ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
ROBERT FROST, “Fire and Ice”
I half-walked, half-skated down rue de l’Odéon, avoiding the worst sheets of ice and grabbing handholds where I could. Bad enough to be locked in; worse with a broken leg.
Mentally, I forgave Hemingway. It wasn’t his fault. In fact, that image of physical ease and technical competence was an illusion. In real life, Ernie was a klutz. After being blown up and wounded during World War I , the events that inspired A Farewell to Arms , he spent the rest of his life putting himself and others in harm’s way. He barely survived some close calls running the bulls in Pamplona. In a couple of Paris boxing matches, he was knocked about by portly but nimble Canadian writer Morley Callaghan, admittedly helped by some inept timekeeping by Scott Fitzgerald—not the man any sane person would have chosen for that task.
In World War II, cruising off Cuba with the drinking pals of his “Crook Factory,” he threatened the safety of everyone but the German submariners they were supposed to be hunting. The army kept him out of Europe as long as it could, but once it let him in, he played soldier all over northern France, getting into scrapes from which a friendly general had to extricate him. (Hemingway repaid him with the ambiguous compliment of making him the hero of his first postwar novel Across the River and Into the Trees , a notable flop.) After that, he was burned in a bushfire, smashed his knee in a 1945 car accident, and, on safari in Africa, survived two plane crashes, from which he never fully recovered.
A less life-threatening but typical accident took place in March 1928, when he lived just round the corner, on rue Ferou. After a heavy night at the Dingo Bar, he lurched to his toilet, which was equipped with an elevated cistern, and yanked the wrong chain, bringing down a skylight on his head. Archibald MacLeish applied toilet paper and drove him to the American Hospital in Neuilly, where they put nine stitches into a gash. To see him, grinning and bandaged like a veteran, posing for photos the following week in front of Shakespeare and Company, you’d think he’d fought off an armed gang with his bare hands. But, as one critic commented, employing an appropriate corrida metaphor, Ernest worked very close to the bull.
The end of our street, where it intersects with boulevard Saint-Germain, was normally the busiest in the area, but today its cafés and restaurants were shuttered and empty. In the bank at the corner, the distributeurs— ATMs—all flashed red. Emptied overnight, they’d remain so until next week, since the entire staff was on holiday, including the people who refilled them. In the métro, some trains would still be running but with few passengers. And nobody would be staffing the guichets , or ticket offices. You’d be expected to buy your tickets from the machines, feed them through the barrier, and find your own way to the platform. Soon, the métro would be like this all year round, not just at Christmas. The new lines are driverless. Computers open and close the doors and deliver us to our destination shrink-wrapped in technology.
A bandaged Hemingway with Sylvia Beach and her staff
I paused halfway across the boulevard. On an ordinary day, traffic would have mown me flat. But along the avenue, though every light was green and I could see at least five blocks in each direction, not a vehicle moved. Snow softened the buildings’ outlines and misted the air. It leached out color, leaving a landscape by Whistler. To my eye, led block after block by the perspective of those six-story buildings and their meticulously aligned balconies, the boulevard embodied rationality and intellect. Let others gather at Notre Dame, Saint Sulpice, Saint Peter’s in Rome, or King’s College Chapel in Cambridge to acknowledge the existence of a higher order.
My church was here.
W ithin thirty minutes, I
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
ROBERT FROST, “Fire and Ice”
I half-walked, half-skated down rue de l’Odéon, avoiding the worst sheets of ice and grabbing handholds where I could. Bad enough to be locked in; worse with a broken leg.
Mentally, I forgave Hemingway. It wasn’t his fault. In fact, that image of physical ease and technical competence was an illusion. In real life, Ernie was a klutz. After being blown up and wounded during World War I , the events that inspired A Farewell to Arms , he spent the rest of his life putting himself and others in harm’s way. He barely survived some close calls running the bulls in Pamplona. In a couple of Paris boxing matches, he was knocked about by portly but nimble Canadian writer Morley Callaghan, admittedly helped by some inept timekeeping by Scott Fitzgerald—not the man any sane person would have chosen for that task.
In World War II, cruising off Cuba with the drinking pals of his “Crook Factory,” he threatened the safety of everyone but the German submariners they were supposed to be hunting. The army kept him out of Europe as long as it could, but once it let him in, he played soldier all over northern France, getting into scrapes from which a friendly general had to extricate him. (Hemingway repaid him with the ambiguous compliment of making him the hero of his first postwar novel Across the River and Into the Trees , a notable flop.) After that, he was burned in a bushfire, smashed his knee in a 1945 car accident, and, on safari in Africa, survived two plane crashes, from which he never fully recovered.
A less life-threatening but typical accident took place in March 1928, when he lived just round the corner, on rue Ferou. After a heavy night at the Dingo Bar, he lurched to his toilet, which was equipped with an elevated cistern, and yanked the wrong chain, bringing down a skylight on his head. Archibald MacLeish applied toilet paper and drove him to the American Hospital in Neuilly, where they put nine stitches into a gash. To see him, grinning and bandaged like a veteran, posing for photos the following week in front of Shakespeare and Company, you’d think he’d fought off an armed gang with his bare hands. But, as one critic commented, employing an appropriate corrida metaphor, Ernest worked very close to the bull.
The end of our street, where it intersects with boulevard Saint-Germain, was normally the busiest in the area, but today its cafés and restaurants were shuttered and empty. In the bank at the corner, the distributeurs— ATMs—all flashed red. Emptied overnight, they’d remain so until next week, since the entire staff was on holiday, including the people who refilled them. In the métro, some trains would still be running but with few passengers. And nobody would be staffing the guichets , or ticket offices. You’d be expected to buy your tickets from the machines, feed them through the barrier, and find your own way to the platform. Soon, the métro would be like this all year round, not just at Christmas. The new lines are driverless. Computers open and close the doors and deliver us to our destination shrink-wrapped in technology.
A bandaged Hemingway with Sylvia Beach and her staff
I paused halfway across the boulevard. On an ordinary day, traffic would have mown me flat. But along the avenue, though every light was green and I could see at least five blocks in each direction, not a vehicle moved. Snow softened the buildings’ outlines and misted the air. It leached out color, leaving a landscape by Whistler. To my eye, led block after block by the perspective of those six-story buildings and their meticulously aligned balconies, the boulevard embodied rationality and intellect. Let others gather at Notre Dame, Saint Sulpice, Saint Peter’s in Rome, or King’s College Chapel in Cambridge to acknowledge the existence of a higher order.
My church was here.
W ithin thirty minutes, I
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