Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  His knees are under his chin, arms wrapped around his legs, as he gazes out at the horizon, without a thought in his head. He is drowsy and feeling very peaceful. For a time he closes his eyes and listens to the surf. As he is resting in this way, a swallow makes its high chipping sound nearby. He opens his eyes.

  It is suspended in the air a meter in front of him, facing him, its wings tilting this way and that as it floats on a draft. Josip opens both his hands, offering a perch, though he knows it is futile.

  The swallow flits forward and alights on his fingertips. Josip ceases to breathe.

  It flutters a little, settles. He has never seen one this close. It weighs next to nothing, it is warm, and through the trembling of its tiny feet he can feel its heartbeat. He knows that he cannot, must not, seize it. The swallow has come of its own accord and will depart in the same way. He must not hasten this moment, which he feels is the most important of his life.

  The swallow grows completely still, perching tentatively, with extreme delicacy. It is regarding him with a fathomless attention, just as he is regarding it.

  “Who are you?” he breathes at last.

  Still the swallow does not depart.

  “Where have you come from?”

  For a few seconds only—seconds that might stretch into the eternal—the boy and bird look into each other’s eyes, reaching across the gaps between the ranks of creatures. Then, without warning, the swallow flashes and is gone before the eye can follow.

  “Where are you going?” Josip whispers.

  2

  Josip and his father sleep under the orange tree. His father has made him unload his pockets, which are crammed with the white stones he has collected from the beach. He will take them home to remember the sea. They are stacked in a little pile not far from his hand.

  Wrapped in their blankets, listening to the surf, they watch the stars over the Adriatic. They pray together, and in a sleepy voice father recites some lines from Homer, about the sea. Josip blinks, and it is morning.

  Cheese and bread, and more oranges for breakfast.

  “Sour?” his father asks.

  “Sweet!” shouts Josip, jumping into the air.

  The father smiles as he watches his son carefully loading the round white stones into his pockets. When that is done, they head up to the road.

  They walk along it for a time, Josip rattling and clicking with the sound of the shore in his pockets. A horse-drawn cart comes clipping and clopping out of the south. The driver, an old man with silver moustache, stops and offers them a lift. His face is dark brown, his eyes as blue as the ocean. The tips of his moustache are so long they touch his chest.

  “It’s twenty-five kilometers to Split, if you’re going to Split”, says the man. “Do you intend to walk all that way?”

  “We are going to Split”, the father replies with a smile. “And to ride with you, sir, I can see would be a great pleasure.”

  The man chuckles, an entire face full of wrinkles, and says, “Come up, then!”

  Josip asks for permission to sit among the boxes of vegetables on the flat open back of the vehicle. His father and the driver agree, after eliciting promises that the boy will not run around or eat any vegetables. His father sits in front beside the man. Josip lies back on a heap of straw between crates of turnips and onions, listening for any conversation that might develop.

  The discussion is vague at first, as if his father and the driver are feeling their way through treacherous territory. Both are Croats, but it seems that his father is more careful in his speech with strangers. There is mention of the Italians, the Germans, and the British. Josip has heard these words before and has seen a German soldier. More than a year ago, one passed through the village alone on a motorbike, stopped, opened a map, and asked directions. Josip’s father, who speaks some German, informed the soldier where he was. Rather, where he was not, for the cart track leading to Rajska Polja threads its way through an unimportant range leading nowhere. This barely passable route ends in a mountainous cul-de-sac and is of no strategic importance whatsoever. The soldier shook his head, gunned his motor, turned the bike in a half circle and, after disappearing through the mountain pass, was never seen again. The people of Rajska Polja refer to this incident as “the invasion”.

  Josip understands that foreigners have armies on the soil of Yugoslavia, and that some of their soldiers have penetrated close to the fields of heaven, but no farther. He knows that the Germans and Italians are friends with each other but sometimes quarrel, and that they hate the British and another enemy called Americans. As the cart rumbles along toward Split, Josip learns as well that the Chetniks are not wolves but men who hate the Germans and Italians and who also hate the Croats and Muslims, and that the Ustashe hate the Serbs, and that most of the Chetniks are Serbs. The Partisans are Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs, and all want a free Yugoslavia, but each in a different way. The Communists are a different kind of trouble altogether, though some of these are Chetniks and some are not, and some are Partisans and some are not. Most Croats do not approve of the Ustashe, who are very cruel to their enemies, but they feel that the Chetniks are a greater menace. The Ustashe want a separate nation for the Croats, but they work with the Germans and Italians, who occupy different parts of Yugoslavia. Most Croats want an independent nation for Croats, which has been declared by the Italians, but it is no more than a puppet state.

  What is a puppet state? Josip likes puppets; his father makes them with him out of his mother’s spare cloth and large oak nuts, and Josip paints the faces on them. The old man says that some people want the united kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes to be restored, and it is not difficult to tell by his tone that he thinks this may be a good idea. His father replies that even if it were revived, it would not really be a natural kingdom, it could never hold together and be a true democracy, considering the nature of Serbs, who always work to dominate everything. The old man agrees and points out that it was the Austrians who caused all the troubles, long ago, when they started that other war because a Serb killed one of their princes. Why start a war over a madman? he wonders. Very strange.

  His father speaks about a place called Versailles, of which the old man has heard nothing, and about the need for a Catholic democracy in Croatia, and how nations can thrive when people respect their differences and do not kill to solve their problems. He adds that it is possible here, and they must all work for it. The old man isn’t quite so sure about that, but he admits there are a lot of things he doesn’t understand, because he is a farmer and all he knows is the bit of soil that’s his own.

  “That’s kingdom enough for me”, he jokes, and Josip’s father laughs, claps him on the shoulder.

  Though their conversation is extremely confusing, his father seems to understand it all, and this surprises Josip greatly, for until this moment he had heard nothing of these matters.

  Split is a mighty city, enormous. If Mostar is a hundred villages pushed together in one place, this is a thousand villages. Its streets are hard and flat, paved with cobblestones or concrete. There are many motorcars and trucks, countless people milling about in all directions. And here too Italian soldiers patrol the streets.

  The cart must stop for a few minutes, blocked by a traffic jam of army trucks and horse-drawn carts. A group of German officers strolls along the boulevard in conversation with a single Italian officer whose black uniform is decorated with medals and braid. Behind him, two other Italians in simpler uniform are smirking and gesturing to the young women they pass on the sidewalk.

  “Look at them flirting with the girls!” says the farmer. “What an army! Do you know what the Italian word for retreat is?”

  “No”, father shakes his head.

  “Avanti! ” and the farmer goes off into peals of laughter. His father smiles. Josip has noticed the frequency of his father’s smiles and laughter during the trip. Clearly, he is enjoying himself very much. The knot of traffic untangles itself, and they move on.
The farmer drops them at a marketplace by the waterfront, where many sea-going vessels have crowded into the small harbor, fishing boats and ships of war with cannons poking out of them in all directions. Here there is no beach, only cement quays.

  Facing the long promenade is a huge old building that his father says is a palace.

  “Is that where the king lives?” Josip asks.

  “No, the king lives in Belgrade, or he used to, before the war. The emperor Diocletian built this palace and lived here in the fourth century, more than sixteen hundred years ago.”

  “It is very old.”

  “Yes, very old. Come, let’s see it.”

  So, they pass through a gate and into a tunnel underneath the palace walls and up some steps into an open square surrounded by Roman buildings, his father pointing out details and explaining all the way. In the center is a building with mighty pillars capped by a dome.

  “This is the cathedral, the church of the archbishop of Split. It was built by Diocletian to be his tomb. Christian slaves built it. All day they worked like animals to lay its stones, and at night they were locked into the cellar beneath it. Now it is our Catholic cathedral. It is also the tomb of the bishop of this region who was martyred by Diocletian. No one knows where the old emperor’s body ended up.”

  “That is very, very interesting”, says Josip, with furrowed brow and distant look.

  “What are you thinking?” his father asks with mild amusement.

  “I am thinking that God has the final word.” This is a saying of his mother’s: God has the final word. “The emperor should have been nicer to the slaves”, Josip adds.

  “Well, he wasn’t. He killed them all after they built this fine resting place for him.”

  “That is hard to believe”, says Josip with a look of disgust, though he does believe it, because his father has told him.

  Now it is his father’s turn to furrow his brow. His eyes grow distant as he looks to the mountains towering above the city, beyond which lies his home.

  “Tomorrow I will take you to Solin, the ruins of the Roman city just outside Split. There we will see the place where the martyrs died.”

  Profound feelings fill Josip, solemn and silent, as if the rhythmic swell of the ocean has been suspended and all motion in the surrounding city has ceased. He is looking at the sky, up beyond the pillars and dome of the cathedral, beyond the peaks of the mountains. He is brought back to the earth by the cheeping of small birds, which he notices have made mud nests in the cornices of the pillars. They are swallows, and it seems to him that they must surely recognize him, because of his name, but also because yesterday their emissary made a visit to his fingertips, and they will surely know this. Their sounds grow boisterous as his father shakes his shoulder and says, “Let’s go in and pray.”

  But the big doors, which are covered with wooden carvings of the life of the Savior, are locked.

  Father kneels down on the steps. Josip kneels beside him. Father presses his forehead against the door. He prays silently, his lips moving, his eyes open. There is worry in the eyes, and also something Josip has never before seen in his father’s face—fear. The exhalation of the man’s breath trembles, and a vein in his neck pulses rapidly. Then his father gets to his feet, smiles broadly at his son, and says in a cheerful voice, “Now we will go to see your aunt.”

  For the first time in his life, Josip realizes that his father shields him from many things, with a confident manner that he does not always feel. This is a revelation so unexpected, so absolutely clear, so undeniable, that it leaves him stunned. He now sees his father’s true strength, his greatness. Miro Lasta is a man shorter than many in Rajska Polja, nearly bald, not as lean as most fathers, not as physically strong. His face is not handsome, and he wears thick eye glasses when he reads. He is respected by all, yet he is not admired in the way that men of better appearance are. Now, however, Josip understands that his father is Odysseus.

  They walk many blocks and enter a street filled with big houses. One of them is the convent where his mother’s sister lives. They ring the bell at its iron gate, and a nun comes and lets them into the front garden. She is dressed all in white, not like the brown Franciscan Sisters who every few years come to Rajska Polja in summer to teach catechism. She takes them up the marble steps of the old house and into a hallway that is shining with a light Josip has never before seen. It is like gold, but darker, less yellow. Their shoes tap loudly on the stone floor, and the air is full of a scent that is like the incense Fra Anto uses at Easter. At the end of the hall they come to a big statue of Jesus pointing to his heart. His father and the Sister bow to it, make the sign of the cross. Josip does the same and follows them into a room that contains a polished wooden table and several chairs upholstered with fine cloth. A purple rug softens the sounds of their steps. On the wall is a single picture, a painting of the Mother of God with many swords in her heart. Josip stares at it, then walks about the room keeping his eyes on hers. Her glance follows him everywhere. She is sad, but it’s plain to see that she likes him. The sister leaves, and father sits down with a sigh, staring at the floor. “Tata, is my mother’s sister nice?”

  Father raises his eyebrows and nods. “Yes, she is. All the Sisters are very fine women. Are you nervous? Don’t be. She is our family and much like your mother.”

  “Still, I feel shy. What will I say to her?”

  “Don’t worry about what to say. You have met her before.”

  “I have never met her before!”

  “When you were a baby we brought you here to show you to her, and to consecrate you at the shrine of St. Josip.”

  “Ah, then she has seen me before.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I no longer look like myself.”

  Father pauses and furrows his brow, because embedded in Josip’s statement are philosophical subtleties. He is about to reply when a little bell rings on the other side of a window in the wall, a window that opens to the interior of the convent. Its wooden cover is drawn aside, and the smiling face of a woman in a white habit cries out in greeting. Josip gasps, for it is the face of his mother. He knows that this woman must surely be his mother’s sister, but still, it is a surprise. As she and his father take each other’s hands and exchange warm greetings, Josip observes that she is unusually beautiful. He remembers his mother’s face and realizes her beauty for the first time. There are tears in the nun’s eyes; she laughs and cries at the same time. Mamica does that, too.

  “And this is Josip”, she turns to him. “Oh, he is the image of his mother!” says the nun, offering her hands to him through the open window. Josip steps forward and comes to attention manfully. He gives one of her hands a single shake and nods his head, once, like a gentleman. This makes her laugh. Her eyes dance, her cheeks shine and flush red—as red as his mother’s do when she has had a little wine after Midnight Mass at Christmas and Easter.

  “This is Sister Katarina of the Holy Angels,” his father says, “your aunt, your mother’s sister.”

  “I am very pleased to meet you, Josip Marian”, she says, adopting a formal manner herself, though she is smiling and does not let go of his hand. Indeed, she takes it in both of hers, making him feel a little uncomfortable, for she is, after all, something of a stranger. She tousles his hair. “His grandfather’s color”, she says fondly.

  “Yes,” says his father, “and we can thank God that he has inherited his looks from your side of the family.”

  “Oof, Miro,” she scolds him, “Marija was lucky to catch you.”

  “I caught her!” he declares in the gruff emphatic voice that is the tone he uses when making a silly joke.

  “Yes, yes, that’s right. Marija knew the great secret of all good marriages. You must chase a boy in such a way that when you have caught him, he will think he has caught you!”

  His father and the Sister are still laughing and wiping tears from their eyes when another Sister brings a tray to the window, loaded with cups and things t
o eat. Josip swiftly seats himself at the table.

  There is tea for him, coffee for his father, a plate of sweet baked goods, bread and butter, a bowl of raisins and dried figs. Josip cannot believe his good fortune. All reticence simply dissolves. He loves this nun. He will love her forever.

  “Let us eat”, she says. They pray grace and then eat.

  A single square of chocolate sits in the exact center of the plate, surrounded by sweet biscuits. Josip stares at it with yearning. He can smell it. His nose twitches, and his mouth begins to salivate. In another second he will drool. He might even lunge toward it and gobble it down before they can stop him, and he would be quite willing to live with the consequences. However, Sister Katarina of the Holy Angels says, “The chocolate is for you, Josip. Please take it.”

  He obeys. It is gone.

  “Let it melt slowly,” she advises, “then it will last longer.”

  But, too bad, it’s already in his stomach. It has left a streak of ecstasy down the back of his throat.

  “Chocolate”, says his father. “Where did you get it?”

  “It’s Swiss chocolate”, she replies, her expression flowing subtly into the kind of evasiveness that only the holy can accomplish without approaching the borderline of falsehood.

  “Swiss?” his father says, with raised eyebrows.

  She sighs, and her defenses collapse. “An Italian soldier came to the convent last December. He was not a bad young man; you could see in his face he didn’t like being an invader, and I thought too that he didn’t like being in the army. He asked to see the Mother Superior. That was very hard for her because her brother in Zadar was in the Molat concentration camp, and no one has had word of him since he was arrested. He is a priest who spoke against them from the pulpit. But she agreed to see this boy. When they met he begged the prayers of the community for his mother who is a widow in Italy and has no other support than him. He said he did not want to do any evil and asked our prayers that he would not be killed so he could go back home and look after his mother. Mother said the whole community would pray for him. This was hard for the Sisters because the Italians have taken away so many people, thousands, and we know some of the missing. But we all did pray for him. He returned a week later and told us he was being transferred back to his homeland within a few days. He brought us the chocolate, enough for a square for each of the Sisters. He knelt down on the floor and asked Mother to bless him. She did. Then he stayed on his knees and could not raise his eyes to us. In a voice like a little boy, he asked us to forgive his countrymen for the wrong things they were doing in our land. Then he went away. We never heard from him again.”