Hemingway's curse by Alexandra Pereira - A short story

Hemingway’s
Curse
Alexandra Pereira

Alexandra Pereira
Hemingway’s Curse
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« Fire destroys Hemingway museum in the Bahamas
A fire deflagrated Friday morning destroying the museum of Ernest Hemingway
and the Compleat Angler Hotel on the island of Bimini, in the Bahamas.
Photographs and objects, which had belonged to the writer, were consumed
in the flames that destroyed the wooden building that constituted the greatest
tourist attraction of the small island and was, in the 1930s, one of the
favourite refuges of the American novelist. The fishing days are said to have
inspired his well-known novel The Old Man and the Sea, and Ernest Hemingway
(1899-1961) was a regular customer of the Compleat Angler Hotel where
it is believed he wrote To Have and To Have Not.»
(Público newspaper, Sunday 15th January 2006)
1.
I
am of the opinion that the news did not relate with substantial veracity
the incidents: only that one whom has not been in the Bimini.
Bimini (I have been there already) is an incurved grouping of small islets
situated in the Bahamas, in the Caribbean West, in the Miami and Fort
Lauderdale coast, up north from the islands of Andros, North Cat Cay and
South Cat Cay, and east from Great Harbour Cay.
In these islets, bathed west by the Florida straits, are sharks, dolphins,
blue merlins, boats with arched hoods, golden shoals and reefs with clusters
of cylindrical chorales and rosy flowers, fish colored like zebras, snakes
named Boas [“the good ones”] and still other fish named Língua de Flamingo
[“flamingo tongue”], besides giant jungle crabs with fainted-green
carapaces and enormous cutting claws.

The Bimini, surrounded by emerald liquids, invaded with gracious incandescent
skins, have the shape of a woman’s uterus and many yachts
repairing in their anchorages. There is a Bimini navigation knot. There are
dunes and palm trees and bulrushes and seaweeds in the beaches there;
the palm trees dominate, those palms that look just like a lying duster
over a blue sea, so blue that it takes your breath away.
In the vegetation there is a life blow uniting us to the universe and all
the animals spread at night through the ground a running shades whispering,
full on the inside with the same wet heat which soaks our nape or
slides down our spine and members during the day. The Bimini are the
passage gate, the entrance door in the Bahamas: “The Gateway to the Bahamas”,
the Yankees say. Moving forth from here, some things improve
and some others get worse, as the super ugly Atlantis Hotel in Nassau
Paradise island, southeast from here.
Differently, Rum Cay and Spanish Wells are at minimum interesting or
curious locations – with so much water around, what would those numerous
wells be necessary for? But I wanted to tell you about the Bimini – the
divers paradise –, about their Nixon’s Harbour and about how it is convenient
to be quite close to the South Bimini Yatch Club when stormy clouds
set to protest, mirrored on the tranquil and treacherous sea.
It is also convenient to distinguish from now on between North Bimini
(let us say that the ovaries in the uterine profile drawing of the islets) and
South Bimini (let us say that one part that the gentlemen will be able to
imagine quite well, when locating it in relation to the set of the other islands,
without being necessary for me to refer it explicitly, which would
become without shade of doubts ridicule in what to a well concrete piece
of land says respect, a piece of land with an airport, terminal, tower of
radio and everything).
I wanted to tell you about the Fimdomundo Bar at Bimini – “End of the
World Bar”, the Yankees say –, built with aged wooden boards calligraphed
in black, and also about the ogival blood-colored arc over the gate of the
Bar Compleat Angler, its high rubber tree slightly ahead, with huge car-

nivorous teeth showing themselves in an absolute fury inside the leaves
cones, and its lathed veranda painted in greenish tones consummating in
her apparent tranquility an interesting contradiction.
Or telling you, for example, about Ernest Hemingway, when he was not
working on the The Old Man and the Sea nor joining the local inhabitants
at the Sloppy Joe’s Bar, ambushing the elusive blue merlins faraway from
the sandbars, in deep sea, hanging them later on a boatman’s deck by
means of sheaves and ropes complex systems, with their sharp as a needle
peak grazing the floor for the glorious photograph next to his companions,
crowning the fishery with perfection and bravery.
I must confess that fishing does not attract me as much as some other
amusements: I’ve informed myself about the verdant golf courses in
the Bahamas, bought the Diving Guide with all the details on the Atlantic
depths and enrolled myself in a promotional package with the duration of
eight days from $499, letting the mooring cables loose in Fort Lauderdale.
I went to the Caribbean sea with a photocopy of the islands illustration
of Thomas Medina authorship (‘ 92) folded in my shorts pocket – it was a
little washy on the arrival, the colors had been eaten by the salted wind
and the cutting persistence of the tides –, where the “Rabbit” islets of Bimini,
the most meridional ones, were represented with the shape of three
little round rabbit excrements dropped right there in ample sea, what
seemed to me as droll in the minimum and in the best of the hypothesis
rather bizarre. When we were finally anchored, I absentmindedly passed
my eyes through the maritime chart of the Bimini that the commander
had opened over his cabin table:
255ºM 42mi 045ºM/ Shifting Sandbar/ EAST WELL/ Casa Grand Hotel/
PARADISE POINT/ Shifting Sandbar/ BAILEY TOWN/ NOTH BIMINI/ Mangroves/
Alec Cay/ Cable Area/ ALICE TOWN/ Marsh/ Pigeon Cay/ BIMINI
ISLANDS: see BIM3 Closeup Bimini Harbour/ Sand Flat Dry at Low Water/
Aero MO (B) R 20 s 23 mi Tower Missing 1997/ Sandbar/ Range/ SOUTH
BIMINI/ Airstrip/ PORT ROYAL/ Marsh/ NIXONS HARBOUR

I did not understand a thing. I’ve felt happy for bringing that naïf and
washy illustration folded in my shorts pocket, it would always be easier to
get myself guided by it (I have been there already but there was no time
for a map, please understand: my departure was quite sudden). When he
saw that I was observing his maritime chart with a confused expression,
the raging oldman flung me a recrimination look which I didn’t understand,
or then could it be the panic hindering me from reasoning about
anything whatsoever in that one precise instant.
I mumbled awestruck: “I’m sorry, commander” and I’ve left the more
speedy I could in the boat’s deck direction, eager to join the group of
passengers there – tourists in the majority – who were already agitating,
storming their arms as an euphoric flock of birds in March, thanks to the
perspective of stepping solid land again. Seagulls and other aquatic birds
came to receive us clanking.
Just by myself seating on the boat’s side, seeing the port in our front extending
lazy and a tire of palm trees stubbly as hedgehogs in their slothful
foliages under the warm sun – the boat’s engine making the ground roar
under my feet and a salty breeze entering my nostrils ahead without asking
for any permission –, then I could be conscious of what again, without
any margin for doubts, in fact had happened with me or in my presence.
The old commander had flung me in the cabin the such censorial look
and his eyes, which until that time were dark as lignite, suddenly reflected
the dense and perpetual color of the sea, then becoming incandescent,
red and swollen as big mellowed berries of cherry, launching towards me
the disturbing and lively fire of a thousand coals in combustion. How terrifying
image that was! How hideous torment was bringing me for my foot
to where I didn’t want nor had ever dreamed of!

2.
Everything begun two months ago, inside my modest house at the
small city where I inhabit. I was never one of long conversations,
neither was I ever one with very numerous friendships: I follow my
instinct and that’s all, besides I’ve never done badly with that. It succeeds
that in my mother’s wake night, two months ago now, there was no intuition
nor good-sense enough or so persuasive that they could protect me
from attending the serious and not less extraordinary events that I will tell
next.
hemingway’s house - Ovi magazineFrom there to here my world has
fallen down, persistent, several times a day and without any justification
– when I think that nothing else will be possible, then the greatest of all
phenomenons reveals itself, and then my past optimism turns me despondent
in the present. This one, the one of the commander, it wasn’t
but the last one of those episodes in a chronology that had become well
stuffed with all kinds of exploits.

It happened the case, as above I reported, in the night of my wishful
mother’s wake. Mom died in the most horrible and unexpected way, although
now it seems to me that perhaps not even her disappearance must
have been fortuitous, what in fact saddens one and makes one doubt in
his chest a certain resigned apprehension, similar to that one we can only
feel in the presence of a mystery as faithful as unsolvable.
There was no way around it: mom left home quite early in the morning
to do the shopping at the neighbourhood’s grocery store, the cap on her
head and woollen gloves in order to protect her sensible bones from the
cold – by that time, she would certainly still thinking about my reaction to
the careless revelation that she had done the night before, between tea,
cookies and nuggets ice cream, and about which I was also still pondering
with my body dormant and lukewarm by the satiating cuddle of the bedroom:
the revelation that my father, whom I had never met, had once been
someone famous, that it wouldn’t have been really worth it – according
to my mother – to meet him when he was still alive, having in account his
temperament, and that, besides the rest, he had made her promise still in
his lifetime that never, under any hypothesis or circumstance, would she
disclose – to me, his son – his real identity.
She had carried out the promise scrupulously until this moment: but
she was beginning to find herself at an old age and the oldness weighed
on her back and softened her, she considered that I had the right to know
the secret, so she took in that night the decision that her conscience had
been ordering her to take in the last few months. «Anyway, he was a man
without great scruples...» she said, with an indifferent shoulders contraction,
after disclosing my father’s true name.
For sure, mom still thought about this conversation and was closing
her overcoat with both her thin hands because of the cutting matutinal
wind, when a misgoverned snow-cleaning car erupted in the astral map
of her destination outlining the most tragic route one can imagine: it
crashed with her small and surprised body and it had large metallic teeth
squeaking anxious of meat and slaughter, lead jaws gulping everything,
a massive, rude and gigantic yellow mass. It left only mom’s hot gloves
abandoned in the place of the accident and, behind it, the horrible spoor

of a leak dropping blood on the diaphanous snow as rose petals loose to
the chance.
Despite the shock suffered and the stupefaction before the news, I’ve
treated of everything with spirit clarity and an exemplary abnegation – or,
at least, this would be later the neighbours evaluation when congratulating
me because of the discernment shown in such a disturbed moment –,
thus at seven o’clock in the afternoon that day a wake was already organized
with all the people in the block and some distant relatives present as
well, the house adorned from the top of the roof to the basement stove
with dark and noble cloths forming half-moon folds, old candelabrums
and stock angels which guarded carefully the perpetual sleep of mom,
besides a nicely composed table in the living-room to the side, provided
with food in abundance and some liquors for the carouse.
«Your – I mean, not your, your mother’s one… – wake is capital, just let
me tell you!» the guests were pulling me for my elbow to mutter aside on
my ear, and therefore I’m not ashamed (rather proud) to admit, because
it is well revealing of the effort that I undertook to dignify the memory of
my beloved dead, that during mom’s wake there were many more people
congratulating me and complimenting the event with grace than eery
guests just worried about directing towards me their disguised hurt under
the form of fake sorrows. But when, a few minutes after ten o’clock in
the evening, the last guest closed behind him the heavy street door, all
the impossibilities precipitated themselves and the imponderable facts
made, in their turn, question to appear.
I’ve said goodbye farewell to that old colleague of mom with a long
and moved hug which he repaid without modesty; however, I had exactly
finished to lock the main door when a purple light, coming from the
kitchen’s entrance, surprised me on my tired visage. I went there and I was
livid when I saw the spectral ghost of my father – or of whom my mother
had disclosed to be my father – apparently deep in thought, seated in a
kitchen stool and drinking a double whiskey.
I didn’t know what to say; I’ve made a cross with my arms which did
not occasion any effect either: nor did it dissolve, sudden, the appearance

into smoke, nor did it dissuaded the ghost from sipping my alcohol. I sat
down as well and, because he seemed unhappy to me, I’ve talked to him
both wanting to distract him and to acquaint what was he doing there.
We’ve chatted during one pleasant hour about everything: he contradicted
mom’s version and denied that I was his son, however he asked me for
a favour which I could not ever refuse, not in my wildest dreams, under
penalty of a curse also abating over me.
Now it renders necessary to clarify that this was a tormented ghost to
whom all wishes should be satisfied, for as absurd or incoherent that they
could seem, because the one who did not make like this would risk himself
to be contaminated with the curse, converting himself into a tormented
appearance. «Men were my terror and my curse was understanding
badly what it was to have courage. Fame didn’t help either...» confided me
blushing the ashamed ghost, condition that – I admit – must not be very
common in transparent masses, pale and floating ones livened up by a
dead spirit.
«This ghost is more alive and human» I thought, and I felt happy with
the possibility of having been that man, in the truth, my real father. He
spoke to me as if we were close friends for a long time now – or otherwise
it could be the drink already occasioning an uninhibiting effect on his vocal
cords –, he explained me toddling the reasons that livened him up
and, though the idea seemed ridiculous to me, I’ve congratulated myself
with the apparent sincerity of the affliction which was transparent in his
stubborn and liquid eyes.
He had a problem: the tourists were invading, in the last years, as much
the intimate nooks on his favourite house as the cellaret of the bar where
he had continued to supply himself with drinks after his death, in such a
way that not only he felt that his privacy was being completely exposed in
the last decades, but he was also subjugated to the abstinence unpleasant
effects – the so-called delirium tremens – because he couldn’t visit the
bar with as much regularity as formerly.
He was a very woebegone ghost – I’ve demonstrated to understand his
concerns with a slight and solidary head waggle. Then he made me the

request: it was a very simple one, with all the necessary details so that I
could execute the plan successfully, and frankly I’ve hesitated for a while
when he asked me with a naughty expression to promise that I would satisfy
it. After all, it was almost the equivalent to cremate still in life a dying
one, gathering all his memories, outfits, personal objects and pieces, admiring
hearts and the ones of his beloved people in the same triumphal
burning pyre – besides, it could even also be considered a crime.
It succeeded me however to look at the rigid mother’s body lying in
the dining-room among wreaths and I remembered the insurrectionist’s
curse, what immediately dissuaded me from denying any request, besides
the old ghostman guaranteed to me, with a pert and accomplice
eye blink, that only in that way could he rest in peace – I decided to yield
and try to satisfy that last wish as soon as I could. I’ve promised, though
not with great enthusiasm. On the contrary, satisfied with what he had
just heard, the ghost snapped five times his left-hand fingers making disappear
with each creak a part of his body, until he was completely gone
in the cold night, cheeks and everything, converted into a tiny lonely lilac
light which blinked three times out there over the frozen hill.

3.
The dining-room was already in the dimness thanks to the melted
candles, but there was a tepid atmosphere intensifying the flowers
perfume when I returned to keep my mother’s orphan and damaged
poor body company, which was all alone in the desert room. We’ve
covered that corpse with make-up the more we could, still the face was
swollen and the trunk had to be covered, from the neck to the feet, with a
very thick sheet in order to save from the serious wounds there displayed
my guest’s sensible eyes.
Just as I seated down on the black chair next to the defunct, the front
door – which I had locked a little time ago – opened itself to let in a furious
and snowed whirlwind, followed by three furious wild cats, which entered
the room. When I finished barring the door with a small piece of furniture I
had to rub my eyes with both hands, because when peeking through the
window to measure the storm violence I thought I saw out there, in the
snowed hill’s place, a mountain as high as the Kilimanjaro.

And what a surprise I didn’t have when I observed that one of the wild
cats was standing only on his back paws and was bullfighting the other
two with bravery and precision, with the help of a small red cape! I decided
to lock the three beasts in the pantry: there was, out of nowhere, a
huge blue merlin in the pantry, suspended from mom’s old hangers by it’s
back fin – it’s silver-colored scales vibrated in multiple reflections and the
beak down, opened mouth, was dripping salty water over the waxed floor
–, besides that a shotgun with thick pipes was settled down at a corner of
the pantry, of which I didn’t understand, not even with the greatest reasoning
and memory efforts, how the hell had it shown up there.
The way they were, they resembled cats in the rain, the three felines
staring humbly at me, with the snow melting in their dense fur and seated
under the salty shower that was dropping from the big fish mouth. «Now
let’s have a look at this» I said, crouching to fetch the cape that the biggest
cat was holding between his claws – the beast didn’t offer any kind of important
resistance and I thought that perhaps that accessory would turn
useful by warming up my lap during the longest night of my life.
Once the pantry door was locked, this one also barricaded with another
small piece of furniture, I’ve seated again, relieved, on the chair next to
mom – «What would it be of men without women» I brooded when I saw
her impassive face that, I should say it, tranquillized me a lot – and I fell
asleep. I woke up with a start to the deafening sound of bells knelling: I
could observe terrified that the red cape on my lap had mouldered during
my sleep in a sticky cherry-colored blood puddle, this in spite of the fact
that, apparently, I was to find myself unharmed.
I straightened the forefinger and dived it in the puddle, then I raised it
as high as my mouth and smelled: that liquid there was cherry liquor... I
could not find any explanations for that, but the fact is that I was already
distracted with the perception of the tepid emanations – similar to those
that one can feel when seated next to a brazier – exhaling from my mother’s
body, deep from her seventy six years old run over almost one day
ago, which I found, in reality, very odd.

We were only two pairs of hours away from the funeral, I had to change
my clothes not to cause any strangeness in the people who would be
present then and again the Kilimanjaro showed up as waving in my window’s
frozen frame. I remember thinking: «Gosh, now how am I going to
explain the visitors that the Kilimanjaro appeared at my doorstep?
This house is so livened up that there doesn’t seem to be a wake going
on anymore, but a party: damn, have we arrived to Paris already?!», but
my fears were revealed baseless because at the hour agreed the funerary
gentlemen and the mourning doleful ones arrived at my place, and
everything was looking normal by that time. I say “was looking” because I
sighted the ghost again during the funeral jumping between two neighboring
gris gravestones and, to be frank, strange things have been going
on with that tomb in the last two months, which I will not precise here
because of the respect due to the memory of my dead mother.
They have been the days, since then and general rule, if not uneasy at
least extremely frazzling to me. Strange phenomenons begun to occur
with the greatest regularity, so bizarre events that before the death of my
mother they would have been completely unthinkable or shocking and
that – if it wasn’t for the assiduous presence of the ghost crying with his
elbows supported on my secretary during the nocturnal discrete solitude
– they would be enough for me to put in doubt my own mental health.
The case had turned, however, in such a way that the paternal spook,
that misanthrope spectre of person, desired to see my promise fulfilled
with the hugest possible hurry so that he could then rest in peace – therefore,
he blackmailed me with all kinds of freakish occurrences and a fertile
sadness pledged in wetting my work papers, if possible turning them
forever useless. This irritated me deeply. When I got his intentions, the
promise dilemma bursted my nerves down, I had to go to the doctor and
start taking tranquilizers; I did not resolve the insomnia with herbal teas,
however the sedatives attenuated it considerably, in spite of my hands
lost of firmness.
But the ghost continued on his footpath, implacable as never before:
or there were deer scalps embalmed and hung appearing over the fire-

place, or a fishing rod stuck in the washbasin drain with the small ticket
«Be a man» sticked on it’s reel, or the blue merlin spine – the only part of
the fish that I managed to save from the wild cats fury after the quarantine
to which I had submitted them –, which (I swear) I was intending to deliver
to the competent authorities for further investigations, flied by magical
arts means dissuading my wise intentions and disappearing under the
persian carpet without leaving any trace behind.
Until one day I decided to yield. I was just on track to lose my job; I opted
for taking some short vacations instead and decide this subject once and
for all: at least, I would have my conscience clean and the promise fulfilled,
because the plan to execute was not that difficult that I couldn’t accomplish
it (and could someone else do it?) in the most efficient and discrete
way possible, without leaving behind myself the minimum clues. «Okay,
I’ve already understood the message: I think that the time has come to go,
now» I communicated that night to the ghost, who was mouldering himself
in whimper, moans and lacrimal fluids, dissolving in a mire the dossiers
with my last six months of work, plangent and noisy as a dissonant
harp. I contained my anger and turned my back away, while he started
celebrating the fact with sonorous outbursts of laughter, which I ignored.
When I arrived to the other end of the office, I faced him with a discontent
expression and tried to keep my voice in an imperative tone: «But
please, do me the favour: do not forget to still dry all that paperwork yet
tonight».
The sun was almost setting when we arrived to the Bimini’s port, there
were aquatic birds receiving us with great tumult, darkly bevelled against
a vernal sky that was fainting away from deep blue to pungent purple.
I had bought a tourist package for eight days where there had been
planned only a fugitive stop in these islands, nevertheless I decided that
I would stay there for three nights until I had completed the service with
perfection.
I would follow to the scratch the indications previously given to me by
the damned ghost, who was watching me even in the flesh of the boat’s
commander: I’ve only decided to really do that when I arrived at the Bi-

mini and realised this detail; I would completely deliver my destiny on his
hands and my faith to the correctness of the plan sketched, before me, by
someone whose intentions I couldn’t but see indistinctly or with insufficient
precision.
As the night was leaning down on us when we stepped on the causeway
of the port, I decided to orient myself quickly in the hotel direction to
leave my luggage there and rest from the journey.

4.
The next morning, after having a pleasant bath at an almost deserted
beach – the cool and tame water felt so good soon in the
morning, provoking a healthful chill in the column that wakes one
up, with languor, for a new day –, I was searching for the Complete Angler
and the house of the famous writer, following with my memory the precise
indications of the appearance and also the drawings in a new map of
the Bimini that they had given me at the hotel.
Hemingway houseI reached the place by noon, after having taken an
invigorating breakfast side by side with three local fishermen and having
been lost for a pair of times, the second of which intentionally, so that I
could observe other attractions on the islands.

The tourists knew exactly why they were coming and where they could
find what they were looking for, as a swarm of numerous bees searching
for the most precious pollen: they were aligning outside and preparing
themselves patiently to enter the house, in an orderly line that was still
meandering some good five hundred meters along the outside wall.
There were entire families coming, with lap babies on who desperate
mothers threaded colorful caps and dark eyeglasses at the same time
that they were trying to still their cry to the cost of sugared ice creams,
there were also coming adolescents carrying full packages of fried chicken
smearing the hands that they would clean later to the curtains of the
house-museum, there were finally coming collectors of all the unknown
manuscripts and personal objects on which Hemingway had some day,
still that per brief seconds, placed his hands.
At my front on the row, a gentleman was holding with a very white
cloth napkin a glass on his hand: he wanted to show it to the one responsible
for the museum because he guaranteed that “mister Ernest” had left
there, on that crystalline and translucent surface to the strong tropics sun
by the tenth-second hour of the day, his precious fingerprint – holding
the glass with two fingers only for it’s tiny stem, the collector told me that
he intended to demand a sturdy reimbursement to the responsible authorities
in order to be able to leave that valuable exemplar in a show
window of the museum.
Ovi magazine - HemingwayAt this moment I felt a certain pity because
the ghost didn’t leave any visible marks of fingers in the objects where he
touched; it only seemed weird to me that the man was handling such a
delicate glass on his hands and not a quite massive and manly container,
destined preferentially to receive whiskey, but I didn’t verbalize my doubt
because I intended to be discrete and didn’t want to hurt my row neighbour’s
feelings.
Half an hour later I passed through the gate with the ogival arc, followed
the stroll that tore the garden and entered in the Compleat Angler
with much bad-humour – my feet were frankly killing me. Two American
tourists were seated at the bar with huge mugs of beer mollifying in front

of them and a Dutchman squeezed between the two was voraciously eating
the content of a small peanuts bowl: they were speaking about The
Old Man and the Sea, exchanging ideas and collating divergent opinions.
«These turnips – I thought –, besides invading a space that does not belong
to them, still they manage to get empty all the bottles that they can
at the bar, as well as the deposits with the malt provisions».
I sat down at a table a bit distant from them and asked the waiter for
a gasified water – which I knew that wouldn’t be missed by anyone afterwards
–, then I took off the summer shoes that I had put on that morning,
I folded the hotel map in a fan form and, with a sudden enthusiasm, I observed
all the details related with the Bar that I would absolutely need to
know. I flung a kind-hearted last look to the space at the exit, as one who
abandons home comforted in a certain way.
«So, this one is the house» I thought uneasy when entering the museum.
There were all the personal objects that I had never seen before and
already knew in detail, in a compound of dusty solemnity and animals
murdering hymn: several writing instruments mixed with firearms and
old papers, stern candelabra with marks of bullets on their supports, what
I did not know if they were daggers or giant sized, sharp open-letters instruments;
numerous dead animals with their eyes opened were observing
us frightened on every nook of the house and, as an aside remark of
almost impressive vivacity, there were those greasy stains left by some
adolescent fingers in the shady curtains. «Kentucky Fried Chicken» I murmured
amused, while launching an abetter look towards the couple of
German tourists who had entered the leaving room with me; two just-arrived
pairs of Japanese visitors circulated moreover through the office,
denoting a discrete and reverent curiosity.
Immersed was the house, due to its enormous opened shutters, in a
superb white light, only once in a while tinted by the tenuous shadow
of the high palm trees dancing in the wind. I did not delay myself in that
place beyond the time necessary to glimpse once again the ghost’s face
blinking a sapphire eye at me, roguish, in the antique cupboard mirror (I
didn’t have the courage not to repay the courtesy...) and to observe all the
details related with the House which I would absolutely need to know.

I’ve moved off the hotel that same night, just as I had forecasted: I
lodged in a more modest place, without a private bathroom, and in a different
island from that one where the house-museum could be found.
I woke up very early in the next morning to visit the Sloppy Joe’s Bar, a
must-place which the ghost had advised to me without any doubt: once
inside the bar, I could not discern more than one hundred tourist heads,
as busy clicking the photographic machines around them as withdrawing
the present locals quietness, who they insistently massacred with derisive
questions about a bearded American who had passed there in the last
century’s thirties decade, when most of the people there wouldn’t surely
even be born yet.
This scenario both saddened and galvanized me – by filling my heart
with an incredible anger that was increasing all day long, helping me so
that I could later satisfy, without vacillating for a brief second, the sordid
wish the phantom had asked me for. I’ve spent the whole afternoon on
the beach taming the ire as I could and sinking my legs in the spume of
different tides; I bought a ticket aboard the passage boat to the following
dawn and waited for the sun to quench his flaming hairs on the Atlantic
Ocean, on a vibrant party.
I then went to get the luggage to that humble hotel and brought them
to a boarding house even worse, in the city where the house-museum
was placed, having the caution of lodging myself under a fake name in a
ground floor room, and paying in advance for the sleeping night. I did not
undo my suitcases; I locked the room door on the inside and immediately
jumped out to the street through the room’s front window, which I left
opened in the lock.
I was sauntering relaxed down the sidewalk relishing the night coolness
on my face and bearing a small backpack, in the interior of which I
was carrying six conserve cans and used yoghurt bottles, full with gasoline,
a box with six matches inside and two fuses of six meters each one
(following to the scratch the ghost indications, the number six was imposed
thanks to superstition, wisdom or any other reason still unknown
to me).

It was not difficult to accomplish successfully the plan, neither to return
the boarding house, get the luggage on my hands and leave in that
same daybreak on board of the passage boat to a luxurious golf course
planted amidst the Caribbean Sea, thus taking advantage of what was still
left to me of that exceptional vacation package.
THE END

Alexandra Pereira
Hemingway’s Curse
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Hemingway’s Curse
1st edition: January 2007
2nd edition: May 2021
Alexandra Pereira
Ovi magazine
Design: Thanos

Alexandra Pereira
Hemingway’s
Curse
“The Compleat Angler Hotel on the island of Bimini, in the Bahamas,
was destroyed by fire a few years ago. It was one of the refuges
of Ernest Hemingway and it is believed he wrote a few novels
there. Now, it has inspired a different kind of story. The author
felt the news failed to reflect the extent of the fiery destruction
and begins her journey to change all that.”