by Robert Stone
“The libertine and the Communist are the one hand washing the other!”
It was the young blackshirt, who was lounging by the door in a pistolero’s crouch. There were several men with him who also favored dark shirts and tinted glasses.
“I’ve tried to answer your political objections,” Holliwell said evenly. “I’m not a political man.”
The politiques left looking unhappy. A whiff of Spanish menace, like cordite and jasmine, hung in the air. Holliwell, sobering up, was more and more driven into confrontation with the heedlessness of his demonstration.
The beautiful Compostelan lady in the aisle continued to smile on him.
“You were saying, Doctor?”
Holliwell looked at her blankly for a moment.
“The answer to all your questions is probably yes. Everything that’s known is someone’s excuse for something.”
The woman sat down in a chair that had been vacated. Holliwell was completely taken with her. He permitted himself to wonder if the debacle might not be turned around, if instead of waking up hung over and humiliated in his overpriced hotel room … it might be otherwise. Not a chance, he thought. Not this woman, not in this country. And not with him. He became once again aware of Nicolay, who was still beside him.
“I beg you,” he said to the doctor, “to accept my remarks as a foreign novelty. Like grand opera.”
“You are a master of insult, Professor. You would have made a duelist.”
“I understand Caruso sang in Compostela,” Holliwell persisted. “In your wonderful opera house. Before the earthquake. That’s what I’ve been told.”
“You’re told incorrectly,” Nicolay said. He was looking into what remained of the audience. The few people who remained could not hear their exchange. The young woman had risen once more.
“I think we should say,” she declared, addressing herself to Nicolay, “I would like to say—that if we have been disturbed by what Professor Holliwell has had to say this is all to the good. We must thank him.”
But there was no one to applaud. Everyone who had not left was moving toward the table on which the drinks were set.
She was nothing short of marvelous, Holliwell thought. In a few strokes she had rebuked his arrogance and brought him into line, rewarded his gesture of remorse and then practically blanded out the whole affair. He bowed to her and walked unescorted to the scotch. Pouring himself a drink, he found himself across the table from her. Her eyes were gold-spotted. She extended her hand.
“Mariaclara Obregón.”
“You’re very skillful, Miss Obregón.”
“We don’t avoid controversy,” Mariaclara Obregón told him. “But on the other hand, we don’t want to leave a bad feeling either way.”
“I’m very glad you were here.”
“I am too,” she said. “I have what you said on tape. I’ll listen to it another time at my leisure.”
“I hope it’ll make sense.”
“I’m sure it will,” she said. “Spontaneity is sometimes difficult.”
“Yes, indeed,” Holliwell said.
“We have political tensions here, I’m sure you know.”
“I understand completely.” His desire for her made him feel suddenly shabby and absurd. Drunk.
“The academic circles of a country are not the most considerate. I’m sure you know that also.”
“The libertine circles are pretty rough too.”
He was aware of a young North American couple standing just behind her, waiting as though to speak with him. He was careful to ignore them. Nicolay had produced two attendants in beige uniforms, their heads no higher than his shoulders. He directed them toward the table; they bowed to him and began removing glasses.
“Are you in fact a libertine, Professor?” Miss Obregón asked him playfully.
“Yes, I am,” he told her. “In that way I predate the industrial age. I am a man of the enlightenment and a libertine.”
“An illuminatus?” she suggested.
“I’m a middle-class professor,” he told her. “In every regard. No more than that.”
“A leftist?”
“A liberal is what they call people like me.”
“Here,” the woman said, “to be a liberal you must be a Mason.”
Holliwell moved around the table and past the American couple to stand beside her.
“Listen,” he said, “is it possible for us to take coffee? If not tonight, then sometime else?”
“I think unfortunately not, Professor. I wanted only to say thank you for speaking to us.”
Her hand was in his again; he forced himself to let it feather away.
“But you’re not just leaving?”
“It’s too bad but I have to go. Please let me thank you again.”
And to his dismay she turned away, leaving him with the porters, the two young Americans and Nicolay. He took a step in Nicolay’s direction and stumbled.
“Miss Obregón,” he demanded of the doctor, “who is she? Is she a member of the faculty here?”
Dr. Nicolay calmly took him by the arm and walked him toward a large soiled window that looked out on the sculpture garden of the university plaza.
“Whether we like each other is not a question, is it, Holliwell?”
“Certainly not,” Holliwell said.
“Certainly not. But I hate to see a man, a colleague—a guest, if you like—make a fool of himself. This is fellow feeling. Allow me to tell you that the party is now over and it is time for you to go home. If you require a taxi, we’ll see that you get one. Don’t embarrass yourself further.”
Holliwell looked over his shoulder; she had vanished. He would never see her again. How, he wondered, if he had pursued her down the stairs and into the lobby. Insisted. Dramatically. Romantically. With impetuosity and flair, like a lover. He felt like a lover.
Detaching himself from Nicolay, he returned to the table.
Only the porters remained, removing the tablecloth and folding it like a banner. And the American couple, still loitering awkwardly.
Presently, Dr. Nicolay joined him again.
“One,” Nicolay said as though he were declaiming poetry, “for the road.”
Nicolay looked over the single bottle of scotch and the several decanters of Spanish brandy that had been set out, and then at his watch.
“Another for the road,” Holliwell said, pouring a second drink.
“Another for the road, of course,” Nicolay said. “You’re our guest. For better or worse.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Holliwell said. He moved the bottle across the table toward Nicolay and looked about the room. Oblivious of the little doctor’s curled lip.
“I believe,” Nicolay said, “that you are a friend of Dr. Ocampo? Is this true?”
“An old friend,” Holliwell said. He was hoping that somehow the woman would come back.
“From university, eh? Roommates.”
“No,” Holliwell said. “Not roommates.”
“Companions,” Nicolay suggested.
“Asshole buddies,” Holliwell told him.
Dr. Nicolay’s expression looked strained, as though his hearing were failing him.
“I think it best to prepare more for an address,” he told Holliwell. “Even before a small audience. Even in a small country of little importance I myself would not have drunk so much. Perhaps you were nervous.”
“Yeah,” Holliwell said, without looking at him. “That was it. Take your hand off my arm.”
Nicolay withdrew his firm proprietary hand and walked away. It was a low point in inter-American cultural relations.
“The thing to do with embarrassment,” he told the young American couple who seemed determined to engage him, “is work it all the way to humiliation.”
The Americans looked concerned. They were both dark, small-boned and sharp-featured—the woman indeed could have passed for a Spanish Compostelan but her expression was eastern collegiate.
“Oh,
come on,” the young man said. “It wasn’t that bad. It was stimulating.”
“Stimulation,” Holliwell said. “That’s what I was after.”
“Can we give you a ride downtown?” the young woman asked. “We’re driving that way.”
Holliwell examined them. They seemed good-natured. Educated. Nice.
“Thank you,” he said. “That would be very helpful to me.”
The Americans conducted him downstairs and across the patio and through the foyer of the House of the Study of Mankind. Nicolay, who had been standing near the door with a group of students, turned his back on them.
Outside it was chilly, a wind off the cordillera blew spray from the illuminated fountain on them. They led him to a four-wheel-drive Honda with Tecanecan plates.
“I’m Tom Zecca,” the young man said as he unlocked the car. “Z-e-c-c-a. This is Marie.”
Holliwell shook hands with Tom and Marie and settled himself in the back seat.
“Tom always spells it out,” Marie explained to him. “People tend to think it’s Zecker—you know, with an e-r.”
“But we’re mountain guineas,” Tom said, “and we insist on the fact.”
“I had a student by that name,” Holliwell said, as Tom Zecca took the Honda around the circle of the fountain and onto the empty boulevard that connected the city center with the university grounds. He wondered if this were not the very student. He often ran into former students and failed to recognize them.
“Yes, you did,” Tom said. “That was my kid brother Rich. You really did a job on him.”
“I did?” Holliwell asked.
“Well, he still talks about your class. You really impressed him a lot.”
Of the student Zecca, Holliwell could only remember that he wore a McGovern button and was very polite.
“That’s why we came tonight,” Marie Zecca said. “We saw your talk in the embassy bulletin, so we thought—that’s the guy Rich is always talking about—we’ve got to go and see him.”
“Well,” Holliwell said, “I’m sorry it turned out the way it did.”
“Whataya talking about?” Tom said. “It was fine. You pissed people off, so what?”
“How drunk did I look?”
The Zeccas deliberated.
“A little high,” Marie said.
“I was shit-faced. It was purely accidental.”
“So,” Tom said, “a little shit-faced. You have to watch it with the altitude here. The booze can hit you hard.”
“I should have remembered that,” Holliwell said. He thought of the Tecanecan plates on the car. “You’re not with the embassy here, are you?”
“No, we’re stationed down in Tecan. It gets slow down there, so we drive up here every few weekends for a little R and R.”
They were pulling into the night’s downtown traffic. Holliwell considered the concept of Tecan as “slow.”
“San Ysidro doesn’t offer much,” Marie said of Tecan’s capital.
“Not unless you like midget wrestling or cockfights,” Tom said. “Or other pleasures we won’t get into. You can get all of those you like.”
“But Tecan has nice beaches,” Marie said. “Really the nicest beaches in the world.”
The floral clock sped by them on the left. Signs flashed. Sony. Sears Roebuck. Eveready. He could see the neon signatures of the downtown hotels.
“I know people down there,” Holliwell heard himself saying. “I may go down there before I go home.”
The Zeccas were silent for a moment.
“If you were going down tomorrow,” Tom Zecca told him, “you could drive down with us. We’re starting out around the middle of the day.”
Holliwell was troubled by the feeling that he had expected the Zeccas to say something of the sort.
“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
“Why the hell not? You’d have to share the back seat, though, because we already promised this reporter a ride.”
“No. It would crowd you.”
Marie Zecca turned in her seat.
“Listen,” she said, “if you really want to go down tomorrow we don’t want you going any other way. We would really genuinely like to have your company.”
“It’s very nice of you to say that.”
“It’s the truth,” Tom said. “You know, the lady beside me is an old social worker type from way back. We’d enjoy rapping on the way down and we’d enjoy showing you our part of the country.”
“The dusty part,” Marie said.
“I couldn’t get a visa in time for tomorrow.”
Tom shrugged. “The Tecanecans have a consulate at Zalteca on the way. They’ll write you a visa. No problem.”
“Hey, that’s me on the right,” Holliwell said as they came up to the Panamerican block.
Tom Zecca pulled over. “Nice place,” he said.
A question occurred to Holliwell as he was about to get out of the Honda.
“Marie,” he asked, “where were you a social worker type?’
“Well,” Marie said slowly. “I worked for AID in Vietnam for a while. But it’s family therapy that interests me.”
“I understand,” Holliwell said. “How about you, Tom? Were you over there?”
“Sure was,” Tom said. “You?”
“Yes,” Holliwell said. “Me too.”
The three of them sat in a charged silence that filled the car. In the instant they were bound, in excuses and evasions, in lost dreams and death. If any of them were to speak it would come forth, the place names of that alien language, the mutual friends and betrayals and crazy laughter. It would end, as it always did, in that dreadful nostalgia.
Holliwell climbed out of the car.
“I don’t think I can make it,” he told them. “But if I change my mind maybe I can call you in the morning.”
“That’ll be fine,” Tom said. He had taken out a card and was writing on it. He handed Holliwell the card through the open door. “Just call as early as you can.”
Holliwell put the card in his pocket and stood in the Panamerican’s driveway waving goodbye to them. Marie Zecca called something he could not make out.
What a curious evening, he thought. Shivering in the cold wind, he took the card Zecca had given him and read it.
THOMAS ZECCA
UNITED STATES EMBASSY
SAN YSIDRO, TECAN
That was all it said. There was a local address written across the back.
Holliwell went inside and walked across the lobby toward the elevators. The restaurant beyond the bar was crowded now; it was Rotary Club night. Compostelan Rotarian couples were dancing and it would not be too much to say that they swayed to the music of the marimbas. They were better dancers than one might expect Rotarians to be. Closer to their folk roots than the pale Rotarians of the North, Holliwell thought.
The adjoining bar was almost empty; there were deep plush banquettes and idle waiters. He straightened up, sauntered into the bar and sat down where he could watch the dancers. He was into his second scotch and considering the practical wisdom of ordering something to eat when his waiter inquired whether or not he were Mr. Holliwell.
He was. The waiter brought him a telephone, its signal button flashing silently. Holliwell assumed it must be Oscar—but a wild hope soared in him that it might, by some magic, some mercy of travel, be the Señora Obregón.
“You fuck,” the voice on the line said. “Communist son of a whore. You fuck your mother and you’re going to die in Compostela.”
Holliwell’s eye had been following the undulations of a Compostelan Rotarian rump, encased in beige silk.
“Who is this?” he asked.
The man on the phone did not hang up. Holliwell sat holding the receiver to his ear, frozen before his drink and his little dish of peanuts. The marimbas rose and fell.
“You Communist pig bastard. We shall kill you slowly. You shall die here. Die and long live the nation!”
He put the receiver down and rapidly fin
ished his drink. Another was on the way when Oscar came in smiling and patted him on the shoulder.
“I wish I could have been there,” Oscar said earnestly. “It would have been a great pleasure.”
“Apparently I got through to somebody,” Holliwell said. “My life’s just been threatened. Just now. Over this telephone.”
Oscar looked at him. “You’re very white.” He walked down the bar to where the phone had been set and dialed the operator. He was asking if the call for Mr. Holliwell had been directed to the bar and whether it had come from outside the hotel.
“I don’t think you have to worry, Frank. It came from outside and they called your room. It’s only because of the lecture.”
“It was a really innocuous drunken lecture,” Holliwell said.
“They won’t do anything to you. They can’t harm an American. Everyone knows who they are.”
“It’s extremely unpleasant,” Holliwell said, “to get a call like that.”
“But of course,” Oscar said, “that’s why they do it. It’s more unpleasant to get a bullet in reality. Be grateful you are protected. Be grateful you’re not me.”
Oscar ordered them more to drink.
“Frank, I have to beg a favor of you. I ask you to go to Tecan for me.”
Holliwell leaned his chin on his hand.
“Do a favor for me, Oscar. Don’t get me involved in your games.”
“My games? Whose games, Frank? You know they want you to go. You can do anything you like down there. You can warn these Catholics about their situation, you can conspire with them, make them a donation—who cares? Only go and be seen and this resounds to my credit. You see,” Oscar explained, “it’s someone’s idea. That’s what makes it important.”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“Yes,” Ocampo said. “Nonsense. Ridiculous. They are ridiculous and I am ridiculous. But that’s how it goes. Someone has an idea, Frank, and that someone has to have his way all down the line.” He moved closer to Holliwell with one of his opaque Indian smiles. “There are just a few steps, understand? You go. You are seen to go. You get home and someone asks you what you saw and you can tell them Russian submarines or you can tell them the heavenly chorus—it doesn’t matter. Yes, it’s ridiculous but these people control my life. I get the credit if you go.”
