The Drifters by James A. Michener
We returned through the swamps and started our long drive to the hills, arriving there about noon. We spread our picnic lunch and ate under some leafy trees, while Gridley with his binoculars surveyed the vast extent of sanctuary lying below us and pointed out one herd after another of animals we could not see with our naked eye. Passing the glasses from hand to hand, we were enjoying this long-distance tour, when Gridley grabbed the glasses, studied a wooded area much closer to us, and said, ‘Here are some beauties. Who knows what they are?’
One at a time we peered through the glasses at a herd of some forty large animals which, had I seen them in the American Rockies, I would have said were elk. Gretchen asked, ‘Are they the sables?’ and Gridley said, ‘The antelope will be much more beautiful. These are elands and we rarely see so many.’ Then, as if they were as curious about us as we were about them, the large animals came slowly toward us, over thirty handsome beasts sniffing the air and testing the terrain cautiously. They came very close, almost in single file, then froze in position for at least five minutes, while we finished our lunch and enjoyed this strange floor show. Finally the lead buck sensed something he did not like, and with a flash of white tails the animals vanished.
‘Oh, I wish we had some music!’ Monica cried. It would make our day perfect,’ and the three young Americans agreed that what they really needed on this picnic was Harvey Holt’s tape recorder. ‘I’d even settle for his sappy songs,’ Cato said, but Monica protested: ‘Not that goo. I’d give anything to have Clive ride up here on an eland’s back, bringing his records so we could hear Octopus again, or Cream or Blind Faith. You know, something real gutsy, with a beat you can feel.’
Each of the four spoke of the hunger he or she felt for some strong music; and Gretchen, remembering how I had liked ‘MacArthur Park,’ made believe she was playing her guitar, and sang: ‘Someone left the cake out in the rain …’
They formed a band of imaginary instruments and ran through a repertoire of numbers I had come to know, and as I listened to them, I realized anew how this music sustained them. Gridley watched in bewilderment, but when Cato began to sing ‘Sic ’Em, Pigs,’ in which the police were ridiculed with grunts and other swinish noises, provided by Joe, he stiffened. In Rhodesia police were essential, and to denigrate them was to align oneself against the constructive forces of society. He said nothing, and a little while later, when the four were lying back in the shady heat of noon, still talking about music, he winked at me, an act whose significance I did not then comprehend.
The songs made Monica talkative, and she said, ‘I keep remembering what Gretchen told us at our picnic at the monastery … that there have always been people like us on pilgrimage. The songs we were singing that Mr. Gridley didn’t like … oh, I saw you wincing. I’ll bet respectable people in the castles didn’t approve of the troubadours either. You know, the other night I was thinking about the way my family carried on at the beginning of the last century. Lady Wenthorne, rest her dear dead soul, had been reprimanding me for wasting my life bumming around Africa. But my ancestors wasted their lives bumming around Europe. There was Christopher Braham, friend of Keats and Shelley. He knocked around Europe for eleven years. Lived in that house at the Spanish Steps in Rome. And Pittenweem Braham, named after an uncle in Scotland. Pronounced his name Pinnim and toured Europe with a covey of homosexuals. And the great Braham, Fitzwilliam, who served in Gladstone’s cabinet. He was a total loss till the age of thirty-seven, but then, with his wild experiences in Spain and Germany behind him, he became invaluable to government. I suppose it’s always been the same. The good people survive and are better for the experience. The weak go under. No, that’s not my point. It was the experiences that made them good people. You lose Pittenweem to the fairies. You save Fitzwilliam for the cabinet.’
She looked fondly at Cato, as if to suggest that one day he might be in the cabinet, then added, ‘I still haven’t made the point I had in mind. In the last century it was only the rich who could afford the grand tour of Europe. Now everybody can do it. And what galls a hell of a lot of people is that then only the young men went. Now girls go, too.’ She started to laugh, just a bit hysterically, and said, ‘And wasn’t that a glorious euphemism? The grand tour of the capitals of Europe? The low-life tour of the whorehouses of Europe. More than half my ancestors came back to England with syphilis. Today we come back with other things.’
‘We’d better get back in the cars, it’s getting late,’ Gridley said, and we started the rough part of our exploration, across open brush where no roads ran. So long as we kept to areas where elephants and buffalo had not foraged during the wet season, the ground was fairly flat, but when we struck areas which the feet of these beasts had churned into potholes, the going was so uneven that we were almost jolted from our seats. It was a trying hour, made bearable only by Gridley’s repeated assurances, ‘Any moment now!’
At last we broke onto a smooth meadowland, along whose border stood a line of trees, and when we had approached to within a hundred yards of them we halted and Gridley slowly looked the terrain over with his glasses. Then, silently, he raised his right arm and pointed, and ahead of us, standing half in sunlight, half in shadow, half in meadowland, half in forest, stood twenty of the most handsome beasts I had ever seen. Joe looked at Gridley as if to ask, ‘Sable antelope?’ The Rhodesian nodded.
They were something to see, worth every bump we had absorbed, the elegant jewels of Africa. They were about the size of a large horse, and as they moved in and out of the shadows, we could see that their coats ranged from a light tawny color to deep purple, but what made them memorable was their facial marking: blazing white stripes cutting across an almost black field. When he saw these extraordinary faces Cato whispered, ‘That’s where every mask of Africa came from,’ and he was right. Their horns were enormous scimitars sweeping backward in breathtaking curves. To use them, the animal would have to drop its face parallel to the ground. Gridley whispered, ‘With those horns an antelope can kill even a lion.’
We watched the beasts for about half an hour, praying that they would move out into full sunlight, but perhaps they were aware of us, for they kept in half-cover, and possibly that was best, for we had to use our imagination to fill in the shadowy outlines. For Gridley the sight was a sad one. ‘The last time I shall see them this year,’ he said, pointing to the clouds that had begun to form in the west. ‘Soon the rains.’
‘Do they make the roads impassable?’ Gretchen asked. He laughed, then said, ‘Impassable? Almost every road we’ve been on today will be under five or six feet of water … for five or six months. When it rains here, it rains.’
The antelope now moved closer, though they still remained in their half-half world, and never did they emerge into sunlight. We saw them as ghosts, with masks of white and black, with gleaming swords curved backward, with coats of fawn and blue and purple. They were startling in their grace and beauty, the animals of elegance, and after a while they vanished imperceptibly, one by one, with no sudden motion, into the forest.
They vanished—that is, for all of us except Joe. Apparently captivated by this glimpse into the heart of Africa as it had been a thousand years ago, and reluctant to relinquish its spell, he left us and moved like a native stalker through the edge of trees, where some of the antelope still lingered, and after a while he froze, staring into the shadows, and he remained in this position for nearly half an hour, studying the sables while they studied him.
‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ I asked.
‘Very,’ Gridley said. ‘Where you see sable, you see lion.’
‘What are we going to do?’
‘For a young man, there are some things more important than lions.’ With his thumb he indicated something that none of us had noticed: the two Negro rangers had moved out quietly and were on guard with rifles.
When Joe returned he asked Gridley, ‘Will they survive?’ and the ecologist said, ‘They’re numbered. But the population is of a magnit
‘Must get going,’ Gridley warned, pointing to the dark western sky where rains were about to conclude one cycle and begin the next. By the time we reached camp our cars were covered with mud.
We had intended that this night be the farewell party for Zambela, but were so exhausted by the day’s excursion that there was talk of skipping it and going to bed. ‘We’ve got to drive out of here at dawn tomorrow,’ Gretchen said. ‘That Greek freighter won’t wait. We’d better get some sleep.’
But Monica, who needed rest more than any of us, protested: ‘Mrs. Gridley’s gone to a lot of trouble. We’ll take a hot shower and a nap and start fresh.’ As I entered my shower I heard a small plane fly over, then buzz the field to scare the animals, but by the time I popped into bed I had forgotten about it.
I was wakened an hour later by Monica, who was touring the rondavels to gather us for the party. As she came into my room, practically naked, she seemed a sprite of the forest, as much at home there as the antelope had been. ‘Time to frolic!’ she said, ripping away my bedclothes and giving me a kiss. As she was about to dart away, I grabbed her by the arm, deciding, suddenly, to try to talk rationally with her, and for a brief moment she must have thought I intended to make love to her, for her eyes brightened as if to say, ‘This is crazy, but it could be fun.’ I ended such thoughts by wrapping her in my bathrobe and sitting her on the bed.
Determined to make her face up to the danger of drugs, I said, abruptly, ‘Monica, you’ve got to drop this heroin bit.’
‘What right have you to give me orders?’
‘I was your father’s friend. I’m your friend.’
Drawing my robe snugly about her, she shrugged petulantly and said, ‘I didn’t request your friendship … or your lectures. And certainly not if you’re going to talk like Father.’
‘Someone must.’ I grabbed her left arm and shook it free of the robe. Pointing to the adhesive, I said, ‘Do you realize that if you had allowed that to fester two more days you could have lost your arm?’
‘Who said?’
‘Mrs. Gridley. She takes care of wounded animals, remember? And you’re a sorely wounded little animal, Monica.’
‘Nothing wrong with me Marrakech can’t cure.’
‘I forbid you to go to Marrakech.’
‘I go where I want to go,’ she said insolently.
This so infuriated me that I twisted her arm, and my eye caught what I was certain would be there—the pale purple nick left by a needle as it entered a vein. ‘You crazy child!’ I cried. ‘You’ve been mainlining!’
‘What if I have?’ she asked defiantly.
I slapped her across the face, unable to control my sick fury. ‘You’re killing yourself—for God’s sake, can’t you see that!’
Tearing loose from my grip and dropping the robe, she shouted, ‘Oh, go to hell!’ and stormed out of the rondavel, but when we were assembled for dinner, she ran up impulsively, took my arm, and whispered, ‘I’m sorry, you dear worried old man. I’ll take care. Promise.’
When we reached the Gridley house I found the explanation for the airplane: waiting in the living room were two good-looking young Portuguese officers, Captain Teixeira and Lieutenant Costa Silva, from the barracks at Vila Gonçalo, and I watched their eyes pop when our two girls appeared in their miniskirts. Immediately the excitement of the evening escalated, but the presence of the officers was not only social; it was also a tribute to the thoughtfulness of the Gridleys, who had listened at various times as the young people lamented the lack of music. Mrs. Gridley had called the barracks that afternoon to ask if any of the men had modern phonograph records, and Captain Teixeira said, ‘I have some, but Costa Silva has the good ones.’ He also had the airplane, and the record player, and now, before dinner, he piled a stack of records, placed his speakers the proper distance apart, and smiled.
‘Guess what the first one will be,’ he said in good English. I could see apprehension on the faces of the young people, as though they expected Glenn Miller or Benny Goodman. When ‘Aquarius’ burst forth, in crisp tones and heavy rhythm, they cheered and Monica grabbed Costa Silva by the hands and did a little dance with him, shouting above the music, ‘You’re promoted to general!’ Soon the blended voices of the Fifth Dimension were shouting, ‘Let the sunshine in!’ and we settled down to a musical session that duplicated what we had heard in Torremolinos four months before, except that the records were newer.
I asked Captain Teixeira how he had got them, since he was stuck away in one of the remotest parts of Africa, and he said, ‘In one of the musical papers from London we see lists of what’s popular, so whenever we fly strangers into the sanctuary or down to the dam at Cabora Bassa and they ask, “What can we send you from New York?” we hand them a list of records and the address of Sam Goody. Look!’ He shuffled through the albums and I saw Octopus, Cream, Led Zeppelin and The Mamas and the Papas. To the astonishment of the Gridleys, who had no ear for this kind of music, I asked Silva Costa if he would play ‘Creeque Alley’ from the last album, and as its familiar strains filled the small living room I again thought how contemporary the song was: unpretty, undistinguished, it offered nothing first-rate except its totality, and that depicted what was happening with the young people I knew.
The next record provided a burlesque interlude. The incident began when Cato announced, ‘This is our theme song.’ When the first chords sounded, Monica leaped in front of the record player to defend it in the way a mother lioness is supposed to defend her cubs. I failed to understand what she was up to, but the other young people knew, for they recognized the music and burst into taunting laughter. Obviously the joke was on me, and finally I caught on. The song was ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,’ and it sounded just as innocent as when I had first enjoyed it.
‘Our Savonarola smashes this one,’ Monica warned Costa Silva. Then, as if we had not quarreled in the rondavel, she pirouetted over to me and kissed me on the cheek, and despite my earlier anger, I still wanted to keep her in my care.
With only a short time out for dinner, we played music till midnight, when I said, ‘These officers have to get home, and we must get some sleep,’ but Captain Teixeira said, ‘We can’t fly out of here in this rain,’ and the girls cried, ‘Who needs sleep?’ I looked at Mrs. Gridley, and she shrugged her shoulders, saying, ‘Nobody will work much tomorrow,’ so we stayed on, with Joe searching through Gridley’s books for information about the sable antelope, and it was about three in the morning when Costa Silva happened to put on his machine a new song about how the housewives of Pompeii behaved in the days before the volcano—‘The Yard Went On Forever,’ it was called—and suddenly the Gridleys were listening, and when the music ended, Mrs. Gridley asked, ‘Could you play that one again?’ and we sat there, nine of us, and for the first time that night all of us understood a common tune. ‘That one’s very good,’ Mrs. Gridley said.
‘They’re all good,’ Monica said.
‘I suppose they are,’ Mrs. Gridley said. ‘I suppose if I could take all that shrieking, I’d find them fairly good.’ She was a tough woman, accustomed to jungle and desert, and where Africa was concerned she had a seventh sense. Looking at Cato, she said, ‘I suppose we two could hear the same music, if our ears ever became attuned.’
‘Not in this century,’ Cato said.
‘I wasn’t thinking of this century,’ she said. ‘I’m fifty-two and in twenty years I’ll be dead. You’re twenty-two and in fifty years you’ll be dead. We seem to have made a hash of our generations, but we can hope that by the year 2050 something sensible will have been worked out.’
‘Do you think it will be?’ Cato asked.
‘No. That’s too soon. But we can use it as our target.’
She had tears in her eyes when the time came to kiss Monica goodbye. The two Portuguese officers had fallen asleep on the couch an
‘That’s no place for Monica,’ Mrs. Gridley said, but Gretchen said, ‘Joe has some draft-board problems he must settle there.’
When Cato left he shook hands with the Gridleys and said, ‘This was the best stop in Africa,’ and Mrs. Gridley said, ‘It was instructive, talking with a young man who can express himself so well Perhaps by the time you die, things will be a little clearer … not much … but a little.’
Cato said, ‘It’s curious. In Africa I’ve met Portuguese, and Boers, and English judges, and Arab saints, and American sailors, and Chinese cooks. But I haven’t met one damned black … socially, that is.’
‘They’re not yet visible,’ Mrs. Gridley said.
‘They will be,’ he predicted.
Moçambique should have ended with the beauty of the sable antelope or the friendliness of the night music at the Gridley’s, but it didn’t.
About five in the morning I was awakened by rough shaking and Joe’s frightened voice. ‘Mr. Fairbanks! We need you! It’s Cato.’
‘What’s he done?’
‘He mainlined. I think he’s going to die.’
I pulled on a pair of pants and dashed across the grass to the rondavel. I rushed past Monica, who was standing in the doorway, wringing her hands and staring vacuously into space. Gretchen, weeping, was leaning over the bed, applying cold towels to Cato’s sweating forehead. ‘My God, he’s going to die!’ she said, and I could see the terrible convulsions that racked his body.
First thing I did was to grab his left arm and look at the veins, and the evidence was clear. Even on his dark skin a raised dot showed the mark of a hypodermic needle. In spite of his promises to Joe and his arrogant assurance to me, he had done exactly what he had sworn never to do. I glanced up, and Gretchen said, ‘She pestered him for more than an hour. She told him there’d be no more sex if he didn’t keep up with her. We could hear her screaming in our rondavel.’