The Drifters

  ‘Do you think Israel is going under?’ Gridley asked.

  ‘The Muslims are determined,’ Cato said, expressing for the first time in public his newly acquired conviction. ‘Even the Muslims in Moçambique are talking about a holy war.’

  ‘Muslims everywhere have been talking about a holy war for the last thousand years. I understand that many blacks in America have turned Muslim. Watch. Within ten years Muslims all over the world will be talking about a holy war to rescue their brothers in America.’

  Cato almost grew angry, but instead returned to his main argument: ‘So let’s suppose that Russia, having absorbed the Middle East, decides to drop down into Africa. Let’s suppose that Communist China applies pressure on Moçambique via Tanzania, and Communist Russia applies pressure on Rhodesia from the Congo. Then what?’

  ‘Within a year they’d be fighting each other, and we’d be down here consolidating our position,’ Gridley said.

  ‘You don’t believe that the drift of the future is black pressure from the north?’

  ‘Oh yes! Pressure, agitation, threats. We shall have to live with them for the rest of our lives. But my point is that there isn’t a damned thing the blacks can do about it. Not for this century at least.’

  ‘You sound just like an American general discussing Vietnam … four years ago.’ The group laughed, and Gretchen asked, ‘What does a sable antelope look like?’ and the Gridleys searched their books until they found a color photograph, but before they showed it, Mr. Gridley said, ‘You still haven’t allowed me to make my point. I think that for the rest of this century the white man can hold on, and in that time he’ll have established certain big principles. And by then the black nations will have produced many citizens as able and as well educated as Mr. Jackson here. Then there may be a totally different symbiosis between the races in which Rhodesia’s addiction to her present solution may be of little importance, because larger solutions will be afoot. However, I feel sure that Rhodesia will be a partner in the larger solutions. But of course, I’m speaking as a man interested in how elephants solve their problems. They do so within the determinations of water, forage, security and a mysterious something called life force, that is, the will to survive. Among the whites in Rhodesia today, the life force is extremely strong.’

  ‘Show them the antelope,’ Mrs. Gridley said, but before her husband could do so, Cato placed his hand on the cover of the book and said, ‘The life force of the black is also terribly strong,’ to which Mr. Gridley replied, ‘Good! Self-respect demands it. But the difference is that for the rest of this century the white man has not only life force but the guns and the airplanes.’

  ‘Like in Vietnam,’ Cato said.

  For some months I had been intending to review our investments in Lourenço Marques, with an eye to extending them into Swaziland, a nearby Negro kingdom, and the presence of the four young people in Moçambique gave me an added incentive to make the trip now. It was an easy jet trip from the capital to Beira, where the government offered me a small plane for the flight to the game preserve.

  It was always hazardous to land at Zambela, for although the sanctuary maintained a sizeable airstrip, well mowed, the grass there was so clean and fresh that wild animals could not be prevented from breaking through the fences to browse, and as we approached I saw with apprehension that it was populated with seventeen Cape buffalo, each weighing nearly a ton, a couple of dozen blue hartebeest a substantial herd of zebra, numerous giraffe and three elephants. I raised my hands in a gesture of futility, but the pilot showed no worry. He simply buzzed the field three times and drove the animals away, but by the time we had taxied to the administrative buildings, the zebras and buffalo were again grazing.

  The young people had been notified by Lourenço Marques that I was arriving and were on the field waiting, profuse in their gratitude for my having suggested Moçambique, and they spent the first hour talking about their letters from Britta and Yigal and telling me what they had been doing with Mr. Gridley. I judged that he had given them a solid introduction to Africa, and even though he was Rhodesian, Cato spoke of him with respect. Next day’s plans called for an expedition far into the bush to see if they could spot a fugitive herd of sable antelope, which had so far eluded them, and I was invited to go along … ‘if you can get up at six,’ Gretchen added.

  When I retired to my rondavel to unpack, I was visited by the three Americans, in turn. Joe showed me a letter which the American consul in Lourenço Marques had sent him. It was from his draft board in California and was a coldly stated announcement that Joe was now considered a draft evader, that his passport was to be confiscated by any American official, and that he could be sentenced to a long term in jail if he did not immediately return to the jurisdiction of the board. Attached was a legal opinion from a government solicitor stating that Joe, for his own good, had better return promptly to California.

  ‘What should I do?’ he asked.

  ‘What else? Go back.’

  ‘But if the war is illegal and therefore indefensible?’

  ‘No individual is big enough to make this judgment.’

  ‘Who else?’

  We kicked this around for some time, then Joe said, ‘I’d better get to Marrakech. I have the name of a guy there who handles these things.’

  ‘I’d stay clear of Marrakech. I’d head for California.’

  ‘For you California would be right. For me it would be reverse gear. Absolutely wrong.’ And he tore up the letter from his draft board.

  A short time after he left, Gretchen dropped in, a girl who had obviously discovered in her life a spaciousness she had not known before. When she spoke of Zambela, her face was radiant: ‘You were so right that day in Pamplona when you told us to reestablish contact with nature. I had never dreamed that places like this existed. We spent all yesterday afternoon just looking at the lions as they stalked a zebra.’ Then the look of contentment vanished and she said, ‘Mr. Fairbanks, it’s Monica. I’m dreadfully worried about her. She’s started taking heroin. Sniffing it at first. Now she’s popping it under her skin and has developed a lovely abscess. I suppose she’ll be mainlining next, and I really don’t know what’s going to happen to her.’

  I asked how she had got started, and Gretchen said, ‘By herself. No pressure from anyone that I know of. She did meet some sailors in Lourenço Marques who told her about an Indian there who did a little peddling on the side. But I’m sure it was she who pressured him.’

  She then added that Cato was also using the stuff but was only sniffing it. I asked her where she had learned such a term, and she said, ‘All the kids know about Big-H. That is, we know what we need to know.’ I told her I doubted that then asked how she was so sure that Cato was merely sniffing, and she said simply, ‘I asked him. And I looked at his arms. For a while he was popping, but he seems afraid of that now.’

  She asked if I would talk to Monica, try to reason with her, and I said, ‘What can I do? She’s a grown girl over whom I have no control,’ but she corrected me: ‘She’s only seventeen and she’s got to have help.’ I told her that where heroin was concerned, I was powerless, but she said she was going to send Cato to talk with me.

  He arrived wearing only shorts, and I hoped, from seeing his unscarred arms, that he had not progressed far in his use of heroin. I found him much subdued by his experiences in Africa, but I was ill at ease and found it hard to bring up the subject of drugs. He solved that quickly: ‘With me heroin is no longer a problem. I’ve tried the stuff and at first I thought it was a breeze. But one day it terrified me. So I quit cold turkey.’ I said this sounded like an arrogant boast, but he said, ‘You don’t believe those fairy stories about the man in the hospital who gets one shot of morphine and is hooked for life? I’ve sniffed it and I’ve popped it and I’ve quit for life.’

  ‘You feel cocky enough to play around with heroin and walk away?’

  ‘I’ve done it. I will never be hooked because I won’t allow it. So l
et’s drop that.’

  ‘I hope you’re right,’ I said.

  Abruptly he said, ‘Monica’s in trouble, not me. She likes heroin. Needs it. She’s taking it regularly, and I’m pretty sure she’s mainlining. Anyway, she keeps her gear with her all the time—the bottle cap for heating the stuff, that hypodermic she bought in Pamplona.’

  ‘Were you two using heroin at Bar Vasca?’

  ‘No. She bought the needle … just for the hell of it. Then, since she had it, she figured she might as well use it. Some American sailors got her started in Lourenço Marques. And she kept pestering me to try. And she eats practically nothing. And when we go to bed, mostly she sleeps. She’s lost a lot of weight.’ He continued his classic description of a young girl in the first stages of addiction, and from listening to him, I was ready to accept his assurance that he had indeed been able to move toward the brink of that precipice and voluntarily retreat. I was glad for him.

  At dinner that night I had my first chance to study Monica, and outwardly she was more appealing than before, an enchanting young lady of seventeen with an ethereal beauty. Her exaggerated slimness made her additionally attractive, for now her pale face was more exotic. She wore a miniskirt with such style that everyone visiting the sanctuary was forced to stare at her. The only sign that betrayed her new explorations was a small skin-colored adhesive that Mrs. Gridley had insisted upon applying to the abscessed spot.

  Monica sat on my right and took pains to charm me, keeping in rein the quick wit that sometimes offended older people. She ate sparingly, and during dessert, which she merely toyed with, I realized that she was quiet because she was at a low point in her cycle of euphoria-depression.

  Later we visited the Gridleys, whom I had known in the parks in Rhodesia, and after he warned us that we must all get to bed soon, for we were starting at six to hunt for the sable antelope, Mrs. Gridley found occasion to maneuver me into the kitchen, where she said bluntly, ‘If you know Sir Charles Braham, you’d better cable him to get his daughter out of Africa and into a sanitarium.’

  ‘Sir Charles has no influence over her.’

  ‘But she’s suffering from dreadful malnutrition … because of the heroin. At seventeen. I could weep.’

  ‘Have you discussed this with her?’

  ‘I didn’t have to. When I treated her abscess, she knew I knew. Do you realize, Mr. Fairbanks, that she could have lost her arm? She has absolutely no resistance and was giving it no treatment.’ She paused, then asked me directly, ‘The young Negro boy. He seems a decent sort. He hasn’t led her into this, has he?’

  ‘It was the other way around.’

  ‘He’s stronger. He can absorb such an experience. She can’t. Are they planning to marry?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Thank God. She’d destroy him, and he’d think she did it because he was a Negro. Fact is, she’ll destroy any man she marries.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because she’s one of the sick of this generation. Don’t you think we see them in Rhodesia? Our world has become too much for them to handle. They’re doomed, and speaking as a geneticist, the sooner they’re removed from society, the better.’ She returned to her guests, a stalwart woman who saw people precisely as they were.

  At six next morning we gathered at the gate which separated the rondavels from the areas where the wild animals roamed, and I was pleased to see how lively Monica was, as if breakfast had rebuilt her spirits, but Gretchen told me, ‘We’ve brought some sandwiches, because Monica hasn’t eaten a thing.’ Later, when we were well into the trip, Cato confided that she had taken heroin before going to bed and was now high. I looked for signs which would indicate this, but detected none.

  In two cars we set out across the normal grazing areas, those to which tourists were admitted, along dirt roads that provided one spectacular panorama after another. ‘Keep your eye out at this next turn,’ Gretchen warned me. ‘Elephants.’

  We were in a land of low trees spaced at twenty-yard intervals with high grass in between, and as we turned a corner the lead car, driven by Gridley, came to a slow halt. Ahead, in the middle of the road, stood three very large elephants. ‘They’re the ones that were on the airstrip yesterday,’ Gridley called back as the huge beasts stared at us without moving. We drove to within a dozen yards of them, our cars side by side, and Gridley said, ‘A couple of weeks ago they picked a small Volkswagen up and turned it over. Keep your gears in reverse.’

  For about fifteen minutes we were blocked by the big gray animals, but finally they ambled off; we were in an area where animals were kings, as in the old days. This feeling was enhanced when we left the forested area and came upon a series of large plains, where we saw before us a herd of nearly a thousand Cape buffalo, those dark beasts whose curious draped horns give them the appearance of wearing cloche hats of the late twenties. As we drove past, the males formed a protective ring, shoulder to shoulder, with their massive armament lowered as if prepared to charge.

  In fields closer to the river we found immense herds of zebra, antelope and wildebeest, intermixed. I particularly remember Joe’s and Cato’s reactions. Joe said, ‘A thousand Cape buffalo make more of a dent on the landscape than a thousand human beings,’ and Cato, seeing the converging groups of animals, said, ‘I always thought of Africa as people … always black … always naked. Lourenço Marques and this place sure change images. The people who matter are white, and the permanent life is the animal.’ I did not ride with the girls, so I don’t know how the herds affected them, but certainly the young men were jolted by the sight. When we came upon our first pride of lions tearing a buffalo apart, with the vultures and the hyenas standing by, Cato, after watching two lions battle for a preferred position, cried, ‘How does that grab you?’ I could see that he was deeply moved by the savagery of the animals and their lack of consideration for anything but a full belly.

  As we approached the river, along whose banks we would travel for an hour or more until we reached a ford which would throw us into the higher hills, I learned that the young people had not yet seen a hippopotamus island, and when I got a chance I called to Gridley, ‘Let’s go by the hippos,’ and we took a fairly long detour, which was one of the best things we did that day, for it led us through a veritable fairyland populated with all the birds one could imagine: large vultures, superb fishing eagles, flamingos, crested cranes of rare delicacy, and hundreds of low-flying birds of brilliant plumage. Among them moved large herds of impala, leaping and twisting as we approached, their fawn bodies gleaming in the sun. We saw that morning a combination of color and motion that nature sometimes provides the lucky viewer; anyone who liked music or painting or dance would intuitively feel that he was in the world of another art. When we halted the cars for a cold drink, Gretchen said, ‘It’s like having your brain geared to slow motion and your eyes to a kaleidoscope. I could watch impalas all day.’

  I told them that a few miles beyond waited an image of opposite quality, one they would never forget, and as the two cars approached a low, swampy area, the two girls spotted something which they supposed was what I had been talking about: a group of five large crocodiles sunning themselves on the riverbank. They looked like logs that had floated downstream from the mountains, hideous creatures covered with knobs and oozing malevolence.

  ‘Stay well back,’ Gridley warned as he and the black rangers who drove our cars unlimbered their rifles. The massive crocodiles watched us approach, saw the sun glistening on the rifle barrels, and slipped quietly into the river. That is, it looked as if they had disappeared; one, so well camouflaged it could not be detected, remained on shore, a tactic which the reptiles had found effective, and as Monica, elated by what she had been seeing, got out of the car and ran across the grassy bank, this great beast allowed her to come parallel to him, then with a mighty sweep of its long, fleshy tail, knocked her nearly into the water, from which two other animals leapt with their massive jaws open, while the one w
ho had knocked her down came at her from the land.

  She screamed, seeing the gaping jaws closing in upon her from three sides, but Gridley and the rangers, followed almost immediately by Joe, sped to the scene and began battling the crocs. ‘Don’t fire!’ Gridley shouted to the rangers as they clubbed at the beasts with their rifles while Joe, with his stout Texas boots, kicked at their heads. As quickly as they had attacked, the crocs retreated, disappearing into the waters they had churned to a muddy brown.

  Of us all, Monica was the least perturbed. Apart from her first warning scream, she had behaved with marked composure, and now brushed herself off and bowed to the four men who had saved her. ‘Lots of girls are attacked by wolves,’ she said, ‘but damned few by crocodiles.’

  ‘It was no joke,’ Gridley said. ‘If Joe hadn’t kicked that one in the head you’d be minus a leg … or worse.’ We were all badly shaken by the affair, and Gretchen said, ‘It was quite a surprise you had for us, Mr. Fairbanks,’ and I said, ‘That isn’t what I had in mind,’ whereupon Monica cried, ‘Let’s go,’ and we continued through the swampy area until we came to a slight rise overlooking the river. I waited to see who would be the first to spot what lay ahead, and finally Gretchen cried, ‘Oh my God!’

  There, on a rather small island in the middle of the river, clustered together in one heap, lay not less than a hundred and fifty giant hippopotamuses, a mountain of heaving flesh and one of the most extraordinary sights to be seen in Africa. It was really unbelievable, this massive assembly of beasts, one lying atop the other in a sprawled-out community. From time to time some hippo would detach himself from the group and splash clumsily into the river, while others, satisfied with their morning swim, would slowly lumber out of the water and find a place for themselves in the pile.

  After we had studied them for some time, we became aware of the fact that far more hippos lay submerged in the river—only their eyes and nostrils showing above water—than we saw on land, and the girls tried to estimate how many animals were there. ‘Four or five hundred?’ Monica asked, and Gridley nodded.