Josip grows accustomed to the feeling of a hot sweaty hand in his, connected to a powerful little body that is ever in search of escape. Let go of that hand, and the boy bolts for the pond (drowning), the street (crushing by automobile), or into crowds (kidnapping). Sometimes, with a grunt, Jason holds up both arms to Josip and makes a high whistling sound that means, “Pick me up; hold me!”
So, a lot of hugging is added to the cost (gift) or gift (cost). In the end, it becomes all a gift, and there is no sense of cost. He loves the little monkey. In Jason’s lack of rational language, there is an absence of lenses that separate him from those who love him. His soul recognizes and responds to love. He evokes love. Even dour, unemotive Gus-the-doorman has adopted the boy—in transit, because Jason always passes through the lobby without stopping, either lurching or staggering at the end of an adult hand. Without Gus, Jason long ago would have smashed through the glass at the front entrance. Regulars in the park recognize the boy now. The balloon man gives gifts, and the ice-cream lady as well. The pigeons maintain their caution. All in all, Jason has become a personage in the neighborhood. To some people he is a delight, to some a reminder of the fragility of human consciousness, and to others a scandal—dangerous because he wantonly destroys barriers. And for a few, Jason is a priceless gift—for precisely the same reason. If he accomplishes no other good deed in his life, he will on Judgment Day have to his credit the most important event that takes place in New York City that year:
Josip, hand in hand with him, walks into the fish market to place his usual order. Suddenly, Jason wriggles free from his grasp, gives a piercing cry of ecstatic joy, and then lurches behind the counter, throwing himself into the arms of the Serb-lady. Jumping up and down and crushing her ribs, he won’t let go. Astonished, preparing to fight, she looks down at this strange child who, without warning, has demolished her fortress walls and burst into her gloom. Then the tremendous event occurs: her face melts and she puts her arms around Jason and holds him tenderly.
There are times when Jason throws his arms around Josip’s chest and tries to crack his ribs, squealing with glee. Then Josip’s throat swells, and he must push memory away, because he feels in this closeness the absence of the child who is truly his, the one who died so many years ago.
Oh, my child, my child, my child, I did not come to you! I will never see your hidden face!
And Ariadne.
Ariadne, Ariadne, Ariadne—
On Palm Sunday, he is walking with Steve and Sally around the pond in Central Park South. The two older children have brought along the wooden sailboats their father made for them. Taking off their shoes and socks, they roll up their cuffs, jump in, and paddle around with exuberant faces, pushing the little vessels before them. There are other children pushing toy boats about the shallows, and others who possess remote-control devices that propel expensive sloops and yachts farther out. Josip does not quite approve of this electronic play. Something bothers him about it; something is detached that should not be detached. It is control amplified to the level of metaphorical loss. A child should get wet in the ocean, he should ride the deck of a ship or become the ship, if possible, but he should not drive it as if he were a dissociated god.
In any event, some children still play with toy boats in the old way. The McIsaacs stop to enjoy the scene while Josip walks on with Jason, intending to circle the pond. Jason is particularly gleeful today, not struggling to escape but dancing along on his tiptoes, making all his noises. Whenever he spots a flying pigeon, he raises his arms but does not cry, just laughs. They have just completed half the circumference when time seems to stop and an enormous stillness fills the world. Into this moment comes an awareness without words: this is the last time he will ever see Jason alive. He pushes away the sensation, certain that it is no more than subconscious worry. Time speeds up again, noise floods in, and he and the boy complete the circle.
About two o’clock in the morning, the phone rings beside his bed. It’s Sally’s panicked voice: “Josip, I’m so sorry to wake you. Can you come up and watch the kids? Jason’s gone into grand mal, and he’s not breathing right. We’ve got to get him to a hospital.”
“I’ll be there in a minute!”
Arriving at their floor, he races out of the elevator just as they are rushing into it with the boy limp in their arms. “Pray”, says Steve.
Josip and Caleb spend two days building the pine coffin, sanding it, varnishing it, and fixing brass handles to the sides. Coriander makes a thin mattress to go inside and sews a gold cloth to cover it. Then they take the coffin up in the elevator to the seventh floor. When the morgue delivers the body, Steve and Josip dress it in a suit and lay it in the coffin in the McIsaac’s living room. Jason is stretched out as if asleep. Josip has never before seen him resting, because the boy has been in a state of perpetual motion since the day they first met. Now he reposes with a dignity he never enjoyed in life, hands crossed, a rosary in his fingers, his blond hair combed neatly, and his face absolutely pure. There is a small smile on his lips. It is easy to see how magnificent he would have looked if he had not been given his crosses. As Josip prays before the body, he comes to understand that Jason was a magnificent human being.
Mrs. Franklin brings meals to the McIsaacs’ apartment, as do a few other people from their floor. Two days later there is the funeral. It is not an expensive one, because the family has so little money. Few people attend the Mass, and few cars follow behind the McIsaacs’ station wagon to the cemetery. After the priest says the final prayers, Josip and Caleb shovel the dirt onto the coffin. When that is done, everyone stands around, gazing down at the barren hump as if it were inexplicable, as if it were an island imprisoning the evidence of death. Josip kneels and with a finger traces a cross in the soil. A light rain begins to fall. A pigeon swoops low over the grave, then soars high.
Josip does not say a word of condolence throughout these days. He speaks with his actions, and his tears, whenever he is unable to contain them. Most of all he speaks through a poem he writes in the middle of the night, the day following the boy’s death. He looks everywhere downtown for a greeting card with a picture of a pigeon on it but cannot find one. Finally, in an artsy shop, he finds one with a bird picture—a photo of swallows lined up on a television aerial at sunset. It looks like lastavice on a cross.
He writes the following lines on the card and gives it to Steve and Sally:
SOUL BIRD
As you rise on the wings of grace,
Jason, you grow larger and larger in our hearts,
even as you disappear from our sight.
Smaller and smaller you seem to the eyes
as you reach the horizon
where the great Wounded Hands reach down
to receive you.
You carry us now, On-flyer,
as we carried you for too brief a time.
Go with joy, for we are with you
and you are with us.
Revolve the lens:
Temporarily housed in a two-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor are an elderly Russian man, his son, and the son’s wife. The latter two are in their late thirties and speak some English. The wife is depressed and bitterly ironic, the son is brooding and irritable, the old man is serene. Josip can never quite remember the names of the young couple, but the father is Sasha.
Josip meets them the day after they move in, when the son phones to complain about the condition of the apartment. He is angry about the lack of a fresh paint job, so Josip inspects it only to find that it is quite clean, though it smells strongly of cigarette smoke. The young ones are chain-smoking noxious Russian cigarettes. There are a few sticks of furniture, a mattress on the living room floor, a baby grand piano, and an easel with a half-completed canvas of a naked woman—semiabstract, surreal and hideous, without a tentacle of allure.
Josip explains that the apartment could not be painted in time for their arrival because the previous tenants had moved out the morning of the day they
moved in, and that the Immigration Service did not give the manager enough time to prepare properly.
This explanation does not satisfy the young couple. They give Josip a bad time, shouting and gesturing, using plenty of irrational argument and recrimination. He does not take offence, promises to see the manager, and says that hopefully wall-painters will be hired—would they mind living with the smell of fresh paint? They insist that they be given a special apartment on the penthouse floor while their own apartment is being cleaned. He explains that none is available. They threaten to protest to the government about how badly they are being treated. All the while their manner continues to be arrogant and demanding.
“I was once a refugee”, he tells them. They light cigarettes, and a look of boredom crosses their sullen faces.
The old man has listened to all of this without a word, and Josip supposes that he has understood none of it. He now says something in Russian, and the son interprets.
“My father would like to play for you. He is a pianist.”
The two young people go off to the kitchen to prepare food and drink for themselves, while the old man sits down at the piano. He smiles at Josip.
He begins to play. The piano is out of tune, but there is a masterly hand at the keyboard. The piece seems to be improvised, but it goes on and on. It is moody and semiromantic, with bleak existential lapses. As its themes unfold, Josip sits down on the floor with his back to the wall and listens. He closes his eyes and lets the music take him where it will. In his imagination, he sees snow fields and frozen lakes, wind blowing through taiga forests, and trees white with crystals. The score infuses a sense of struggle, fate, death, and regeneration.
The son and daughter-in-law bring their food and drink back to the living room and stand by the window, nibbling caviar on crackers and sipping from glasses of vodka. None is offered to Josip or the old man, who continues to play without interruption.
“There is no end”, laughs the woman sarcastically, after about twenty minutes more. The son barks at his father, the old man smiles self-deprecatingly and brings the performance to a close. Then he asks a question.
“He wants to know what you thought of it”, says the son.
“I felt winter in it”, says Josip. “I saw winter—and the longing for spring.”
The son translates. The old man gazes at Josip and nods.
“Yes, its title is ‘Winter’.”
Then the following exchange:
“I can see that you hear my music in your heart”, says the pianist.
Josip notes that the Russian word for heart is almost exactly the same as the Croatian—the Slavic roots.
“I think so, sir. Music speaks to the heart. It enters the soul through the heart.” (The word soul is also nearly identical.)
“Yes, it is so.”
“Music is a spiritual language that leaps across the oceans, through language barriers and cultural fortresses—from soul to soul.”
“Yes, yes, this is true.” (They make deep eye contact.)
Josip asks him a few questions, where are they from, how did they come to America, et cetera.
The son and daughter decline to translate. “You don’t need to know this”, says the son, suspiciously. “Who are you, anyway?”
“The janitor”, replies Josip. He adds a few little facts about his own life. They shrug and change the subject and still do not translate it to the father. Then they put on leather coats and boots, and leave.
The apartment is repainted that week, and afterward everyone seems improved in disposition. Two months later, the son stops Josip in the lobby and asks him to come up to the apartment to change a light bulb. Unless they are infirm, tenants change their own light bulbs, but Josip hasn’t seen the old pianist since their first meeting.
There he is again, improvising at the keyboard. Josip changes the light bulb. This time the son offers a glass of vodka. Josip thanks him but declines, he is on duty. But he is forced to sit down for five minutes to drink a cup of tea and eat some caviar on crackers. There are more possessions in the room now, costly new furniture, books in shelves and paintings on the walls, all semiabstract, surreal, hideous. The mattress remains on the floor, and now Josip notices with a skipped heartbeat that there is an unclothed woman lying on it, drowsing in half-sleep. She is not the son’s wife. Josip hastily averts his eyes.
“My model”, says the son, with a disgruntled toss of his head. “I pay her by the hour, so I can’t talk to you long.”
He swallows the last of his shot glass and picks up his brush. But this does not signal an end to the conversation. Thus, with averted eyes, Josip listens to the following story:
They are political refugees. The son was a professor at the Moscow Art Institute until five years ago, when he participated in a free exhibit in a city park—avant garde, antitotalitarian paintings. The State did not like it, and the KGB destroyed the exhibit. Several paintings were seized or ruined, some friends were arrested, and two committed suicide, though it might not have been suicide. He lost his job, and they began to starve. His father, who worked as a musician with the State Opera, took them into his little flat, and then they began a years-long effort to emigrate. The KGB dragged them in for questioning too many times for counting. There was no imprisonment, but much threatening. He is a nihilist, he declares, an antimoralist, because Marxism-Leninism is a moralistic system, and moralism must be resisted whenever and wherever it manifests itself. He hates all organized religion, and Communism, he believes, is a religion. Josip counters that it is a faith-system, a mythology, not a religion. This sets off another harangue.
During a lull in the monologue, as the son dabs purple splotches onto the canvas, Josip ventures disingenuously:
“How happy you must be now that you live in a free land.”
The painter drops his brush into a pot of turpentine, rubs his fatigued eyes, and fixes Josip with a look of pity.
“I hate this country”, he snarls.
“You hate it?” Josip asks, with some surprise.
“Yes, I hate it. In my country we were dying, my friends and I. We were starving and beaten and in prison, but we were alive. There they kill the body. Here they kill the soul.”
Soul? What does this avant-garde amoralist-nihilist mean by the word? He never has a chance to find out. Ten days later the Russians move out, and never again does he meet them.
Revolve the lens:
A weekend in autumn. He visits Winston and Miriam to celebrate Christiana’s third birthday. The family has moved from the university grounds to a little house (Cape Cod design, Miriam explains) at the edge of a woods. The road near their front door is well-traveled but is not busy during most of the day—only at off-to-work hours or home-from-work hours is there much traffic.
“Uncle Yosup!” the little girl cries, skipping down the stairs to the living room and throwing herself into his arms. “Did you bring me a present?”
“I brought you a present, Christiana, but you must wait until the party tonight to open it.”
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
“You are the most beautiful young lady in all of Connecticut.”
“I know. Daddy told me. Mommy says you’ll take me for a walk because Daddy’s sick in bed.”
Poor Winston waves to Josip from the couch, where he is lying under a blanket, watching a Jane Austen video, and suffering from the flu. He offers copious eloquent laments for ruining Christiana’s party and pleads with Josip to save this disastrous situation by taking her and Miriam for a walk in the woods. So, while Winston naps, Miriam reverses their Volvo out of the garage, and they drive over to the university chapel for Mass. Afterward they go north into wooded hill country, park on a side road, and step into glory. The trees have changed color now and are a riot of red and gold, and many shades of orange. They breathe the feral scent of dying leaves, plowed fields and haymows, the damp humus of the forest floor, and deer droppings and quail spoor scattered on the narrow path they fol
low through the trees. They are hiking toward a little river that Miriam knows, about half a mile from the road, a place where the water is absolutely clear, flowing down from a high hill. You can climb the hill, she says, and from the top you can see the world stretching away into infinity in every direction.
The girl trots ahead but stays in sight. As they stroll along behind her, Miriam describes what she has been reading lately—St. Augustine’s teachings about word and sign. As Josip listens, he grows more and more excited because it is what he has been learning about language and poetics throughout his life—learning the hard way through blessings and blows, as well as through intuition and observation. Augustine’s great mind articulated it all fifteen or sixteen hundred years ago!
Josip launches one of his forays into loquaciousness.
“Miriam, Miriam,” he exclaims, “do you understand what this means!?”
“I think I do, Josip.”
“It means that the world is radiant with signs. Heaven is pouring out continual messages, but we can hardly read them, you see, because we are blind and deaf and do not know who we really are. The signs in the earth, inanimate and organic, living and dead, are not divine in themselves, but they are creations of the divine, and this sense is being lost because we—”
He pauses to catch his breath.
“Lost, Josip? Perhaps mankind has never really found it?”
“Some have found it. Some—the great saints like Sveti Franjo—Saint Francis of Assisi.”
“And John of the Cross”, she adds with a smile, enjoying her guest’s intense expressiveness, which in her experience of him is a rare outburst.
“Yes, and the great poets too!” Josip goes on. “And when a saint is also a poet, we have an amplification of the power of language.”
“And if a poet is also a saint?”
“The same, but a true saint is first and foremost alter Christus, a kind of Christ living among us. He is never first and foremost a poet who happens to be a saint.”
Island of The World Page 58