Not with us. It never would be. I could see that Gretchen and Britta considered themselves fortunate that they had associated with men who had protected them, and I noticed that each drew closer to her man. The men, for their part, were filled with helpless outrage that a girl as fragile as Monica had been so abused. A wandering pimp, seeing Joe momentarily detached from our group, sidled up to him and asked, ‘You like to spend one whole night my sister? Very young, very clean.’ Joe punched him viciously in the gut, doubling him with pain. It was then that I said, We’d better get out of this town.’
Now Gretchen sprang her surprise. Leaning across the table, she reached for Joe’s hands and said, ‘It’s time for us to do what must be done. I’m giving you the pop-top. Go where you have to go, then sell it.’
There was a protracted silence. Joe reddened and was speechless, confused by the transparent revelation contained in her impulsive act. Britta smiled approvingly. It was practical Holt who spoke: ‘How are you going to transfer the papers?’ I suggested the American consul, but Kasim, monitoring our conversation, hurried up to suggest, ‘I have a friend who is a printer. For ten dollars he’ll forge you a complete bill of sale … all documents in order.’
‘What country to what country?’ Big Loomis asked.
‘You name it. Germany to Sweden, Egypt to Tanzania. To him it’s all the same.’
To my surprise Holt agreed. ‘Probably the best way. You get mixed up with an American consul … there aren’t that many months in the year.’ So Gretchen unloaded her purse and produced a series of papers which Kasim stuffed into his inside pocket
‘How long?’ Gretchen asked.
With my friend, every case is an emergency,’ Kasim said reassuringly. ‘Forty minutes.’
‘So fast?’ Gretchen asked.
‘In Tangier … yes,’ Big Loomis said, but Kasim did not depart immediately. Going to Joe, he asked, ‘How about a passport? Maybe a special passport?’
‘How much?’ Joe asked cautiously.
‘Depends upon what ones we happen to have on hand. By the way, any of you like to sell your passports? Good money.’
Holt, afraid that Joe might be seriously considering exchanging his American passport for some other in order to escape detection by American officials, said firmly, ‘We’ll get along with the passports we have.’
‘If problems should arise,’ Kasim said unctuously, ‘I’ll be back in forty minutes.’
‘Are you serious about the car?’ Joe asked.
‘Yes. It’s a present … to an extraordinary young man.’ Quietly Gretchen added, ‘A young man with dignity.’
‘Where will you go, Joe?’ Holt asked.
‘I heard these kids at the Bordeaux the other night They said the big scene was Shinjuku.’
‘It’s very good,’ Holt said. ‘Lot of girls … lot of action.’
‘Where’s Shinjuku?’ Britta asked, insistent as ever upon identifying places.
‘Tokyo,’ Holt said. The most exciting part of Tokyo.’
Gretchen suggested, Why don’t you try India? A lot of people find the answers … the illumination … in India.’
Now Big Loomis broke in: ‘You would be out of your mind to waste one minute in that country. No fable of our time is more ridiculous than the one which says that India has the answer to anything.’
‘I was speaking of the spirituality,’ Gretchen replied.
‘So was I,’ Loomis said. ‘I lived in India for the better part of a year … also Sikkim and Nepal … good grass … good conversation among the Europeans. But the illumination referred to by starry-eyed kids in Greenwich Village and Bloomsbury … it’s not there. That’s an illusion sponsored by half-ass professors in half-ass American colleges.’
Holt confirmed the big man’s thesis. ‘It’s like Tyrone Power wandering through Europe and finally winding up in India. He didn’t learn anything.’
We turned in our chairs to look at Harvey, who refused any further elaboration. Joe started to ask what Tyrone Power had to do with this conversation, but shrugged his shoulders and turned back to Loomis, who said, ‘I appreciate the fact that you girls have had a rough time … Monica’s death … and I apologize for what I’m about to say, but from the nonsense that Gretchen’s been spouting, I suppose you have to hear it. When I landed in Calcutta—God forbid that such a thing should happen to any man—I was in search of illumination. I spent three days in that cesspool of horror, with starving children mocking my fat, with men and women dying in the streets, with whole families living off one garbage can, but I was able to forgive it all on the principle that it is from such squalor that we sometimes gain illumination. Great spiritual leaders simply do not arise from banks or university faculty clubs. I made every concession, and in time I began to revel in the death and terror of Calcutta. I also established contact with a great sadhu who volunteered to explain the world’s mysteries to me. He was six feet two inches tall and weighed ninety-one pounds, including his beard. He had once stared at the sun for forty-eight uninterrupted days, and he had about him a certain modesty, because he felt that in my case he ought to consult with two other sadhus, built a lot like himself and with equally long beards. These three holy men—who conducted office hours in a village close to Calcutta, and charged stiff fees—told me many things, and occasionally they said something about equal to what a fifth-grade teacher in a good elementary school might say. Off-hand I can’t give you an illustration, because the teaching of these holy men was more or less nullified by what they were caught doing two days before I completed my course.’
He paused, looked only at the girls and waited for Gretchen to ask what they had done. ‘In conformance to the ritual of their particular school of sadhus, they dug up the grave of a five-year-old girl, dead for three days, and ate her.’
For a moment no one spoke; then Britta said, ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ and she disappeared. Gretchen sat tapping her fingers on the table, then said, ‘Now I know it’s time I went home and got to work. What are you going to do, Cato?’
He waited till Britta returned, pale and embarrassed, then said in hard syllables, ‘I haven’t known what I wanted to do … exactly. Now I do. I’m going to leave here and bum my way to Egypt. Then I’m going down the Red Sea and cross over to Jiddah. From there I’m walking every step of the way to Mecca, where I shall run six times around the great black stone, and when I get back to Philadelphia, I shall put on my fez and announce myself as Hajj’ Cato. I’m going to start a movement, and it’s going to be just as great a racket in favor of blacks as Christianity was against them. And when it’s securely launched, you sons-of-bitches better beware.’
With that he rose, adjusted his fez, and left us.
When he had gone, Big Loomis said reflectively, ‘Three years ago I wore a fez. But don’t worry about that kid. He has staying power. When he gets back to Philadelphia he’s going to be difficult for you whites to handle, but he’s the kind of Negro we all need.’
Gretchen said, ‘I notice you use Negro,’ and Loomis replied, ‘Three years ago I used Afro-American. And to me it was important.’
I asked the huge man what he proposed doing, and he said, ‘I’ll probably stay in Marrakech as long as my mother can send me a little money. I’ve a lot of work to do down there. Sometimes I’m able to help kids like Monica and Cato.’ He rose in full regalia of beads and hand-woven fabrics and Tibetan boots and stalked up the hill toward Zoco Grande, where he would catch a bus back to Marrakech.
‘You think what he said about India was true?’ Britta asked.
‘I saw things like it,’ Holt said.
‘How would I get to Shinjuku?’ Joe asked.
‘Well, you’d drive from here to Egypt. Then you’d have to take a boat to Beirut, because you couldn’t transit Israel. From there you’d head for Damascus and Teheran and then across the desert to Afghanistan and down into Pakistan and through Lahore to India. It’s easy to drive across India and you’d go through Burma a
nd Thailand. You wouldn’t be able to transit Vietnam, so you’d ship your car on a Japanese freighter … they cost practically nothing … and you’d be in Shinjuku.’
I listened with admiration. It was like telling a neighbor how to get to the new grocery: ‘You go to Afghanistan and turn left.’
‘Could I make it on two hundred and eighty bucks?’ Joe asked.
‘Why not?’
There was now an awkward silence as Joe and Gretchen looked at each other—one preparing to head for Tokyo, one for Boston—and out of natural respect for her feelings, he extended her an invitation: ‘How about coming to Japan with me?’ and she said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I heard a man say that taking your wife to Tokyo was like taking a ham sandwich to a banquet.’
‘You’re not his wife,’ Britta pointed out.
‘I know, but I don’t want to spoil his fun with those almond-eyed chicks.’ This fell flat, and there was another awkward silence.
Impulsively Gretchen opened her handbag and fumbled around for her traveler’s checks. ‘You were the best driver in Africa,’ she said, ‘and you merit a bonus.’ Hastily she signed a batch of checks—whether they were fifties or hundreds I couldn’t see—and with acute embarrassment shoved them at Joe. He took them, mumbling his thanks. She then looked up at him with a radiant face, free of fears and tensions. ‘We’ll meet somewhere,’ she said, and they shook hands.
What Joe said next must have been difficult for him, for he knew it was likely that Holt was aware of his former interest in Britta. Sucking in his breath, he said, ‘You know, Holt, since you’re heading for Ceylon and I’m heading for Japan, why don’t we drive across Asia together? The three of us, I mean.’
‘I’d like that,’ Holt said evenly. ‘We could talk.’
‘That’s what I had in mind.’
‘And we could share expenses,’ Britta suggested.
‘There’s one thing,’ Joe said. ‘I’d want to stop at Leptis Magna.’
‘Why not?’ Holt said. ‘We go right through it.’
‘What’s to see in Leptis Magna?’ Britta asked.
‘Ruins. I want to see one of those Roman cities that vanished because they misused the land. Maybe—when I’m through with jail, that is—I might like to work in land use. Mr. Gridley said I ought to think about getting a job in a national park. Keeping the earth alive.’
‘We could look at the irrigation in Egypt, too.’ Holt suggested, but I noticed that as he said this, Britta frowned and was about to speak, but she was forestalled by the return of Kasim with the forged title. Gretchen paid him the ten dollars, but he whined, ‘That’s for the printer. What about me?’ So I threw him another two and Joe started stowing his gear in the pop-top.
Now Britta spoke. ‘We can stop at Leptis Magna,’ she said cautiously, ‘but not a lot of other places, because we have to be in Ceylon by December 23.’
‘No we don’t,’ Holt assured her. ‘It’s true, I’m due back. But the company isn’t going to get itchy about a week here or there.’
‘What I meant to say,’ Britta explained, ‘is I have to be there on the twenty-third.’
‘Why?’
She blushed and said in a low voice, ‘Because I’ve sent my father an airplane ticket to visit us in Ceylon.’
Holt was startled. ‘Where’d you get the money?’ he asked.
Britta put her hand on his and said, ‘Whenever you gave me money for anything, I put a little aside.’
I was looking at Holt when she said this, and he cocked his head and stared at her in astonishment, and across his deeply lined face came that look of loving bewilderment which husbands sometimes cast at wives with whom they have lived for many years but are only now discovering.
But Gretchen remembered: ‘In Alte you told us that if your father was ever forced to see Ceylon as it actually was, he’d collapse.’
‘I said so then,’ Britta confessed, ‘but now I believe that men ought to inspect their dreams. And know them for what they are.’
BY JAMES A. MICHENER
Tales of the South Pacific
The Fires of Spring
Return to Paradise
The Voice of Asia
The Bridges at Toko-Ri
Sayonara
The Floating World
The Bridge at Andau
Hawaii
Report of the Country Chairman
Caravans
The Source
Iberia
Presidential Lottery
The Quality of Life
Kent State: What Happened and Why
The Drifters
A Michener Miscellany: 1950–1970
Centennial
Sports in America
Chesapeake
The Covenant
Space
Poland
Texas
Legacy
Alaska
Journey
Caribbean
The Eagle and the Raven
Pilgrimage
The Novel
James A. Michener’s Writer’s Handbook
Mexico
Creatures of the Kingdom
Recessional
Miracle in Seville
This Noble Land: My Vision for America
The World Is My Home
with A. Grove Day
Rascals in Paradise
with John Kings
Six Days in Havana
About the Author
JAMES A. MICHENER, one of the world’s most popular writers, was the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Tales of the South Pacific, the best-selling novels Hawaii, Texas, Chesapeake, The Covenant, and Alaska, and the memoir The World Is My Home. Michener served on the advisory council to NASA and the International Broadcast Board, which oversees the Voice of America. Among dozens of awards and honors, he received America’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1977, and an award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities in 1983 for his commitment to art in America. Michener died in 1997 at the age of ninety.
James A. Michener, The Drifters
(Series: # )
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends