The Drifters

  ‘That’s the nub of the matter.’ He took Yigal’s hands and said, ‘Obviously they love you. You’ve been so helpful … so generous. Obviously Maria Concepcião is fond of you, young fellow. She likes to be kissed, and so she should. But in the hills of Portugal a family and a girl have only one chance at life. If they make even the slightest mistake, like riding to the dance in an expensive automobile …’ He inspected the pop-top and said to Gretchen, ‘The townspeople tell me you all sleep in this little car.’ When Gretchen nodded, he looked at her left hand, then at Britta’s. ‘And you’re not even married. Well, I’m sure it’s no harm, but you’re allowed to do these things. A girl from the mountains isn’t.’

  ‘She’s done nothing wrong, never …’ Yigal protested.

  ‘But she has ridden back and forth instead of walking. She’s at the age when she must find a husband, or remain barren the rest of her life. One little thing … anything like appearing too haughty …’ He looked at each of the six separately and nodded his tired head. ‘That’s the word I’ve been seeking … haughty. If it is said of her, “She’s the kind who has to have an automobile …” Well, it could kill her chances of catching a husband. It could be terrible and cruel … the effect on her.’

  He looked at Britta, who had made a favorable impression, and said, ‘You’re Swedish. You’ll understand what I’m saying.’

  Gretchen asked in French, ‘So it’s not Yigal? It’s me?’

  ‘It’s you.’ The priest nodded. ‘You represent a flashy way of life. You scare the people, and if the young men of the region ever get the idea fixed in their minds that Maria Concepcião is going to grow up like you …well, to put it simply, she’d not catch a husband.’ He stopped, wiped his forehead, and said with some anxiety, ‘You don’t understand. But with us a girl has only one chance.’

  Gretchen grew angry. ‘Chance?’ she echoed. ‘You mean that if she’s a good girl and walks barefooted fourteen miles and has one dress … you mean that maybe she’ll earn the right to live like a pig in a room with no furniture … for the rest of her life?’

  ‘I mean just that,’ the priest said.

  ‘It would be better if she rode with us, and went with us to Lisboa, and let happen what will.’

  ‘For you, and for this one’—and here he placed his hand on Britta’s arm—‘but not for Maria Concepcião. Her ordained life is here.’

  No one spoke, and after a while the priest rose and shook hands all around. He told Gretchen that one night he had heard her playing the guitar and she was good, then he added, ‘But when Maria Concepcião and her mother come this week, allow them to stay in the shadows. At the dancing, young man, you must not dance with her ever again, for if you do, you will be altering her life in a manner that cannot be corrected.’ He bowed and left.

  Then an unpredictable thing happened. Yigal grabbed Joe by the throat and said bitterly, ‘You big loudmouth.’ Now if there was one thing Joe wasn’t, it was a loudmouth, and no one could understand Yigal’s point, but he continued: ‘You keep telling us how much more beautiful Portugal is than Spain, how much better they run things over here. Well, there’s a hell of a lot more to running a nation than saving the shoreline. There’s also people. And in Spain I saw people who were living … who were getting out of their mountain hovels.’

  ‘In Torremolinos you never saw a Spaniard,’ Joe said defensively.

  ‘You’re right. Why do you suppose I went up in the mountains. To see for myself. In back of Ronda, in back of Granada. I can tell you how the Spaniards live, because I was there … in the houses with them. And they live damned poorly, some of them, but they live, and if some priest tried to tell a family that their girl shouldn’t dance, they’d kick him in the balls.’

  ‘So you like the girl,’ Joe said.

  As abruptly as he had started, Yigal stopped. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, shaking Joe’s hand. ‘But there’s a hell of a lot about landscape you don’t understand. There really is.’

  Maria Concepcião and her mother were not mentioned again. That Thursday night they appeared, barefooted, to hear the music, but spoke to none of the foreigners. On Saturday night Maria appeared in her shoes and dress, looking radiant as a young aspen tree in the hills, but none of the strangers spoke to her, so after a while the local men started asking her to dance.

  While music filled the plaza at Alte, I was cooped up in Geneva. Negotiations with the Greek shipowners had ended in a surprise: by some miracle they were able to collect almost enough money to save their Torremolinos property. All they needed from us was a loan of three million dollars, and this our board decided to grant, assured that by the end of 1970 the Greeks would have to go broke, whereupon we could pick up the apartments for even less money than we had been prepared to offer this year. Pinpoint negotiations—what our New York lawyers called the nitty-gritty—took longer than expected, but the day came when the work was done and I found myself with a couple of empty weeks prior to my July vacation.

  On my desk lay two postcards from Algarve. One showed a hillside near Albufeira covered with almond blossoms. The message, written neatly on the back, read: ‘This is the kind of snow I like,’ and it was signed ‘Britta.’ The other showed one of the typical colored chimneys of Algarve, with its customary stork. Its message read: ‘This son-of-a-bitch better stay away from us,’ and it was signed ‘Monica and Cato.’

  The cards made me homesick, for I had been going to Algarve since 1954 and I liked the area. I liked its cleanliness, its antique quality, its unparalleled beaches and its good peasant food.

  How had I become involved in Algarve? Through the idiosyncrasy of a man called Martin Rorimer. It’s not necessary to remember his name because I won’t be mentioning him again, but toward the end of World War II he was on army duty at the edge of a glacier in Alaska, and one wintry afternoon as he watched the sun disappear he had what he called ‘my big idea.’

  It was simple. He visualized a future when hundreds of thousands of people like himself would be wanting a quiet sunny place near the sea. ‘Land along the sea,’ he said to himself. ‘That’s the secret.’

  Many people, maybe once or twice in their lives, entertain big ideas, but few act upon them. He did. As soon as he was demobilized he converted all his savings into cash, borrowed what he could from friends, and convinced his mother to let him have his inheritance ahead of time. What did he do with it? He went back to all the places he had visited over the past fifteen years and bought whatever ends and scraps of land he could find along any seashore. When the great hunger that he had foreseen materialized, he had oceanfront land to sell.

  He made his most conspicuous success in Hawaii (bought at $4,000 an acre, sold at $167,000) and in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands (bought at $3,000, sold at $139,000). He also bought along the Mediterranean, in southern France, at Acapulco, in the wooded country north of Seattle, and on the Costa Brava in Spain. His most daring venture was the purchase of six hundred choice acres along the southern coast of Turkey; he was convinced that by 1975 it would be worth a fortune.

  When his purchases were completed, Rorimer flew to Geneva with a proposition that World Mutual take over the management of all his holdings. We agreed, because he controlled half a dozen sites we wanted to build on, and I had the pleasure of flying about the world with him to see what he had picked up, for in the early days whenever he sold a parcel in Hawaii for a profit he reinvested most of it in oceanfront in places like Australia or Japan.

  But the land he preferred lay in that unknown part of Portugal called Algarve. When he first mentioned it, one day in Barcelona, I had not even heard of it, but when I flew with him to Faro, I understood the sleeping grandeur of this, area and its potential in a world becoming each day more crowded.

  Sitting in Geneva now, I began to think about going to Algarve, but whether to see its white beaches and chimney pots or the young people I knew were there, I could not say. I contemplated flying down to check on a hotel we were building. In an a
brupt aside, I thought: But I wouldn’t know where they were camping. I then rationalized that since Algarve was not large, residents would surely know the whereabouts of anything as conspicuous as a yellow pop-top.

  In the end it was a small thing that decided me. As I sat there idly, I picked up Britta’s postcard, and I visualized her expressive, lovely face and its abundant vitality. Suddenly it was important that I know what she and the others were up to, so I grabbed a shaving kit, jammed it into the briefcase containing records on our Algarve holdings, and was on my way to the airport.

  Clothes? I got into quite an argument over this some years ago. An American couple heard me explaining that I traveled light because I kept six or seven caches of wardrobe in various crossroad cities throughout the world—Tokyo and Rome, to name two—and I flew into those cities as I might move from a townhouse to a farm in the suburbs. The husband snorted, ‘Preposterous,’ and when I assured him that quite a few men did this, his wife said, ‘You must be joking.’ We were in Bombay at the time and I asked where they were headed, and he said, ‘Bangkok.’

  ‘What hotel?’

  ‘Erawan.’

  ‘Good. When you check in, ask the bell captain to show you the room where they keep such luggage. Mine will be there.’ I hope they checked.

  It was my habit, acquired when I first traveled the Orient, to fly empty-handed into Hong Kong and then hurry to Jimmy Yen’s, where I would order seven or eight suits and a dozen hand-made shirts for less than two hundred dollars. Jimmy supplied his customers with cardboard suitcases, and off we would go with lettering on our cases proclaiming: I am well dressed. I buy my clothes from Jimmy Yen, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Because I had to visit Algarve so frequently on land problems, I kept a Jimmy Yen suitcase packed with suits and shirts in Faro.

  Where were the young people? I asked at various spots, but no one had seen them, and it looked as if my flight might have been useless. However, in the course of my inquiry two different men said, ‘There’s an Englishman named Churchill of all things. Hangs out at a bar in Albufeira. He’d know.’ On this chance I borrowed the company car and drove to Albufeira, rummaging through the bars until I came to one on the square. In the corner sat a tall, unkempt, tennis-shoed man, with his elbows on the table, his unshaven chin propped on bony knuckles. He was extremely gray in the face, like a lizard, and his manner was listless.

  ‘You Churchill?’ I asked. He nodded his head about a quarter of an inch, staring at me from his basilisk eyes. ‘Could you tell me if a group of six young people … one of them’s a young Negro …’ Again he nodded his head almost imperceptibly. ‘Are they in Albufeira?’ I asked. He shook his head slightly. ‘Alte,’ he said, as if the very name of the town were repugnant.

  I found him quite objectionable and was about to leave when he whined, ‘Aren’t you having a beer? It’s very good, you know.’ I ordered two, and as he sipped his he described the six drifters I was seeking.

  ‘The Norwegian girl … steady as an ox … real Viking princess. Your black boy is quite jittery. Never at ease in his relationship with Monica. Did you know she was the daughter of Sir Charles Braham? Quite an English lady, but I’ll bet she’s the gutter type at heart. As for the Jew? I don’t much care for Jews. Too bright. Yours is like all the rest. The Boston girl? There’s a deep one. She’s wasting her time with that crowd.’ He studied me carefully, and I felt that if anyone happened to ask about me, he would be able to provide a comparable thumbnail sketch. ‘Oh, yes. I didn’t mention Joe. He keeps to himself. He’s a lot like me.’

  I stared at him, aghast at the comparison. ‘How do I reach Alte?’ I asked. ‘Up to the Silves road and turn right.’ He did not bother to rise when I left.

  When I reached the lower level of the town I stopped at a bar to ask if anyone knew where the Americans were staying, and at my first words the men lounging there understood what I wanted. ‘Up there!’ they cried with visible delight, and three of them climbed into my car with me, for they had learned that if they did odd jobs to help Americans, there could be wine and perhaps guitar-playing.

  They led me up a cobbled street to a plaza where women were lugging jugs of water. In the trees beyond, they showed me the pop-top. Britta, lounging in a chair outside the Volkswagen, saw me first. ‘It’s Uncle George!’ she shouted, and in a moment bodies were tumbling out of the car and Cato was pumping my hand and yelling, ‘You old fart! You couldn’t stay away!’

  I pointed to my three guides, and Cato growled, ‘The three hungriest men in Portugal,’ but he did produce wine and cheese—and we held a reunion beside the tumbling water.

  It was not surprising that Churchill should have been able to judge Monica so accurately, because on the days when Gretchen drove the pop-top into Albufeira for marketing or the pleasure of seeing the ocean, the English girl, with her uncanny skill in seeking out the lowest common denominator, had struck up an acquaintance with Churchill and had begun to buy ‘spots’ for him, eating them under his tutelage.

  A spot was a small square of rice paper, about an inch and a half on the side. In the middle it contained a gray-looking discoloration. Churchill stored his spots in his wallet, so the corners were dog-eared, and if you were, a beginner you tore the paper in half and chewed only half a spot, swallowing it slowly, before progressing to a full spot, which was a more serious affair. As one chewed, there was no discernible taste.

  On her first try Monica, as might be expected, swallowed a whole spot, and one with a larger discolored area than usual, but Churchill was experienced in handling such people, so Monica enjoyed an exhilarating experience on this her second adventure with lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate 25, known to her peers as LSD-25.

  To take her trip required about seven hours, and during the latter half of that time the other five young people searched for her, and grew increasingly apprehensive when they could not find her. It was Cato who first thought of the English fellow at the bar, and sure enough, when he and Britta went there to make inquiries, the waiter said in broken English, ‘She come here. Now his room I think.’ When Cato flashed a jealous anger, the waiter laughed. ‘Not pom-pom. Sssttt!’ he said, and he shot an imaginary hypodermic into his arm.

  For five escudos the waiter showed them where Churchill lived; it was on the third floor of a very old house overlooking the ocean, and as they reached the door to his room they could hear Monica moaning and laughing inside, with Churchill’s whining voice assuring her, ‘It’s going splendidly. Everything is all right.’ When Cato pushed the door open, Britta entered first, and saw Monica lying mostly undressed on an unmade bed, her head rolling backward off a pomade-stained pillow, her eyes much dilated and apparently crowded with abnormal visions.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Cato shouted, to which Churchill merely said, ‘Ssssssh. Mustn’t waken her abruptly, must we?’

  ‘You son-of-a-bitch!’ Cato shouted, lunging at the reedy Englishman, who quietly stepped aside. ‘Don’t be an utter ass,’ he said. ‘She’s coming out of her trip and needs quiet.’

  So Cato and Britta sat on the floor and watched as Monica slowly returned to near-normal reactions. ‘It was so spacious,’ she moaned repeatedly. She offered no other description of her trip; it was merely spacious in a majestic sort of way.

  ‘You’d better tell the others we’ve found her,’ Cato suggested to Britta. After she left, he started dressing Monica, who oscillated between a normal control of her senses and a reversion to her trip. When she finally realized where she was and with whom, she gave Churchill a kiss, crying, ‘You dear, dear boy! Ten times better than you said.’ And her first words to Cato set the pattern to which she would stubbornly return during the rest of her stay in Portugal: ‘Cato, you’ve got to try it! The colors … the sensations … God, to have sex at the height of a trip … Cato, we must!’

  When they got her into the pop-top and back in Alte, where the air was fresher, her head cleared and she said rationally, ‘It isolates and expands the senses. Of c
ourse, you still have only five, but each one seems twice as important as the others. I remember looking at the uneven plaster on the wall. Slight bumps became mountains. One broken area became the Alps, each speck of plaster a peak by itself. I heard Churchill saying, “It’s going beautifully.” I heard the words. I understood them. And I was aware that I understood them. You know, you’re aware the whole time. You’re aware of everything.’ She paused, remembering the effect of Churchill’s words, then said, ‘Only three words! But they formed the noblest oration I ever heard. It was as if he were the real Churchill, with Hitler and Mussolini thrown in … a fantastic orator. It took him about fifteen minutes to say “It’s going beautifully,” but all the time the multitudes were cheering. God, how they cheered.’

  She returned to her intense proselytizing. ‘Kids, you’ve just got to try it. Really, that first time in Torremolinos with the dike … that was nothing. But to take it seriously … with Churchill there to steer you … a real spot with a place to lie down sensibly. It was the greatest experience I’ve ever had. I’ll tell you, it was twenty times better than good sex.’

  She insisted that Britta and Gretchen accompany her on her next trip, but they begged off. Yigal also declined, and Joe said, ‘You must be nuts.’ She did, however, persuade Cato to join her, so three days later they walked and hitch-hiked into town, with the understanding that we’d pick them up about ten hours later.

  When Britta took us to Churchill’s grimy room, we found Monica and Cato naked in bed, with Churchill leering over them. ‘This is one trip they’ll never forget,’ he assured us, and when they returned to Alte their report substantiated his prediction: ‘Have you ever wondered what sex would be like, strung out for twenty-four hours at peak perfection?’ Monica asked, and Cato replied, ‘It ain’t bad.’

  So the pressure of the proselytizing continued, with Britta under fire one day, Yigal the next. When Monica insisted one morning that Britta try LSD, because it would expand her mind, the Norwegian girl replied, ‘My mind expands every morning when I get up and see that sun. You wouldn’t understand. You’ve never been in Tromsø through the winter.’