The Drifters (81 page)

I expected Holt to blow his stack, but instead he sat back and listened, and after a while he heard a beauty of a statement, an insolent provocation to which he would
often refer. A gangling young American with a wispy beard said, ‘You forget one basic fact. What Hollywood could do was to come up, at rare intervals, with a confection of ideal camp. It sometimes did just what Mr. Holt suggested—caught an entire era and froze it into motionless motion.’ One of the French listeners asked what he had in mind, and he said, ‘The greatest movie ever made on our side of the water—one of the greatest, I suppose, made anywhere—
King Kong.
’

Rarely in debate have I heard a thesis so universally accepted. All agreed that
King Kong
was the only really good movie ever made in Hollywood, but I was rather startled when the man with the wispy beard also proposed it as the high-water mark of American culture.

‘We’ll drink to that,’ two of the girls agreed. ‘Best single thing we’ve done. I suppose Fay Wray is the ideal American.’ They launched into a discussion of her acting in this picture, and I was surprised at how minutely they remembered the movie. They drank a toast to Miss Wray, who was apparently a huge favorite, but the man with the wispy beard protested, ‘Don’t forget that without Robert Armstrong’s masterful performance, you’d have had no picture.’ He imitated Armstrong’s musclebound style, and the group had to confess that Armstrong had won immortality.

‘The apex of our contribution to world culture,’ one of the girls proposed, and they drank to that too.

In a well-controlled voice Holt asked, ‘If
King Kong
is the only good thing we’ve done, where do you put the plays of Eugene O’Neill?’

The crowd laughed, and one girl asked, ‘Have you ever tried to sit through one of those turgid things?’

‘Don’t kid around. What about
Strange Interlude
?’

‘Oh my God! Please.’

‘What about
A Long Day’s Journey into Night
, where his mother is hooked on heroin?’

‘Mr. Holt, nobody, but nobody, can take that junk seriously any longer.’

‘Then what about Ralph Waldo Emerson?’

‘That Sunday School teacher?’

One girl thought that he was merely an apologist for the Establishment, but Holt asked, ‘They ever teach you his essay “Compensation”?’ No one had heard of it, and he said, ‘His idea is that whatever you do, you get a
compensatory reaction. Like if yo uwast your university days without learning anything … well, you’re really up the creek.’

Holt’s idea was brushed aside by a young man who said, ‘There’s one other American movie that deserves serious consideration. Any of you cats seen this all-time winner
I Was a Teenage Werewolf
?’ He added a phrase that one heard often in discussions these days. ‘It was so bad it was beautiful. There was this clean-cut high school kid who had only one bad fault. From time to time he changed into a werewolf and killed young girls.’

One of the girls had seen the film and agreed that it was a masterpiece. ‘They had one scene that was truly precious. A perfectly wonderful average middle-class American family. Father was a salesman, I think. Serious discussion as to whether it was all right to let their daughter go out with a boy who kept turning into a werewolf.’

Now another girl recalled the film and said, ‘It was delicious.’

This is a word that offends me, so before I said something I didn’t intend, I judged it best that I walk over to the bullring, but the young critics had one more blockbuster. A Frenchman launched it when he said, ‘We’ve been overlooking a man working today who is certainly the best American of them all. We Europeans look on him as the equal of Fellini.’

‘You mean Jerry Lewis?’ one of the girls asked.

‘Who else? As an actor he’s magnificent, but as a director he’s a genius. Your only one.’

This brought such unanimous agreement that I had to protest: ‘You can’t be serious!’

‘Ah, but we are!’ the Frenchman said, and when the other Europeans nodded, he said, ‘Over here we see your country as comic, frenzied, lacking direction and bordering on the psychotic. Mr. Lewis is your only director to catch that quality. A generation from now he’ll be recognized throughout the world as your only serious contribution to the cinema.’

‘More significant even than
King Kong
,’ a German girl said.

This was more than I could take, so I snapped, ‘I won’t have to wait till the next generation to know that none of you have the slightest critical judgment.’ I stalked away
from the discussion, but had not gone far when Holt overtook me. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I was speechless.’

July 13 brought us a real surprise. When I took the girls down to the museum to watch Holt run, we supposed that the disaster the day before would thin the ranks, but that did not happen. If anything, the number of men who were willing to test the bulls on the slope was somewhat greater than before, as if the carnage of yesterday had whetted their appetites for a true test.

We were commenting on this when Monica suddenly screamed, ‘Good God! Look who’s down there!’

It was Joe, conspicuous in tight Levis, boots and leather vest, leaning nonchalantly against the wall and looking completely out of place. He had stationed himself not far from the police barrier at the spot where the bull had begun its housecleaning the day before. Fascinated by that catastrophe, he had come down to be part of whatever might happen this day.

Monica called to Holt, ‘Guess who’s running with you!’ and Harvey looked in various directions before he spotted Joe. He started to yell, ‘You can’t run in those shoes,’ but as he did so, the rocket exploded and the bulls came charging up the hill. Serenely Joe moved to the front rank of the runners, ran easily down the hill, miscalculated his distance, turned back too late and was hit squarely in the rump by a big steer who flattened him and then ran over him. By the time he was able to look up, all he could see was the tails of the disappearing bulls as they rounded the bend for the hospital.

‘It happened so damned fast,’ he told us at Bar Vasca as we ate breakfast. ‘I had seen how Holt did it. But those animals are so big!’

‘Did the bull get you with its horns?’ Monica asked.

‘I wish I could claim it was a bull,’ Joe replied, ‘but you miserable bastards had to be watching.’

When Holt arrived he said harshly to Joe, ‘You should have told me. I’d have warned you not to run in that spot. The steers always take that bend close.’

‘I’m telling you now. I’m going to run tomorrow.’

‘And so am I,’ Cato said, perhaps on the spur of the moment.

‘And so am I,’ I added, certainly on the spur of the moment.

‘Now wait a minute!’ Holt protested. ‘I will not be responsible for three clowns like you on the slopes of Santo Domingo.’

‘I didn’t ask for your protection today,’ Joe pointed out.

‘Yes, and you got knocked on your can … because you were stupid.’ He rose and stormed about the bar, calling Raquel as his witness. ‘They want to run tomorrow … Bastille Day … biggest crowd of the year. A dumb oaf who runs straight into a steer. A bedroom athlete. And a tired old man with white hair. For Christ sake.’

He sat down, and we assured him that whether he cooperated or not, tomorrow morning we three were going to be in the streets. ‘Why?’ he asked.

I could explain Joe. He had been indifferent to the running before yesterday, but when he saw the bull sweep the left wall clean he grasped the significance of running. It was something germane to him, something that related. It was as inevitable for him to run as it was for Monica to like men and try LSD. It was his destiny.

Cato was different. Slowly he was beginning to accept the fact that he was a member of the team without any limitations. The one person he had not yet convinced was Harvey Holt, whose prejudices ran deep, so if running with the bulls was Holt’s criterion for acceptance, Cato would show him that this was a trivial requirement. Also, he liked and trusted Joe and vaguely wanted to be with him.

As for me, it was quite simple. I was sixty-one years old and might never again be in a group so congenial, men with whom I would so gladly run. Of course, as to why I might want to run in the first place, I am not competent to explain. Psychologists have argued that men in ancient Crete ran with the bulls in order to steal from the animals their virility and courage. Cynics dismiss it as ridiculous, grown men trying to be boys again; and those psychiatrists who explain high-fidelity as a substitute for sexual mastery argue that only those men who are sexually incapable run before the bulls, hoping thus to assuage their incompetence. I’m afraid there is something wrong with this theory, because it raises so many questions about Bar Vasca. If the men I saw there had had
one more jot of sex, they wouldn’t have been able to stand up in the street, let alone run. Some have argued that it is exhibitionism on the part of old men, yet half the runners are young; and others have reasoned that it is narcissism on the part of the young, but half the runners are old. One American critic of note has claimed that nine tenths of the runners are crazy college kids from America and Germany, whereas in matter of fact, nine tenths of the runners are Spaniards, who may well be crazy but have never seen a college. My own theory is that it is fun—inexplicable fun—like a Turkish bath … or anchovies and beer … or a Chinese girl in Hong Kong.

Holt gave in. He said, ‘All right. Tomorrow the four of us will run. But not in Santo Domingo. You’re so dumb you’d get killed.’ He then led us into the street and up to town hall, where he blocked out a reasonable program. ‘You, Fairbanks, you stand in this corner of the barricade. You don’t run, and if a bull should by remote chance happen to hit you, there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. The three of us will start here, right in front of town hall, and we’ll wait until the bulls pass Fairbanks. We will then run like hell to the next corner, which is about as far as we can make it before the bulls overtake us. Now let’s go there and decide more or less what we’re going to do. Look the place over and each man makes his own decision.’

We walked slowly down to the corner where the bulls turn into Estafeta, and Cato was the first to speak. He had spotted a shop which sold baby clothes, Los Zamoranos—The Guys from Zamora. It stood on the corner away from where the bulls sometimes fell down, and under its window was a crevice which provided better than normal protection. ‘I’m going to throw myself there, under that window. What do you think?’

‘It’s each man for himself, but that’s a good spot. All right, that’s Cato’s drill. Joe?’

‘I’m going to run right into the barricade and hold fast.’

‘And you?’ Cato asked me.

‘I feel safer in the street. I’ll run till they gain on me, then twist away.’

‘Is that safer?’ Cato asked.

‘For me it is. Because I know when to twist … and how. You stick to your own plan.’

Holt hesitated, then said, ‘Remember, tomorrow’s Bastille Day. Hell of a crowd and anything can happen. I want you to see a picture which tells it all.’ He led us to a photographer’s shop facing the turn into Estafeta, and the proprietor knew what he wanted. It was a dilly. A large black bull had fallen in the street and was about to rise, totally outraged. Its horns were about four feet from a tangle of three men who were taken by surprise and were unable to find protection. They knew that the bull must hit one of them. The first man, nearest the bull, was grabbing the waist of the second man so that he could pull him in front as a shield; the second man had a stranglehold on the third, trying to yank him into position so that the bull would hit him; the third man was twisting so that he could dodge to safety behind the other two.

‘This should be labeled “The Spirit of Pamplona,” ’ Holt said. ‘It’s every man for himself, because when that bull looks down your throat, you don’t know how you will react.’ He tapped the photo and said, ‘I’ll bet each of those men was astonished when he saw what he was doing when the bull came at him.’

‘Which one did he hit?’ Cato asked.

Holt turned to the photographer. ‘Isn’t that the time the bull got up, shook himself, and ran placidly down Estafeta?’ The photographer nodded.

At dinner that night Holt suggested that Joe and I join him upstairs in a small dining room where we could talk, and after the inevitable chatter about the bullfight, Holt said, ‘Joe, I hope you’re not serious about dodging the draft.’

‘Most serious.’

‘It beats me. I know you have courage … it’s not easy to do what you did this morning.’

‘Not a matter of courage.’

‘Of course it is. You’re afraid to die. We all are. Now let me tell you that when I won my last medal I was as frightened …’

‘Please, don’t ladle out that tired soup.’

Holt kept his temper, for he felt that this boy deserved a hearing. ‘If it isn’t a problem of courage, what is it?’

‘The war’s wrong. A decent man can have no part of it.’

‘All wars are wrong. But they’re forced upon a nation, and the only honorable thing a man can do …’

‘You’re using an old vocabulary, Mr. Holt. We don’t accept the definitions you’re using.’

‘You mean that you’re going to place your judgment above that of your President, your Congress …’

‘Yes and no. As to our last four Presidents, I don’t think their judgments have been very good. As to Congress, so far as I know, it hasn’t been consulted. So the war’s not only wrong. It’s also illegal.’

‘You don’t believe that communism threatens us?’

‘Problems at home threaten us a great deal more.’

They stayed on this merry-go-round through the
pochas
, but when Raquel brought up the stew, Holt changed the subject. ‘I take it you don’t accept the poem I learned in college:

Joe tried not to smile, but failed. ‘That seems as ridiculous to me as a Charlie Chan movie.’ When he saw the shock on Holt’s face, he added, ‘That poem was written about the days of spears and shields. I’m talking about the hydrogen bomb.’