The Drifters by James A. Michener
They were standing about eight yards apart at this moment of recognition, and slowly they walked toward each other, and who led whom behind the sand dune, it would be difficult to say, but Cato and Monica went down the beach and swam for a couple of hours, and after that the sleeping arrangements in the yellow pop-top were much different.
When I heard this story from Monica, with Gretchen confirming it later in her own hesitant way, I thought how curious love was among this new breed. A boy and a girl live in the same Torremolinos apartment for four months, sleep side by side in a pop-top for two months, go swimming nude for a month, and finaly discover that they like each other. It was a style of courtship I did not comprehend, but as I reflected on it, I began for some bizarre reason to think of Jane Austen and her delicate novel Northanger Abbey, in which two English girls at a resort are thrown into a tizzy by the fact that two soldiers are following them at a respectful distance, and I reflected that Miss Austen’s fiercely proper young ladies must have experienced the same flood of emotion—precisely the same—as Gretchen did when she walked naked to Joe and took him by the hand, and I felt sure that if Miss Austen were writing today, she would not be particularly outraged by what had happened on the beach, and neither was I.
One afternoon, when they had been lying on the sand, observing the crested waves move slowly, subsiding before they reached the shore, as if too tired to make further effort, Gretchen watched as Monica pulled Cato to his feet and led him down the beach, her slim tanned body a lovely counterpart to his black. Gretchen lowered her voice, although there could have been no stranger within five miles and asked, ‘Joe, have you noticed anything odd about Monica these last days?’
Joe said no, but she persisted: ‘Are you sure? Or about Cato? Is he different?’
‘They seem to want to be alone a little more than they used to. But so do we.’
‘Joe, I hate to say this, and if I’m wrong, forgive me. But I want you to look very closely at the inside of Monica’s left elbow.’
‘What’s up?’
‘I’m sure I saw needle marks.’
‘You must be kidding!’
‘No. They’re needle marks. And just where you’d expect them to be … where the veins show. What I want you to do is to look at Cato’s arm. I can’t see marks on his skin … supposing there are any.’
‘What am I to do? Grab his arm the way that American girl did in Pamplona? “Excuse me, but are you on heroin?” ’
‘I think they both are, and I think that accounts for a lot of things recently … their euphoria and depression coming so close together.’ She sat on a small sandbank, her trim knees drawn up to her well-tanned breasts, and dropped her head upon her knees, saying half to herself, ‘That’s all she needs … heroin.’
When Monica and Cato returned, the marks on her left arm showed so clearly that even Joe detected them. However, when he tried to study Cato’s arm he was able to see nothing, since if there were scars, they were camouflaged by the black skin.
For the next several hours Joe and Gretchen found no opportunity to compare notes, but each stared with such fascination at Monica’s arm that they were afraid she must notice, but she was in a state of such exaltation that she saw nothing. It was not until the two couples went to bed, with Monica and Cato thrashing around, that Joe and Gretchen found themselves alone, but they were so close to the others that normal talk was impossible, so Gretchen whispered, ‘Like I said, the marks were there,’ and Joe whispered back, ‘I looked at Cato’s arm but didn’t see anything. You’d have to get real close,’ and Gretchen said very softly, ‘What should we do about this, Joe? I don’t mean only about the kids. We could lose this car if the police caught us. You know Monica … she probably has a gallon of the stuff stowed away somewhere. Does it come in gallons?’
‘What’s the big whispering about down there?’ Monica asked abruptly.
In the darkness Gretchen drew in her breath, squeezed Joe’s hand, then said quietly, ‘Joe and I were trying to decide whether you were using a hypodermic needle on your left arm.’
Silence, then: ‘I am.’
‘You, too, Cato?’
‘Not technically.’
‘But it is heroin?’
‘Yep.’
The four young people lay in silence for some minutes, each trying to think of what ought to be said next. It was Monica who finally spoke: ‘Kids, it’s super. It’s really super. All the things they’ve told you. No matter how you take it … zing, it goes right into the mainstream and it’s perpetual spring. You think LSD expands the consciousness …’ For some minutes she spoke in these extended bursts, proclaiming the superiority of heroin, and her euphoria was so marked, Gretchen and Joe were now certain that at some point that afternoon Monica and Cato must have given themselves shots.
Joe asked, ‘You started with that Indian store in Lourenço Marques, didn’t you?’
‘We were also able to get some in Beira, and I have the name of a man who is highly recommended on Moçambique Island.’
‘If you wanted to stop right now,’ Gretchen asked, ‘could you?’
‘Stop? Are you kidding? All my yesterdays were preludes, as the poet says. I was building up to this all along, and now I’m home safe.’
‘Tell me, Monica, you aren’t inserting the needle into your veins, are you?’
‘No. I’m just popping it under my skin. But when I do decide to mainline, it’ll be none of your business.’
Comment seemed superfluous, and silence filled the pop-top, but after a long interval Joe asked, ‘Cato, what’s with you?’
Apparently he had given himself a smaller dose than Monica’s or it had had a different effect, for he was deeply morose: ‘As Holt used to say in Pamplona … regular.’
‘I mean, could you stop now if we decided …’
‘If you decided? Who the hell are you to decide?’ Cato paused, then his voice grew louder and higher. ‘You think that because you’re the Man you just say, “Cato, little black brother, lay off the stuff” and I lay off. Well, who the fuck do you think you are? You subside, buster, or somebody’s gonna subside you.’ He began throwing words and phrases from his alley days, so that Gretchen covered her face with her hands and wondered what she had got into.
Then suddenly the lights switched on and Monica was climbing down out of her bed and crawling in with Joe and Gretchen. ‘Kids, it’s really the most. It’s what you’ve been looking for without knowing it. It’s so beautiful, you’ll simply never be satisfied with anything less. Joe, you particularly. If you’d only join up you’d see everything so clearly. You’d have a power …’
She spoke in this agitated manner for nearly an hour, assuring her bedmates that if only they would take a good hypodermic full—she’d show them how it worked—they would end their hang-ups and everything would become clear. ‘You see so far into the distance that you seem like an eagle,’ she said. ‘For example, I see very clearly now why I started this liaison with Cato. Father had been badly hurt by the niggers …’
Joe gasped at her use of this word, expecting Cato to explode, but on Cato the heroin had acted as a depressant and he was asleep, twisting convulsively now and then in bed above. ‘As I was explaining,’ Monica continued, ‘Father’s ego had been diminished at the hands of the niggers, and as a loyal daughter I assumed the burden of his conscience, so actually I hate niggers. But I wanted to humiliate myself the way Father had been humiliated, and the best way to do this—in fact, the only way, if you look at it—was for me to take a nigger lover, repulsive though it was.’
‘Monica!’ Gretchen protested. ‘Cato’s up there.’
‘Forget Cato. He was an instrument of my self-abasement.’ She continued with an analysis so turgid that her listeners could not understand any of it.
‘I think you ought to go to sleep,’ Gretchen said, and Joe helped lift the girl back into her own bed, where, as soon as she felt Cato’s body, she began mumbling, ‘Wake up, you dark Greek god, and
Target of the trip north was an unusual island. For five centuries it had stood less than a mile offshore from an area that had remained nothing but a primitive hinterland, populated with savage animals and Stone Age blacks, while the island had flourished as a center of government, sophistication and culture. It was famous as one of the world’s most beautiful islands, not because of its physical attributes but because it contained, over almost every square foot, buildings dating far back into history, spacious squares dedicated to the heroes of Portuguese navigation, and broad avenues lined with flowering trees. At the end nearest the mainland stood an ancient church which St. Francis Xavier had known, and at the opposite end, a forbidding fortress set inside massive walls which had been constructed as long ago as 1545. Repeatedly foreign troops had tried to wrest this fortress from Portugal, but always a bare handful of resolute Portuguese had withstood the invaders for a year, or two, or three. The sieges were fearful, no quarter given, and often Dutch invaders would control ninety-five per cent of the island, but invariably when the siege ended, the fortress would still be occupied by Portuguese troops who would move out cautiously from the walls to reconstruct the rest of the island.
Ilha de Moçambique with its fortress was a shrine in Portuguese history, the most sacred overseas possession, and the roster of great Lusitanians who had served here was endless, led by that one-eyed seaman who had sat on a stone bench at the south end of the island scribbling the verses which were later to be issued as the epic of Portugal, The Lusiads of Luis Vaz de Caões.
The wanderers first saw the island from a slight rise on the road that had been cut through long miles of mainland bush. They saw the great gray fortress, the long straight bridge erected recently, and the flowering trees. ‘It was worth the trip,’ Joe said, and Monica agreed: ‘All my life I’ve heard of Moçambique Island. It stands like a sentinel in African history, but I never thought I’d see it.’
Joe was surprised that a girl on heroin could be as lucid as Monica. With Cato it was different. The drug had a decidedly depressing effect on him, and even when he had just popped a shot, the effect was down rather than up. But the major surprise was that the drug, for all its powerful properties, still left them both in apparent control of their capabilities most of the time.
‘The beginning user,’ Gretchen pointed out when Joe discussed his observations. ‘These kids are just starting, and we don’t know how much they’re taking or what the final effect is going to be.’
‘We know that it permits some pretty torrid love-making.’
‘Who needs that?’ Gretchen asked. ‘I mean, who needs the extra stimulus?’ During the last week there had been little evidence of heroin in the pop-top, but twice Monica had spoken of the Indian pusher who controlled the traffic on the island, so Gretchen feared they would have trouble now that they had arrived.
The drive across the long bridge, whose pilings were sunk deep in ocean water, was exciting, for now the young people could see the island clearly and could guess what it held in store for them. ‘Look at those beaches!’ Cato cried. They bordered both sides of the island and ran practically into the center of town. ‘And the trees!’ Monica added. ‘Nobody ever told me they had so many trees on Moçambique.’
Then they were on the island itself, driving along a handsome boulevard lined with casuarina trees and overlooking the Indian Ocean. At a corner they met a black policeman, and Gretchen asked in English, ‘Have you a camping?’ and the policeman, who could speak no English, caught the key word, left his post and walked beside the car for a block, pointed finally to a large and handsome public park.
‘Camping,’ he said.
‘For automobile?’ Gretchen asked, and the man nodded. ‘For sleeping?’ she asked, making a pillow of her hands and resting her head upon it. Again he nodded, pointing to where they would find water.
Even though the camping at Lourenço Marques had been ideal, in some ways this surpassed it, not because it fronted on the Indian Ocean, nor because of the flowers, but because it was situated right in the heart of the city. You lay in your bed and around you passed the wild and varied life of a strange community. Joe maneuvered the pop-top under a huge flowering tree, and a crowd of residents—black and white—gathered to make them welcome. Speaking no English, they showed the girls where the markets were and the stores that gave good bargains. Children explained the beach and the best locations for bathing. Another policeman stopped by to show the men how to buy gasoline and where city hall was, in case of trouble. Then, to the amazement of the group, a rotund Portuguese businessman came by in freshly pressed whites to invite them to a nearby bar for a welcoming drink.
‘This is Bar Africa,’ he said in patois—part Portuguese, part French, part English. ‘Over there, the hospital. Down there, the Catholic church. A little more, the mosque.’
‘Is the island Muslim?’ Gretchen asked.
‘Eighty per cent,’ the Portuguese said. He paid for the drinks and was about to leave, when Cato said unexpectedly, ‘A lot of my friends in Philadelphia are Black Muslims. Could I see the mosque?’
‘I wouldn’t be the best guide,’ the Portuguese said. ‘I’m Catholic. But I know who would be.’
He dispatched a black boy to run to the post office, and within a few minutes the child returned leading a tall elderly Arab dressed in gray caftan and turban. He wore a small beard, had a deeply lined face and compelling eyes, with which he now studied the young people, paying particular attention to Cato.
‘This is Hajj’,’ the fat Portuguese said, placing his hand affectionately on the arm of the old man. ‘He is our saint.’
‘Hajj’ what?’ Gretchen asked.
‘Just Hajj’,’ the Portuguese said. ‘He had an Arabian name, of course, but for the past fifty years he’s been just Hajj’… the holy one who made the pilgrimage to Mecca … only man of his generation to get there.’
Two Arabs, passing the bar, saw Hajj’ and stopped, asking his blessing, which he gave with a bow of his turbaned head. ‘And now I leave you in his hands,’ the Portuguese said in French, after which he disappeared.
At first the young people were uncomfortable to be with an Arab, for they did not know his language, but Hajj’ smiled and said, ‘I speak English. And even though I am a Muslim, I will have a little of your wine, which is something else I learned from the English.’
He told them of his hajj: ‘In those days it was not easy to get to Mecca. We took a small boat north to Zanzibar. It’s always been a center of Islam, a great center. And we waited there for several weeks till a pilgrimage was arranged and we sailed together to Mogadiscio, which was terribly hot, and we waited there for a couple of weeks, then sailed up to Djibouti for some more pilgrims, and from there to Jidda, where there was almost no water. We walked on foot to Mecca, so many miles that older people died along the way and younger people thought they would die. It was just after the war—the big war—and I remember the automobiles that whizzed past us, throwing dust in our faces, and one broke down, and as we overtook it we laughed at the rich people sitting inside, but pretty soon it was fixed, and when they drove past us again they not only laughed, their tires also kicked pebbles at us, but when we got to Mecca we saw them again, and the car was broken again, so we could not decide who had the best of it.’
‘Was it worth it?’ Cato asked.
The old man turned, studied Cato’s dark face, and said, ‘Worth it? For me it’s been the difference between living and dying. When I returned, everyone knew me as the hajji, the pilgrim who had made the great hajj. Later two other men tried to reach Mecca, but they died. I was the hajji. Ship captains knew me as Hajj’ and brought me business, but so did God. Mecca inspired me to be a saint, and although I fell short, I have borne testimony to saintliness.’
As he spoke, other visitors came for his bless
He led them to the waterfront and along the bay to a handsome green building topped by a minaret. At the door the Americans started to kick off their shoes, but he restrained them, saying, ‘You do that inside,’ and he showed them the racks for shoes and the line of eight basins for washing hands. He took them to the prayer room, a large, clean area with its mihrab indicating Mecca. Then they climbed to the roof, from which he explained the island’s structure. ‘There by the bridge that you crossed, six or seven native compounds looking exactly as they did when my forefathers came here more than a thousand years ago. Grass huts with grass roofs and a thousand people jammed together where a hundred ought to be. In this area around the mosque, our middle class, mainly Arab. Up toward the fort, the big homes of the Portuguese Catholics. And see how narrow the island is. From one waterfront to the other, not more than three city blocks. We are living on a precious little jewel, one of the treasures of this earth.’