Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“Know what it means, boychick?”

“I believe I know what it means,” Pablo said.

“It means you would die for nothing, thief. It means the money’s gone.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“You know what’s customary?” Naftali asked.

Pablo took a deep breath and glanced at the door. It looked very far away. When he turned back to face Naftali he noticed for the first time the night table beside the old man’s bed. The table was covered with bottles — one of Mexican brandy, another of liquid Nembutal, clearly labeled in English, yet another small one of insulin with a syringe beside it.

“I won’t ask you for a break,” Pablo said.

“It never hurts to ask.”

Pablo turned away from the sight of the barrel.

“Fuck you,” he said.

“Nothing to say for yourself? A name?”

“Pablo,” Pablo said.

“Whose life is worth more, Pablo? Yours or mine?”

Tabor looked with hatred into the man’s cold gray eyes. He could not stand to be the object of games.

“I’m gonna walk outa here,” he told the man on the bed. “You can do what you like.”

“That’s right,” Naftali told him. “I’m entitled.”

Pablo stayed where he was.

“Tonight I indulge my every whim, why not?”

Confused and frightened, Pablo bared his teeth and tried to shrug. The man seemed extremely drunk. Or drugged. Yet his movements were deliberate. He was crazy, Pablo decided, and sick. His eyes were red-rimmed, he was pale and sweating. Sick to death, Pablo thought.

“Please,” Tabor said. He knew it was a terrible thing to say.

“I think I waited for you,” Naftali said. “The thief always comes.”

Pablo panicked, coiled himself to spring and almost lost his balance. He was too frightened.

“You embarrass me,” the old man said. Yet he was not so old, Pablo saw. Sickness and fatigue had drained him. “I’m dying.”

Tabor could only stand and stare, taking each breath as it came.

“Do you understand, Pablo?”

Pablo slowly shook his head.

Naftali smiled coldly.

“You are interrupting my suicide.”

Tabor’s mouth fell open.

“It’s terrible,” Naftali said. “A coarse intrusion at a solemn moment. What a rude fellow you are.”

“I … I … don’t know what to tell you,” Pablo stammered. “I made a mistake.”

“Definitely.”

“I made a big mistake,” Pablo Tabor admitted. “But I ain’t gonna crawl, mister. Whatever happens gonna happen.”

Naftali laughed and his eyes closed for a moment and Pablo considered a bolt for the door. The predatory eyes were on him before he could compose a move.

“You’re young, Pablo.”

Tabor swallowed.

“Have a drink,” Naftali said. He reached over, took the brandy bottle from his night table and tossed it to Pablo. Catching it, Pablo held it by his chest for a moment, then took it in his right hand. He licked his lips. He was preparing to throw it in the man’s face.

“Don’t even think about it,” Naftali warned him. “I want to see you drink.”

Pablo stared at the bottle.

“No,” he told Naftali. “No way.”

“Think it’s poisoned?” Naftali laughed again. “That would be funny, eh? I could go to eternity with a little thief at my feet. A Viking funeral. Don’t worry,” the old man said. “It’s not the best brandy but it won’t kill you.”

Pablo took a sip and gently put the bottle on the foot of the bed.

“Sit,” Naftali ordered him. He went across the room to a straight-backed chair and sat down with his head in his hands.

“We’ll tell the story of our lives,” Naftali said.

“I’m sorry,” Pablo said. “I’m awful sorry. Lemme go, will ya?”

Naftali shook his head solemnly.

“An extrovert to the last, that’s me, Pablo. But I’m a good listener too. Since you’re here, we’ll chat. But it must be about important things. Time is short.”

Pablo started to speak, to plead. The barrel of the pistol was still trained on him. He put his hand over his eyes.

“I’m a thief like you,” Naftali said. “An older and much better thief. Smarter. If I were not a thief — who knows what I’d be. A geologist. An opera singer maybe. A baritone. Scarpia.” Still pointing the gun at Pablo, he leaned forward and took the brandy from beside his slippered feet. “Truthfully,” he told Tabor, “I think I would be a pianist, strange as it seems. Now tell me — given your intelligence — if you were not a thief what would you be?”

“The thing is,” Pablo said, “I’m not a thief at all.”

“Answer seriously.”

“Shit, man, I don’t know. Look, if you’re gonna be easy about this, would you mind if I just left?”

“I would mind,” Naftali said. “Now answer.”

“I got no idea in hell.”

“Try harder.”

“I suppose I’d be a lifer in the Coast Guard.”

“Harder.”

“I’d do things different.” Then to his own surprise he said: “Maybe I’d be a better father.”

“Ah,” Naftali said. “Now you’re talking. Father to whom?”

“You want to know my story do you, mister?”

“I do. In your own words.”

“I got a little boy. Nine. I was just wishin’ he had a better father. It just come to me here.”

“Then why do you have to be a thief?”

“Because I got turned around. Just turned around and around.”

“Yes. Me also. What turned you around?”

“What did? Things did, is what. Things.”

Naftali took the bottle of liquid Nembutal in his hand and drank from it. He followed the drink with brandy, which he swallowed without blinking, his eyes still on Pablo’s.

“Things,” he said. “Life? History?”

“Sure,” Pablo said. “If you like.”

A small wind chime tinkled against the closed shutter on the window. Naftali turned toward it. Pablo saw that his hand was still around the pistol.

“The last time I saw my father,” the old man said, “he was standing on a piano stool. He was showing our visitors that there was no jewelry concealed in the light fixture. It was in a faraway country of which you know nothing. My father was wearing only pajamas and I had never — although I was already a graduate — I had never seen him in pajamas before. And my mother stood beside the stool and her hand was raised because she was afraid he would fall. I was there. I was also afraid. I wasn’t Naftali then.”

Pablo frowned. He could make no sense of it.

“Did they find any jewelry?” he asked after a moment.

“No jewelry. But in the stool there were some nocturnes of Chopin. Manuscripts in his hand. Right in the stool. So typical of my father.”

“Huh,” Pablo said. “Did they find them?”

“Oh yes, they found them. They came back for them. And for my parents and my sisters also. But I was gone.” He picked up the brandy bottle and tossed it to Pablo. Pablo took a long drink. Naftali was listening to the wind chime.

“Hey, that’s tough,” Pablo said.

“Tough,” Naftali repeated. “Happened a million times. Always has. Continues. History. History will turn you around every time, sailor.”

“Well,” Pablo said. “I hope you got your own back off the bastards.”

Propped on one elbow against the bolster, Naftali shrugged.

“I had revenge. It wasn’t enough.” He turned toward the shuttered window again and the breeze drifting through stirred his sparse hair. “You can’t get your own back.”

Naftali’s eyes were dulled. Pablo began to think he might come out all right.

“I keep remembering trains, Pablo. The last trains. Little gymnasia sweethearts waiting on platforms. Their parents waiting for them. And I alone am escaped to tell thee.”