by Robert Stone
There was a block of paved street where the houses had carports and painted fences, then the Gran hotel, the Texaco station—and they turned into the crowded plaza. Godoy eased the jeep through the crowds and parked against the church wall, behind a barrier of bicycle stands. As soon as the jeep was stopped, the six Carib boys leaped out and disappeared among the crowd.
Godoy watched them go and looked at his watch.
“Now,” he told Justin with a sad smile, “the trick will be to get them back.”
The two of them went past a line of helmeted Guardia and along the edge of the church steps.
In the center of the square, a ceiba tree had been hung with paper garlands and an elderly band in black uniforms was ranged beneath its branches. There were Japanese lanterns strung between trees at two sides of the plaza and the square itself was jammed with people. Men of property stood with transistor radios pressed against their ears, teen-aged parents in cheap cotton dress-up clothes clung to their several tiny children—and lone children by the hundreds puzzled their way through the crowd’s legs. The shoeshine boys had given over their space by the fountain and sat together with their boxes at the park edge, watching for flung cigarette butts, fallen change, loose wallets.
The sailors’ girls had marched uptown from the waterfront brothels and occupied their own space on one lawn where they sat on open newspapers, singing along to the music of the nearest radio and trading comic books with each other.
Along the fountain there were teen-agers, arranged according to social class—the boys watching the prostitutes and the girls, more or less demurely, watching the boys.
There were girls in hip-huggers and “Kiss Me, Stupid” tee shirts and girls whose fancy dress was their school uniforms. There were nearly white boys who wore Italian-style print shirts and looked bored, stiff self-conscious mestizos in starchy white sport shirts, blacks who broke their Spanish phrases with “mon” and “bruddah,” practiced karate moves, swayed, danced with themselves in a flurry of loose wrists and flashing palms. Across the street, at the gate of the Municipalidad, a few Guardia leaned against the pillars and watched the crowd. They were given all the space they might require.
A little boy with an inflamed eye chased two smaller girls toward the church.
“Mono malo, mono malo,” he shouted after them. “Bad monkey.”
It occurred to Justin that she had been hearing children shouting “mono malo” at each other for weeks, and calling it also at such of the ragged wandering anglos who were still about. She had never heard an epithet like mono malo before.
In the street at the foot of the church steps, a squad of local technicians was struggling with an enormous antiaircraft searchlight, adjusting the dogs and swivels, playing out the wire that led up the steps and into the church interior. Nearby there were men and boys in the purple hoods and cassocks of the Holy Brotherhood, those who had carried the images in the afternoon’s procession.
Justin and Father Godoy stood together near the ceiba tree, facing the church. The air smelled of frangipani, of perfume and hair oil, above all of the raw cane liquor, barely rum, that was being passed in Coke bottles among the sports in the crowd.
At the stroke of darkness, the band broke into a reedy paso doble and the great searchlight sent forth an overpowering light. The light broke up the foremost ranks of the crowd, sending the people there reeling back, forcing them to turn away, hands to their eyes. Then it swept around the square, ascending until the beam was pointed straight upward, a pillar of white fire heavenward. A great gasp of joy broke from the crowd.
Spinning again, the column of light descended on the plaza, catching each second a dozen transfixed faces, dazzled the old men in their wicker chairs in the Syrian’s shop and the lounging Guardia, electrified the posters of Death Wish in front of the cinema. It made the whores’ beads sparkle, shone on the balloons and patent-leather shoes of the better-off children and on the slick flesh of the banana plants. As it whirled, the crowd screamed and applauded.
The beam came finally to rest on the steps of the church, centering on a glass-and-mahogany coffin which four men in the purple robes of the Brotherhood had carried out during the display. Prone in the coffin was the figure of Christ, which was the occasion of Puerto Alvarado’s rejoicing.
Christ wore a burial shift of waxy linen and worn lace; his hands, clutching a lily, were folded across his chest. Around his brow was a crown of thorns and his long hair was matted with blood. Both the hair and the blood had the appearance of reality and Sister Justin, who had seen the figure many times before, had always wondered about them. The eyelids were also quite authentic; one felt they might be pulled back to show dark dead eyes beneath.
A hush settled as the light fell on the dead Christ—but only for a moment. As the plaza beheld its murdered redeemer, a murmur rose from the crowd that grew louder until it drowned out the dirge of the band, swelled into moans and cries of women, hoarse Viva el Cristo’s, drunken whoops of devotion.
As he lay under the light in his glass box, he looked for all the world as though he had died the same day, in Tecan, of meningitis like the overseer’s daughter who went at Christmas, of an infected scorpion bite, of undulant fever, of a knife on the docks. So the crowd began to cheer, the children of the early dead, the parents of perished angelitos, secure in their own and their children’s resurrection—cheering the sharer and comforter of death.
Around Justin there were people on their knees. Some steps away, a woman holding a balloon in one hand and her infant daughter’s hand in the other was weeping for the deceased—out of courtesy perhaps, or habit.
Justin turned to Godoy and in the shadowy light saw a look of patient detachment on his face. When he realized that she was looking at him, he said: “See, it’s all done with light. Like the movies.”
She thought that it was something very like what she might say, although what she felt at the moment was very different. It made her wonder whether he said it only for her benefit, from embarrassment for his country.
After a few minutes, the searchlight was turned off and the encoffined savior carried inside and placed at the side altar where he reposed except during procession days and Holy Week. A number of people stood chatting in the church doorway, and among them Justin recognized Father Schleicher, an Oblate Missionary from the Midwest. The other clerics there were two Tecanecans, or rather Spaniards—one the vicar of the cathedral and the other a monsignor from the capital, a representative of the Archbishop.
“We should go up there,” Father Godoy said, when they had done a round of the square. “I have to at least.”
Together, they climbed the church steps, and while Godoy made his obeisances to the senior clergy, Justin endeavored to converse with Schleicher and a young Tecanecan woman who was with him.
Father Schleicher was young, and was said to be politically engaged. Sister Justin had heard also that he had unofficially purchased a colonial press edition of the Quixote from a clerk at the Catholic university in the capital and that he paid plantation workers to bring him such pre-Columbian artifacts as they might find. Although none of this was quite illegal, although it was practically innocent hobbyism and a mark of his cultivation, Justin held what she heard against Schleicher’s account. She disliked him; he was chubby and blond, and it seemed to her that his face was set continually in an expression of thick-lipped self-satisfaction. A creep, was what she called him.
They talked for a while about American politics and Schleicher introduced the girl with him as a community planner. When their conversation ran thin, they all turned toward the interior of the church to look for more to talk about.
Inside, a great many people were crowded in a semicircle around the dead Cristo, kneeling on the floor.
“It’s an incredible statue,” Justin said. “Isn’t it strange to see him presented like that—I mean laid out?”
“When I first saw it,” Schleicher said, “it reminded me of Che. You know, the pict
ure taken after he was killed? It still makes me think of him.”
The Tecanecan girl smiled slightly and nodded.
“I wonder what it’s made of,” Justin said.
The Tecanecan girl laughed, a bit too merrily for Justin, and turned to Schleicher.
“It’s such a North American question,” the girl said. “What’s it made of?”
Schleicher laughed as though he thought it was such a North American question too.
“I’m like that,” Sister Justin said. “When I saw Notre Dame Cathedral I wondered what it weighed. We’re all like that where I come from.”
The girl’s laughter was a little less assured. Father Schleicher hastened to ask her where it was that she came from, but Justin ignored him. She had told him often enough before.
“Did you study in the States?” Justin asked the Tecanecan girl.
“Yes. Yes, in New Orleans. At Loyola.”
“That must have been fun,” Justin said. “Community planning.”
“Yes,” the girl said warily.
Godoy disengaged himself from the old Spaniards and joined them for a moment’s stiff exchange of pleasantries. Then he and Justin said their goodbyes and went back down the steps to the square. Justin found herself wondering whether the hip Father Schleicher might be sleeping with his young community planner. She sighed, despising her own petty malice. That night she was against anyone with a purpose to declare, anyone less lonely and beaten than herself.
The plaza was emptying as she and Godoy walked across it. Men approached them in the shadow of the trees, begging, calling for a blessing against bad visions from the cane alcohol. A youth warbled a birdcall after them and a woman laughed.
The crowds, the lights and the music were on the other side of the church now, where they had set up a market and a fun fair for the children. The trees had been stripped of garlands and lanterns by the crowd and the central street ran deserted toward the harsh bright lights of the company piers.
“Hungry?” Godoy asked.
Justin was not at all hungry but she supposed that he must be. She nodded pleasantly.
“We’ll give the kids some time at the games,” the priest said, “before we go and arrest them. Now we can go to the Chino’s if you like.”
The Chino’s was a restaurant that called itself the Gran Mura de China. It had a small balcony section with two tables that overlooked the harbor.
The lower floor of the Gran Mura de China was empty when they arrived; the Chino’s wife and daughter sat at a table stringing firecrackers. Justin and Godoy smiled at them and went upstairs to the balcony. They sat down and Godoy lighted a Winston.
“Do you know what Father Schleicher said about the image?” Justin asked Godoy. “He said he thought it looked like Che.”
Godoy looked at her evenly, unsmiling.
“Father Schleicher said that? Was he joking?”
“Not exactly joking. I think he had a point to make.”
“Iconography,” Godoy said vaguely, tapping his ash and looking out over the pier lights at the dark ocean.
After a minute the Chino’s daughter came up to serve them. Under her apron, the child wore a white party dress; she had been up to the plaza.
Godoy asked for shrimp and rice; Justin a bottle of Germania.
“You may have heard about our troubles,” Justin said, when they had ordered. She found the puzzled look Godoy gave her disingenuous. It was impossible, she thought, that he had not heard.
“I’m going to close us down and go home. I’m tired of arguing with the order and I don’t believe we’re getting anything done.”
“It’s a shame you had no support. It must be difficult.”
“Yes, it’s difficult to make a fool of yourself to no good purpose. But of course it’s a lesson.” She was beginning to grow quite irritated with Godoy. “Yet another goddamn valuable lesson.”
“I have to tell you,” the priest said as he watched the little girl serve his dinner and their beer, “that I’m very sorry to hear that you’re closing.”
“Really?” Justin said impatiently. “Why, thank you.”
He’s downright super-serviceable, she thought.
“Please excuse me,” Godoy said. “I haven’t yet eaten today.”
“Please go ahead,” Justin said. She decided that he was dandified and vain. Frightened of, and therefore hostile to, women. For a long time it had seemed to her that Godoy had a difficulty in comprehending plain English that went beyond any unfamiliarity with the language.
“You know,” Godoy said, tasting his shrimp, “I think you stayed this long because I wanted you to.”
“Are you kidding?” Justin demanded.
“Just a superstition of mine.”
“If you wanted us to stay you were very subtle.”
“It wasn’t only because I like you,” the priest said. “And not because I thought you were the very model of a Yankee missionary. Obviously you are not that.”
The bluntness of his language startled her. “Then why?” she asked.
“Because I know how you think. I know your attitudes. I even know the books you own.”
Justin watched him delicately take his shrimp.
“Then everyone must,” she said. “So I’m probably in trouble.”
He shrugged.
“You are North American and that protects you. The Archbishop in his way protects you.”
“Campos,” she said.
“Don’t worry about Campos for now.” He kept his eyes on his plate as he said it.
“Really,” Justin said, “it was stupid of me to try to keep the station open.”
Godoy gave her a quick amused glance.
“I don’t know what you were thinking of. But I admire you for it. And I sympathize.”
“I was being naïve as usual.”
He looked up from his plate again and held her with the look.
“You were never as naïve as I was,” he said, “and I was born here. You think you’ve failed? Of course you failed. There’s nothing but failure here. The country is a failure. A disaster of history.”
“That’s very hopeless talk,” Justin said.
“It’s where we begin,” Godoy said. “We start from this assumption.”
His meal finished, the priest took a sip of beer and lit another Winston. The beer seemed to bring a faint rosiness to his pale pitted cheek.
“When I was in the Jesuit college here I wrote a letter of which I was very proud. I wrote to your President Eisenhower.”
“Good Lord,” Justin said. “To dear old Ike.”
“Yes, to Ike himself. And I sent the same letter to the leader of our opposition—his name was Enrique Matos, of the great Liberal Party. In this letter—which I covered with tears—I told them that if the free world was to conquer Communism it must not follow the way of greed and narrow self-interest but the way of the Great Redemptor. He whom we saw dead tonight.”
Godoy crushed his Winston out in an ashtray and put another in his mouth.
“I told Ike and Matos—I was only a kid, you understand—that their leadership must be spiritual. Also that they were overlooking the evils of our country, that we were suffering because of the government and the rich and the North American attitude.
“In the same week my father disappeared. Not for long and he came back alive. You see, he was a watchmaker in the capital, an immigrant from Spain. He wasn’t hurt badly but he was very frightened. He told me not to write any more letters.
“A little later there arrived a message from the White House in Washington. I can tell you that it was an occasion of terror in my house, my parents were quite unsophisticated in some ways. It was a perfectly amiable letter. It thanked me. It was signed by an assistant. A typical letter.”
“A form letter,” Justin corrected him.
“Yes, a form letter.” He lit his Winston and blew the smoke upward. “Under that government people often disappeared. When our great hope Matos became
President it was the same. It’s the same now. When Matos was President there was a man from your country in the capital—he was the head of your intelligence here and Matos’ great friend. Last year his name was in the papers a little because of the scandals in Washington. We believe now that he knew a great deal about who disappeared and why. It was strange to read about him in the newspapers. He seemed a foolish, trivial man, almost likable.”
Justin said nothing.
“I’ll call you Justin,” Godoy said.
“It’s been my name so long,” she said, “I guess it’s my name.”
“If you tell your superiors that you agree to leave—how long can you keep the mission station?”
“Well,” Justin said, “it’s company property to start with and they’ll take it right back. There are medicines there and furniture, so I guess they’ll reoccupy it and we can be out in a week.”
Godoy shook his head in exasperation.
“No good,” he said. Before she could ask what he meant he asked her: “What will you do in the States?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to laicize anyway. I suppose I’ll look for a job.” She touched her hair in confusion. “I’m afraid to think about it.”
“I want you to keep the station open. For a month anyway. You can stall. Say that Father Egan is too ill to travel.”
“Father Egan will die if he stays.”
“All right then, send Egan back. But keep open any way you can. I’ll help you to keep open.”
“But why?” she asked him.
“Because,” Godoy said, “I have friends who are doing illegal work. They are going to make a foco in the mountains. They need a place on the coast for a while.”
“They’re going to fight?”
“Not here. But not so far away. You see, for years it’s all been smoke.” He permitted himself a quick smile. “But it’s time now.”
“Oh, my gosh,” Justin said. Her heart soared.
“So we need you if you can help us. If you want to.”
“Thank you for asking me,” Justin said. “For trusting me.”
“I have good reasons to trust you,” Godoy said, “and it’s easy to ask.” He watched her, and she knew that he was measuring her hesitation.
