Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

Sandy looked out to sea. “Lost a mon on dat drop other year. I follow him dorn near two hundred meters but when I turn off de mon still goin’ down.”

“Suicide,” Holliwell said.

“Das right. Mon take de sleepin’ pills and go down.”

“It must have happened more than once.”

Sandy nodded. “I don’ lose nobody,” he said. “Got to be dere own chosen will.”

Holliwell felt himself shudder. “Did you think that’s what I was doing?”

“Oh, no,” the dive master said quickly. He touched Holliwell on the shoulder in the Caribbean way but avoided his eye.

“I won’t make the dive this afternoon,” Holliwell told him. “Maybe you could leave me off around French Harbor. I’d like to snorkel down there.”

Sandy guessed that it would be all right. French Harbor was on the way. He told Holliwell that if he requested it, the Paradise kitchen might pack a lunch for him. They walked together toward the hotel buildings.

“There was something down that drop this morning,” Holliwell said. “A big shark, maybe.”

Sandy stopped walking and looked at Holliwell, holding his hand on his brow to shield his eyes from the sun.

“You see any shark?”

“No.”

“Then don’ be sayin’ shark if you don’ see one.”

“Something was happening down there.”

“I tell you don’ go down that far, Mistuh Holliwell. I give you de dive plan. When you down so far, das not a good place.”

“Why’s that?”

Sandy walked on; Holliwell followed him.

“Dat drop, people see tings, den dey don’ know what dey seen. Dey be frightened after.”

“Was it always like that?”

“Jus’ dangerous divin’, das all. Surface current and de drop is cunnin’. You get deeper den you know.”

“So pretty, though.”

“Jus’ as pretty on de top,” Sandy said. “Always prettier in de light.”

“Yes,” Holliwell said. “Yes, of course.”

Justin was trying to reread To the Finland Station in the afternoon shadows of the veranda. She had almost dozed off when she saw the man snorkeling along the southern end of Playa Tate. For days now, her dispensary had been ready to receive wounded insurrectionists; each night she had spent awake and prowling in the light of her hurricane lamp among the stacks of stretchers, the basins and the small array of surgical instruments — listening to the government radio until it went off the air and then to U.S. Armed Forces radio or the BBC foreign service. Sometimes she would turn the volume down and tune in Radio Havana. Nights were long.

It was high tide and the swimming man crossed over the inner reef and headed for the roadside beach in front of the mission steps. Only a few hundred yards past the steps, a sizable stream ran down from the foothills of the Sierra, carrying with it all the refuse and infections of the hillside barrios. Its small estuary was a dirty place to swim. The shrimp that lived there grew to great size and Justin had often seen boats from the hotels up and down the coast come at night to gather them. Moreover, she knew that in the water offshore there was a deep channel where hammerhead sharks came in to feed upon the shrimp.

The man would be a tourist from one of the hotels. There would be many more before long as the fruit companies liquidated their unprofitable plantations and converted to the resort business.

The swimmer’s absurd sportive presence irritated Justin considerably. If he persisted in staying near the channel, she would have to go down and wave him out of danger and she was not in the mood for personal engagement. To her further annoyance, the man came out of the water by the mission pier, took his fins off and sat down on it. Two women carrying laundry on their heads passed the pier and Justin felt as though she could see the false smile he gave them, hear his fatuous “ Buenos días. ”

While Justin was watching the tourist on the dock, Father Egan came out on the veranda.

“There’s someone on the dock,” he said to her.

“A tourist. Snorkeling through.”

“What do you think he wants?”

“He wants to sun himself on the glistening sands of Tecan. That’s what he paid for.”

“But why on our dock?”

“Because he owns the place. Chrissakes, Charlie, go ask him.”

She watched Egan make his way down the steps, slack-jawed, shuffle-gaited. His deterioration was proceeding at an alarming rate; he had aged dreadfully in the past months, sometimes he seemed to her almost senile.

Egan was talking to the tourist now; the tourist had accepted a cigarette and a light from him. An odd pair they made — the tourist tanned and muscular, towering over the priest’s gray, lumpish figure. The two of them turned toward the mission building; Egan was pointing into the forest behind it. She stood up impatiently and went inside to make herself some coffee.

It had all been smoke before, Godoy had said. Perhaps it was still.

One time, she thought, they will require something from me other than my well-exercised reverent attention and prayerful expectation. People — men, when you came down to it — were always dreaming up glorious phantasmas for her to wait joyously upon. Justice. The life to come. The Revolution. There are limits, she thought. Justin Martyr.

When she went out with the coffee, Egan and the snorkeler were sitting on the pier in conversation.

Well, she thought, why not, we’re all tourists now. For weeks no one had come. Campos had some method of keeping them away.

After a few minutes, Father Egan came huffing up the steps.

“Know who he is, that fellow? He’s an anthropologist. He had business in the city and now he’s come to see our ruins.”

“Yours and mine?”

“Haw,” Egan said. “Clever kid.”

But Justin was growing anxious about the swimmer.

“And did you volunteer to take him back and show him?”

“Yes, I did. And I asked him to dinner on Friday.”

Justin looked at him in dismay.

“Go down and un-ask him,” she said in a steely voice. “We can’t have him here.”

“We certainly can.”

“We can not!” Justin almost shouted.

“May one ask why?”

She looked away, out to sea.

“Good heavens, I suppose we can go to town and have dinner. I don’t understand what the objection is. Do you think I’m so unpresentable?”

“It’s not that,” Justin said. Better to let it go, she thought. The chances were that the man would not come back. Or that Egan would forget. She watched the strange swimmer now, saw him sit waist deep in the water putting on his fins. He began to crawl toward deeper water. He was not far from the river channel now. If he continued as he went, the bottom would slope sharply and without warning he would be over it. It was no place for a tourist to be — the sharks, and the bottom covered with sea urchins. A few feet short of the surge channel, she saw him crumple up and stop swimming. He was splashing, clutching his knee. Justin stood up. The tourist had crawled into the shallows and was lying in the slight surf, both hands folded over his wound.

Damn you, she thought, you asshole tourist.

“He’s hurt himself,” Father Egan said helplessly.

“He stepped on a goddamn sea urchin is what he did. Either that or something took a piece of him.” She went into the dispensary wing, snatching up a bucket on her way through the kitchen. In the bucket she poured a pint of ammonia and then diluted it with well water from the tap. She hauled the solution down the veranda steps and across the road to the water’s edge. The swimmer was sitting upright now, with his back to the ocean. When he saw her, he was squinting in pain, his teeth clenched, pale under his tan.