Hemingway’s cafe Manly. I had trouble with the step, but the inscription is memorable and the girls are beautiful
The weather is holding and I set off mid-morning for my now routine trip to Manly in the wheelchair. On returning I decided to stop for a cup of coffee at Manly institution, Hemingway’s coffee shop. It’s about half way between Manly Surf Club and my place. Just across the road from the beach. Nothing is ever easy in a wheelchair. Hemingway’s has a small step to go up from the footpath into the cafe. It’s about 3 inches high. Able-bodied people would never notice. I wheeled up to it and tried to wrestle the front wheels of the wheelchair over it. Luckily, the staff came to my assistance. They wheeled me inside and I transferred onto one of the long benches. Back to the window, sun streaming through. Ordered a skinny Latte. On the opposite wall, words written on the whitewash. They took me back many years
The small step at the entrance to Hemingway’s in Manly. Able bodied people wouldn’t notice it but to me it was always a barrier.
We went into the bar and sat on high stools and drank a whisky and soda. We rolled poker dice out of a deep leather dice-cup. Bill was out first roll. Mike lost to me and handed the bartender a hundred-franc note. The whiskies were twelve francs a piece. We had another round and Mike lost again. Each time he gave the bartender a good tip. In a room off the bar there was a good jazz band playing. It was a pleasant bar. We had another round. I went out on the first roll with four kings. Bill and Mike rolled. Mike won the first roll with four jacks. Bill won the second. On the final roll Mike had three kings and let them stay. He handed the dice-cup to Bill. Bill rattled them and rolled, and there were three kings, an ace, and a queen.
I stared. No one else seemed to notice these words. I wonder if the thousands of people who came through that cafe, wondered where they came from? I knew. Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The book, which I read as a teenager, like Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, inspired a young boy, raised in the bush of western NSW, to see the world. In particular, I wanted to see America. Words on a wall, in a cafe in Manly, but words I will never forget.
Under the words, on the other side of the cafe, facing me was something even more arresting. A girl sat, head down, looking intently at a laptop computer. Occasionally she would laugh. A brilliant smile, perfect teeth in a dark face. Her eyes danced. Black jumper, white shirt tight blue jeans and long brown boots. Boots fashionably scuffed. A beret jauntily tossed on one side of her head. From under it erupted a cascade of wild curls which fell to her shoulders. Topping it off was a colourful woolen scarf which seems the accoutrement du jour for all young women in winter. She was breathtakingly beautiful. I couldn’t stop looking at her and the words floating above her head. My coffee arrived. I wondered how Hemingway might have handled this scene.
He was old. Not that old that he should have been in a wheelchair. He struggled to get over the small step into the café. Staff obligingly assisted and he settled on a long bench which ran across one of the walls. He seemed to enjoy the sun pouring through the window at his back.
“Skinny latte, thanks, nice and hot,” he said to the waiter who ambled off. The visitor looked around. It must have been his first visit. He stared at an inscription on the opposite wall. Under the writing sat a girl, well a women, maybe thirty years old. Olive skin, probably not from Australia, maybe Brazil. Half that country seems to reside in Manly. Black beret, large muffler scarf and curly brown hair, that fell to her shoulders. She was typing messages into a computer. Occasionally she would pause then laugh and cover her mouth with her hand.
The guy in the wheelchair seemed transfixed. He looked at her and pondered. He was obviously thinking. His coffee arrived.
“Thanks very much,” he nodded and pausing in his revere, looked up and smiled at the waiter.
“Thanks for helping me get in here. It’s quite a business being in a wheelchair.”
“No problem, happy to help,” the waiter said.
The visitor sipped his coffee. He looked over the top of his cup at the girl across the the café. It was a cavernous distance that separated them. She looked up. For a fleeting moment their eyes met. He looked away. Embarrassed. She hardly noticed him and went back to her typing. She would occasionally touch the side of her head and tuck her hair behind one ear. Sometimes, she would bury her lower jaw in the coloured waves of her scarf. The man in the wheelchair exuded longing. Loneliness and longing seemed draped around him. He was at an age where women render men invisible. It happens at 50. He was probably about 60 and at that point a man can only be a burden to a woman. The days of lust are not finished for a man though it’s not permitted to bubble to the surface and wander inside a beachside cafe. A man of this age can still appreciate female beauty but he must not touch. Regret and longing kept on a short chain. The visitor knew that if he wheeled across and spoke to the girl she would probably call the police. Fragile as a raindrop and as unattainable as the dark side of the moon, she was from a place that was now forever closed to him. She was from the place of his youth, when he could have got up, taken his coffee and sat down and talked to the girl. She may have been flattered, she may have welcomed the attention. Who knows where it would have gone from there.
The cafe was quiet. Occasional car on the street outside, the boom of the surf on the beach across the road. Bookshelves on the walls gave it the feel of a library. Low hum of conversation. It was a peaceful coffee shop. The visitor took it all in and tried not to look at the girl but failed. He was mesmerised by the timeless beauty of a young woman.
Calling for the waiter, he paid for his coffee, maneuvered himself back into the wheel chair and negotiated the small step out of the cafe. Soon he was in the street rolling away.
The girl did not look up from her laptop,
She had not even noticed he was gone.
Maybe he would have written it something like that. Much better obviously. I finished my coffee and wheeled out of the cafe with one last look at the quote on the wall and the girl underneath it. She was oblivious. I was left with an intense sense of aloneness and a time passing that I could never get back. Ernest Hemingway shot himself when he was about my age. He probably did it after he had been alone in a cafe for a cup of coffee. Something about the quote on the wall bothered me. Back in my apartment I pulled out my copy, dogeared and battered, of The Sun Also Rises. There it was in chapter 19. What he actually wrote was:
We went into the bar and sat on high stools and drank a whiskey and soda.
“That drink’s mine,” Mike said.
“Let’s roll for it.”
So we rolled poker dice out of a deep leather dice-cup. Bill was out first roll. Mike lost to me and handed the bartender a hundred-franc note. The whiskeys were twelve francs apiece. We had another round and Mike lost again. Each time he gave the bartender a good tip. In a room off the bar there was a good jazz band playing. It was a pleasant bar. We had another round. I went out on the first roll with four kings. Bill and Mike rolled. Mike won the first roll with four jacks. Bill won the second. On the final roll Mike had three kings and let them stay. He handed the dice-cup to Bill. Bill rattled them and rolled, and there were three kings, an ace, and a queen.
Whoever wrote on the wall left out the bit about why they were rolling dice. It was to pay for the whiskey. I think that’s important. Also whoever wrote on the wall can’t spell “whiskey” or “whiskeys” Didn’t have the heart to tell them the quote was wrong. Still, I’ve had three books published and I can’t write like Ernest Hemingway. I shouldn’t scoff at anyone.
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