A Flag for Sunrise

by Robert Stone

  “Es ist eine schöne …” Naftali whispered. “Ach. Trains.”

  Pablo leaned against the brass frame of the bed and bent down to hear.

  “Brain coral,” Naftali whispered to him. “It’s only the outer coral of the brain …”

  Tabor took the brandy bottle and sat down on the edge of the bed. He dropped Naftali’s diamond into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  “Pablo!”

  “Yo,” Pablo answered.

  “There are reefs outside, Pablo. And reefs inside—within the brain of the diver.”

  “I don’t understand you, boss,” Pablo said. He realized then that he feared to lose the old man’s presence.

  But he had scored in spite of everything. Had made an idiotic overplay and scored all the same. He felt forgiven, favored by God.

  “In the brain coral you see the skull of the earth, the heaping of the dead. You pass it going out … you see it in your mind … it’s your own brain. Sometimes among the brain coral … the casing of a skull. It rolls under the reefs.”

  Pablo stood up, lifted the shutter slats and looked out into the quiet street. He saw no one save an elderly Chinese in a Hawaiian shirt, walking his bicycle along the sidewalk. He turned and put the brandy bottle on the dresser, catching sight of his own lean brown face in the mirror as he did so.

  “Pablo!”

  “Still with you, boss.”

  “Your name rolls, Pablo. It’s your skull down there—white and round. It shines in the clear light … eight fathoms under the fan coral. Your skull is the counter … it’s the only ball in this game, Pablo.”

  He cursed me, Pablo thought, he turned around and cursed me. The chill of eight fathoms touched his heart. A dying man’s curse.

  Might it be, he wondered, that a man saw the future as he went out?

  “Hey, man!” He shook Naftali’s shoulder, lightly at first, then harder, trying to bring him back in over the reef. But Naftali’s breathing was like the slow droning of some remote insensible machine, beyond call.

  He stepped back and looked around the room, fingering the bottom of his shirt pocket where the diamond was. It was still possible, he thought, that there was more jewelry somewhere in the room. If there were even one more stone like the one in his pocket, he might buy time and freedom. If there were two or three more … the excitement made him clench his teeth and roll his upper lip in a hungry grin.

  As he reached down to take his clip and gun from beside Naftali’s unconscious body another thought came to him: that it might still be possible to bring the old man back, to get help, a doctor, an ambulance. But it was too late for that. There was too much to explain, too many forces at work. It would be a foolish gesture.

  Naftali’s pistol was a good one—Japanese, a new Nambu, eight shots, seven sixty-five.

  Pablo set about searching the drawers and paper wardrobes. In one drawer, he found a wall crucifix. The other drawers held invoices, onionskin copies of contracts, letters typed in several languages, some in a strange alphabet he had never seen before. Only one was locked and when Pablo pried it open he found a stack of nearly a dozen passports from as many countries. The wardrobes held a few pairs of slacks and a great many short-sleeved white shirts.

  He searched no further; he felt very tired now and it was dangerous to stay. He sat back down in the chair for a few minutes and drank the rest of the brandy, listening to the wind chime and Naftali’s last labored breathing. What, Pablo wondered, might he be seeing now?

  The speculation threw him into a sudden panic.

  He’s too strong, Pablo thought desperately, he’ll take me with him.

  Tabor got to his feet, hesitated for a moment and then went quickly to the bed and slid the bolster from under Naftali’s head. Staring hard at the colorless stucco wall before him, he pressed the bolster with all his strength into Naftali’s face. There was a brief spasm of faint struggle, so faint that he might almost have imagined it. When he had finished, he dropped the bolster and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He could not bring himself to feel for the old man’s heart.

  Before turning out the light, he glanced quickly at the figure on the bed. Naftali’s gray eyes were dull, there was spittle at his lips. No question now on which side of the reefs he lay.

  Alone in the darkened room, he felt bereaved. He would interpret Naftali’s words not as a curse, nor as a prophecy, but as a warning from the dead worlds. He besought Naftali’s forgiveness. When he passed the open drawer where the crucifix lay, he crossed himself as he had seen Mexicans do.

  What now, old man? he thought, touching the diamond.

  There was nothing to do but go back to the Cloud.

  The lower floor of the Hollandia was silent and dark now; its street door had been bolted. Pablo laid back the latch carefully. Outside, the island town seemed to have withdrawn into itself. He could hear only a distant car engine, a few dogs, the calls of the night birds that had tormented him in Compostela. He went down the front steps and out through the little garden fence and it was not until he had crossed the street and started down the neat little alley leading to the marketplace that he noticed the old Peugeot with an unlit taxi sign that was parked some distance down the road from the Hollandia, and that there was a man seated behind the wheel. The Hollandia’s night light reflected on what might be the man’s sunglasses or the visor of a driver’s cap.

  Aboard the Cloud, the Callahans were making merry in their saloon deck; Negus was on the bridge moodily tapering off on beer.

  “Where the hell you been?” he demanded of Pablo. “Who in fuck said you could just take off?”

  “I got finished loading,” Pablo told him. “You were crapped out, so I thought I’d go over and lift a few.”

  Negus staggered out of the pilothouse. He looked slack with his day’s drinking, his anger weak and without menace.

  “Nobody told you you could have that pistol. Give it here.”

  “I need protection,” Pablo said, “if I’m gonna walk around these foreign places.” He handed Negus his forty-five. The Nambu was tucked in his belt, concealed by shirt-front.

  “This ain’t the goddamn Waterman Line,” Negus said, as though he had thought of saying something else instead.

  “Hell, I was over with Tino before. I thought it must be all right.”

  “Where is Tino?” Negus asked. “Was he with you?”

  “Haven’t seen him since this afternoon,” Pablo said. He walked back to the lazaret with Negus’ frail curses behind him.

  Down in the compartment, he propped the hatch cover open with a marlinspike and lay down on his rack. When he closed his eyes, luminescent ranges of coral began to form behind them.

  Godoy’s church was in the hills above Puerto Alvarado, a square structure of whitewashed clay with the shapeless parody of a Norman steeple over its doorway. As soon as Justin opened the unpainted wooden door she heard the babies crying. Some Indian couples had come down from the Montana to have their infant children christened. The Indians knelt gravely in the candlelight around the font, the women in their dreary cotton shawls that were never sold in shops or exported, the men in khaki shirts and trousers, clutching straw sombreros with red and black marriage bands like coral snakes around the crown. The older children knelt behind the adults, equally grave and silent.

  In turns the women rose to offer up their weeks-old infants and as Godoy, unassisted, poured the sacramental drops, the church would fill with the babies’ thin cries and the liturgical hum of the godparents reciting their oaths. Justin sat waiting in a rear pew, out of the light. When she had been seated a minute or two, she looked across the church and saw two men, one white and the other Negro, sitting in a pew opposite. The two men had turned to watch her; they did so unselfconsciously. One of them had thrown a lazy arm around the back of the bench on which he sat. The men were wearing cheap silky sport shirts of a bright print.

  Justin ignored them and sat facing the baptismal font. When the christenings were duly s
olemnized and Godoy, wielding his censer, blessed the Indians and his church, the two men crossed themselves. Justin, out of reflex, did the same.

  Father Godoy, with a smile, walked the Indians to the door. Each of them turned their eyes toward Justin as they passed her; not one, not even the children, glanced at the men in the print sport shirts. Godoy opened the church door and stood in the doorway, a rhombus of fiery light, shaking hands and bestowing felicitations. The Indians gone, he remained there, shielding his eyes from the glare. The surplice over his black cassock was real lace, Justin saw; it was a strangely rich thing in so poor a place. A gift from his mother, she thought. Vestments were what their mothers gave them.

  The two men in the church stood up, and passing Justin, affected to examine her with an insolence enriched by four hard centuries of tradition. At the doorway, they did as well for Godoy. When the two were outside, Godoy closed the door against the fiery light and locked it.

  “Thank you for coming up,” the priest said to Justin. He approached her and offered his hand with the same manner and with the same smile that he had employed for the Indian parents. The recognition of this troubled Justin slightly: she decided that it was his sincerity she saw.

  “I’ve been waiting to hear from you,” Justin told him, as indeed she had been.

  Together they walked toward the front of the church and Godoy went to the baptistry to blow out the candles around the font. Justin sat in a forward pew to the left of the altar. With the candles out, the church was almost in darkness, lit only by two small windows of imitation stained glass over the ceiling beams and the red sanctuary lamp.

  He sat down beside her and she could barely see his face. They were close together, nowhere touching; two creatures of sacerdotal dark.

  “I sent for you to tell you I was leaving,” the priest said.

  She was surprised at the pain his words caused her. In the silence of the church, she thought he must have heard her shocked intake of breath. She fixed her eyes on the lamp beside the tabernacle.

  “The work is in the mountains. It’s very important for us to be there now.”

  “Of course,” Justin said. “Whatever the necessity … wherever it’s going on … you should be.” She could not get it to come out right but her voice never broke.

  “In the mountains we have started collectives—ejidos. There are nuns working there and the Indians are organized. They’ve done wonderful things there, these nuns. Our compadresitas.”

  Unlike the nuns here, Justin thought, who tend to be twittish, sentimental and useless. And who are not above a rush of raw hatred for the wonderful compadresitas in the mountains.

  “We have the land there,” Godoy told her. “We have it by right of occupation and by right of law. Very soon the landowners and the copper companies will send in the Guardia to take it back if we let them. But we’re not going to let them. This time we resist, you see. And all over the country we will resist.”

  “What about the foco here?” Justin asked. “Is it going to happen?”

  “Absolutely it will happen. When the signal is given. Arms are on the way. And it will be soon. Absolutely.”

  “And how will I know what to do?”

  “You’ll be directed by people who know you. You must prepare.”

  “We might have done things here as they did in the mountains,” Justin said sadly. “We might have organized collectives on the land.”

  “The situation is different here. Here the foreign companies have what they want and the structure is not so visible. Also one is cut off on this coast. It can be liberated only together with the rest of the country.”

  “I thought the nursing was enough,” Justin said, bowing her head. “I wasn’t looking around me. I wasn’t seeing. In all this time …” She could hear Godoy tapping his fingertips on the pew bench, impatiently.

  “Don’t reproach yourself. You have your job and I have mine.”

  After a moment she said: “I’m sorry you’re leaving.”

  Godoy himself was silent for a while. She waited in the darkness for his answer.

  “Interrupted friendships are disappointing” was what he said.

  “Yes,” Justin said calmly, “but I suppose they’re very much part of the work.”

  “Sadly so.”

  Sadly so. He had done her the courtesy of informing her personally of his leaving and he wanted her to be off.

  “How much notice do you think I’ll have,” she asked him, “before the dispensary is needed?”

  “You were told to be ready at the shortest possible notice. At most you will have only a day or so. It depends on circumstances.”

  “O.K.,” Justin said.

  “I must go very soon. I have many things to do before I leave for the mountains.”

  “Yes,” Justin said. “I have to go myself.” In fact she had nowhere to go. Nothing of any value to attend to except the nursing of a dying drunk.

  They sat beside each other, neither moving.

  Will you just touch me, Justin thought, will you do only that much? I will do whatever you ask, I will face the Guardia, I will die, I will try to kill for you, will you just touch me? Will you do something for me, to me? Will you give me your hand? Will you give me anything?

  Godoy stood up and waited in the aisle for her to do the same. She rose and walked the length of the aisle with him. A key was in his hand.

  “Father Godoy,” she said to him. He had not looked at her, had marched her straight back to the door which he was now unlocking. “Father Godoy!” She nearly shouted it at him. “What I care about … maybe all I care about … is me! Not about this country. Only about the way I myself feel.”

  He looked at her in silence for a moment and then he smiled. He had a sad smile for all the wind and weather, she thought.

  “I think we are all that way deep inside. But there can be a coincidence of interest, can there not? Between justice and one’s feelings.”

  In despair, she played the schoolgirl and then the penitent.

  “Of course. But before I go there is something I want to say. I want to say it because we may never meet again. My feeling for you is particular. I have come to feel about you in a particular way.”

  Godoy had opened the door a crack. She stepped back from the light so that he might not see the shame in her face. It would have been so easy not to say anything. And then to say it in the absurd language of the cloister. Now it was too late.

  In time suspended, she watched him search for an answer, saw his brows knit, his eyes shift. Then, without looking at her, he said: “I feel the same about you.” Immediately she knew that he was lying. Whatever his feelings might be, his declaration to her was a simple lie, a pacifier.

  She watched the Adam’s apple bob in his white throat above the top button of his cassock and the thought came to her that he must be quite good at lying. But for her he was not trying very hard.

  “There you see the extent of my selfishness,” she said. Driven by the lie, she could not stop. “And my smallness and foolishness.”

  Godoy was genuinely embarrassed and perhaps concerned for his foco.

  “Please,” he said. He opened the door and they were standing together in the white hot light. “I am your friend, you can believe that. I need you to help me. These poor also need you.”

  “There was never any question of that,” she said. “I’ll be there when you need me.”

  Another melancholy smile. “Until later then, dear friend.”

  “Yes, until later,” Justin said, and went down the three whitewashed steps. The two men in print shirts were on the corner and she needed all her strength to walk past them, calm and heedless with a friendly, superior nod.

  On the drive back she let herself cry. She cried from shame and from revulsion at his deceit and unctuousness. But he was right, she thought. Her feelings were a child’s feelings, and they were a matter of no importance. It was she, by all the rules of all the games, who was wrong.


  By the time she was most of the way along the beach road, the sun was out of sight behind the mountains. Justin parked her jeep beside the ocean, climbed out and walked to the water’s edge. For a long time she looked out over the ocean before her, still in sunlight and deep blue.

  In all the working systems, she thought, the weakness was always yourself—that spot of gristle in the gears. It applied on every level—even the act of getting through a day could be performed with gusto and dispatch if you kept out of your own way. Justin believed that she knew as much as anyone about self-struggle. But if I win, if I crush myself, she wondered, what will be left of me? She was not so much afraid as curious. Would what was left be useful? And if so, in what way? Would what was left be happy? And there I am again, she thought. Me.

  The self was only a girl, a young thing, brought in arsy-varsy. A One True Church was a One True Church, a scientific system was a scientific system, a Revolution, no less, was a Revolution, but a broad was only a broad. It was all so obvious.

  I am unworthy, she thought. You are. We are. They are. We are all fucked flat unworthy, unworthy beyond belief, unworthy as a pile of shit. Help us there, you—help us crush ourselves out of recognition, help us to be without eyes without pudenda without any of those things. Most of all make us without childish feelings. Because it’s that kid inside that makes us so damnably unworthy. We’ll scourge ourselves, we’ll walk in the fiery furnace, we’ll turn ourselves around.

  To do penance and to amend my life, amen. To struggle unceasingly in the name of history. Gimme a flag, gimme a drum roll, I’m gonna be there on that morning, yes I am. And it won’t be the me you think you see. It’ll be the worthy revolutionary twice-born me. The objective historical unceasingly struggling me. The good me.

  And if I’m not there on that morning, she thought, I won’t be anywhere at all.

  She walked a few steps into the mild surf, wetting her chino trousers to the knee, and cupped two handfuls of salt water to pour over her face. When she started back to her jeep it was a few minutes before twilight and the hillside across the road had started to settle into evening. The first howler monkeys were awake and signaling their alarms, the diurnal birds settling down to cover among the thickest boughs, trilling the last calls of the day.