The Drifters (113 page)

‘You think what he said about India was true?’ Britta asked.

‘I saw things like it,’ Holt said.

‘How would I get to Shinjuku?’ Joe asked.

‘Well, you’d drive from here to Egypt. Then you’d have to take a boat to Beirut, because you couldn’t transit Israel. From there you’d head for Damascus and Teheran and then across the desert to Afghanistan and down into Pakistan and through Lahore to India. It’s easy to drive across India and you’d go through Burma and Thailand. You wouldn’t be able to transit Vietnam, so you’d ship your car on a Japanese freighter … they cost practically nothing … and you’d be in Shinjuku.’

I listened with admiration. It was like telling a neighbor how to get to the new grocery: ‘You go to Afghanistan and turn left.’

‘Could I make it on two hundred and eighty bucks?’ Joe asked.

‘Why not?’

There was now an awkward silence as Joe and Gretchen
looked at each other—one preparing to head for Tokyo, one for Boston—and out of natural respect for her feelings, he extended her an invitation: ‘How about coming to Japan with me?’ and she said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I heard a man say that taking your wife to Tokyo was like taking a ham sandwich to a banquet.’

‘You’re not his wife,’ Britta pointed out.

‘I know, but I don’t want to spoil his fun with those almond-eyed chicks.’ This fell flat, and there was another awkward silence.

Impulsively Gretchen opened her handbag and fumbled around for her traveler’s checks. ‘You were the best driver in Africa,’ she said, ‘and you merit a bonus.’ Hastily she signed a batch of checks—whether they were fifties or hundreds I couldn’t see—and with acute embarrassment shoved them at Joe. He took them, mumbling his thanks. She then looked up at him with a radiant face, free of fears and tensions. ‘We’ll meet somewhere,’ she said, and they shook hands.

What Joe said next must have been difficult for him, for he knew it was likely that Holt was aware of his former interest in Britta. Sucking in his breath, he said, ‘You know, Holt, since you’re heading for Ceylon and I’m heading for Japan, why don’t we drive across Asia together? The three of us, I mean.’

‘I’d like that,’ Holt said evenly. ‘We could talk.’

‘That’s what I had in mind.’

‘And we could share expenses,’ Britta suggested.

‘There’s one thing,’ Joe said. ‘I’d want to stop at Leptis Magna.’

‘Why not?’ Holt said. ‘We go right through it.’

‘What’s to see in Leptis Magna?’ Britta asked.

‘Ruins. I want to see one of those Roman cities that vanished because they misused the land. Maybe—when I’m through with jail, that is—I might like to work in land use. Mr. Gridley said I ought to think about getting a job in a national park. Keeping the earth alive.’

‘We could look at the irrigation in Egypt, too.’ Holt suggested, but I noticed that as he said this, Britta frowned and was about to speak, but she was forestalled by the return of Kasim with the forged title. Gretchen paid him the ten dollars, but he whined, ‘That’s for the printer. What about me?’ So I threw him another two and Joe started stowing his gear in the pop-top.

Now Britta spoke. ‘We can stop at Leptis Magna,’ she said cautiously, ‘but not a lot of other places, because we have to be in Ceylon by December 23.’

‘No we don’t,’ Holt assured her. ‘It’s true, I’m due back. But the company isn’t going to get itchy about a week here or there.’

‘What I meant to say,’ Britta explained, ‘is
I
have to be there on the twenty-third.’

‘Why?’

She blushed and said in a low voice, ‘Because I’ve sent my father an airplane ticket to visit us in Ceylon.’

Holt was startled. ‘Where’d you get the money?’ he asked.

Britta put her hand on his and said, ‘Whenever you gave me money for anything, I put a little aside.’

I was looking at Holt when she said this, and he cocked his head and stared at her in astonishment, and across his deeply lined face came that look of loving bewilderment which husbands sometimes cast at wives with whom they have lived for many years but are only now discovering.

But Gretchen remembered: ‘In Alte you told us that if your father was ever forced to see Ceylon as it actually was, he’d collapse.’

‘I said so then,’ Britta confessed, ‘but now I believe that men ought to inspect their dreams. And know them for what they are.’

Tales of the South Pacific

The Fires of Spring

Return to Paradise

The Voice of Asia

The Bridges at Toko-Ri

Sayonara

The Floating World

The Bridge at Andau

Hawaii

Report of the Country Chairman

Caravans

The Source

Iberia

Presidential Lottery

The Quality of Life

Kent State: What Happened and Why

The Drifters

A Michener Miscellany: 1950–1970

Centennial

Sports in America

Chesapeake

The Covenant

Space

Poland

Texas

Legacy

Alaska

Journey

Caribbean

The Eagle and the Raven

Pilgrimage

The Novel

James A. Michener’s Writer’s Handbook

Mexico

Creatures of the Kingdom

Recessional

Miracle in Seville

This Noble Land: My Vision for America

The World Is My Home

with A. Grove Day

Rascals in Paradise

with John Kings

Six Days in Havana

J
AMES
A. M
ICHENER
, one of the world’s most popular writers, was the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning
Tales of the South Pacific
, the best-selling novels
Hawaii
,
Texas
,
Chesapeake
,
The Covenant
, and
Alaska
, and the memoir
The World Is My Home
. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.