Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “Ooo, poor Stjepan,” croons Ariadne, “you will have plenty of good luck this year!”

  “Look at my tooth, I think it’s broken!” But it’s not broken, and Stjepan indulges in a self-deprecating chuckle. Like the food platters, the banter and laughter are lavish this evening. Nothing serious is discussed. Hours later, as Vera is talking in a low voice with Ariadne, and the young couple from Livno are washing the dishes in the kitchen, and Stjepan is absorbed in a book he has spotted on the parlor shelves, Simon puts an arm around Josip’s shoulder and invites him to take a walk in the garden behind the house. They carry their little glasses with them. Standing under a tree full of winter oranges, Simon lights a cheroot and blows smoke up into the sky.

  “Your first Christmas”, he says in a reflective tone. “I can see that you are both very happy.”

  “We are”, Josip nods solemnly.

  Silence stretches a bit too long. Josip asks if the spring edition of Dobri Dupin is nearing completion. Simon nods.

  “Our situation is becoming delicate”, he says, after blowing more smoke. “The printer tells me that he has been visited with surprise inspections since the last issue. He says that other printers in Split are experiencing the same. Fortunately, he is extremely careful about printing the journal only at night, and he burns all test sheets for the press run. They found nothing.”

  “That is a relief. Still, it does indicate an increasing threat.”

  “It does. There is something else that is worrisome. The other day I had a discussion with someone who warned me in subtlest terms that the journal is now known in Belgrade. Of course, we have sent copies there, as well as throughout the country. The police are turning over every stone, this person said, to find the people who produced it.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Actually, no. My brother and I, though we maintain cordial relations, are not on great terms. He lives in his world, and I live in mine. It’s a friend at the health commission, a man with connections to both worlds. Though I fear his first loyalty is to the regime, we have been friends since boyhood.”

  “And he suspects you are involved?”

  “I hope it’s no more than a suspicion. He would never betray me, and thus I think he was doing what he could, considering the circumstances of his life.”

  “What exactly did he say?”

  “He told me that the authorities are fully aware of a quarterly journal they know to be published in Split. They consider it very dangerous. When I asked him its name, he gave me a candid look as if he knew we were both acting out of a script. He replied that surely I know its name because it’s circulating everywhere among the intelligentsia. Then he said it was named for the dolphins of the Adriatic. ‘Do you like dolphins?’ he asked me pointedly. ‘Only as mammals’, I told him. ‘I thought they were fish’, he said, with a look that disturbed me. ‘And fish eventually find themselves caught in a net.’ ”

  “Do you think he knows about us? And do the police know?”

  “I think he knows—perhaps no more than intuitively—that I’m involved in some way or other. But I doubt the police know. One of the telling signs would be surveillance, if any of us were being followed by shadows and watchers.”

  “Are you aware of any surveillance on your own activities?”

  “None that I can see, but of course my life is rather public and not very complicated: my home, my practice, the classes I teach at the medical faculty. Other than that—nothing. I am hardly a typical counterrevolutionary.”

  “Yet your home is often full of people who have no love for the Communists. Surely they would know this.”

  “I expect they do. But these gatherings are not uncommon. The academic life naturally forms into circles of thinkers and artists. There are several on the campus. Besides, we have music as our justification. We must have more music whenever we meet . . .”

  Simon’s voice trails off into some private question that he does not share with Josip.

  “They know that Tatjana is your friend,” says Josip, “and she has escaped.”

  “Yes, she is now in America, where there is a large community in exile. That alone proves nothing, since people from all walks of life have fled, from every family, Communist and non-Communist. Which brings me to what I wanted to talk with you about, Josip.” He pauses. “Have you considered leaving Yugoslavia?”

  “I haven’t given it much thought.”

  “I think you should consider it. We can expect no outside help for many years to come. Since Marshal Tito’s state visit to Britain in 1953, the West thinks of us as ‘socialism with a human face’, as they call it. For complex geopolitical reasons, and also for reasons of international trade and banking, they do not want to disturb their so-called friendship with Belgrade.”

  “I do not understand them,” Josip blurts vehemently, “those defenders of democracy!”

  “They are first and foremost defenders of their wealth, and you need look no further than that for an explanation.”

  “Still, they take in our refugees.”

  “This is true. But the West has a divided heart. And divided hearts cannot be trusted. They abandoned Hungary during the uprising. A lot of brave young people died, and Cardinal Mindszenty was thrown into prison. No one protests—only Rome.”

  “If we are ever to see democracy in this land, then we must be willing to endure for a long time.”

  “Yes, a long time, Josip, decades I think. Perhaps generations. That is why I ask you if this is really where you want to raise your family.”

  “Ariadne knows the dangers as well as I do.”

  “Ariadne”, says Simon, sighing. “But what kind of a life can you have here?”

  “With my teaching and her music, we can survive. We will have a family, and our children will build the Croatia of tomorrow.”

  “Is that realistic?”

  “You ask this question, Simon, yet you yourself are doing just that. You risk everything for it.”

  “I have lived my life, and I have my memories. Besides, in the time left to me I can do more here than in another country. Our Dolphins, for example. To speak the truth, even if few are listening, can achieve much. It preserves the truth and the spirit of the people for a coming generation.”

  “That is a praiseworthy cause, and that’s why I’m glad to be part of it.”

  “Still . . .”

  “Still, I think, Father, that you make one exception. There is only one person you would exclude from this way of sacrifice.”

  “I love her. I could not bear to see her hurt.”

  “I love her too. She is my life. But we are both willing to continue on the path of sacrifice. And because we are together in it, the darkness becomes light.”

  Without answering, Simon looks long at Josip.

  “You have experienced much darkness in your life.”

  Josip looks away.

  “Perhaps you know no other way of being”, Simon goes on. “You have never told us about your life before you lost your family, nor have you really described how it happened. Whenever one of us asks you about it, you became vague and evasive.”

  Hurt by this accusation, Josip says defensively, “It’s gone, and nothing can bring it back. I must look toward the future.”

  “Can you really see the future if you have not seen the past for what it was?”

  “I see it. I merely do not wish to talk about it.”

  “Yet it seems you are now upset with me.”

  Flustered, Josip says nothing at first. Then, losing inhibition, he says in a low voice, “I do not think you are happy about the man your daughter chose to marry.”

  Simon takes a step back, then a step forward, and puts a hand on Josip’s shoulder. “That is not true. It is not in the least true. I am worried, that’s all. I worry that your qualities, your strength and your courage . . .”

  He does not complete the thought.

  “You are worried that my ‘qualities’, as you call them, might
drag your beloved into torment. That is really your worry.”

  “Yes, of course it is”, Simon replies in a subdued tone. “But this does not mean I am unconcerned about you, Josip. In fact, I do not make a separation between you and Ariadne in my thoughts. I want both of you to be happy.”

  Shamed, Josip murmurs, “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you think I fail to see what a gift you are for her? And for all of us really. But that is not the whole of life, and in these times, life itself has been devalued to such a degree that it is difficult to grasp what has happened, let alone look at the horror for more than a fleeting moment. Hell was unleashed here, and hell continues to act. In another land . . .”

  “In another land, we would be safe, but would we do our part in bringing an end to hell?”

  Simon shakes his head, staring at the ground. Looking up at last, he sighs and says, “Well, this is one of the reasons I love you, Josip. We are so much alike! Let’s go into the house and pretend to the women that we’ve been discussing the weather.”

  So, they go in and play their roles, and after a few more hours Josip and Ariadne take their leave. As they walk down the hill toward the palace, a rare sprinkle of snow falls from the night sky.

  Lying in their bed beneath the crèche, they recount their evening in drowsy exchanges. Despite his tears earlier in the day, and the disturbing conversation with Simon, Josip is at peace.

  In the middle of the night, Josip bolts upright in bed with a cry of alarm.

  “What is it, Josip?” his wife murmurs beside him.

  “Nothing, Ariadne, nothing. Go back to sleep.”

  She rolls over in bed and falls back to sleep. He lies down and stares into the blackness above the bed. An hour or two pass before he gets up and tiptoes out into the parlor, shutting the bedroom door softly behind him.

  Gazing out the window by the doorway that opens onto the inner compound of the palace, he sees that the dusting of snow has melted. He lights a candle beside the juniper tree, rubs his face, drinks a glass of water, and then sits down on the sofa. The dream was disturbing. He will write it out, expunge it, stop it roaring around in his head, creating havoc with his emotions.

  Picking up a pencil, he writes it as a poem.

  THE CROWN

  In the cold dark barren land,

  stars and moon and the great star

  that has appeared,

  puzzling the wise and the low,

  scatter jewels upon the blood-soaked snow.

  The grieving earth awakes to its first groaning;

  and men, grown weary of toil and fear,

  cynical of love and despairing of truth,

  bearing lamentations as if these were their only

  birthright, look up at last.

  Now the star has moved on,

  the shepherds return to their camps,

  the kings to their cities.

  The ordinary woman and the silent man

  tend the turf-fire in the cave,

  break the last disc of bread,

  tell softly to each other their small tales

  to lift hope on high

  as the wind blows straight out of

  the northern desert.

  They pray also and make their oft-renewed covenant

  with trust.

  The man stands by the door

  to guard from wolves and wolvish men,

  the woman holding the nursing child

  as if the star itself has ignited in her arms.

  This boy, this boy gazes at her

  and she at him, wordless they are, wordless he is.

  She strokes the little feet, the hands, the brow

  on which a fan of black hair as fine as thread

  is spread.

  Her heart is startled as the lamplight flickers

  and she sees a spray of thorns—

  the moment quickly passes and there is peace again

  upon the uncut brow;

  the child sleeps, sinking into her from whom he came,

  mother and child drifting timeless while the interior angels

  blow trumpets from the ramparts of the celestial city,

  that no eyes can see,

  chanting the songs of the many,

  that no ear can hear:

  She smiles, remembering the children who will come from her,

  numberless more than Abraham’s stars,

  more than Sarah’s countless laughs,

  more and more and more until paradise is brimmed

  with the impossible love.

  So, she dreams, she dreams, and smiles at herself dreaming

  knowing the outpouring that love insists through dreams.

  Across the desert of that dark age a small horse gallops

  through the silver clouds

  and continues on, east to west.

  Then another and another—white they are,

  valiant with riders, while below their thundering feet

  fire scorches the horizon, and shadows seep.

  Long later she stands alone, encircled by a throng,

  all faces, all the world, infested with shadows,

  all shepherds, all kings, gone,

  on a merciless height as swords thrust her heart.

  Is this before or after the horses?—

  it is hard to know, for dreams are like that.

  Then the great sword, the darkest and worst

  is plunged and paradise extinguished

  in the threads of the blackened wick,

  the flame snuffed by rivulets down the splintered wood

  into wasted earth pouring, she sees

  the small hands and feet and brow

  within the humiliated body of her son—

  though the eyes are the same, gazing at her,

  and she awakes.

  It is, after all, only a dream.

  “Come, it is time to go”, he says, the good man shaking her shoulder:

  Rising, she murmurs, “I saw a thing in sleep.”

  “I too slumbered while at rest”, he says,

  “and saw our boy crowned king upon old Sion’s crest.”

  She is silent, wrapping the child as the man unstraps the colt.

  “Where will we go?” she asks.

  “To a distant land,” he says, “where an angel calls.”

  “Did he speak?” she says. “I thought he only sang.”

  And having heard that voice, they say no more and go out to face the night:

  It is dark, it is all

  darkness, as into the land of exile and ancient bondage,

  they walk, bearing the light in their arms.

  J. L. Christmas, Split, 1957

  He arrives home from the university to find the apartment dark and empty. Where is she? This is Tuesday, not Wednesday, when Ariadne has a late recital and he must make his own supper. She has probably lost all sense of time, meandering through the market longer than she had planned.

  By seven o’clock he becomes frantic. This is so unlike her. He runs up the hill to the Horvatinecs’ home to see if she is there. Neither Simon nor Vera has seen her since Sunday. Simon offers to go searching with him. Josip declines the offer, says it’s nothing to worry about; she probably bumped into a friend somewhere and will no doubt be home shortly. He promises to let them know as soon as he hears anything.

  For two hours he races throughout the downtown area looking in all the places where she usually goes—the market, the library, the music shop, the little café on Marmontova Street, where she likes to take friends for a cup of tea. A fever of growing desperation pushes his search, an ache swelling in his throat, fearing most of all that she has been careless and has said something about the Dolphins—that she has been seized by the police for interrogation and will be taken away from him forever.

  As he passes through the north gate of the palace, he glances up to their apartment window and sees a light on. Wheeling, within a minute he is racing up the steps to the balconata; he throws the f
ront door open so hard that it bangs against the wall, and he barges into the apartment. She is standing in the kitchen in a bathrobe, with a towel wrapped around her head, her mouth open in astonishment. She laughs.

  “Ariadne!” he groans and throws his arms around her. “Ariadne, Ariadne, Ariadne,” he whispers, “where were you?”

  “Ooh, my Josip, what is the matter?” She is still laughing, rubbing the blond bristles on the back of his head, for he is kneeling now, with his arms around her waist.

  “I thought I had lost you!” he cries.

  “Lost me?” she smiles, her eyes frowning with concern for him. “I am so sorry to worry you, Josip, but I went to the doctor, and there was a long wait in his office.”

  “Why did you go to the doctor? Are you not well?” he asks, standing up but unwilling to let her go.

  “I’m fine. I’m very healthy, he tells me.”

  “Oh”, he mutters, still panting from his run. “Oh, that’s good.”

  “And supper is late too. Today you have much to forgive me for!” Then she kisses him on the lips, and one thing leads to another.

  Simon and Vera appear at the door an hour later, knocking and knocking until Josip opens to them. “She’s here,” he says, “she’s safe.”

  They nod, yes, they already know. On her way home earlier in the evening she stopped off to give them the news. “What news?” Josip asks.

  “She will tell you”, says Vera, standing on tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

  “She’s in bed now”, says Josip, puzzled. “Please come in, but I think she’s sleeping.”

  “The poor dear, of course she is on such a day. No, we won’t stay, just wanted to bring you a gift.”

  She hands her son-in-law a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine so dark its contents are black.

  “Excellent for the blood”, she adds.

  “Come to supper tomorrow, Josip, and we can celebrate”, says Simon.

  After they have gone, Josip goes back to bed and crawls in beside his wife. She is asleep. Lying on his side, he lightly strokes her forehead, her shoulders, her arms. Without waking her, he takes her hand and holds it for a time. His terror of losing her slowly dissolves, and he falls into a light doze. She wakes a short time later and, by the light of the city coming in through the window, sees the shape of her husband lying there, like a protective wall between herself and the world. Enfolding him in her arms, she whispers to him, “Joooo—sip—” and he awakes.