Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “Aren’t you making a false distinction, Josip? If man is not a collection of components, his poetry will always be the language of his love for Christ, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, of course,” Josip nods, “I said it badly. But, Miriam, is it not wonderful! Is it not splendid! We live and move and have our being within a vast masterpiece. Nature itself is speaking or, rather, God is speaking through nature—”

  “Yes, everything speaks because it is given by the Creator of all things.”

  “His hand is upon it all, the damaged and the undamaged. We must learn to see the original intention even in the damaged.”

  As they continue to follow the path deeper into the woods, the mother keeps an eye on her daughter, but Josip is staring simultaneously inward and upward, and also connecting to the colors blazing all around him. “We are so blind, so blind!” he groans, flailing his arms for emphasis, his face flushing, his voice intense with the excitement of this new discovery. “It’s as if heaven is raining miracles upon us, but we cannot see because we do not look. It’s as if fabulous birds fall unceasingly from the skies!”

  “Peacocks and ostriches?” she laughs.

  “No, no, I mean fabulous because they exist—fabulous birds are—”

  At the very moment when he flings out his right arm and says fabulous birds, a flash of blue catches his eye at the end of his hand. Halting abruptly, he gazes along his arm, off the springboard of his hand, and sees the stroke of blue lying in a pile of red leaves. He drops his arms and goes to it, kneeling down to find out what it is. It’s a bird. A very little bird that is unfamiliar to him. Miriam kneels beside him as he picks it up in his hand and lets it rest there, as if it were sleeping. It is warm, it has died only a moment before.

  “An Indigo Bunting”, whispers Miriam. “I’ve never seen one before, never this close, I mean.”

  Christiana has come running back and is playing in the leaves nearby, singing to herself.

  The bird’s apparently insignificant form is so elegant, so perfectly shaped for the wind, its form and function so integrated, that the genius of whoever sculpted it is beyond question. Moreover, its feathers are a rare kind of iridescent blue, falling from the light turquoise of the head to the dark indigo tail in a perfect gradation through that part of the spectrum, without any discernible transition zones of shade or tone.

  “Who designed this little masterpiece?” says Miriam shaking her head in wonder.

  Josip lays its body on the ground and covers it with leaves.

  “And so death entered the world”, Miriam whispers. They walk on, and for a while can say nothing.

  As she promised, the river is pristine. Josip, Miriam, and Christiana bend over a miniature waterfall and drink from it. When they are refreshed, the little girl looks upstream and startles. She tugs on her mother’s arm, pointing. Before them stands an antlered deer, drinking from the same side of the river. It lifts its head and bolts away into the trees.

  They cross on stepping-stones and then climb through red maples to the hill beyond. From the top, the view opens up in all directions, and it takes a stretch of the imagination to believe that human habitations, villages, towns, and cities are really there among the rolling hills. They rest awhile, then go back down, and make their way home.

  That night, after the party and prayers and bedtime for Christiana, the three adults sit around the living room and engage in a long discussion about symbology. Winston, ever the master of didactics, even when he is sick, gives the history of the symbols of Christ drawn from nature: the fish and white hart, the kingfisher and pelican. Near midnight, he returns to the subject of the stag—particularly in relation to Charlemagne, St. Hubert, St. Felix, and others—arguing that this is the paramount symbol—a dying stag with blood pouring from its wounded breast, the fountain filling a chalice.

  Miriam insists that the sick man must come upstairs to bed now, and Josip yawns and lies down on the pull-out couch in the room off the entrance hall. He drifts into sleep composing a little poem about the indigo bird and another about a white hart, the words blurring together until he is snoring.

  Bang-bang-bang! He sits bolt upright, his heart hammering hard. The bedside clock reads six A.M. Dawn is near. He throws on his bathrobe and goes out into the front hall to see what is causing the noise, just as Miriam comes trotting barefoot down the staircase in her nightgown. She opens the door, and there on the steps is a weeping woman.

  The woman stammers the explanation: she was driving to work, has just hit a deer; too heavy for her to drag off the road, and she’s late for work. Would they do it . . . ?

  Miriam agrees and, without putting on a coat or shoes, follows the woman at a trot back to the road. Josip feels self-conscious in a bathrobe and returns to the guest room, where he dresses himself as quickly as he can. Arriving at the roadside a few minutes later, he beholds a wondrous sight:

  Miriam is sitting on the yellow centerline, cradling the head of an antlered stag in her arms. Its brown eyes are blinking, its massive chest heaving sporadically. There is no blood, but there must be internal injuries. Cars are backing up, their horns honking, brakes screeching, and engines roaring, as drivers swerve to go around the woman sitting in their path. A few even shake their fists.

  “Miriam, we must pull the animal from the road. It could cause an accident.”

  She holds up a hand and silences him.

  “Give us a minute. He is dying.”

  She rocks the hart’s head against her chest, its antlers splayed like tree branches across her shoulder, and strokes its forehead and nose, singing softly. It closes its eyes, and then its chest falls into stillness.

  “Now”, she whispers. Together they drag the body to the side of the road. The traffic roars, honks, and flows on.

  Later, Miriam phones some people at a farm down the road, and a man and his son come by and take the body away in their pickup truck.

  When Winston stirs from his sleep around noon, they tell him the story. He finds it improbable. Surely his wife and friend are joking, or perhaps they are being metaphorical, building upon the discussion they had last night. They shake their heads no; it happened.

  “What are the statistical odds?” Winston frowns, with eyebrows raised high. “Who will believe that we fell asleep speaking of a dying stag and woke up with a dying stag in our arms?”

  “Do such things often happen here?” asks Josip.

  “Oh, yes”, says Winston dryly. “Deer die in our arms every day.”

  Revolve the lens:

  Caleb is about to graduate from his high school. Although Harlem can be a dangerous neighborhood, Josip walks all the way from his apartment to the school without anyone bothering him. More and more of the people on the streets are black as he proceeds north through Manhattan. Almost everyone is black as he reaches Harlem, and when he climbs the front staircase into the high school he realizes he is the only white person to be seen in any direction. He is being watched by many eyes.

  Doubtless people are noticing that he wears an ill-fitting suit, which he bought at the St. Vincent de Paul Society thrift store. They also see the bouquet of roses he carries in his hands—a gift for Mrs. Franklin. He finds a place in the back row of the school’s auditorium, which is already packed with people. He does stick out dramatically—his color (or lack thereof) and also the scars all over the top of his head, his baldness too. His tallness is not what draws their eyes, he is sure, because several very tall men have likewise chosen to sit in the back rows, in order not to block other people’s view of the stage. He wishes his appearance were better than it is, but that’s life. You grow old. The flaws gain on the pleasanter parts then overtake them, and then become the new regime, ruling everything. Well, not everything, he smiles to himself, for there is the interior country, where you are always young.

  Coriander comes trotting up the aisle, spots him in the crowd, and bustles over. She looks tremendously fine this evening, with her hair spun high in a beehive
, her pearl earrings and necklace, and her shiny blue silk dress with matching high-heeled shoes. Her poor waist is put to the test by the shoes because they make it hard for her to walk upright—she is a bold parenthesis when seen from the side, but the glow in her eyes won’t let anyone notice the gait for more than a second.

  She scolds Josip for hiding himself away in the back, cocking her head and wagging her finger at him, making the people beside him laugh and slap their knees. Then she takes him by the hand, drags him from his chair, and pulls him down the center aisle to one of the rows nearer the front, where the family has been saving a place for him.

  “Y’ set down heah, Yo-sep. I don’ wone no moah nonsense from the lahks o’ yoo. You’s fambly, an’ I ain’t gon’ take no ahgamint ‘bad it!”

  It takes a moment for him to interpret her black dialect:

  You sit down here, Josip. I don’t want no more nonsense from the likes of you. You is family, and I ain’t gonna take no argument about it!

  “Tenk yoo sooo mutch, Corrhi-anterr. Yoo honorre mee—an honorre I to not tesserf.”

  It takes her a moment to translate his Slavic dialect:

  Thank you so much, Coriander. You honor me—an honor I do not deserve.

  She grins and gives him a little kiss on his forehead, then pushes him into his seat.

  Caleb is visible in the rows of graduates immediately before the stage, dozens of young people in caps and gowns. He is a head taller and a fair bit older than the others. He is twenty-two years old now, a late bloomer. But the confident tilt of his head and the squared shoulders proclaim a personal victory over his years of failure. Sitting in the Franklin family row are several elderly women who nod and smile a welcome to Josip; they too are wearing their best dresses and jewelry. Also attached are a couple of old gentlemen with canes and a young man in military uniform, as well as Coriander’s other children, three teenage girls. Everyone is dressed like a Broadway star, and Josip feels very shabby by comparison.

  The purple stage-curtains part, revealing a brass band in red uniforms and gold braid. When they strike up “The Star-spangled Banner”, all in the crowd stand, put hands over their hearts, and sing with gusto.

  To make a long story—longer—Caleb graduates with honors. He has the highest marks in his class, and he has won a scholarship to NYU. The crowd erupts in cheers when the news is announced. Josip is sure that Caleb has blushed. In any event the boy’s eyes are blinking rapidly, and he is shaking a lot of hands up there in public, looking nervous and dignified all at once. How will he handle all that success?

  Afterward there is a big party at the Franklins’ apartment a few blocks away, just off Frederick Douglas Boulevard. This is the first time Josip has been invited to their home. It is a three-bedroom apartment with a balcony and a view over treetops and rooftops to the northernmost end of Central Park, which is about eight blocks south. If you squint your eyes, it looks like a decent section of the city. Inside, the rooms are packed with friends and family and people from their church—everyone drinking coffee and tea or fruit juice and eating cakes and cookies and candy from dishes spread out on every available tabletop. Plenty of Gospel scenes are arrayed on the walls: an Anglo Jesus with bright blue eyes, a Semitic Jesus in Gethsemane, and a Black Jesus holding little children on his lap. Bibles and hymn books, red lampshades dangling with glass crystals, an imitation Persian rug, and a bright yellow sofa with matching chairs surrounding the large television set, which Coriander insists will remain off—“O.F.F.!” she shouts at one of the younger girls, who switches it on because she is sure that her brother winning the scholarship will be announced on the national news. Off it goes, and the hum of conversation grows louder. Though the decor is not to Josip’s taste, the people surely are. And if the visuals and audios are disorienting, overwhelming him at first, he soon senses a strong peace in the place, a wholesome spirit, that makes him feel completely at home within minutes.

  Finding an empty chair in a corner of the living room, Josip sits down quietly. He feels shy and does not want to force these good people into a position of having to make conversation with a person who is really not from their culture. This is an evening for warm-hearted celebration, not for social strain. He himself feels no strain, but it is quite possible that some of the people here tonight might be uneasy around him. When Caleb sweeps into the living room with his arm linked in his mother’s, Josip grins and applauds like everyone else, though he does not want to push himself forward. The graduate is surrounded by his people, thumping him on the back and shouting advice and congratulations into his ears. Then there comes a moment when, in the midst of all this tumult, his eyes grow completely still for a few seconds and swivel unerringly in Josip’s direction. The eyes flicker a message: I see you. Yes, here we are. A small smile flashes before he resumes his interaction with the others.

  Josip sits down, just soaking it in.

  An elderly woman is seated next to him on a couch, and beside her are three other elderly women. The one closest to him seems to be asleep. She looks rather frail, tiny and very black, with white hair freshly arranged by a beauty parlor. Pink dress, pink shoes, pink pearls, a big red cross on a gold chain. Her hands are long, with fingers as thin as slender shoots and very wrinkled, roped with purple veins. Her nails are un-painted. These are hands that have toiled and suffered. How many lives have passed through these hands? Is she Coriander’s mother or grandmother? Was she once a slave?

  He is still staring at these phenomenal hands when one of them reaches for him. The right hand gently covers his and enfolds it. It is cool, trembling a little yet holding him with a certain firmness. He does not withdraw his own.

  “Oh, yes”, says the old woman in a quavering voice. Josip looks up to see that she is gazing at him with huge watery eyes. “Oh, yes, oh, yes, I know that my Lord is good, for I see what he has done here.” Heah.

  “How do you do, Madame”, says Josip. “I am Josip Lasta, a friend of Caleb’s and Mrs. Franklin.”

  “Hello, Josip; I am Cori’s gramma. Mah name’s Naomi Johnson. It’s so nice to see you.”

  So, they sit there and hold hands. Perhaps people notice, perhaps not. In any event, it feels very good, and Josip is content for it to go on.

  “You know,” says the old woman, “I look in your eyes, and I see right into your soul.” She nods and nods. “And I see what the Lord has done in you.”

  Josip is somewhat uneasy about North American soul-readers. On the whole, they tend to be imaginative, and a few are manipulative.

  “It is a small, poor soul, Madame.”

  “Oh, Josip, all our souls are small poor ones, don’tcha know.”

  “Yes,” he nods, “I think it is true.”

  “It true, boy. It true. But he is so good. He is sure lovin’ us all the time. An’ we hardly knows it.”

  “Where are you from, Madame?” he asks, thinking it best to make friendly conversation. “It seems to me that your accent is not from New York.”

  She chuckles. “I’ll tell you later where I’s from. That’s not why we been brought together—no, not at all why. Now I has a message for you, Josip.” She leans closer, serious again, nodding and nodding. “I’s lookin’ into your heart, and I sees a whole lot of things there that move my heart.”

  There is not much one can reply to such a statement, so he says nothing, just keeps holding her hand and looking back into her eyes.

  “No, I waren’t no slave, but my momma was when she was a li’l’ gal, before Abraham Lincoln. Now I am ninety-three years old, and I been livin’ in freedom all mah life. I voted for the first time when I was already a ol’ woman, back in 1964, and that was some experience, but it don’t make for freedom, I try to tell these younger folk—no, that ain’t what freedom is all about.”

  “What makes for freedom?” he asks.

  “You already knows what makes for freedom, Josip. I see right into your heart, and there it is within you, it was just a-waitin’ for me to look at it, an
d I didn’ need t’ say a word to put it there.”

  Now he feels perplexed. What is she saying?

  “I sees that you have come up from slavery. I sees you beaten on the threshin floor. You was broken under the wheel of the devil, but he could not break you entirely for the hand o’ the restrainer was a-holdin’ him back. And that is how you come to be here.”

  “You see many things rightly, Madame”, Josip says. “How is it that you see these things?”

  “Oh, I don’ see with my poor ol’ eyes and my poor ol’ head which is full enough o’ stuff an’ nonsense, like most people’s. I see with the spirit, and what he show me now is something else. It is something big, Josip. It don’t look big in your own eyes, because you’s inside yo’self, and that’s the way with us human bein’s, seein’ the outside for the inside.”

  “Yes, that is a very bad habit of human beings”, Josip murmurs with a nod.

  Naomi chuckles, her little voice and little body shaking. “I tells Coriander that too, and she got no objections to it. But it one fine thing to hear it from a boy like you.”

  Boy? The term is quaint and culturally interesting; he is familiar with its inherent social-historical problems. But he is not offended.

  “You is a runnin’ boy, I know.” She looks down at the floor for a moment, whispering, “I know, I know, I know—” She squeezes his hand; a tear spills down her cheek. “Sometimes you was a walkin’ man, and sometimes you was a runnin’ boy, and I’m called to tell you, Josip, that all your walkin’ ain’t over. You gonna walk many a mile before you go on up to glory. You gonna get older and older and when you is as old as you can stand it, you is gonna become a child!”

  Now he is not only perplexed, but somewhat disturbed. It seems that sound and time are decreasing steadily until they are alone in a room where the voices of angels become plausible.

  “You is gonna take the hand of a little child, and he is gonna run with you. And no longer will you call yourself abandoned, Josip, no longer is you gonna put your head under your wing like a dying swallow—you’s gonna fly”