A Flag for Sunrise

by Robert Stone

  Grim and frantic, Pablo set out through the siesta quiet for the drugstore. The druggist was waiting for him, leaning against the shutters of his shop with a singularly geek-like expression. He had taken off his green smock and was wearing a dark sport coat with three or four ball-point pens in the breast pocket. When Pablo walked by, the druggist fell into step with him. They crossed to the shady side of the street.

  “Ritalin?” the druggist asked.

  “Uh-uh,” Tabor said. “Gotta to be amphetamine, pure and simple.”

  “Dexamil?”

  Pablo nearly snarled with exasperation.

  “No downers in it.”

  “Benzedrin’,” said the druggist.

  It was the most beautiful Spanish word Pablo had ever heard.

  “Benzedrino,” he said. “Fuckin-A.”

  “Twenty dollars,” the druggist said as they walked.

  “Are you kiddin’ me? For how many?”

  “For cincuenta. Fifty tablets.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Tabor said. “Shit, O.K.” He was in no mood to bargain.

  They turned into a narrow dirt street bounded on both sides by corrugated-iron fencing on which there were a great many posters celebrating the party in power. The druggist gave Pablo an unmarked bottle with the tablets inside. Pablo handed over the twenty. The morning’s financial exchanges were making him dizzy.

  All anybody cares about in this fucking country, he thought, is money.

  When he opened the bottle to inspect the pills inside, the druggist began to hiss and flap at him to put it away.

  “Aw, fuck you,” Pablo said, but he stuck the bottle in his trouser pocket.

  At the corner, the pharmacist turned away and waddled purposefully back toward his drugstore. There was no one else in sight.

  Pablo caught sight of a Coke sign at the end of the next block and trucked on toward it, imagining the rush, hoping to Christ he had not, been taken.

  The sign stood over a little flyblown tienda, where there was a counter with some pastries and a coffee machine. Pablo went inside and whistled between his teeth. After a while a sleepy old woman came out from the back of the shop to sell him a Coke.

  He gave her one of the coins with the general on it—five ratones, gibrones, whatever—and stared her down in case she decided to fox him out of the change. Nervously, the old woman counted coins into the upturned palm which Pablo held imperiously before her.

  Then he went outside, propped the Coke under his arm and took out the bottle the geek had sold him. They were Benzedrino all right, little yellow tablets, three hundred migs.

  Hot shit, Tabor thought; he swallowed two of them with his warmish Coke and leaned back in the shade of the corner building.

  On his empty stomach, he began to get the rush fairly early on and it felt like the real thing.

  “Thank you, Jesus,” Tabor said. His being began to come together. When he had rested against the wall for several minutes, a little boy appeared and approached Tabor with his hand out. Tabor happily doled out a handful of cabrones. But the boy did not go away—he planted himself before Tabor and pointed at the Coke bottle in his hand.

  Just as he was about to hand the boy the bottle, Tabor experienced his true rush. He was moved almost to tears.

  As the boy watched him wide-eyed, Pablo wound up like Dizzy Dean and sent the bottle hurtling into the wall of the building across the street—where it smashed magnificently, sending thick shards of bottle glass in all directions.

  “Ay,” the kid said.

  “Ay,” Tabor said. “Aye aye aye.” He gave the kid a thumbs-up sign and set out for the docks with music in his heart.

  “Well, he’s gorgeous,” the blond woman said to her companion, “but don’t you think he’s a thug?” Cecil had pointed Pablo out to them at the bar.

  The man with her was about fifty, his face deeply tanned and fine-featured. His haircut made him look like a boy in a magazine ad for a military school, gone gray.

  He shrugged and lighted a cigarette.

  “They’re all sort of the same. If you think he’s gorgeous that’s good enough for me.”

  “Cecil is doing one of his Cecil numbers on us,” the woman said. “He’s pissed off because you wouldn’t hire his cousin.”

  “Hell,” the man said, “I’m sure he never set eyes on this dude any earlier than last week. I’d just as soon have it that way.”

  “You know, he thinks it’s racial. He heard you make that remark about being born on the dark side of the moon.”

  “I don’t care what Cecil thinks. If I keep hiring those no good ratones Cecil says are his cousins I’ll really be in trouble.”

  “Damnit,” the woman said. “Whatever happened to the carefree college boy we always dreamed of?”

  “I don’t want a carefree college boy,” the man said. “I want a bad guy I can keep in line.”

  The woman glanced over at Pablo and worried the lime in her Cuba Libre with a candy-striped straw. “But don’t you think this cat looks a little demented?”

  “Could be he’s high on something,” the man said, without looking over. “That could be bad. On the other hand—as long as he can work—it could make him easier to handle.”

  “Are you sober enough to talk to him? I’d like a closer look.”

  “Sure,” the man said. “Let’s run him past.”

  The woman picked up her straw and waved it languidly until Cecil caught her signal. He walked over to Pablo, who was beginning to fret over his beer, and leaned toward him.

  “O.K., bruddah. Front and center for de mon. I tell dem we know each other from New Orleans.”

  Even being ordered front and center did not stay the surge of optimism that flooded Pablo’s heart. He swung off his stool and marched confidently toward the table where the couple sat. He had been watching them, a little greedily. They looked rich and heedless, the lady sexy and loose. They aroused his appetites.

  “My name is Callahan,” the gray-haired man said when Pablo stood before him. “This is Mrs. Callahan.”

  “Right pleased to meet you,” Pablo said. “Pablo Tabor.”

  “Well, we’re right pleased to meet you too, Pablo,” Mrs. Callahan said. “Please have a seat.”

  Pablo sat down. Mrs. Callahan called for two more rum and Cokes and another beer for Pablo, while he and Mr. Callahan looked at each other blankly.

  “So you’re a buddy of Cecil’s?” Callahan asked.

  “No sir, he ain’t my buddy. He knows me, though. From New Orleans.”

  “Salvage diving, wasn’t it?” Mrs. Callahan asked brightly.

  “Yeah,” Pablo said, confused. “There was a little of that.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Callahan looked at each other quickly. Cecil brought the drinks. He had a smile for everyone.

  “Well, the thing is, Pablo,” Mr. Callahan said, “that the missus and myself have a boat and we’re looking for a crewman. She’s a powerboat.”

  Pablo nodded.

  “Do you have any seagoing experience?”

  “Well,” Pablo said. “I can steer. I’m pretty handy with engines. I can operate and maintain any kind of radio equipment you got. If you got radar I can work with that too.”

  “You must have been in the service.”

  “Coast Guard,” Pablo told him, taking the chance.

  “Good for you,” Callahan said. “Can you navigate?”

  “Guess I could get a fix on a radio beacon. I never used a sextant much.”

  “How come they call you Pablo,” Mrs. Callahan asked. “Are you part Cuban or something?”

  “I ain’t part anything,” Pablo said. “I’m American.”

  “Have a passport?” Callahan asked him.

  “They got it where I’m staying. I believe they’re a bunch of crooks over there.”

  “I see,” Mr. Callahan said. “Now that could be a problem. We might have to work on that.”

  Pablo chewed his thumbnail. “Where is it you and the lady were goin
g to take your boat?”

  “Oh,” Callahan said, “up and down the coast. Maybe do a little island hopping. We’d want you for less than a month. You could leave the vessel any number of places.”

  “Could I ask you about the salary?”

  “Well, I usually leave that to my number one. But I can tell you it’s higher than customary. Because the work is hard and we have our standards.”

  “That’d be O.K. with me,” Pablo said.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Callahan said. “We have a few things to check out before we can give you the O.K. If you check back here around five—either we’ll be here or we’ll leave a message with Cecil.”

  “Jeez,” Pablo said. “I was hoping you could tell me one way or the other.”

  Callahan smiled sympathetically. “Sorry, sailor. No can do. But I’ll tell you what”—he slipped Pablo a fistful of local notes across the table—“buy yourself a few beers.”

  Pablo sighed behind his Benzedrine and took the bills. Bank notes had slipped back and forth under his hands all day.

  “What’s the matter, Pablo?” Callahan asked. “You feeling O.K.?”

  “I don’t know,” Pablo said. “Sometimes you get the idea all anybody’s interested in down here is money.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Callahan looked at him pleasantly.

  “Well,” Callahan said, “that’s because it’s such a materialistic society down here. They don’t have the same kind of spiritual values we have up home.”

  “Right,” Mrs. Callahan said, “one gets caught up in it.”

  Pablo smiled and stood up, thinking that he might have trouble with these people. “Hope to see you at five,” he said.

  On the way out he said so long to Cecil.

  When Pablo was on his way, the Callahans drank another round.

  “Jesus, it’s depressing,” Mrs. Callahan said. “They’re all such creeps. And what we really need is an extended family.”

  “The only question these days,” Callahan said, “is, will they turn on you? It’s sad but that’s the way things are.”

  “I think I’ve just decided,” Mrs. Callahan said, glancing toward the bar, “that I don’t like him. I think he’s Cecil’s idea of a gag.”

  “He’s a deserter,” Callahan said. “Those guys are usually a good bet.”

  “Maybe we’re supposed to think he’s a deserter. Maybe he’s a Fed.”

  “He’s too fucked up to be a Fed. I mean, they’re just not that good.”

  “Maybe we can get by without him?”

  “I don’t think so,” Callahan said.

  They sat in silence for a while.

  “Look, Deedee, on the level of instinct I go for him. I think he’s the best man we’ve seen. I think he knows how to take orders. I’m sure he doesn’t like it much—but I think he takes them.”

  “I don’t like him,” Mrs. Callahan said.

  “There’s three of us and one of him—and he can’t really navigate. But I’ve got to get his passport and check him out. Cecil probably knows where it is.”

  “It’s your decision,” the woman said.

  “I used to like it,” Callahan said, “when the baddest thing around these parts was me. These days I’m just another innocent abroad.”

  Mrs. Callahan finished her rum and lit a small thin cigar.

  “It’s really scary,” she said. “People are getting to be a disgrace to the planet.”

  Callahan smiled dreamily.

  “We’ve been lucky, kid. We’ve met some dingalings but we’ve met some sweethearts, too.”

  Mrs. Callahan waved the cigar smoke away from their table.

  “Don’t get me going,” she said. “I’ll start to cry.”

  Six stories below Holliwell’s window, a French teen-ager and her mother were playing in the swimming pool. The women were fair; their bodies were tanned and charged with the sunlit sensuality of fruit in the softening afternoon light. The daughter was doing laps and even within the confines of the Panamerican’s pool it was apparent that she was a fine swimmer. At each length, she performed a racer’s turn while her mother watched her with a brown arm resting on the tiles, shading her eyes from the sun and sipping lemonade from a tall iced glass. Tame parrots wandered among the plants before the poolside suites. Beside the wall that divided the hotel pool from the Compostelan street outside, two Indians in braided uniform jackets hosed down the garden, looking neither at the guests nor at each other.

  Holliwell was sitting on his pocket balcony watching the Frenchwomen when it occurred to him that, against safety and reason, he felt like going to Tecan after all. The Corazón Islands stood off her Caribbean coast, enemies to winter and the emptiness that awaited him at home. Tecan was what it was, but it was also, like Compostela, the sweet waist of America. A seductress, la encantada, a place of pleasure for the likes of him.

  Beyond the snow bird’s impulse was his mounting curiosity about the Catholics there. It would be strange to see such Catholics, he thought. It would be strange to see people who believed in things, and acted in the world according to what they believed. It would be different. Like old times. He owed nothing to anyone; he could go or not. What he might do and what he might see there would be no one’s business but his own.

  He put away the thought and drank more and the pool below him surrendered to shade. He had stayed in his room in the expectation that some sort of social invitation would come from the university, that someone there would at least call to welcome him.

  No calls came, however, and he suspected that it must be because of Oscar. Perhaps they imagined that they were being preyed on by a faggot cabal.

  Fuck them, he thought, pacing the tile floor drink in hand. They would despise his address. Leftists and rightists alike would find it so much gringo decadence.

  The women would be puzzled and threatened, they would turn to their husbands for explanation. The husbands would explain about gringo decadence. That professor, they’d say, smacking their lips, he’s a friend of Ocampo’s, he’s a maricón. It’s no surprise he feels that way.

  But hasn’t he a wife? the women would ask.

  It proves nothing with them, the men would say. Believe it, he has little boyfriends like Ocampo. The wife undoubtedly has lovers.

  Then their poor children, the women would say.

  And the men—whether of the left or right would say—Mujer, the children—you can see them for yourself. They come here all the time. Look at their mouths and their eyes. The boys all look like women. They can’t satisfy the girls. All of them are addicted to drugs.

  How bitter he had become, Holliwell thought. His own venom startled him.

  So be it. If the Autonomous University would not give him dinner, he would come back to the hotel after the lecture and take his dinner there. Perhaps Oscar would join him.

  With a drink beside him, he took up his Spanish-English dictionary and worked over the address for a while.

  Within the hour there was another bout of hide-and-seek with the hotel phone. He found himself in conversation with a man from the Cultural Affairs section of the American Embassy named Vandenberg. Vandenberg regretted that the Cultural Affairs section had not been able to sponsor his address. He regretted further that he himself would not be able to attend although he understood that there were people from the embassy community who planned to go.

  Holliwell explained that it had all been set up very suddenly, through friends; he understood that there had been no time to arrange official sponsorship.

  Vandenberg said that everyone was very happy all the same.

  “Keep us in mind,” he told Holliwell.

  Holliwell assured him that he would indeed.

  By six o’clock there were no further calls. Holliwell had a shower to sober himself and then drank more, as though that would further the process. Going along the hallway to the elevator, he observed that his steps were unsteady. On his way across the lobby, he stopped at the bar for a drink, spreading his address o
ut on the polished mahogany before him. He drank two escosses and listened to the voices of the men at the table nearest him; there were four, speaking together in accented English. Turning casually in their direction, Holliwell surmised that two of them were Compostelans. The others, from the pitch of their English and their starched white open-necked shirts, he decided must be Israelis. They were too far away and spoke too softly for him to determine what it was they talked about.

  Holliwell gathered up his speech and strode out into the gathering darkness, walking the length of the hotel path to stand beside the policemen who stood at the gate to fend off beggars and shoeshine boys. When a taxi pulled up at the curb, he caught it and set off in a peel of rubber for the Autonomous University.

  The palm-bordered blocks of the Central Avenue were deserted as Holliwell’s taxi sped along them. At one intersection, the cab halted to let a column of youths march across the roadway and at first Holliwell mistook the procession for some sort of demonstration. But as the column emerged from the verdant gloom of the dark traffic island, he saw that it was flanked by policemen with carbines and that the boys and the few girls among them marched ten abreast in a quasi-military step, silent and expressionless. Most of the boys long-haired, the girls in jeans. There were couples among them going hand in hand. The policemen marched them on across the right-hand lanes of the avenue and up a darkened side street.

  When the cab was under way again, Holliwell asked his driver who they were.

  “Jipis,” the driver said. “Youth without morals.” The driver seemed to be something of a philosopher, an elderly Spaniard with clerical steel glasses.

  “What will be done with them then?”

  The driver shrugged. “No harm.” Then he turned in his seat and smiled. “Perhaps haircuts a la policía.”

  At the floral clock, the driver plunged cursing into the maelstrom of rotary traffic. Holliwell held his breath.

  “Still,” he suggested to the driver when they had cleared the rotary, “it’s a free country.”

  “Claro,” the driver said. “Ever since the Reform.”