Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  Then he comes to a roadside fruit stand. Under its awning, a fat man in an apron studies the walker suspiciously, then shrugs and tosses him a plum. When he sees the way in which the plum is eaten, he gathers a few more into his apron and approaches. He puts one into the hand of the man standing before him, and, after considering, pushes the rest into the wretched fellow’s pockets. Then an orange and an apple. Still undecided, he goes back to his stand and returns with a little baguette of bread. Into the pocket as well. He shakes his head as if to say, poor soul.

  “Acqua?” he asks.

  Because the walker continues to stand there with his cracked lips parted, neither speaking nor leaving, the fruit vendor brings a metal pitcher and a glass. He fills the glass. The walker ignores it, takes the pitcher in both hands, and gulps its contents down. Then he staggers away alongside the highway, narrowly missing the end of his life, for many vehicles whizz past his elbow, honking their horns, though he does not hear them.

  Evening. Twilight settles on a village decorated with yellow streetlights. A concertina is playing somewhere within the houses. Voices are rising and falling. At the edge of the village is a heap of rubble, hills of broken concrete, bricks, and clay tiles. Half-buried in it is a huge green machine with a cannon poking out of its nose. The walker climbs the hill and stops beside the machine. On its side is a white star. The metal around it is riddled with bullet holes. Its top is broken open, and there is a cave within, deep and cool and dark. He climbs inside.

  The gray light of dawn spills in through the little holes and from the jagged opening above his head. When his eyes clear, he notices broken pieces of metal all around, a steering wheel, and a slit of sky above the wheel. The cannon juts upward from somewhere below it.

  Slowly, slowly he examines the walls of the cave. Written upon them are the musings of many ghosts. Sally B I love thee. FDR take us far. Back to Old Virginny. He does not understand these words. He closes his eyes and gathers his strength, because he must travel far today, farther than he has ever walked before. He will walk into oblivion; he will walk so far that all remaining cells will be burned away, if he can overcome his body, if he does not allow it to force him to eat.

  But as he gathers strength, he loses it again so swiftly. He falls asleep. He awakes when voices surround the cave—children shouting and screaming. Then clinking and clanking as bullets hit the outer walls. He understands now that he is inside a machine of war and that the war has continued without his knowing it. Now, because all soldiers are dead, children must take their places. Peering out through the slit above the steering wheel, he sees a band of them running about the piles of rubble, stopping from time to time to throw stones at each other. A few hold iron pipes and make noises as if they are firing machine guns.

  He sinks down inside the metal cave and hides. He will leave when they go away. But all day long they play around him. Sometimes a child will stand on the roof of the machine, shouting taunts and firing his gun. Then a hail of stones will fly, and that one will run away, only to be replaced by another. He sees their shadows cross the hole in the roof, and once a little face, contorted with hatred, screaming words that he does not understand. The voices decline, return, fade again, and at last there is peace. Cocks crowing, women’s voices, the smell of cooking food, and it is dusk.

  Today he has not died. Tomorrow, then.

  He can relax his vigilance in the dark, though he must shift his body with care, for there are points of metal wherever he turns. He should not spear himself; he need not die in pain. Death itself is the important thing. He lets his head fall back and looks up at the sky. It is overcast, no stars, no moon.

  With a skip of his heartbeat, he realizes that something alive is moving within the machine. He freezes his body and holds his breath. It moves again, a soft sound, a rope coiling on canvas, then hissing—breathing or whispering. Another person has quietly dropped down into the hole with him. He chokes with fear, for the soldier-children might strike his head again and again with their iron pipes. It would not be right to die in this manner.

  “They’re gone”, whispers the voice.

  He does not move, does not speak. When his lungs are about to burst, he gasps for air.

  “I won’t betray you”, says the other.

  Throughout the long night hours, they converse together, the walker and this unseen companion, so quiet-spoken and considerate. In time, it seems to the walker that he no longer hears the voice with his ears, for the other’s thoughts are in his mind.

  “You see what they’re like, don’t you, those innocents.”

  His own thoughts are pictures, not words, but the other’s are words dialoguing with the pictures.

  Children who desire to kill. Children whose play is murder and contempt.

  “Do you see what they have done to your world—the world that was? Do you see what they will do again and again with their freedom? And you, do you think you are walking to freedom, like the man pulling his cart into the north with a little toy boat on top, and a violin, and a wife and a child?”

  Ariadne and the faceless infant. In the end, there was no pathway to freedom for them.

  “These innocents who make war their game, are hungry, of course. They are brutal because they are empty. Their bellies and their souls, for they have no souls. How loathsome they are.”

  But this does not seem right, for the soldier-children are indeed brutal, but it is wrong to think that there is nothing inside them.

  “Like the ghosts of the island of death”, says the voice, in a calm and pleasing tone. “Though I see you have escaped.”

  “Is-is-is it you, Vladimir?” the walker stammers, in a hoarse whisper.

  “No, I am not he. I am one who brings you bread. Are you hungry, do you want bread?”

  “I am hungry, but I must not eat.”

  “Surely you must eat. All living things eat. They devour and are devoured, are they not?”

  “I will escape from the devouring.”

  “But the devouring is inside you”, whispers the voice reasonably.

  “I did not wish it to be so.”

  “Yet it is so, and nothing can be done about it.”

  “Who are you, then? Tell me, for I do not know where I am, nor where I can go.”

  “Would telling show you the way?”

  “It would help me speed to my end.”

  “I will speed you to your destiny.”

  “How?”

  “You need not take the path you think is yours, for not every road leads to an end. I will show you a different way. See—”

  The voice opens a path in the walker’s mind and shows him a route that leads into another city, far along the path. And out of the air, bread and gold materialize and will fall into his hands if he wishes. And in that distant city his strength will return as well, and his beauty, and his voice, and his knowledge. Then men will heed him again and respect him.

  “It takes but a little”, explains the voice. “You choose to put your foot on one path and not another. Then your other foot. Onward you walk, faster and faster, and you rise into the places where no adversaries can confound you, and no hunger weakens you, and no authority rules over you.”

  “What place is that?”

  “Freedom”, whispers the voice reverently. “Freedom without submission. Come with me, and I will show you. We will enter together.”

  “What is your name?”

  “You know my name.”

  “It seems to me I do not remember it. Though it may be I once knew you in the fields of heaven.”

  “No, that was another, and you saw how it all ended, the death of everything and the loss. All that loss, all that hunger, and the weakness upon weakness that came afterward, and the fear too. You remember the fear, and now you feel it again. I will take it from you. I will take all pain from you, if you follow me into my light, for I am master of light and of darkness.”

  “I forget so many things”, says the walker. “I did not kn
ow you well, though I saw you crushed on the floor of the church in Rajska Polja and ate you with the blood and mud upon your flesh. You were with Fra Anto’s body too, and you were there in all that horror and pain. But I was afraid. I was afraid that this is how we all end, but now you have returned to me, and I see it is not so.”

  “It is of another you speak, the one who died long ago, for he had no power. Now I will show you new things. I will take you by the hand and lead you out of this pit that men have made, and I shall take you higher. I will restore your mind, and with your thoughts and numbers you will amaze the cities of man. You can possess the fire from the heavens, and teach many about it. And if you wish, you can bring it down on those who have destroyed your life.”

  The walker pauses and wonders, for an unease has entered him. Though this voice speaks of life and light and fire, his words are unlike the other one, the man he once knew, the man in the brown robes who gave him sweet fire upon his tongue. In that weakness and poverty there had been peace. Why is there now no peace?

  “Little do I ask in exchange”, whispers the voice. “So little, so little—”

  “There is nothing I can give you,” says the walker, “for there is nothing left of me. I have come to my end, and beyond it there is nothingness.”

  “Yes, you have come to your end, yet I will show you another end, and if you accept it the end I give becomes beginning. For in me you will not enter nothingness, you will become as me, knowing good and evil.”

  “I hunger and thirst,” says the walker, “but I know that mine is the path of weakness. Be it only hours or days left to me, this is my path and no other—I know it in my soul.”

  “But you do not have a soul”, whispers the voice.

  The walker falls silent. The dawn has crept in through the holes in the walls, and above his head is a scar of pale light. Now he sees the form of the other in the shadows, a man seated close by, their bodies centimeters apart. The face comes forward out of the shadows. It is Zmija the snake.

  “You have found me!” cries the walker. “How did you find me?”

  “I followed your trail, the trail Cain always leaves in the desolation beyond Eden, for his evil drains out of him but is ever replenished. Yes, you are already like me, for you are me and I am you.”

  “No!” cries the walker.

  Glancing about with desperate terror, he spies a spear of metal and thrusts his wrists upon it. He presses down, sawing the flesh furiously on the jagged edge, gasping and trying not to hear the whispering of the other.

  “You escape from me into my arms,” laughs the snake, “for there are no escapes.”

  Now his blood is spurting, and he falls backward against the hard metal floor.

  Now another form slips down into the hole and strikes the shadow of the snake. The two forms clash, sword upon sword, until Zmija flies out through the hole and disappears into the sky.

  The warrior kneels and takes the walker’s wrist in his hand.

  “Rise up,” he says, “for you have work to do.”

  Then the warrior too is gone, and children’s voices fill the air. A boy’s face floats in space above him, peering into the pit, reaching down.

  Then a cry—Yankee-Yankee-Yankee!—and the face disappears.

  25

  He is walking along a hallway, feeling groggy. The floors are green linoleum, and the walls are white. Where is he? How did he come here? Is this his own body?

  Glancing down, he notices that his mind is riding on a body dressed in pale blue pajamas, with cloth slippers on his feet. The top of the garment has short sleeves. The arms are as thin as sticks, and the wrists are bandaged.

  Beside him stands a little man, as small as a child, but rather old. He is chattering in a language Josip does not know. How strange is this fellow who holds his arm and guides him along, with his dark brown face and bright red hair and little white teeth that grin and click incessantly. Along one wall, sun-filled windows offer a view of old buildings tipped by spires and capped with domes. Flocks of pigeons wheel among the pinnacles and then drop between them. Stopping to look down into the street below, he sees that it is made of water. All the streets are water, and boats are being poled along them.

  He can escape, he can swim away from this prison. He must look for a way out.

  The little man takes him into a room where people in white clothing are standing beside a table. They make Josip lie down on it and bind his ankles and wrists. He wants to fight, but his body is too weak, and he is so sleepy that he cannot think. They put electric wires on his head. There is a bang, and his body jumps. It is the end, and he knows now that everything is over.

  He wakes up in a room with white walls. A red-haired man enters through a door, helps him to stand, and takes him into a hallway. Down the hallway they go. He cannot remember how he came to this place. He has never seen it before. Now he waits at the end of a line of people. Others are waiting in pajamas just like his, old women, young men muttering to themselves, people crying with fear. One by one, they are taken into a room off the hall where there are voices and thumps and cries. He is very afraid. The bodies are taken from that room, wheeled away on rolling trolleys. Now is the end. It is time to die.

  The little man takes him into a room where people in white clothing are standing beside a table. They make Josip lie down on it and bind his ankles and wrists. He wants to fight them, but his body is too weak, and he is so sleepy that he cannot think. They put electric wires on his head. There is a bang, and his body jumps; his mind goes black. It is the end. His life is complete.

  He wakes up in a white room. He is lying on a cot, covered with a clean sheet. A red-haired man enters, helps him to stand, and then takes him into a hallway. Down the hallway they go. He cannot remember how he came to this place. He has never seen it before. What is his name? He could remember his own name, if he were to try, but he is too sleepy. Now he stands at the end of a line. Other people are waiting in pajamas just like his, old men and women moaning or staring into space, young men muttering to themselves, a girl crying with fear. One by one, they are taken into a room off the hall. He is very afraid for them, and for himself, but he cannot run away. One by one, the bodies are taken from that room on rolling trolleys. Now is the end. It is time to die.

  The little man takes him into a room where people in white clothing are standing beside a table. They make him lie down on it and bind his ankles and wrists. He would fight them if he could, but his body is too weak, and he is so sleepy that he cannot. They put electric wires on his head. There is a bang and his body jumps. His mind goes black. It is the end.

  He wakes up in a room with white walls. The red-haired man enters through a door, helps him stand, and then takes him into the hallway. Grinning, he holds up nine fingers. Down the hallway they go. He cannot remember how he came to be here. He has never seen it before. Now he stands docilely at the end of the line, hanging his head, sure that he must remember something, though it is not important.

  “What is this place?” he asks, and only after speaking does he realize that these are his first words.

  “Italiano?” cries the little fox excitedly. “Credo di no! Austriaco? Croato?”

  “What is my name?”

  “Croato, si, Hrvatsko, sì?” says the fox.

  Josip nods and drops his eyes, for he cannot bear the other’s look of enthusiasm. Besides, he is about to be executed. A woman in a fine suit and a white jacket walks by, her high-heeled shoes clicking on the linoleum. She carries a clipboard under her arm. The fox stops her and speaks rapidly in his language. The woman replies in kind, though she examines Josip’s face with curiosity. She hurries away. He is executed.

  He wakes up in a room with white walls. A red-haired man enters through a door, helps him to stand, and then takes him into a hallway. Down the hallway they go. He cannot remember how he came to this place. He has never seen it before. They move past a line of people waiting to be executed and enter a room farther along, a large
open space with tiled walls and floor, a row of sinks and toilets. The little man takes a toothbrush and tube of paste from his pocket and hands them to Josip. Then, as if to enlighten the ignorant, he imitates brushing motions. Josip turns and glances into a mirror above a sink.

  Now he sees what he has become. How frightening is the creature staring back at him, this skeleton, this battered old man. He is hunching forward, his neck sunken in the collar bones and his shoulders sagging. His lips are parted to reveal a mouth like a graveyard, and there are hollows beneath wide cheekbones, over which parchment skin is stretched to the tearing point. Beneath the brows are purple shadows, and there are bags under blue eyes, which are distant and without expression. Most of the hair is gone, and what remains is wispy and gray. White scars score the sunburned forehead and cheeks.

  After cleansing what remains of his teeth, he must shower with the fox standing guard nearby. Under the hot spray he closes his eyes and soaks. The fox reaches into the stall and fumbles a bar of soap into his hands. This soap smells of lemon, so fragrant and malleable that he wishes to eat it but does not. Afterward, he dries himself slowly with a towel, observing his body in the mirror. Yes, it’s a skeleton with a large purple bruise in the center of the chest, all the ribs are popping out, and on one shoulder he bears a healed gash, roughly stitched a long time ago. The knees and elbows swell between vestiges of muscle in the legs and arms.

  The fox observes it all, clicking and frowning and crooning sympathy. Then he helps Josip into a clean set of pajamas. After that, he is guided back to a small room at the other end of the corridor, gently taken into it, and then left alone. The door clicks shut behind him and is locked. There is a bed, a clean sheet, and a light bulb in a basket beyond reach in the ceiling. The window has a vent on top, through which fresh air is trickling in, but nothing human can climb back out. There are no bars on the window. He looks out through the glass and sees pigeons circling and boats slowly passing through the street below. In one, a man and a woman are reclining side by side, arm in arm, as the boatman leisurely poles them along.