Read Online The Drifters by James A. Michener - Free Book Online

it to ensure a better bed. ‘I slept in this for three weeks before Jean-Victor allowed me in his bed,’ she said. ‘Of course, he was sleeping with a Belgian girl at the time and I had to wait my turn.’ Joe climbed in and almost immediately fell asleep, but he was vaguely aware that when Sandra went to bed she kissed him lightly on the forehead, as a mother might, and sometime toward dawn he was awakened by Ingrid and Suzanne returning from their work. They undressed casually, prepared for bed, and when they saw he was awake, paused to chat. ‘It’s good to have a man in the room,’ Suzanne said.
    Joe pointed to where Jean-Victor slept, and she said, ‘He’s taken. You’re for us,’ and they knelt down to kiss him goodnight.
    ‘I’m going to like Torremolinos,’ he said drowsily.
    ‘We all do,’ Ingrid cried happily as she crept into bed. ‘My God, this is heaven.’
    ‘Today I’m going to find a job,’ Joe said.

II

BRITTA
    The daughter of a lion is also a lion.
    When the Germans invaded Norway, I was able to adjust to their occupation. When the British were defeated in our waters, I never doubted that they would someday return to rescue us. When food was cut off, we survived; when fuel was in short supply, we shivered and made do; and even when Germany seemed triumphant on all fronts, we masked our feelings and never lost hope for an eventual victory. But when Knut Hamsun, our great novelist who won the Nobel Prize, turned his back on all that Norway stood for and openly propagandized on behalf of Nazi Germany, we not only lost heart but experienced a lasting shame, as if one of our family had done this dreadful thing, for if you cannot trust the great writers, on whom you have lavished your highest rewards, who in God’s name can you trust?
    The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.
    What though the spicy breezes
    Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle;
    Though every prospect pleases
    And only man is vile:
    In vain with lavish kindness
    The gifts of God are strown;
    The heathen in his blindness
    Bows down to wood and stone.
          —Bishop Heber
    For God’s sake, give me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself.—Stevenson
    The curtains of the First Act open on a wild and savagebeach on the Island of Ceylon. To the right and left, some huts of plaited bamboo. In front, two or three palms overshadowing giant cactus trees, twisted by the wind. Below, on a rock which overlooks the ocean, the ruins of an ancient Hindu pagoda. In the distance, the ocean, illuminated by a blazing sun.
    The Pearl Fishers
    Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.—Joel
    The secret of being tiresome is to tell everything.—Voltaire
    Ah, for some retreat
    Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat,…
    Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies,
    Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster knots of Paradise.
    Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Slides the bird o’er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag;
    Droops the heavy-blossom’d bower, hangs the heavy-fruited tree—
    Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea.
    —Tennyson
    This Scandinavian flew down from Stockholm four times each year. No matter what the temperature, he dressed in his swim suit and went right out to lie on the sand, whether the sun was out or not. We asked him about this, and he said, ‘I paid a lot of money to get down here. I’m supposed to be here on the beach and the sun is supposed to be there in the sky and if it doesn’t know its job, that’s not my fault.’ And you know something? He always went home sunburned.
    I hear as in a dream
    Drifting among the flowers
    Her soft and gentle voice
    Evoking songs of birds.
    The light of distant stars
    Permits a view once more
    Of those seductive veils
    That shimmer in