Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

Father Godoy, with a smile, walked the Indians to the door. Each of them turned their eyes toward Justin as they passed her; not one, not even the children, glanced at the men in the print sport shirts. Godoy opened the church door and stood in the doorway, a rhombus of fiery light, shaking hands and bestowing felicitations. The Indians gone, he remained there, shielding his eyes from the glare. The surplice over his black cassock was real lace, Justin saw; it was a strangely rich thing in so poor a place. A gift from his mother, she thought. Vestments were what their mothers gave them.

The two men in the church stood up, and passing Justin, affected to examine her with an insolence enriched by four hard centuries of tradition. At the doorway, they did as well for Godoy. When the two were outside, Godoy closed the door against the fiery light and locked it.

“Thank you for coming up,” the priest said to Justin. He approached her and offered his hand with the same manner and with the same smile that he had employed for the Indian parents. The recognition of this troubled Justin slightly: she decided that it was his sincerity she saw.

“I’ve been waiting to hear from you,” Justin told him, as indeed she had been.

Together they walked toward the front of the church and Godoy went to the baptistry to blow out the candles around the font. Justin sat in a forward pew to the left of the altar. With the candles out, the church was almost in darkness, lit only by two small windows of imitation stained glass over the ceiling beams and the red sanctuary lamp.

He sat down beside her and she could barely see his face. They were close together, nowhere touching; two creatures of sacerdotal dark.

“I sent for you to tell you I was leaving,” the priest said.

She was surprised at the pain his words caused her. In the silence of the church, she thought he must have heard her shocked intake of breath. She fixed her eyes on the lamp beside the tabernacle.

“The work is in the mountains. It’s very important for us to be there now.”

“Of course,” Justin said. “Whatever the necessity … wherever it’s going on … you should be.” She could not get it to come out right but her voice never broke.

“In the mountains we have started collectives— ejidos. There are nuns working there and the Indians are organized. They’ve done wonderful things there, these nuns. Our compadresitas. ”

Unlike the nuns here, Justin thought, who tend to be twittish, sentimental and useless. And who are not above a rush of raw hatred for the wonderful compadresitas in the mountains.

“We have the land there,” Godoy told her. “We have it by right of occupation and by right of law. Very soon the landowners and the copper companies will send in the Guardia to take it back if we let them. But we’re not going to let them. This time we resist, you see. And all over the country we will resist.”

“What about the foco here?” Justin asked. “Is it going to happen?”

“Absolutely it will happen. When the signal is given. Arms are on the way. And it will be soon. Absolutely.”

“And how will I know what to do?”

“You’ll be directed by people who know you. You must prepare.”

“We might have done things here as they did in the mountains,” Justin said sadly. “We might have organized collectives on the land.”

“The situation is different here. Here the foreign companies have what they want and the structure is not so visible. Also one is cut off on this coast. It can be liberated only together with the rest of the country.”

“I thought the nursing was enough,” Justin said, bowing her head. “I wasn’t looking around me. I wasn’t seeing. In all this time …” She could hear Godoy tapping his fingertips on the pew bench, impatiently.

“Don’t reproach yourself. You have your job and I have mine.”

After a moment she said: “I’m sorry you’re leaving.”

Godoy himself was silent for a while. She waited in the darkness for his answer.

“Interrupted friendships are disappointing” was what he said.

“Yes,” Justin said calmly, “but I suppose they’re very much part of the work.”

“Sadly so.”

Sadly so. He had done her the courtesy of informing her personally of his leaving and he wanted her to be off.

“How much notice do you think I’ll have,” she asked him, “before the dispensary is needed?”

“You were told to be ready at the shortest possible notice. At most you will have only a day or so. It depends on circumstances.”

“O.K.,” Justin said.

“I must go very soon. I have many things to do before I leave for the mountains.”

“Yes,” Justin said. “I have to go myself.” In fact she had nowhere to go. Nothing of any value to attend to except the nursing of a dying drunk.

They sat beside each other, neither moving.

Will you just touch me, Justin thought, will you do only that much? I will do whatever you ask, I will face the Guardia, I will die, I will try to kill for you, will you just touch me? Will you do something for me, to me? Will you give me your hand? Will you give me anything?

Godoy stood up and waited in the aisle for her to do the same. She rose and walked the length of the aisle with him. A key was in his hand.

“Father Godoy,” she said to him. He had not looked at her, had marched her straight back to the door which he was now unlocking. “Father Godoy!” She nearly shouted it at him. “What I care about … maybe all I care about … is me! Not about this country. Only about the way I myself feel.”

He looked at her in silence for a moment and then he smiled. He had a sad smile for all the wind and weather, she thought.

“I think we are all that way deep inside. But there can be a coincidence of interest, can there not? Between justice and one’s feelings.”

In despair, she played the schoolgirl and then the penitent.

“Of course. But before I go there is something I want to say. I want to say it because we may never meet again. My feeling for you is particular. I have come to feel about you in a particular way.”

Godoy had opened the door a crack. She stepped back from the light so that he might not see the shame in her face. It would have been so easy not to say anything. And then to say it in the absurd language of the cloister. Now it was too late.

In time suspended, she watched him search for an answer, saw his brows knit, his eyes shift. Then, without looking at her, he said: “I feel the same about you.” Immediately she knew that he was lying. Whatever his feelings might be, his declaration to her was a simple lie, a pacifier.

She watched the Adam’s apple bob in his white throat above the top button of his cassock and the thought came to her that he must be quite good at lying. But for her he was not trying very hard.

“There you see the extent of my selfishness,” she said. Driven by the lie, she could not stop. “And my smallness and foolishness.”

Godoy was genuinely embarrassed and perhaps concerned for his foco.

“Please,” he said. He opened the door and they were standing together in the white hot light. “I am your friend, you can believe that. I need you to help me. These poor also need you.”

“There was never any question of that,” she said. “I’ll be there when you need me.”

Another melancholy smile. “Until later then, dear friend.”

“Yes, until later,” Justin said, and went down the three whitewashed steps. The two men in print shirts were on the corner and she needed all her strength to walk past them, calm and heedless with a friendly, superior nod.

On the drive back she let herself cry. She cried from shame and from revulsion at his deceit and unctuousness. But he was right, she thought. Her feelings were a child’s feelings, and they were a matter of no importance. It was she, by all the rules of all the games, who was wrong.