Marlene Page 17

  He was an anchor, a sage, the decisionmaker, the best adviser, the pope of my personal church. How did I survive his death? To this question I have no answer. Whoever has lost a father or a brother, will understand me. You deny the fact quite simply, until the dreadful pain disappears from the heart. Then you keep on living as though you might meet the one who no longer exists any time of the day or night. You continue along your way despite your awareness of the fact that he will never come back. You get used to the sorrow.

  Here I would like to cite some excerpts from his letters, some of Hemingway’s sentences so that one can better understand the intensity of the feelings that united me with this great man, and also his sense of humor which so delighted me:

  “Prudence is fatal for the imprudent—you and me.”

  “This letter is sadder than Switzerland and Liechtenstein put together.”

  “It [life] was easier in the Hürtgen Forest.”

  “Sometimes I forget you, the way I forget my heartbeats.”

  Grief does not diminish, it just becomes a habit.

  For me habit is a good thing. Most people consider it something bad. But in regard to grief I find it really desirable. Hemingway also was of this opinion. He explained it to me at a point in time when, compared to his, my problems were trifling. He taught me everything about life. I knew only maternal love (which made him laugh—his characteristic bittersweet laugh) and normal, everyday love. He didn’t teach me anything new, but his approval confirmed my most secret thoughts, converted them into powerful truths, and gave them the appearance of something new.

  He taught me writing and warned me against using too many adjectives. At that time I was writing articles for The Ladies Home Journal, and he would call me twice a day and ask: “Have you defrosted your ice box?” And he knew all the little weaknesses of aspiring writers, also the classic pretext “Maybe, it would be better if I were doing something else.”

  I miss him terribly. If there were a life after death, he would speak with me in my long sleepless nights, but there is no life after death. He has left us forever, no grief can bring him back again, and my yearning will remain forever unfulfilled. With time you learn “to carry on,” to make the best of things, that is, you accept what before you couldn’t endure—a kind of “diminished” life Hemingway always detested (as I do) throughout the time he was among us and could talk about it.

  Anger is not a good antidote against grief. The anger you feel when you have been abandoned is like a demand for alimony (both are futile). Nevertheless, I was angry—against whom, I don’t know. But how could I prevent it? So beautiful a life extinguished forever for so stupid a reason.

  On the day after his death I was in a rage, which was my way of fighting grief. Hemingway had sworn that he would never leave me—but what was I compared to all those whom he had left behind, his children, his wife, to those who needed him? I was the fifth wheel on the wagon. He didn’t think of that. Like all of us, he lived with the conviction that his days were not numbered. Nevertheless, he put an end to his life long before his appointed time. That’s how he wanted it. I respect his decision. But I still weep.

  I never go to funerals. So I didn’t attend Hemingway’s burial. “She wasn’t there,” the newspapers wrote. I haven’t participated in any funeral ceremony since my mother’s burial. That day was more than enough for me. I don’t feel the slightest desire to experience anything of this kind again. I love the living and do what I can to mitigate their distress and suffering. But I don’t feel affected by their burial. I am powerless against the frightful destructive power that transforms us into dust again, that rises triumphant and walks off with the mortal remains of those we have loved.

  When Hemingway took his life, he had no wish to hurt anyone of us. He loved Mary. He loved his sons. And he loved me intensely, very intensely. He loved me with all his enormous strength, and I was never able to do the same for him. Can such a love ever be reciprocated? I tried to—within the extent of my capacities. He knew it. Since we were physically separated, the telephone and letters were our only means of contact. Every day he would tell me about his blood pressure, as though that were of decisive importance. But he believed it was, and I would conscientiously write down the numbers he passed on to me. One morning he told me that he was staying “in the most fantastic place in the world, the Mayo Clinic.” He trusted the diagnosis of his doctors. I didn’t. But who was I to contradict him?

  Once you’ve had any experience with American doctors, you begin to entertain some doubts. The surgeons are the best in the world. But if they can’t cut you up and look inside, they are completely helpless. In Europe, doctors are more qualified. They have an exceptional knowledge. Naturally, no miracle is to be expected from them either, but you die in a shorter time and with greater dignity than in the United States. In America, they are not finicky with the dying. There is no place for death (except in the earth). And that is probably also the reason why Americans attach such importance to burial services. Unlike Europeans, they do not show respect for the dying. For them you’re only a “corpse under the knife.”

  Yes, Hemingway knew what he was doing. And I have never reproached him for his decisions, although my attitude toward life is, of course, quite different, and I don’t let myself be as driven as he was. I’m an average woman, and incapable of committing so radical a deed. I would have fought like a lioness for him if I had had an inkling of his intention. But he was much stronger than any of us, so he would have promptly knocked me out on the floor.

  I would now like to tell about how I met Mary Welsh, Hemingway’s last wife. I had been sent to Paris to “decompress myself” as they used to say at that time during the war, and I was living in Chatou, a Parisian suburb. When I learned that Hemingway was in Paris, I drove there in a jeep to see him. He told me I could take a shower and then “report” to him. He also told me that he had met a “pocket Venus” whom he wanted to seduce at all costs. He confessed that she had rejected his first advances, that she considered him a “pitiful lover,” and that only I could help him out of this fix by having a talk with the girl.

  It is impossible to explain why a man desires a particular woman. Mary Welsh was stiff, formal, and not very desirable. Like most women of her sort, she probably would have gone on living sadly and joylessly if she hadn’t found a Hemingway along the way, who, for a long time, had had no romantic affairs or sexual adventures. I know that on this day I didn’t render him any special good service. But I followed his instructions. Mary Welsh didn’t love Hemingway, of this I am sure. Yet this modest, inconspicuous woman war correspondent had nothing to lose. Fighting against my intuition, I accomplished my mission. I met Mary Welsh and talked with her. “But I don’t want him,” this charming little woman confessed to me. Stubbornly, I pressed Hemingway’s suit, but she turned a deaf ear. Finally, I listed all the advantages of a relationship with him, and advised her to compare her present life with what she could expect at his side—since I was there to make her a “promise of marriage.” My efforts bore fruit. At lunchtime her resistance began to slacken.

  Lunch at the Ritz is always a decisive moment. At this time of the day, women are ready to make concessions and to think over their plans. Mary Welsh, the “pocket Venus,” was no exception. Finally, she told me that she would “consider the proposal.”

  I had to face Hemingway and make my report, and I was trembling all over when evening arrived. But Mary Welsh showed up wearing a radiant smile and accepted his offer, in the presence of a single witness. Namely, me.

  I have never seen anybody as happy as Hemingway. He could be happier than all of us. And, what is more important, he could also show it. His huge body seemed to emit sparks whose light fell on us and was reflected in our eyes. Shortly thereafter, I returned to the front and didn’t see him or Mary again during the whole war.

  His capacity to be happy was in astonishing contrast to his public stance of desperation and to his tragic decision. As a realist,
I can’t understand this contradiction. Like myself, he had a very strong sense of responsibility, and that doesn’t accord with his suicide. We would talk a lot about responsibility and very often we were in agreement. Perhaps he sensed that his grown children no longer needed him; perhaps he was simply “fed up.” Who knows …? When the body no longer reacts as it once did, when the brain no longer functions as smoothly as usual, then it’s time to muster your courage (if you can) and blow out the candle yourself. Till now, no one has been able to explain the reasons for Hemingway’s suicide.

  I think that it was a rash act, rather than a conscious decision. Did Hemingway perhaps act in a somnambulant state? I cling to this hypothesis. At any rate, I’m convinced that his act was not dictated by his father’s example, that it had nothing to do with the weight of his remembrances. When he pressed the trigger, perhaps something distant in his memory flashed and suddenly forced itself on him … but I’m rationalizing too much. I know that he was very unhappy. Everything that his “biographers,” or those who pass themselves off as such, have written about him is, to me, nothing but a pile of “shit,” to use his own word. Up until now I haven’t yet read his wife’s book, which, I’m sure, corrects all this silly nonsense, but I doubt she has succeeded in capturing and rendering Hemingway’s extraordinarily complex personality. The relations I’ve had with different great men may be difficult to understand, and I don’t intend to explain them. Tough luck if you haven’t understood. If you’re only interested in physical love, then you can immediately close the book, since I won’t be expressing any opinions on such matters. And for a very simple reason: I hardly know myself in this area. Throughout my whole life, physical love was a part of love itself, and only of love—for which reason I’ve never known “fleeting happiness.” My love for Hemingway was not a flash in the pan. We simply weren’t together long enough in the same city and nothing ever happened. Either he was together with a pretty girl, or I was busy elsewhere when he was free, and when I was free, he wasn’t.

  I detest unclear situations, and I’ve always remained true to my principle of respecting “the other woman.” Thus, I’ve met many wonderful men like ships that pass in the night. But I believe that their love would have been more constant had I dropped anchor in their port.

  ERICH MARIA REMARQUE

  Erich Maria Remarque, who became famous for All Quiet on the Western Front, The Road Back, Three Comrades, etc., was a sensitive man with a delicate soul and was endowed with a subtle talent about which he always had doubts.

  We were bound by a very special feeling. First, we are both Germans—or were, rather—because we spoke the same language and loved it. One’s mother tongue is very important, much more important than some famous writers have said or written. German was our principal bond.

  I met Erich Maria Remarque on the Lido in Venice. I had come to visit Josef von Sternberg. Remarque came to our table and introduced himself. I almost fainted, something that still happens today when I meet famous people. I probably will never get used to seeing them “incarnate” before me.

  Next morning on the beach, I met him again. I had a book by Rainer Maria Rilke under my arm and was looking for a sunny spot where I could sit down and read. Remarque came over to me. He saw the book’s title and said rather sarcastically, “I see you read good authors.”

  Just as ironically, I retorted, “Shall I recite a couple of poems to you?”

  His perpetually skeptical eyes were riveted on me. He didn’t believe it possible. A movie actress who reads? He was dumbfounded when I recited “The Panther,” “Leda,” “Autumn Day,” “Serious Hour,” “Childhood.” “Let’s go somewhere else, and let’s have a talk,” he said. I followed him. I followed him as far as Paris, and I listened to him from then on. All that happened before the war.

  In Paris there was a nightclub that he loved and that had the best wines, which he, as an expert, knew how to appraise. This also explains why I never learned anything in this area. I was always in the company of men well versed in the matter of wines who would order a bottle without consulting me, leaving me in a state of ignorance. Remarque was an outstanding authority on wines from all over the world. He enjoyed having his connoisseurship tested. Based on the taste alone, without having seen the bottle, he could give the name and the year of a grand cru.

  Remarque had great difficulty with writing. He worked hard and would spend hours trying to construct a sentence. Throughout his life, he was stamped by the success of his first book, All Quiet on the Western Front, and convinced that he could not repeat, much less surpass that miracle.

  His melancholy and sensitivity bordered on the pathological. I was deeply moved by this trait of his personality. Our special relationship all too often, unfortunately, gave me an opportunity to witness his despair.

  When war broke out in the summer of 1939 I, my husband, my daughter, and he were together in Antibes.

  I’ve forgotten to mention Remarque’s passion for sports cars. He had a Lancia he was crazy about. Whenever we passed the car, he gave the body a light, gentle pat. He took my daughter to Paris, driving against the stream of refugees fleeing the war. My husband drove back to Paris in a Packard, and took as many people as possible to the capital, mostly Americans who had landed in southern France.

  I had left our small group behind in the joyful and peaceful setting of Antibes to make a film in California. My husband, Maria, and Remarque first got back to Paris, and then boarded the Queen Mary, the last ship to sail from a French port.

  During the crossing, there was no radio contact. Trembling with anxiety, I would be singing “See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have.” I received the phone call in the studio in which I was working. They were in New York!

  I had been told that the Queen Mary, a British ship, had steered for a Canadian port. So I dispatched lawyers and a private plane to meet them on their arrival and bring them to America before the outbreak of hostilities. But, to everyone’s surprise, the Queen Mary arrived at a pier in New York.

  Remarque, whose books the Nazis had burned in a gigantic bonfire, had managed to purchase a Panamanian passport. My husband still had his German passport.

  When America entered the war, my husband became an “enemy alien,” and Remarque, who had settled in California, was “interned.” For the duration of hostilities, he couldn’t leave his hotel between six in the evening and six in the morning.

  In New York the regulations were less drastic. My husband could move freely outside the hotel, but he had a “pink card” and couldn’t work. It was all very sad, and I felt for them with all my heart. Yet the fact that they were safely in America moved me in a way beyond my ability to express it in words. Remarque became one of the first refugees who benefited from my protection. My husband had brought our child to Hollywood and helped us to settle down, but the California laws forced him to return to New York. He didn’t want to be “interned” and hoped, despite everything, to be able to earn a living in New York.

  I found a house for Remarque, although he liked living in the hotel, above all, because he could meet people during the time he was prohibited from being outdoors.

  His paradoxical situation drove him to despair. Hitler had burned his books, and America had placed him under house arrest. We Germans are very sensitive to injustice. We can’t come to terms with it. Over and over again, we brood on it, rebel against it, rack our brains over it, to no avail. But we don’t accept it. We must drink the cup to the dregs—the bitter cup full of tears. We can’t do otherwise.

  Remarque was a wise, clearheaded man. But his wisdom could not spare him from suffering. As soon as he learned that the travel restrictions applying to interned aliens had been lifted, he settled for a brief period in New York and then left for Switzerland to live in exile. He left the United States regretfully, deeply affected by the terrible years that had plunged the entire world into chaos. He believed that he had shirked his responsibility, that he had not sufficiently struggled again
st Nazism, and often he would say, “Talk is easy, action is much more difficult.”

  We had a talk with each other before his death. And my daughter, whom he called “The Cat,” also chatted once again with him. A friend told me that he had a fear of death. I can understand that only too well. To fear death, you must have lots of imagination, and imagination was his forte.

  As a young girl, I was enthusiastic about Knut Hamsun. Today, I still know whole passages by heart from Victoria, Hunger, and Pan and many of his other books. If I rightly recall, it was the first time I was disloyal to Goethe. I was bitterly disappointed when Hamsun sided with the Nazis. But at that time I was already grown up and used to disappointments. I can’t say that I liked to read novels. The great exception is Job by Joseph Roth. I would take this book with me everywhere, but I’ve lost it as I’ve lost things that mean something to me. Perhaps when I emigrated, perhaps later, during my journeys. Today, that book is not to be found. I’ve asked all the book dealers I know to inform me if they ever come upon it somewhere. Material possessions have absolutely no value when you emigrate. You learn to content yourself with essentials. That doesn’t especially please me, but I can make a relatively easy adjustment.

  Once, by chance, I was reading the novel The Telegram, by Konstantin Paustovsky, in a bilingual edition—on one side was the Russian text, and on the other, the English translation. This novel made so great an impression on me that I could no more forget it than I could the name of the author, of whom I had never heard before. Since I couldn’t get any other novels of this great writer, I bided my time. When I went to Russia, immediately upon my arrival I asked about Paustovsky. Hundreds of journalists assisted me. They didn’t ask me the stupid questions I was used to. I talked with them for over an hour, and was able to gather lots of information about Paustovsky.