Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “And the third reason?”

  “His character. As you see, he is a man of noble qualities and great intelligence. Also he is a kind of father to many people.”

  “Ariadne, it seems to me that great men can become the objects of envy and hatred.”

  “But he would harm no one! He is a moral leader among our people. His presence alone gives others courage.”

  “He is a moral leader, though not a religious one”, Josip muses.

  “It wasn’t always so. When he was a boy, he wanted very much to be a priest, like his older brother. But he fell in love with Mama, and I think they were both influenced by thinkers in Vienna. He began to doubt, and then the doubts grew. He was horrified by what the Ustashe were doing, and at that time he did not have a clear picture of what a danger the Chetniks and the Communists would become. His high idealism could not bear to see our nation involved in evil, and it shook his faith to the roots. A friend of his tried to help him understand. He is an archbishop now, the cardinal in Zagreb.”

  “I have heard about him. A controversial figure.”

  “Yes. He and Tata talked a lot together when my father was going through his crisis of faith, but Tata was listening to many different voices by then, mostly intellectuals from other countries. He had known the cardinal since they were both young, and he admired him very much, even when they disagreed. Once my father told me that Stepinac is a sign of contradiction, and for that reason he is a sign who will be rejected. He condemned the evils committed by the Ustashe, defended the Jews from the Italians and the Germans, and now the Communists call him a Fascist. He defends the civil freedoms of all men, in the face of every kind of regime, and for that reason each in turn has viewed him as an enemy of the state. I hear that when he ordains men to the priesthood he tells them, ‘I am sending you into a river of blood.’ ”

  “So, you don’t believe what they say about him in the press?”

  “No, of course not. He is a saint, Josip, a man of truth, and he is suffering for it. Tata says they will kill him.”

  “Ariadne, you believe in saints, but you are not sure about religion?”

  Tears fill her eyes. “I recognize the contradictions, Josip. It’s what our enemies have done to us. They have confused so many things. But you, also, Josip—you believe and do not believe.”

  The pain this question evokes is beyond all proportion to its subject. He swallows hard and breathes more heavily.

  How can he tell her about Fra Anto’s body, which continues to lie prone on the steps of every church? How can he explain that he knows the image is a wound in his mind, that there is in fact no body lying there, but that the horror blocks his entry to churches? If the enemies of God can kill a man as good as Fra Anto, and imprison a man as fine as the cardinal, and destroy families and villages and nations that follow God, where then is God? And if he exists, why does he not act, why does he not defend his children? The question is so steeped in blood that, whenever it flashes into his mind, he can sustain it only for a moment at a time. It must be pushed away. He cannot solve it, so why should he torment himself with it?

  He says nothing of this to Ariadne. Their love is everything to him now. Their love is the world. It is his religion.

  Another day: They are strolling along a walkway in the park below the crest of the Marjan. “I love your name”, he whispers.

  “Do you?” she says. “To tell you the truth, I have never been that fond of it.”

  “No?” he exclaims. “Why not?”

  She laughs. “My mother worships everything classical, especially the golden ages of Greece and Rome. The Greek myths have always appealed to her.”

  “Ah, I wondered why you have a Greek name.”

  “You must know the story of Ariadne and Theseus?”

  “Of course. Theseus was a prince of Athens who was sent to Crete, where he was to go down into a Labyrinth as a sacrificial victim to the Minotaur. Every year this monster devoured young men and women as human sacrifice. No one who entered the Labyrinth ever came out again.”

  “Yes, but when Theseus arrived in Crete, the princess Ariadne fell in love with him.” She squeezes Josip’s arm. “Very, very much in love with him.”

  “And she gave him some thread.”

  “She gave him a ball of thread, which he attached to the door of the Labyrinth as he went in. In this way, he could find his way out if he was able to kill the Minotaur. And so he did.”

  Josip smiles. “And so he did.”

  “Remember how he and Ariadne sailed away together and were shipwrecked on another island. There are different versions of what happened next, some better than others. In the one I like best, Theseus was blown away to sea in a storm, and Ariadne was convinced he had abandoned her, so she died of a broken heart with a child in her womb. In another version, Dionysus arrived after the disappearance of Theseus and married her.”

  “Why do you prefer the first one? It’s horrible.”

  “Every version ends badly, Josip. In the one I like best, Ariadne remains true to her first love, even though she dies.”

  “All in all, it’s not a happy tale.”

  She laughs again. “In the beginning it is happy.”

  “One may defeat a monster only to be defeated by the human heart.”

  “In any case, I would not like to be part of such a tragedy.”

  “Then you, Ariadne, must make of your life a happy story.”

  “It is no longer my life. It is our life. I feel certain, my Josip, that together we will make a story with only joy in it.”

  It is spring of the year 1957. More than two dozen people are crammed into the parlor, dining room, and hallway of the Horvatinec home, gathered together to celebrate the inaugural issue of Dobri Dupin. Wine and rakija are flowing. The tables are heaped with sweets and breads and slices of smoked fish.

  Iria plays “In the Homeland of the Soul”, which is greeted by tears and heartfelt applause. She blushes unceasingly and says nothing. Stjepan laughs and waxes ebullient for the first time. Vlado manages a few transitory smiles, and even his cautionary notes are somewhat humorous. Antun and Ana announce their engagement; they are so publicly in love that everyone dotes over them. Stunned with euphoria, the slippery otter is practically unrecognizable. In marked contrast, Josip and Ariadne sit on two stiff chairs, side by side, in a corner of the dining room, far from the radioactivity. Their love is not public. They cast long glances at each other and briefly touch hands.

  Simon presents a copy of the journal to each person present. It is a humble creation, sixty staple-bound pages of newsprint covered in a fine sheet of glossy turquoise. On the cover is a black and white photograph of a sculpture by Vlado. It is, of course, a leaping dolphin.

  Most people plunge into the volume immediately, and conversation dies, replaced by quiet murmurs and general wonder that such a work has really come into existence.

  Josip and Ariadne bend over their copies:

  The subject matter is broad ranging. All of the authors’ names are pseudonyms. There are three political essays, and it is not difficult to recognize Antun’s hand in one titled The Corruption of the Geo-psyche under Imposed Cultural Revolutions. A long short story, The Watering of the Earth, about those who died during the war, doubtless written by Stjepan. More than a dozen poems in various styles. Josip says to Ariadne that he thinks one titled “Flowers in the White City” is by Tatjana. There is an essay on modern antitotalitarian fiction. Another on underground literature in Eastern Europe. Iria’s musical score, with stirring lyrics by someone named “Slobodan”.

  There is a rather clumsy piece by “Žir” (acorn) titled “Labyrinth”, which Ariadne points out to Josip and reads to him in a whisper:

  In the island of the sea there dwells insatiable appetite,

  The bull of Beograd in its subterranean hell

  Will gorge upon its feast of human blood

  And none can tell when he is full, for he is never full.

  Thi
s man-devourer, muscle and sword cannot defeat;

  A girl alone will weave demise, for she with finest thread uncrypts the maze, confounds the dead.

  The beast is bled and black its light.

  The gods of Baalgrad fall back at sight.

  Then blow harsh winds, the valiant prince

  Is taken from the love that saves, the thread unwound is wound again.

  She grieves the loss of one she wed, and a child within its mother-bed,

  For woes both ancient and to come, no sword suffice, no human art:

  One may defeat a monster yet be defeated by the human heart.

  Ariadne looks up. “Josip, you wrote this!” He smiles ruefully. “I’m sorry, it’s not very good.”

  “It’s strong, and the poetic sense is in it. But the rhyming and meter . . .”

  “I know. It’s embarrassing. But it will stop Antun from calling me a poet. Now he’ll have to admit I’m no more than a scientist who dabbles in poetic fragments.”

  She gives him a long look. Then, lowering her eyes she says, “No matter what comes, my beloved, we will not be defeated.”

  Sensing some unstated fear or sorrow in her, he puts his arm around her shoulder. Then, forgetting entirely that there are other people in the room, he leans over and kisses her on the lips. Their second kiss. She begins to tremble, and silent tears run down her cheeks. He holds her close.

  Looking up at last, they see, to their embarrassment, that everyone in the room is staring at them, and beaming with approval.

  Antun leaps across the room and punches Josip playfully on the shoulder. He lifts a glass.

  “Won’t be long before another engagement!” he declares theatrically. “And before you know it—baby dolphins everywhere!”

  The room ripples with laughter. Vera jumps in with maternal rights and powers: “Now leave the young people alone!” she scolds. “They don’t need a whole soccer stadium watching them hold hands. Ariadne, you take Josip out for a walk. He is looking pale.”

  More laughter.

  “And bring me back some acorns”, calls Antun, as they leave. Simon observes it all with a slight smile that is belied by the worry in his eyes.

  15

  Josip awakes in his darkened room. It is the middle of a hot summer night. The window is wide open, and stars are blazing in the sky across the bay, above the mountain wall. That wall is a dam holding back the horror of his past.

  Standing before the open window, he gazes at the sky—the sea above. He is aware as never before of the inner reservoir of life within him—the inland sea. Thousands of children might come from him, if time and the sequence of generations permits. To germinate untold numbers of human lives, each of them never before seen, never to be repeated. How splendid and mysterious it is. He has never given much thought to his body. Though he looks after it, feeds it, cleans it, and exercises it, on the whole he lives almost entirely in his mind. This body carries him, like a beast of burden, and if he regards it as a component of his identity, it is not central, not entirely integrated with the whole.

  Ariadne is helping him to understand himself, to see the part and the whole. But how can this ever find complete expression? How can he consider the creation of a new life when the world is so full of perils, and this land one of the most dangerous? Is it not an act of cruelty to conceive a child? Will he and Ariadne become another tragedy, like Josip and Tereza in Rajska Polja, who gave birth only to see their baby shot as it took its first breaths?

  He cannot bear this memory, even though the loss is another’s. How, then, could he ever survive the destruction of his own child?

  Josip and Ariadne have discussed this in a roundabout way: so much death, so much innocent blood spilled by men of power, and now all the land is in the absolute grip of such men.

  “But we have survived”, she says.

  “Have we?” he asks.

  “We have.”

  “And what have we lost?”

  “Life always contains blessing and loss.”

  “But what has our survival cost?”

  “I do not ask the cost, Josip. This is what was given to me. And what you are was given to you.”

  “Tell me, Ariadne,” he says, in a voice of deep gloom, “what was given to me?”

  “Your life was given to you”, she whispers. “And beautiful is this life to me. So much, so much has been given to you, and it is given to me through you.”

  He ponders what she has said. He cannot explain to her the agony that he feels over the question of survival. His entire community was destroyed, with most of his family, and the only other member who was not destroyed has allied herself with the regime of the killers. He is alone in the world. How can he create a family from the foundation of such aloneness?

  “You are not alone”, she says, reading his mind, taking his hand. “We are together. Is it not enough?”

  “It is enough”, he says, because to say anything else would damage their union.

  “You say one thing with your lips, Josip, yet I hear in your heart another thing.”

  “To marry, Ariadne, and to bring children into this world, is a terrible risk.”

  “Yes, but has it ever been otherwise? Life is always dangerous. It is always risk.”

  “I do not know if I have the strength to take this risk”, he groans, covering his eyes with his hand.

  “You are strong, Josip, stronger than you think you are. You suffer for your lost family—I know this is really what troubles you. But now we are able to make a new family, and through us life will triumph over death.”

  “Will it? I do not know.”

  She has never seen him weep before. She is astonished, but she is able to understand the conflicts in his heart: he is impelled by the vitality of his strength, and at the same time he is pulled down by the memory of the evil he has experienced.

  “I love you”, she says quietly. “And I will not leave you.”

  “You will be taken away. I know you will be taken away.”

  Now she sees that this large man, a man of so many strengths and qualities of character, can revert to the condition of a frightened boy. Many women would have been repelled, many would see such vulnerability as a threat to their future security. Instead, she loves him more than before.

  “I cannot be taken away”, she says, pulling the hand from his eyes. “I cannot be taken from you, because I am now, and forever, living in your heart.”

  He gazes at her bleakly, questioningly. She puts the palm of her hand to his chest.

  “This is where I live”, she says. Then she takes his right hand in both of hers and presses it to her heart.

  Josip ponders this conversation again and again as he stands alone in the night, gazing at the stars. And it comes to him slowly, slowly, that written in the glory of the cosmos is both a promise of joy and a promise of sorrow. Beyond them and through them is the promise of final victory. He can feel hope now, a sense that even sorrows may become part of the coming victory. He will suffer, but he will no longer suffer alone. He returns to his bed and sleeps.

  It is September of 1957. The wedding takes place in the parlor of the Horvatinec home, which is now crammed to the full with guests. As each one enters, he is presented with a tiny glass of rakija and a sprig of rosemary tied with a pink ribbon. Antun is doing these honors because Vera is upstairs with Ariadne putting the finishing touches on their hair. Antun is now living in Zagreb, completing his doctoral thesis, but he and his wife, Ana, have come by bus to Split for the event. The only Dolphin missing is Tatjana, who has not returned from a conference on literature in Italy. In fact, she has remained there as a refugee.

  The second issue of Dobri Dupin has been printed but not yet distributed. The two hundred copies are hidden away somewhere in the house, because there will be people here today of questionable reliability. All Dolphins have been alerted to the need for silence about their activities. Besides, it’s not a meeting, it’s a wedding!

  Simon has
given Josip a fine suit and tie, and new black shoes as well. During the past few months Josip’s admiration for his future father-in-law has developed into an unspoken affection, though he remains somewhat in awe of the man and feels quite unworthy of his daughter. Yet Simon treats him as a son, as if Josip were already inextricably and fundamentally one with Ariadne. Despite several satisfactory, paternal-filial conversations about the future, there remains a gap between them, caused in part by the many other concerns on the doctor’s mind, and perhaps also by the enigmatic nature of his future son-in-law. That Ariadne loves Josip with a rare and absolute devotion cannot be contested, and the doctor knows his daughter’s mind well. He trusts her discernment, but so far has little empirical evidence of what her betrothed is really like. He knows that he is reliable, intelligent, discreet (he is, after all, a Dolphin), has overcome the obscure sufferings of his childhood (as have so many others), and is now an assistant professor of mathematics at the university. He will provide adequately for Ariadne, and in all likelihood they will be happy together. For this—above all for this—Simon is grateful. Even so, as he brings his daughter into the parlor on his arm, there are tears in his eyes and a tension in his face that is lightly masked by an apparent joy.

  For Josip, the surrounding world dissolves as she enters the room. He sees only her eyes uniting with his, feels the sun glowing in his breast and the light in hers as they stand together. They are already one heart, and in a few moments they will be completely one in the eyes of man and state.

  The ceremony is a civil one, officiated by a clerk from the municipal marriage bureau. He does his duty and departs swiftly.

  Unchecked jubilation erupts, loud cheers, laughter, embraces, the guests waving long multicolored ribbons in circles. Vera enfolds her daughter, sobbing with a surfeit of emotion. Simon pumps Josip’s hand, while Antun kisses his friend on both cheeks and Vlado punches him lightly in the stomach and grins. Stjepan ponderously bestows a florid, grandiloquent speech of congratulation. Iria stands on tiptoes and kisses the down-bending Josip on his forehead and does the same to Ariadne. It goes on and on, and in the tumult, both bride and groom forget to kiss each other. They will not, however, permit their hands to be separated—these hands are welded together. Now the flowers become visible, flowers pinned to clothing, flowers bursting through the walls, flowers in vases everywhere. There are roses and chrysanthemums and hibiscus, and the pink orchid at the neck of Ariadne’s white lace dress.