you could be there and see the honest races with the great horses, and you got to know
the course as well as any place you had ever known. You knew many people finally,
jockeys and trainers and owners and too many horses and too many things..
In principle I only bet when I had a horse to bet on but I sometimes found horses that
nobody believed in except the men who trained and rode them that won race after race
with me betting on them. I stopped finally because it took too much time, I was getting
too involved and I knew too much about what went on at Enghien and at the flat-racing
tracks too.
When I stopped working on the races I was glad but it left an emptiness. By then I
knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad,
the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something
better. I put the racing capital back into the general funds and I felt relaxed and good.
The day I gave up racing I went over to the other side of the river and met my friend
Mike Ward at the travel desk in the Guaranty Trust which was then at the corner of the
rue des Italiens on the Boulevard des Italiens. I was depositing the racing capital but I did
not tell that to anyone. I didn't put it in the chequebook though I still kept it in my head.
'Want to go to lunch?' I asked Mike.
'Sure, kid. Yeah I can do it. What's the matter? Aren't you going to the track?'
'No.'
We had lunch at the square Louvois at a very good, plain bistro with a wonderful
white wine. Across the square was the Bibliotheque Nationale.
'You never went to the track much, Mike,' I said.
'No. Not for quite a long time.'
'Why did you lay off it?'
'I don't know,' Mike said. 'Yes. Sure I do. Anything you have to bet on to get a kick
isn't worth seeing.'
'Don't you ever go out?'
'Sometimes to see a big race. One with great horses.'
We spread pate on the good bistro bread and drank the white wine.
'Did you follow them a lot, Mike?'
'Oh yes.'
'What do you see that's better?'
'Bicycle racing.'
'Really?'
'You don't have to bet on it. You'll see.'
'That track takes a lot of time.'
'Too much time. Takes all your time. I don't like the people.'
'I was very interested.'
'Sure. You make out all right?'
'All right.'
'Good thing to stop,' Mike said.
'I've stopped.'
'Hard to do. Listen, kid, we'll go to the bike races sometime.'
That was a new and fine thing that I knew little about. But we did not start it right
away. That came later. It came to be a big part of our lives later when the first part of
Paris was broken up.
But for a long time it was enough just to be back in our part of Paris and away from
the track and to bet on our own life and work, and on the painters that you knew and not
try to make your living gambling and call it by some other name. I have started many
stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are
both on the indoor and outdoor tracks and on the roads. But I will get the Velodrome
d'Hiver with the smoky light of the afternoon and the high-banked wooden track and the
whirring sound the tyres made on the wood as the riders passed, the effort and the tactics
as the riders climbed and plunged, each one a part of his machine; I will get the magic of
the demi-fond, the noise of the motors with their rollers set out behind them that the
entraineurs rode, wearing their heavy crash helmets and leaning backwards in their
ponderous leather suits, to shelter the riders who followed them from the air resistance,
the riders in their lighter crash helmets bent low over their handlebars, their legs turning
the huge gear sprockets and the small front wheels touching the roller behind the machine
that gave them shelter to ride in, and the duels that were more exciting than anything, the
put-puting of the motorcycles and the riders elbow to elbow and wheel to wheel up and
down and around at deadly speed until one man could not hold the pace and broke away
and the solid wall of air that he had been sheltered against hit him.
There were so many kinds of racing. The straight sprints raced in heats or in match
races where the two riders would balance for long seconds on their machines for the
advantage of making the other rider take the lead, and then the slow circling and the final
plunge into the driving purity of speed. There were the programmes of the team races of
two hours, with a series of pure sprints in their heats to fill the afternoon, the lonely
absolute speed events of one man racing an hour against the clock, the terribly dangerous
and beautiful races of one hundred kilometres on the big banked wooden five-hundredmetre
bowl of the Stade Buffalo, the outdoor stadium at Montrouge where they raced
behind big motorcycles, Linart, the great Belgian champion that they called 'the Sioux'
for his profile, dropping his head to suck up cherry brandy from a rubber tube that
connected with a hot-water bottle under his racing shirt when he needed it towards the
end as he increased his savage speed, and the championships of France behind big motors
of the six-hundred-and-sixty metre cement track of the Pare du Prince near Auteuil, the
wickedest track of all where we saw that great rider Ganay fall and heard his skull
crumple under the crash helmet as you crack a hard-boiled egg against a stone to peel it
on a picnic. I must write the strange world of the six-day races and the marvels of the
road-racing in the mountains. French is the only language it has ever been written in
properly and the terms are all French and that is what makes it hard to write. Mike was
right about it, there is no need to bet. But that comes at another time in Paris.
8 HungerWas Good Discipline
You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops
had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so
that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing
nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching
out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg Gardens where you saw and
smelled nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l'Observatoire to the rue de
Vaugirard. There you could always go into the Luxembourg Museum and all the
paintings were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty,
hollow-hungry. I learned to understand Cezanne much better and to see truly how he
made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he
painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat. It was one of those
unsound but illuminating thoughts you have when you have been sleepless or hungry.
Later I thought Cezanne was probably hungry in a different way.
After you came out of the Luxembourg you could walk down the narrow rue Ferou
to the Place St-Sulpice and there were still no restaurants, only the quiet square with its
benches and trees. There was a fountain with lions, and pigeons walked on the pavement
and perched on the statues of the bishops. There was the church and there were shops
selling religious objects and vestments on the north side of the square.
From this square you could not go farther towards the river without passing shops
selling fruits, vegetables, wines, or bakery and pastry shops. But by choosing your way
carefully you could work to your right around the grey and white stone church and reach
the rue de l'Odeon and turn up to your right towards Sylvia Beach's bookshop and on
your way you did not pass too many places where things to eat were sold. The rue de
l'Odeon was bare of eating places until you reached the square, where there were three
restaurants.
By the time you reached 12 rue de l'Odeon your hunger was contained but all of your
perceptions were heightened again. The photographs looked different and you saw books
that you had never seen before.
'You're too thin, Hemingway,' Sylvia would say. 'Are you eating enough?'
'Sure.'
'What did you eat for lunch?'
My stomach would turn over and I would say, 'I'm going home for lunch now.'
'At three o'clock?'
'I didn't know it was that late.'
'Adrienne said the other night she wanted to have you and Hadley for dinner. We'd
ask Fargue. You like Fargue, don't you? Or Larbaud. You like him. I know you like him.
Or anyone you really like. Will you speak to Hadley?'
'I know she'd love to come.'
'I'll send her a pneu. Don't you work so hard now that you don't eat properly.'
'I won't.'
'Get home now before it's too late for lunch.'
'They'll save it.'
'Don't eat cold food either. Eat a good hot lunch.'
'Did I have any mail?'
'I don't think so. But let me look.'
She looked and found a note and looked up happily and then opened a closed door in
her desk.
'This came while I was out,' she said. It was a letter and it felt as though it had money
in it. 'Wedderkop,' Sylvia said.
'It must be from Der Querschnitt. Did you see Wedderkop?'
'No. But he was here with George. He'll see you. Don't worry. Perhaps he wanted to
pay you first.'
'It's six hundred francs. He says there will be more.'
'I'm awfully glad you reminded me to look. Dear Mr Awfully Nice.'
'It's damned funny that Germany is the only place I can sell anything. To him and the
Frankfurter Zeitung.'
'Isn't it? But don't you worry ever. You can sell stories to Ford,' she teased me.
"Thirty francs a page. Say one story every three months in the Transatlantic. Story
five pages long makes one hundred and fifty francs a quarter. Six hundred francs a year.'
'But, Hemingway, don't worry about what they bring now. The point is that you can
write them.'
'I know. I can write them. But nobody will buy them. There is no money coming in
since I quit journalism.'
'They will sell. Look. You have the money for one right there.'
'I'm sorry, Sylvia. Forgive me for speaking about it.'
'Forgive you for what? Always talk about it or about anything. Don't you know all
writers ever talk about is their troubles? But promise me you won't worry and that you'll
eat enough.'
'I promise.'
'Then get home now and have lunch.'
Outside on the rue de l'Odeon I was disgusted with myself for having complained
about things. I was doing what I did of my own free will and I was doing it stupidly. I
should have bought a large piece of bread and eaten it instead of skipping a meal. I could
taste the brown lovely crust. But it is dry in your mouth without something to drink. You
God-damn complainer. You dirty phony saint and martyr, I said to myself. You quit
journalism of your own accord. You have credit and Sylvia would have loaned you
money. She has, plenty of times. Sure. And then the next thing you would be
compromising on something else. Hunger is healthy and the pictures do look better when
you are hungry. Eating is wonderful too and do you know where you are going to eat
right now?
Lipp's is where you are going to eat, and drink too.
It was a quick walk to Lipp's and every place I passed that my stomach noticed as
quickly as my eyes or my nose made the walk an added pleasure. There were few people
in the brasserie and when I sat down on the bench against the wall with the mirror in
back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer I asked for a distingue, the
big glass mug that held a litre, and for potato salad.
The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and
marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and
moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draught of beer I drank and ate
very slowly. When the pommes a l'huile were gone I ordered another serving and a
cervelas. This was a sausage like a heavy, wide frankfurter split in two and covered with
a special mustard sauce.
I mopped up all the oil and all of the sauce with bread and drank the beer slowly
until it began to lose its coldness and then I finished it and ordered a demi and watched it
drawn. It seemed colder than the distingue and I drank half of it.
I had not been worrying, I thought. I knew the stories were good and someone would
publish them finally at home. When I stopped doing newspaper work I was sure the
stories were going to be published. But every one I sent out came back. What had made
me so confident was Edward O'Brien's taking the My Old Man story for the Best Short
Stories book and then dedicating the book for that year to me. Then I laughed and drank
some more beer. The story had never been published in a magazine and he had broken all
his rules to take it for the book. I laughed again and the waiter glanced at me. It was
funny because, after all that, he had spelled the name wrong. It was one of two stories I
had left when everything I had written was stolen in Hadley's suitcase, that time at the
Gare de Lyon when she was bringing the manuscripts down to me to Lausanne as a
surprise, so I could work on them on our holidays in the mountains. She had put in the
originals, the typescripts and the carbons, all in manilla folders. The only reason I had the
one story was that Lincoln Steffens had sent it out to some editor who sent it back. It was
in the mail while everything else was stolen. The other story that I had was the one called
Up in Michigan, written before Miss Stein had come to our flat. I had never had it copied
because she said it was in-afcrocbable. It had been in a drawer somewhere.
