The Drifters (106 page)

I gave Jemail a few coins and sent him away. Then I said harshly, ‘Cato, keep your mouth shut about Yigal.’

‘Have I said too much?’ he asked apologetically.

‘Too damned much. That kid heard you blabbing, and now Yigal’s in trouble.’

‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ he protested. ‘We had a fight, but I wouldn’t …’ There could be no doubt of his sincerity, and he returned to his earlier concern. ‘What can we do about Monica?’

I sat him in a chair, ordered an orange drink, and listened to his rambling analysis of himself. He was sentimental over the benevolence of Mister Wister, angry over the Negro-Jewish confrontation, euphoric when he thought of Islam, bewildered over Monica’s behavior. He was an appealing young man, that sunny morning in Marrakech, a confused human being, not a black robot reacting to stimuli: white girl, sex; Jew, resentment; older person, contempt; Christianity, abhorrence. He asked me, ‘Do you think I could patch it up with Monica?’ and I said, ‘Why would you want to?’

‘Because she’s my woman and I want to help her.’ He said this so simply, so much like any young man caught up in a perplexing love, that I wanted to assist him in winning her back, but I knew it was impossible, so I said, ‘Cato, it’s over and I think you knew that someday it would be over.’

He looked at me with narrowing eyes and said brusquely, ‘And you’re glad.’

‘That’s a silly statement.’

‘Oh no!’ he said. ‘I’ve been on to you ever since Moçambique. You’re in love with her, too. And you’re jealous as hell of me.’

‘Quit talking such crud.’

‘I know. You’d just love to get me out of here so you could move in.’

‘Cato, we see a girl in deep trouble. We both want to help her. Let’s let it go at that.’

‘No, we won’t let it go at that. You’re trying to edge me out so that you can move in.’

‘Cato, she moved you out.’

Faced by this harsh reality, he sobered, and asked, almost humbly, ‘What can I do?’ and I said, ‘You can suffer. Like every young man before you who has lost a beautiful girl. Join the human race, Cato. You’re one of us.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Just this. You arrogant young punks go around as if you’d discovered sex. You think that because you can slip into bed so easily with a beautiful girl that you can slip out just as easily when it’s all over … without being touched by the experience. I got news for you, bub. You bleed exactly like the rest of us. Good men begin to grow up on the morning they find that some girl has thrown them over. Then, by God, they’ve got to face up to themselves. You’re not the superman you visualized. Sex is not so simple as you thought. It’s the terrible, mixed-up, complex thing it’s always been.’

‘What can I do?’

‘Squirm, goddamn you. The way I did when I was twenty and lost a girl. The way young men have been doing for ten thousand years.’

Very quietly he said, ‘But, Mr. Fairbanks, with me it’s different. I’m black.’

‘Bullshit! Yigal’s Jewish. You read his letter from Detroit … about Britta. Don’t you suppose he bled the other day when he found out she was hooked up with Holt? Clive is English. Don’t you think he bled too when he discovered that Gretchen was now Joe’s girl? Talk with Holt sometime about how his wife walked out. Join the brotherhood. You’re mortal like the rest of us.’

‘But when a black man is ridiculed by a white girl, everything’s different,’ he insisted.

‘The relevant words are man and girl. All men, all girls. And whenever there’s a savage rupture, we all bleed, Cato. We all bleed.’

‘You sound as if you were pleased.’

‘I am. You’ve been acting as if you were some sacred black god. You’ve really been a drip. I’m glad that life has chopped you down to size. You’re much more likable.’

‘But mostly it’s because you love Monica, isn’t it?’

‘All right. We both love her. We both want to see her well again.’

‘We’ll have to get her off heroin. That’s the big thing.’

‘Have you quit?’

‘After that night in Moçambique … I’ve quit.’

‘Can Monica?’

‘Not by herself. I’ve tried to help but I can’t. Big Loomis is about the only man who could swing it. He understands these things.’

‘We’ve got to talk to him—get him to try,’ I said.

He extended his hand, and as we walked down the rickety stairs together, we saw the waiting Jemail, and I said, ‘But right now we’ve got to protect Yigal.’

‘From what?’ he asked.

‘From the damage you’ve done … from that little bastard over there. Jews are like Negroes. On all sides they have enemies.’

I deemed it obligatory to warn Yigal that Jemail was onto his secret and would remain silent—he said—for forty dollars, but when we started to leave the Terrace to find Yigal, the canny little Arab was at our heels, having anticipated what I would want to do and determined that he participate to protect his financial interests. ‘I go along,’ he said softly, ‘to be sure no one betrays your friend, Yigal Zmora.’

‘How do I know that if I pay the forty dollars you will not betray him?’

‘Could I stay in business a week … suppose word leaked out … I dishonest?’ He smiled at me self-deprecatingly, but kept close behind us.

At the Bordeaux I did not enter, for it was essential
that Cato and Yigal be alone to restore their friendship, so I said, ‘Cato, go in and fetch Yigal,’ and by a look I indicated that he was to alert the Jew to the trouble that threatened. A few minutes later they appeared, with Yigal nodding at me in such a way as to assure me that Cato had informed him of the blackmail. They shook hands and I set off with them to get the money.

To my surprise, when we were crossing the Djemaá, Yigal patted the little Arab on the shoulder and said, ‘You’re clever. How did you find out?’

‘That first afternoon at the Terrace. When two grown people whisper … I listen.’

At the Mamounia, Jemail asked if we could slip in by a side door, since he did not wish to confront the doorman, and when we were in my room I asked if Yigal would fetch Holt, whereupon the four of us entered into serious negotiation. Jemail put his cards on the table, and I could almost visualize his shifting them about with his small, adept fingers. ‘He’s an Israeli soldier … could be shot.’

‘He’s also an American citizen,’ I said, ‘and he’s decided to surrender his Israeli passport.’

‘No matter. If our government knows … they shoot him.’

‘Suppose we pay you the forty dollars,’ Holt broke in. ‘What guarantee would we have that you wouldn’t go right out and talk?’

‘I’m an Arab,’ the boy said haughtily, ‘a man of honor. Don’t you think my government give me a reward … if I told them? Why didn’t I? Because you people good to me. Because Mr. Fairbanks and I going to be partners … heroin business … Geneva. Our association a long-term deal. I got to treat him like a gentleman.’

The other two looked at me, but I stared straight ahead, whereupon Jemail made us this proposition: ‘You give me forty dollars. I stay in this room under your guard twenty-four hours. In that time Yigal Zmora fly out of here and catch Air France plane Casablanca for Rome, where he catch El Al plane for Tel Aviv.’

‘When he is safely out of the country, why couldn’t we club you on the head and take back our money?’ Holt asked.

‘Because you also gentlemen. I got to trust you.’ There was a long silence, after which I said, ‘Yigal, you better fly out of here on the early morning plane. If the
Moroccan government finds out about your second passport, things could become sticky.’

‘Is there a plane?’

Jemail broke in with the full schedule, so I went to the phone and asked if we could get a confirmed ticket to Rome. It was arranged, but when I proceeded to ask for a continuation to New York, Yigal put his hand over the phone and said, ‘I’ve decided to go back to Israel.’ This so surprised me that I terminated the phone call abruptly and turned to ask what had happened, only to find that Holt had leaped from his chair to grab him.

‘What in hell did you just say?’ Holt demanded.

‘That I’ve made up my mind.’

‘To give up your American citizenship?’

‘Yes.’

Holt looked at me as if only I could explain what he was hearing, but I was as shocked as he, because nothing in recent weeks had indicated that Yigal was going to opt for Israel. In fact, all indications had pointed to the opposite. ‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘So he is Israeli soldier?’ Jemail asked smugly.

‘You keep your goddamned mouth shut,’ Holt snapped, pushing the little Arab into a chair. Then, as a precaution, he locked the doors and windows, slamming onto the table two twenty-dollar traveler’s checks. ‘When the plane takes off, I sign them,’ he said. Then, turning to Yigal, he asked, ‘Son, what’s confused you?’

Yigal thought for a moment, then said, ‘These last days have showed me so much. Cato and his attitudes. I suppose they’re universal. The Jew really does bear a stigma. And that amazing exhibition yesterday. Those horsemen charging and firing their old rifles … as if it meant anything.’

‘One good Israel machine gun,’ Jemail broke in. ‘Yat-tat-tat-tat-tat. There go the horsemen.’

Yigal turned to look at the Arab and said, ‘That’s what I mean. He sees so clearly. The engineers were so blind. Maybe his generation and mine can come to some kind of understanding.’

‘Son, you can’t fight everybody’s battle,’ Holt pleaded.

‘But only the Jew fights the Jewish battle,’ Yigal said. ‘My place is …’ I thought he was going to say that his place was with his people, but he ended his sentence, ‘with those who trained me.’

‘Israel can get along without you,’ Holt argued. ‘But America needs every good man we can produce. You’ve got to go back.’

‘There’s another thing that makes me wonder about America,’ he said. ‘Television.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ Holt exploded. ‘That’s like those damned-fool kids at Pamplona saying that the only good thing America ever produced was
King Kong.
’

‘No, I mean it,’ Yigal said. ‘A stranger like me looks at America, and if he has any sense he sees much that’s good, much that’s bad. On the average the good wins out … by far. You really do some wonderful things in America. I used to laugh at my grandfather and his devotion to General Motors. But I found he was just as devoted to the Detroit Art Museum. And the man who had been under him was just as devoted to Case Institute. But when you’re alone, trying to get everything in balance, you turn on the television, and you see that the people who really run America, the men who make the commercials, believe that all American men are dopes and all American women so stupid they can hardly count to seven. And the suspicion grows that these wise men writing the advertisements know better than you do. They even know how to sell you a President.’

‘You believe what you’re saying?’ Holt asked.

‘I sure do,’ Yigal said. ‘In Israel we know that we couldn’t exist if our people were dopes … so we don’t treat them that way.’

‘What worries you is merely a style,’ Holt argued. ‘It can change. What the hell is television?’

‘A mirror,’ Yigal said. ‘It mirrors the empty silliness of American life. With all your vast problems, your pattern of life is essentially silly. In Israel, because we are under the hammer, we can’t afford that luxury.’

‘Why not work with us and change the silliness?’ Holt asked.

‘I watched you with Joe—the pressure you put on about Vietnam. Joe is trying to change one of the silliest wars men ever engaged in.’

‘Are you siding with him, too?’ Holt asked.

‘Yes. His war in Vietnam is totally unjustified. Mine in Israel was totally justified. We young people are going to make these distinctions. And you’ve got to go along with us, even if it requires juggling the ideas of a lifetime.’

‘Do you think you can do anything to help Israel … really?’ Holt asked.

‘I’m not doing it to help Israel. I’m doing it to help myself. Mr. Holt, I’m going to live only once. Not too many years if the hydrogen bomb goes off. And I am not going to spend my life in absurdities.’

We talked all night. Jemail dozed during the parts of our debate he could not fully understand, wakened whenever Jews or Arabs were mentioned. Holt used every argument in his arsenal—Korea, Sergeant Schumpeter, an international citizenship, patriotism that goes beyond religion, the manly life, the destiny of the United States—but young Yigal Zmora countered with a stubborn realism. He was a Jew who would have to fight his battle somewhere, and he did not propose to fight it for economic reasons against Cato Jackson in the streets of some American city; he would fight it in Israel where the enemy was known and where the survival of a people was at stake. He was a young man who had acquired that terrible burden—a clear vision of what ought to be done—and he was committed to doing it.

At dawn, when the plane to the north was being rolled out onto the Marrakech airstrip, Jemail wakened and said, ‘You better get going,’ and Holt insisted upon accompanying Yigal to the plane, hoping that he might convince him at the last moment to stay with his American citizenship. This meant that I was left to guard Jemail until such time as the Air France plane left for Casablanca. The last thing Yigal said to me was, ‘Monica is very sick. There must be some way …’

But that was not the last thing said among the four of us, for as Holt left the room, Jemail grabbed his arm and said, ‘Suppose you don’t come back sign traveler’s checks … you know what I do?’ When Holt asked, the little Arab said, ‘I go to police … charge you with smuggling spies out of the country.’

Yigal’s rejection of America had a demoralizing effect upon Holt. We would sit in his meticulously ordered room in the hotel and stare at the current sign which told us that we were at the same latitude as Jerusalem, Lahore, Shanghai, Kagoshima, Waco, the same longitude as Alte,
Santiago de Compostela, Donegal, Samoa, Christchurch—and he would pound his knee and ask, ‘How in God’s name could a self-respecting boy choose a dump like Israel over the United States?’ Even as we listened to Glenn Miller playing ‘A String of Pearls,’ he would growl, ‘They call this the Age of Anxiety. It ought to be the Age of Insanity.’ Several times at meals he put aside his fork and told me, ‘If I had any sense I’d get the hell out of here.’