‘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.’
He lingered on because of Joe. He suspected that Joe was planning some new, hideous move to escape the draft, and he even went so far as to interrogate Gretchen, who forestalled his questions by stating, ‘I approve whatever he decides to do in this stupid business,’ so Holt found no ally there, but still he hung around, maintaining an uneasy surveillance of Big Loomis and telling Britta each day, ‘We ought to get out of here.’
His indecision reminded me of two notable passages in literature. In The Eve of St. Agnes, the best story-poem I know, Keats has that wonderful sentence, ‘So purposing each moment to retire, she lingered still.’ In Death in Venice, Thomas Mann had elaborated this concept with those telling scenes in which the learned narrator, even though aware of the impending plague, tarries in the doomed city in order to remain close to the golden boy, Pribislav Hippe. Why would Pribislav Hippe sweep into my consciousness in Marrakech, especially since the relationship involving Holt was entirely different? I suppose because educated men are doomed to carry burdens like this, depending upon them for illumination in times of crisis. Keats and Mann would have understood Holt; even if I could not, and the little comprehension I did acquire stemmed from them.
Holt’s confusion mounted when the United States embassy in Rabat forwarded a cable to its consulate in Casablanca, which dispatched a special messenger to deliver it in Marrakech. The messenger, looking for Americans, came naturally to the Mamounia Hotel, where he inquired how he might best locate Joe. The desk clerk grabbed at Holt, who happened to be in the lobby. He signed for the cable, and when he had it in his hands, became suspicious, ripped it open and read it—then stalked through the alleys to the Bordeaux.
The cable said that the California draft board was determined to make a test case of Joe’s refusal to cooperate. The board had rejected the opinion of Dr. J. Loomis Cargill, whose name they could find on no medical roster, that Joe was a drug addict. Let Joe present himself to a convenient United States military base—in this case Wheelus in Libya or Morón in Spain—for their doctors to inspect him, and then let him report for immediate induction, it being assumed that the military doctors must find Cargill’s diagnosis fraudulent.
At the Bordeaux, Holt demanded crisply, ‘Where’s Joe?’ and was told, ‘Up in his room with Gretchen.’ Bounding up the stairs, he kicked open the door, snapped Joe to his feet, and said, ‘Cable from the government.’
‘I know what it is,’ Joe grumbled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with one hand and trying to fasten a towel around his middle with the other.
‘What the hell were you thinking of when you announced yourself as a dope addict?’
‘Give me the cable and get out of here.’ He grabbed for the torn envelope, but Holt evaded him.
‘How dare you imperil your whole career, with such an admission? Thank God, the government had sense enough to know it was a phony. Joe, you’ve got to come to your senses.’
Now Joe got angry: ‘Why don’t you get out of here? I don’t need you and Gretchen doesn’t want you.’
Holt directed his attention to the girl, and said, ‘You have some influence on him. Keep him from doing these shameless things.’
But Gretchen said, ‘You forget. I happen to agree with him about Vietnam’
‘Who’s talking about Vietnam?’ Holt thundered. ‘I’m talking about a human life—a precious human life—and if you had any womanly instinct, you’d want to protect it too.’
‘I do want to. I want him to stay out of Vietnam.’
‘Damn it all, life is something more than shacking up with some broad! Life is also self-protection … and honor.’
‘Please,’ Gretchen said, ‘go away. We’ll never understand each other.’
‘You can say that again. How a woman in love can allow her man to do the things this miserable son-of-a-bitch is contemplating is beyond my understanding. Lady, for me you represent a new low.’ He had started stomping from the room when Gretchen said quietly, ‘If you had read Aristophanes, Mr. Holt, you would know that the revolt of women against war is very old—one of the oldest themes in history.’
Holt went to the bed, grabbed her by the shoulders, and said, ‘I read Aristophanes when you were sucking a b
ottle … and not a gin bottle either. For your information, Aristophanes was writing comedy … anything for a laugh. I’m talking deadly serious. Joe, I’m not going to let you do what you have in mind.’
He stormed from the room and they could hear him rampaging down the stairs, an ex-marine on fire. He left the hotel, and as soon as he got out of sight of the Bordeaux, ducked into a doorway and signaled to one of the numerous boys who infested that part of the city, hoping to pick up a tip here or there. ‘Get me Jemail,’ he said, giving the boy two dirhams.
It was a long time before the boy could find the little gangster, for Jemail was in the business section of town trying to unload his two twenty-dollar traveler’s checks in the black market for more than their face value. When he did arrive he asked in a whisper, ‘What’s up, bud?’
‘When Big Loomis has a special job with a draft dodger …’
‘You mean, the photograph?’
‘Yes, who does he use?’
‘You ever seen Ugly Abdullah?’
When Holt shook his head, Jemail said, ‘Well, I know him,’ and it was agreed that for a price Jemail would wait with Holt to see if Abdullah was summoned to the Bordeaux.
He was. After Holt stormed out of the hotel, Joe had immediately climbed the stairs to consult with Big Loomis. ‘They didn’t buy the dope addict bit,’ Joe reported.
‘I didn’t think they would, but it gave us time.’
‘The cable said they were sure you were a fake.’
‘Sometimes I think so myself.’ There was an embarrassed pause during which Big Loomis was obviously reluctant to speak, but when the silence became prolonged he said, ‘So you’ve decided to take Big Casino?’ When Joe nodded, Loomis asked, ‘You know what it entails? It’ll be in your file for a long time.’