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CHAPTER 8 The Newlyweds (1927–1928) After their wedding, Pauline and Ernest headed south by train with their bicycles on board. Their destination was Le Grau-du-Roi, a small fishing port in the south of France at the mouth of the Rhone River Delta. The flat land in the heart of the marshy Camargue region along the Mediterranean, full of ponds, salt marshes, and stretches of swimming beach, became a perfect getaway haven. Nearly deserted, Le Grau-du-Roi offered solitude. When they wanted company, they rode their bicycles a few miles north to the ancient thirteenth-century town of Aigues-Mortes, a walled crusader city with ramparts still intact. Walking the ramparts and fortifications provided glorious views of the Mediterranean. During their visit, the annual pilgrimage and Gypsy Festival took place some twenty-five miles away, at Saintes Maries de la Mer. Pauline and Ernest stained their faces with berries and got lost among the gypsies. For three weeks they took in the sea and sun, including some fishing, a lot of swimming, and writing. Before departing, Ernest finished his short story “Hills Like White Elephants” and presented it as a wedding gift to Pauline. While it dealt with abortion, not a likely wedding subject, he considered it one of his “harder” stories, meaning more complex, with much of it submerged below the surface. It suited Pauline, who encouraged him to perfect his “iceberg” style of writing. It also may have been a great gift to Pauline, transferring the guilt she felt over a possible earlier abortion. If so, most likely it was Pauline who had insisted on an abortion. Though it was a great sin for a Catholic such as Pauline, it was not so public a sin as having a baby out of wedlock, thus announcing her transgression to the entire world. Nevertheless, it must have caused tremendous guilt for Pauline—a guilt Ernest attempted to assuage by giving the insistence on the abortion to the man in the story, rather than to the girl. Hemingway’s rapid-fire back-and-forth dialogue, with minimal 78 attribution, makes it easy to get lost in who is saying what or to switch the male and female viewpoints by changing just a few pronouns and transposing the “man” and “girl” references. It must have been a fine wedding present , indeed. Ernest and Pauline’s honeymoon days also found their way into his posthumously published manuscript Garden of Eden. In the novel, David Bourne and his wife, Catherine, vacation at Le Grau-du-Roi and ride bicycles frequently into Aigues-Mortes. Catherine cuts her hair short, and they experiment with gender roles and being “the same guy.” This is a theme Hemingway explored over and over in his novels and short stories. And it was a phrase Pauline used often in deference to Ernest’s continuing fascination with gender roles and merging sexual identities. Ernest would never be able to get away from her for a minute, Pauline suggested early in their relationship , “because we are the same guy.”1 Perhaps she would not have been so quick to play his game had she realized he had played it before with Hadley. “You’re a very dear much to be loved guy and I’m the guy to love you,” Ernest once wrote Hadley, who reciprocated with “Anything goes doesn’t it between [us] honest men.”2 Upon return to Paris, Hemingway and his new games partner set up housekeeping at the apartment Uncle Gus’s money had provided on rue Ferou, quite a step up for Ernest from the sawmill flat he once shared with Hadley. Typical of Ernest’s inclination toward accidents, he had cut his foot before departing the Camargue, and it became infected, sending him to bed for ten days with swelling and fever. Since Virginia had completed much of the unpacking and organizing the apartment while they honeymooned, the two sisters shared time doting over the invalid. While recuperating, Ernest attempted to establish a comfortable pattern of correspondence with his new in-laws. His first newsy letter let them know about the wonderful honeymoon trip, progress on the book he hoped to complete by fall, and Pauline’s skills in organizing the apartment. Sensitive to his own parents’ reaction to his writing, he told Paul and Mary that if they did not mind the stuff he wrote—or could avoid reading it if they didn’t like it—he thought he could be...

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