Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“Yes, you did,” Tom said. “That was my kid brother Rich. You really did a job on him.”

“I did?” Holliwell asked.

“Well, he still talks about your class. You really impressed him a lot.”

Of the student Zecca, Holliwell could only remember that he wore a McGovern button and was very polite.

“That’s why we came tonight,” Marie Zecca said. “We saw your talk in the embassy bulletin, so we thought — that’s the guy Rich is always talking about — we’ve got to go and see him.”

“Well,” Holliwell said, “I’m sorry it turned out the way it did.”

“Whataya talking about?” Tom said. “It was fine. You pissed people off, so what?”

“How drunk did I look?”

The Zeccas deliberated.

“A little high,” Marie said.

“I was shit-faced. It was purely accidental.”

“So,” Tom said, “a little shit-faced. You have to watch it with the altitude here. The booze can hit you hard.”

“I should have remembered that,” Holliwell said. He thought of the Tecanecan plates on the car. “You’re not with the embassy here, are you?”

“No, we’re stationed down in Tecan. It gets slow down there, so we drive up here every few weekends for a little R and R.”

They were pulling into the night’s downtown traffic. Holliwell considered the concept of Tecan as “slow.”

“San Ysidro doesn’t offer much,” Marie said of Tecan’s capital.

“Not unless you like midget wrestling or cockfights,” Tom said. “Or other pleasures we won’t get into. You can get all of those you like.”

“But Tecan has nice beaches,” Marie said. “Really the nicest beaches in the world.”

The floral clock sped by them on the left. Signs flashed. Sony. Sears Roebuck. Eveready. He could see the neon signatures of the downtown hotels.

“I know people down there,” Holliwell heard himself saying. “I may go down there before I go home.”

The Zeccas were silent for a moment.

“If you were going down tomorrow,” Tom Zecca told him, “you could drive down with us. We’re starting out around the middle of the day.”

Holliwell was troubled by the feeling that he had expected the Zeccas to say something of the sort.

“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“Why the hell not? You’d have to share the back seat, though, because we already promised this reporter a ride.”

“No. It would crowd you.”

Marie Zecca turned in her seat.

“Listen,” she said, “if you really want to go down tomorrow we don’t want you going any other way. We would really genuinely like to have your company.”

“It’s very nice of you to say that.”

“It’s the truth,” Tom said. “You know, the lady beside me is an old social worker type from way back. We’d enjoy rapping on the way down and we’d enjoy showing you our part of the country.”

“The dusty part,” Marie said.

“I couldn’t get a visa in time for tomorrow.”

Tom shrugged. “The Tecanecans have a consulate at Zalteca on the way. They’ll write you a visa. No problem.”

“Hey, that’s me on the right,” Holliwell said as they came up to the Panamerican block.

Tom Zecca pulled over. “Nice place,” he said.

A question occurred to Holliwell as he was about to get out of the Honda.

“Marie,” he asked, “where were you a social worker type?’

“Well,” Marie said slowly. “I worked for AID in Vietnam for a while. But it’s family therapy that interests me.”

“I understand,” Holliwell said. “How about you, Tom? Were you over there?”

“Sure was,” Tom said. “You?”

“Yes,” Holliwell said. “Me too.”

The three of them sat in a charged silence that filled the car. In the instant they were bound, in excuses and evasions, in lost dreams and death. If any of them were to speak it would come forth, the place names of that alien language, the mutual friends and betrayals and crazy laughter. It would end, as it always did, in that dreadful nostalgia.

Holliwell climbed out of the car.

“I don’t think I can make it,” he told them. “But if I change my mind maybe I can call you in the morning.”

“That’ll be fine,” Tom said. He had taken out a card and was writing on it. He handed Holliwell the card through the open door. “Just call as early as you can.”

Holliwell put the card in his pocket and stood in the Panamerican’s driveway waving goodbye to them. Marie Zecca called something he could not make out.

What a curious evening, he thought. Shivering in the cold wind, he took the card Zecca had given him and read it.

THOMAS ZECCA

UNITED STATES EMBASSY

SAN YSIDRO, TECAN

That was all it said. There was a local address written across the back.

Holliwell went inside and walked across the lobby toward the elevators. The restaurant beyond the bar was crowded now; it was Rotary Club night. Compostelan Rotarian couples were dancing and it would not be too much to say that they swayed to the music of the marimbas. They were better dancers than one might expect Rotarians to be. Closer to their folk roots than the pale Rotarians of the North, Holliwell thought.

The adjoining bar was almost empty; there were deep plush banquettes and idle waiters. He straightened up, sauntered into the bar and sat down where he could watch the dancers. He was into his second scotch and considering the practical wisdom of ordering something to eat when his waiter inquired whether or not he were Mr. Holliwell.

He was. The waiter brought him a telephone, its signal button flashing silently. Holliwell assumed it must be Oscar — but a wild hope soared in him that it might, by some magic, some mercy of travel, be the Señora Obregón.

“You fuck,” the voice on the line said. “Communist son of a whore. You fuck your mother and you’re going to die in Compostela.”

Holliwell’s eye had been following the undulations of a Compostelan Rotarian rump, encased in beige silk.

“Who is this?” he asked.

The man on the phone did not hang up. Holliwell sat holding the receiver to his ear, frozen before his drink and his little dish of peanuts. The marimbas rose and fell.

“You Communist pig bastard. We shall kill you slowly. You shall die here. Die and long live the nation!”

He put the receiver down and rapidly finished his drink. Another was on the way when Oscar came in smiling and patted him on the shoulder.

“I wish I could have been there,” Oscar said earnestly. “It would have been a great pleasure.”

“Apparently I got through to somebody,” Holliwell said. “My life’s just been threatened. Just now. Over this telephone.”

Oscar looked at him. “You’re very white.” He walked down the bar to where the phone had been set and dialed the operator. He was asking if the call for Mr. Holliwell had been directed to the bar and whether it had come from outside the hotel.

“I don’t think you have to worry, Frank. It came from outside and they called your room. It’s only because of the lecture.”

“It was a really innocuous drunken lecture,” Holliwell said.

“They won’t do anything to you. They can’t harm an American. Everyone knows who they are.”

“It’s extremely unpleasant,” Holliwell said, “to get a call like that.”

“But of course,” Oscar said, “that’s why they do it. It’s more unpleasant to get a bullet in reality. Be grateful you are protected. Be grateful you’re not me.”

Oscar ordered them more to drink.

“Frank, I have to beg a favor of you. I ask you to go to Tecan for me.”

Holliwell leaned his chin on his hand.

“Do a favor for me, Oscar. Don’t get me involved in your games.”

“My games? Whose games, Frank? You know they want you to go. You can do anything you like down there. You can warn these Catholics about their situation, you can conspire with them, make them a donation — who cares? Only go and be seen and this resounds to my credit. You see,” Oscar explained, “it’s someone’s idea. That’s what makes it important.”