Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “It will be impossible”, says Vlado darkly.

  “The most problematic contribution may well prove to be yours, Vlado”, says Simon. He goes on to explain that, because the sculptor is well known in Dalmatia, his work would be immediately recognizable by the police.

  Vlado now offers to sculpt something in a different style. How about a piece titled Freedom for the first issue? Simon emphatically supports this idea, but wonders if Vlado really wants to abandon his adamant antirealism.

  “My work is not anti-realist,” Vlado shoots back, “it is meta-realist. But I can bend a little in the direction of cognitive expressionism.”

  “Excellent”, says the doctor, while everyone else puzzles over the term. “It can be photographed and reproduced on the cover, but you realize it can never thereafter be exhibited in public. It should be safely stored away, somewhere other than in your apartment-studio.”

  “May we purchase it, Vlado?” asks Vera.

  “Of course, if it ever sees the light of day.”

  There are other matters discussed that evening. Simon asks Iria if she would be willing to write a composition—music and lyrics that would embody the spirit of the people. Iria agrees with a nod, her cheeks flushing bright red.

  “It should be called ‘Song for the Homeland’ ”, declares Antun. This sparks a debate. Is the homeland Croatia alone, or is it all of Yugoslavia? Clearly the Croat majority in the room prefers the title to mean the republic within Yugoslavia. Tatjana and Vlado have reservations. Simon maintains a neutral stance in order to moderate the discussion. Soon their thoughts about the central goal of their project spin off in tangents about nationalities and ethnic loyalties within the larger imposed state. It goes on for some time, and because these questions are vital and complex, no one seems able to draw the discussion back on course.

  Josip clears his throat. “Could it be titled . . .”

  Because he has not yet spoken, and perhaps also because this extraordinary model of humanity has sat motionless for three hours like a bronze god parked in the corner, all voices fall silent.

  “Could it be titled ‘In the Homeland of the Soul’?” he asks in a low voice.

  Instantly, he regrets that he has broken his silence. It seems his silence has bred more silence in the others. Then, to his surprise, one by one they nod. Murmurs of agreement follow: Yes. That’s good. It says it all. What do you think, Iria?

  Iria gives one of her smiles.

  Then Vera begs, “Play something for us, Iria, would you? Please? One of your own?”

  So, the little round woman, who looks as if she should be selling black-market flowers on the promenade, gets up and crosses the room, seats herself at the grand piano, and flutters a few keys. She closes her eyes and begins. Slowly at first. It is simply classical, yet a piece no one recognizes. It gathers strength, the central current growing complex with alliances, themes blending and parting and reuniting again, and all the while it remains meditative and melancholic in the Slavic way. Though it is unlike anything else they have heard before, they recognize in it the faintest residue of the Orient and the cool northern exultation of Europe, followed by the heat of the Western Renaissance and the dread suction of the Turkish tide rising from the south. Then, in the final movement, when the tide is repelled at last by valor and faith and passionate love for what must not be lost, they hear what has been purchased by immeasurable sacrifice. The entire concerto is about the crucifixion and the resurrection of a people. How she creates it no one can guess. Why it should pour from this most unlikely of persons is another mystery. Everyone in the room stops guessing, leaves behind all thought, and rises with her into a realm that is never seen with the eyes, and is only rarely felt in the homeland of the soul.

  When it is over, not a sound can be heard in the room. No one speaks. One by one they get up, shake hands, embrace, kiss, and take their leave. In the hallway people are milling about, whispering to each other about the next meeting, when, where? It is not at all a secretive sound; it is the whisper of reverence.

  Because Josip has listened to the concerto with closed eyes throughout, flying somewhere within himself as the Lastavica of the Mountains, and at certain moments alongside the Lastavica of the Sea, he does not notice the departures. Antun is in the hallway, deep in discussion with the old novelist, their voices low and intense, and mutually excited by a literary question. Josip remains seated in the corner, eyes closed, his head thrown back against the wall, hands folded in his lap, breathing lightly though his parted lips.

  When he opens his eyes, he sees that he is not alone. Seated across the room from him is a young woman in a long white dress that reaches nearly to her ankles. Her feet are bare. Her recollected face is extremely still. She is looking at him with wide open eyes. Her hands rest on her lap, and cupped in them is a chambered nautilus.

  12

  The young woman lowers her eyes. Without looking again at Josip, she gets up and leaves the room. Beyond the parlor is a dining room. There she pauses and picks up a stringed instrument that is lying on the table. From the distance of a few meters, it appears to Josip that the strings are vibrating, as if she had put the instrument down only moments before, picked up the seashell, and come into the parlor, where she had silently observed him sitting, immobilized in his solitude. Now she is departing as swiftly as she has come. She puts the shell on the table and, cradling the instrument as if it were an infant, vanishes into another room. A door is closed.

  Antun calls to him from the hallway. “Time to go, Josip!”

  He gets up and says his good-byes to the doctor and his wife.

  “Will you come again?” asks Simon.

  “We hope you will”, says Vera, putting a hand on his arm. “It was lovely what you said tonight, about Iria’s song—the way you said it.”

  Simon shakes Josip’s hand. “You are a man of few words but many thoughts, I believe. Is this a work you wish to be part of?”

  Josip nods solemnly. “Yes”, he says. “It is.”

  “We can use a mole who can count to a hundred”, Antun jokes. “One who can keep his lips sealed too.”

  Josip smiles, and the others laugh. He and Antun leave.

  They cross half the city before Antun is able to penetrate Josip’s thoughts.

  “Thanks for agreeing to join us. It’s going to be interesting. And don’t look so worried.”

  “I am not worried.”

  “Then what’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing is the matter with me.”

  “Yes, there is. If I pushed you into a pool right now, you’d continue walking under water and not even notice.”

  “Who is that girl?”

  “What girl?”

  “Did you not see her? She came into the room as everyone was leaving.”

  “I didn’t see anyone. You were imagining it. An enchanted evening, especially the music at the end.”

  “She was there. Only for a few seconds.”

  “Maybe a maid.”

  “Do they have servants?”

  “I don’t think so. No—they wouldn’t.”

  “Do they have children?”

  “I’m not sure—wait, yes, I heard they have a daughter. She’s a student at the university. Music faculty, I think.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “Know her name? Of course not.”

  “When is the next meeting?”

  “Of the ACU, you mean?”

  Josip looks at Antun blankly.

  “Too stunned for acronyms tonight, Josip? The Alternative Culture Underground—my name for it. It has a nice ring, don’t you think?”

  “Where is the faculty of music?”

  “Music? Oh—I see—the mysterious girl. You’re sure she’s real, are you?”

  “At this moment, I’m not quite sure.”

  Alone at last in his room, Josip does not turn on the light. He throws open the window and lies down on his cot, looking at the stars over the Dinarics. He
can feel his heart booming slowly and relentlessly, his eyes swimming with wonder, his arms reaching into the air like a child desiring to be lifted.

  Into what zone does he wish to rise? No longer is there any longing for escape. Now he reaches for some new thing, which is waiting for him. It is simultaneously above and within him.

  Who is this woman? She has appeared out of the unknown, the realm of theoretical nonbeing, only to reveal in a flash of light that she exists; she has lived for years, and he did not know of her existence. Now he knows. She is here. Her white dress, her silence, her very great beauty and composure, the musical instrument in her hands—all of these show him that she is entirely present and entirely miraculous. This certainty is consummated, above all, by the chambered nautilus. For its intricate unfolding of rooms within rooms is replete with meaning—the spiral genius of pink and white enclosures within the household of its exterior form.

  “If I die now, at this very moment,” he declares to the stars, “it has all been worth it. For I have seen that she exists. She is on the earth with me.”

  He does not need to know her, still less to direct the trajectory of his obscure and painful life toward her luminous life. It is enough to know that there is one like her.

  Now the little wooden swallow is in his right hand. His arms are raised, playing with it, making it soar back and forth. He laughs, laughs at this playing, this unabashed childish joy, as streams of water run down his cheeks, his happiness so close to sorrow, yet infinitely above it. The sorrow is the lower air through which the bird must pass to reach the higher winds. A flicker of wings and it soars upward, arc after arc, rising and rising into the dark until it is seen no more. He goes with it, because he is the Lastavica of the Mountains.

  October. The second meeting of the group is scheduled for this evening. Josip awakes before sunrise in a state of nervous anticipation. Because it is a Saturday, he wants to run to the top of the Marjan as usual. He needs to burn off excess tension, but he cannot fix his will on anything. He paces back and forth in his room, unable to concentrate. She is always in his thoughts, her chambered nautilus as well. For two months she has taken up residence in the exact center of his soul. Does he believe in the eternal soul? Perhaps. He does not need to think about this; his only certainty is that paradise is possible and that if he does not see her again he will be shut out of paradise.

  He has not seen her again, despite three or four separate incidents when, impelled by ardor and longing, he has lingered around the music faculty at the hours when an apparition is most likely to materialize. He has learned through complex negotiations that her name is Ariadne. The joy of her most beautiful name compels him continuously to write messages to her in his mind, which is alternately exalted by the certainty that she is an incarnation of all that is truly feminine, heroic, and sacrificial, and deflated by the equal possibility that she is no more than a dream.

  Fragment:

  I have beheld you walking in your grace,

  containing your mystery like a secret crown,

  your royalty like a serving maid,

  the inland sea of future generations

  and the beating heart reserved for me.

  My life, which until now has been a desolation,

  is suddenly a sun-struck winter garden

  aburst with flowers, promising full fruitfulness.

  I am drugged by perfumes and visions,

  and am more awake than I have ever been.

  Though you do not know me, and I do not know you,

  still I know you and you know me.

  Tonight at the meeting she might come into the room. If he were still in the habit of praying, he would beg God for this. Instead, he possesses only his yearning to meet her, a force so immense that no power on earth can resist it. At first, he believed that it was enough to know of her existence. Though their encounter lasted only a few seconds, the image it burned into his memory is the strongest of his adult life, stronger even than death, and thus he now feels that if he were to lose her, death would win, and this would mean a lifelong sentence of living death.

  Even so, he is not entirely bereft of reason, nor of an overarching sense of proportion. He knows that he cannot engineer a meeting and willfully bring about the bliss that might come from it. It must be a mutual step, simultaneous and miraculous (now he even begins to believe again in miracles and paradisiacal illuminations).

  On the other hand, he wonders whether he should employ every strategy developed throughout the long history of courtship in order to win that which he must win if he is to survive. But where would he begin? He knows nothing about such tactics!

  No! No, he will not! If this love is real, if it is for life, perhaps even for eternity, it will not be dependent on human strategies. It will speak to both hearts at once, and it will accomplish what human limitations cannot.

  He climbs into his running gear and goes out onto the street, then turns toward the green mountain of the Marjan. He will run off the madness, he tells himself, but still retain the reality. He gets no more than a few blocks before turning around and galloping at a headlong pace back to his apartment.

  Arriving there, he opens the window, kicks off his shoes, and throws himself down at his desk. Still huffing and puffing, he takes pen and paper in hand and writes.

  To You,

  I write this as the overflow of a soul that cannot contain its excess of wonder. I will not deliver this letter to you, for to do so would reduce what has occurred to the linearity of communication. Yet I may write it to your soul.

  I can say nothing to you, for I know nothing except this, and even this I do not know for certain: your name is Ariadne, you play the violin, you are the daughter of two courageous people, and you held the chambered nautilus in your hands as you would hold a beloved child. Are you the sea, Ariadne, and the nautilus your work of art?

  I have seen you with my own eyes, though this does not necessarily mean that you exist in any realm accessible to me. Are you real? Did you see me that evening as I saw you?

  I do not wish to compromise the purpose of the cultural group, to use it merely as an excuse to enter the palace where you live. Yes, your father’s house is now a palace. To do so would be dishonest of me, at the least a mixed motive. For you I must have only the purest motives, even though it may cost everything, indeed the consequence of never again seeing you in this world.

  You are here (whether in this world or not).

  I am here.

  I will say no more.

  Josip Lasta

  He is determined not to send this letter to her; it is penned strictly for the purpose of relieving the anguish he feels over the possibility that they will never speak to each other. Though he dresses in his ordinary clothes, and throughout the remainder of the day performs the necessary functions of a normal human being, he is not entirely on this earth. The single sheet of paper is folded, with her name penned in fine script on the back of the sheet. It is inserted beneath his undershirt, next to his heart. The words will be absorbed through the skin, the paper too, and they will become part of his body so that her name can flow as molecular light through his veins and pulse within his heart.

  Antun Kusić knocks on his door an hour before the meeting is to begin. He has given himself a margin of time in which to groom his friend Josip. Tonight he enters the room and throws up his arms in surprise.

  “What happened to you!” he exclaims.

  For there, before his very eyes, stands a man transformed: Josip in a pressed white shirt, black trousers without wrinkles or debris, a fine new blue tie, and a brown blazer that is not missing its elbows. Even his black shoes are shining.

  “Where did you get those?” asks Antun, pointing at the shoes with a laugh of disbelief.

  “At the market. They had previous owners but are still presentable, don’t you think? I darkened them with ink.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t rain. And who cut your hair?”

  “I did.”
>
  Walking slowly around Josip, the inspector frowns, but murmurs a guarded approval. “Not bad. Nice to see you’ve parted your hair for once. Of course, there are a few over-enthusiastic patches here and there, but they’re at the back of your skull. Just keep your face toward Ariadne at all times.”

  “Toward whom?”

  Antun snorts and grins. “Just do what I tell you.”

  “Will she be there, do you think?” Josip asks in a low and somewhat shaken tone.

  “Who knows?” Antun shrugs. “My guess is that Simon and Vera would prefer their daughter to keep a distance from illegal activities. Or maybe she’s not interested.”

  “But music is culture!” Josip bursts out with rather too much intensity.

  Antun laughs and says, “Let’s go.”

  The Horvatinecs’ living room is crowded. All those who attended the previous meeting have returned, and most have brought one or two newcomers with them. Ariadne is not present. Josip sits on the floor in a corner that he has chosen for its view of the dining room. There are a lot of interesting people here tonight—more writers, poets, a playwright, and three musicians, as well as a scattering of students.

  Despite Simon’s and Vera’s gentility, the evening does not begin well: Vlado has brought along another sculptor, a woman in her thirties who asserts her presence in an unpleasant manner. Without waiting for the hosts to guide the discussion and ease the introductions, she declares to all and sundry that she is a “Euro-marxist” and adds, with an aggressive out-thrust chin, that she is a Marxist who despises totalitarianism.

  “A contradiction in terms”, declares Antun.

  A big argument ensues. The woman storms out, slamming the front door behind her.

  Vera uses her best mother-placater skills and settles everyone down. Vlado apologizes for his guest and admits she is more unstable than he had supposed. Simon asks him how much the woman knows about the purposes of the group.

  “Almost nothing. She thinks we’re one of those effete culture clubs that want to have European-style salons. She says she’s a Marxist, but she’s really just a baby with intellectual pretensions, the romance of revolution and all that. But don’t worry, her romance, I assure you, has no prisons or torture cells in it.”