The Drifters (85 page)

Joe simply stared. The dockside was more modern than he had anticipated. The presence of a chugging train confused him as did the modern cargo gear and the Mercedes-Benz taxis. What he could see of the surrounding city looked European. ‘This isn’t what I was led to expect,’ he said.

As for Gretchen, she reveled in the exotic beauty and said to the others, ‘That was a great decision we made in Pamplona.’

Gretchen wanted to drive, but on the trip in to the city, found it difficult to keep left, and this prevented her from seeing much of Lourenço Marques. The others found it one of the most beautiful capitals they had visited. Its boulevards were wide and ran in straight lines far into the interior, and the buildings that edged them were clean and solid. Joe tried to guide her from a map he had picked up aboard ship, leading her through the residential area to the luxury hotels, huge structures that would have been at home in Nice or Cannes, each with its own swimming pool and tennis courts.

‘I keep trying to convince myself this is Africa,’ Cato said.

They now got mixed up in a network of concrete superhighways, from which they extricated themselves with difficulty, but ahead they saw that sign which is so reassuring to motorists in Europe and Africa:
Camping.
Swinging off the road, Gretchen stopped the car at a flower-surrounded office and asked, ‘Is this where we register?’

‘Your passports,’ the Portuguese official said. Then he raised a barrier that allowed them entry to a spot which they would remember as a most gracious introduction to a new continent.

When I later caught up with them, Gretchen told me, ‘It lay smack on the shore of the Indian Ocean, so that when you got up in the morning you saw the sun rising from the water, and when you went to bed at night you could see the lights of passing ships. There were casuarina trees everywhere and so many flowers that the place must have been run by gardeners.

‘In and out among the trees wove a network of paved roads, with places to park at unlikely points. We chose a beauty. We could see a cluster of distant islands. And all this for less than a dollar a day.’

‘She hasn’t mentioned the best part,’ Monica said. ‘We’d be leaning against the pop-top, and out of the trees would descend a horde of tame monkeys to chatter about local affairs and beg for food. They were really extraordinary, from grandfathers to babies, and if we didn’t feed them they perched out of reach and cursed us, but if we had food they’d come closer and flatter us outrageously. We called them our welcoming committee.’

‘The part I liked best,’ Gretchen said, ‘was the rondavels. If you left the part of the camping reserved for caravans, you came to an area filled with little round huts, each painted a different color. They were patterned after old African-style houses, and when you got tired of sleeping in your car, you could rent a rondavel. It was super.’

The rondavels, I learned later, caused some embarrassment, because after they had slept in the pop-top for two nights, Joe suggested that they needed more room, so they went to the office, where the attendant, seeing from their passports that they were not married, made an elaborate joke out of finding a pink rondavel for the two girls
and a blue one for the boys. Gretchen was about to inform him that this wasn’t what they had in mind, but Monica interrupted to say, ‘That’s good.’

When the attendant left, Cato and Monica moved into the pink one, leaving Joe and a self-conscious Gretchen standing before the blue one, uncertain as to what they should do next. On the Greek freighter, life had been simple. Since original plans had called for a party of five, three cabins had been reserved, and when Britta stayed behind, it was logical for Monica and Cato to use one, Gretchen one, and Joe one. This embarrassed nobody, since it was recognized in the group that Gretchen was in some nebulous way attached to Clive, so Joe had paid her normal attention during the long trip and felt neither inclination nor obligation to do more. The two nights spent ashore had presented no problem, since everyone was accustomed to the close quarters in the pop-top and did not interpret them as an invitation to emotional involvement.

But now it seemed as if Gretchen and Joe must share the blue rondavel with its double bed, and Gretchen backed away. In obvious embarrassment she moved to the doorway of the hut and said in a low voice, ‘Hadn’t you better bring my things from the Volkswagen?’

Joe asked, ‘
Your
things?’ and she nodded. When he trudged back to the pop-top, after having delivered them, he muttered, ‘And I was the guy who proposed the rondavels.’

On the afternoon of the third day Gretchen surprised the others by saying, ‘I’ll stake you to dinner at the Trianon.’ So that night Cato spruced up and the girls wore their sauciest miniskirts, but Joe appeared in his normal outfit. With a collective ‘Oh, brother!’ they got him out of his Levis and sheepskin vest, but his boots he insisted upon wearing, and with ordinary trousers, shirt, tie and blazer he didn’t look too bad.

When they filed into the posh dining room, everyone stared at them—partly because of the very short miniskirts, partly because of Joe’s wild hair and beard, but mostly because Cato was obviously a white girl’s escort. Unfortunately, they were seated near a stiff-necked Boer
couple from South Africa who took an extremely dim view of everything and muttered audibly about niggers who ought to be kept out of decent places.

Under this provocation, Cato and Monica became completely obnoxious. ‘If you please,’ Cato said haughtily to the head waiter, ‘send us the wine steward.’ When the sommelier came, Cato asked in a voice somewhat louder than necessary, ‘Have you a really good white Burgundy … perhaps a Chablis?’ He stroked his beard and said in a confidential tone, ‘But it must be very dry … very dry indeed.’

The head waiter now started the rumor ‘He’s a distinguished official from the United Nations,’ whereupon Monica said in a clear voice, ‘Isn’t it amusing that all over the world people use the United Nations as an excuse for being forced to do what they should have done fifty years ago?’

When the wine came, Cato really went into his act. He lifted the sample, looked at it against the light, then carefully sipped a little, swished it about his mouth, and studiously spit it into another glass. Then, reflectively, he leaned back and said, loud enough for the Boer couple to hear, ‘There’s something … something.’ He asked for a piece of bread, which he slowly chewed and swallowed. Only then would he try a second taste, which he savored like a connoisseur, finally swallowing it. ‘Very just,’ he said judiciously. ‘You may serve.’

In the kitchen the head waiter said, ‘That goddamned monkey knows his wine. His wife must be a millionaire,’ but the Boer gentleman whispered to his wife, ‘I’d like him to try that on me … just once. I’d wring his neck,’ and Cato whispered to Gretchen, ‘I hope you can pay for this wine … whatever the hell it is.’ Monica ended the act by saying loudly enough for several tables to hear, ‘You clown. You wonderful, stinking clown.’

At another table a distinguished-looking couple—he with white hair and clipped mustache, and she with bluish hair and delicate lace collar—kept staring at Cato, neither in amusement at his buffoonery nor in anger at his presumption, but rather as if they knew him, and after the wine had been served they dispatched a waiter with a note. It was addressed not to Cato but to the young lady in blue, and it read: ‘Forgive me, but are you not Sir Charles Braham’s daughter? My husband is chief justice
of the Vwarda supreme court.’ It was signed ‘Maud Wenthorne’ and carried the postscript, ‘Perhaps we can have coffee in the bar.’

Monica read the note with confused emotions: it conjured up memories of pleasant afternoons in Vwarda when the English colony met for tea and talked of schools and summer rains and the most recent outrages of the Labour Government—in London, of course, not Vwarda. Those had been the splendid days, hanging at the edge of change, but swiftly they had turned into tragic days marked by tribal strife, expropriation, loss of jobs that had seemed secure, and the gradual expulsion of the white man. Monica’s father and the Wenthornes had seen much of one another, but Monica had been away at school in England and it was understandable that Lady Wenthorne should not recognize her for sure.

Monica felt a strong temptation to send back a note: ‘You are mistaken,’ for she did not want to reestablish contacts with Africa’s British colony, but to reject Lady Wenthorne, after she had been so kind in Vwarda, would be ungracious. Turning toward the other table, she smiled warmly and nodded, then passed the note to her three companions, replying noncommittally to their questions. To tell them all she knew of this distinguished couple would require a backward trip that she was ill-prepared to take; to tell them less than the whole story would be unjust; but her dilemma was solved by Cato, who said, ‘Isn’t he the cat who’s had all that trouble in Vwarda? Handed down a decision the blacks wouldn’t tolerate?’ Arrogantly he turned to stare at the chief justice in such a way that the latter had to know that this Negro was identifying him with the recent judicial crisis. Sir Victor blushed, then bowed and nodded his head a couple of times as if to say, ‘Yes, young man, I’m the one.’ At that moment he must have regretted his wife’s intemperate invitation to coffee.

The Wenthornes finished their dinner first and were waiting in the bar, where Negro servants in blue uniforms and white gloves moved sedately, serving small cups of very good Angolan coffee accompanied by sugar wafers. The judge and his wife sat in a corner at an ornate cast-iron table whose surfaces were lavish with scrolls and curleycues. A soft light emanated from unseen sources, and Gretchen thought: This must be one of the most
civilized spots in the world today; but Monica thought: Here we go again … the grandeur of empire … this time Portuguese.

Lady Wenthorne acted as if she were presiding over a Victorian soirée, and the judge seemed the epitome of judicial elegance, characterized by that probity and nice regard for proper behavior which marks the best British judges. For example, when Cato asked pointedly, ‘Why did the Vwarda decision trigger riots?’ Sir Victor rose, excused himself and went ostentatiously to the men’s room, leaving his wife to answer the question. ‘Because a white judge had to reverse a black judge.’

‘Aren’t there any blacks on the high bench?’ Cato asked.

‘How could there be? No natives have studied law.’

‘You said the lower judge was black.’

‘By courtesy, not by training. My husband was in charge of recruiting a judiciary, and he did wonders in bringing promising young men, even though they were not qualified, onto the bench. But for the superior levels … Quite impossible.’

‘But I understand that right now the superior judges are black.’

‘Yes. Since the riots, all the white judges have been kicked out.’

‘Then they did find black judges?’

Lady Wenthorne looked steadily at Cato and said, ‘They found black men … not black judges.’

Now Sir Victor returned, and this was a signal to drop the subject of the riots, so Monica asked, ‘Will you be returning to Vwarda?’ and he said with that calm which had characterized him on the bench, ‘A mission is arriving tomorrow. The president’s brother is in charge, I believe. We’re going to explore what might be done, because there’s an honest wish in Vwarda that I continue until the various benches have been filled and trained.’

‘I thought they were filled,’ Cato said.

It was remarkable—Monica made a great point of this when she told me about the affair later—how free of prejudice the Wenthornes were. They liked the black men, had worked with them all their lives, had done all they could to inspire young blacks to study law and medicine, and now they intuitively liked Cato and his imperative questioning. I’m afraid the benches are filled, sir,’ the judge said, ‘but all the leaders in Vwarda acknowledge
they are filled with the wrong men—tribalists, corrupt bargainers, men without principle or probity. I doubt if the president and his brother want me to return, but they certainly want someone like me who is capable of cleaning up the mess. And I suppose, for better or worse, it must be a white man.’

This irritated Cato and he asked, ‘Suppose that the rioters who threw you out, keep you out? Doesn’t the bench continue? Doesn’t law continue, but on a different footing? Black justice for blacks?’

‘You’ve hit the nail right on the head, young man,’ Sir Victor conceded without rancor. ‘Of course the courts can continue without white judges. Why should two Englishmen, two Irishmen and one Australian dispense justice in Vwarda? But what the black judges of this generation will dispense is neither law nor justice, for they know neither. They will dispense tribal revenge. In truth, they are already doing so, and that’s why the mission is coming here tomorrow.’

‘You condemn the whole legal system of Vwarda?’ Cato pressed.

‘So long as it steeps itself in mere tribalism, yes.’

‘You don’t think that tribalism can ultimately work just as well as western legal systems?’

‘In a given tribal area, unquestionably it’s as good. In a federal area, where many tribes must co-exist or perish, it cannot function.’

‘Isn’t it possible that Africa may have to experience a long period of tribalism, after which it will evolve its own kind of federalism?’

‘Yes!’ Sir Victor said enthusiastically. ‘That’s what we hope for … what we plan for. But the steps from tribalism to federalism must be taken honestly and without destroying nations, and this can be accomplished only if all of us observe the universal principles of law. That’s where the problem lies.’

‘And the law to be followed is of course the white man’s law?’

‘If you consider Hammurabi, Moses, Muhammad and Solon white men, yes.’

Lady Wenthorne interrupted to steer the conversation away from judges and justice. ‘What do you hear from Sir Charles?’ she asked Monica.

‘He’s in London. Totally dreary.’

‘What a pity! He should never have left Africa,’ She said this as much to her husband as to Monica.

‘What are you and Sir Victor planning to do?’