Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

“What are you doing out in the dark, Holliwell?” the Cuban asked good-naturedly. “Come in and have a drink.”

He thought it an oddly promiscuous grouping.

Holliwell stood in the darkness where he had thought himself concealed and stared at them.

“Come and tell us how things are,” Mr. Heath said. “Nun-wise.”

He walked away from them and into the bar. It was two-deep there. A man next to Holliwell said: “That fucker needs his hat rung.” He was talking to someone else, of someone else.

Holliwell wanted a telephone and they did not want to give him one. The bartender was unhelpful. There were no representatives of management in view.

He persisted; the bartender led him to an office near the kitchen where a young Spaniard was doing accounts. From the depths of his zombie state, Holliwell summoned up the energy to represent a pain in the ass. He shouted, he could hear himself at it, bullied, threatened and begged for a phone. It developed that the Paradise possessed a radio-telephone hookup; the young Spaniard observed that he could not rely on a connection and that it would be very expensive. He was trying to call the capital and Captain Zecca.

In the end a line was brought him. He stood with his back to the clamor of the bar beyond and listened to the undersea sounds in the receiver.

To his own surprise and relief, he got through. There was a Marine guard on the other end; the connection was adequate. It was fine.

He asked the guard who answered for Captain Zecca’s home telephone number and the guard asked him politely to wait. Then a young woman came on, the embassy duty officer. When he asked for the number, there was a long pause and she said she would see if it was available.

“Captain Zecca speaking,” said the next voice on the line.

“Tom,” Holliwell exclaimed, “you’re there! It’s Frank Holliwell.”

“Yes, sir,” Zecca said. “Yes indeed.”

“I’m down on the coast near Alvarado,” Holliwell said.

“I know where you are, sir.”

“I need your help,” Holliwell said. “There are people here who need protection. Because there’s going to be trouble here.”

“Would you speak carefully, Mr. Holliwell? If you don’t speak carefully I won’t be able to hear you.”

“What?”

“Speak carefully, Holliwell.”

“I have to tell you the situation here,” Holliwell said. “How can I?”

“We know the situation there. This office isn’t handling that.”

“What do you mean, Zecca?”

“I mean we’re not handling it. You’ll have to talk to them. There.”

“Them there? Who where?”

“Holliwell, we can’t have this conversation if you won’t speak carefully. I mean the people who are handling it. Surely you know whom I’m referring to.”

“I don’t think … I don’t think … I know them.”

“You know them, Holliwell. They know you.”

“Oh,” Holliwell said. “Yes. I know.”

“You should. I’m sure you do.”

“They have it wrong,” Holliwell said. “That’s why I’m calling.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. If you think they’ve got it wrong, man — tell them.”

“I don’t think they’ll want to hear my side of it.”

“Look, old friend — it’s theirs. It’s not mine. It’s yours and theirs.”

“Can’t you do anything?”

“Afterwards. Possibly.”

“After what?”

“Hey, Holliwell,” Captain Zecca said. “Go away, will you, pal?”

“I don’t know what to do, see.”

Zecca sighed at long distance. “Use your judgment. It’s all going down. Talk to them.”

“I understand,” Holliwell said.

“Do you? I don’t. I’m going to hang up.”

“Yes,” Holliwell said.

“See you, schemer. Hang loose.” And he hung up.

When Holliwell went out to the bar, he saw that the Cuban was not at his table beside Heath. He ordered a whiskey and in a moment the man appeared from the direction of the bungalows. He wore a look of concern. Holliwell saw him look at the table where his drinking companions were and then scan the bar. When their eyes met he was waiting. When he saw Holliwell, the Cuban’s worried look turned into a smile that was bright and false and layered with contempt. Holliwell gulped his drink to ease the chill of it. Then he walked past the man and into the darkness outside.

Ashore, Pablo gathered up an oilcloth and an anchor bag and left his aluminum dinghy adrift on the light surf. There was a dirt road beyond the mangrove and he crossed it into a thick wood where treetops closed out the stars and the air was heavy and still. After a while, he found a lean-to at the edge of a burnt-over clearing where melons rotted on the ground and the night’s rats fled from him. He tried to sleep on a ledge of crossed sticks, wrapped in a cloth, a canvas bag under his head for a pillow. There were animals outside.

He dreamt of morning light, fiery columns that blinded. The light was of dreams only. After a while he got himself up and took some of the blue pills to contain his pain. He slipped the bottle and the folded bills in his jeans and put the diamond back in his pocket. He was hearing voices, Deedee’s voice and the old Jew’s. Sometimes he heard his mother’s voice.

He began to feel his way through the forest. The wounded leg was steady under him; the bone was sound and that was good enough for picking it up and putting it down again. His body was functioning well enough but his mind was febrile, ablaze in the rank darkness.

Somehow he found a trail to walk along and true light to follow. Most of the time it was not the distant firelight he saw, but a succession of past darknesses, filled with doings that were lit with their own light. The light of things happening in the dark.

He felt night-sighted like a creature. Before long, it seemed his whole being would be in darkness and he would run from light. His numbed fingers sought the diamond in his shirt pocket, a tiny lamp to think by. He thought of his knife, of bullets, fists and teeth. The voices inside sang and conspired.

The path took him to another clearing where there were fires burning and people gathered around them. Hammocks were strung between boughs. The sight of humankind made him angry.

Gooks, he thought, and then he saw it was Stateside people. There were twenty, there were twice that. The place looked like the bo jungles he had seen as a child. But the people all looked young and tender.

He hung back for a moment and then stepped out among them. One by one, they took notice of him. He was the Darkness King, it was his party.

An older man at one of the campfires addressed him: “ Oye, señor .”

A fat Anglo.

“ Oye, oye, señor ,” Pablo said in his softest voice, “ chinga su madre — hijo de la siete leches .”

He laughed at the man’s fleshy face.

“Where’s your prez, fat?” The fat man’s mouth fell shut, his teeth clicked. “Where’s the main person here?”

The man shrugged and turned partly away. Pablo took a step to face him, tilting his head to one side, staring, his brows knit.

“There’s an old fellow who lives here,” a girl at the same fireside said. Pablo turned to her. “He’s over there somewhere.” She pointed across the clearing, to the far side of three stone slabs that stood in the center.

“Thank you,” Pablo said. He held her look to see what her face would do. She looked away. As he walked toward the stone slabs someone called to him.

“Hey, your leg’s bleeding.”

The slabs were like tombstones the height of a man. In the flickering light of the nearer fires, Pablo examined the first one he came to. He saw the profile of a face with the features chipped away. Over the figure’s head was what appeared to be a fanged cat with its mouth open wide. Below the obliterated face was another, upside down; it seemed the same face reversed like the obverse head of a one-eyed jack. Below that face were things like the rattles of a snake, feathers, a lizard.