for long pants and pullovers," he told me. "Not that it was cold, but I felt better with something more on. There was no one at home to help. Rene, Juan, Clara all in bed to protect themselves from the "frio." A matter of habit.
A matter of relativity, I thought, recalling one morning in Prigi when after mass I had come down the steps of the Madeleine in a spring suit - it was spring - between a light floral dress with a very Nordic face on it and a fur coat with a very African face on it. Under these clothes so different who knows how even more different our problems were, impatience, weakness, I had thought.
I arrived on time for Christmas. Unlike us who traditionally lit the tree on Christmas Eve, the Hemingways prepared it for the morning of the 25th and in order to see the candlelight, the windows had to be closed and the curtains drawn.
Mary gifted me a yellow linen guaiabera, Papa a Mexican gold weight. It hadn't been easy to find a gift for Papa who already had everything. I thought it might be a good idea to give him some of my poems and I had those I had written about Finca Vigia, about Cuba and about him bound in cloth, some in English.
Those that spoke of Papa were for the most part a hard attack on his faults, in others I took Mary's defense. One of the mildest said: "Remember that a woman's heart / is like that big red flower / that when you hurt it / it bleeds and dies. / It is your condemnation."
Papa read the book carefully. He was a very good sport: he said he hoped not to deserve such a severe judgment but that overall I was right. And thank you very much.
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