The Drifters (45 page)

But on my third visit I did meet Joe. In fact, I took him and Britta to dinner at a Chinese restaurant and we talked for about two hours. At first I was antagonized by his hairdo, and by the fact that he was a self-proclaimed draft dodger; I had served in the navy in World War II and had never known of a single draft evader among my acquaintances, and I felt ill at ease sitting with one.

‘No comparison of the two cases,’ Joe said when I raised the question. ‘Your war … you had a visible enemy … everyone recognized him …’

I was surprised at how well and how sparingly he used the language, and as the evening wore on I listened with attention as he made one sensible point after another. ‘How did you become a rebel?’ I asked.

With his long fingers he fluffed out his beard and said, ‘This doesn’t make me a rebel. The fact that I can’t cooperate with a ridiculous draft doesn’t make me a revolutionary. What I want most of all … is go back to college … get a degree.’

‘To do what?’

This stumped him. He chewed on his lower lip for some moments, shifted in his chair and said quietly, ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

‘What’s eating you?’

‘Well, when you haven’t done anything yet—don’t even have a degree—wouldn’t it be pretentious to sound off with big ideas about what you’re going to accomplish?’

‘But you do have ideas … back in your head?’

‘I do.’

‘Like what?’

He saw that I was badgering him into making a statement for which he was not yet emotionally prepared, but this did not irritate him, for he also saw that I was willing to talk with him about important matters, so he looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘On the night of January 4 there was a blizzard in Wyoming. I was caught in the middle of it.’ He paused, looked down at me and asked, ‘You ever in a blizzard?’

‘Not in Wyoming.’

‘I stood out on the road … all the cars were stranded … and the world seemed to have two faces. More drawn in and tiny than you could imagine. The whole world was a tight circle drawn about you by the snowflakes. But it was also much vaster than I had realized, reaching out in all directions so far that it met itself coming back. I experienced the same sensation driving down here from Madrid … over those empty plains. The hugeness of the distance and the closeness of the part where you happened to be standing.’

‘Leading to what?’ I asked.

‘Speculations,’ he said, and it was apparent that he intended to drop the question. Britta said something about having been in lots of blizzards, endless ones, in fact, but Joe was staring into my eyes. ‘Speculations,’ he had said, and I had not a clue as to where those speculations would lead him but I suspected that here was a young man who had conceived an image of the world, and to have attained this was the beginning of constructive thought. Our mutual respect dated from that moment.

In the days that followed, while the nervous Greeks surveyed their crumbling empire and postponed decision, I often sat at the bar while Joe served drinks and kept the phonograph going, and in broken sentences amid the interruptions he related the history of his flight. He doubted that he would return to the United States, for he had no inclination to be a hero nor any taste for jail. He wondered what he ought to do about an education, because he was saving his money in Torremolinos and knew no foreign languages in which to study at European universities.

The more I talked with him about important matters the more I grew to like him; I had invited him to dinner the first night because he was attached to Britta, but now I was inviting Britta because she was associated with him.
In our talks I tried to find out something about his parents, but he forestalled me. Of his mother he said simply, ‘Grotesque,’ of his father, ‘Pathetic,’ and he would say no more.

He was an archetype of the young man of promise who is a natural loner. He was generous with his money and insisted upon taking Britta and me to dinner when he had a little saved; he was helpful with the forlorn drifters who kept pestering him at the bar, asking for handouts or leads to jobs; and he was gentle with girls, especially with Britta; definitely he was not the savage-animal type that young men in long hair and leather jackets are supposed to be. He was an appealing human being, perplexed by his society and his relationship to it, and bewildered as to what he ought to do next. But in his confusion he was developing character, and if he ever found his way out of his present dilemma, he could, I felt sure, become a notable man.

There was a shock in store for me, because one night after we had dined at the smorgasbord, and I had sat mesmerized by the amount of food he and Britta could eat, plates piled high four times, he suggested, ‘I’m providing identification papers for an American girl who’s trying to cash personal checks. I left them at the apartment. Care to see where we live?’ We left the center of Torremolinos and walked slowly down the hill to the old fishing village, where we passed a collection of low cottages, stopping at one which overlooked the Mediterranean. ‘Good location,’ I said as Joe pushed the door open and turned on the light.

He explained that he and Britta were occupying the place while the owner was in Morocco lining up a regular supply of grass, so I was more or less prepared for what I saw: a couple of beds and a little furniture, but when I saw the wall decoration I burst into laughter. Over the bed to the left hung a very large, well-printed poster which showed a benevolent yet monitory Pope Paul, his gentle eyes smiling and his forefinger wagging. Below in bold print stood the words:

THE PILL IS A NO-NO.

Over the other bed, on which Joe and Britta threw their things, hung the famous poster of W. C. Fields in black-rimmed top hat, evening coat and white bricklayer’s
gloves, holding a poker hand and looking balefully at some scoundrel on his right. Between these two figures, the Pope and the Clown, the young people of this generation existed.

The noise of my laughter wakened two sleepers in the bed below the Pope. Drowsily they pulled down the cover that had been hiding them, and I saw their faces—one very white, the other quite black. ‘Good God!’ I shouted. ‘I know them!’

They sat up in bed, obviously nude but clutching the sheets about their throats. It seems ridiculous for me to say so, but they looked like two angels on some super-cute Christmas card. Even Britta and Joe burst into laughter as I stood there in amazement.

At this point sleepy Monica cried, ‘Uncle George,’ and started to come over to greet me, but becoming aware that she was wearing nothing, yelled, ‘Throw me a robe!’ Britta did so, and when Monica had slipped into it she ran across the room and gave me an enthusiastic kiss. ‘How did you get here?’ she cried.

‘How long have you known him?’ I countered, pointing to Cato, who was pulling on a pair of pants.

‘Ages … simply ages,’ Monica said. Cato shook hands with me and said, ‘Philadelphia seems a long way off.’

‘How did you meet?’ I asked, pleased to see two young people in whom I had taken more than a passing interest.

‘At the bar,’ Cato said. ‘The Arc de Triomphe. This is a town for swingin’ cats.’

‘Let’s celebrate!’ Monica cried, and she opened a closet in which the owner of the apartment had left some of his trade goods, and within a few minutes she had rolled a huge marijuana cigarette, which Cato lighted for her. We sat on the two beds, and the cigarette passed slowly from hand to hand as we talked of past experiences. I was sitting next to Britta, and was surprised when she took a puff and handed it to me. I passed it quickly to Cato.

‘Come on, Uncle George!’ Monica cried. ‘Give it a try. It’ll make you feel twenty years younger.’

‘I already do,’ I said.

We sat thus for some hours, talking about Vwarda and Philadelphia. I told Cato, ‘You know, she’s not an ordinary girl.’

‘Sir, you are belaboring the obvious,’ he said primly, pinching Monica’s leg.

‘And she’s not from an ordinary family. The Queen of
England knighted her father with the words “Sir Charles Braham, architect of Vwarda’s freedom.” He was.’

I noticed that of the four smokers, it was Monica who kept the cigarettes longest and puffed most deeply from them. She offered little to the conversation, and in time it became obvious that she had become bored. Finally she made an extra long cigarette for herself and puffed it deeply for some minutes, then astounded us all by saying, ‘When you get really stoned and have sex, it can go on forever. You feel as if God was plowing a field. Come on, Cato get high. You weren’t worth a damn in Granada.’

Cato took no offense, but when Monica tried to force the cigarette on him, he passed it along to Joe. Monica studied him with contempt, and I was afraid that a scene might develop, so I looked for the door, but she changed her mind, threw her arms about his neck, and said, ‘So smoke up, baby. I’m going to bed right now, and so is Britta. Uncle George, you can run along. We have work to do.’

She threw off her robe, jumped into bed, and cried, ‘Turn off that damned light, please!’ Before I left the room she was asleep, and as Britta showed me to the door she whispered, ‘Monica talks more than she acts.’

As I was leaving I saw at my feet a tartan sleeping bag, and asked, ‘Which one sleeps down here?’ and Cato said, ‘A real good kid. He stayed in Granada an extra day. You’ll meet him at the bar.’

The Greeks, with a tenacity I had to admire, continued to flush out unsuspected sources of money, hoping to collect enough to enable them to proceed with the skyscrapers without surrendering ownership to World Mutual. I was kept aware of their efforts by reports from various money centers that had turned them down; one night they came back to me and asked if I would lend them eleven million at a good rate of interest. They tried to convince me that they had somehow got together sixteen of the missing twenty-seven million, but I told them flatly that my company was not interested in lending money. What we insisted upon was ownership of the project. There were no bad feelings. They accepted my answer in good spirits and retreated to do some more scrounging.

‘We’ll see you again next week,’ they said, so once more I was left to myself with nothing to do. I took long walks, sunned myself in my penthouse, read Thomas Mann, and stopped by the bar to talk with the young people.

It was delightful to see Cato and Monica again, for these were surely two of the most appealing members of the younger generation. In a way they were like young animals, for they responded automatically and with amusing verve to whatever stimuli reached them. As I talked with them I found Monica even more self-oriented than she had been in Vwarda; she really did not give a damn about the opinions of anyone but herself. She was an uninhibited spirit, forthright in manner and prepared to accept the consequences of whatever she did. Certain American soldiers from southern states, attracted by her crystalline beauty, which they considered a monopoly of southern belles, tried to dissuade her from living with Cato Jackson. They not only offered themselves as replacement but let her know that the American contingent would approve if she ditched Cato and took a white man.

She replied in a way she knew would infuriate them: ‘I’ve had four lovers so far, two black, two white, and if any of you gentlemen think you can offer in bed what the black gentlemen do, file your credentials with the bartender.’

When I asked her about Sir Charles, she said, ‘The old dear! He put the police on my trail and for a while I had a hell of a time. I think he’s growing roses in Sussex.’

Several members of the British colony in Torremolinos, having known Sir Charles in Africa, had sought to establish overseer relations with his daughter. Hearing that she hung out at the American bar, two of these ladies came to the Alamo one afternoon to extend an invitation to Monica, but when she saw them approaching, she asked me to send them away, then fled upstairs to the washroom. But before I could say anything, Britta told them frankly, ‘She’s in the john, but she’ll be down soon,’ so I was left to entertain them.

‘We have a lovely clubhouse on the hill,’ the women assured me. ‘Monica would find it delightful … garden … good English food … meeting old friends from India and Africa … it’s really rather choice, and on Fridays we have formal meetings with the liveliest discussion.’

I said I was sure that Monica would want to know about
this, and after a long wait I told Britta, ‘Better fetch her,’ and Monica came down reluctantly, planting one foot solidly before the other and glowering at me as she drew her thumb across her throat.

‘We’ve come to invite you to our British Club,’ one of the ladies said.

Because of her menacing appearance, I expected Monica to be extremely rude; instead she was all charm. ‘It’s so frightfully good of you,’ she said with schoolgirl politeness. ‘Of course I remember when you were stationed in Rhodesia. Of course I’d like nothing better than joining you at the club. But there’s one problem.’

‘I’m sure there couldn’t be any problem,’ one of the ladies said.

‘You don’t know my husband,’ Monica said. ‘He is a very big problem. As a matter of fact, he’s sitting on the end stool at the bar.’ As the astonished women looked at where Cato was perched with his head propped on his hand and his elbow cocked against a case of orange drink, Monica called, ‘Come here, darling,’ and Cato ambled over,

With that hilarious cunning I had noticed in Philadelphia, Cato immediately grasped the situation and lapsed into his most obnoxious Stepin Fetchit. ‘I sure am pleased to meet wid you ladies.’ Here he sniffed two or three times like a heroin user, jerked his head twice, and said, ‘I always say, any frien’ of Miss Monica’s is a frien’ of mine.’ He paused and smiled vacuously at each of the women, making himself look a complete idiot. Sniffing a couple of more times, he gave Monica a tremendous whack across the behind. ‘I don’t want you hangin’ around this bar all night. Get home. Get some work done.’ And with this he shuffled back to his stool.

‘He’s the son of a chieftain,’ Monica said with embarrassment. ‘His father wanted him to go to Oxford but … well, you can see.’ She paused, doing her tragic-queen bit, then said quietly, ‘It would be quite impossible. If he’d known you were British he’d have given you a speech on imperialism.’