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.’
The ladies withdrew, and when they were well out of hearing I said, ‘I ought to wallop you,’ and she said, ‘Life is too goddamned short.’
Cato was profiting in many ways from his stay in Europe. He had updated his wardrobe so that except for his color he was indistinguishable from the better-dressed Frenchmen and Germans. He listened to the observations of others and was acquiring an insight into European and African problems; most of all, he ingratiated himself with people of the most diverse quality.
Apart from the occasional southern soldier who wanted to steal Monica, he got along fine with Americans from the deep south, outraging them one time with his frank statements of belief, enchanting them the next with his assurances that in the next generation there would be many blacks like him, willing to talk seriously, willing to make necessary concessions to keep the ball game going. He loved to talk with Europeans who sought information about America; with them he was brutally frank, feeding their animosities at one moment, appalling them with his challenges the next. I got the feeling that he was trying out his powers, finding how far he could go with people and what led to success in debate. I had no idea what he had in mind, but I was sure that he was slowly generating a picture of himself and deciding what he could accomplish with that picture.
Often he infuriated me. He had now picked up about six good accents: gutter Philadelphia, deep-south Geechee, University of Pennsylvania high society; debonair French, grandee Spanish, and what can only be called put-on—the flamboyantly funny and aggravating speech with which he kidded anyone who asked questions that probed too deeply into his Negro consciousness. He could really be most exasperating.
But no matter how irritated I became with Cato, and he could be infuriating, one aspect of his behavior commanded my respect: in his relations with Monica he took pains always to be decent. Many young men who conduct affairs with girls better positioned than they, feel driven to compensate by giving the girls a difficult time; not Cato. Or a man who goes with a girl who has more money than he, often needs to affirm his manhood by treating her meanly; not Cato. That she was the daughter of a titled Englishman did not impel him to humiliate her, and the fact that she was white did not make it necessary for him to denigrate her in public. He remained a normal, sex-driven, amiable young man, and I found much fun in being with him and his girl.
For example, one night an American newspaperman, learning that the young fellow who had shot up the Llanfair church was in town, sought him out at the Alamo, and while the regular customers sat in an admiring circle, interviewed Cato, who perversely adopted the role of a pansy Negro gone French. His answers were hilarious and we had to control ourselves to keep from giving him away.
The newspaperman asked gravely, ‘Do you see the black revolution as sweeping all parts of America?’
With ultra precision Cato replied, ‘So far I have been permitted to visit only Philadelphia and New York, with an occasional visit to the brothers in Newark, but couriers reach me continuously from the provinces, and piecing together what they tell me …’ He shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of defeat and said, ‘California is totally lost … lost … lost. Those filthy Mexicans with their goddamned grapes have stolen the play from us. You could explode seven tons of TNT in the middle of Watts, and it wouldn’t make that much difference.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Those goddamned Mexicans horning in.’
When the reporter tried to zero in on just what the revolution was trying to accomplish, Cato cut him short: ‘What I said about California applies even more strongly, I fear, to New York.’ One of the soldiers started to laugh at the ‘I fear,’ but his friends muzzled him. ‘In New York it’s the goddamned Puerto Ricans. They’re taking the play completely away from us. If you’re a Pureto Rican, you get the headlines. If you’re black, who cares? But in places like Birmingham and Tupelo we rate. So from what my friends tell me, we’ve written off California and New York. Let the spics have them. But you can tell your white readers this. When we strike our blow we are really going to strike.’
By now we could see that the reporter realized he was dealing with a put-on, but he kept at Cato, obviously hoping to get some usable quotes on how Negroes felt about Spanish-speaking people. Again Cato cut him short: ‘What’s this Whitey word Negroes? Who’s Negro? I’m no Negro. That’s a filthy imperialist word dreamed up by Bible-spouting white folks and kept alive by the captive press. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, using a word like that in what I thought was to be a friendly interview.’ He ranted in a French accent and so confused the reporter that the discussion fell apart.
At the end, the reporter took Monica aside and asked her, ‘Does he always kid around like this?’ and she confided, ‘No. He’s usually quite coherent, but his wife is having a baby.’ ‘I didn’t know he was married,’ the newsman said. ‘Yes, to a very fine Spanish girl. Her family thought he was Moroccan … very dark. Now they’ve found out. They’re applying dreadful pressure on the poor girl, and Mr. Jackson’s afraid she’ll lose the baby.’ The reporter hesitated, looked at his notes and said, ‘Wait a minute! Three months ago he was in Philadelphia. Hadn’t even seen Spain.’ ‘I know,’ Monica said stiffly. ‘That’s the real tragedy of this affair. The father of the baby is a Finnish businessman. Mr. Jackson married her to save her good name.’ The reporter played it straight, saying to Cato as he left, ‘I hope your wife comes through all right,’ and Cato, suspecting that Monica had been up to some nonsense, replied almost instantaneously, ‘Thank God, they have transfusions these days.’ It was a great closing line for an interview with a revolutionary.
On this occasion Cato had a surprise for me, too, because when the reporter left, he and Monica came to sit at my table, and he said, ‘Guess who’s going to come through that door at midnight.’
When I said they’d have to give me a clue, Monica said, ‘The kid who uses the sleeping bag. The one we said was in Granada.’
‘When he told us he knew you,’ Cato said, ‘it was a real gasser.’
Shortly before midnight the door opened, and in the entrance stood Yigal Zmora in hiking shorts, blue knit shirt and Israeli idiot cap. ‘Shalom!’ he cried as he came to greet me. Spreading his arms to indicate the bar and its occupants, he said, ‘This is the way to study engineering!’ It was obvious that the American soldiers respected him as ‘that kid from Qarash.’
When I asked how he had met the others, Cato interrupted, ‘Same way I did. Stumbled into this joint for a drink, caught a glimpse of Britta, and fell in love with her.’
I happened to be looking at Yigal when these joking words were spoken, and when I saw the deep and automatic blush that confused him—red surging up into his ears—I realized that Cato had make a joke which to Yigal was not funny, nor would it ever be. He stared down at my beer mug while Britta served drinks at another table, and during the rest of that night he seemed afraid to look at her.
In speaking of Torremolinos, I have used phrases like ‘We were talking at the bar’ or ‘Someone said to me at the Alamo,’ but these words must be understood in a special way, because during every minute of its operation this bar, like all others in Torremolinos, was filled with a deafening cacophony of sound.
When the bar opened at eleven in the morning Joe would start a stack of records and until he closed at four the next morning, they wou
ld grind on, each giving the effect of being louder than its predecessor. If, by accident, a disk recorded at moderate volume did find its way onto the machine, someone in the bar was sure to yell, ‘Turn that goddamned volume up.’
We therefore had to talk above this Niagara of noise. It was constant and immutable, as if the young people of the world were afraid to be alone with mere thoughts. What did this cascade consist of? At first I could not have said. I had been trained in classical music, with a strong predilection toward Beethoven and Stravinsky. Two of the best concerts I had the good fortune to attend were a Toscanini performance in Boston at which he played the Leonore Overture No. 3, the Fifth and the Ninth, and that popular gala, often repeated at the Moscow ballet, in which they danced The Firebird, The Rite of Spring and Petrouchka. I knew most of Verdi by heart and had played recordings of Carmen and Faust so often that I could have conducted them.
I loved music. In my youth I had enjoyed the songs then popular, not so avidly as some of my companions, but enough to remember the major successes of men like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Jimmy Lunceford. I was never much taken with vocalists, but I did like Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald. Of the composers, Harold Arlen was my favorite, but I also liked some of the finest Rodgers and Hart inventions. My education had ended with Pal Joey.
I was not able to study or comprehend the musical explosion after the war. It did not repel me—no music could do that—but it had shot off in new directions I did not care to follow. About the only songs I remembered from this bleck and noisy period were ‘Nel Blu Dipinto del Blu’ and ‘Rock around the Clock.’ The first captivated me, as it did the whole world, for I understood what the author was trying to say; it was a fresh, authentic cry from a man imprisoned on earth in a job he did not like and surrounded by people who bored him: it was a real cri de coeur. ‘Rock around the Clock’ I first heard at a skating rink under my hotel window in Austria; the proprietor had a stack of records three feet high, but it seemed that every third selection was this noisy, throbbing thing whose title I could not decode. Finally I went down to his establishment, where red-cheeked young Austrians were twirling over the ice, and asked him, ‘What’s that piece of music?’