Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  He goes back to the leper by the side of the road. Though the little black dog has been watching its master curiously, it has not stirred from the man’s side. The boy puts a single orange into the leper’s open palm, then gets up and dusts off his trousers. He whistles to the dog, and they go away through the trees toward their home.

  There are stars in the sky. He is shivering. There is something round in his hand—soft and firm. He sits up. What is this? He sniffs it. Then his mouth, without waiting for his permission, tears into it and chews and swallows, rips and chews and swallows again and again, until it is all gone. Then he licks his hands, hating his body for not letting him die.

  The road is ever rising, up and down sometimes, but always climbing higher. The night grows colder, a chilling wind begins to blow. It does not matter. It will speed him toward the end. But it hurts, this cold. One may die without pain. It’s the dying itself that is needed. Under the stars, he sees a shape looming in a field beside the road. All about are barrens, no longer any trees. He leaves the road and makes his way little by little through rocks and briars toward the shadow.

  It is a shelter of some kind. He feels it with his hands, moving along its curving walls in search of a doorway. The building is made of unmortared stones piled upon each other. His hands push into empty space, and he goes inside. The smells of sheep droppings and straw are strong. He lies down on the floor and, without knowing it, sleeps.

  Dawn floods the interior with light. Beyond the open doorway are dry rolling hills, already simmering in the sun. Here and there upon them stand round huts roofed with stone shingles. He rises and goes outside, finds the road again, and moves on. He walks because that is all that is left, this walking. Yet he is thirsty.

  The road enters a dip in the hills. Soon he comes to a stone wall and sees a little house beyond it. Smoke is rising from its chimney. Chickens are clucking, and a pig is snorting, though none of them are visible. The gate in the wall hangs open, squealing back and forth, but what makes it move is unseen.

  A white billy goat bursts from the gate onto the road, dragging an old woman after it. She has it by a rope around the neck.

  “No, no!” she yells.

  The goat leaps up on its hind legs and plunges, butting the air with its massive curving horns, this way and that, trying to get loose. It is very strong, and the woman is weak. She wails and scolds. The goat lands on four feet and turns around, paws the ground, and charges toward her. She swerves to avoid it, but the rope yanks her from her feet, and she sprawls in the dust.

  Spotting the man on the road, she cries, “Help me!”

  The goat goes up on its hind legs again and prepares to charge. Its front hoofs strike the dust as its horns flash and narrowly miss the woman. She scrambles to her feet and stumbles in the direction of her gate.

  “Help me, help me!” she cries.

  The man standing not ten meters away continues to stare. Then he shakes himself, bends down, and picks up a rock. He hurls it at the beast. It strikes the animal’s rib cage. He bends for another. The goat jerks the rope from the woman’s hand and charges the man. The man remains without moving, without fear on his face. Now death comes, he hopes. But though he welcomes it, he also hates it. He hates its willfulness, which so thoughtlessly and unswervingly seeks to destroy him.

  He hurls the stone, and it clacks off the goat’s horns. The goat tosses its head and kicks and spins in circles. The man picks up another rock and hurls it at the goat’s head. Now it strikes the skull, and the goat drops onto its front knees, shaking its head as if to rid it of a fly. Then it is up again on all four feet, still shaking its head, unhurt but subdued.

  The man grabs the end of the rope and ties it to the iron gate. Then he walks on.

  “Wait, wait!” the woman calls after him. She scurries along behind and tugs at his sleeve. He pauses and looks down at her.

  “Thank you, sir, thank you. Old Pohota might have put an end to me had you not come along. A bad one he is, never satisfied. He has three nannies of his own out back in the shed but got wind of the others at the farm down the road. I’ve had enough of his roving, and my neighbors have had enough, too!”

  The man nods and walks on. It is not good to expose the death that is inside him, to let an old woman see that he is Cain and that he is fleeing from paradise, out into the desolation where he belongs.

  “Will you stop for a sip?” she asks, trotting along beside him.

  Once more he pauses and considers. His tongue is cracked leather. He does not need to die in pain.

  When they return to her yard, she sits him down on a wooden beam between two stones and bustles into her house—more a shelter than a house—and comes out again with a jug and a cup. The jug is very fine, white with blue flowers, the flowers that grow on the slopes of Rajska Polja. The cup is an odd one, white stone hollowed by much chipping. Clicking her tongue, chattering in words he does not listen to, she fills the cup and goes back into the shelter, returning with a basket of bread and a handful of raisins.

  “Drink”, she says. “Eat.”

  The cup is heavy, heavier it seems than a rock that can fell a billy goat. He drinks from it and holds it in both hands between his knees. He stares at the dust of her dooryard. An orange rooster with a green crown passes before his eyes, strutting and inspecting him.

  “Now, tell me, what is your name and where are you going?” says the woman. “We’re far from any place, and it’s farther to any that lie ahead.”

  He looks up into ancient blue eyes; he sees her green kerchief, bordered with red hearts, so much like Mamica’s.

  “Jo—” he whispers.

  “Jo—sip!” she finishes for him, smiling with satisfaction. “Or is it Jo—zo ? Some say Jo—shko, which is what I called my own boy. They are gone, my husband and my boys. They did not come through the war. But a home of my own have I, and my goat-ladies and this bad billy, and a pullet or two. An egg and some milk is all I ask of life.”

  They are gone, they are gone.

  “More milk?” she asks, filling the cup without waiting for a reply.

  In the end, she just hands him the jug, and he drinks from its lip, tilting his head back, swallowing and swallowing until it is empty. She refills it, and he drinks again.

  “Those are big hands,” she mutters pensively, “and a big man you are, too, poor fellow. It’s hard to find work these days, though things are better than they were. Where did you say you were going?”

  He drops his eyes and does not answer.

  Now she rocks back and forth beside him on the beam, humming a song, muttering a few thoughts to herself, sighing.

  “Eat some bread too, Joshko. There’s plenty and to spare, because I trade milk for wheat.”

  So, he dips the bread into the jug, and tears wet pieces from it, and puts them one by one into his mouth. And all the while he is staring at the tops of the hills, not wanting to look into her eyes. Eyes that have lost everyone, too.

  When it is time to go, he stands and nods his thanks. She forces him to accept more chunks of bread, which she tears from a large loaf; in fact, she stuffs them into his pockets. Without another word, he goes out through the gate and, without looking back, disappears around a bend in the valley.

  It is nightfall; the west is bleeding. His legs can no longer move; he sits down in the dry scrub to silence their protests. All around him birds and insects make noise. Why are they doing this? What makes them sing? Is it the presence of the sea? No, the sea is nowhere to be seen in any direction. The tips of the hills are glowing bronze and purple. On a distant hilltop, a tiny spire rises above the horizon, more or less in the direction where his feet have been taking him.

  He eats a chunk of bread, though it is dry in his throat. After a while, he stands and continues along the winding road. All the colors have drained from the world by the time he nears the spire. There are no lights inside. The chill is settling upon the land, and he must lie down. Leaving the road, he follows a gravel p
ath that is now only a pale mark beneath the stars, wandering through a rocky field to the heights. Arriving at the top, he finds that the spire is part of a building—or several buildings surrounded by waist-high stone walls. Behind this stands a little grove of olive trees, swaying in the wind. He knows their scent, but there will be no olives at this time of year.

  The moon rises, round and red, as if it were presiding over a burning village. He sits down and watches it. He eats another piece of bread, swallowing it with difficulty, for his mouth is drier than before. As the moon climbs it turns from flame to gold, casting its glow across the hilltop. Beyond the wall, to the right of the grove, is a field of crosses.

  Now he stands, and looks all about with night-eyes, searching for a way into the building—a church, he supposes. No, he cannot enter, because there will be a mutilated body lying on its steps. He will sleep in another building, then. And, yes, to the right of the church there is one of those round huts with a stone roof. Near it he spots a well. A rope dangles down into its depths. He pulls the rope and feels an unseen weight on it. Hand over hand he pulls, and when the weight emerges it is no more than a tin bucket with water sloshing inside. He sniffs the water, because sometimes bodies are thrown into wells. It is clean. He takes the bucket in both hands and drinks and drinks until his belly bulges. Then he drinks more. With his fingertips, he feels the walls on the moonless side of the hut until they find a doorway. It is blocked by boards hammered at angles across the opening. He pulls one off and crawls in through the hole.

  The floor is stone. It smells of ancient dust and leather, of beeswax candles and incense. Is it a little church or just a storage place? He is too exhausted now to worry about it, and no body blocked his entrance.

  Morning. When his eyes open, he finds himself knotted in a fetal position, shivering. The cracks of light from the entrance indicate that dawn is near. Not yet able to rise, he looks about the interior. It is not a church. It is a circular room containing wooden shelves along one wall and a prayer-kneeler facing the shelves. On the shelves are shadowy forms, like sticks. Little wooden boxes are sitting on the boards, up-ended so that what is inside can be seen. In the dim light he cannot tell what they are. Perhaps there is food.

  He crawls across the floor to the kneeler and rests beside it. He is still shivering and wants to go back to sleep. He closes his eyes. Oh, it is cold in here, cold, cold, and it may be that he has come at last to the place where he will die. He longs for this because he can no longer walk, and even standing is beyond his power. There is nothing in his pockets to eat because the old woman’s bread is long gone. He does not have the strength to go outside to drink from the well, though he is thirsty again.

  Now, I go down, he says in his mind. Now, I will go down into nothingness and will feel no more.

  As he waits for death with closed eyes, a light appears in his head. It is not in his thoughts, for it is nothing he can imagine, nothing he has ever experienced before. He sees it with eyes that are not the eyes of his head—a red spot approaching, expanding as it comes closer. The spot becomes a little sun glowing and heating his skull. This makes no sense, because the only source of light in the chamber is the entrance behind him.

  The little sun pulsates and penetrates his mind, gently, gently, not invading, merely enfolding him and warming him. Now it is heat and light, and tears begin streaming from his eyes, tears without feeling. He cannot remember when he last cried—was it before the island or on it, when he was an animal in chains? No, this kind of tears came before—it was on a Christmas day long ago in a world that no longer exists, when a woman made bread for him with secret spice, or when he lay beside her in the dark with his hand on her belly, feeling the quickening of their child.

  Is it you? Am I coming to you now?

  The light slowly fades.

  He opens his eyes, and to his dismay finds that he is still on earth. The tears cease. He sits up. He sees that the little boxes contain bones and scraps of clothing. Some of the boxes contain hands and feet—living hands, living feet—they have not decomposed. The fingers of a hand in a tin box are positioned in a priest’s blessing. The wrist is severed, like Petar’s. Though here there is only the hand, while back there in the fields of heaven there is only a body without a hand. On the wrist are fine golden hairs. Peering more closely, he sees other forms on the shelves. Before him is the shape of a person stretched out along the shelf, sleeping. It is a woman—he knows this because she is wearing nun’s robes, black and white, and her hands are crossed over her belly, and a crucifix is about her neck. The skin of her face is dark brown, drawn tightly over the bones, but the little hairs of her eyelashes are visible.

  The red sun pulsates once more from her face, and for an instant he is warmed again. Then—understanding—he jerks backward, a cry of fear leaping from his throat. He scrambles away from her on hands and knees, out through the hole in the door, and then he is up and fleeing as quickly as his legs will carry him. Now he is hobbling down the gravel path, now he is running. He runs until he reaches the road, and there his feet take him to the right because that is where he must go. And when the ruined buildings are far behind, he slows to a walk, and stumbles onward, deeper into the white hills, with a knife turning in the center of his chest.

  It is night, and he is still walking. How is it possible, all this walking? He has eaten little since he left the goat-lady, a bite or two of bread; he has drunk nothing since the well beneath the spire. Yet on he goes. Now the road pitches downward under the stars, and because silence is upon the world the stars no longer sing. The moon rises, glinting on the sea. Yes, the sea has returned, on his left side, and far ahead, lights are twinkling in the bottom of a valley.

  He trips and lands on his knees. Close to the road a hill is glowing beneath the moon. He crawls through the grass and comes to its base. He will rest here awhile. But dew is settling on him, and he has begun to shiver again. The shadow of a crevasse beckons. Into this he crawls, then deeper and deeper, until the stone closes over his head. A cave. He will sleep.

  Tired as he is, he cannot sleep, for the memory of the pulsating red light remains, and it seems that the memory warms him a little. But there are other memories. He sees the exploded skull of his uncle, and his fist curls around the hilt of a hatchet, wanting to kill, seething with the lust to kill the Jure-face of death. Then the Zmija-face of death, which he wants to kill by dropping a stone on it, smashing all its bones, pressing poisonous wine from its brains. Then the Goran-face of death, and he is smashing and smashing its head with an iron pipe, splattering its snake-thoughts out of existence. And though the little sun fights with the three faces of death, it is no good. For as he slides down into wrath, he knows that he has become Jure and Zmija and Goran.

  Gagging, choking on the poison within himself, he gropes about in the dark. His hand touches a rock, and he seizes it and strikes his breast with it. Again and again he strikes the bones in the exact center of his chest, killing and killing and killing his heart, the evil within this heart, until from blood and pain and exhaustion he cannot go on. He drops the stone and falls into unconsciousness.

  Still he is not permitted release from this world.

  Morning. Get up! Go on! Keep moving! Burn up all the cells, and today you will go down into the ruined houses of heaven. Let your skull rest among the burning books, shimmering down to ashes, and snow, and dust, and dry-cold wind. Two skulls become three skulls—mother and father and child—the children of Cain breeding Cain breeding Cain breeding Cain breeding Cain—Get up! Go! So, he crawls away from this new torment and resumes his journey, trying to leave it behind.

  The dusty road on which he has traveled for days comes to an end at a larger road of finer gravel. This runs along the sea coast and descends at a sharp angle. He turns right and goes down with it.

  In time, he sees a fence blocking the road just ahead. On both sides of the fence are soldiers and flags. On this side is a flag with a red star sucking blood, on the far
side is another flag, green-white-red, no star. Though there is blood on it, its fields are up and down. No flattened fields, no compressed sea, no sinking and crushing and sucking. So, he shuffles through the dust, approaching the fence and the buildings on both sides of it, and the soldiers and flags on both sides of it. He becomes invisible as he moves, for he is now transparent mobile glass that is no longer sessile, no longer spectacular for its qualities of light, no longer living on light, for it is the dying light, and no human eyes can see it.

  A truck sits at the fence gate, vibrating and chugging black smoke from its tail pipe, an old truck with a cave of green canvas over its carry-platform. As he approaches its back end, the soldiers do not see him—of course they cannot, for he is too small to be seen and they are talking to the drivers. He lifts the canvas flap and climbs up into the dark interior. He lies down among piles of hard objects. Then the engine roars. The donkey moves, carrying him forward, then it stops, and voices are heard, then it moves again, and men’s laughter and curses and songs resume, as they always do.

  The donkey carries him, hour after hour, and he sleeps as it sways and rocks him along the road to Sarajevo. Now the truck is screeching to a halt. The heat is great, and he is sweating away the last of the water in his body. The truck does not move. Outside, men are pulling back the canvas from its roof of iron pipes. He sees now that he is lying under the pipes in a space among piles of limestone squares. Imprinted on every piece are sweat and tears and blood, for these are the ghost-stones from the island of death. He blinks and clears his eyes. There is no mark upon them except the sign of Cain. And when he slides down from the back of the truck and walks away unseen, he learns that he is not in Sarajevo but in a strange new land, and on the horizon stands a golden city, rising out of the sea.

  24

  He has walked all morning beside a paved road, along which automobiles run in both directions. He passes a house with a dark blue flag flying above it. On the flag is a falcon capped by a gold crown. To his left is a wide bay, on which boats with white sails are flying before the wind. On his right are rows of cypress trees and fields of black soil being turned up with tractors and plows. The golden city seems no nearer.