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93 • african safari In 1953 we suffered a great lost at the Finca when Ramón Wong died from a heart attack. One day after lunch Ramón started to feel very ill, so Juan and I drove him to Calixto Garcia Hospital in Havana. I sat in the backseat of the stationwagon with him. He was gasping for air and coming in and out of consciousness. “Apurate Juan. Apurate!” I yelled to Juan. Ramón’s eyes rolled back in his head and he held tight to my hand. His breathing became more desperate. Then his body relaxed in my arms. Ramón’s wife was contacted and the funeral arrangements made. Papa wanted to cover the funeral expenses and provide financial assistance for the children’s education, but his widow declined any financial help. We found out that Ramón had been a shrewd businessman. Not only did he have a good insurance policy, but he belonged to an organization that would take care of his wife and kids. He also had a partnership in a restaurant in Havana’s Chinatown. Unfortunately, his replacement turned out to be a drunk. Once a great master chef, Agustin Antuña, a Basque, had drunk his way out of great jobs and fine establishments. In the four days he was at the Finca, he severely depleted the liquor inventory. “This man must be very rich,” Agustin said to me the afternoon I found him sitting in the pantry room next to two empty bottles of Château Margaux. I confronted him and he responded with a devil-may-care attitude. Hemingway fired Agustin within a couple of days, and Mary took on the cooking responsibilities for a while. 94 rené villarreal and raúl villarreal Some months later we suffered another tragedy. Clara, Mary’s maid, suffered from bouts with depression. One evening when she was severely depressed, she stopped and briefly spoke to my mother, telling her that she was bored with life. She then went to see her family and Arturito, her son, in the town of Casa Blanca in Havana. Early the next morning, a neighbor banged on my parents’ door and informed them that Clara had been found unconscious behind the pueblo’s bakery and had been rushed to the clinic. She had taken a whole bottle of sleeping pills and was in a coma. She died a short while later. Hemingway and Mary planned an East African safari for mid-1953. Papa had not been to Africa since 1934. They were to be away for several months. Before ending up in East Africa, they would travel to New York, London, France, Italy, and Spain. After fifteen years of vowing not to step onto Spanish soil until the last of his friends from the civil war was released, Hemingway was going back to Spain. He wanted to reestablish old connections in the bullfighting world. That spring an editor for Look magazine traveled to Cuba and tried to persuade Hemingway to allow a photographer to accompany Papa and Mary on the safari. The magazine wanted a picture story of 3,500 words or more and Hemingway to write the photo captions. The proposed payment was an offer Hemingway didn’t refuse. Hemingway invited Cuban boxer Evelio Mustelier, alias Kid Tunero, Cuba’s former middleweight champion, and his family to stay at the Finca while he and Mary were away. He was one of Hemingway’s heroes , and also one of mine. Hemingway wrote an article on Kid Tunero for La Prensa Libre, a Havana newspaper, in which he declared him to be one of the last true gentlemen in and out of the ring. Papa and I had seen Kid Tunero’s last fight, when he fought as a light heavyweight against Hanskin Barrow. During his career, Kid Tunero was known as “the gentleman of the ring” because of his classic style and quiet demeanor. Later in his career he was also known as “the champion without a crown” for defeating two world middleweight champions. Those fights had not been for the crown, however, and Kid Tunero never received his much-deserved world title. After Evelio, Yolette, and their two sons moved into the house, I learned that Kid Tunero and Luis Sarria, another great Cuban boxer (who in later years became a respected trainer and masseur for Muhammad Ali), were training fighters at the Rafael Conde gymnasium [18.188.44.223] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 09...

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