Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“I beg you,” he said to the doctor, “to accept my remarks as a foreign novelty. Like grand opera.”

“You are a master of insult, Professor. You would have made a duelist.”

“I understand Caruso sang in Compostela,” Holliwell persisted. “In your wonderful opera house. Before the earthquake. That’s what I’ve been told.”

“You’re told incorrectly,” Nicolay said. He was looking into what remained of the audience. The few people who remained could not hear their exchange. The young woman had risen once more.

“I think we should say,” she declared, addressing herself to Nicolay, “I would like to say — that if we have been disturbed by what Professor Holliwell has had to say this is all to the good. We must thank him.”

But there was no one to applaud. Everyone who had not left was moving toward the table on which the drinks were set.

She was nothing short of marvelous, Holliwell thought. In a few strokes she had rebuked his arrogance and brought him into line, rewarded his gesture of remorse and then practically blanded out the whole affair. He bowed to her and walked unescorted to the scotch. Pouring himself a drink, he found himself across the table from her. Her eyes were gold-spotted. She extended her hand.

“Mariaclara Obregón.”

“You’re very skillful, Miss Obregón.”

“We don’t avoid controversy,” Mariaclara Obregón told him. “But on the other hand, we don’t want to leave a bad feeling either way.”

“I’m very glad you were here.”

“I am too,” she said. “I have what you said on tape. I’ll listen to it another time at my leisure.”

“I hope it’ll make sense.”

“I’m sure it will,” she said. “Spontaneity is sometimes difficult.”

“Yes, indeed,” Holliwell said.

“We have political tensions here, I’m sure you know.”

“I understand completely.” His desire for her made him feel suddenly shabby and absurd. Drunk.

“The academic circles of a country are not the most considerate. I’m sure you know that also.”

“The libertine circles are pretty rough too.”

He was aware of a young North American couple standing just behind her, waiting as though to speak with him. He was careful to ignore them. Nicolay had produced two attendants in beige uniforms, their heads no higher than his shoulders. He directed them toward the table; they bowed to him and began removing glasses.

“Are you in fact a libertine, Professor?” Miss Obregón asked him playfully.

“Yes, I am,” he told her. “In that way I predate the industrial age. I am a man of the enlightenment and a libertine.”

“An illuminatus?” she suggested.

“I’m a middle-class professor,” he told her. “In every regard. No more than that.”

“A leftist?”

“A liberal is what they call people like me.”

“Here,” the woman said, “to be a liberal you must be a Mason.”

Holliwell moved around the table and past the American couple to stand beside her.

“Listen,” he said, “is it possible for us to take coffee? If not tonight, then sometime else?”

“I think unfortunately not, Professor. I wanted only to say thank you for speaking to us.”

Her hand was in his again; he forced himself to let it feather away.

“But you’re not just leaving?”

“It’s too bad but I have to go. Please let me thank you again.”

And to his dismay she turned away, leaving him with the porters, the two young Americans and Nicolay. He took a step in Nicolay’s direction and stumbled.

“Miss Obregón,” he demanded of the doctor, “who is she? Is she a member of the faculty here?”

Dr. Nicolay calmly took him by the arm and walked him toward a large soiled window that looked out on the sculpture garden of the university plaza.

“Whether we like each other is not a question, is it, Holliwell?”

“Certainly not,” Holliwell said.

“Certainly not. But I hate to see a man, a colleague — a guest, if you like — make a fool of himself. This is fellow feeling. Allow me to tell you that the party is now over and it is time for you to go home. If you require a taxi, we’ll see that you get one. Don’t embarrass yourself further.”

Holliwell looked over his shoulder; she had vanished. He would never see her again. How, he wondered, if he had pursued her down the stairs and into the lobby. Insisted. Dramatically. Romantically. With impetuosity and flair, like a lover. He felt like a lover.

Detaching himself from Nicolay, he returned to the table.

Only the porters remained, removing the tablecloth and folding it like a banner. And the American couple, still loitering awkwardly.

Presently, Dr. Nicolay joined him again.

“One,” Nicolay said as though he were declaiming poetry, “for the road.”

Nicolay looked over the single bottle of scotch and the several decanters of Spanish brandy that had been set out, and then at his watch.

“Another for the road,” Holliwell said, pouring a second drink.

“Another for the road, of course,” Nicolay said. “You’re our guest. For better or worse.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Holliwell said. He moved the bottle across the table toward Nicolay and looked about the room. Oblivious of the little doctor’s curled lip.

“I believe,” Nicolay said, “that you are a friend of Dr. Ocampo? Is this true?”

“An old friend,” Holliwell said. He was hoping that somehow the woman would come back.

“From university, eh? Roommates.”

“No,” Holliwell said. “Not roommates.”

“Companions,” Nicolay suggested.

“Asshole buddies,” Holliwell told him.

Dr. Nicolay’s expression looked strained, as though his hearing were failing him.

“I think it best to prepare more for an address,” he told Holliwell. “Even before a small audience. Even in a small country of little importance I myself would not have drunk so much. Perhaps you were nervous.”

“Yeah,” Holliwell said, without looking at him. “That was it. Take your hand off my arm.”

Nicolay withdrew his firm proprietary hand and walked away. It was a low point in inter-American cultural relations.

“The thing to do with embarrassment,” he told the young American couple who seemed determined to engage him, “is work it all the way to humiliation.”

The Americans looked concerned. They were both dark, small-boned and sharp-featured — the woman indeed could have passed for a Spanish Compostelan but her expression was eastern collegiate.

“Oh, come on,” the young man said. “It wasn’t that bad. It was stimulating.”

“Stimulation,” Holliwell said. “That’s what I was after.”

“Can we give you a ride downtown?” the young woman asked. “We’re driving that way.”

Holliwell examined them. They seemed good-natured. Educated. Nice.

“Thank you,” he said. “That would be very helpful to me.”

The Americans conducted him downstairs and across the patio and through the foyer of the House of the Study of Mankind. Nicolay, who had been standing near the door with a group of students, turned his back on them.

Outside it was chilly, a wind off the cordillera blew spray from the illuminated fountain on them. They led him to a four-wheel-drive Honda with Tecanecan plates.

“I’m Tom Zecca,” the young man said as he unlocked the car. “Z-e-c-c-a. This is Marie.”

Holliwell shook hands with Tom and Marie and settled himself in the back seat.

“Tom always spells it out,” Marie explained to him. “People tend to think it’s Zecker — you know, with an e-r.”

“But we’re mountain guineas,” Tom said, “and we insist on the fact.”

“I had a student by that name,” Holliwell said, as Tom Zecca took the Honda around the circle of the fountain and onto the empty boulevard that connected the city center with the university grounds. He wondered if this were not the very student. He often ran into former students and failed to recognize them.