Closerie Part One

The Closerie was nicer than I had expected, and more expensive. Sitting down at a table would have required ordering from the high-priced menu, so I sat at the bar, at the end, by the wall.

French bars, or zincs, do not have stools. Men - usually men - stand and drink their beers and their espressos and talk and lean on the metal counter top with their elbows. If a bar has stools, it is called an American bar. In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway writes about how they put in an American bar at the Closerie and made the waiters wear white jackets and cut off their mustaches. So I was not surprised that the Closerie had an American bar. But that didn't stop me from being disappointed.

Hem was to my left - looking older and smiling, his face well lit and full of color. He was clean-shaven in that picture, except for the mustache. His hair was slicked back, and he looked happy. It must have been hot in Havana because he wore a light collared shirt.

Behind me he didn't look as happy, but he was writing, so I thought he was probably happier in truth. He had a beard in that picture, which was larger.

There were more pictures all over the Closerie, and I wondered when the owners had decided to put them in. He was even on the cover of the menus. I imagined a meeting where the owners and managers discussed whether to make the Closerie like a Hemingway version of Dollywood.

At a table on the other side of the room, a man read Le Monde and wrote in a small pad of blank paper. He was the only other person there who was writing, besides me. The prices were too high now, for writers and poets. There is something romantic about the poor writer, like the poor saint. What is it that makes poverty a virtue, there?

A few stools down at the bar sat a man with hair that was white with wisdom and troubles and reminded me of Walt Whitman, like the huge sculpture of his head that comes out of the wall in one of the buildings on campus. He ordered an American beer - though his accent told me he was French. As he spoke, he traced the letters of his words in the air with his finger, as if transcribing his speech in an invisible court record.