Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “Yes, he comes home.”

  “He had a lot of trouble getting there.”

  “He did. But it was worth it.”

  “Was it?”

  “Yes, and that’s part of the nostos. The not-knowing is important.”

  “Why?”

  “So, when you return, you find that you have returned with your whole self.”

  “You lost me again.”

  “You’ll understand one day.”

  “You think? What if I don’t come home?”

  “Do you have a home?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then you must make your home in your own heart.”

  These are noble sentiments. He plants them wherever he may, and perhaps life will permit them to sprout in the damaged lives of these children. Yes, they look like men, but they are just children. And maybe the seed he plants will grow into a big tree and bear its proper fruit in time. He hopes for this. What else can he do? As for himself, his bride-queen is lost, and he has no son to search for him. The immovable wedding-bed was moved—in fact, it sank in a sea of blood. Even so, others may escape, and he can help them a little. And his marriage will remain unshakable within his heart.

  Slavica rushes into the clinic that evening, waving an envelope and dancing around his room.

  “A letter! A letter from Cass!” she sings.

  He is not interested and lets it show on his face.

  “But Josip, it’s about you! She has spoken to the officials at the embassy, and they have agreed to give you a job there in Rome—yes, right at the embassy. They need another grounds-keeper.”

  “I do not want the job.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous”, she exclaims, her face falling. “I am happy here.”

  “Yes, but for how long? There’s no wage. You have no future in this. And there’s always a chance the government will ship you back to—”

  “No, I have work to do here.”

  “What? Pruning bushes?”

  No. Planting seeds, he thinks to himself. It’s not much, but it’s what I know how to do.

  “You can prune bushes and cut grass in Rome, and besides, if you make good friends there, they may even give you refugee status; then you won’t be sent back.”

  This is hard to ignore. He must think. His mind is swimming. He must think when he has calmed himself.

  Josip is sitting in Emilio’s dentist chair in his office in Mira. His mouth is full of wet plaster, which is hardening quickly. How does Emilio know for sure that once the plaster has hardened it can be removed? What if he made a mistake? Will it be necessary to chip it out with mallet and chisel? It slides out easily.

  “Soon you will have your smile back!” declares the dentist, with an operatic flourish.

  “Why do you do it, Emilio? You are very kind, but I do not understand why you are so good to me and the others.”

  “The others? What are you talking about?”

  “I know that you and Slavica pay the clinic fees for those boys—the drug addicts.”

  He shrugs and in a gruff voice commands: “Rinse!”

  “Who told you that nonsense?” he asks, as Josip washes out his mouth.

  “Amaliani.”

  “Well, we can spare it. We’re rich enough.”

  “Look at your car. It’s falling apart. Why do you drive an old Fiat like that, if you’re so rich?”

  “I like Fiats. They’re the best on the road!”

  “Why not a new one, then?”

  “Automobiles are unreliable and dangerous slaves. They frequently revolt and kill their masters. I hate them. The cheaper the better, I say.”

  “Do you hate them as you hate chocolate?”

  Emilio smiles pensively, puttering about with instruments on a tray. “Yes, like that.”

  A dinner party. Josip is doing a lot of grinning this evening. His dentures are so realistic that everyone oohs and ahs over them.

  Paolo demands frequent showings, while Chiara goes so far as to pull up his lip without asking permission. Hands are slapped, jokes fly about the dining room, and the food is brought in, course after course after course. The planet has still not been incinerated. Spring is coming, buds are showing on the olive tree in the backyard, and nests are being built somewhere out there too! There is plenty of wine tonight, including a bottle from Yugoslavia, though Josip will not accept a glass—not even of this. Fruit juice is enough for him.

  Tomorrow he leaves for Rome. He is staying the night with the Mazzuolos, who will drive him to the train station in the morning. Tonight they will celebrate. They have come to think of him as part of their family. How long has he been visiting their home? Two years, three years maybe. No one quite remembers.

  Dr. Amaliani drops in for an hour and brings news about one of the drug addicts: the boy has found a job and is staying clean, and he seems happy living with the religious brothers in Padova who work with the young. Amaliani gives Josip an envelope with a wad of lire inside, enough for train fare and a few meals along the way, with some left over for a new shirt. He has also brought a parting gift of shiny black shoes: giant-sized for giant feet, he says, not easy to find in this country! But he must leave early, with regrets, because his wife is waiting for him. They made a date with each other months ago—they are off to Venezia to see the new Fellini film. He shakes hands with Josip and says his last good-bye, with thanks for all he has done.

  The doctor departs, and the feast continues. It does not so much end as it tapers interminably. Finally, gelato is brought in from the kitchen in fancy dishes, plenty of chocolate for everyone but Emilio, who seems well pleased with his little scoop of vanilla.

  As everyone dips into the desserts, Josip scrapes back his chair and stands up. All eyes turn to him.

  “I have some things to give you”, he says. “They are not much, and maybe they are too simple, compared to all you have done for me.”

  “Oh, Josip, that is not necessary!” scolds Slavica.

  “For you, Slavica”, he says, turning to her, “I have only words to give. I wish it were more, but this is what I have. They are in memory of your father. They are also in memory of all fathers, and the father of your children too.”

  Silence falls on the table. Josip removes a piece of paper from his pocket, holds it before him and slowly recites:

  In a father’s toil-worn face can be read the epic tale:

  Within his eyes is a boy I once knew though we never met.

  See how he carries you and carries me And the offspring of his soul as if we weigh no more than birds perching on his fingertips yet are dearer to him than the stars.

  It is there in his eyes, not easily read,

  Each true man is like this, holding within himself

  A world that once was, a world that may be made anew.

  He knows himself as incomplete, sees his failures

  As do all men before the ending of their tale.

  Though with each ending a beginning is writ,

  Each death is birth for which he knows full well the cost,

  Yet this price could not be paid alone, without you.

  Finished, he sits down. Slavica is leaning forward, her eyes beaming moistly as she glances at Josip and her husband. She claps her hands vigorously, and the children and old mother join in. Emilio leans back in his chair, his eyes fixed on Josip, a whimsical smile playing about his lips.

  “Oh, sì, sì, Josip,” says Slavica, with a lump in her throat, “the poem is so much like Emilio! Yes, that is our Papa! Thank you, thank you, and now let us kiss you, if you will permit us?”

  The children rush over and kiss Josip, and Slavica gives a kiss to his cheek as well, and the grandmother grins with her naked gums and rocks back and forth in her chair. And still Emilio continues to gaze at Josip with a pondering expression.

  “I have something for you too, Emilio”, he says diffidently and stands again. Because the table is wide and the men are seated across from each other, Emilio must stand also. Josip
stretches and into the other’s hands places a package wrapped in foil.

  “Thank you”, murmurs Emilio shaking it curiously. “It’s heavy. What is it? A gold bar?”

  “Yes, a gold bar.”

  Emilio unwraps it and holds up a large bar of Swiss chocolate.

  “Oh, that kind is so expensive!” gasps Slavica. “You shouldn’t have, Josip, but what a fine gift!”

  Emilio nods at Josip and sits down, looking with some puzzlement at the bar in his hands.

  “But Mamma, this isn’t right!” cries Paolo. “Josip got the presents mixed up. The poem is for Papa, and the chocolate is for you!”

  “Tsk! Paolo, Paolo, Paolo, you rude boy! If Josip wants to give me a poem, that’s his business. And if he wants to give your Papa some chocolate, that’s all right, too!”

  “But Papa hates chocolate!”

  “He doesn’t hate chocolate; he just doesn’t eat it.”

  “He must hate it because I have never seen him eat it. Never!”

  All heads turn in Josip’s direction. He clears his throat. “Emilio?”

  “Si.”

  “You have no brothers and sisters.”

  “Yes, that’s so. How did you guess?”

  “I know.”

  “You know? Maybe you made a wild guess. For a family in my country it is not usual, eh, to be an only child. Come on, who told you? Slavica?”

  “Not Slavica. You were the only one to look after your mother when you came back from the war, weren’t you?”

  “The war?” Emilio frowns, waving a hand dismissively, “I was a boy then. A long time ago.”

  “When you returned from across the sea—”

  “That’s right,” says his mother, “away he goes across the Adriatico, and then a few months later he comes sailing back again without a scratch.”

  “And that is when you made a promise”, Josip continues.

  Emilio looks up and gazes at Josip with great seriousness.

  “Yes, that’s when.”

  “A promise you have kept.”

  “Yes, always.”

  “You do not hate chocolate.”

  “I love chocolate.”

  “Now you must eat some, for your promise is fulfilled.”

  Emilio’s urbanity and whimsical manner have completely vanished. He puts a finger across the bridge of his nose, head down, staring at the table top.

  He opens the wrapper, breaks a piece from the bar, and puts it slowly onto his tongue. He closes his mouth and his eyes, as tears run down his cheeks.

  “Now I will tell you a story”, whispers Josip.

  27

  In the end, he does not take the train to Rome. He decides to walk. Slavica, Emilio, and the children drive him to Padova, and there they let him out of the car on the highway to Bologna.

  In the folios of memory there are many tears, but this scene of tears is like no other. It is a convergence of rivers, draining the wide green valley of the Udine and flowing into the sea. He shoulders his knapsack, which they have stuffed with food and mementos. As he walks away from them down the road, he looks back again and again, seeing their souls fused into one form that diminishes in size and disappears into the past—waving and waving until it becomes entirely memory.

  Now he is again the walker of the world, and he understands the necessity of this walking. No longer is it a fleeing-from, it is a going-to. It is the counterpoint of flight; it is the search for completion, the arc between departure and arrival. It is nostos. The home of his past is behind, the home of his future is ahead in the unknown territory he must cross. He knows that he will live in the fabled city for a time, yet as he walks through the flat farmland and orchard country of northern Italy he dreams of another home. It is ahead and undefined, yet it is already taking shape within him. It has no form or detail and may be far away or near—he does not know. This sense cannot be dismissed, for it tells him that a momentous turning point is walking toward him, even as he walks toward it.

  What is remembered, what is forgotten? Why are some things stored away forever, while others resurface again and again?

  Who sifts through the material, who sorts and files it? A Renaissance palace is swiftly forgotten, while blue wings slicing arcs in the wind will be remembered always, in tandem with swallows swooping in coordinated flocks. Also imprinted is a barefoot child at a gate with a lamb standing docile beside him, the lamb’s neck looped by a cord of red wool held tightly in the child’s hand. There is a stone thrown at the walker by an unseen hand beyond a fence, but a cup of water is offered by a girl who appears from behind another fence farther along the road. Such events are both strange and familiar. Simple exchanges link them together, the media of humanity: food, gestures, and sometimes words: Grazie or Godspeed or Safe journey, Sir. There is a jug of cow’s milk purchased from an old man at his farmhouse door and a bowl of pasta purchased in a village café, served by a grudging matron whose disapproval and suspicion are an essential part of her maternal style. When he smiles at her, the scowl transforms into a smile returned, and an extra serving, free of charge.

  There are beautiful churches everywhere in this region—Romanesque and Renaissance and Baroque—the latter in a city he passes through with hurried pace. Was it back there in Bologna? He cannot remember where it was.

  He understands that his many small adventures along the way will also fade in time: the changing landscape, roadside water wells named for saints, atonal bells in impoverished stone chapels. Though he cannot enter them, he is grateful that someone built these structures long ago, and that invisible people still pull the ropes of their campaniles at eventide and dawn. So many people are encountered on his journey, and there is no explaining why this one is remembered and that one forgotten. It is all part of a whole, the kindness of strangers, the harshness of strangers, the mixture of good and evil in strangers. At the same time, an uncanny sense of familiarity is growing, as if he knows this land and this people very well. The impression increases as the road goes ever upward, and his feet find themselves passing deeper into the Appennino. At nightfall, especially, he is sometimes startled to see spires glowing red in the sunset, surrounded by hilltop towns that, in the dwindling light, are like castles in dreams. He dreams when he sleeps—good dreams, for in them dolphins leap in the sea spray, and children standing on white-pebbled shores speak poems to them as they speed away, smiling as they disappear.

  The hills are dry, and in this too he senses his past, for it is not unlike Istria. The hills are now rising higher and higher, and they appear in the dawn as sawtooth ridges and peaks. The days are still warm, though at these altitudes a chill can settle in swiftly when darkness falls and the stars come out to sing. Each night he sleeps rolled up in his blanket beside the road, hoping that snakes will not find him. Sometimes he sits down on a rock beside the road for no reason at all and sometimes, while he is sitting there, he cries. He is not sure about the reason for these tears. Perhaps he is merely fatigued. Or it may be that he cannot always distinguish between his losses and blessings, and the release of tears reduces the pressure. He does not know. Generally, he feels happy and, at times, elated. The mountains are intimations of transcendence, which he is now free to pursue, and the walking writes messages in every cell of his body, telling him that he is not locked inside a cement box, nor in a water drum, but is moving forward. The walking and the sun, the air and the food, and the sensation of progress all conspire to strengthen him with every passing day. He does not drive himself overmuch but does persevere beyond the little complaints of his reawakening muscles. Both they and his stamina are growing.

  Once, he kneels beside a natural pool at the bottom of a narrow valley. He drinks from it as a man, not as an animal, for he carries a tin cup in his backpack. When the ringlets of disturbance flatten out into a mirror, he sees his reflection and notices that he is not as old as he was in Venezia. His hair is light-colored and thick again and is growing blonder under the beating sun. His face is lean and
tanned, and his hands are wide and strong, no longer the claws of a skeleton. And his smile, admittedly artificial, is sincere and not unpleasing. Though the eyes are not those of a young man exactly, neither are they the eyes of an old man. How old is he, then? What year is this? Oh, yes, it’s 1964. He was born in 1933. This makes him—how old?—well, no matter. Adding and subtracting are for mathematicians. It is enough to live.

  Now the Appennino range spreads its arms and expands its chest, and the route descends through foothills into the valley of the Arno. In the distance appears Firenze, its domes rising rose-red above a golden mist. Bells ring continuously, it seems, as he walks through its streets, pausing only a few times to absorb the meanings in faces—especially the very young and the very old. Then, by nightfall he is beyond the city and going deeper into the Valdarno. The energy needed to resist the city’s distractions has tired him, and he rolls up in his blanket an hour after leaving it behind. He sleeps by a field of tomato plants. Their odor inebriates and pushes him into dreams. In the morning, he rises and shakes the dew from his blanket, shoulders his knapsack, and walks on.

  Day after day he walks, the weather growing fiercely hot at times, succeeded by overcast and rain. It is pleasant to drink from the sky. The rain cools his body and soothes his soul, at one point gently pushing him from the road onto a path that leads him into the hills. There he loses himself in a thicket of wild trees and thornbushes, a place where people seldom seem to go. In a shadowed glade, he comes upon a man-made pool that looks ancient, its stone blocks overgrown with moss and cracked by the roots of bushes. Though floating lilies are taking over, the water is spring-fed and clean. He removes his clothing and stands beneath an outpouring of the heavens, as if it were the first day of creation. He washes his clothing, scrubbing it with hand soap, holding it up for the rain to rinse, and then sloshing it in the pool. He wades in as a child would wade, laughing and splashing about. When the sun comes out again, he drapes his clothes on the surrounding bushes and sits shivering and exposed to the light until they are dry. Then it is time to move on.

  He is in Umbria now, with lovely hills rising to the left and the right. He passes roads that cross his path, leading off into the hills. At various junctions, there are signs with names he recognizes—Spoleto, Assisi, Rieti, Gubbio—places in stories that Fra Anto once told to the children of Rajska Polja. He would like to see Assisi, far up in the hills, but it would be impossible to enter the shrine of the saint. Perhaps he could go to Rieti, where St. Francis received the stigmata. No, that might hurt too much, to see it yet be unable to kneel and pray. Perhaps he could go to Gubbio, where the saint tamed a man-eating wolf. He stops and ponders these choices, trying to decide. In the end, he continues along the road toward Rome.