A Flag for Sunrise (35 page)

Some fifty feet away, he caught clear sight of a school of bonito racing toward the shallows over the reef. Wherever he looked, he saw what appeared to be a shower of blue-gray arrows. And then it was as if the ocean itself had begun to tremble. The angels and wrasse, the parrots and tangs which had been passing lazily around him suddenly hung in place, without forward motion, quivering like mobile sculpture. Turning full circle, he saw the same shudder pass over all the living things around him—a terror had struck the sea, an invisible shadow, a silence within a silence. On the edge of vision, he saw a school of redfish whirl left, then right, sound, then reverse, a red and white catherine wheel against the deep blue. It was a sight as mesmerizing as the wheeling of starlings over a spring pasture. Around him the fish held their places, fluttering, coiled for flight.

Then Holliwell thought: It’s out there. Fear overcame him; a chemical taste, a cold stone on the heart.

He started up too fast, struggling to check his own panic. Follow the bubbles. Follow the bouncing ball.

As he pedaled up the wall, he was acutely aware of being the only creature on the reef that moved with purpose. The thing out there must be feeling him, he thought, sensing the lateral vibrations of his climb, its dim primal brain registering disorder in his motion and making the calculation. Fear. Prey.

He was running out of air—overbreathing and overtaxing the expanding contents of his tank. The sound of his own desperate respirations furthered panic.

When he had worked out a breathing pattern and reached the first terrace, he found that he had enough to curve his ascent with the slope of the coral. At forty feet, he saw a sandy punch bowl like the one in which he had stopped but the forests of elkhorn were everywhere the same and the anchor line was nowhere in sight. Looking up, he saw Sandy outlined against the surface, coming down at him.

Sandy grabbed Holliwell’s pressure gauge, read it and shook his head in reproach. He pointed to the right and upward along the slope.
Holliwell followed the coral ridges as long as he could. The fish in the shallows swam placidly, unperturbed. When he found himself sucking hard on the regulator mouthpiece, he eased up the next thirty feet, taking three breaths on the way. And there, in another dimension altogether, the boat rocked gently, the youngest of the Cuban boys leaned over the side to watch the shifting surface, lost in reverie; his mother thumbed through
Cosmopolitan.
The shoreline glowed green beyond the hot blur of the beach, the line of banana jungle broken only by a white wooden building on a solitary hill, surmounted with a cross. Holliwell turned over on his back and swam to the boat’s ladder.

The boy and his mother watched as he took off his gear. Before disconnecting the regulator from the tank he checked the gauge once more; it read just a hair over empty at sea level.

“That’s as empty as it gets,” he told the people in the boat. The charge of primary process he had experienced at a hundred and ten feet put him in danger of becoming garrulous.

The boy looked at the gauge. “None left at all?”

“Empty,” Holliwell said. “Just like it says.” He was ill at ease with the boy and he sensed a certain artificiality in his own manner. His own children had not been this age for five years or more; he had forgotten what it was like. Out of touch again, he thought.

“How come is that?” the woman asked.

“Just ran it out,” Holliwell told her cheerfully.

“What did you see?” the boy asked him.

“Lots of great fish,” he said. “And beautiful black coral.”

“And we can’t take any,” the woman said. “Such a shame because it’s so beautiful.”

“I’m sure it looks prettier where it is,” Holliwell heard himself say pompously.

The woman inflated her cheeks and shrugged. She was not a bad sort, Holliwell decided. They chatted for a few minutes. The family’s name was Paz; they lived in Miami, had lived there since 1961. All of their sons were born there. The man was a dentist, she herself was in real estate. They were visiting her brother, who had five hardware stores in Tecan. Holliwell told her that he was a professor; she had lived in the States long enough to remain unimpressed.

Sandy and the middle son were next up; the boy climbed aboard
and fixed a smirk on Holliwell. The dive master got out of harness in a single easy motion.

“Now what you want down theah, mistuh?” he asked Holliwell. He was smiling. “I nevah tol’ you go down theah.”

“Just wanted a look, I guess.”

“Sandy made him get out of the water,” the middle son announced. Señora Paz and the youngest boy gave Holliwell dutifully accusatory looks. Then Señora Paz asked sharply after her husband and eldest son. They were under the boat, Sandy assured her, playing among the elkhorn coral.

After a few minutes, the dentist surfaced and climbed aboard. He was elated after his dive and his amiability extended even to Holliwell.

“Where the hell were you?” Dr. Paz asked Holliwell. “I never even saw you.” His English was almost completely unaccented.

“Sandy made him get out of the water,” the middle son said.

“Just down too deep,” Sandy said soothingly. “A bit too deep and de air run out faster.”

“What’s the attraction down there?” the dentist asked.

“Just the drop,” Holliwell said.

“How far you think she drop off dere?” Sandy asked him, laughing.

“A long way,” Holliwell said.

“Nine hundred meters,” Sandy said.

“Is that possible?” Holliwell said.

Sandy let his smile fade. His nod was solemn, his eyes humorous with certainty.

“I’m tellin’ you, mon. Nine hundred meters.”

When the youngest boy wanted to know how far that was in feet, Sandy was uncertain.

“It’s about two thirds of a mile,” the dentist said. “I thought they taught you that in school.”

“Yeah, dummy,” the middle son said to his brother.

“How about that,” Holliwell said.

Then the oldest boy surfaced with an empty tank.

“Orca, orca,” the two younger boys shouted. “Orca surfaces at last.”

The youth’s eyes were shining as he climbed up the ladder. It was
hard to dislike anyone, Holliwell thought, when you watched them come up from a dive.

“Gosh,” the boy said to Holliwell, “we didn’t see you anywhere.”

“Sandy made him get …”

Señora Paz hushed her middle son with a frown and a raising of her chin.

They motored back to the hotel dock making small talk. At the dive shack, Sandy, who knew a big tipper when he saw one, helped the Pazes wash and stow their gear and was jolly with the boys. Holliwell put his own gear away and sat down on the dock. After a while Sandy wandered down and joined him.

“How long you been divin’?” Sandy asked him.

“I’ve been certified for two years. I don’t do it much anymore.”

Sandy looked out to sea. “Lost a mon on dat drop other year. I follow him dorn near two hundred meters but when I turn off de mon still goin’ down.”

“Suicide,” Holliwell said.

“Das right. Mon take de sleepin’ pills and go down.”

“It must have happened more than once.”

Sandy nodded. “I don’ lose nobody,” he said. “Got to be dere own chosen will.”

Holliwell felt himself shudder. “Did you think that’s what I was doing?”

“Oh, no,” the dive master said quickly. He touched Holliwell on the shoulder in the Caribbean way but avoided his eye.

“I won’t make the dive this afternoon,” Holliwell told him. “Maybe you could leave me off around French Harbor. I’d like to snorkel down there.”

Sandy guessed that it would be all right. French Harbor was on the way. He told Holliwell that if he requested it, the Paradise kitchen might pack a lunch for him. They walked together toward the hotel buildings.

“There was something down that drop this morning,” Holliwell said. “A big shark, maybe.”

Sandy stopped walking and looked at Holliwell, holding his hand on his brow to shield his eyes from the sun.

“You see any shark?”

“No.”

“Then don’ be sayin’ shark if you don’ see one.”

“Something was happening down there.”

“I tell you don’ go down that far, Mistuh Holliwell. I give you de dive plan. When you down so far, das not a good place.”

“Why’s that?”

Sandy walked on; Holliwell followed him.

“Dat drop, people see tings, den dey don’ know what dey seen. Dey be frightened after.”

“Was it always like that?”

“Jus’ dangerous divin’, das all. Surface current and de drop is cunnin’. You get deeper den you know.”

“So pretty, though.”

“Jus’ as pretty on de top,” Sandy said. “Always prettier in de light.”

“Yes,” Holliwell said. “Yes, of course.”

Justin was trying to reread
To the Finland Station
in the afternoon shadows of the veranda. She had almost dozed off when she saw the man snorkeling along the southern end of Playa Tate. For days now, her dispensary had been ready to receive wounded insurrectionists; each night she had spent awake and prowling in the light of her hurricane lamp among the stacks of stretchers, the basins and the small array of surgical instruments—listening to the government radio until it went off the air and then to U.S. Armed Forces radio or the BBC foreign service. Sometimes she would turn the volume down and tune in Radio Havana. Nights were long.

It was high tide and the swimming man crossed over the inner reef and headed for the roadside beach in front of the mission steps. Only a few hundred yards past the steps, a sizable stream ran down from the foothills of the Sierra, carrying with it all the refuse and infections of the hillside barrios. Its small estuary was a dirty place to swim. The shrimp that lived there grew to great size and Justin had often seen boats from the hotels up and down the coast come at night to gather them. Moreover, she knew that in the water offshore there was a deep channel where hammerhead sharks came in to feed upon the shrimp.

The man would be a tourist from one of the hotels. There would be many more before long as the fruit companies liquidated their unprofitable plantations and converted to the resort business.

The swimmer’s absurd sportive presence irritated Justin considerably. If he persisted in staying near the channel, she would have to go down and wave him out of danger and she was not in the mood for personal engagement. To her further annoyance, the man came out of the water by the mission pier, took his fins off and sat down on it. Two women carrying laundry on their heads passed the pier and Justin felt as though she could see the false smile he gave them, hear his fatuous “
Buenos días.
”

While Justin was watching the tourist on the dock, Father Egan came out on the veranda.

“There’s someone on the dock,” he said to her.

“A tourist. Snorkeling through.”

“What do you think he wants?”

“He wants to sun himself on the glistening sands of Tecan. That’s what he paid for.”

“But why on our dock?”

“Because he owns the place. Chrissakes, Charlie, go ask him.”

She watched Egan make his way down the steps, slack-jawed, shuffle-gaited. His deterioration was proceeding at an alarming rate; he had aged dreadfully in the past months, sometimes he seemed to her almost senile.

Egan was talking to the tourist now; the tourist had accepted a cigarette and a light from him. An odd pair they made—the tourist tanned and muscular, towering over the priest’s gray, lumpish figure. The two of them turned toward the mission building; Egan was pointing into the forest behind it. She stood up impatiently and went inside to make herself some coffee.

It had all been smoke before, Godoy had said. Perhaps it was still.

One time, she thought, they will require something from me other than my well-exercised reverent attention and prayerful expectation. People—men, when you came down to it—were always dreaming up glorious phantasmas for her to wait joyously upon. Justice. The life to come. The Revolution. There are limits, she thought. Justin Martyr.

When she went out with the coffee, Egan and the snorkeler were sitting on the pier in conversation.

Well, she thought, why not, we’re all tourists now. For weeks no one had come. Campos had some method of keeping them away.

After a few minutes, Father Egan came huffing up the steps.

“Know who he is, that fellow? He’s an anthropologist. He had business in the city and now he’s come to see our ruins.”

“Yours and mine?”

“Haw,” Egan said. “Clever kid.”

But Justin was growing anxious about the swimmer.

“And did you volunteer to take him back and show him?”

“Yes, I did. And I asked him to dinner on Friday.”

Justin looked at him in dismay.

“Go down and un-ask him,” she said in a steely voice. “We can’t have him here.”

“We certainly can.”

“We can not!” Justin almost shouted.

“May one ask why?”

She looked away, out to sea.

“Good heavens, I suppose we can go to town and have dinner. I don’t understand what the objection is. Do you think I’m so unpresentable?”

“It’s not that,” Justin said. Better to let it go, she thought. The chances were that the man would not come back. Or that Egan would forget. She watched the strange swimmer now, saw him sit waist deep in the water putting on his fins. He began to crawl toward deeper water. He was not far from the river channel now. If he continued as he went, the bottom would slope sharply and without warning he would be over it. It was no place for a tourist to be—the sharks, and the bottom covered with sea urchins. A few feet short of the surge channel, she saw him crumple up and stop swimming. He was splashing, clutching his knee. Justin stood up. The tourist had crawled into the shallows and was lying in the slight surf, both hands folded over his wound.

Damn you, she thought, you asshole tourist.

“He’s hurt himself,” Father Egan said helplessly.

“He stepped on a goddamn sea urchin is what he did. Either that or something took a piece of him.” She went into the dispensary
wing, snatching up a bucket on her way through the kitchen. In the bucket she poured a pint of ammonia and then diluted it with well water from the tap. She hauled the solution down the veranda steps and across the road to the water’s edge. The swimmer was sitting upright now, with his back to the ocean. When he saw her, he was squinting in pain, his teeth clenched, pale under his tan.