The Drifters Read Online Free PDF Page B

during the day he saw young people, including many attractive girls, gathering in the streets, but he could not bring himself to join them. His immediate responsibility was to earn enough money to make the break for Canada.
    On his last visit to the church his counselor gave him an address in New Haven, and told him, ‘Report after six in the evening. This office is run by Yale men and they attend classes during the day.’
    He left New York with the impression that it was probably a hundred times larger than he had guessed, a hundred times more interesting. At some future time, when circumstances were more congenial, he would like to test himself against this city, against its indifference and beautiful girls. ‘I wonder if I could handle New York?’ he asked himself as he headed north.
    He landed in New Haven at mid-afternoon, and as the woman in New York had predicted, the underground office was closed, so he drifted about the ugly city. It was a cold day, and the more coffee he drank in order to share the warmth of the restaurants, the more his bladder suffered from the icy wind, and he was most uncomfortable, but when the counseling office opened he was more than repaid.
    The counselor was a professor of poetry with an Oxford background, so Joe concluded that he must have been aRhodes Scholar. To protect himself legally, the professor, a young man with enthusiastic ideas, advised Joe to surrender and go to jail, but when Joe refused, the professor leaned back in his chair and said, ‘When I was about your age I went to Europe with hosannas in my ears. You’ll be going as a criminal.
Plus ça change, plus ce n’est pas la même chose.
’
    ‘I haven’t decided yet,’ Joe said.
    ‘Good God! Aren’t you the lad I was supposed to meet from Alabama?’
    ‘California.’
    ‘My dear fellow, forgive me. We get these urgent messages and we don’t really spend the time we should. There’s a deserter being smuggled through here this evening on his way to Canada, and I assumed that you were he.’ He struck himself on the forehead and said, ‘Good God! One look at your hair should have satisfied me you hadn’t been in the army. I’m going to turn you over to one of our chaps who specializes in draft delinquency. I really don’t know the facts.’ He called for a student named Jellinek, but got no response, so he looked outside the door to see if the deserter from Alabama had arrived, then sank back into his chair, adjusting his legs beneath him as if he had no bones.
    Speaking rapidly and with mounting enthusiasm, he said, ‘Since both of our people are late we may as well exchange confidences. If I were you I’d head straight for Europe. Even if I had only ten dollars I’d go. How? Work on a cattle boat. Ensnare a rich widow. God knows how I’d do it, but I’d do it. I’d see the Van Eyck altarpiece at Ghent, the Brueghels at Vienna, the Velázquezes in the Prado. I’d want to see Weimar and Chartres and San Gimignano and Split in Yugoslavia. Do it, young man, no matter the cost. Don’t waste these years in hiding in Canada. There’s nothing you can learn there that you can’t learn hiding in Montana. Go to Europe, educate yourself, and when this madness is over, come back and go to jail. Because if you go into your cell with ideas and visions, the years of imprisonment won’t be wasted and you may come out a man of substance.’
    ‘How would I get to Europe … with no money, that is?’
    ‘Good God, money is the cheapest thing on this earth, but with you boys, it seems to be the overriding concern.’ He leaped from his chair and stormed about the room,scratching his head. Suddenly he stopped and pointed a long finger. ‘I know just the place for you. Get to Europe any way you can and drift down the coast of Spain to a place called Torremolinos. All sorts of bars, dance halls. A smart chap can always make a living there.’
    ‘My Spanish isn’t too good.’
    ‘In Torremolinos they speak