Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“Oscar and I used to have some great arguments,” Holliwell said. Apparently Oscar had stopped arguing. They had turned him — either with money or with the offer of a job in the States. It was a shame, Holliwell thought, and Oscar must feel very bad about it.

“I suppose,” Holliwell said, “that in a couple of years, you’ll be asking me to get him a job up here.”

“Frank — how about doing us a favor while you’re down there?”

Holliwell buttered some French bread and said what he had decided he would say.

“If you approach me with something like that, Marty, I’m supposed to publicize the approach. My professional association passed a resolution against doing favors for you guys.”

“Your professional association,” Marty Nolan said humorously, “is a bunch of long-haired disorderly persons. Pinkos, Frank. Red rats.”

“All anthropologists are brothers,” Holliwell said.

“Suppose I ask how you voted on that resolution?”

Holliwell put his bread down and set his fork beside it.

“I abstained. I was in favor of the resolution but I felt compromised. Because of what I did in Nam. The favors.”

“God,” Marty said soberly. “You’re an honest man, Frank.”

“Well,” Holliwell told him, “there it is. As they used to say. What do you hear from Ho Chi Minh City?”

Marty looked at him for a moment and finished his wine.

“Not much. They arrested the Hoa Hao. A lot of them were friends of ours and nobody bothered to get them out. Look — what can I say? You want to know if I’m bitter? I’m not. Neither am I repentant. The other guys fought hard, they earned it.”

“If you were bitter I wouldn’t blame you. You really came through the whole thing damn well.”

Nolan put his own fork down. They had both stopped eating.

“What should I do — run for Congress? Get myself a tent show in Orange County — I Know the Red Terror Firsthand? I’ll tell you something, Frank — the night they dug me out I was in a hospital compound with this old Spanish priest. The guy was walking up and down chain smoking and they’d had him under the ground longer than I was. He said to me — Hombre, this was nothing. They buried me alive in Murcia in thirty-eight and it was a lot harder.”

Holliwell laughed and shook his head.

“Frank,” Marty Nolan said, “let me tell you about what’s going on down south. I guarantee, you’ll love it.”

Holliwell shrugged; Nolan was leaning across the table at him, his eyes shining with good-natured intrigue.

“Down in Tecan, on the east coast, even as we sit here — some of our countrymen find themselves in a state of social and spiritual crisis.”

“Let’s let them work it out for themselves,” Holliwell said.

“All I want to know, Frank, is what they’re really up to.”

“Ask Oscar what they’re up to — he’s on the payroll, right? Speaking as an American taxpayer, I don’t give a shit.”

“Oh, Frank,” Marty said. He sat back in his chair as though scandalized. “Information is a positive force. It furthers communication. It reduces isolation and clarifies motives. The more everybody knows about what everybody else is doing, the less misunderstanding there is in the world.”

“I’m going to Compostela. I’m not setting foot in fucking Tecan. It’s a rathole and it gets on my conscience.”

“Nonsense,” Marty said, “it’s a wonderful place. They have American-style hardware stores and the President speaks English just like we do here on Court Street.”

“And he’s wonderful too.”

“He certainly is,” Marty said. “He’s a Rotarian.”

“Marty,” Holliwell said, looking around for the waiter, “get off my back. I’m not going there and I’m not doing you any favors.”

When the waiter came near, Nolan ordered them both a stinger. A busboy took their unfinished lunches away.

“On the Caribbean coast of Tecan there’s a little place the locals call French Harbor. A couple of clicks down from Puerto Alvarado. For the last thirty years the American Devotionists have had a mission there but they’re on their last legs now and they want to close it down. The only people left there are a priest in his sixties and an American nursing nun. Now the Devotionists have been asked about this and their provincial in New Orleans is being very cagey — but it seems that these characters won’t come back.”

The drinks arrived; Marty raised his glass in salute.

“There’s a lot of medieval church diplomacy going on. The provincial says he’ll cut off their funds but he hasn’t. The priest and nun say they’ll come back presently but they won’t. Also the Tecanecan government has become aware of their presence and the Tecanecan government is extremely paranoid.”

“And extremely murderous,” Holliwell said.

“O.K.,” Marty said, “they’re murderous troglodytes and we put them in. But there it is. The Tecanecans suspect that the two of them are somehow mixed up in subversive activities but it hasn’t got a line on them and it doesn’t want a hassle with the church.”

“And what do your sources say?”

“That these people are wrongos, Commies et cetera. That’s what they always say. You know, Tecan is a special situation — it’s still the fifties there. Our ambassador is a Birchite moron. The cops lock you up for reading Voltaire.”

“Another corner of the free world.”

“Don’t give me clichés, Frank. Save them for the meetings of your professional association and someday they’ll make you their president.”

He finished his drink looking pained.

“Listen, old chap — I want to know what these people are up to. They’re my compatriots and erstwhile co-religionists and they’re fucking with El Toro down there. Somebody may have to bail them out.”

“I’m not going down there to spy on them.”

“Spy on them? Are you crazy? They’re already being spied on seven ways from sundown by people who’d love nothing more than to mess with their private parts.”

Holliwell signaled for another pair of stingers.

“You’re going to Compostela. It would be the easiest thing in the world for you to get a Tecanecan visa and check out French Harbor. Go diving, go bonefishing. There’s even an Old Empire ruin a few miles from there for you to scramble around. The thing is,” he went on, before Holliwell could protest, “it’s me that wants to know about these people. Not so much the outfit as just me. And I’d like to get it not from some informer or right-wing spook — but from somebody with some sensitivity. Somebody who could give me a real insight into what they think theyre doing down there. You might be in a position to help everybody out.”

“The last time I thought I was in that position things didn’t work out very well.”

“So what do you want? A perfect world? Tell me something, Professor, have you stopped believing that people have to take sides?”

“No,” Holliwell said. “People have to take sides.”

“What side are you on then? Do you really think the other guys are going to resolve social contradictions and make everything O.K.? Worker in the morning, hunter in the afternoon, scholar in the evening — do you really believe that’s on, Frank?”

“No,” Holliwell said.

“Well, it’s them or us, chum. Like always. They make absolute claims, we make relative ones. That’s why our side is better in the end.”

“Is that what you believe?”

Marty shrugged. “Sure I believe it. You believe it too. Anyway I’m not recruiting you and it’s not some kind of hostile operation. I told you what I wanted — just a little insight. It could be that we have something to learn from these two people in Tecan.”