The Drifters

  Britta stared straight ahead at the outlines of Málaga, so Sigrid concluded: ‘What’s left is the way most of the girls manage it. The American soldiers flock down here each weekend—even sailors from Rota. And the big thing in their lives is to set up an apartment with a Swedish girl. They’re very generous, because they get paid well, but they’re loud and damned near illiterate. I thought about it … quite seriously … anything to get a foothold in Spain. But in the end I couldn’t take it. What would you talk about with an American soldier?’ She sighed, then said quietly, ‘So on Friday I fly back … if I don’t jump out this window first.’

  Unhappy with this report, Britta said, ‘I’m hungry,’ so they went down to lunch and were given one of the best tables, and not once during her stay in the Northern Lights did anyone indicate in any prejudicial way that they knew she had made the trip at the cheapest possible fare. To the hotel staff she was another beautiful Norwegian girl who could be used to decorate the hotel and make it look something like the photographs in the advertising brochures, and they knew that if they treated her well, she might in future years return … at full rate.

  In every respect Britta found the physical aspects of her vacation better than she had expected. The room was larger, the bedding cleaner, the view more spectacular. The food was good, with three courses at every meal, four plates to chose from in each course: one was strictly Scandinavian, with the accent on fish; one was Spanish, with emphasis on spices; one was French, with a new sauce every meal; and one was international and totally bland. Only the indoor swimming pool had a serious weakness: three girls to every man. In sum, the Northern Lights was one of the best tourist values in the world, even at top prices, and at $26.13 for fifteen days it was a miracle.

  Yet Britta could not enjoy it, because every morning when she awakened she realized that the time of her departure was one day closer, and this depressed her. She asked the hotel manager if he had any jobs, and he threw up his hands: ‘My dear girl! If I had fifty jobs I could fill them.’ She also stopped by the SAS offices, but they were fully staffed. ‘Girls who get jobs here don’t leave,’ the office director said. She tried the luxury hotels, one after the other, and found nothing. On Friday she bade her roommate goodbye; Sigrid had tears in her eyes as she left Spain, and that evening her bed was taken by Mette, a delightful girl from Copenhagen, the daughter of a newspaper editor.

  Mette had firm ideas about how a vacation should be spent, and on the first night invited Britta to accompany her to the Arc de Triomphe, explaining, ‘When two blondes walk in together, a nicer type of boy swings into action, because he has to have a buddy, and to have a buddy you must be at least human. If a blonde goes out alone, she’s likely to pick up creeps who operate solitary.’

  When they entered the discotheque they made a stir, with confident Mette leading the way, and before midnight she had arranged dates with two American soldiers from the base near Sevilla. The men were young and bright and noisy and had an apartment near the ocean. Mette said she’d like to see it, but Britta felt that this could come later. Before she shacked up with soldiers she would exhaust every possibility of a job; she was convinced that something dramatic would happen to save her from flying back to Tromsø and she would pursue every possibility that might help it to happen.

  ‘I’m not a prude about sex,’ she told Mette the next morning when the Danish girl returned to the hotel. ‘In a crisis I’ll take an apartment from the Americans. But what I really want is a job.’

  ‘You find one,’ Mette said, ‘and they’ll build a statue to you—in Copenhagen harbor, right beside the Little Mermaid.’ But later she admitted, ‘You were smart to go home last night. They just got drunker and drunker.’ But when midnight approached she said, ‘I will not spend Saturday night in a hotel room with another girl. Come on, I’ll treat you to the Arc de Triomphe.’

  At the discotheque Britta saw the two American soldiers, but they were standing at the bar, so glassy-eyed drunk they did not even remember the girls. Nothing happened. The music was tremendously loud and good, and there seemed to be about the same number of young people as the night before, but no men dropped by their table to talk, so about two in the morning Mette in desperation walked to the bar and reminded the almost-unconscious Americans who she was. It was agreed that she would sleep at their place again, whereupon she returned to Britta and said, ‘You can come along if you like,’ but Britta said, ‘No thanks. I don’t object to a little sex, but the man has to be awake when it starts.’

  She walked home alone, and it was on this night, as the stars were brilliant above the mountains and music came from every bar, that her panic began: ‘Oh God! I’m going to miss the whole thing. In nine more days the plane will return and drag me back into the tunnel.’ Without realizing what she was doing, she began whistling softly the cavatina from The Pearl Fishers, and its languid melody, so appropriate to southern Spain at night, tormented her with its vision of lost paradises. She passed a score of bars crowded with weekend visitors, and twice Spanish gentlemen from Madrid accosted her in gallant hyperbole, and she thought: Don Energetico, one false step and you’re going to have a Norwegian mistress on your hands.

  When she reached her hotel she could not go in. She could not bear to see that clean Scandinavian lobby, that antiseptic, lonely room with its distant view of Málaga: Oh God, I am so afraid. I am so alone. In the dark night she wanted to weep, but felt that it was beneath her Norwegian dignity to do so. Biting her lip to restrain the tears, she started back toward the center of town, an eighteen-year-old girl determined to find a solution, any solution to her problem.

  Nothing happened. She drifted into four different bars and out again before any of the men could talk with her. She went down to the silent beach and walked eastward along it, hundreds of apartments towering above her. ‘There must be someone up there,’ she said to herself, ‘who’s as lonely as I am. But how in the hell do you find him?’ She kicked the sand and wandered back to the center of town, where some American soldiers wanted to talk with her, but they were drunk. She tried another bar, but it was German, so she walked right out, and in the end she had to go back to her hotel. It was four in the morning and Mette was not home.

  ‘There must be some way,’ she told herself repeatedly, falling asleep in a chair with her clothes on.

  Each day at noon she surprised the Scandinavians and astonished the Americans and Britons by appearing in her bikini, wearing a loose robe and sandals, headed for the seashore. ‘You’re not going swimming?’ guests asked. ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Sun’s out.’

  On the way to the beach an icy wind whipped at her ankles, tossing her robe aside, so that men could see her excellent legs and beautiful torso. They whistled at her and made sly suggestions, and as she passed them she thought: If you clowns only knew how easy it would be if you had any guts. One proper word. One decent invitation.

  Along the windswept beach the municipality maintained a series of low walls constructed of wattle and reed plaited in ancient peasant patterns, and they provided good protection against the wind. Each day, snuggled close to those walls, a few hardy Scandinavians and Germans came to profit from what sun there was, and whenever Britta came among them and threw off her robe, revealing her flaxen hair and handsome body, the sunbathers stopped whatever they were doing and admired her. Invariably some German athlete would ask where she was from, but she found it impossible to talk with him.

  Actually, when one was protected from the wind, the beach wasn’t bad, and before long she had accumulated the tan she had dreamed of, but occasionally she would look up from the sand and see on the roadway beside the beach English and American ladies in overcoats, and everything would seem contrary and strange.

  After lying in whatever sun there might be for an hour or so, Britta would leave the windbreak and dash down to the water’s edge. Without testing the ice-cold waves, she would grab a deep breath and run into the sea until the water reached her waist, then plunge ben
eath it and swim underwater for a few minutes. The water, always colder than she had expected but warmer than it ever was at Tromsø nearly paralyzed her at first, but the exercise was so invigorating that she found real joy in swimming and gasping and shaking her blond hair free, and after fifteen minutes of this she would run from the sea, dash across the beach and rub herself vigorously with a towel, finding in her ability to withstand the cold a courage to face the disappointments she was encountering in Torremolinos.

  Always when she stood drying herself people came up to converse with her, but never did anyone arrive in whom she detected that flash of interest which she might care to pursue and develop. On Friday afternoon, the twelfth day of her vacation, she slipped into her robe, recovered her sandals and walked disconsolately back to the Northern Lights, flicking at imaginary ghosts with her towel. ‘Are you having a good time?’ the hotel manager asked her. She forced a smile, drew her pouting lip back from her white teeth, and said, ‘Wonderful.’ Alone in the elevator she growled, ‘I could kick this damned building down stone by stone.’ When she reached her room, Mette was preparing to join her Americans, and suggested, ‘Remember, this is Friday, so maybe there’ll be some new men coming down from the base. You want to come along?’

  Britta did, desperately, and said, ‘Well, if there were only someone new …’ By the time the girls reached the Americans’ apartment the men were already drunk; there was nobody new; Mette’s friend insisted upon going to bed with her immediately; and ten minutes after Britta had arrived at the party she was walking back to her hotel, alone.

  Saturday was the worst day of her vacation, one that she would often recall with a sense of terror. It was the thirteenth day, an ominous fact which she noted when she arose. At lunch she realized that she had memorized the menu; the food was good, but here it came marching at her in established order. She looked about her at the sturdy Scandinavian families, solid middle-class women and their honest husbands, and she thought of them saving their money throughout the year for this one glorious vacation in Spain, with the regiments of food coming at them, and she could visualize herself in this room twenty years from now.

  On the beach that Saturday she was so terribly lonely that she allowed a German to talk with her for twenty minutes. He was a most handsome man, blond and well muscled, and he proposed that they have a drink, but she could see him only as an officer on the great battleship that lay sunk off her island, and he became a ghost in a beribboned uniform and she felt sorry for him and sent him away.

  She could not go in to supper, but went into the center of town and with her own money bought a Chinese dinner, and as she was eating, a Spanish businessman down from Madrid sat at her table, speaking excellent English. He volunteered to pay for her dinner, assuring her that he came often to Torremolinos and would be happy to know that someone as attractive as Britta was waiting for him. She studied him as if he were an applicant for a job and was tempted to pursue the matter, but she knew intuitively that this was not what she wanted. She was intended for something better than the weekend mistress of a Madrid businessman, no matter how charming, so she said, ‘Sorry, I’m waiting for my fiancé.’ He knew she was lying; he was sure no young man was going to appear, but he appreciated her courtesy in offering him a plausible excuse, so he nodded and withdrew. After a decent interval she left.

  It was Saturday night and she was stricken with loneliness, made no less oppressive by the fact that she had brought it upon herself: she could have stayed with the drunken Americans or she could have picked up the Spaniard, but she felt that these were not honest options, and she would not delude herself with them. Slowly she walked toward the sounds coming from the Arc de Triomphe, bought a ticket and went in. The music was exciting, reminding her of how much she had enjoyed it on her first visit, but as the night wore on, nothing happened. She met no one and decided to go back to her hotel, but as she left the discotheque she felt someone take her arm. It was the Spanish businessman.

  ‘Your fiancé failed to appear?’ he asked graciously.

  ‘Had to work in Málaga,’ she replied.

  ‘Then there is nothing to impede you.’

  She allowed herself to be led away from the street and toward a public park with many obscure areas. Adroitly and with charm, the Spaniard took her to a protected corner and within two highly proficient minutes had her practically undressed. With lightning speed his trousers were down and he was about to mount her when she came to her senses and pushed him away.

  He had anticipated this and covered her with kisses, pulling away her remaining clothes, but now she rebelled. Shoving him so hard he fell to one knee, she recovered her clothing and began adjusting it, but he would have none of this, for he interpreted her hesitancy as natural modesty on the first night and he intended to respect it on the one hand but to override it on the other.

  He therefore began kissing her violently as he tugged for her clothes, whispering as he did so, ‘What is your name, beloved? Will you stay in Torremolinos if I find you a flat?’

  His speech was so ridiculous that she began to laugh, but this infuriated him and he gave her two sharp blows to the head. That did it. With violent thrusts and slaps she drove the poor fellow back, more than a match for him if he cared to pursue the fight. He struck at her ineffectually while she fought to recover her skirt from his left hand. ‘Get yourself dressed,’ she said contemptuously.

  ‘You a lesbian?’ he growled. ‘You don’t like sex?’

  The question was so preposterous that she gave no answer. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said grudgingly. ‘It was your idea.’

  ‘You think of yourself as some cold goddess from the north?’ he asked from the shadows.

  ‘Oh, quit it!’ she said. A dozen clever comments came to her mind, but she offered none because she knew they would hurt him; other responsible observations occurred to her which would allow him to preserve his dignity, but she was too distracted to bother with them. It had been a mistake, a regrettable accident, and she wanted it to end. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated, resuming her walk to the hotel.

  She was not proud of herself. If she had not been so obviously looking for companionship in the Chinese resturant, the Spaniard would not have approached her; and if she had not lied to him, he would not have accosted her at the discotheque. ‘It’s time I got out of this town,’ she said grimly to herself as she walked through the darkened streets, but no sooner had she said these words than their consequences overwhelmed her: to leave Spain, to surrender her glimpse of another life. In desperation she ran through, the streets, and as she did so she came upon a small bar she had not noticed before. From the noise issuing through its open door it had to be American, and when she looked at the sign she recognized the name from a John Wayne movie she had seen in Tromsø, THE ALAMO; it was printed in crude letters along the barrel of a huge wooden revolver. For a moment she listened to the screaming music, the sound of high-pitched voices, and she thought: This is the kind of place you need on lonely Saturday nights.

  Hesitantly she entered and slipped into a seat in the corner. The bartender, a tall, slim American with long hair and a beard, waited for her to get settled, then casually walked over to ask what she wished, and she said, ‘How about a beer?’

  ‘It’s lousy. Refrigerator broke down. But we do have some cold orange.’

  He brought her one and stood by her chair for a moment. ‘You just in?’

  ‘Yes. Norway.’ She said nothing more, so he made some general comment and returned to his work at the bar. He did not come her way again for about an hour, during which time he was quite busy both tending the bar and serving the tables. When he did return he was as noncommittal as before. She asked what part of America he came from, but before he could answer he was called back to the bar.

  At two in the morning she was taken in tow by three American sailors from the navy base at Rota, a noisy, generous lot. Since she was blond and Scandinavian, they insisted she was Swedish and wanted to know what s
he thought about President Eisenhower’s famous accusation that Sweden was a degenerate, socialistic, immoral nation where suicide was rampant. ‘I’m not Swedish,’ she said, ‘but I don’t believe a foreign statesman in President Eisenhower’s position would make such a charge.’

  ‘But you are socialistic, aren’t you?’ one of the sailors pressed.

  ‘Not that I’ve noticed,’ she replied. And when the sailors became abusive about the Swedes, accusing them of encouraging American military to desert, she tried to counter their arguments, then blurted out, ‘What about Vietnam?’ The sailors had various answers, and the discussion continued till about four in the morning. They liked the free manner in which she spoke and wanted to know where they could see her the next day, and she said, ‘On the beach. Where else?’ and they asked in astonishment, ‘You mean you go swimming? In February?’ and she told them, ‘Norwegians are real sea people. Not little boys in sailor suits,’ whereupon one of the Americans caught her by the shoulders and gave her a goodbye kiss, crying, ‘You’re the little Viking I’ve been looking for.’

  Once more she had managed to get through the night.

  On the final Sunday afternoon Britta had to admit that her bright dream of Spain had disintegrated. Putting on her bikini, she threw her robe about her shoulders and went down to the beach for the last time. She noticed that the wind was a little less cold, the sun a bit warmer, and she thought: How utterly rotten! On my last day they make things better. After a sunbath that was actually relaxing and imparted a finishing touch of tan, she ran into the icy waters, swam vigorously for twenty minutes, and dashed back to find a visitor standing by her robe.