A Flag for Sunrise (51 page)

It was wrong for him to be there. He had chosen to live where the world turned wrapped in illusions of peace, where all odors startled, the soul slept and dreams were only dreams. This fate-scented night brought up his wariness, his body tensed, he watched from behind the lights with the rapid eye movement of nightmare. It was war here; his nerve ends shivered like the polyps of the reef, vibrating to guns which he could almost hear.

“It’s beautiful here,” he said to her, as they turned inland and the jeep labored up a grade to the low cliffs over the delta.

“I guess it is,” the strange young woman said. The nun.

Over the dim lamps and the encircled glare of Alvarado’s naked lights, he could make out, far out to sea, a tiny beacon. It would be Camarillo, the nearest of the Corazón Islands. It was a sweet island. He had friends there once. He knew that he would not be seeing it this time around.

Descending toward the streets of town, he looked at her from time to time, trying not to let her catch him at it. She seemed, superficially, to have thrown every grain of her energy into the driving; she sat erect and rigid and the expression of mild shock in which her face was set never changed. She was stone beautiful, he thought; to his eye outrageously and provocatively beautiful, an impossible nun. And stone fierce now, her beauty suggested steel to him, steel that drew blood, the Queen of Swords.

“Not a bad town as they go,” he called to her above the engine’s
whine. She nodded without looking at him, and showed her white upper teeth between the soft parted lips. He could not make himself look away from her then. She was the only person in the world. He needed to find her out and love her. Bad luck, he thought. Bad luck for both of them.

She guided him along mud streets, past square cement houses to the Gran Mura de China. It was a lime-green wooden building beside the river, the interior done up with a little halfhearted chinoiserie. There were plastic tables and fringed lanterns and a three-dollar dragon tapestry over a counter where a pale middle-aged Chinese woman leaned beside her abacus. A party of four Greek ship’s officers were eating steak and eggs at one end of a long table in the back of the room.

Justin exchanged a few pleasantries with the Chinese woman and then took Holliwell up a flight of stairs to a balcony where there was a table with a window overlooking the slightly fetid harbor. The breeze was fresh enough to make it the most pleasant table in the place. Dragons notwithstanding, there was nothing to be had that night except tough steak and eggs and jalapeños. They started out with Germania beer, served them by a Chinese girl of twelve or so.

“You must have been very young when you came,” Holliwell said.

“I was twenty-two,” she said. “I did my last year of nursing with them—the Devotionists.”

He wanted to ask if she had desired to go where springs failed not.

“Why them?”

“It must have been a newspaper ad,” she said. “Isn’t that silly?”

He thought it was very peculiar. He was silent.

“I was in Los Angeles at Cedars Hospital. I came from the country, you see, from Fairfield, Idaho. I didn’t like Los Angeles. I was after God, all that. They wanted me.”

God. All that. Yes, indeed, he thought. Life more abundant. More.

“I always thought of them as being in another century. I mean more than the others.”

“No,” she said, “no more than the others. They have lots of good women doctors.”

He nodded enthusiastic agreement.

“A lot of religious used to think of them as low Irish. Still do, I guess.”

“I know that to be true,” Holliwell said. “Part Jesuit as I am. There is a grain of truth in it, is there not?”

“I’m a grain of truth in it,” Justin said.

Her voice made him think of clear water, running over smooth stones. Gold-flecked pebble bars in the south fork of the Salmon. The fool’s gold and the real stuff.

“Why a nurse and not a doctor? I mean … not that there’s anything wrong with nursing.”

“The status side of it doesn’t really worry me. I don’t guess it occurred to me then that I could be a doctor. I was a girl, right? You think they had women doctors up there in Zion?”

“I suppose not when I was younger,” Holliwell said. One of us, he thought, has got to calm down. “I thought maybe by your time they had.”

“No,” she said. She sipped her beer and touched the paper napkin to her lips, staring all the while. “You know,” she said, “you look a bit spaced. Are you all right?”

“I’m perfectly well,” he said very slowly. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you look a little spaced yourself.”

“Oh,” she asked, “do I?” She tried to laugh. “Well, I am.” She tried again. “Because we’re moving out. And we’re so busy.”

“We should take things easy now. We’re not working at the moment.”

Holliwell called to the child for more beer.

“It’s terrible beer,” Justin said.

“Yes, it certainly is.”

Somehow, he thought, he was going to have to tell her about the whole business—Marty Nolan, Ocampo, all of it. He would have to explain himself and that would be the hard part. His presence did not explain well. He had followed disordered circumstance, coincidence, impulse and urging so heedlessly that the logic of his to-ings and froings had evaporated. He made no sense. Except as an agent of Nolan’s.

If he did not tell her, it might be more dangerous for her. She was in some danger already. If he did tell her, it would quite likely be dangerous for him.

“I’ve heard talk of you around,” he said to her. “You’ve apparently made an impression here.”

“What have you heard?”

“There are people who think you’re a radical of some kind.”

“Who?”

“Local people. I met a man at Playa Tate the other day after I spoke with you. He didn’t seem to like you.”

She seemed neither surprised nor alarmed.

“There are people here who hate my guts. They’re all I have to show for being here. The local Guardia, for instance.”

“That’s interesting,” Holliwell said. “Why’s that?”

“Oh,” she said, “because when the mission was open I was running some projects they didn’t like. I was training women in some basic nursing and it got sort of political. There were other things too. Anything like that gets them uptight. And I was friendly with some church people who were suspected of being anti-government. I still am.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“Maybe not to you. But it’s enough for the Guardia.”

“I thought it was dangerous to have misunderstandings with the Guardia.”

“I’m leaving, see, so my war’s over. They win. I quit.”

“The man at Playa Tate was pretty nasty.”

“Do you know his name?”

Holliwell thought about the question for a moment and decided to stall. It was bad business.

“Didn’t catch it.”

“Cuban?”

“I think so.”

“I know who it was. He’s a big-time hardware person. He’s nice enough when I see him but I understand he has Fidel on the brain.”

“I think it’s all a bit frightening,” Holliwell said.

“They spy on me—the Guardia do. I don’t think they can do much more than that.”

Suddenly, he realized that she was frightened. Fear was one of the elements composing her state that evening. What she needed was a friend. And what she has, he thought, is me.

“I hope you’re being careful.”

“You better be careful too, you know.” He watched her glance about the room. “You don’t want to be here when it goes.”

“Is it imminent?”

“I only know what I hear. I hear … a lot.”

The beer came and Justin hastened to change the subject. She was a bit frantic, manic.

“You can’t drink both of those beers,” she told him. “You’ll be ill. I’ll have to drink one.”

“Sorry about that,” he said. “It is sporting of you.”

“You’re damn right it is, this horse piss.”

“You certainly don’t have the manner of a nun, do you?”

“Horse piss is in Shakespeare,” she said. “In
The Tempest
.” And then she suddenly looked sad.

Holliwell felt she would be easier to deal with that way, although she had broken his heart with horse piss in
The Tempest
. He was more in love than he could ever remember. And the beer was truly dreadful.

“Do you feel good about your six years here? I mean have you …”

“Have we brought spiritual guidance to the soul and temporal health to the body of our flock?”

He checked his impulse to apologize for the question, for bringing forth her impatient scorn.

“Have you?”

“I think it was all for us,” she said. “What we did we did for ourselves.”

“Everyone does for themselves finally.”

“Easy answer,” she said.

“You expected more from being here?”

“What I expected I don’t know.”

I know, Holliwell thought. But he realized he could know only in part. He avoided looking her in the eyes; it was harrowing because she could conceal nothing. Along with the fear, mastering it, was a mighty pride.
More
was what drove her. Whatever the world afforded in the name of virtue, sacrifice, good works—she wanted more, wanted it all, as though she deserved it. She could be clever, she could play a little homely poker but she had never learned to trim the lights of her pride.

“What will you do when you get back to the States?” he asked her.

“First laicize. I don’t belong in the church. I don’t believe in it. I’m a fake nun.”

“You’re not a fake, ma’am, whatever you believe.”

“We made a botch of it here,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe what a mess we made of it.”

In her eyes, the hunger for absolutes. A woman incapable of compromise who had taken on compromise like a hair shirt and never forgiven herself or anyone else, and then rebelled. She could, he thought, have no idea what that look would evoke in the hearts of smaller weaker people, clinging to places of power. She was Enemy, Nemesis, Cassandra. She was in real trouble.

When he looked out of the window and saw the fishing smack steaming for its berth, two deckhands with red and green flashlights playing at being running lights, he followed the rivers of his own past. There, in an instant was Dalat, the Perfume River, its banks disgorging Marty Nolan to a second, lesser life. Holliwell had the strange notion that Nolan had found this woman out by some magic of Lazarus, had found himself a new war and an enemy. Then watching Justin eat her
charro
steak, demurely, but one would have to say hungrily, he wondered if something like the same thing was not true of him, if he had not sought out war and nemesis. But he was in love past regret. Regret, his second nature, the very fluid of his veins, and it was not there.

“You probably asked too much of yourself. I think it must be hard to make a dent down here.”

“We tried. We were doing it the wrong way.”

“I wonder if there’s a right way,” Holliwell said.

She was puzzled. “There must be,” she said. Then she said: “I’m glad you stopped asking me questions. I felt on the spot.”

“I’m sorry,” Holliwell said. “Why do you think I was asking questions?”

She smiled a thin tense smile.

“You’re seeing our part of the world, aren’t you? You’re an intelligent tourist and you want your money’s worth. We’re local color.”

“You state my good intentions very coldly,” Holliwell said.

“Good intentions get a going over here. Am I right more or less?”

“No, you’re wrong. I’m asking you questions because I like you.
And I’m an anthropologist. It’s my way of communicating. It’s all I know.”

“You’re supposed to gain people’s confidence first. Even dumb missionaries know that.”

“I would like very much to gain your confidence,” he said.

“And why? When you’re just passing through. What’s my confidence worth? I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being difficult. I’m not very good company.”

“Madam,” Holliwell said, “you’re all the company I want, believe me.

“Who, me?” she asked. She seemed genuinely incredulous.

“I like you, I told you that. I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t so.”

“Are you lonely?” she asked. Strange question.

He smiled. “Always. So I’m the deserving object of your attention.”

She was staring at him again but her look was no longer so wild.

“It never occurred to me that someone like you could be lonely. I was thinking how interesting and full your life must always be.”

“You’re putting me on,” he said. He was fairly certain she was not but he had to ask. There was not another soul he knew who would make such a statement without irony.

“I’m not,” she said. “I most certainly am not. Do you know what fun this would be for me if it wasn’t for … things?”

“Let’s …” He sought words, the right words, he was desperately afraid of losing her. “Let’s put things aside.”

Her look was so sorrowful and so transparent that he could not bear to face it. She was shaking her head.

“They don’t put aside too well,” she said.

“Let’s go outside,” he said, “or I’ll make you drink more of the beer. Is it cool to walk by the river?”

To her eyes came a smile that made them dazzle, a very small mischievous smile that she slowly gave way to. He stopped breathing.

“You mean is it safe for tourists? Yes, it’s safe enough.”

When they were downstairs, and Holliwell peeling out soiled Tecanecan bills to pay for dinner, it seemed to him that he saw her place her paper napkin, correctly folded, on the edge of the counter. He was too addled to take note of it at the time, but the image would come back to him later.

Beside the Gran Mura de China was a sorry little park with the warped ruin of a railing between the uncut saw grass and the riverbank. A stand selling ices was drawn up beside it. A few children played on the overgrown lawns, dodging between the sprawled bodies of three unconscious cane-juice junkies. An old black man in a Panama who looked as though he had been there all day occupied the only bench.

Holliwell and Justin walked a small
paseo
along the fence.

“The coconuts are all that’s dangerous,” she told him. “They never pick them off the trees.”