Garden of Eden

Ernest Hemingway

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780684804521
• eBook ISBN: 9781476770123
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

A sensational bestseller when it appeared in 1986, The Garden of Eden is the last uncompleted novel of Ernest Hemingway, which he worked on intermittently from 1946 until his death in 1961. Set on the Côte d'Azur in the 1920s, it is the story of a young American writer, David Bourne, his glamorous wife, Catherine, and the dangerous, erotic game they play when they fall in love with the same woman. "A lean, sensuous narrative...taut, chic, and strangely contemporary, " The Garden of Eden represents vintage Hemingway, the master "doing what nobody did better" (R.Z. Sheppard, Time).

9

The new plan lasted a little more than a month. They had three rooms at the end of the long low rose-colored Provençal house where they had stayed before. It was in the pines on the Estérel side of la Napoule. Out of the windows there was the sea and from the garden in front of the long house where they ate under the trees they could see the empty beaches, the high papyrus grass at the delta of the small river and across the bay was the white curve of Cannes with the hills and the far mountains behind. There was no one staying at the long house now in summer and the proprietor and his wife were pleased to have them back.

Their bedroom was the big room at the end. It had windows on three sides and was cool that summer. At night they smelled the pines and the sea. David worked in a room at the further end. He started early each morning and when he was finished he would find Catherine and they would go to a cove in the rocks where there was a sand beach to sun and to swim. Sometimes Catherine was gone with the car and he would wait for her and have a drink out on the terrace after his work. It was impossible to drink pastis after absinthe and he had taken to drinking whiskey and Perrier water. This pleased the proprietor, who was now doing a good defensive summer business with the presence of the two Bournes in the dead summer season. He had not hired a cook and his wife was doing the cooking. One maid servant looked after the rooms and a nephew, who was an apprentice waiter, served at table.

Catherine enjoyed driving the small car and went on buying and collecting trips to Cannes and to Nice. The big winter season shops were closed but she found extravagances to eat and solid values to drink and located the places where she could buy books and magazines.

David had worked very hard for four days. They had spent all the afternoon in the sun on the sand of a new cove they had found and they had been in the water until they were both tired and then come home in the evening with salt dried on their backs and in their hair to have a drink and take showers and change.

In bed the breeze came in from the sea. It was cool and they lay side by side in the dark with the sheet over them and Catherine said, “You said I was to tell you.”

“I know.”

She leaned over him and held his head in her hands and kissed him. “I want to so much. Can I? May I?”

“Sure.”

“I’m so happy. I’ve made a lot of plans,” she said. “And this time I’m not going to start so bad and wild.”

“What sort of plans?”

“I can tell but it would be better to show it. We could do it tomorrow. Will you go in with me?”

“Where?”

“To Cannes where I went when we were here before. He’s a very good coiffeur. We’re friends and he’s better than the one in Biarritz because he understood right away.”

“What have you been doing?”

“I went to see him this morning while you were working and I explained and he studied it and understood and thought it would be fine. I told him I hadn’t decided but that if I did I’d try to get you to have yours cut the same way.”

“How is it cut?”

“You’ll see. We’ll go together. It’s sort of bevelled back from the natural line. He’s very enthusiastic. I think it’s because he’s crazy about the Bugatti. Are you afraid?”

“No.”

“I can’t wait. He wants to lighten it really but we were afraid you might not like it.”

“The sun and the salt water lighten it.”

“This would be much fairer. He said he could make it as fair as Scandinavian. Think how that would be with our dark skin. And we could make yours lighter too.”

“No. I’d feel funny.”

“Who do you know here that makes any difference? You’d get lighter swimming all summer anyway.”

He did not say anything and she said, “You won’t have to. We’ll just do mine and maybe you’ll want to. We can see.”

“Don’t make plans, Devil. Tomorrow I’ll get up very early and work and you sleep as late as you can.”

“Then write for me too,” she said. “No matter if it’s where I’ve been bad put in how much I love you.”

“I’m nearly up to now.”

“Can you publish it or would it be bad to?”

“I’ve only tried to write it.”

“Can I ever read it?”

“If I ever get it right.”

“I’m so proud of it already and we won’t have any copies for sale and none for reviewers and then there’ll never be clippings and you’ll never be self conscious and we’ll always have it just for us.”

David Bourne woke when it was light and put on shorts and a shirt and went outside. The breeze had died. The sea was calm and the day smelled of the dew and the pines. He walked bare footed across the flagstones of the terrace to the room at the far end of the long house and went in and sat down at the table where he worked. The windows had been open overnight and the room was cool and full of early morning promise.

He was writing about the road from Madrid to Zaragossa and the rising and falling of the road as they came at speed into the country of the red buttes and the little car on the then dusty road picked up the Express train and Catherine passed it gently car by car, the tender, and then the engineer and fireman, and finally the nose of the engine, and then she shifted as the road switched left and the train disappeared into a tunnel.

“I had it,” she had said. “But it went to ground. Tell me if I can get it again.”

He had looked at the Michelin map and said, “Not for a while.”

“I’ll let it go then and we’ll see the country.” As the road climbed there were poplar trees along the river and the road climbed steeply and he felt the car accept it and then Catherine shift again happily as it flattened the steep grade.

Later, when he heard her voice in the garden, he stopped writing. He locked the suitcase with the cahiers of manuscript and went out locking the door after him. The girl would use the pass key to clean the room.

Catherine was sitting at breakfast on the terrace. There was a red-and-white checked cloth on the table. She wore her old Grau du Roi striped shirt fresh-washed and shrunk now and much faded, new gray flannel slacks, and espadrilles.

“Hello,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep late.”

“You look lovely.”

“Thank you. I feel lovely.”

“Where did you get those slacks?”

“I had them made in Nice. By a good tailor. Are they all right?”

“They’re very well cut. They just look new. Are you going to wear them into town?”

“Not town. Cannes in the off season. Everybody will next year. People are wearing our shirts now. They’re no good with skirts. You don’t mind do you?”

“Not at all. They look right. They just looked so well creased.”

After breakfast while David shaved and showered and then pulled on a pair of old flannels and a fisherman’s shirt and found his espadrilles Catherine put on a blue linen shirt with an open collar and a heavy white linen skirt.

“We’re better this way. Even if the slacks are right for here they’re too show-off for this morning. We’ll save them.”

It was very friendly and offhand at the coiffeur’s but very professional. Monsieur Jean, who was about David’s age and looked more Italian than French, said, “I will cut it as she asks. Do you agree, Monsieur?”

“I don’t belong to the syndicate,” David said. “I leave it to you two.”

“Perhaps we should experiment on Monsieur,” Monsieur Jean said. “In case anything goes wrong.”

But Monsieur Jean began cutting Catherine’s hair very carefully and skillfully and David watched her dark serious face above the smock that came close around her neck. She looked into the hand mirror and watched the comb and scissors lifting and snipping. The man was working like a sculptor, absorbed and serious. “I thought about it all last night and this morning,” the coiffeur said. “If you don’t believe that, Monsieur, I understand. But this is as important to me as your métier is to you.”

He stepped back to look at the shape he was making. Then he snipped more rapidly and finally turned the chair so the big mirror was reflected in the small one Catherine held.

“Do you want it cut that way above the ears?” she asked the coiffeur.

“As you like. I can make it more dégagé if you wish. But it will be beautiful as is if we are going to make it truly fair.”

“I want it fair,” Catherine said.

He smiled. “Madame and I have spoken of it. But I said it must be Monsieur’s decision.”

“Monsieur gave his decision,” Catherine said.

“How fair did Monsieur say he wished it to be?”

“As fair as you can make it,” she said.

“Don’t say that,” Monsieur Jean said. “You must tell me.”

“As fair as my pearls,” Catherine said. “You’ve seen them plenty of times.”

David had come over and was watching Monsieur Jean stir a large glassful of the shampoo with a wooden spoon. “I have the shampoos made up with castile soap,” the coiffeur said. “It’s warm. Please come over here to the basin. Sit forward,” he said to Catherine, “and put this cloth across your forehead.”

“But it isn’t even really a boy’s haircut,” Catherine said. “I wanted it the way we planned. Everything’s going wrong.”

“It couldn’t be more a boy’s haircut. You must believe me.”

He was lathering her head now with the foamy thick shampoo with the acrid odor.

When her head had been shampooed and rinsed again and again it looked to David as though it had no color and the water tunnelled through it showing only a wet paleness. The coiffeur put a towel over it and rubbed it softly. He was very sure about it.

“Don’t be desperate, Madame,” he said. “Why would I do anything against your beauty?”

“Iam desperate and there isn’t any beauty.”

He dried her head gently and then kept the towel over her head and brought a hand blower and began to play it through her hair as he combed it forward.

“Now watch,” he said.

As the air drove through her hair it was turning from damp drab to a silvery northern shining fairness. As the wind of the blower moved through it they watched it change.

“You shouldn’t have despaired,” Monsieur Jean said, not sayingMadame and then remembering. “Madame wanted it fair?”

“It’s better than the pearls,” she said. “You’re a great man and I was terrible.”

Then he rubbed his hands together with something from a jar. “I’ll just touch it with this,” he said. He smiled at Catherine very happily and passed his hands lightly over her head.

Catherine stood up and looked at herself very seriously in the mirror. Her face had never been so dark and her hair was like the bark of a young white birch tree.

“I like it so much,” she said. “Too much.”

She looked in the mirror as though she had never seen the girl she was looking at.

“Now we must do Monsieur,” the coiffeur said. “Does Monsieur wish the cut? It’s very conservative but it’s also sportif.”

“The cut,” David said. “I don’t think I’ve had a haircut in a month.”

“Please make it the same as mine,” Catherine said.

“But shorter,” David said.

“No. Please just the same.”

When it was cut David stood up and ran his hand over his head. It felt cool and comfortable.

“Aren’t you going to let him lighten it?”

“No. We’ve had enough miracles for one day.”

“Just a little?”

“No.”

David looked at Catherine and then at his own face in the mirror. His was as brown as hers and it was her haircut.

“You really want it that much?”

“Yes I do, David. Truly. Just to try it a little bit. Please.”

He looked once more in the mirror and walked over then and sat down. The coiffeur looked at Catherine.

“Go ahead and do it,” she said.

10

The patron was sitting at one of his tables on the terrace of the long house with a bottle of wine, a glass and an empty c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Books by Ernest Hemingway
• Publisher’s Note
• Preface
• Book One
• Book Two
• Book Three
• Book Four
• About the Author
• Copyright