The march of marvelous days becomes a bit unnerving. When does the overcast start? A raindrop?
Hemingway’s house — really Pauline Hemingway’s house — isn’t a calm retreat; it’s too much in the center of Key West, with cars and motorbikes and airplanes audible. But it’s an expansive, palmy compound that, like Faulkner’s house in Mississippi, does convey something of the writer.
What it conveys, accurately enough, is his mordancy. There’s an irony in the air which feels excessive, studied.
Even maybe spiritless, like our rather robotic tour guide — a standard-issue Key West male, sixtyish, slender, in loose-fitting clothes with cigarettes and dollar bills (tip prompts) sticking out of pockets. His sun-stained eyes had white circles around them where his sunglasses went. “Folks tragically Hemingway died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound manic depressive here’s photos of all his ex-wives on the wall behind me.” Arranged in order of abandonment.
Polydactyl cats lay unconscious atop poolside tables. “There’s forty-four of them here. About half of each litter have six or even seven toes.” The guide shook a bag of dry food at them and they wandered over to get their pictures taken. Those with extra digits had an odd splayed walk. “This one’s Archibald MacLeish, and that’s Gertrude Stein.”
The cat cemetery, with slabs for Frank Sinatra and Zsa Zsa Gabor, was … I dunno. Put it together with the fountain made from a urinal and lots of other clever stuff — a cat named Mr. Bette Davis — and it’s trop camp pour moi, dearies. At some point I start seeing all those too-too characters in Fitzgerald stories who seem to have skipped right over being human beings.