Writing 'for whom the Bell tolls'

Continued from Auguest 16 ...

From those years come also his magnificent African stories with Spanish or American settings, and literary experiment with his memories of his first Safari in Africa. It was the time when bloody events that shook Spain were still fresh on his mind and he returned to Havana to stay the whole year of 1939 locked away, cloistered, engaged in one of the most difficult projects that up until then he had undertaken. In his room on the fifth floor of Ambos Mundos Hotel, for months, he wrote the first draft of The 'Undiscovered Country', destined to become 'For whom the Bells Tolls' , a work that would spark major controversies.

Hemingway finished that intense creative period with excellent results before settling definitively in the Finca Vigia, in 1940, atop a lovely hill in San Francisco de Paula, in the outskirts of Havana, where he remained for more than twenty years.

His time in Cuba, his creative activity and his Cuban ties during his three decades in Cuba is of great significance by the very nature of what he created by absorbing the deep feelings of the country and its people and their indigenous sense of humour.

The Temple of the Mojito

Exactly halfway down Calle Emperdrado, a typical small street in old Havana, a few steps away from the Plaza de La Catedral is the Bodeguita del Medio.

(A little shop in the middle)

Founded in 1942, as a food shop then bar serving alcohol drinks was added, and the place became a haunt for intellectuals, artists and politicians. It is a popular restaurant offering Creole dishes that Nat King Cole, poet Pablo Neruda, Robert Di Niro and numerous other celebrities, along with Papa Hemingway stopped to drink the famous mojitos, whenever in Cuba.

The friendly bartender demonstrated the making of a lineup of mojitos. Half a tea spoon of sugar and juice of half a lime mixed and a crushed stem of mint add white rum and fill the glass with sparkling mineral water and chopped ice , stirred and not shaken.

Few bars may make daiquin's but almost every bar makes mojitos. We spent a pleasant evening in this bustling bar knocking down countless mojitos. We were lucky it was a short walk back to the hotel.

This is Havana's well-known and elegant restaurants made famous by Hemingway. It is known as the "Cradle of the Daiguin".

In the early 1900s a Cuban engineer named Pagluchi and his American college Jennings S Cox while making an inspection tour near Santiago, mixed rum with sugar and shared frapped-ice , which gave the drink its final touch of enchantment , was added by Constance Ribailagna, El Floridita's bartender in the 1920's the frozen daiquin's " The great ones that Constance made" wrote Hemingway, " had no taste of alcohol and felt as you drank them, the way downhill glacier skiing feels when you are running unropped. The drink was named after the place they were in, Daiquiri.

Daiquiri frappe is served in a chilled cocktail glass. White rum is placed in an electric blender and is mixed with one tea spoon sugar, five drops of maraschino, lime juice and crushed ice, shaken and strained.

The "Papa special", which Costanie made for Hemingway, contained a double dose of rum, no sugar and half ounce of grapefruit juice. Another popular drink Cuba Libre is made from Rum and Coca Cola mixed with ice and lime juice. The drink was supposed invented by US soldier who took part in Cuban wars of independence (1898). The name, Free Cuba comes from the nationalist motto. This is the official drink of Cuban-American community in Miami.

Floridita, immortalized in Ernest Hemingway's "Islands in the Stream". We enjoyed a famous daiquiris and thought of the heady atmosphere of the days when Papa drank here.

To be continued