4. GATHERING IN CORTINA

“Fernanda, I’m in Cortina. When will you be arriving? Ernest.” The postcard, with a message likely resembling this,narrived in Turin on an October morning in 1948. Fernanda
 Pivano, tireless promoter of relations between Italy and the United States, read the message and tossed it in the trash. Nice joke, she thought. But soon, another one arrived. It really was Hemingway! She and her husband, Ettore Sottsass, jumped on a train, and by evening they were in Ampezzo, where Fernanda embraced Ernest Hemingway on the steps of the Hotel Concordia. That winter in Cortina would be an opportunity for “Papa”—who had already been in Ampezzo in 1923—to write Across the River and Into the Trees, his response to the novels of the new American generation. In 2022, the novel was adapted into a film, directed by Paula Ortiz and starring Liev Schreiber. Cortina, a place of good cheer for Hemingway, was different in 1949 from what it is today (The Lutteri bookstore already existed, later to become the Sovilla bookstore in 1971), but the town was driven by a similar routine: lunches, dinners, and a lively, obsessive whirl of contacts, meetings, and relationships. Pivano arrived, and after a dinner with copious amounts of alcohol Alberto and Virginia Mondadori departed, having secured an agreement with Ernest to translate his works into Italian—an arrangement they snatched from Einaudi, as recounted by Andrea di Robilant in Autumn in Venice. Meanwhile, Italo Squitieri appeared, followed by the
Fürstenbergs; then came the Windisch-Graetz family, and Carlo di Robilant, Hemingway’s drinking buddy from Harry’s Bar… The legendary Genzianella bar became the spot for
aperitifs, while dinner was at the Hotel de la Poste. Facing the siege of journalists and photographers camping under the larches, Hemingway posted the following notice on the door of his Villa Aprile in Doneà: “Writing isn’t always easy, especially when photographers are around. The author of these lines, if left undisturbed, can earn three thousand dollars in a morning’s work, of which 74 percent must go to the U.S. Treasury. On the other hand, if he’s disturbed, he earns nothing… It goes without saying that one must be polite and kind… But sometimes Mr. Papa gets fed up.”