The Drifters

  ‘I know.’

  During this conversation Big Loomis had been furtively whipping through his papers, and now, with a quick thrust of his huge right hand, he pushed a photograph at Joe. It was intended to shock, and he watched Joe’s face closely to see the effect. It showed two nude male figures—one a young American boy on his knees, the other a large, muscular Arab standing with his legs apart in order to display a huge erect penis which the boy was about to take into his open mouth. Joe, expressionless, said nothing. Big Loomis said, ‘When they get this through the mail, they drop you from the draft rolls. It’s very final.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ Joe said, and the big man directed one of his tenants to go fetch Ugly Abdullah.

  When the Arab came down the alley, ready to be photographed again, Jemail whispered to Holt, ‘That’s our man.’ It was a phrase he must have learned in the movies.

  They trailed the big Arab into the Bordeaux, waited till he ascended the stairs, then dashed up the four flights to where Joe waited while Big Loomis prepared his camera. There was a moment of shocked dismay, broken when Holt dived headfirst at the huge Negro, butting him hard in the belly with his head and knocking him backward. ‘You bastard,’ Holt shouted. ‘Not with this boy!’

  A silent, grunting brawl ensued, with Holt lashing out indiscriminately at Big Loomis, at Joe and at Ugly Abdullah. As occasion permitted, Jemail darted in like a viper to attack his permanent enemy, Big Loomis, who took ineffectual swings at his little tormentor.

  At first rush it looked as if Holt would subdue all three, for he quickly immobilized Joe and Ugly Abdullah, but he had sorely underestimated flabby Loomis, whose football training now manifested itself. With deft footwork and ham-handed swipes from left and right, he first defended himself, then started driving Holt back. Two effective wallops to the side of the head stunned Holt momentarily, but he recovered and swarmed over Loomis like a one-man typhoon.

  The preliminaries over, the main bout now began, with the fat Negro dancing about the room on his toes, seizing every opening to slam Holt against the wall. Occasionally Loomis would shake one leg or another to drive away Jemail, who was kicking at his shins.

  Now Joe and the big Arab regained control of themselves and vectored in on Holt, the former trying to grab his arms, the latter to knee him in the testicles. Surrounded by three such able adversaries, one might have expected Holt to call it quits, but the idea never entered his mind. Swinging with silent and dreadful force, he put into practice all the low tricks Sergeant Schumpeter had taught him in boot camp, clubbing first one, then the other of his three enemies until blood began to appear on their faces. One powerful blow rocked Big Loomis, who retaliated with a vicious swipe at Holt, knocking him clear across the room, but the engineer was up swiftly, butting his head into Ugly Abdullah’s gut and knocking him out of the fight momentarily. Then he turned to face Joe, launching a violent blow which caught him on the side of the head, spreading him on the floor.

  Loomis used this diversion as an opportunity to assault Holt from the blind side, and with a powerful slap of his open hand, knocked Holt down, but the ex-marine did not stay down. He was up and flailing in all directions, taking a moment’s time out to knee fallen Abdullah in the face as he tried to rise. Two teeth splattered to the floor and for the first time one of the brawlers spoke. ‘Get his photograph with no front teeth,’ Holt gasped.

  The end was inevitable. Big Loomis gave Holt a mighty cuff on the side of the head, and Joe, stung by the pain from Holt’s knock-down blow, staggered up and swung with all his force and caught Holt’s head as it was being snapped back. As if struck dead, Holt fell in a lump, and Big Loomis cried, ‘You next, you little bastard.’ He launched a blow at Jemail, but the little Arab was well down the stairs.

  I did not enter the scene until two hours later. Jemail had run from the Bordeaux to the Mamounia, shouting, ‘Mr. Fairbanks! They going to kill each other!’ I hurried to the Bordeaux, but the battlers were gone and I surrendered my search. Late that afternoon Jemail came to inform me that they were all having hot soup together at the Terrace and sharing a bottle of whiskey which he had bought for them on the black market.

  Where had they been? In a Turkish bath, salving their bruises and relaxing their muscles. When I reached the Terrace, they were drinking like old buddies and Big Loomis was explaining that in a brawl, he rarely used his fists: ‘I prefer that good old-fashioned football swipe. You get your arm swinging, you can knock a man clear across a room.’

  ‘I know,’ said Holt, and there was no more nonsense about Big Casino.

  We stayed together most of that night, talking football and war and gang fights in Marrakech. Holt asked how an apparently decent man like Big Loomis, a man you could get to like when you saw him in action, could involve himself in a filthy deal like the photograph with Ugly Abdullah, and Loomis said, ‘Some of us believe the war in Vietnam is indefensible. We’re willing to do anything to escape it.’

  ‘But you and Joe are born brawlers,’ Holt said. ‘You obviously love fighting, yet you claim conscientious objection.’

  ‘I never claimed it,’ Joe said.

  ‘What I mean—how can you take a high moral stand against war and smear yourself with Big Casino?’

  ‘Anything’s permissible,’ Joe said.

  ‘But don’t you realize a photograph like that could ruin your life?’

  ‘With whom?’ Big Loomis interrupted. ‘Maybe years from now a photo like that dated 1970 will be a badge of honor. Certainly the people of our generation will understand and the others don’t count.’ He took a long swig of whiskey and pointed at Holt with the bottle: ‘Take Gretchen. Suppose next year Joe wanted to marry her. A photo like that would rip her old man’s head off. He’d go right up the wall and zoom around the ceiling like a dead chicken. But would it matter a damn to Gretchen? Wouldn’t she love Joe even more for his guts?’

  This was a line of argument I did not want to follow, so I left them and wandered across the Djemaá to the Bordeaux and as usual drifted into the big room, where I found twenty-odd young people submerged in the sweet, heavy smell of marijuana and captives of the gentle lassitude which prolonged smoking of that weed induced, and this was one of the most instructive things I was to do in Marrakech, for late that night I was given a view of the future which I have never forgotten.

  The crowd was indulging in their usual sport of how they would settle the world’s problems, and no one showed any rancor or strong conviction as he passed idly from one gigantic confrontation to the next. Vietnam, Cuba, revolution in South America, the Sine-Russian conflict, the folly of having wasted billions of dollars on the moon shot, the California report proving that Negroes are genetically inferior—all these were discussed with charming sincerity, and dismissed in a cloud of marijuana.

  After midnight, when the crowd thinned a bit, conversation centered on the hydrogen bomb, and again I witnessed the deep confusion produced by this ever-present threat, but with irresponsible grace the conversationalists drifted away from this hovering topic and went on to talk about the fact that in all nations a new breed was rising which simply would not go to war: ‘They’ll have to machine-gun us in the streets,’ one boy of nineteen said, and I suspected that this conclusion had not been idly reached; I regretted that Harvey Holt was not there to argue with him, for I was beginning to believe that the larger group of young Americans—the ones back home—would retain views somewhat like Holt’s and would support war if it was presented to them within the historical tradition. Consequently, between these two groups of war-resisters and war-supporters there would have to be a conflict.

  It was not then, however, that I caught my glimpse of the future. During most of the evening Rolf and Inger had served merely as hosts, supplying marijuana for the various pipes that were being passed and going to the Djemaá for bread and cheese for their smorgasbord. Toward three in the morning, when the last of the crowd was departing, Rolf stopped me as I was about to leave and asked, ??
?What do you think of the conclusions tonight?’ and I replied, ‘They reached a major conclusion every four minutes, and frankly, I’m dizzy.’ He laughed and asked, ‘I mean about the war bit?’

  I said, ‘I find it mildly offensive that a generation whose very existence was saved by the men who opposed Hitler before they were born should tonight be applauding when The Beatles make fun of that effort.’

  Inger said, ‘Not the effort. The wrong uses to which memories of that effort are being put today. We are truly fed up.’

  I saw there was no use in my trying to discuss a theme on which so many had made up their minds so firmly, so I thanked Inger for her hospitality and started out the door, but again Rolf stopped me. ‘Don’t go,’ he said, and I realized that he wished to talk with someone older, someone with a more combative mind than those he had been listening to that night, so I sat on the bed and he began, ‘You seem to miss the big point about our generation. You get hung up on war or sex or drugs, and we don’t. Inger and I, for example, we have a whole new thing going.’ I asked him what it was.

  ‘It’s this. We are really cutting out from society. Whole segments of us are simply not going to have anything to do with the values that have motivated you. Take Inger and me. We see no reason to get married. We’re sure it’s an honorable estate for those who need it, but we don’t. We see no reason to get educated in formal schools for formal degrees. If you want to be an engineer or a doctor, I grant that you need such degrees, but we don’t. We educate ourselves … perhaps to a high level … but it’s for us, not for some examining board.’

  Inger, who now sat down on the bed beside me, holding between her fingers the fag end of a cigarette which one of the departed guests had rolled, broke in to say, ‘We try to do everything as inoffensively as possible. Even our dress and the way we wear our hair is temperate. On those points, which society takes so seriously, we’ll make concessions. But on the big issues, we won’t. Honestly, we would die rather than submit to the old forms.’

  She was so sincere, so attractive, with the yellowish smoke drifting past her head, that I asked, ‘That’s quite satisfactory, I’m sure, when you’re twenty-eight. But how are you going to adjust later on?’

  Rolf snapped his fingers and cried, ‘That’s precisely it! This is later on.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘I’m referring to a home … children … reliable income.’

  The two Swedes winked at each other and broke into open laughter. She grabbed my arm and said, ‘You dear man! Don’t you realize what we’re saying? This is the future. This is our home … for six months every year.’

  ‘Who’s supporting you?’

  Rolf shook his finger back and forth under my nose. ‘You are missing the whole point, Mr. Fairbanks.’ He opened an orange soda, poured me half a glass, kept the bottle for himself. ‘In two weeks Inger and I fly back to Stockholm. We take no hash or keef with us. In those suitcases over there we have normal clothing, and before we go we cut our hair a little shorter. When we leave the airport at Stockholm we catch a bus that takes us to a flat just like thousands of others, and if you were to see us the day after we get home, you wouldn’t be able to tell us from millions of others who look just like us. At noon that first day Inger will start to visit kindergartens, and by the time she’s seen three, she’ll have a good job at a good salary. She’s a wonderful teacher and is in great demand.’

  Inger interrupted to offer me her cigarette, which I declined, so she took several drags and said, ‘As soon as Rolf lands, he reports to almost any asylum for the insane, and they’re so happy to find someone who can cope—who will report to work faithfully—that he lands a good job even faster than I do.’

  ‘For six months we work most diligently,’ Rolf explained.

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then we quit.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Of course. It’s time for Marrakech. Our real life is down here and we’ve saved enough bread to swing it. So Inger quits at the kindergarten and I quit at the asylum, and we’re on our way.’

  ‘And there’s no problem when you get back?’

  ‘I’ve been telling you. Within two or three hours after we land we have good jobs again.’ He reached for Inger’s cigarette, took a few puffs and returned it. ‘It’s a new world. Look at Inger. Can’t you see that she’s really very competent? Don’t you suppose that if she wanted to apply herself to the rat-race of a school system, she could become headmistress in short time? There’ll always be a place for Inger. And do you know why? Mainly because she’s found a contentment that others haven’t. She doesn’t fight or elbow. She has no aggressions. She is truly one of the beautiful people. If she went to America, she’d land a well-paid job within one day.’

  ‘But I would never work more than six months a year,’ Inger said. ‘Then it would have to be back to Marrakech … for the real life.’

  ‘You find this so gratifying?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ she asked.

  For a long time I could not answer, for I was trying to judge this mysterious life on its own terms—the Djemaá, the fellowship, the surcease the young found in marijuana, the benevolent indifference of the local society, the narcotic suspension of real life, the Arabian Nights milieu, the endless conversations, the music, the irresponsibility—and I had to confess its lure; but against it I had to weigh the tough gratifications of the other world, from which I also derived so much pleasure in hard work, competitive triumphs, art museums, tall buildings well designed, Beethoven symphonies, and homes with growing children. Finally I said, ‘It could be gratifying … as a vacation.’

  ‘Enough!’ Rolf cried. ‘That’s all I want you to admit. As a vacation it has merit. You see, the difference between us is only the length of the vacation. Inger and I insist that it last at least six months, the work no more than six.’

  ‘In Stockholm we work intensively,’ Inger assured me, and I could believe her. ‘Rolf usually takes over the most difficult ward of the asylum and ends the problems. He’d make a superb director. So we pay our way in society. But from society we demand a much better life than our parents had.’

  ‘We thought of splitting the year, five months’ work, seven months’ vacation,’ Rolf said, ‘but you’ll appreciate the reason we didn’t. Inger found that in five months she couldn’t train her children. I found I couldn’t really clean up a ward in less than six. And we do like to do a good job.’

  ‘Children?’ I asked.

  ‘We have a little girl,’ Inger said, passing the cigarette to Rolf. ‘When we get back, she’s overjoyed to be with us. When we’re down here, she’s quite content to be with her grandmother.’

  Rolf said, ‘She’s growing up rather better than those we see around her,’ and Inger said, ‘Don’t look so surprised, Mr. Fairbanks. In Israel thousands of children are brought up in the kibbutz. And they seem to turn out better than those who are brought up in the traditional ways. In the next generation it’ll be standard across the world. The family is vastly overrated.’

  ‘Will you ever get married?’ I asked.

  Rolf shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve suggested it once or twice … not very strongly. Inger says she has all the children she wants. Also, when you work in an asylum, marriage looks somewhat less enchanting than it does when you’re twenty and hopeful.’

  ‘I doubt we’ll need marriage,’ Inger said, blowing the black bangs out of her eyes. ‘Of course, we don’t know how we’ll feel when we’re forty.’

  ‘How about your daughter?’

  ‘You mean … does our not being married affect her adversely? The only case in which our not being married might have harmful consequences would be if she wanted to marry the son of some traditional middle-class family, but we’d do anything within our power to prevent that anyway, and not being married ourselves seems an effective tactic.’

  Then a new idea struck me. ‘What you’re doing is gambling that the economic system which men like me organize
and keep going will be elastic enough—secure enough, if you wish—to enable you to enter it on your own terms, grab off a little cash, and return to your six-month vacation? In other words, you exist because we pay the bill?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Rolf agreed. ‘With this correction. The system exists primarily for your benefit. You don’t run the system for us. You run it for yourself. But in order to keep it functioning, you need our work and our consuming. You need us as much as we need you. And the price you’re going to have to pay us in the future is one year’s wages for six months’ work.’

  ‘And the promise of a secure job each time you come back?’

  ‘Definitely. But not for our sake. For your sake. When I clean up the mess in the asylum—and I work very hard for the money you pay me—I’m not doing it for myself primarily. I’m doing it for you—to keep your system going.’

  ‘Isn’t it everybody’s system? How many couples like you can it support … on half production?’

  ‘Obviously it can support us,’ Rolf said, ‘and we’re not concerned about the others.’

  ‘Why not make your contributions over the whole year?’ I asked in some irritation.

  ‘Because that’s too long a spell to work at other people’s tasks.’

  ‘Why not make them your tasks?’

  ‘What you really mean is, ‘Aren’t you interested in promotion and higher salary?” Inger would find no satisfaction in being headmistress. I’d get none from being an asylum director. That kind of career gratification we’ve eliminated from our thinking, and so have millions of others. As for the money, we frankly don’t want any more.’

  ‘Has it been marijuana that’s killed your drive?’ I asked.

  ‘In Stockholm we never touch it. Our police make it too risky … for the present. So abstinence is the price we have to pay for being eligible to work in your system. It’s not particularly onerous.’