The Drifters (64 page)

‘With those apes?’ Cato asked. ‘They’d have ditched you in Turkey.’

I participated in the self-congratulation, and was expressing my admiration for Joe’s performance, when everything snapped. The tension of the morning overtook me and I became an elderly man, appalled in retrospect by the brawling in which I had been involved. It would be disgraceful under any circumstances to clobber an unsuspecting
opponent over the head with a cudgel, but to do so at my age was unforgivable. My side hurt and I began to tremble. I folded my hands tightly across my stomach, but I could not halt the quivering.

Monica was the first to see it. Leaning over and giving me a kiss, she said, ‘Don’t take it so hard, Uncle George.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Cato asked.

‘Look. He’s shaking.’

‘Were you hurt?’ Yigal asked. ‘I saw him give you one hell of a kick.’

‘I’m scared,’ I said. ‘Scared at what might have happened.’ This they understood. They were scared, too, but as young men they could control their fears. I couldn’t

When we rejoined the girls, everyone insisted that I put off flying to Geneva, and when Britta made me take off my shirt and saw the large blue spot where the Texan had kicked me, she put me to bed and from a neighboring house borrowed some hot water. A Portuguese woman, hearing that someone was ill, came with knowing hands and fixed a poultice for me, and I am ashamed to say that I fell asleep and remained that way for some hours.

I was awakened by the same words that had greeted my arrival at Alte that morning: ‘Monica’s run away.’ A village boy had seen her catching a ride in to Albufeira, and as soon as I heard that name, I understood what had happened. And I knew exactly where she would be.

We drove into town and I deposited the others at the bar while I went off alone to Churchill’s room. The door was locked, but I kicked it open, hurting my side again as I did so, and there inside was what I knew I would find: Monica in bed with Churchill.

‘Get dressed and we’ll go,’ I said.

‘Old blabbermouth,’ she muttered from the bed.

‘I figured this out by myself. I’ll keep it to myself.’

‘She’s a free woman …’ Churchill began.

‘Shut up,’ I barked, ‘or I’ll kick the living shit out of you. And she knows I can do it.’

He started to say something, and for the second time that day, blood rushed to my head. Even though my side ached, I said, ‘One more word, Churchill, and I will really …’ I had no idea how to end the threat, but said no more.

Monica dressed, slowly and insolently, walking close to me several times while she was still naked, and as I led
her down the stairs, she asked, ‘How did you know I would be here?’

‘Because you wanted to hurt us … not only Cato … all of us. By rescuing you from the German, we proved how much we loved you … and you wanted to hurt us.’

‘You’re stupid,’ she said, ‘but you aren’t dumb. Did you tell the others?’

‘No need to. Each of them interprets your absence in his own way … because they too love you.’

She took my arm for the last flight and said, ‘You really were scared coming home, weren’t you?’

‘Aren’t you ever scared?’

‘Never.’

Why did I bother with Monica? Her behavior in Algarve had been so incorrigible that I would have been justified in dropping her. I refrained for two reasons. She was, in a sense, my daughter. She had no mother, and at various crucial times in her life her father had abandoned her, leaving her guidance to me, and would probably do so again. I had worked hard to bring her to some kind of stability, and in doing so, had come to love her as my child. I appreciated the rare qualities she possessed and believed that if I could help her past the chaotic teens and into the more responsible twenties, she might attain some kind of balance to serve for the remainder of her life. I was encouraged to persist because of my failure with my own son.

My second reason was quite different. I remembered that unbroken chain of eccentric women which proper England had presented the world for its entertainment and, at times, enlightenment. There has been no nation so strict in its proprieties as England, nor so calculated to produce outrageous women. There was a good chance that Monica, if she gained control of herself, would find a place in that difficult company.

At seventeen she was no worse than Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who had set Europe on its ear with her flagrant behavior and salty tongue. And her willingness to set out for Nepal did not begin to match the similar propensity of Isabel Burton, a proper young lady who conceived a grand passion for the translator of the
Arabian Nights
, following him wherever his exotic fancy beckoned. Isabel was a strange woman; for thirty years she watched her husband patiently writing his masterpiece,
The
Scented Garden
, intended as an evocation of all that was erudite and pornographic in the east; when he died on the eve of publishing his great book, she sat alone in a room and burned the only copy of the manuscript, page after page, through more than two thousand, convinced that she was doing a righteous act, since the writing contained passages which she considered ‘not nice.’

They were a doughty tribe, the female eccentrics of England, and if Monica lived long enough, perhaps she would take her place among them. I was even able to overlook her sexual escapades when I compared them to the notable records set by Jane Digby.

Jane was a handsome young lady born in 1807, granddaughter of an earl. At sixteen she was married off to an English lord. At twenty she took her first official lover, a clerk in the British Museum. At twenty-one she negotiated a passionate affair with a cousin, who was promptly displaced by an Austrian prince, with whom she eloped to Paris, bearing him a child. At twenty-four, discarded by the prince, she served briefly as Honoré de Balzac’s mistress, abandoning him to become the kept lady of the King of Bavaria, and before long, of his son as well. In order to keep so handy a young woman available to his court, the king married her off to a Bavarian baron, who unfortunately took her to Sicily, where she met an adventurous Greek count who made her his mistress on sight. She had now borne five children to a variety of gentlemen, but at the age of thirty-four she decided to settle down. Accordingly, she divorced her Bavarian and married the Greek, with whom she started a happy domestic life.

On an unlucky day she happened to meet a wildly romantic Albanian brigand more than sixty years old, and after a protracted interlude with him, which rocked Athenian society, broke loose and scuttled off to Damascus, where she underwent an instantaneous conversion to desert life, which she found congenial. Although now in her forties, she struck up a liaison with a young sheik to whom she made the extraordinary proposal that he divorce his wife, give up his harem of a dozen beauties, and rely upon her to replace both. Understandably he refused, so at forty-seven she launched into a vigorous affair with an older sheik and crossed the desert with him as a member of his caravan.

Her free spirit had so captivated the younger sheik that in her absence he did divorce his Muslim wife and he did get rid of his harem. Under those circumstances Jane married him and they lived happily ever after. In her late sixties she was riding by his side in tribal warfare, and at seventy-two she was coursing in camel caravans over the desert, avowing that her sexual appetites were as vital as ever and her attractiveness to men undiminished. At seventy-four, however, she began to slow down somewhat and complained that she could spend no more than a morning in the saddle. At the end of the year, having successfully avoided the plague of cholera that was sweeping Syria, she was struck down by the humiliating disease of dysentery and died of it.

Her devoted husband, whom the niggardly press of Victorian England called ‘a dirty little black Bedouin shaykh,’ followed her casket to the grave, riding her favorite black mare.

If ever I was tempted to be harsh in my judgment of Monica, I was restrained by the thought of Jane Digby, granddaughter of an earl, Lady Ellenborough, Baroness Venningen, Countess Theotokoy, mistress of two kings—father and son—inspiration of Balzac, companion to an Albanian brigand, and beloved wife of Sheik Abdul Medjudel of Damascus.

I returned Monica to the group and as usual no one questioned where she had been.

‘I think you ought to get out of here right away,’ I said. ‘The German might come back.’

‘I don’t want to see him again,’ Yigal said.

‘Where can we go?’ Britta asked.

‘Somewhere over there,’ Joe said, pushing his hands toward the west.

‘I know!’ Gretchen said. ‘We’ll go back toward Silves. I’ve been wanting to see the castle again.’

So it was agreed that they would set out at once for Silves, and after that, to whatever areas came to mind, but Gretchen interposed a caveat. ‘I will not leave without saying goodbye to the people at Alte.’

‘That’s where the German will head if he doubles back.’

‘I don’t care. Those people did so much for us. To leave in silence would be criminal.’

So we drove back to Alte, and I think all of us were apprehensive lest we confront the ominous gray Mercedes,
but it did not appear. The young people said their farewells, some tearful, to the mountain people, and Gretchen entrusted one woman with ten American dollars for Maria Concepcião when she next came to the dance.

They then accompanied me to my car as I headed back to Faro. ‘If we don’t see you again,’ Joe said, ‘you’re one hell of a man with a club.’

‘Where will you be going?’ Britta asked.

‘I must get back to Geneva. Because the first two weeks in July, I always go to Pamplona.’

Gretchen snapped her fingers. ‘Isn’t that where Hemingway went?
The Sun Also Rises?’
When I nodded, she said excitedly, ‘Did you say July?’

‘Seven days from now.’

‘My God! We could go over to Silves tonight … then up to Lisboa … then …’

Britta asked, ‘Where will you be in Pamplona?’

‘Bar Vasca,’ I said, and as I drove down the hill I could see them in my rear-view mirror, unfolding maps.

I do not love war, but I love the courage
with which the average man faces up to war.

The world is but a place of shadows. The guest pauses for but a few nights and departs confused, never knowing for sure where he has been. Beyond the horizon he feels certain he will find a better city, a fairer prospect, a more sonorous group of singing companions. But when his camels are tethered he will find himself engaged with still yet another set of shadows.

Our country is wherever we are well off.—Cicero

This is the door where you get books about America when you want to go to college, and this is the window where you throw the bomb when we have the next demonstration.

Jungle, desert, tundra, icecap, the long wastes of the sea … these are the mansions of the lonely spirit.

In ancient Baghdad there was a wise man who had read Somerset Maugham, and when he saw death stalking the marketplace he said, ‘I’m not so stupid as to try hiding out in Samarra. I’m going to lay low in a little village on the other end of the Bridge of San Luis Rey.’

The President is going on a twelve-day tour to visit some friendly nations. What will he do the other eleven days?

Never was a patriot yet, but was a fool.—Dryden

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.—Stevenson

Last time I saw Harry, I think he was on the sauce. It was in a Jersey City diner and he insisted upon paying his compliments to the chef for some extra fine waffles.

Go on smoking. Who needs two lungs?

We can never be certain of our courage until we have faced danger.

—La Rochefoucauld

Girl Scouts wear green berets.

Show me a man who keeps his two feet on the ground and I’ll show you a man who can’t get his pants off.

A good man must have trained the army for seven years before it is fit to go to war. To lead an untrained multitude into battle is equivalent to throwing it away.—Confucius.

Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.—Barrie

They sleep perpetually on small islands that we may sleep peacefully at home.

It was now the first of July, so naturally my thoughts turned to Afghanistan, and as I closed my desk in Geneva, I could visualize the great plateau with camel caravans drifting down from the Russian border, the crowded bazaars, vines laden with the best melons in the world, dirty tearooms where men on their haunches endeavored to make one cup last for three hours while discussing those inconsequential things which had preoccupied nomads for the last five thousand years.

It was a land of men, undisciplined men cast in an ancient mold, and no matter where I happened to be working, if someone uttered the word Afghanistan, I wanted immediately to set forth. I wanted to see Kabul again, and the soaring Hindu Kush, and the caravans coming home at night through the city gates of Herat or Mazar-i-Sharif. I had worked in Afghanistan on three different occasions, trying to put together investment opportunities for World Mutual, but had accomplished nothing, primarily because the Russians invariably offered a better deal. Of all the countries of the world in which I have worked, Afghanistan is the one I would always want to go back to.