The Drifters (78 page)

Surprised at my own conclusions, I asked Clive what he thought, and he said, ‘I am much impressed. The artists had to work within such dreadful confinements … only a few acceptable rhythms … a rigid form for the words … all instruments sounding about the same … and no beat whatever. I’m amazed they accomplished so much. But I agree with Joe on one thing. The lyrics are really abominable. So fake, so puritan. You can feel the pressure of society in the silly rhymes.’ He paused, then added, ‘Of course, if you could revive “My Reverie” it might enjoy a smash success … ultimate camp.’

Holt turned off his machine in the midst of this pronouncement, but when Clive was through, Harvey began to chuckle, then to laugh outright. Yigal asked him what the joke was, and Harvey said, ‘I’m looking forward to that day in July 1998, when some of you wiseacres are here on a picnic with a bunch of young kids from that period. And you try to explain to them how in your youth you got a bang out of the unmitigated slop you call music.’ He closed his machine, slamming the cover.

Joe said, ‘Wait a minute. You haven’t heard the new songs that Clive brought.’

‘I heard them last night—at Bar Vasca—and this morning when I went down I asked if they had fumigated the place.’

‘You’re an old man,’ Cato said sharply.

‘With trained ears that listen to every note that is played, and I say the slop Mr. Clive was grinding out last night was a fraud on the public.’

‘It happens to be the music of this age,’ Monica said heatedly.

‘Then this age is slop. If you have to listen to music like that for kicks … and smoke pot …’

‘Are you the new Savonarola?’ Gretchen asked coldly.

‘Is he the guy who burned those things in Florence?’

‘Yes.’

‘We need him … right here.’

‘I wouldn’t burn your music,’ Gretchen said. ‘I would keep it in a museum of nostalgia.’

‘Yours I would burn,’ Holt said. ‘It’s protest against things you don’t understand … destruction of things you do.’

‘I think this picnic is over,’ Monica snapped, but
Britta, in her cool Scandinavian composure, took Holt’s tape recorder from him and replaced it on the ground, opening the clasps as she did so.

‘It’s ridiculous for grown people to act this way,’ she said. ‘I think Mr. Holt should play the tape over again and we should listen to see if there are any songs we can respect. How else can we learn?’ She turned to Holt and said, ‘How do you start this?’

‘Push that button,’ he said, accepting no responsibility, but before any music sounded he stopped the machine. ‘We’ll do it this way,’ he said. ‘Mr. Fairbanks laid it on the line with you about “Night and Day” and you laughed. I’ll take the same risk. There’s a piece here that tore me apart when I was a kid. Tell me what you think of it.’ He worked the tape till he found what he wanted, then set the machine at good volume and adjusted the speakers.

In a moment we heard Jo Stafford’s husky voice singing ‘Blues in the Night,’ with its haunting vision of youth in an impoverished railroad town and that marvelous pair of lines:

The young people did listen with respect, and I was amused at how apprehensively Holt and I awaited their judgment. At the conclusion Joe said, ‘It has a touch of class,’ and Gretchen said, ‘Tonight, Mr. Holt, when you hear “MacArthur Park” I hope you’ll have the same compassion.’

‘I’ve already heard it,’ he said. ‘It has a touch of class.’

On our return, Holt was driving the lead car when two policemen flagged us down at the outskirts of Pamplona, took one look at Joe’s beard, instructed us to pull over to the side of the road, and asked, ‘Is this the young man who calls himself Yigal Zmora?’

‘In the next car,’ I said.

When the police halted the pop-top, I went back to translate. ‘Are you the young man who calls himself Yigal Zmora?’ they repeated. When Yigal nodded, they told Gretchen, ‘Follow us. He’s wanted.’

I asked, ‘What for?’ and they said, ‘Don’t ask questions.’

We drove into town, but when we reached the fork that led to the police station they turned in the opposite direction, and before I could figure out what was happening, they had hauled up in front of the Hotel Tres Reyes, swankiest in town, where it was practically impossible to get reservations during San Fermín.

They dismounted, leaned their motorcycles in the driveway, and told Yigal, ‘Follow us.’ As he started to enter the hotel, a small, familiar figure of an elderly gentleman dashed out of the lobby, elbowed the policeman aside, and clutched at Yigal. ‘Bruce!’ he cried. Yigal, hanging limp and dismayed, called back to us over his shoulder, ‘My grandfather.’

It was Marcus Melnikoff, well dressed and alert as ever. When he saw me he ran over to say hello, keeping firm hold of Yigal’s hand as he did so. ‘I had one hell of a time finding this boy,’ he said as we gathered around the pop-top. ‘Bruce, your room at the bar … it’s a disgrace. It was these good officers who tracked you down. Gentlemen, I would like to express my thanks …’ He took the bewildered policemen aside and handed each a thousand pesetas. ‘Spain is well run. You say, “Where’s my grandson?” and they find him.’

I asked Melnikoff where he was staying, and he pointed to the Tres Reyes, and I said you couldn’t get rooms there, and he said, ‘You can if you know the Spanish consul in Chicago and the American ambassador in Madrid. I’m a heavy contributor to the Republican party.’

‘What brings you here?’ I asked.

Grandly, silently, Melnikoff pointed to his grandson. Then he said, ‘I’ve come to take him home.’

‘I’m not going back to Detroit,’ Yigal protested.

‘Please! In front of so many, it’s not necessary to discuss family matters.’

‘I will not go home now. I said I might in mid-September.’

‘Mid-September is too late to get you into Case Institute of Technology.’

‘Who said I wanted to go to Case?’

‘Do you know how difficult it is to get in a good school these days? Only because one of the top professors at Case happens to serve as consultant to Pontiac …’

‘He can give the vacancy to some deserving black,’ Yigal said.

This unexpected reply angered Melnikoff, and he snapped, ‘I’ve heard about you at the Technion … To waste a talent like yours … Please, let’s go elsewhere. This is a public driveway.’

Yigal said, ‘The gang was planning to have dinner together. Join us.’

‘I would be honored to meet Bruce’s friends,’ Melnikoff said graciously. ‘But only if I can pick up the check.’

Monica cried, ‘You sure can. Free food, gang!’ Mr. Melnikoff laughed and asked where a decent restaurant could be found in Pamplona, and Monica had three quick suggestions, concluding, ‘But the nicest place is an old castle perched on the city walls. You’d like it, and since we know the food is excellent, so would we.’

‘You shall sit at my right,’ Mr. Melnikoff said.

The restaurant Monica had recommended was popular in Pamplona, El Caballo Blanco, situated in the old part of town on a cliff overlooking the Río Arga. It was an ancient building, beamed with old chestnut rubbed with oil, and it conveyed a sense of good living. During San Fermín it was crowded, but the manager at Mr. Melnikoff’s hotel knew the women who ran it and he had arranged a table for fourteen, which included the two college girls that Joe had picked up and the boy who was grieving over the death of Octopus.

It was a gala evening and Mr. Melnikoff proved a charming host. He told many stories of Detroit’s automobile industry, then listened as Clive explained how the musical groups in London operated. He wanted to hear the latest doings of World Mutual and congratulated me on our recent successes, and this led to our serious discussion. ‘How could a man of your interest and attainments bother with a cheap Mardi gras like this?’

‘Some of us happen to revere Pamplona.’

‘Why?’

‘As the last evocation of something important.’

He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I happen to like Miami Beach. My friends in Detroit think I’m crazy.’ He hesitated, then asked, ‘What kind of boy is Bruce?’

‘To begin with, he’s Yigal.’

‘A phase. Have you heard about his grades? In every
science, almost a hundred. Perhaps a genius. We mustn’t let that go to waste.’

‘Israel produces some very fine scientists. And she needs him.’

‘We need him.’ He looked down the table to where Yigal was arguing heatedly with one of the new girls. You could see how much the old man cherished the boy. ‘Did he tell you that he was a hero in the Arab war? What’s a boy his age doing at war?’

‘Life everywhere is pretty dangerous, Mr. Melnikoff. Those riots in Detroit …’

‘A phase. The simple fact is, that boy is needed in the United States.’

‘He knows that. I can assure you that as of now his mind isn’t made up against America.’

‘Then what in hell is he doing in Pamplona? Torremolinos? That no-where place in Portugal? Has some girl got him on the string?’

‘Mr. Melnikoff, you see that pretty girl down there, the one they call Gretchen? This morning she took us on a picnic to an old monastery.’

‘I know, the policemen here called the policemen there and they said they saw you go in.’

‘Good old Spain.’

‘What?’

‘Anyway, we were discussing the fact that for the last seven hundred years pilgrims have been traveling up and down these roads … wanderers in search of meaning. That’s what Yigal’s engaged in.’

‘Some pilgrim! You see the filthy bar he’s living in.’

‘I’m living there too.’

‘You ought to be ashamed.’

‘I would guess that in the old days half the pilgrims slept in monasteries, the other half in whorehouses.’

Our conversation was broken at this point by Cato, who came to our end of the table to pay his respects to the host. Monica was with him. ‘We have to meet some kids from Denmark at the bandstand,’ he explained, and when they were gone, Mr. Melnikoff said, ‘Ten years ago I’d have been outraged by such a sight. Now I think it’s great. If I were young and had talent, I’d want to be black, and the first thing I’d do would be to marry the boss’s daughter … for the betterment of everybody.’

Long after midnight I was in my room when a knock
came at my door. I supposed it was someone who had been sent to find a place to sleep, but it was Melnikoff; a taxi had brought him from the hotel. He asked softly, ‘Can I talk with you, Fairbanks?’ I nodded, and he went to the window and signaled the taxi to wait. Sitting on my bed, he said, ‘I feel as if I were lost. This dump you’re living in. This afternoon when I visited Bruce’s room, there was a strange couple in bed. I’m sure they’d been smoking marijuana. What’s our boy doing with a crew like this?’

‘He’s part of a total revolution,’ I said, not satisfied with my answer.

‘In America the college students burn down buildings. What is it?’

‘Mr. Melnikoff, I see these young people over here and I find them some of the finest kids I’ve ever known.’

‘This I cannot accept. I think a sickness has overtaken a whole generation.’ Before I could argue otherwise, he took my hands and said earnestly, ‘Tell me this. The Negroes. Why can’t they work their way up the ladder … the way my mother and father did? The way I did?’

‘Is that what you ask in Detroit?’

‘No. There I keep my mouth shut. I figure there’s something going on I don’t understand and I don’t want to look the fool.’

‘I’m glad you haven’t preached that in public. It accounts for the bad feeling the blacks have against the Jews.’

‘And that’s another thing. I’ve paid my dues to the NAACP for thirty years. Without the leadership of us Jews, the Negroes would still have no civil rights. You look at the record.’

‘But don’t tell them that because you Jews worked your way up, they could do so, too.’

‘Does Bruce feel the way you do?’

‘If he has any sense, he does. But let’s drop the Jews and blacks for a minute. I happen to know the Irish in Boston. When they came over here they were treated worse than the blacks. Yet they rose by their own power. Why? Because they had at their disposal a ladder of vertical mobility. The older Irish could get nothing from the Protestants in Boston. But those resourceful Irish developed the habit of producing beautiful girls and rugged boys who starred at football in the Boston high schools. So
what happened? Whether the Boston Protestants liked it or not, their sons fell in love with the beautiful Irish girls, and Harvard University gave the rugged Irish boys football scholarships, and in time those boys married their roommates’ sisters. But the black never had access to this vertical mobility. A white Irish girl can hide the fact that she’s Catholic, or she can join the Episcopal Church. But a black never could hide his color, and we allowed him to join nothing. There is no possible comparison between a Jew who got ahead and a black who didn’t. They were not even playing in the same ball game.’

‘Then you agree with the young people? There is something wrong with America?’

‘Much.’

He was silent for a long time, then said abruptly, ‘Vietnam. Shouldn’t we throw the protesters in jail?’

‘I used to live in Saigon. Tell me, has there ever been a worse war?’

‘You tell me. If you were a young man, would you burn your draft card?’

Now I was silent. We were engaged in an honest discussion, so I answered honestly. ‘It’s impossible for me to think as a young man, because I carry the stamp of my education—automatic patriotism, a certain attitude toward women, a belief in contracts, faith in the ideals that were prevalent in 1932 and were proved so dreadfully wrong. I’m an old man, encrusted with all the errors and abuses of age. If, continuing to bear my present stamp, I were suddenly made nineteen again, of course I would respect the draft and go to war. But if I were really nineteen—thinking like today’s nineteen-year-old brought up under his own system—I don’t know what I’d do … probably burn my draft card.’

Mr. Melnikoff rose, paced for some moments, then asked, ‘What do you think will happen with Bruce?’

‘I think he’ll go to the United States, study it carefully, and in the end, decide to cast his lot with Israel.’