The Drifters (79 page)

He sat down. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I know him very well, and he is a boy who looks with cold logic at the facts.’

‘But the facts are all in favor of the United States.’

‘Physical facts, yes. Emotional, no. And this generation is not going to defraud itself where emotions are concerned.’

‘Have you advised him to stay in Israel?’

‘I’ve advised him to try the United States … but not Detroit.’

‘Why not? We have a good life there.’

‘I promise you this. If you keep him with you in Detroit, you’ll lose him.’

‘What can we do to hold him?’

‘By doing the only thing that ever holds young people—the good ones, that is—by setting them free.’

‘To what?’

‘For Yigal it could turn out to be engineering in one of the new Negro republics like Vwarda, or research at Oxford, or teaching at some college in the south. I don’t know what it will be, but unless he finds it, for himself, you’ll not be able to hold him.’

‘You talk very glibly about children. I suppose you have none of your own.’

‘I had a son. Much like Yigal. And I lost him.’

‘How?’

‘By using the same tactics you’re using with Bruce … as you call him.’

I was much agitated by my conversation with Melnikoff. I found that my attitudes were so close to those of Yigal, and Melnikoff’s so much like those of Holt, that I wanted to discuss the matter with Harvey to check whether I was on the right course in defending the boy. I was especially keen to get his guess on whether Yigal would choose to remain in the United States, because I didn’t want Melnikoff to be swayed by my own somewhat prejudiced opinion.

Before returning to my own room, therefore, I stopped by Holt’s. As I started pushing the door open—there were no locks in Bar Vasca and not too many latches that worked—I vaguely thought that he must have a suitcase or something by the door, and it was only when I had the door well opened that I realized it was a chair, propped against the door, purposefully. I started to retreat, but at this moment Holt growled at me from the bed and I, like a fool, stopped to answer. I wish I hadn’t.

For the last several days I had noticed—at the picnic this afternoon, for example, when we were discussing
music, and the other day when we were arguing motion pictures—that Britta was deferential to Holt’s opinions. Politically and socially he was quite unlike the people she preferred, but in his rocklike simplicity he resembled some of the stronger men she had known in Tromsø. There was, she told me once, a certain Norwegian honesty about him. The men of Norway whom she admired had usually been wrong about everything except what mattered most—character. ‘With them you felt that if you got into a fight … Let’s suppose we were in a real fight. I could trust you to decide which side was morally right. I could depend on Cato to make a speech. I could depend on Yigal to know what to do if the going got tough. And I could depend on Joe to give me sympathy if things went wrong. Mr. Holt I could depend upon to do the fighting. In this respect he is much like my father.’

‘I thought you said you felt sorry for your father.’

‘I feel sorry for Mr. Holt.’

When I saw them together—say, at lunch or if we went out to a restaurant for dinner—well, they weren’t together in that sense, but they did usually find chairs at the same end of the table … Well, I had the suspicion that pretty little Britta had spotted Holt as her last best chance of escaping Tromsø. Certainly her affair with Joe had permanently ended, and for some years Yigal would have problems larger than girls, and her time was running out, for she had only the money that Gretchen gave her. Under those dismal circumstances, Holt must have appeared the only good bet, and I admired her perspicacity.

Holt, for his part, had never been blind to an attractive girl, and if one flattered him, as Britta had after the run that morning, he was susceptible. I should have caught on when he asked me, ‘Are Norwegians pretty much like Swedes?’ I began by explaining what I knew of Scandinavian history.

‘I don’t mean the history,’ he interrupted. ‘I mean the social customs … today. Are the Norwegians as … well … liberal?’

‘Oh, you mean sex? I don’t know.’

‘You’ve been there.’

‘Yes, and if you want to know about hydroelectric plants, old-age pensions, shipping …’

‘You study the wrong things,’ he growled, and I forgot the conversation.

Later I was to learn that after the fireworks one night, Holt and Britta had walked for miles through the darkened city, stopping at one bar after another, till nearly dawn. Britta told me, ‘I felt that he was both a little boy and a powerful man, and that’s a dangerous way for a girl to feel.’ At one of the bars there were some English students who hadn’t been to bed for three nights and they were obviously smoking pot, and Holt had asked if she smoked, and she had replied, ‘Everybody tries it.’ The phrase had struck him oddly; for the first time he vaguely understood that it was a total society in which these young people lived, a society in which it was unlikely that a young person with curiosity would avoid a confrontation with marijuana.

‘Have you tried LSD too?’ he asked her.

‘I’m not that crazy,’ she replied. He then asked her if Monica smoked, and she had fenced with him, saying, ‘That’s each girl’s problem. Ask her.’

Holt found her fascinating, a window into a new world, and since it was a world of which he had been contemptuous, he found special pleasure in exploring it with her. The overriding consideration, of course, was the fact that Britta was unusually handsome—a tall, beautifully dimensioned girl, with an enviable complexion, very white teeth, and flaxen hair that shimmered in sunlight and cast flecks of gold by candlelight.

One afternoon I was walking with them back from the bullfight, and I noticed that Britta kept stride with us as if she were our tested companion, and Holt asked suddenly, ‘You ever ride a mustang?’ and Britta replied, ‘American cars are too expensive for us in Norway.’

Now, on this night when Holt growled at me for pushing aside his chair, I saw in the light that entered the room that he had had good reason to block the door, for there was a girl in bed with him. Because of what I had observed in recent days, I assumed it was Britta. I was strangely relieved when I saw it was one of Joe’s college girls, wearing nothing and making no effort to draw the sheet over her face. The couple showed no embarrassment, and as I backed out, Holt said, ‘Pull the chair back against the door, if you can.’

July 12 produced one of the most dramatic runs in recent years, and this was unfortunate, because standing beside me on the plateau of the art museum was Marcus Melnikoff, who had insisted upon seeing for himself the madness that had captured his grandson. I had advised him not to come, warning him that he would neither understand nor enjoy what he saw, and Yigal had protested that the bulls held no fascination for him: ‘In fact, I think the part you’re going to see … the running … it’s insane and no rational man would bother with it.’

‘Then why are you in Pamplona?’ Melnikoff demanded as we had our cups of hot chocolate.

‘I’m like the others. I enjoy Pamplona … the music … the fireworks.’

‘I’ll see for myself,’ Melnikoff said, and now he stationed himself stubbornly on the ramp as if to say, ‘Show me.’

I told him, ‘What Yigal had to say was right …’

‘Please don’t call him Yigal.’

‘Yigal or Bruce, he’s a terrific boy and you should accept him as he is.’

‘One of the fundamental errors of our age. Anyone who accepts an eighteen-year-old boy as he is … he’s nuts. The whole purpose of life is to change people into something better.’

I changed the subject to the bulls, and explained. ‘They’ll come out of that corral down there … Look at that man by the wall. That’s the fellow we had dinner with last night. Yigal’s friend, Harvey Holt.’

‘You mean a grown man is going to make an ass of himself? What’s he do?’

‘Tech rep for UniCom … in Afghanistan.’

‘That’s a strong company. What’s an official of UniCom doing in a place like this?’

‘He comes every year … to run with the bulls.’

‘You mean he’ll stay down there? When the bulls come?’

‘Yes, sir. And what’s more, Mr. Melnikoff, he’s an intelligent man. And rather wealthy.’

‘It beats me.’

There was nothing more I could say, so we stared down the hill to watch the policemen as they slowly moved
toward the ramp up which they would shortly escape. The first rocket went off and almost immediately the second, sending the bulls on their vigorous charge up the hill.

‘Look at that idiot!’ Mr. Melnikoff shouted as Holt started his dash toward the bulls. ‘Bruce, Bruce, he’s going to be killed!’

‘He knows what he’s doing,’ I assured him, but I was relieved when Holt, spotting some danger I could not see, turned back more quickly than usual and started running faster than I had ever before seen him move. Real fear showed in his face and he dove for the wall.

What had he seen to make him suspect trouble? In the narrowest part of the passage, where jostling among the animals often occurred, a steer had bumped into an ill-tempered bull, throwing the latter off stride. The bull had hooked at the steer, missed, and for a fraction of a second had lost his footing. Trying not to stumble, the bull had veered sharply to the left, which brought him close to the wall against which Holt had taken refuge.

Seeing along this wall a mass of forms, some moving, the bull now lowered its head, and like a scythe reaping barley, swept its left horn along the wall, wiping it clean. Three, four, five, six men went down before this savage horn, all punctured in one way or another.

The seventh man to be hooked stood just downhill from Holt, and unfortunately, in place of the traditional sash, he wore a leather belt which caught on the bull’s horn, impeding forward motion. Arrested for a moment, the bull savagely chopped its head, goring the man twice more. It then broke loose and for the count of four stood facing Harvey Holt, who remained ice-stiff, with the horn six inches from his gut. The man to Holt’s left moved, and the bull drove hard at him, tossing him to the ground and nuzzling at him, first with its nose, and then with its horns.

Mr. Melnikoff screamed, ‘For God’s sake, take the bull away!’

Britta, standing to my left, prayed aloud, ‘Make the bull move on. Make him move on.’ But Joe, next to Britta, watched silently, fascinated, as Holt remained motionless while the bull savaged the man at his feet. My breath came in such gasps that I scarcely felt Mr. Melnikoff clutching at my arm. ‘This is terrible!’ he screamed. ‘Get that bull away!’

With sudden force the bull left Holt and scraped his horn once more against the wall, knocking down numbers nine, ten, eleven, the last a man standing in the very door of the hospital. Then, with a kick of his hind legs, the great beast ran straight up Santo Domingo, ignoring everyone.

As soon as he was gone, teams began gathering up the bodies. Some of the gored men had fainted and were dripping blood. Others, not punctured by the horns, shook themselves, felt their bellies and their testicles, and walked off. Eight were carried into the hospital.

Mr. Melnikoff said, ‘I want to sit down.’ Yigal sat with him and assured him that none of the runners would die, but the old man snapped, ‘How can you be so wise? You saw that horn in the man’s belly.’

‘Believe me, Grandpop, that man is going to live. Ask Mr. Fairbanks.’

‘Why should I ask that fool? A grown man who comes here every year to watch such a spectacle. He might as well be back in the days of Nero. Three tickets to the Colosseum, please.’ He stopped for breath, then took his grandson’s hands and asked, ‘Tell me, Bruce, did the war harden you so much that you enjoy this sort of thing … look at those pools of blood … in a public street?’

‘I’m revolted by it.’

‘Then why, in the name of God, do you stay?’

‘Because there’s so much more to Pamplona. Some of the kids don’t even go to the bullfights. They never see a bull. Grandfather, they don’t go to bed till morning. Why would they bother with this?’

‘Tell me, Bruce. Is it a girl? You have a girl here, that’s it.’

‘Grandfather, I’m just here to enjoy myself.’

‘Enjoy! Enjoy! You talk like General Goering. Bruce, you’re flying home with me this afternoon.’

And Mr. Melnikoff swung into action. At Bar Vasca, where a huge crowd judged the day’s run to have been one of the worst in recent years and congratulated Holt on his miraculous escape, Melnikoff got on the phone, made a reservation on a late TWA flight to New York, hired a taxi to drive him and his grandson to Madrid, and sent a batch of cables to Tel Aviv and Grosse Pointe. Then he asked me to accompany them upstairs to pack Bruce’s gear, but when we reached the room and
he opened the door, he drew back in disgust, because in Brace’s bed lay two girls from our picnic, with the boy from California who dug Octopus.

‘Get them out of there,’ he commanded me, as if I were one of his minor employees, so I went in and said to the kids, ‘Trouble. Better scram.’ All three were naked, and they hastily donned bits of clothing.

‘I think that shirt belongs to Yigal,’ I told one of the girls.

‘He won’t care,’ she said, and they traipsed through the hall and into Gretchen’s room, where they climbed back into bed and went to sleep.

‘Your close friends?’ Mr. Melnikoff asked his grandson with deep sarcasm.

‘I met them yesterday,’ Yigal protested.

‘They were in your bed.’

‘They were in my clothes—but what can I do?’

‘You can pack.’

The moment of decision had come. By every sign that I could read, Yigal wanted to stay with the gang, he wanted to continue his exploration of their values, their significance. He was inclined to tell his grandfather to go to hell, but instead he turned to me and asked, ‘Mr. Fairbanks, what should I do?’

‘Do?’ Mr. Melnikoff shouted. ‘There’s only one thing to do. Pack!’

‘Get out of here!’ Yigal exploded. ‘Go on. Wait out in the hall.’ He started to push his grandfather into the hall, but the old man resisted.

I said, ‘If you insist on having your way, Mr. Melnikoff, you’re going to lose this boy. You wait out in the hall and let me talk with him.’ I nudged the old man along—he muttering under his breath about who the hell I thought I was, and I pretending not to hear. When I closed the door I turned to see Yigal sitting on his bed, his head in his hands.