80
ALBERT
J.
GUERARD
on the terrace, or perhaps from the bedroom of the Prince. The flute
stops. At once a bird responds, then the flute again. And I leave
Odile with a strange anxiety. I go out onto the balcony. The taste
of risk calling? To hold Odile outside on the hillside and weeds; or, no,
to creep barefoot through those weeds and over the barbed wire to
silence that guard and his flute?
And suddenly I wonder about my ship, which would be invisible
from down here. I rush up past my office to the roof.
The
Agracorinth
is there, just off the darkness of the cape. Far
out the lights are where they should be: but very faint. She must have
swung with her prow either south or north. Yet can one be sure?
Could it not be a stranger? I go to my office, quickly turn on the
radio, which is already tuned to our station; and hear, reassured,
Beetrare's nasal whine as he announces a record; and the weird
clearing of the throat.
It is all right; no announcer on earth has a voice resembling his.
He too is still talking.
And reassuringly the next morning she still floats: a small ugly
black blotch on the calm sea. I think of my first odd interview in
which a minor bureaucrat threatened me, at first politely, at last with
a grim reminder of power. He spoke as though even the neighboring
Provisional Republic's navy (its fast cutters) would be brought into
play. His complaint was that the old ship's hovering presence was
"disagreeable." Moreover, there was still some suspicion that the ship
was being provisioned from the mainland, not from the island as I
claimed. Anyway, he said, "Your ship finds itself in a very precarious
situation. That is my candid opinion." He dismissed with these few
words the niceties of obsolete international law: an amiable but firm
warning. Who was I to talk of international waters when the register–
ing country would not even adhere to the basic communications codes?
Angry, he marched up to his wall map of Africa, and crushed his
cigarette methodically against the small blue square of the sponsoring
nation: the brand new flag of
convenience.-"Voila!
That's what I
think of your sovereign autonomous republic!" The smudge, an inch
or so across, almost blacked out the whole new and insubordinate
country, and its one river curving briefly inland feeble as a pinworm.
"I don't care what you broadcast. Your ship is an offense to the eye,
however. The presence of your ship is an insult, I warn you action
will be taken!"
