CU Hemmingway
26 Dec 2001

The Daily Telegraph - National Post - COJIMAR, Cuba - Gregorio Fuentes is 104 years old and laments he can no longer stroll down the hill from his little bungalow to the restaurant where he and Ernest Hemingway used to eat a little fish and drink a lot of whisky. Fuentes is the last living link between the heroic, hard-drinking age of Hemingway and the down-on-its-luck fishing village of Cojimar, a few miles east of the Cuban capital, Havana. Although Cojimar is now an important staging post in the communist regime's crusade for tourist dollars, the old man is tired and seems no longer willing to play his role of fishing foreign currency from visitors' travel belts. Between 1935 and 1960, when Hemingway was at the height of his literary powers, he and Fuentes were like brothers. The Nobel prize-winning author of The Old Man and the Sea even took his Cuban drinking and fishing pal with him when he went big-game hunting in Africa. Neither of them could have known that, after Hemingway's suicide in 1961, Fuentes would become the living embodiment of the noble fisherman, the protagonist of The Old Man and the Sea. As Hemingway wrote: "The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks.'' Only the description of his eyes has failed to be as prophetic. "Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.'' In truth, Fuentes looks a little distracted, possibly anxious, and sad. It was only earlier this year he had to give up his daily trip to the harbour for lunch at La Terrazza, where would hold court for the tourists. On the restaurant's walls are photographs of Hemingway with Fidel Castro at a marlin fishing competition and an iconic image of Fuentes in his threadbare fishing garb on the pier, which was destroyed recently by Hurricane Michelle. There was less than a year's difference in age between Hemingway and Fuentes and they used to celebrate their birthdays together with a bottle of their beloved whisky. After Hemingway's death, Fuentes maintained the tradition: he would drink a glass and pour another for Hemingway over his brass bust. When whisky became a rare commodity in Cuba, he had to give up. Hemingway left his boat, the Pilar, and all his fishing tackle to Fuentes, but the old man has not fished since then. He finally gave the boat up to the state and it is part of the Hemingway museum. Mariel Hemingway, the author's actress granddaughter, said after meeting Fuentes: "This man literally lives each day mourning a man who died decades ago and whom he cannot replace.'' For a man of his age, he is in stupendously good health but he clearly misses his lunchtime tipple and seems still to grieve for his famous dead friend. Asked what he remembers most about the U.S. writer, Fuentes licks his lips and says: "He was a panther. He could have a crazy temper.'' Then, thinking that perhaps he ought to say something a little more respectful, he adds: "He was a good writer.'' The smile on his daughter Blanca's lips seems to suggest her father has never been a great fan of reading anything. Hemingway attended the wedding of Blanca, who now acts as her father's gatekeeper, screening callers at the front door. She says it was an honour to have Hemingway at her wedding. "He wasn't a man to socialize much when he was here, but my father invited him, so he came.'' Blanca has taken some persuasion to allow me across the threshold. "People come asking all sorts of stupid questions of Gregorio. They want to know what he thinks about politics and religion but all he has ever known about is fishing and being with his friend, Hemingway.'' As she gently urges me to the door, Fuentes grips my arm suddenly with a gnarled hand and says: "And remember, if you're going to La Terraza, they stock whisky.'' I take the hint, but Blanca tuts. "He was a great drinker all his life but I cannot allow it now. The problem is that when he has one he wants another and another.'' The dollar bills I slip into her hand will be spent on milk and cookies instead, she smiles. For the old man of the sea, it is yet another reason to mourn.