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33 Waiting for Zero Confirming that the avant-garde can’t wait for history, gray Hemingway reached Paris seven days before the Liberation. With Nazis near the Place Vendome, he freed his moveable feast and waited for the troops . . . Like Hemingway you wait for snow before a January second masquerading as the first of May. The maple buds almost believe it. Stallion dung around a pear tree thaws into its pasture smell again. Even a buried crocus lets its periscope break ground. So far, no snow. Whether it will come or go is in the winds of Canada. But you . . . You act as if it’s here. Your blood’s already down to three below. Your shoulders chill and heighten in the winds to come. Remembering your future as a fact, you turtle up like any seed beneath the snow or like a snoozing black bear in the hills and wait for Easter, wait for history . . . 34 But just suppose the wait’s too long and troublesome. Or else suppose that Easter’s not enough—or not at all. Which brings you back to Hemingway in Idaho in 1961. His feast no longer moveable, his hunter’s eyes too sick to see, his future certain to grow worse, he faced the choice of waiting for the end or not. At last he thought ahead of how it felt to be the first to Paris. Then, he held the muzzle cold between his eyes and shot. ...

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