Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “Your parents were here”, he murmurs. “They brought us bread and wine.”

  He waits for her to give him the news, whatever it may be. Judging by everyone’s demeanor it must be good news indeed.

  She takes his right hand and draws it across her belly, then presses it with her own.

  “Now we are three.”

  “Three?” Then it hits him, a wave of wonder that makes him gasp. “You mean . . .”

  “Yes, you are a father.”

  Even in the dark, he senses her joy. She holds his face in the palms of her hands. From these hands comes fresh love, and from his hands it is returned to her. He knows that the child within them—yes, it is as if the child is not only within her—is the bridge between his annihilated past and the future that is now so full of promise. The world is entirely different than it was a moment ago. The planet revolves slowly on its axis, and at the same time revolves in its orbit, and the disk of the sun spins like a wheel of fire across the black firmament of the heavens. They are riding on it, and the child, so safely curled within, is riding with them.

  It is a spring morning. Josip has no classes to teach that day, and Ariadne is at home as well. They are reading through the latest issue of Dobri Dupin. The quality of the paper is better this time, and the cover is magnificent, a photo of Vlado’s latest sculpture, Sloboda, freedom. A stone hand reaching upward from rubble and bronze flames.

  There is a lot of fiction in this issue; and from skimming some of it, they can understand why the regime would think it dangerous. Yes, each issue is more dangerous than the previous one.

  “I like this little acorn”, says Ariadne, jabbing him in the ribs.

  “Rhyming and meter still poor?”

  “Very poor. But he has the poetic sense, don’t you think?”

  “I wouldn’t know; I’m not a poet.”

  “Well, I will admit it’s not exactly a poem, more like a prose-poem. Shall I read it to you?”

  “No, please do not.” She reads it to him anyway:

  TOY BOAT

  Is a man’s yearning for a toy boat a sign of immaturity or a sign of heightened consciousness? Are they the same thing? Conversely, are they mutually exclusive?

  A wind-driven ship is a “word”—its mystique is oceanic, iconographic, the solid metaphor of suspension on waves above an abyss. Fleet of form, beauteous, the dance of integrated engineering within a harmonious work of art. The link-point between infinite water and infinite sky.

  The man purchases the toy boat with the last of his coins.

  He knows this extravagance will be paid for by his family’s sacrifice,

  Yet it will feed his family as no bread can feed.

  This emblem will speak in the center of their home;

  It will be their vessel of escape.

  Can you imagine the sight of a family pursued by its government?

  Can you see them walking on foot to the Drava River,

  Toward the pass into the mythological north where freedom reigns?

  Can you see the weeping wife walking beside the husband,

  their children weeping too?

  Do you see the little cart pulled by the father, the clothing and scraps of food, and books—and a violin—loaded on the cart?

  Do you see the lovely model schooner (the cause of all their woes) perched on top?

  Is this a portrait of what could happen when a dreamer loses touch with reality?

  Or is this what happens when regimes break families,

  And they must flee entirely within?

  Is such flight an embodiment of failure?

  Or is their flight success?

  Is their flight the revenge of immanentist demography,

  Forcing them to enter the land of the dispossessed within their native land,

  to be at home only in the homeland of the soul?

  Have we not all become internal refugees?

  Are we not anonymous beggars hiding our tarnished crowns

  Inside our bundles of rags?

  O my people, find your hidden crowns!

  O my homeland, find your undiscovered kings!

  O my homeland, find your missing fathers,

  and then you will find yourselves!

  Ariadne chuckles to herself.

  “Why are you laughing? Do you think this poem is funny?”

  “No, it is very, very serious. I am just wondering if you’re telling me we’re going to leave for Austria.”

  “No,” he shakes his head, “but I would like to leave for Austria.”

  “And what on earth is immanentist demography? No, don’t tell me.”

  He tells her, which makes her laugh and laugh. She has been crying more than usual lately, for no reason, and also laughing at the silliest things. She throws up in the mornings and is always falling asleep when he least expects it. This can be disconcerting, especially when in the evenings he tries to proofread his master’s thesis, which the university is publishing as a book. Whenever he reads a section aloud to her, her eyes glaze, droop, close. She has lost all sense of time, too, which worries him. Fortunately, she is ravenously hungry these days, so meals have become more regular.

  Josip’s book has been published. He is immensely proud of it, and Ariadne even more so, though she apologizes that its subject matter is, for her, impenetrable. Simon brags about it to his colleagues, gives away copies to those willing to take one from him. There are probably no more than fifteen or twenty people in the world who would read it with interest; in Yugoslavia, three or four, though one might add to their number those who happen to love its author.

  A hundred copies have been printed, nicely bound too. It is a theoretical cosmology based in higher mathematics with an assist from astrophysics. Its title is Equations Inferential of a Meta-universe.

  During one of their Sunday walks along the waterfront, Ariadne says to him, “Oh, see all these people staring at us! They recognize the author of Metaphysical Inferences of Equations.”

  “No, they’re looking at the most beautiful pregnant woman on the planet.”

  “No, that’s not the reason. It’s you. You’re very, very famous now.”

  “Yes, I am. In a huge circle of about five people.”

  “It won’t always be so. Keppler, Newton, Einstein, Lasta . . .”

  “Let’s go home. I know two things with absolute certainty: first, that I will never be famous. Second, that I want to kiss you and kiss you and kiss you.”

  “Wrong about the first, right about the second. And after that, I will play you something from Handel.”

  “Will you make supper today?”

  “Who needs food when we have kissing and Copernicus?”

  “Einstein.”

  “And baby Lasta.”

  “What will we call our baby, Ariadne?”

  She pauses. and her joking mood passes. She slips into that feminine space so alien to Josip, yet so near, and ponders the question.

  “She will be called Marija.”

  “Why do you think it’s a girl?”

  “I just know.”

  “And if it’s a boy?”

  “He will be Josip, of course.”

  He smiles.

  “There will never be enough of you in this world”, she adds. So, they go home and kiss and kiss and kiss. And later they share a happy meal with Simon and Vera.

  It is Saturday morning, just before dawn.

  She shakes his shoulder and says, “Josip, I need to talk.”

  “You need to talk?” he mumbles into the pillow. “This is our day for sleeping late.”

  “I feel that we must talk now, or something will be lost.”

  He sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes, scratching his disheveled hair.

  “All right. What do you want to talk about?”

  “I can’t describe it exactly.”

  “That is an auspicious beginning”, he yawns.

  She slaps him lightly on the arm.

  “Can I lend you a sho
e?”

  “Don’t joke. It’s important. Do you remember the first morning after we were married?”

  “It’s the most beautiful memory of my life—I will never forget it.”

  “We went into the sea together, as the sun was rising, remember? The water was gold and pink. Underneath we could look up to the surface and see the morning break on the waves.”

  “Later you said we would always live in that light.”

  “You do remember.”

  “I remember.”

  “I want to tell you about something that happened when I was under the water with you. Never in my life had I felt such happiness. But suddenly a sorrow entered, like an arrow piercing the highest human joy that can be experienced. At that moment I felt like crying. It came and went in an instant, and then we burst out of the water gasping for breath.”

  “What made you feel sad?”

  “Knowing that something glorious was hidden from us, but if we wanted it, all we had to do was reach up for it. It was only a sense—no thoughts came with it.”

  “A feeling.”

  “Yes, a feeling, but one that contained a meaning, like the crown in the beggar’s rags. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I see what you felt, but I don’t know its meaning.”

  “Our part was to reach up, and then everything else would be given—from above.”

  “From above?”

  “Josip, I think we must return to Christ.” He exhales.

  “It would create problems—”

  “I know. But what you said about the toy boat—about being in exile. You know, going inward. It just came to me that we should go the other way, upward.”

  “And if Christ is only an abstraction—what then?”

  “He is real. I know he is real.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He is here. I feel him all around us. He was in our first meeting and has been in our hearts ever since. He has been with us in a way that I can’t explain. But it’s incomplete.”

  “Am I not enough for you?” Josip asks in a quiet voice.

  “Ours is the greatest human love in the whole world, Josip, truly it is. But it is not enough.”

  He has no answer to this. A sob is in his throat, the choking, the vision of dead bodies flashing through his mind, the burning church, the desecrated hosts, an absent God who did not save.

  “I can’t”, he says.

  “Would you not try?”

  He opens his mouth and closes it.

  “If he is there, Josip, as we once believed when we were children, he will do the rest. We only have to reach up. That alone is our task.”

  Still he cannot speak. He turns on his side to face her, putting the palm of his right hand to her belly, which is now a small mountain. His hand warms the bare flesh, and he can feel his own pulse in it. He desires with his whole being that this pulse send waves of protection to the child sleeping within. “We cannot endanger her”, he says.

  “Not to reach up”, whispers Ariadne, “may be the greatest danger of all. If you cannot do it for me, can you do it for her?”

  For long moments, he looks down at Ariadne and their hidden child.

  “We will go to God’s house”, he whispers. “And you will help me to enter.”

  THE NAKED ISLAND

  17

  The isolated shape of each memory is more or less clear, but their context is altered by a history of subsequent interpretation. Memories are reshaped simultaneously into what they are and what they are not—then pondered as actualities, which in turn are reshaped. Within this laboratory of the mind, the scientific method deceives the scientist who fails to consider that his experiment is changed by his very presence within it. The subtle arts of causality or the subtle causalities of the mind’s primary artform.

  Or to put it another way: From the alpine peaks of old age one peers into the valleys of the past and sees indistinct forms, highlighted only by the most monumental sub-formations—the valley is a green blur, containing serene flocks of sheep, and buildings in flames. A palace by a sea is an ivory carving, surmounted by an emerald hill, and beyond it a sheet of rippling phosphorous. Within that miniature carving, countless dramas are enacted.

  Ariadne attends Mass each day and has re-embraced everything she believed in her childhood. Josip promises he will soon attend with her, but every week he finds a reason to delay. She is patient because she knows he is a man who keeps his word. For his part, he is determined to overcome his fears and is gathering strength for it. The act of stepping over a mutilated body is no small one. In a sense, it is his very self that lies spread-eagled on the steps, silent and degraded. He must rise from the dead.

  He drifts into sleep with the first reawakenings of prayer.

  Are you there? I cannot see you, cannot hear you. Are you there?

  The following morning is their first wedding anniversary. It is a Saturday, and nothing is scheduled to happen. They will go to Mass together for the first time the next day, but for now they will simply be together and reaffirm their love. For hours they stroll hand in hand through the Marjan, recalling the first days of their courtship and chatting about their hopes and dreams. Ariadne would like to climb all the way to the top so they can look out over the sea, but Josip thinks this is unwise and makes her sit down on park benches from time to time. Neither of them wants the day to end. They eat a late supper at a café on Marmontova, linger over wine until closing time, then slowly walk the few blocks home to their apartment. Sleepy, they do not bother to turn on the lights, just head straightway to the bedroom, undress, and lie down.

  Ariadne is asleep beside him. He is drowsing, though he hears his heart quietly thumping, his hand warm on the hill of her belly, which has sheltered the child for six months within the womb. Three months from now they will see the hidden face.

  There will be no visual memory of the next moment, for the room is dark and the window shuttered. He will remember sounds. Into the calmness of the world, there comes a loud bang, then the splintering of wood. Ariadne cries out. He struggles upright and flings his legs over the side of the bed. A bright light appears in the bedroom door. Blinded, he stands and gropes for something heavy to strike the intruder. Something hits him on the side of the head, making his ears ring in such pain as he has never felt before in his life. Another blow strikes his eyes, and after that, nothing.

  He is sitting on a chair in a cement room, facing a wall. His skull feels broken, his eyes so swollen he can open them only a crack. He tries to move his arms, but they are bound, the wrists secured to the back of the chair. His ankles are bound to its legs.

  He is asleep on a cement floor. He is pulled from this hole into the darker hole of consciousness. A hand is dragging him up by the hair of his head. His face is slapped. Still, he cannot see. “Open your eyes!” shouts a voice.

  The folios of the mind, the albums of hell, display more and more pictures. The worst. The faces of wolves. He flinches, retreats into the sea—the spray of the dolphins as they leap in the sunlit waves, the soothing surf on the beach, white stones rolling under the white light, oranges dripping syrup into his open mouth, and the millions of shelters in the wall of sand where the lastavice live their lives.

  Who are you? Where have you come from? Where are you going?

  But pain negates all of this with a single blow or a shout.

  Above, fly!

  They will not let him fly, all those hands grabbing him, tying him, untying him, walking him from room to room, forcing a bit of bread or a slug of water down his throat. He cannot hear what they say! His nose is bleeding, and sometimes he chokes on the blood. Is it his own or another’s? Because, in the end, blood is always raining down on mankind, unjust blood and holy blood—he knows the taste of both.

  Yet lastavica is not only the name for a bird but also for a flying fish.

  Beneath, dive!

  They will not let him dive! He is tied by his flesh to this world.

  Ariadne
!

  Does he say it, or is it only a constant cry within his mind? Her name, the sweetest in the world, he will cling to it, he will feel her arms around him as he enfolds her with his own. But the pain increases.

  “Wake up!”

  Here again are the faces of the wolves.

  “Tell us about Dobri Dupin!” shouts one of the wolves, “And we will let you go back to your wife!” Ariadne, Ariadne, Ariadne, where are you?

  “Tell us!”

  As he stumbles around inside the labyrinth of his skull, he closes his eyes, blocking out the face of the Minotaur.

  “Speak!” Hard blows to the ears; first one, then the other. He feels his ears become liquid, two rivers draining away all thought.

  How long does it last? A few days, a month, more months?

  There comes a morning—yes, it is morning, because sunlight is glowing behind a barred window of opaque glass—when his mind, his body, and his eyes connect to each other. He is enclosed within a cement cell. Is he in the hospital? Have they cut off his arms?

  No, he has arms. He has hands and fingers. Though no feathers. No feathers, no wings. No upward flight, no diving to the depths.

  That day, guards take him to another room and seat him on a metal chair without strapping him to it. Facing him behind a desk, there sits a wolf in a suit and tie. The wolf smiles pleasantly.

  “Your eyes, Lasta, are working again.”

  It is not necessary to speak with wolves.

  A hand behind him grabs his hair, yanks his head back. “Answer!” growls another voice.

  “I can see”, Josip whispers.

  “And you can hear too”, says the pleasant wolf. “Now, if you wish to be released, you will tell us everything about the Dobri Dupin.”

  Josip’s head falls forward on his chest. He notices that he is dressed in a dirty cotton jumpsuit soaked with his own urine. His feet are bare.

  “The Dobri Dupin!” prompts the wolf.

  “Where is my wife?” he moans.

  “Your wife will be released if you tell us everything.”

  “She is beneath the water with me”, he murmurs. “The Dobri Dupin, Lasta!” shouts a different voice. “We are in the net,” Josip groans, “and we will die with smiles.” It takes them a moment to consider this. Then he is slapped again, harder than before.