The Drifters (88 page)

‘There must be a literate leadership here that they don’t let us see,’ he reasoned. ‘The Portuguese stifle it, I suppose, but it exists underground. It stands to reason that eight million people must have an intellectual culture of some sort.’

He was never to find it. If it did exist, it was so submerged that its effect had to be minimal. Whenever the pop-top needed gas, he would poke into the areas back of the filling station, would talk with everyone who spoke English, would look with his keen eye, and what he learned depressed him. His vision of an African renaissance vanished like a shimmering mirage. Since he was a young man of intelligence, he did his best to bring this new evidence into focus, and during the long trek north he would often harangue on this gloomy topic.

‘You have three patterns in southern Africa,’ he always began, as if this were the basic truth upon which to build an analysis. ‘You have white-dominated repressive societies in South Africa and Rhodesia. You have black-dominated in Vwarda, Zambia and Tanzania. And you have the white-dominated cooperative societies in the Portuguese territories, Angola and Moçambique. What’s going to evolve out of these patterns?’

In his judgment on South Africa he was surprisingly generous, influenced by the likable qualities of the South Africans he had met in Lourenço Marques. ‘They’re hurting themselves as much as they’re hurting us,’ he said, but he could no longer support the theory that within a decade the blacks would rise up and take control of that country. He had seen too many stiff-necked Boers, too many men like Dr. Vorlanger, to ignore the terrible staying power of their society. ‘I used to think we could drive them out within ten years … in a horrifying blood bath. Now I see that if there’s to be a blood bath, we’ll be the ones supplying the blood.’

He was also fairly clear in his thinking on Moçambique. ‘The whites here will eventually have to side with South Africa and Rhodesia. I wouldn’t be surprised to see homeland Portugal slough the colonies off … they must be a heavy burden … men and money. And when that happens,
the local whites will take over, just as they did in Rhodesia, and I suppose there’ll be a kind of federation. South Africa, Rhodesia, Angola, Moçambique, with South Africa supplying the money and the brains and most of the arms. The sad part is that each step of that development will radicalize the white men more and more, and in the end the whole southern part of the continent will be just like South Africa. Moçambique will have to have its BOSS, because two per cent of the population will be dictating to ninety-eight per cent, and you can do that only if you install a police state, not to govern the blacks but to keep check on the whites … to see they remain loyal.’ Whenever he reached this part of his analysis he always added, ‘But I suppose the same thing will have to happen in the United States. We blacks will require something like the Black Panthers to keep us loyal, and you whites will have to have a super-FBI to keep you in line … when the crunch comes.’

It was when Cato reflected on the all-black states that he became unsure of himself. ‘I look at Moçambique and say, “These blacks couldn’t possibly govern themselves,” but just over the border to the north is Tanzania, where the same kinds of blacks
are
governing themselves, and over the border to the west the Zambian blacks govern themselves, and up in Vwarda other blacks of about the same level of development govern themselves. So I guess that if tomorrow you kicked every Portuguese out of Moçambique, the land would govern itself somehow. Airplanes would still fly into Lourenço Marques, and someone would see to it that the electric-light plant produced electricity, and dinner at the Trianon would still cost five bucks. It might be a lousy government, but it would govern.

‘So I’m tempted to say, “Let the blacks govern. They won’t do much worse than the whites have done.” And then I hear about Nigeria and Biafra and the tribalism in Vwarda and the Chinese taking over in Tanzania, and I wonder if that’s the answer either.’

They were now approaching the Zambeze River and saw repeated convoys of armed white troops moving toward the Tanzanian border, where a minor but persistent revolution was under way. Cato said, ‘I’m damned sure guns aren’t the way to solve the Moçambique problem,’ but what the way was he did not care at this moment to guess, nor did he come back to the matter later, because
waiting for him at a place called Moçambique Island, their destination in the far north, was a confrontation of an entirely different nature, one that would shatter all his preconceptions and move him into new turmoils.

Obviously, the emotional repose of which I spoke when the young people were launching their tour north did not involve Cato, for he was to find little peace in Africa; nor did it concern Monica, who was increasingly depressed by the recollections forced upon her. When she was in Beira, the big middle city of Moçambique, she read of the assassination of Lady Wenthorne. She sought out some vacationing Rhodesians—their railroad had its terminal in Beira—finding several who remembered her parents, and together they lamented the death of Lady Wenthorne.

‘What changes have occurred in Vwarda!’ they said. ‘All whites are being expelled. Properties are expropriated, bank accounts confiscated. Of course, they’ve murdered many of the Indians. We see refugees stepping off the planes in Salisbury with only the clothes they wear.’

One man said, ‘I consider it fortunate that your father got kicked out when he did. Probably protested, but he did get his money out. You hear about poor Sir Victor? Wasn’t even allowed to bury his wife. Plopped him on a plane for England, and three hundred screaming blacks stood outside the door, shouting, “Throw us the white judge!” He barely escaped.’

It was to Joe and Gretchen that emotional ease came. They were on one of the vast beaches north of Beira, where inland swamps prevented the shore from being developed—so that two centuries from now, when bridges have been built over the swamps, a splendid recreation area will be waiting for the crowded population that will need it—and were lazily wandering along the beach, naked, when they happened to turn toward each other. You could say it took place in a millisecond. They had been together for seven months but had never really seen each other. Gretchen had watched Joe in his love affair with Britta, and Joe had seen Gretchen fall half in love with Clive. But now each saw what the other was. Gretchen saw Joe as a tough, inhibited, uncertain man with courage to spare, and Joe saw Gretchen as the gentle girl she was, apart from her brilliance at school and her many hang-ups.

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.’