Paris. In the rain. Ducking into a warm café to claim an empty wooden table at the back.
Nursing my grand crème while scribbling flowing exposition and biting dialogue into my leather Moleskine notebook with my Montegrappa pen. Just like Ernest Hemingway all those years ago.
His love letter to Paris, A Moveable Feast, had awakened my $30 fortune with yearning. In that memoir, Hemingway wrote: "It was a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a café au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write..."
Wait. What? Stop. A pencil? What happened to his Montegrappa?
Everyone knows that Hemingway discovered Montegrappas long before he discovered Paris. It was in Italy, during World War 1 when he was an ambulance driver stationed near the company's factory. He wrote with Montegrappas.
Hemingway was Montegrappa.
Hemingway was not a pencil!
Now what? Without access to that factory 4,200 miles away in Italy or to a Montegrappa anywhere in New York that didn't require a bank loan, all that was left was to commandeer my late grandfather's vintage-1920s Parker Big Red. My mother was fine with that, but she put her foot down when it came to the Parisian café. "You are not moving to France. Go do your homework."
That didn't happen until 10 years later. France, that is. Thinking back, the homework probably didn't get done at all.
But a pencil? They're fine for crossword puzzles. And for the counter guy at the diner who takes your order and chews on it.
この記事は PEN WORLD の February 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は PEN WORLD の February 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
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