Robert Stone - A Flag for Sunrise

Father Egan left off writing, rose from his chair and made his way — a little unsteadily — to the bottle of Flor de Cana which he had placed across the room from his desk. The study in which he worked was lit by a Coleman lamp; he had turned the mission generators off to save kerosene. The shutters were open to receive the sea breeze and the room was cool and pleasant. At Freddy’s Chicken Shack up the road a wedding party was in progress and the revelers were singing along with the radio from Puerto Alvarado, marking the reggae beat with their own steel drums and crockery.

As Egan drank his rum, his inward eye filled with a vision of the Beguinage at Bruges, the great sculptured vault overhead, the windows inlaid with St. Ursula and her virgins, the columns gilded with imperial red and gold. It had been many, many years since he had seen it.

The Coleman lamp cast the shadow of his desk crucifix across the piles of books, bills and invoices that cluttered the space around his typewriter. He took a second drink of rum and considered the cruciform shadow, indulging the notion that his office space suggested the study of some heterodox doctor of the Renaissance, a man condemned by his times but sustained by faith in God and the Spirit among men.

The work on which Father Egan was engaged would fail of imprimatur, would be publishable only by a secular house. When it appeared he would be adjured to silence. He would resist, appeal to Rome if only to gain a wider hearing. When Rome thundered condemnation, he would turn to the Spiritual Church, the masses so hungry for comfort in a violently dying world.

It was the composition of this work that had led to Father Egan’s intemperance in drink. For over thirty years as a Devotionist Father he had been a moderate man in that regard — but writing was hard for him and the cultural deprivations of his voluntary mission posting had rendered his life difficult by the day. He had rewritten the work six times and had reached the point where he could no longer endure it without alcohol. Yet without the work, he had found, life itself was not endurable. As for his faith — it was in a state of tension, the dark of his soul’s night was such that he could not bring it to bear. And if that faith seemed moribund, he could only hope that it had returned to the seed to grow, to be transmogrified, dried and hardened in the tropical sun, destined to rise like a brilliant Tecanecan phoenix from Pascal’s fire.

He had put by him the thought of a third slug and was halfway back to his desk when he heard the sound of a jeep’s engine on the beach below the mission buildings; he stopped to listen as the jeep drew closer. At length, he heard the brakes squeal and the engine die, and then a man’s ascending step on the stairs that led from the beach to his veranda.

“Oh my fucking word,” Father Egan said aloud.

He quickly took the bottle of Flor de Cana, put it in his shower stall and drew the curtain that closed off the bath. Then, popping a mint candy in his mouth, he stepped outside to the veranda.

It was the night of the full moon and the ocean before him was aglow. The tips of coral along the reef, the wind-driven whitecaps beyond were edged in silver shadow, the very grains of sand on the beach sparkled faintly. In the dispensary wing, an oil lamp burned behind Sister Justin Feeney’s bamboo shade.

At the foot of the steps a jeep had been parked, and a man was climbing toward the main house, humming along with the music from Freddy’s. He climbed very slowly, putting both feet on each step and shuffling to the reggae beat. On the last step, he raised both hands above his shoulders in a little flutter of stylized ecstasy and lurched onto the veranda. When he saw Father Egan in the moon-swept darkness, he stepped back, startled.

The man wore a white guayabera and dark trousers. There was a holstered pistol on his hip, hanging from a webbed guard belt which he had buckled casually over his loose shirt. His hair was combed slickly across his skull; he was not a man of the coast, but a mestizo from the interior. Egan saw that it was Lieutenant Campos, social agent of the Guardia Nacional, uncharacteristically out of uniform and thoroughly drunk. Recognizing Campos, he drew his breath in fear.

“Holy Father,” Lieutenant Campos said. He crossed himself and kissed his fingers as though Egan were an object of veneration. “Bless me, Father,” he said in Spanish. “Bless me, for I have sinned.”

Egan, having coiled a sentence of greeting, released it without enthusiasm.

“Good evening, Lieutenant, my friend. How may we help you?”

“Yes,” Lieutenant Campos said. “And now you have to come with me.”

Father Egan recoiled, in spite of himself. The words froze his heart. Campos was staring at Sister Justin Feeney’s lighted window. The two men stood bathed in the unrelenting moonlight, both of them swaying slightly with drink. At Freddy’s Chicken Shack, the beat went on.

“Where is the nun?” the lieutenant asked with distaste. “The earnest nun?”

“Gone to bed, I would suppose,” Father Egan said cheerily. God save us, he thought. We’re being arrested.

“No no,” Campos said. “Because, see, her light is on. She’s staying awake. And who knows what she’s thinking?” The lieutenant had raised his voice over the distant music but from Sister Justin Feeney’s room there was no sound or stirring. Campos belched sadly and turned his attention back to the priest.

“Come with me,” he said in his policeman’s voice. “We’re going.”

“It’s so late,” the priest said. “Does it have to be now?” He was aware of the lieutenant’s insane intelligent eyes smoldering in the moonlight.

Campos laid a hand on his arm.

“Come!”

“Lieutenant,” Egan said, “please. A moment.” He went inside to get his stole and breviary, in case there might be some emergency.

They went down the steps to the beach in silence. Campos stood by the side of his jeep and held the door open for the priest.

The road, such as it was, followed the packed sand of the beach, descending now and then into a sea-flooded hollow that splashed phosphorescence as they forded it. Egan sat with the stole in his teeth, the missal between his legs, holding fast to the sidebar of the jeep. The lieutenant drove as fast as the vehicle would move; now and then he muttered something in a low voice which the priest could not understand.

He did not brake for animals. If a cow, transfixed in the headlights, was too slow in heaving its flyblown bulk from the roadway, the lieutenant would unhesitatingly ram it bellowing into a ditch, throw the jeep into reverse and charge forward.

In twenty minutes or so they came to the peninsula on which the lieutenant maintained his residence. In a country of frenetically gregarious people, Lieutenant Campos lived alone, without family or servants. The turnoff that led to his compound was barred by a chain link fence, its gate secured with a padlock. Campos kept his jeep motor running as he opened it; when they were inside he got out again and locked it behind them.

Breathing deeply, Father Egan followed Campos from the jeep and stood by while he unlocked his front door. The lieutenant used more locks than one was used to seeing along the coast.

Egan went in first; the presence of Campos, entering behind him in the darkness, touched the priest with terror.

The lieutenant had electric light and his bungalow was very neat. There was a picture of the President of the Republic on one wall — the President appearing as the apotheosis of the nation-state, his full cheeks pink with retouching, his uniform inked in pastels, his peculiar ears unobserved — the whole swathed in the furled colors of Tecan. Beside it was a framed copy of the lieutenant’s commission, then a framed shot of a younger — perhaps a more reasonable — Lieutenant Campos, posing with his buddies at Guardia school.