The Drifters (77 page)

‘There are two answers to that question, Mr. Fairbanks,’ Clive said with exaggerated precision. ‘The first is that my listeners are not over there, for as you can see from the sample here, only a few of us are British. And the second is that we care a great deal, because if we can defeat General Hershey and his stupid draft in your country, we may be able to defeat men like him in all countries.’

‘There’s a third reason,’ Gretchen said. ‘A crucial one. This song may be much more important in Russia or Brazil than in England. You see, Uncle George, this music really is international.’ Then she added quietly, ‘As we are international … as you are, Mr. Holt.’

Clive played for us until it was time to attend the bullfight. It was a fascinating concert, and I was reminded again of the wide artistic range of modern popular music. On the one hand, he played ultimate noise such as Mauve Alligator in a blast called ‘Sunday Excursion,’ and on the other, a bittersweet thing like Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Dangling Conversation.’ For laughs he had a nasal rendition of ‘Winchester Cathedral,’ but for the most part he held to the newer pieces by Blind Faith, Led Zeppelin, and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

After dinner some Spanish singers came to the bar, and it was surprising how easily their style fitted in to what the young people had been enjoying. Then Gretchen borrowed a guitar and sang some of the old ballads, which prompted one of the woodchoppers to send for his partner, a man who could sing a very high falsetto, and these two entertained us for an hour with the jotas of Navarra and Aragón, and these, we agreed, were the best of all.

About two in the morning we trailed off to bed, and since there were no available rooms in Pamplona, and certainly none in Bar Vasca—some of the singers would sit here all night and we would hear them distantly as we fell asleep—I wondered where Clive would sleep, and as I was about to offer him half of my bed, if someone else had not preempted it, Gretchen subtly interposed herself between us, and by some gesture which I could not see, indicated that Clive was to sleep in her room.

On succeeding nights he kept returning, and what arrangement they made with Britta, I never knew, but I do know that the tension which had till now enveloped Gretchen seemed to dissolve. In the main square when roistering men grabbed at her, she no longer drew back in automatic dismay, and one morning when I saw her and Clive emerge from their room, with Gretchen laughing and a ribbon in her hair, I felt sure that if her sensible father could have seen her at that moment, he would have applauded her recovery.

July 11 that year was memorable for two events: Clive’s picnic in the morning, Yigal’s encounter in the afternoon.

Following the running of the bulls, Clive announced, ‘It’s going to be a glorious picnic. You can come, Mr. Holt, because we need your tape recorder. And you can come, Mr. Fairbanks, because we need your car.’ The boys had struck up an acquaintance with two American college girls who were spending a year overseas, and they brought along a young man from California who kept repeating, ‘Boy, do I dig Octopus!’ He was desolate when Clive told him, ‘Octopus broke up.’

When we had distributed the group between the two cars, Clive asked, ‘Where we going?’ and since no one had a clue, I suggested, ‘Have you ever seen Estella?’ and no one had, so we headed for the Puerto del Perdón and the marvelous stone bridge at Puenta la Reina. In less than an hour we were entering Estella, a battle-scarred old town which had withstood a dozen sieges and from which, in medieval days, pilgrim roads had led to shrines in the west. I halted our little caravan at a café overlooking a very old square in which travelers from all parts of
Europe used to convene for mutual protection on their trips west.

As we sipped coffee and rested, I asked Gretchen if she knew much about that amazing development in history, and she said, ‘To me medieval Spain is a blank,’ so I asked, ‘Do you know anything about the pilgrimages … from the French side, that is?’ ‘You mean to Compostela?’ When I nodded she said, ‘Everyone knows about that. From Chaucer.’ ‘This is where the road west began,’ I said ‘In this little square. It’s entertained millions of pilgrims.’

Gretchen rose, walked about the inconspicuous square, rejoined us and said a startling thing: ‘Maybe this is what I’ve been looking for. The Crusaders at Silves proved quite a bust. I find I’m not interested in them, really, because they were bullies—and phonies to boot. But the people who came along this route had faith. Maybe that’s what we’re lacking today—an appreciation of faith.’

We got back in the cars and I led the way to a historic monastery that had guarded this trail for seven hundred years. It was largely in ruins and had a cloister from which massive oaks grew. Spreading our blankets beneath them, we could look across a broken wall and down a long valley in which it was possible to imagine men in cowls picking their way to sanctuary.

‘How these buildings must have looked seven hundred years ago,’ Gretchen said quietly as she helped distribute the bread and cheese.

I told her, ‘You must imagine thousands of travelers walking along the road we came, lured on by hope of salvation. They come to that ruined door over there, bang on the iron knocker and beg assistance. They’ve been on the road for months, with a month more to go … down that valley and across a score of hills.’

Gretchen stared at the horizon and said, ‘What I’d like to write about is what kind of faith enabled them to take such a journey.’

Of those listening to us, the one who seemed to understand best what Gretchen had in mind was Cato. He had a strong sense of pilgrimage. He told us, ‘I’m convinced I don’t come to a monastery like this by accident. It must be for a purpose … but what? I can’t even guess.’ When I reminded him that all young men of character experience this sense of making a journey to find themselves, he said,
‘I don’t mean that jazz … the old gig about identity. I know damned well who I am. What I mean is that somewhere—down that valley maybe—there has got to be a secret which will make this whole thing come alive … give it significance.’ I told him that significance could come only from within, but this he would not accept. ‘Somebody knows the secret … say the mystic word and the mountain opens.’

He said no more and listened as Gretchen continued her speculations while Clive laid out the picnic: ‘Perhaps I’ll take a family in France … it could be Flanders. About a hundred years before Chaucer. I’d study all about it, especially the religion and economics, and I’d bring the father and mother on this pilgrimage. Sometime around the year 1240. I can visualize them now—a man about the age of Mr. Holt a young wife like Monica.’

I was captivated by her tentative suggestions, and said, ‘When your family reaches this monastery door, they meet four young men about to leave for the west. Joe with his beard. Cato with his quick step. Yigal with his books. And Clive the minstrel. They’d be dressed in sackcloth and sandals, and they’d carry staves and wear cockleshells in their hats … like him.’ I pointed to the ruined door of the monastery, over which stood a carved stone relief of a pilgrim dressed as I had indicated, and its eroded features could have been any one of our four young men.

‘Not many blacks came this way,’ Cato protested.

‘Many,’ I said, ‘from North Africa.’

‘Slaves?’

‘Some. And teachers. And merchants. In the cemetery over there I’m sure you’ll find the bones of many Negroes.’

‘Any Jews?’ Yigal asked.

‘They owned half Estella,’ I said.

As we ate—stout cheese, sausages hefty with garlic, excellent bread—Gretchen nibbled and said, ‘I suppose if we knew the facts, we’d find there have always been young people wandering over the face of Europe … pretty much as we do today. I don’t think of myself as unusual. Or you, either, Monica. You could have been coming down this road and munching this same kind of cheese seven hundred years ago. In fact, I feel much closer to the girls of that age who were on a real pilgrimage of the spirit than to some nitwit in suburban Boston today.’

Joe, sprawled against a tree, said, ‘I’ll bet most of them came here because they were sent.’

Gretchen stared at him, made her right forefinger into a revolver and shot him dead. For epitaph she said, ‘Joe, you’d have been at the head of the column, fighting off the bandits.’

‘And cursing every minute of it,’ Joe said from his grave.

‘What I’m trying to say is that the motives which brought me to Europe—and you, too—were the same as those which moved the pilgrims. At any rate, it would be a great subject for a book.’

There was a pause as we looked beyond the ruined monastery to the historic route of faith, the difficult hilly path that had lured the pilgrims, and then a strange thing happened. Harvey Holt, who so far as I knew had taken no interest in what Gretchen and Cato were saying, suddenly began quoting from a poem which he had once told me he did not know:

‘Mr. Holt!’ Gretchen cried. ‘Those words could have been written about Joe.’

‘You know whose they are?’

‘Haven’t a clue.’ None of the others knew and Holt said, ‘ “The Scholar-Gipsy.” A professor wanted me to memorize it once, but I said it was too long. But one hot spell when I was at Simpang Tiga with no one to talk to …’

‘I must get a copy,’ she said, and for the first time the group felt close to Holt, although what happened next turned them around again.

For Clive said, ‘We really must have some music,’ and Holt unlimbered his tape recorder, hooking it into the electrical system of our car. His first tape, the one he considered his masterpiece, proved a disaster. It contained
the best songs of the big-band era, and when the wispy voices of the male singers and the ultra-cute beepings of the girl soloists came from the machine, like inane ghosts mouthing formal conceits in some courtly age, the young people started to laugh. ‘Hey, could we hear that chorus again?’ they asked, and when Holt rewound the tape and played ‘September in the Rain’ a second time, the young people chortled and begged for it a third time. ‘It’s sensational!’ they cried. ‘Catch that voice … that tremolo.’

All the songs we had loved they abused: ‘Just One of Those Things,’ ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree,’ ‘I’ll Never Smile Again’ and ‘Symphony’ were treated with contempt, but when the tape came to ‘My Reverie’ the crowd broke up, demanding that it be played again and again.

‘They keep telling us, “They don’t write lyrics the way they used to.” Is this a sample of what you mean, Mr. Fairbanks?’

Defensively, Holt asked, ‘What’s wrong with “My Reverie”? After all, Bea Wain is singing it,’ and Cato asked bluntly, ‘Didn’t they ever go to bed together in those days?’ and Holt snapped, ‘Yes, they went to bed, but they didn’t sing about it on Victrola records,’ and Cato said, ‘Frankly, that music is dreadful.’

Holt wanted to know why, and Joe broke in, ‘For one thing …’ but before he could make his point, Gretchen interrupted to say, ‘The tunes are dull and regular … one, two, three, one, two, three … and the lyrics are juvenile … intellectual age about nine years old.’ When Holt started to defend his favorites, Gretchen cut him short with: ‘Mr. Holt, have you ever listened to the lyrics?’

He studied the table of contents for this particular tape, ran it backward and forward a few times, sampling the sounds, until he found what he wanted: Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter’s ‘Love for Sale.’ This bittersweet melody did hold the attention of the young people, and when the lyrics began they did not immediately laugh.

‘Clever play on words,’ Joe admitted. ‘But the rhymes are forced.’

‘Don’t be so technical,’ Holt said. ‘Admit it’s good.’

‘So it’s good. One in seven is good.’

‘Harvey,’ I said, ‘I think you have “Night and Day” on
that tape. See if you can find it.’ While he looked, I told the young people, ‘When you hear this I want you to believe that thousands of men my age felt that it summarized their … not their attitudes … that would be too much. What I mean is, their feelings about how you feel when you’re twenty-two … or maybe even thirty.’

‘You’re expressing yourself awkwardly,’ Monica said. ‘You mean, how you felt about girls?’

‘Listen.’ Holt had found the famous song, one of the few in which the verse was even better than the chorus, and when it sounded through the cloister, it was all I could do to keep from closing my eyes and imagining—probably with a silly grin on my face—that I was hearing it for the first sentimental time. I knew the young people would laugh at me if I did, and the afternoon was tense enough without that.

As the words unfolded, so handsomely matched to their tune, I asked the critics what they thought of it. ‘Same reaction,’ Cato said. ‘Didn’t you cats ever get the girls into bed?’

‘Damn it! Listen to the words!’

‘I am listening, and it’s hogwash. Sentimental hogwash. No wonder the world’s in the shape it’s in if your generation listened to that slop and if President Kennedy read James Bond thrillers. Preserve me, but that is crap.’

I looked to the others, and they said things like: ‘There’s no vitality in the music.’ ‘That beat would drive you to masturbation.’ ‘Slop isn’t the exact word, but it’s close.’ And: ‘Mr. Holt that music is like the Elizabethan roundelays, whatever in hell they were. Good in their day but …’ Cato, who was listening to a replay of ‘My Reverie,’ said simply, ‘Oh, brother.’

At this unfortunate point Holt’s tape came to Sammy Kaye and the Three Kaydettes in a version of ‘Taking a Chance on Love,’ and when I heard the beginning I muttered to myself, ‘This one we should have skipped,’ and when the male voices came on, sounding like a crew of eunuchs at a palace fete, the crowd collapsed. When we got back to sensible talk, I admitted that the worst of our songs were pretty bad, and they were bad for the reason that Joe had so neatly hit on: they all sounded as if the singers and the writers had never gone to bed with anyone. The involuted euphemisms they used were ridiculous, and listening to the songs in this context.
I wondered how I could ever have taken them seriously.