Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

The boat drifted further and Pablo was gone. Small swells, borne on the offshore breeze, closed the tiny rent in the seam of ocean where he had been suspended.

When the sun was down, a thin stream of low clouds moved north across its azimuth and were lit to red and gold beyond imagining. Holliwell had started the engine out of an impulse to escape; he held the throttle at full, riding the breeze eastward. When he saw the illuminated clouds he began to recite.

“See, see,” he said aloud, “where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament!

“One drop of blood will save me.”

In Vietnam he had recited the lines in company to amuse and they became a little sunset superstition, a formula in times of stress, never remotely a prayer. He said them now, over and over until the words were purged of meaning. There was blood on his shirt. He took it off and, shivering, scrubbed the wet stains in sea water. Then he saw that there was blood in the boat as well; he cleaned it up with more salt water, using Pablo’s trousers and the bilge pump and the bailing can. After dark, he was still looking for blood; he cut the engine, took a flashlight from the gearbox and inspected the deck for traces of it. Under the bow, he found a small sparkling stone. It appeared to be a rhinestone when he examined it in the beam of his light. He threw it overboard, together with Pablo’s bloodstained pants.

Half an hour later, the lights of a passing ship came in sight and Holliwell signaled S O S with his light until it was apparent that there would be no result. He was feeling very cold and sick now; even the warm drinking water in the jug made him shiver. He lay across the tarpaulin and tried to sleep.

During the night, things overtook him. There was music that had somehow to do with the passage of the stars overhead and there were jokes. In one of the jokes a shark passed near the boat, on his way to a feeding frenzy.

“What is there?” the shark asked a companion.

“Just us,” the other shark said.

Holliwell laughed in his thin sleep.

“She’s dead,” Lieutenant Campos told Father Egan, “your nun.” In the surrounding woods ramon nuts were falling from the higher boughs, an unceasing rain that rustled the leaves softly.

“I knew it,” Egan said.

Campos had come weaving into the clearing where the stelae stood, thrown himself upon his knees and demanded Penance. He was pointing his service revolver at the priest; it was a sacramental hijacking. He had not made it to Miami like the President, so he was forcing Jacob’s ladder.

“The Lord who loves tricks,” he said bitterly, “has played a trick on me.”

Campos was wearing a jaunty lemon-colored yachting cap with crossed anchors, badly soiled above the visor. It was the kind of cap that street-corner sports in Alvarado favored. His white shirt and trousers were caked with red mud. All that remained of the former official Campos were the one-way sunglasses. When he removed them to wipe his face, Egan saw that the pupils of his eyes were dilated. He would have taken Justin’s bag for the drugs, the priest thought.

The lieutenant’s pit-centered lustrous eyes rolled under his brows.

“Such a thing as you — how can you understand? A coward is degenerate. I am a man that knows who he is and you want to make me ridiculous. A man of stern formality with a responsibility for order. You’re not worthy to kiss my prick but I’m on my knees to you.”

Egan was bemused.

“You did kill her, didn’t you?”

“I killed her. She was a dilettante.” He sniffed ferociously and spat on the ground. “How many deaths were caused by her? Hundreds? Thousands? She herself didn’t know how evil she was.”

“Oh, Campos,” Egan said.

“Confess me!” Campos shouted, waving the pistol loosely. “It’s my right.”

Egan drew a benediction on the air. You who love tricks, he prayed silently, who made Leviathan — why will you confront us in these monstrous aspects? Who made the lamb?

It was His way of not listening, the priest thought. On the field of folk He is never at home, never available. Reach out a hand and there’s only the terrifying touch of flesh, nothing firmer or finer. Ask questions and the answers are veiled in illusion, words from a fever dream.

“She was tortured, I presume?”

“In the Guardia we’re serious. It wasn’t a birthday party.”

Egan bent forward over the flat stone on which he sat and leaned his forehead on his fist.

“Why confess, Campos? I’m not your judge.”

“For my peace,” Campos said thickly. “You see what’s happened, priest? I was what I was and now I’m poorer than the poorest Negro. My life is in danger. My soul also. The church exists for people like me.”

“Oh, the church,” Egan said, and smiled. “Of course.”

“Before she died, she said, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord.’ ”

Egan raised his head. “Justin did? Good heavens. How about that, eh?”

Campos curled his moustache and looked at the ground.

“She said that, did she? You beat her lifeless and you did your business with the cow prods and she said that? Good girl.” Egan wiped his eyes. “She was special, young Justin. Well,” he said to Campos, “I guess that showed you, eh?”

“It showed me up,” Campos admitted. “It put me in the wrong. Then I knew that God had played a trick on me.”

“Maybe you’re just being superstitious.”

“I?” said Campos, outraged. “It was a sign from God!” he shouted. “Don’t dare deny it! A sign from God to me.”

“Of what?”

“You don’t even know how to be a priest, you maricón! A sign that I would have to ask forgiveness.”

“Oh, I see.” Egan found himself looking at the purple flowers growing from the vine on one of the pyramids. “I suppose Justin would forgive you if she could. She’s all right now. But you have a debt to discharge to her.”

“I’ll swear,” Campos said.

“If you want Justin to forgive you, you’ll have to stop murdering young women. They may be well out of it, see, but it’s very hurtful to their families. That kid you had in the freezer couldn’t have been more than twenty and that’s awfully young to be terrified and murdered.”

“It happens everywhere,” Campos said.

“All the same, Lieutenant.”

Campos crossed himself and squinted ardently at the flawless sky.

“But I must have comfort,” he said when he had sworn.

“If you want comfort along with Justin’s forgiveness you’ll have to embrace a vision. Could you?”

“With ease,” Campos said. “That’s the sort of man I am.”

“You must concentrate as hard as you can and imagine a world in which you don’t exist. A world in which there is no trace of you whatsoever.”

Campos crossed himself again and closed his eyes.

“Just a moment,” he said. “I don’t understand this.”

Egan, looking at the flowers, was impatient. “Oh,” he said. He thought he had been clear.

“I must know that God forgives me,” Campos insisted. “I’ve come. I’ve humiliated myself before a maricón of a priest. Now it’s up to Him.”

“Campos, God doesn’t care what you do.”

“Not care?”

“Of course not. Why should he?”

“Don’t tell me God doesn’t care what I do,” Campos said indignantly. “He must. He must or … there can be no mercy.”

Egan turned to the lieutenant and smiled.

“There is no mercy. Not the kind you’re talking about. Not in this place. We can’t bestow it and we can’t receive it. It’s just not available at this level.”

“But I believe in it,” Campos said. “I believe in mercy.”

“One as experienced as you should know better.”