Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“Pablo!”

“Yo,” Pablo answered.

“There are reefs outside, Pablo. And reefs inside — within the brain of the diver.”

“I don’t understand you, boss,” Pablo said. He realized then that he feared to lose the old man’s presence.

But he had scored in spite of everything. Had made an idiotic overplay and scored all the same. He felt forgiven, favored by God.

“In the brain coral you see the skull of the earth, the heaping of the dead. You pass it going out … you see it in your mind … it’s your own brain. Sometimes among the brain coral … the casing of a skull. It rolls under the reefs.”

Pablo stood up, lifted the shutter slats and looked out into the quiet street. He saw no one save an elderly Chinese in a Hawaiian shirt, walking his bicycle along the sidewalk. He turned and put the brandy bottle on the dresser, catching sight of his own lean brown face in the mirror as he did so.

“Pablo!”

“Still with you, boss.”

“Your name rolls, Pablo. It’s your skull down there — white and round. It shines in the clear light … eight fathoms under the fan coral. Your skull is the counter … it’s the only ball in this game, Pablo.”

He cursed me, Pablo thought, he turned around and cursed me. The chill of eight fathoms touched his heart. A dying man’s curse.

Might it be, he wondered, that a man saw the future as he went out?

“Hey, man!” He shook Naftali’s shoulder, lightly at first, then harder, trying to bring him back in over the reef. But Naftali’s breathing was like the slow droning of some remote insensible machine, beyond call.

He stepped back and looked around the room, fingering the bottom of his shirt pocket where the diamond was. It was still possible, he thought, that there was more jewelry somewhere in the room. If there were even one more stone like the one in his pocket, he might buy time and freedom. If there were two or three more … the excitement made him clench his teeth and roll his upper lip in a hungry grin.

As he reached down to take his clip and gun from beside Naftali’s unconscious body another thought came to him: that it might still be possible to bring the old man back, to get help, a doctor, an ambulance. But it was too late for that. There was too much to explain, too many forces at work. It would be a foolish gesture.

Naftali’s pistol was a good one — Japanese, a new Nambu, eight shots, seven sixty-five.

Pablo set about searching the drawers and paper wardrobes. In one drawer, he found a wall crucifix. The other drawers held invoices, onionskin copies of contracts, letters typed in several languages, some in a strange alphabet he had never seen before. Only one was locked and when Pablo pried it open he found a stack of nearly a dozen passports from as many countries. The wardrobes held a few pairs of slacks and a great many short-sleeved white shirts.

He searched no further; he felt very tired now and it was dangerous to stay. He sat back down in the chair for a few minutes and drank the rest of the brandy, listening to the wind chime and Naftali’s last labored breathing. What, Pablo wondered, might he be seeing now?

The speculation threw him into a sudden panic.

He’s too strong, Pablo thought desperately, he’ll take me with him.

Tabor got to his feet, hesitated for a moment and then went quickly to the bed and slid the bolster from under Naftali’s head. Staring hard at the colorless stucco wall before him, he pressed the bolster with all his strength into Naftali’s face. There was a brief spasm of faint struggle, so faint that he might almost have imagined it. When he had finished, he dropped the bolster and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He could not bring himself to feel for the old man’s heart.

Before turning out the light, he glanced quickly at the figure on the bed. Naftali’s gray eyes were dull, there was spittle at his lips. No question now on which side of the reefs he lay.

Alone in the darkened room, he felt bereaved. He would interpret Naftali’s words not as a curse, nor as a prophecy, but as a warning from the dead worlds. He besought Naftali’s forgiveness. When he passed the open drawer where the crucifix lay, he crossed himself as he had seen Mexicans do.

What now, old man? he thought, touching the diamond.

There was nothing to do but go back to the Cloud.

The lower floor of the Hollandia was silent and dark now; its street door had been bolted. Pablo laid back the latch carefully. Outside, the island town seemed to have withdrawn into itself. He could hear only a distant car engine, a few dogs, the calls of the night birds that had tormented him in Compostela. He went down the front steps and out through the little garden fence and it was not until he had crossed the street and started down the neat little alley leading to the marketplace that he noticed the old Peugeot with an unlit taxi sign that was parked some distance down the road from the Hollandia, and that there was a man seated behind the wheel. The Hollandia’s night light reflected on what might be the man’s sunglasses or the visor of a driver’s cap.

Aboard the Cloud, the Callahans were making merry in their saloon deck; Negus was on the bridge moodily tapering off on beer.

“Where the hell you been?” he demanded of Pablo. “Who in fuck said you could just take off?”

“I got finished loading,” Pablo told him. “You were crapped out, so I thought I’d go over and lift a few.”

Negus staggered out of the pilothouse. He looked slack with his day’s drinking, his anger weak and without menace.

“Nobody told you you could have that pistol. Give it here.”

“I need protection,” Pablo said, “if I’m gonna walk around these foreign places.” He handed Negus his forty-five. The Nambu was tucked in his belt, concealed by shirt-front.

“This ain’t the goddamn Waterman Line,” Negus said, as though he had thought of saying something else instead.

“Hell, I was over with Tino before. I thought it must be all right.”

“Where is Tino?” Negus asked. “Was he with you?”

“Haven’t seen him since this afternoon,” Pablo said. He walked back to the lazaret with Negus’ frail curses behind him.

Down in the compartment, he propped the hatch cover open with a marlinspike and lay down on his rack. When he closed his eyes, luminescent ranges of coral began to form behind them.

Godoy’s church was in the hills above Puerto Alvarado, a square structure of whitewashed clay with the shapeless parody of a Norman steeple over its doorway. As soon as Justin opened the unpainted wooden door she heard the babies crying. Some Indian couples had come down from the Montana to have their infant children christened. The Indians knelt gravely in the candlelight around the font, the women in their dreary cotton shawls that were never sold in shops or exported, the men in khaki shirts and trousers, clutching straw sombreros with red and black marriage bands like coral snakes around the crown. The older children knelt behind the adults, equally grave and silent.

In turns the women rose to offer up their weeks-old infants and as Godoy, unassisted, poured the sacramental drops, the church would fill with the babies’ thin cries and the liturgical hum of the godparents reciting their oaths. Justin sat waiting in a rear pew, out of the light. When she had been seated a minute or two, she looked across the church and saw two men, one white and the other Negro, sitting in a pew opposite. The two men had turned to watch her; they did so unselfconsciously. One of them had thrown a lazy arm around the back of the bench on which he sat. The men were wearing cheap silky sport shirts of a bright print.

Justin ignored them and sat facing the baptismal font. When the christenings were duly solemnized and Godoy, wielding his censer, blessed the Indians and his church, the two men crossed themselves. Justin, out of reflex, did the same.