Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  The windows are all open, and though it is an autumn afternoon, birds are rioting in the garden as if it were spring, as if they were in courtship, as if all creation were leaping to a new level of fecundity. Innumerable nests and homes and generations of lives are pouring from this single moment. As the noise of birds and men grows in volume, Zoran is shouting something abstract into Josip’s ear, something about “co-creation”. Iria is at the piano playing a Bosnian wedding song, and three or four people sing along. Ivan is strumming a bandura—evoking only the best memories. One of Ariadne’s cousins is here as well, a girl from Austria. She is lovely, and Ivan is captivated by her, pulled in an ever-tightening orbit toward her. All commotion stops when Vera urges the cousin to play a wedding sonata by Mozart. Like Ariadne, she is a violinist. A member of the Vienna symphony orchestra, she comes from another world, a safe world, where culture is never a dangerous pursuit. Of all the people in the house, she is the only one who can cross borders without trouble. She plays the piece with aplomb and feeling.

  Perhaps it is the music that opens a path in the tumultuous proceedings: at last Josip kisses his bride. So tender and swift, this kiss, so full of everything that is to come. None of the burdensome past is in this kiss, only the bright future. She knows it too and speaks it back to him, their eyes confirming what has been exchanged.

  He will not remember the feast that follows, the marvelous food that has taken days to prepare, nor the fragments of conversation with these dear friends, whom only a year or so ago he did not know existed and who now have become like family to him. He feels a great affection for each and, as ever, can articulate it only with his eyes, a hand to an arm, or a mumbled word of thanks. They understand his diffidence and recognize all that he wishes to say, but cannot.

  There are a handful of people here whom he has never met, bubbling friends of Ariadne’s from the music faculty, and also a few older men and women who seem congenial enough but whose manners are reserved. Josip is introduced to the director of the city’s main hospital, then to a friend of Simon’s, a fellow doctor, and finally to someone named “Uncle Goran” and the woman who accompanies him. Goran is Simon’s younger brother. He appears to be ten years older, and he is at least twenty kilos heavier. His manner is as unlike Simon’s as could be, for his eyes are guarded and his mouth, smiling so socially, is lined with old ironies and sarcasms. He says the right things, pleasantries and best wishes, as does his companion, but Josip excuses himself from their company as soon as he is able. He recalls that this is the Communist brother.

  Dancing begins, quite a feat in the crowded rooms. It spreads from room to room and out into the back garden, where torches have been lit. More than one love is sparked this evening and more engagements consolidated. They dance for hours, Ariadne graceful, as she is in everything, Josip clumsy but rapturous.

  Later, when they make their departure, Josip and Ariadne go down the front steps of the house and turn to face the crowd that has poured out onto the sidewalk to bid them good-bye and good luck. Everyone talks at once, shouting farewells and advice and blessings. Dangerous amounts of food and drink have been consumed, and few, if any, of the guests are entirely sober. Vera steps forward and places into Ariadne’s hands a loaf of bread with an open bottle of wine perched tipsily on top of it. She kisses her daughter, and then speaks in a voice of tyrannical maternal command:

  “Now, walk to the car, my dear, and if you can reach it without spilling a drop, you will have a happy life.”

  Everyone holds his breath as Ariadne obeys; step by step she goes, until she arrives safely and clasps the neck of the bottle with a gasp of relief.

  The crowd applauds and shouts incoherently.

  Simon steps up to the groom.

  “Josip, my son!”

  “Yes, Father?”

  “Remove your shoe!”

  Puzzled, hopping a little to keep his balance, Josip removes one of his shoes.

  Simon takes the shoe and gives it to Ariadne.

  “Show him!” he commands.

  Ariadne takes the shoe and gives Josip a thump on the arm with it, laughing.

  “Now you know who’s the boss!” cries Vera.

  “Now you will always remember”, declares Simon, “that you must never use your strength against a woman!”

  The ritual completed, the entire crowd bursts into cheers. Somewhat dazed, Josip hops about and puts his shoe back on. Ariadne drags him into the back seat of the car, and the driver takes off with them down the hill toward the promenade, past the imperial palace, and onward into the south, toward the sea.

  They will spend the week in a hut on the shore of the Adriatic, about an hour’s drive from the city. It is an isolated place at the end of a dirt road that leads down to a little cove. The driver helps carry baskets of food and water jugs from the car to the back door of the building. The wind is blowing in off the sea, and the lap of invisible waves softens all other sounds. A night bird cries. The stars in the west are brilliant. Unseen trees stand nearby, their limbs sighing, and the scent in the air is of oranges and lavender.

  When the car drives away up the slope of the hill, leaving them alone at last, Josip and Ariadne hold each other tightly for a time, listening to the wind.

  “Let’s go in”, she says.

  Josip unlocks the door, and they enter the little dwelling that will be their first home.

  Striking a match, he lights an oil lamp hanging from the rafters, then a candle on the wooden table that stands by a window overlooking the sea. Hand in hand, they glance about the room. Its walls and floor are stone. In the shadows above the roof beams are red tiles. It is very small and perfect.

  A white quilt covers the low wooden bed, and on the pillows someone has laid sprigs of rosemary and lavender. They look at the bed, then at each other, and they smile. How is it possible, such happiness?

  They sit down on the two chairs by the table. With his fingers Josip strokes the gold band on her wedding finger. She touches the ring on his hand and strokes it. Time has disappeared. There is only quiet now and peace, caressed by the waves and by the wind.

  The people who prepared the place have arranged a vase of lilies on the table and a bowl of fruit—pomegranates, yellow plums, black grapes—and another bowl of ripe figs. Josip gazes at the figs, then takes one. This movement is oddly familiar, but he cannot remember why. He is about to put it into his mouth but pauses and, with a look of great love, lifts it to Ariadne’s lips. She opens her mouth, and he places it on her tongue. They hold hands as she slowly eats it.

  Later, when they are ready to go to bed, Josip removes from the inside pocket of his jacket a little package. He puts it into her hands. She opens it carefully. Inside, she finds his most precious possession, the carving of a swallow.

  “For you”, he whispers.

  She kisses it. Then, from a bag by her feet, she takes a package wrapped in turquoise paper and puts it into his hand. He opens it carefully. Inside is the chambered nautilus.

  “For you”, she whispers.

  16

  Their first literal home, after the hut by the sea, is an apartment built into the north wall of the palace compound. They love its two small rooms, which are a little cramped but spacious because of their joy. It is theirs and theirs alone. The stone hut where they first knew their nuptial love will always be the icon of their homes to come. And they must surely come, because in time children will fill each one, and more rooms will be needed, more beds, more noise and activity and laughter and crying. As many children as life will give them.

  The apartment is on the third floor, reached by an exterior stone staircase that zigs and zags up to the porch by their front door. Here Ariadne keeps a terra cotta pot with a bushy juniper growing in it, and another pot with a leafy plant that perpetually sprouts bright pink flowers. She and Josip like to sit here in the evenings and gaze out over the maze of narrow cobbled streets of this city within a city, savoring its atmosphere, the Roman foundations on which w
ere built the medieval and Renaissance additions. The latter are mostly apartment blocks, and in one of these the Lastas now live.

  The apartment’s sitting room has a small window opening onto a park north of the city walls. It is crowded with books, and a comfortable sofa and chair have been donated by Stjepan, who, it turns out, is a semi-affluent bachelor. Josip’s goat-hair rug adds a splash of warmth, and Ariadne’s violin and music stand fill the rest of the space. The walls are cream-white bricks that Ariadne has scrubbed clean and then brightened further by brightly colored landscapes painted by friends and soberly balanced by the nineteenth-century painting of the sea battle of Lepanto, a wedding gift from Simon and Vera. In an alcove is the tiny kitchen, and beyond that a curtain hides a small bathtub and toilet. Their bedroom, off the parlor, contains a wide bed with head- and footboard carved in Dalmatian folk motif. Beside it is a desk for Josip’s work, heaped with papers, journals, books. There is also a set of dresser drawers and a very old wooden armoire, in which Ariadne keeps her dresses and Josip his one good suit. The little latticed window opens onto a network of tree branches in the park, some of which have bird nests cradled in the crook of their arms. Displayed on the sill are the chambered nautilus and the carving of the swallow. Josip has placed with them a single round white stone from the cove where they spent their honeymoon.

  “I will add a stone each year”, he tells Ariadne.

  “Good,” she replies, “this means we will need to find a house with a larger window, for I expect to see seventy-five stones sitting there someday.”

  “Three quarters of a century! By then I will be bent and toothless and forget my own name.”

  “I will remind you.”

  “Ah, that is worth waiting for.”

  “And if I forget your name and my name too, our children will remind us. And their children also. We will be the quaint old couple taking walks on the promenade with our canes and our fond memories. People will not want to talk with us so much because we will speak too slowly and we will not finish our sentences properly.”

  “But inside ourselves, Ariadne,” he says drawing her down onto the sofa and kissing her, “we will be young always.”

  “You will be running to the top of the Marjan—always.”

  “You will be demolishing my heart as you play your violin—always.”

  “You will be jumping into the sea as you did at sunrise on our first day as man and wife—always.”

  “And I will bring you with me deep into the blue and golden light—always.”

  “And we will laugh underwater—and conceive our baby dolphins there—always.”

  Here the conversation ends—as always.

  The quarter where they live within the palace compound is a neighborhood of artists and academicians, bureaucrats, shopkeepers, and assorted young married folk who have procured the rather decrepit dwellings with a mixture of romanticism and Party connections.

  Simon and Vera had at first encouraged Josip and Ariadne to move into the family home on the hill of Manus, reasoning that the house is too large for two aging people, and that there is more than enough space to make a separate apartment. But Ariadne insisted on a separate dwelling. They eat with the Horvatinecs once or twice during the weekdays. Every Sunday, if Simon is not in the surgery that day, the Lastas and their parents take leisurely walks together on the promenade after the midday meal, then sit in the Horvatinecs’ garden throughout the afternoon and into the evening, sipping wine, talking about their dreams for the future and the situation in the country, discussing articles that have been submitted for the third issue of Dobri Dupin, and exchanging news of the Dolphins and other friends. They try not to stay out too late, because Josip teaches on Monday morning. Besides, they need time every night to fall asleep in each other’s arms.

  Though Josip slowly grows accustomed to all this bliss, sometimes during his run to the top of the Marjan he stops in mid-stride, shakes his head, and says to himself: I am married. Yes, I am a married man. Just yesterday I was a child! Now I am married to the most wonderful woman in the world. Is it possible? Is it real? Perhaps, after all, there is a God. Then he resumes his run. Reaching the top, he never fails to experience elation, yet, after the run back down into the city, the arrival at his home is the greater exultation.

  It is their first Christmas together. In the days preceding the outlawed feast Josip helps Ariadne drag the potted juniper into the parlor, where it sits in the exact center of the room. She decorates it with straw stars and numerous small bells that she has collected since childhood. Tying walnut shells to the branches with red thread, she fills them with grains of golden incense, raisins, and nuts.

  She asks him about the customs of his family when he was a child. He tells her he cannot think about all that, he does not remember much. “We had nice food. We sang too”, he murmurs vaguely. He looks away from her and busies himself with moving the little kitchen table to another wall where she wants it. She regards him thoughtfully, but says nothing.

  One Saturday is spent walking in the woods on the far side of the Marjan, collecting birch twigs, pine cones, and sprays of evergreen to decorate the apartment. The birch twigs are for polazniki (carolers), which by tradition represent the shepherds of Bethlehem. When she was very young, aunts, uncles, and cousins would arrive at the house on Christmas eve and barge in carrying birch twigs or evergreen fronds, and then run about, lightly striking all the inhabitants, warning them to stay awake because Herod would soon come to destroy the children. After that they sang a carol, were fed dry bread and sour wine, and then they all went off to midnight Mass. Since the war, Simon and Vera no longer continue this custom.

  “You will not hit me too hard, I hope”, Josip says to his wife during their nightly embrace.

  “I will hit you very hard, and maybe with a shoe too!”

  He laughs. He loves her so much: to strike each other even in jest is unthinkable.

  The day before Christmas Eve, she brings up the subject of Mass. She would like them both to attend, even if they are no longer certain of the faith. It is a custom, and people should not abandon customs too readily. Especially now that the government hates these customs and seeks at every turn to abolish them.

  “I would rather spend the night alone with you, Ariadne. We will think about our future together, and about the light within us that will defeat the darkness. We will think about our children, the ones who are coming to us.”

  “That is a beautiful way to spend Christmas”, she nods in agreement.

  Even so, on Christmas Eve she puts a little crèche on the windowsill, flanked by the nautilus and the swallow. The crèche is very old, a log stable made of twigs and stuffed with moss. St. Josip, Mother Marija, the angel, shepherds, and animals are arranged, fine porcelain figures that belonged to Ariadne’s grandmother. The manger is also porcelain, but empty. There is no child.

  “Where is the baby?” Josip asks curiously.

  “I’m hiding him from Herod.” She will explain no more.

  On Christmas morning, they awake to the sound of bells ringing throughout the city. This, doubtless, is illegal, but the government probably does not have the stamina to destroy Christmas utterly; they know that the people would never accept it. An uneasy truce endures for a day, with government offices reluctantly open. Drowsing on the bed, tangled in sheets, Josip gazes toward the crèche and smiles: the baby is there in the manger. It is unlike the other figures, for it is made of wax, so perfectly molded that it is almost human, delicately painted and swaddled in lace. It too is very old, from Italy, Ariadne explains.

  Throughout the day, Josip does small tasks for her, such as filling a vase with evergreens, which she wants on the table, and running up the hill to borrow a cup of almond slices from Vera.

  Mostly he watches Ariadne bustling about the apartment, straightening decorations, singing to herself, fussing over the dress she will wear to supper at her parents’ home. She is baking a little cake, which she calls chestnit
sa, containing a silver coin that is said to bring plenty of good luck. She also braids loops of dough for loaves of sweetbread made from ingredients purchased at the market.

  “An old woman sold me a special spice—a secret spice”, says Ariadne with a mischievous smile. “I think you will like it.”

  He will like it. He will like it so much that it will crack something inside him.

  “I’ll take a nap while it’s baking”, he whispers to her, kissing her cheek; then he goes into the bedroom and shuts the door. Later, after she has removed the loaves from the oven, coated them with sugar icing, and sprinkled them with the almonds, she enters the bedroom to wake him up. She finds him weeping silently. There is no need for explanation. She sees it all, understands what he is feeling on this most festive of days: the absence of his own traditions, which have been cleaved entirely from his life. Yet as she lies down beside him and holds him, she knows as well that she is recreating the traditions, and restoring, a little, what he has lost.

  Vera serves roast goose by candlelight at the big table in the Horvatinec parlor. China tureens are full of steaming vegetables, steeped in butter. There are dumplings, a bowl of black rice, and the platter of smoked sea foods. Dark red wine from the islands flows. Afterward, cookies and homemade sachertorte and glasses of rakija. Stjepan is present too, looking somewhat forlorn, but restraining his loneliness. Iria is a guest as well, as are Ivan and his fiancée, a shy girl named Lucija, from Livno. Stjepan bites into a piece of Ariadne’s chestnitsa cake and yelps.