Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

When they had parked, Oscar took up Holliwell’s suitcase, and shaking off the doorman, advanced aggressively into the lobby with it. Holliwell followed him to the desk, where he was demanding evidence of Holliwell’s reservation in a peremptory manner. The reservation was in order.

“Listen,” Oscar said, “when you finish here I’ll take you over to the apartment for a drink. Would you like that?”

“Sure,” Holliwell said. “That’ll be fine.”

“Good. Then I’ll wait down here for you.”

Waiting for his key, Holliwell watched Oscar drift across the pale gray lobby. The lobby of the Panamerica-Plaza had a fine banana tree at the foot of its mezzanine stairway and a fetching interior waterfall. Beyond that, it was a spiritual extension of Miami Airport.

Oscar had gone to the desk of a tour agency beside the gift shop and was in conversation with the man behind it, a tall man in a lightweight Italian suit who appeared to be a European. As Holliwell watched, they both took a quick look at the area around them — and then Oscar slipped a parcel across the desk. The tall man examined its contents beneath his counter. Oscar sauntered off in the direction of the door and lit a cigarette.

While Holliwell and the hotel bellman rode up to the sixth floor, the elevator played the theme from The Godfather for them. The bellman smiled unceasingly.

He was shown to a pleasant balconied room over the pool. When the bellman had set his bag down and turned on the air conditioning, Holliwell gave him two grenadas. Two turned out to be enough.

Ocampo was waiting by the elevator.

“I don’t like it here,” he told Holliwell as they walked to the car. “Not at all.”

“Did you think I did? Never mind,” he told Oscar, cutting off an apology. “It’s comfortable. It’s different.”

Oscar got behind the wheel. Holliwell gave the hotel lackey who opened the door for him a grenada.

“Look, I’m mortified by this,” Oscar said. “My place is small and I’m not alone there.”

“Come on, Oscar. It’s fine. And you have more important things on your mind.”

It was strange, he thought. Laura Ocampo had put up with so much for so many years. Was there female consciousness raising even in Compostela? Had she someone else? It was all so un-Compostelan.

They drove past the cathedral square. Beggars and lottery vendors swept by the car. Holliwell patted his vest pocket, checking his wallet.

“What about the kids?”

“The kids are with Laura. They won’t let me see them.”

“Who won’t?”

“Her family. My brother-in-law threatened to shoot me.”

“Obviously they’re taking this very badly,” Holliwell said.

“ Claro ,” Oscar said. “Very badly.”

His apartment was in an old and elegant section of the city, on the lake side of the hill called Colucu. It was a neighborhood of cobbled streets and colonial houses with mahogany gates and barred windows. Here and there were new apartment buildings in the California style and Oscar lived in one of these. It was a nice building, three stories of dark wood that blended well with the ancient houses around it. Oscar parked his Toyota in a garage behind the building and they went up the back stairs. In the rear of the building was a garden with fig trees, but it was enclosed by a wall like a prison’s.

Inside Oscar’s apartment, a stereo was playing Purcell; there was a smell of whiskey about. Everywhere there were stacks of books, some still in boxes. There were also a great many pre-Columbian pieces around the apartment — more than Holliwell had ever seen in Oscar’s possession. In the little dining area off the kitchen, clay statuettes from the Pacific coast were lined up like toy soldiers beside rows of jade animals. Against one wall there were bone carvings that appeared to be Mayan, opal grave ornaments and three unbroken chacmools of varying size — the largest a full two feet in length, from the recumbent god’s elbows to his toes. The groupings had a businesslike lack of decorativeness that made it unlikely they were reproductions.

In the past, as far as Holliwell knew, Ocampo had always been very scrupulous about the antiquities that passed into his possession. He had never maintained a collection of his own, only kept the odd piece of jade, or a small necklace for his wife or a girlfriend to wear abroad.

Holliwell stood looking at the ranks of artifacts as though by doing so he were being polite. Oscar seemed to be looking for someone in the apartment.

“Frank,” he said suddenly, “have a drink.”

“With pleasure,” Holliwell said.

Oscar went to the kitchen doorway and stood in it for a moment.

“Patrick?” Holliwell heard him call. At first he could make no sense of the word.

When Ocampo came back, he was carrying two glasses full of ice and a bottle of scotch. He made a small circuit of the room and rapped on the bedroom door with the bottom of the bottle.

As Holliwell was taking his filled glass, a tall thin youth came out of the bedroom, brushing long light-colored hair from his face.

“This is my friend Frank Holliwell,” Oscar said to him. “And, Frank, this is Patrick Ventura.”

Holliwell held out his hand. The boy gave him a soft continental handshake. He was no older than twenty, Holliwell thought, and spaced out — as though he were drunk or on pills.

“Where’s mine?” the boy said to Oscar. He looked at both of them in turns with a mannered wariness that Holliwell found distasteful. Oscar handed him the scotch bottle, and he disappeared into the kitchen.

On the wall across from where Holliwell stood was a picture of Oscar and his sons, the boys on ponies, Oscar standing between, holding the bridles.

When Patrick Ventura came back into the room, he held a water glass full of whiskey.

“You’re from the States?” Holliwell asked him.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in Hastings-on-Hudson,” the boy said, fixing Holliwell with the same sidereal coyness.

Being suckled by wolves, Holliwell thought. He glanced at Oscar. Oscar was nervous and proprietary.

“My mother’s family lives there. But I come from Chile.”

“Ah,” Holliwell said. “Chile.”

“Chile today and hot tamale,” Patrick Ventura said. “That’s what they say in Hastings-on-Hudson. The South American weather report. Have you heard that, Oscar? Chile today and hot tamale?”

Oscar had never heard it.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “You were taunted with this?”

“Like, constantly,” Patrick Ventura said.

“It’s strange,” Oscar said brightly to young Ventura. “You and I have never spoken English before.”

“Well,” Holliwell observed, “Santiago used to be a nice town.”

“It’s still a nice town,” Patrick Ventura said.,

“A lot of people have left. Or been arrested.”

“Patrick is not political,” Oscar said.

“Oscar used to be a Marxist-Leninist,” Patrick Ventura told them, “but now he’s a hippie.”

Holliwell turned away quickly so as not to have to look at Oscar, and walked his drink to the full-length balcony window.

“Well, that’s what you said to me, Oscar,” Ventura was insisting petulantly.

Then they were in the kitchen, speaking in Spanish, fighting over the bottle. Oscar was cutting Patrick Ventura off. For his part, Holliwell hoped devoutly it could be done without some kind of scene. If there was one — if the kid went into some kind of fit — he would leave at once, he decided. He drank deeply of his drink.

Oscar came into the living room holding the bottle.

“We need this more than he does,” Oscar said. “Let’s go and sit outside.”

The boy was leaning against the back of the sofa, his eyelids fluttering. Holliwell was afraid that he might fall. Oscar turned off the stereo and with the whiskey in his hand led Holliwell outside to the balcony.