A Flag for Sunrise (45 page)

It was a little dangerous. The thought made him smile and quickened in him a subtle fine excitement. Like the feeling that had come to him over the black coral—but not so coarse as that. It had to do with the girl. There was something of seduction in it.

He lay back on the splintering boards, his hat beside him, arms across his face, until something, a bird’s shadow, the passing of a cloud, roused him. He sat up then and put on his hat and saw a solitary figure coming toward him along the water’s edge. When he saw that it was she, a rush struck him like cocaine in the blood and he was surprised. He had been hoping against hope that she would come that way.

Upright, his hands clutching the edges of the dock, he watched her draw closer. She was in white and he thought, at her expense, it was appropriate. Loose-fitting white work pants and a short-sleeved shirt. There was a red scarf over her hair.

When she was near the dock, he could see that her face was drawn and paie, her eyes harried and haunted and clouded with fatigue. She walked looking down at the sand.

As soon as he called to her, something like a voice inside him said: You are foolish. A middle-aged drunk, meddling. Foolish. By then he had already spoken. When she turned toward him her look was blank. He took his hat off.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, and he nodded, lamely agreeing that it was.

“You shouldn’t be out in the sun. How’s your leg?”

“It’s healing,” he said. “I don’t much like sitting around the Paradise.”

“Don’t you like it there?”

“Not much. Do you know it?”

“Not up close,” she said.

“One thing I can’t do is get a fin on. I’m thrown on the cultural resources of the area.”

“That’s a shame,” she said, “because there aren’t any.”

He asked her if she could stop to talk; he was afraid of sounding breathless. He wanted her to sit beside him on the dock but she stood off, tensed for flight.

“How are things going?”

“Oh,” she said, “not too bad.”

“Packing?”

“Yes,” she said. “Right.”

“How long have you been here now?”

“About six years.” She seemed to have to think about it. “Six it would be.”

“You’ll be sorry to leave then. Or will you?”

She pursed her lips as if she were trying unsuccessfully to smile.

“Yes, I’ll be sorry. I’ll be sorry to leave this way. To leave things as they are, when I might have helped more.”

“When you talk about things and how they are do you mean the country? The conditions?” He watched her then for a hint of suspiciousness; he was reminding himself of the secret policemen who started conversations with suspicious foreigners about the state of their countries. One found them all over.

“It’s a poor country.”

“With tourism coming down,” Holliwell said, “things might improve.”

“For some people they’ll improve.”

“Not for the
campesinos?
”

“For a few of them. If they mind their manners and smile a lot.”

“You don’t read much in the papers about the politics here,” Holliwell said. “Not in the States.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” she said.

“You do read a few things though. Guerrilla stuff in the mountains. Makes you wonder who you ought to be for.”

“Good,” she said.

He laughed. “People like to tell you it’s the politics of bananas.”

“Sure,” she said, and her smile changed until it had a bitter turn to it. “It’s a banana republic. I’m sure that’s in the papers.”

“Strategic considerations aside,” Holliwell said, “bananas are worth fighting for. Any nutritionist can tell you that.”

“Really?”

Holliwell stood up, his eyes on hers. There was clear light there, when the film dissolved. The film of weariness or fear.

“If you don’t eat your bananas, you don’t get enough potassium. If you don’t get your potassium, you experience a sense of existential dread.”

“Now I’m a nurse,” she said, “and I never heard that.”

“You can look it up. One of the symptoms of potassium insufficiency is a sense of existential dread.”

“You’re the scientist. I’m supposed to believe what you tell me.”

“Certainly. And now you know why Tecan is vital to the United States.”

“The United States,” she told him, “may be in for a spell of existential dread.”

“What do you think will happen after you go?”

“There’ll be changes. I’m absolutely sure there will.”

“They say the more it changes here, the more it stays …”

She was shaking her head. “Changes,” she said.

“You mean … something like a socialist government?” It was a crude question and he was ashamed of it.

“The country is going to be overrun by its inhabitants. We may have to pay a little more for our potassium and our sense of cosmic certainty.”

“So,” Holliwell said, “we’re the bad guys again.”

“Look,” she told him, “they’re good people here. They suffer. Their kids die and they get pushed around and murdered. That’s all there is to the politics here—no more than that. Just people who need a break.”

“Will they get it?”

“If there’s any justice they will.”

“Is there any?”

“Yes,” she said. “Even here. Even Tecan isn’t beyond justice.”

“But it’s only a word. It’s just something in people’s heads.”

“That’s good enough,” she told him.

He had not been paying close attention to the things she said. There was no need for him to draw her out and sound her politics. Instead, he had been concentrating on the way she was, and in the time it took him to spin out his net of marginal civilities he had seen, or was persuaded he had seen, what fires were banked in her. Fires of the heart, of sensibility. There were plenty of
engagés,
he thought, plenty of them were honest and virtuous. She was different; she was heart, she was there, in there every minute feeling it. This kind of thing was not for him but he knew it when he saw it; he was not an anthropologist for nothing.

It’ll kill her, he thought, drive her crazy. Her eyes were already clouding with sorrow and loss. It was herself she was grieving and hoping for; for that reason she was the real thing. So he began to fall in love with her.

“Maybe it is good enough,” he said.

“Even here we have history. Things change. People want their rights.”

“Does history take care of people?”

“I wish I knew,” she said. “Maybe in the end. In the meantime people take care of themselves.”

“Yes,” Holliwell said.

Lady of sorrows, he thought, creature of marvel. It was enough for her that people took care of themselves. In the meantime.

I will show you, he thought, the war for us to die in, lady. Sully your kind suffering child’s eyes with it. Live burials beside slow rivers. A pile of ears for a pile of arms. The crisps of North Vietnamese drivers chained to their burned trucks.

He thought she was a unicorn to be speared, penned and adored. He was a drunk, middle-aged, sentimental. Foolish.

He wanted her white goodness, wanted a skin of it. He wanted to wash in it, to drink and drink and drink of it, salving the hangover thirst of his life, his war.

Why, he wondered, is she smiling at me? Then in a moment he thought he knew why, although he was sure that she did not. You did not have to be an anthropologist to know.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

He would never bring it to that. He was more honorable than that, an honest man. But he was sure now and he did not feel ashamed for thinking it. Exalted rather and moved at her innocence in that regard, who was so wise.

The smile had left her face; she looked at him in slight confusion, raising a weary hand to her face.

“I’m supposed to have dinner,” Holliwell said, smiling. “I’m supposed to see the ruins.”

“Oh, my gosh,” she said. “I forgot.”

“Is it all right?”

She stammered, the hand touching her scarf.

“Not, not … for me. I mean I don’t think I can. But Father Egan will take you.”

“Good,” Holliwell said. “Well, I’ll see you anyway.”

“Yes,” she said. She had turned back in the direction from which she had come, she did not look at him again. “Take care. Take care of your leg.”

When she walked off he felt like crying. He stood up and walked the beach, hardly thinking of his leg. When he had been wandering around for a half hour, he found himself even with the ragged cabana where the Cuban and his friends were resting. It was their blender that attracted his eye. It was amazing how many people owned blenders in places like Tecan. Where there was electricity, even people with barely enough to eat seemed to have them. The Cuban was waving to him, motioning him over.

The man’s name, it turned out, was Miguel Soyer. He was tall and youthful with a square good-natured face, warm eyes under thick Celtic eyebrows. He did not much resemble his sister.

“You were diving with my brother-in-law, no?” Soyer asked as the three men with him watched politely from behind their dark glasses.

“Yes, indeed,” Holliwell said. He had been introduced to the others but had immediately lost their names. All of them had the sinister air that respectable businessmen so often projected in the South. Holliwell was not disturbed by it; it was an incongruity of appearance only, the result of a difference between Anglo and Latin expectations and masculine style.

“Twixt,” Soyer said. “Beautiful.”

“It was a fine day’s diving.”

Soyer turned and looked in the direction of the mission.

“You’re a friend of Sister Justin?”

“Not really. I had a minor accident in front of the mission the other day and she took a sea urchin spine out of my knee. So we’re acquainted.”

“She’s a nurse,” Soyer said vaguely. “Now you’re her patient, eh?”

“Yes.”

Holliwell accepted a piña colada.

“A very dedicated woman,” Soyer said. “We admire her here.”

“She’s very nice, isn’t she?”

“Yes, very nice. Very American.
Una tipica.
”

“I suppose,” Holliwell said.

“I know North America well. Once I spoke English but I’m out of practice.”

Holliwell was reassuring. It was not his impression that Mr. Soyer had difficulty with the language. The three men with him held their silence.

“I was in school at Washington,” Soyer said. “At Georgetown University. I was preparing for the foreign service of Cuba when the Communists took power.”

“Ah,” Holliwell said.

“America is so free,” Mr. Soyer said. “That’s what I liked. So many opportunities.”

“But you chose to settle here.”

“The style is better for me. I like the quiet life, I think.”

“How’s business?” Holliwell asked.

“It’s not bad,” Soyer said. He was still looking toward the mission. “We hear that Sister Justin is leaving.”

“That’s what she says.”

“Then it must be true, eh?”

“Gosh,” Holliwell said. “I guess so.”

“Do you think she is a true idealist?”

“I assume so,” Holliwell said. There was a silence. “Do you mean,” he asked, “as opposed to a false idealist?”

Soyer slapped his knee and laughed loudly and vacantly.

“I’m misusing the language,” he said. “Forgive me.”

“I’m intrigued,” Holliwell said. “I wonder about the relations
between the missionaries and the community here. Are they good? Are they cordial?”

“Why not?” Soyer asked. Then he said: “Why ask me?”

“I wondered,” Holliwell said, “what you thought about it.”

“I think they’re more than agreeable,” Mr. Soyer said. “But I’m a sucker for Americans.”

Holliwell supposed his smile appropriate and kept it in place.

“This mission,” Soyer said, “Sister Justin’s—I don’t know what they do now there.”

“She was telling me they feel kind of redundant. That’s why they’re going, I guess.”

“Ourselves and you,” Mr. Soyer said, “I speak as though I’m of Tecan because it’s my home now—ourselves and you, we have a great deal in common. We have common enemies.”

“Very true,” Holliwell said.

“The greatest enemy,” Soyer said, “is the enemy inside America. Do you think so?”

“We’re all our own worst enemies, aren’t we?”

“I don’t mean that,” Soyer said. “Not exactly.”

“American politics is rather frenetic.” Holliwell hesitated. “Fucked up.”

“From maybe too much comfort. Everyone is comfortable.”

“Not everyone.”

“I see,” Mr. Soyer told him. “I understand your point of view.”

“I’m not very political.”

“Sister Justin?” Soyer asked. “Do you think she is political?”

“No, I don’t,” Holliwell said. “Not at all.”

He watched Soyer frown. The Cuban grunted and shook his head as though he had been given information of significance. Holliwell turned toward the ocean and saw with some relief that Sandy was bringing the Paradise boat around the outer reef.

“I don’t see Mr. and Mrs. Paz,” Holliwell said.

“Gone home,” Soyer told him. “Only this morning.”

“Thank you for the cold drink, Mr. Soyer.” He got to his feet and nodded to Soyer’s three friends. They nodded back.

“Staying long?” Soyer asked him.

“No, I don’t think so. I only wanted a little rest after my labors.”

“Listen, Holliwell—don’t take the boat back. Come have a drink with us and we’ll take you.”

Holliwell explained that his foot was hurting and that he had writing to do.

“Ah,” said one of Mr. Soyer’s hitherto silent friends. “Writing.”

In fact, Holliwell was in some pain. He felt dizzy and he was thinking for the first time in a while about the telephone calls in Santiago de Compostela.

On the run back, Sandy spoke to him above the engine.

“How you leg now, mon?”

“Better,” he shouted. “I still can’t put a fin on.”

Sandy grinned. “Keep you outena trouble.”

“I think it’s too late for that,” Holliwell said.

With the sun below the green saw-toothed ridges of the coast, darkness gathered quickly. Venus was the evening star. She hung low over the eastern horizon and the unbroken sea beneath her transit was dulled to the color of lead. The wind rose in that quarter, setting a roll beneath the
Cloud
’s counterfeit boards but nowhere breaking the skin of the sea’s expanse. Across the sky, Deneb and Vega twinkled beyond a calligrapher’s stroke of purple nimbus.