The Collector of Names

by Miha Mazzini

  He tried to remember, even though his contact with the child seemed like the memory of a dream.

  Did he ask me? Did I tell him?

  He just could not remember whether he had answered. But the question was quite clear in his mind, just like the boy’s thank you. Oh, no, no, I’ve been condemned. Another few minutes and then How long did it take with Alfonz and Max? Half an hour, no longer. Another thirty minutes before I sink into madness and then into death.

  He jumped up. Ran across the meadow, kept tripping, falling and rolling in the grass. Grabbing at the grass and pulling it towards him.

  I’M GOING TO DIE I’M GOING TO DIE!!!

  I’M GOING TO DIE I’M GOING TO DIE!!!

  He bit into the soil and clenched his teeth with all his strength. He felt very clearly that the grass was something different, something outside him, just like the sky, the stars, the night, the rest of the world. It would all still be there when he was gone. He remembered that time at school when Max said he was not afraid of death, just the end of the world, and Raf said to him it was the same thing. How easy it had been to say that then! To use names without really understanding the things they referred to.

  He knelt in the grass and something slimy poured out of his nose and mouth.

  I’m not a part of all this around me, I’m separate. I’m not immortal. I’ll die, I’ll die.

  I’ll be nothing. In half an hour or less. With every second, that moment is getting nearer and nearer.

  He moaned and tears ran down his cheeks, mixing with snot and saliva. With a corner of his eye he noticed a figure of a child entering the campsite and he did not care anymore. That was not his world anymore, let those who belong in it take care of it.

  It was the end. How was it that he had never before understood death and mortality? He did know, of course, nobody had hidden it from him, everybody talked about it, keeping it away only from very small children. He had listened and never imagined it. He had just accepted the name as if that was all and he had never thought of the meaning of the word. Did all names have a meaning or only some and were all of those with a meaning like land-mines in the middle of a field, which explode and destroy our lives when we step on them?

  OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOh!

  How much more time did he have? How much?

  *

  This time the receptionist opened both eyes. He had a feeling that a small figure, resembling a shadow, had crossed the edge of the lit-up concrete platform in front of him. He walked over to the door, opened it and looked out. He could not see anybody.

  He went back to his chair and dozed off again.

  *

  The motorcyclist was dreaming a funny dream: he was sleeping and even though his eyes were closed, he saw a boy, standing over him and waiting patiently. He opened his eyes to see the boy better and the child asked him his name, without opening his mouth. Funny! He told him his name and went back to sleep.

  *

  "I’m testing," said Luka, "can you hear me?"

  One, two affirmative answers. Adriano was nearly deaf anyway, since his good ear had started deteriorating and there was no point in asking him. Luka looked down towards his legs and kicked Adriano gently. Adriano turned around and gave Luka such a big smile that his false teeth moved in his mouth and after that he did not take his eyes away from his leader.

  "Miro, did you pump the oil in?"

  "I did!"

  He even sounded a bit out of breath.

  "Bruno, did you remove the plug from the barrel?"

  "I did!"

  "Now we’ll wake the dead!"

  He looked down to the left and all he could see were Bruno’s thighs and hips.

  "Bruno, start it up! That’s it that’s it LET’S GO!"

  The rumble suddenly turned into an explosion resounding around the bay, spilling over to the other side of the island. The crickets became silent, the birds stayed still. Thirty two tons of steel jerked forward with a groan and a rumble. A flame hissed out of the exhaust pipes, the caterpillar track rattled and the tank started moving off its base.

  The memorial plaque was smashed to pieces.

  "Shit," swore Luka to himself, "I forgot to remove it."

  He looked at the sheet of paper in his hand. No, he had not forgotten, he had just overlooked point three. OK, they would make another one, but he was still angry.

  "How it started, just like new," Luka heard Bruno’s voice through the earphones.

  "Yes, short, sweet and noisy!"

  He looked out of the turret and leaned back. He could not see Bruno’s head in the bottom part of the tank but he could admire his skills. After all those years, Bruno had not lost any of his driving abilities. Well, just a few maybe – one of the mooring stones had just been smashed to smithereens by the tracks.

  Not one light in the village came on and no window opened. That was precisely why Luka loved that village and that island, there were just enough people to stop life being too boring and not too many to make it impossible to agree on things and keep them to themselves. He took a deep breath. There was nothing he enjoyed more than leaning out of the top of the tank and riding through a warm summer night. They did start the tank occasionally, but always in the winter, when it rained and there were low clouds, when the ferry only came in once a week, when there was nobody but the natives on the island and the possibility of anybody seeing them was minimal. The thunder of the tank in that kind of weather could never compare to the sound echoing through a warm, early summer night. The only time it was even better was in the desert in the middle of nowhere when the battalion and the tank.

  He ran his eyes over the steel around him and quietly repeated the names of all the parts around him. He knew them all, as always. Everybody laughed when he stuck a label in the middle of the turret, saying:

  TANK SHERMAN

  MODEL M4A3E8

  How could anybody forget anything like that, they said. You could, said Luka to himself, remembering his parents. They were both still alive, the oldest on the island. But their minds were like those of the youngest inhabitants: they could not remember anything, they did not recognize anybody or anything and it seemed they had even forgotten how to speak. I'll never be like that, Luka had promised to himself. Every morning, he would list the names of everything in his room, making sure that the process of forgetting had not started that night. Because he was the oldest child there was no way of telling whether his parent’s extreme senility was hereditary. His middle sister, who had married on the mainland had died in a car accident. His other sister was ten years younger than him and was not a really suitable guinea pig, but in spite of that he still observed her carefully. She looked after her parents and her older brother, just like the youngest female child was supposed to do and that was another reason why Luka liked that place so much.

  He remembered it well: his parents' senility did not start with forgetting small, unimportant objects, just the opposite, it started with things nobody could believe could be forgotten. They did not really forget objects as such, they remembered how they looked, they just could not think of their names - often they would wave their arms around, trying to catch the lost word:

  "Well, that thing, what do you call it, that, you know, that thingumajig!"

  And that was only the start of a long process of forgetting.

  They turned out of the village and started climbing up the hill. Luka turned on the floodlight on the turret and lit up the road way up the hill. The pine trees at the side stopped the light getting even further. In his earphones he could hear Bruno and Adriano talking and it struck him how funny, how everyday their conversation was, as if they were still sitting on the bench.

  "I CAN TELL YOU THIS! YOU CAN DRIVE! NOT LIKE THAT SON OF MINE, WHEN I VISITED HIM ON THE MAINLAND AND HE LET ME DRIVE HIS CAR. NEVER AGAIN! HE SAID, I'D RUIN THE ENGINE! ME, RUIN THE ENGINE! I ONLY PRESSED MY FOOT DOWN ENOUGH TO HEAR THE ENGINE PURR QUIETLY! WHAT WOULD I RUIN! RUIN, HA! WHEN I'VE DRIVEN MORE KILOM
ETRES IN MY LIFE THAN HE EVER WILL!"

  Bruno did not interrupt Adriano's monologue, knowing that there was no point. Luka looked at the road in front and thought about what was ahead of them. Had Aco planned it all back then? Was it possible? He had talked them into stealing one of the tanks which were on the island waiting to be transported back to the mainland once the war was finished. They hid it in the woods in one of the gullies. Aco did not have to persuade them for long, it sounded like a wild adventure. They had all been among the soldiers who had disembarked in Naples two years earlier, at the time of a theft of a destroyer, an enormous ship. The crew had left it there in the evening and when they returned in the morning they found the tied up guards and no ship. The case remained unsolved. Just like the case of the tank. The American officer shouted at the villagers who did not understand him anyway and just stood there stoically in the warm spring air. They knew it would not last long. The soldiers were eager to get home after four years of absence. The tank was left in the gully until it was flooded during a big storm when they had to take the engine completely apart, clean each bit and put it all together again. Luka himself then asked where they were putting it and they talked about various hiding places, caves and hollows which were all rejected by Aco because they were too far. They may need it urgently, he had said. Miro said how great it would be to be able to keep their eye on it all the time and Aco jumped up with excitement. So, they put it up as a monument and whenever any politicians came from the mainland, they always praised the islanders for their model patriotism and continuous loving care in keeping that monument to the glorious past. Luka could not stand those visitors - they behaved as if the islanders were all savages or at least idiots. And that campsite, it was created by those from the mainland, without asking the islanders. And to top it all, all the young people went to work there instead of rejecting the intruders. Shame on them!

  Luka always had a feeling that the tank was somehow connected to that night at the villa. Aco would sometimes become very restless, constantly looking towards the other side of the island as if he was expecting something terrible to come from there. He only calmed down when he looked at the tank nearby. Luka suddenly realised that the barrel was always pointing towards the villa. How could he not have noticed that before! Maybe he should make a note of it to stop himself forgetting, just like he always did.

  Whatever, he was sure that only a tank could destroy something which could turn an eight-year old boy’s hair white in half an hour. I hope so, anyway, he said, trying not to show his despondency, standing in for their commander and thus having to set an example to the common soldiers, who were down in the belly of the tank still hearing about Adriano's son's driving abilities.

  He corrected himself: not the pensioner Adriano, not the old Adriano, but machine-gunner Adriano, just like in times past. A smile floated above the floodlights.

  *

  Max managed to free himself at just the right moment before he heard his father's arrival. He could not be mistaken: the noise was very fatherly, a remote thunder without a body.

  He jumped up, held the material with which he had been tied and ran towards his father as fast as he could.

  *

  "A storm!" thought Ana, "that's all we need."

  *

  The receptionist opened both eyes and swore. The pensioners were getting more and more daring, now they were riding around in the middle of the tourist season! The first, decisive tourist season! He sighed over the selfishness of the old people: they could not sleep and they thought that everybody was like them. He really hated people who judged others by themselves. And anyway, he was really fed up of these particular senile old buggers. So what if they had been heroes in the war. The war meant nothing to him. They sat on that bench boring everybody with their stories, and even though nobody wanted to listen to them they had to because the island was so small that there was nowhere to escape to. There they were, rabbiting on while he had to work!

  A disgrace!

  *

  It had started!

  Raf stopped whimpering. The madness was starting. He could hear thunder, the clanking of the iron, soon the ground would start shaking and then... He did not know when it would come and what shape his madness would take, but it had undoubtedly started. He ran to the edge of the cliff and looked down. He could only see one half of the body, the rest had been dragged into the darkness by the waves. A look at the unnaturally bent arm stopped him.

  Everything could end down there. He would not go crazy and start killing or slowly cutting bits off himself!

  Jump! said the voice inside him! Finish it all!

  Maybe he would have done it if he had just run up to the edge without stopping. But as it was, with that body on the rocks, it was like seeing his own remains, and he could not do it. He knelt on the edge and looked at the waves. The white foam seemed to be winking at him, not invitingly, more like not caring one way or the other. He cried.

  How can I live when I can't kill myself? A weakling, without courage or willpower. I'll just kneel here, waiting to become a lunatic and a killer, without trying to prevent it, even though all it would take is a movement, all I would have to do would be to lean forward, forward, the air would embrace me and take me. He imagined falling into the darkness - a sweet feeling - and then a quick smash against the rocks and that would be the end. I'll do it! Another promise, just like the one he gave Aco, who had relied on him and who was now down in the darkness, or rather his remains were there, or to be even more precise the remains of his remains.

  He heard the noise coming nearer. He did not have much more time, he had to decide.

  *

  The child stepped out of one tent and was going to go on to visit the three family tents which stood together in the corner. But then he stopped by the motorbike and had a good look at it and then turned towards the noise coming from the hill and saw a tiny ray of light flashing from time to time. The light was becoming brighter and the noise noisier. He made a decision, stroked the motorbike, left the campsite and started walking up the hill.

  *

  The receptionist tried to sleep in spite of the noise. He closed his eyes tightly, cursed the pensioners and tried to come up with a plausible excuse to tell the tourists in the morning.

  The biker appeared in the doorway, with his eyes bulging, the right corner of his mouth quivering, copious saliva running down his chin. He looked at the sleeping man and started grinding his teeth, as if their every move was tearing a piece of meat from a large joint.

  8

  "FATHER! FATHER! I'M COMING! FATHER!"

  Ana froze. The screams, together with the sound of running feet were coming from the darkness in front of her, and the strangest thing about them was their joyfulness, euphoria. She quickly jumped behind a tree, tripped and rolled into a hollow. A wonderful hiding place, she thought, leant on the soil, pushed herself up and peeped over the edge.

  A figure dressed in a short T-shirt and y-fronts ran along the path, waving something in its hands and calling for its father. The apparition had gone past her before she could make out anything else about it. She looked after it in amazement. For the first time, she got a very serious and unpleasant feeling that something was happening which was not a game and which was completely out of her control.

  Should she go on? The rumbling from the direction of the village was increasing and for some time now she had known it was from some kind of an engine, probably a tractor or something similar even though she could not think of anything suitable. She let the soil take her down to the bottom of the hollow. She would wait another few minutes and then pluck up the courage to go on.

  Moonlight shone on the branches but it was nearly completely dark down there, apart from the very middle of the hollow, about a metre in front of her, which was lit up by a vertical ray of light from the moon.

  She became aware of the quiet in the woods, probably because of the shouting earlier.

  The first day of her ho
lidays and there she was already alone in the middle of the night (or was it early morning?) among the pine-trees. She remembered her school-friend's advice that she had rejected. No, she would not want to stay up that late every night. The thought reminded her of bed and sleep, which she had not really missed until then, but now she started to. It would be nice to go to sleep in her own bed. But she would make do with the bed at her uncle's, even though it looked very old, with a mattress stuffed with straw, and was probably pretty uncomfortable. Only somebody rested finds it hard to decide between an adventure and rest.

  She smiled at the darkness.

  A skull nodded in the ray of light, or so it seemed at first glance. Large shining eyes, teeth exposed in a big grin, whilst the rest of the face was covered with something dark, sticky and hard, studded with pine-tree needles.

  Ana felt like screaming. Her mouth opened, the air travelled into her lungs, her vocal cords flexed, but her brain read the look on the monster in front of her and told her: if you scream, you are dead.

  The being made no threatening moves, it just stared at her. Ana did not scream, she believed her inner voice.

  "Why are you trembling so much? Are you cold?" asked Alfonz.

  *

  Raf saw the light in the woods and in between sobs, little seeds of doubt started emerging: were those really signs of madness? They looked so realistic. But then, that is the definition of madness.

  He felt his forehead, took a quick breath in and got up. No, his hope was false: his neck was completely stiff, his body was drenched in sweat and he could feel his stomach somewhere deep in his groin. All the signs of an imminent catastrophe.

  He looked towards the campsite. The child came out of the smallest tent and started paying attention to the motorbike. The slaughter had started. Raf surprised himself with his cold indifference and a feeling of superiority - all that had nothing to do with him anymore. He was already dead and buried. The only thing that bothered him at all was the slight envy he felt when he thought about the destiny of the tourists within those tents. He felt ashamed and he turned away from the boy who was now looking towards the light above the woods.