The Drifters (112 page)

The boy took us down some extremely narrow alleys, and I said to the doctor, ‘Things haven’t changed much here in two thousand years, have they?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘This is the backland of Morocco. And things won’t
change for another two thousand years.’ We stopped at the door of a small mud-walled house that must have been at least two hundred years old, and I experienced a sense of tragic drama when I thought that it was to such a hovel that Monica had come. I was about to enter when the doctor said, ‘I’d better go first,’ and he allowed the boy to lead him inside.

As we waited apprehensively, I could see that Cato was tense to the breaking point. To Inspector Ahmed, of course, Monica was merely another European girl to be traced; if he did find her today, tomorrow he would be looking for someone else.

Now the doctor came out, very grave, saying, ‘One of you had better join me.’ I stepped forward, but Cato in his red fez elbowed his way ahead of me and disappeared through the small door. In a moment we heard a terrible cry—a shriek of mortal anguish. Ahmed darted into the house, but before I could follow, Cato appeared in the dark hallway, bearing in his arms the dead body of Monica.

She was a ghost, her arms and legs hanging like withered twigs, her black hair a tangle about her once-beautiful face. Her left arm showed the hideous and familiar sore which I supposed had finally caused her death.

The doctor shook his head in professional disgust. ‘That abscess could easily have been cured.’ He looked at Cato and me and said, ‘Didn’t any of you notice her face? Her color? That’s what killed her. Serum hepatitis. For weeks it must have been incubating in her body and was able to break out with terrible force because of her malnutrition.’

‘She died?’ Inspector Ahmed asked professionally. ‘She wasn’t killed?’

‘She died.’

‘Then we face no legal problem,’ Ahmed said, evincing no further interest in the case.

‘How did she catch hepatitis?’ I asked.

‘Infected hypodermic. Lots of young people kill themselves that way.’ The doctor turned to face us: ‘Any of you use her needle six weeks ago … seven weeks?’

Cato, still holding the dead girl, shook his head numbly.

The doctor spit in the dust and said, ‘The tragedy is that if any of you had made one sensible move, she could so easily have been saved.’

When it came time for us to drive back to Tangier, the question arose as to what we should do with Monica’s body, and Inspector Ahmed suggested, ‘We’ll put her in the trunk,’ but when that dark receptacle was opened, Cato rebelled. ‘No! She rides with us.’ Ahmed shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘It’s going to be damned uncomfortable.’

Cato pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around Monica, and we climbed into the car, placing her body across our knees, her head resting against Cato’s chest.

As we picked up speed along the road that would take us into Tangier, I affected not to notice that Cato, drawn deep within his corner, his arms about Monica’s shoulders, was weeping silently. Occasional convulsions of his sagging shoulders betrayed his passion, and I thought of how bitter his experiences with love had been: Vilma kicked to death, meaninglessly, on the streets of Philadelphia; Monica dead of a dirty hypodermic needle in Morocco, when even the most routine attention would have prevented it. As I maintained surveillance of him I felt that he represented his generation, courageous in building new modes of behavior, defenseless when overtaken by the ancient tragedies that no man escapes.

In my compassion I reached out to touch him, but he reacted as if I had struck him. ‘Keep your hands off me!’ he cried. ‘I want no sympathy from white men,’ and I told him, ‘I didn’t offer it as a white man.’ From the front, Big Loomis growled, ‘Cool it back there.’

Cato half-turned to look at me, his red fez cocked to one side, his dark eyes brimmed with tears. He wanted to say something conciliatory, of that I am sure. He wanted to return my gesture, for his hand left Monica’s shoulder and started to reach for mine, but at this moment his grief overcame him and he collapsed in shaking sobs which he no longer tried to hide. In this manner, sharing the burden of the dead girl we had loved, we returned to Tangier.

As we drove up to the police station, I spotted the yellow pop-top. Gretchen and Joe ran out to greet us, and before they could see what Cato and I were holding, Gretchen asked eagerly, ‘Did you find her?’

‘We did,’ Loomis said.

‘Britt! They’ve found her,’ Gretchen cried as Holt and Britta came up.

They saw Cato and me, grim and silent, and then, looking down, saw the motionless form on our laps.

‘Oh my God!’ Gretchen cried. ‘What’s happened?’

‘She’s dead,’ Cato said.

Gretchen put her hand to her lips and watched, stunned, as we climbed out of the car, leaving the body stretched across the seat. Cato and I had brought Monica home; we could do no more, and so we stood aside.

Inspector Ahmed and another policeman came back and routinely started to unload the body, but as they did so, the shirt pulled away from Monica’s head and disclosed it to all who were watching.

‘Jesus!’ Joe cried at the awful sight.

Quickly Inspector Ahmed replaced the shirt. But Britta, walking stolidly to where Ahmed held the dead girl by the shoulders, carefully drew it back and gazed down at her friend. She was hideous, terrifying, staring at us, her mouth ajar, her tongue protruding. This was not death; it was an indecent mockery.

‘Cover her,’ Holt said, but Britta put an arm around Monica’s head. Tenderly she closed the eyelids and straightened the wild strands of hair. She bent to kiss the sunken cheeks, then turned to us, crying, and said, ‘We gave her so little help.’ Holt started to say that nothing would have helped Monica, but Britta placed her hand over his mouth, and Ahmed and his man carried the dead girl to the plain wooden box that awaited her.

Morocco was used up.

We sat at our sidewalk table in Zoco Chico and found the parade of young drifters frightening and ugly. Each stringy-haired girl reminded us of what had happened to Monica.

No one proposed going back to Marrakech, and to remain in Tangier was unthinkable. Nor was there any need of us. The authorities showed no inclination to track down, let alone prosecute, the young Moroccans who had taken Monica to Chechaouèn, because she had accompanied them willingly. As for their maltreatment of her, it would be impossible to prove that they had collected money from
the friends they had called in to use her, and Inspector Ahmed shrewdly guessed that her father, Sir Charles, would not be eager to fly to Tangier to press charges that could only reflect on him. He told us, ‘Last year we had twenty-nine girls die. Much like your friend. From all parts of the world. And in only two or three cases did the parents wish us to delay the burial so they could come. The case is closed.’

Not with us. It never would be. I could see that Gretchen and Britta considered themselves fortunate that they had associated with men who had protected them, and I noticed that each drew closer to her man. The men, for their part, were filled with helpless outrage that a girl as fragile as Monica had been so abused. A wandering pimp, seeing Joe momentarily detached from our group, sidled up to him and asked, ‘You like to spend one whole night my sister? Very young, very clean.’ Joe punched him viciously in the gut, doubling him with pain. It was then that I said, We’d better get out of this town.’

Now Gretchen sprang her surprise. Leaning across the table, she reached for Joe’s hands and said, ‘It’s time for us to do what must be done. I’m giving you the pop-top. Go where you have to go, then sell it.’

There was a protracted silence. Joe reddened and was speechless, confused by the transparent revelation contained in her impulsive act. Britta smiled approvingly. It was practical Holt who spoke: ‘How are you going to transfer the papers?’ I suggested the American consul, but Kasim, monitoring our conversation, hurried up to suggest, ‘I have a friend who is a printer. For ten dollars he’ll forge you a complete bill of sale … all documents in order.’

‘What country to what country?’ Big Loomis asked.

‘You name it. Germany to Sweden, Egypt to Tanzania. To him it’s all the same.’

To my surprise Holt agreed. ‘Probably the best way. You get mixed up with an American consul … there aren’t that many months in the year.’ So Gretchen unloaded her purse and produced a series of papers which Kasim stuffed into his inside pocket

‘How long?’ Gretchen asked.

With my friend, every case is an emergency,’ Kasim said reassuringly. ‘Forty minutes.’

‘So fast?’ Gretchen asked.

‘In Tangier … yes,’ Big Loomis said, but Kasim did not
depart immediately. Going to Joe, he asked, ‘How about a passport? Maybe a special passport?’

‘How much?’ Joe asked cautiously.

‘Depends upon what ones we happen to have on hand. By the way, any of you like to sell your passports? Good money.’

Holt, afraid that Joe might be seriously considering exchanging his American passport for some other in order to escape detection by American officials, said firmly, ‘We’ll get along with the passports we have.’

‘If problems should arise,’ Kasim said unctuously, ‘I’ll be back in forty minutes.’

‘Are you serious about the car?’ Joe asked.

‘Yes. It’s a present … to an extraordinary young man.’ Quietly Gretchen added, ‘A young man with dignity.’

‘Where will you go, Joe?’ Holt asked.

‘I heard these kids at the Bordeaux the other night They said the big scene was Shinjuku.’

‘It’s very good,’ Holt said. ‘Lot of girls … lot of action.’

‘Where’s Shinjuku?’ Britta asked, insistent as ever upon identifying places.

‘Tokyo,’ Holt said. The most exciting part of Tokyo.’

Gretchen suggested, Why don’t you try India? A lot of people find the answers … the illumination … in India.’

Now Big Loomis broke in: ‘You would be out of your mind to waste one minute in that country. No fable of our time is more ridiculous than the one which says that India has the answer to anything.’

‘I was speaking of the spirituality,’ Gretchen replied.

‘So was I,’ Loomis said. ‘I lived in India for the better part of a year … also Sikkim and Nepal … good grass … good conversation among the Europeans. But the illumination referred to by starry-eyed kids in Greenwich Village and Bloomsbury … it’s not there. That’s an illusion sponsored by half-ass professors in half-ass American colleges.’

Holt confirmed the big man’s thesis. ‘It’s like Tyrone Power wandering through Europe and finally winding up in India. He didn’t learn anything.’

We turned in our chairs to look at Harvey, who refused any further elaboration. Joe started to ask what Tyrone Power had to do with this conversation, but shrugged his shoulders and turned back to Loomis, who said, ‘I appreciate
the fact that you girls have had a rough time … Monica’s death … and I apologize for what I’m about to say, but from the nonsense that Gretchen’s been spouting, I suppose you have to hear it. When I landed in Calcutta—God forbid that such a thing should happen to any man—I was in search of illumination. I spent three days in that cesspool of horror, with starving children mocking my fat, with men and women dying in the streets, with whole families living off one garbage can, but I was able to forgive it all on the principle that it is from such squalor that we sometimes gain illumination. Great spiritual leaders simply do not arise from banks or university faculty clubs. I made every concession, and in time I began to revel in the death and terror of Calcutta. I also established contact with a great sadhu who volunteered to explain the world’s mysteries to me. He was six feet two inches tall and weighed ninety-one pounds, including his beard. He had once stared at the sun for forty-eight uninterrupted days, and he had about him a certain modesty, because he felt that in my case he ought to consult with two other sadhus, built a lot like himself and with equally long beards. These three holy men—who conducted office hours in a village close to Calcutta, and charged stiff fees—told me many things, and occasionally they said something about equal to what a fifth-grade teacher in a good elementary school might say. Off-hand I can’t give you an illustration, because the teaching of these holy men was more or less nullified by what they were caught doing two days before I completed my course.’

He paused, looked only at the girls and waited for Gretchen to ask what they had done. ‘In conformance to the ritual of their particular school of sadhus, they dug up the grave of a five-year-old girl, dead for three days, and ate her.’

For a moment no one spoke; then Britta said, ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ and she disappeared. Gretchen sat tapping her fingers on the table, then said, ‘Now I know it’s time I went home and got to work. What are you going to do, Cato?’

He waited till Britta returned, pale and embarrassed, then said in hard syllables, ‘I haven’t known what I wanted to do … exactly. Now I do. I’m going to leave here and bum my way to Egypt. Then I’m going down the Red Sea and cross over to Jiddah. From there I’m walking every
step of the way to Mecca, where I shall run six times around the great black stone, and when I get back to Philadelphia, I shall put on my fez and announce myself as Hajj’ Cato. I’m going to start a movement, and it’s going to be just as great a racket in favor of blacks as Christianity was against them. And when it’s securely launched, you sons-of-bitches better beware.’

With that he rose, adjusted his fez, and left us.

When he had gone, Big Loomis said reflectively, ‘Three years ago I wore a fez. But don’t worry about that kid. He has staying power. When he gets back to Philadelphia he’s going to be difficult for you whites to handle, but he’s the kind of Negro we all need.’

Gretchen said, ‘I notice you use
Negro
,’ and Loomis replied, ‘Three years ago I used
Afro-American.
And to me it was important.’

I asked the huge man what he proposed doing, and he said, ‘I’ll probably stay in Marrakech as long as my mother can send me a little money. I’ve a lot of work to do down there. Sometimes I’m able to help kids like Monica and Cato.’ He rose in full regalia of beads and hand-woven fabrics and Tibetan boots and stalked up the hill toward Zoco Grande, where he would catch a bus back to Marrakech.