received by both the public and his critics, who ridiculed its self-indulgent style, gossiped about the disgraceful goings-on of its aging author, and declared his career over. Like a counterpunch, Hemingway then released a much shorter work, over a decade in the making, condensing his experiences accumulated during a lifetime of fishing the Gulf Stream--with the fishermen he had come to admire. He called this novella, about an aging fisherman and his Cuban village of Cojímar, The Old Man and the Sea. The work achieved immediate success and widespread praise from many of the very critics who had so roughly criticized his previous work. It won him a Pulitzer Prize and, one year later, resulted in the achievement of literature's highest honor, the Nobel Prize--solidifying his place as a literary legend. Recognizing his debt to the village and to Cuba, Hemingway immediately announced to the press that he had won the prize "as a citizen of Cojímar . . . as a Cubano sato ." It was a gesture that ran countercurrent to prevailing politics of his day, one that underlined his respect for the Cuban people and affirmed his identity as a world citizen and a member of the Caribbean community in which he lived. Keeping a promise that he had made to himself and to an old friend, he donated his prize medal to the church of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, the people's patron saint who, Cubans believe, possesses the supernatural power to grant or to withhold great favors. His gift not only underlined his gratitude but also suggested that, after twenty-two years of residence in Cuba, Hemingway believed in La Virgen too. In the pages of Life magazine, The Old Man and the Sea first appeared with pictures of Hemingway walking along the shores of Cojímar village on its cover. Warner Brothers offered Hemingway $150,000 for the movie rights and another $75,000 to serve as the film's technical advisor, an unprecedented sum for a writer to receive in 1953. Drawing from the film's $5 million budget, the author also insisted upon employing all of Cojímar's fishermen to assist in the production, in order to lend the film some authenticity, to recognize them, and to bring their struggling families some much-needed income. "Hemingway Dead of Shotgun Wound; Wife Says He Was Cleaning Weapon," said the newspaper, which Cojímar's fishermen read before wrapping it around the baitfish that they would bring on the boat that day. Reflecting upon it, they saw Mary's denial was merely her grief, and after long hours spent at sea, the realization that they were also grieving floated slowly to the surface. When they returned to port and observed his ship, the Pilar, anchored there, floating without a captain, their throats thickened from the emptiness, for they understood they missed a friend and a man that they had admired. They could not bring themselves to judge this man that they respected and loved. Gathering at La Terraza, they stood silently along the bar where their friend no longer appeared. But they wanted to do something more to honor him. They decided to commission a sculpture and place it at the entrance of the harbor of their town. They were very poor, and they did not have enough money to purchase the material, so they melted down the propellers from their boats for a sculptor to fashion into a bust. Today the bust remains, its eyes fixed forever, gazing into the waters of the Gulf, a source of life and mystery that the writer loved and so often wrote about. As a Hemingway scholar completing my dissertation at the Université de Paris IV, La Sorbonne, and following my research in Spain, I stumbled upon a story of Hemingway's friendship with America's persistent enemy. Then I read an article in a French newspaper announcing that the Finca Vigía Museum in Havana would be opening its doors and archives to foreign researchers like me. Following Hemingway's example, I wanted to "go to the source" to investigate. What I found there was an untold and remarkable story of Hemingway in Cuba, which has been eclipsed by fifty-seven years of Cold War blockade. The blockade, which continues to this day, has defined Cuban-American relations for the last half century and has had many regrettable consequences: it severed many of our cultural, intellectual, familial, and economic ties, and the prolonged separation has complicated our capacity to understand each other and the history that we "Americans" inevitably share. As Hemingway's own story shows, the difficult lessons are not received easily, but those lessons are invaluable when attained in struggle against our own wayward natures--over time. As the first North American permitted to study in residence at the Finca Vigía Museum and Research Center, I spent two years conducting interviews and examining documents that had previously been unavailable to other researchers. My investigations bore many fruitful discoveries, and when I myself "became Cuban," through marriage, I believe that my perspective increased and continues increasing, a little each day, and in ways that I hope will add depth to this narrative. Formerly, numerous respected researchers, unable to consult Cuban sources, had concluded that Hemingway lived in Cuba in isolation, as an expatriate American writer who did not associate with the Cuban people; yet my research in that country in consultation with Cuban sources revealed a completely different Hemingway, one who enjoyed a long and enriching friendship with Cuban fishermen like Gregorio Fuentes and Carlos Gutierrez, and with Cuban writers like Enrique Serpa and Fernando G. Campoamor, as well as an enduring affair and tender friendship with Leopoldina Rodríguez. In Cuba, it is often said that Hemingway loved Cuba and that Cuba loved him back, and everywhere one goes in Havana this emotion appears in plaques that pay homage to the author, in statues, in Cojímar, in Habana Vieja's Floridita Bar, at the Bodeguita del Medio, at the "Marina Hemingway," in the affection with which Cubans speak of him, and in the way they maintain his boat, the Pilar, and his Finca Vigía home--as a monument and as a museum--as a shrine to the friendship that might have been. Excerpted from Ernesto: Hemingway's Years in Cuba by Andrew Feldman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
