Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  He is an unassuming man, in his mid-sixties, of moderate frame but unusually tall, his height mediated a little by the stoop of age. His appearance, though clean and groomed, is not one of style or opulence. He performs his work in the building fastidiously, and no resident other than myself knows of his stature in the world of letters. There is nothing to distinguish him from the hundreds of thousands of other immigrants who live in the surrounding streets.

  Upon the hall-side of the door to his one-room basement apartment there hangs a shield: the red and white checkered crest of his homeland, and above it a simple sign in English: Custodian. One enters his residence as if through a looking glass, penetrating a world of memory and artifact, though the latter is scant and the former largely invisible, revealed slowly, over many years, in conversation. For Marulić, objects are words and words are objects, though they are primarily so in the sense of objets d’art. Even this must be qualified, for in Marulić’s mind art is never static. He speaks of words (with words) as living beings, not dead letters, not even true dead letters. Language should be, he says, as fluid as love and as stable as marriage.

  The interior of Marulić’s room is spartan. There is a cot, a dresser, a hot plate for his beloved coffee, a small refrigerator, and a desk and chair. The single window looks out upon the brick wall of a neighboring tenement. There is no radio or television, no desktop computer, no satellite dish at the window. A black dial-telephone sits on the floor beside the bed, though it appears little used, considering the dust on it. Such a room is, I would guess, like many a janitor’s room throughout this great city, with the differences that there is a manual typewriter on the desk and the walls are lined with books. The books are in several foreign languages. They appear to be, for the most part, literary and historical works. The room contains, with one exception, no other distinguishing features. The exception is simple and, like its owner, inexplicable: above the desk hangs a fine intaglio print of a bird. It is, I think, a swallow in flight.

  Who is he, then? For me, the answer is to be found only in the collage of my memories of him. For example, as a boy I once stood beside him at a fish market and observed him transforming the mundane act of buying a piece of cod into a mysterious experience of communion between himself and an irritable old woman who held a cleaver in her hands above a bloodstained chopping block. He spoke to her with his eyes, with his tone, and with a slight bow of the upper body that reawoke her respect for her inherent dignity and her lost charms. In the end, she smiled. Later, as a youth, I observed him playing tortuous games of checkers for hours in the park with a mentally deficient octogenarian, with whom he shared no common language—no spoken language, that is. Fast forward a few years to a press conference launching my first book of poetry. Josip Marulić was present that evening as my guest. By then, I knew that he was the great poet and I no more than a “promising” young amateur. Yet he beamed throughout the event like a child at a surprise party. Indeed, for him, life is always an unending series of surprises, at one moment grievous, the next brimming with delight.

  Toward the end of this party, however, the smiles died on his face when an aggressive academic of great renown, having been informed that my guest wrote poetry, launched into a condescending, facile disquisition on classicism, the demise of which the speaker roundly approved. With several deft strokes of his Herzegovinian saber, Marulić demolished the glib assumptions. However, it is to his credit that no one in the room could have taken his ripostes for insults, so gentle was the tone my friend used, so quiet was his voice. Yet with what compelling clarity, what intransigent authority did he press his points home—an authority that needed nothing more to underline its rights than the power of truth. The personage departed shortly after.

  Though Marulić is an even-tempered and whimsical man, he can be roused to intemperate emotion by two things, as far as I know, though I admit that the existential spectrum of the New World is not quite the same as that of the Old World, especially his portion of that world. Even so, I have learned that he is capable of unruly passion. One need only speak of the pace of modern life to provoke a furrowing of brow, a tightening of mouth, or a cast of the eyes that is both ironic and angry. The second thing that provokes him is the false assumption, held by most people, that they have a right to know about the most intimate details of other people’s lives. He calls this tendency “chthonic”. It is a measure of the man that he is at ease with such terms but can be confused over the various meanings of the word bar.

  The translations from the original Croatian language are by Marulić himself. My adjustments to the text were sparing, employed only when the author used a nuanced English term that clearly meant something other than his intention. It is, of course, a dangerous exercise to presume upon a poet’s intention. However, certain word choices were obviously the casualties of a second language learned in part through literature and through the lesser, though by no means insignificant, element of street lexicon. In other words, slang. But this is no street poet. He is a poet in the classical sense.

  Considering the extraordinary quality of his writing, and his long and not undramatic personal history, I felt it important to piece together what Marulić said would be, in his ironic phrase, “a volume of vast insignificance”, that is, a provisional biography. From the stories he told me about his past, I compiled a brief “Life”, which was to have been the preface to the poems. Before going to press, however, and having read the preface, he insisted on the deletion of any significant biographical data. He maintained that while such matters are important “for the soul” of a man, the understanding to be gained from them is for the man himself, and not for anyone who, from idle interest or “more perilous curiositas”, as he called it, presumes to enter into the realm of another’s private memory. Thus, all glimpses into the interior come through the poems themselves. Josip Marulić is, to the end, the custodian.

  Caleb Franklin, Jr., Ph.D.

  Professor of Literature, Columbia University

  Looking up, Josip smiles, reaches over, and ruffles Caleb’s unruffleable springy hair as he once did when the doctor was a street rat. Caleb grins, leans forward, and ruffles the absent hair on the dome of the old man’s head, as he has never, until now, dared to do.

  They both laugh, say no more, and call it a night.

  The folios of exultation fill quickly. There are reviews in major papers but always on the back pages of the weekend book section. The review by Caleb is a big help and draws attention that The Seraph would not have otherwise received. Josip’s old adversary, the literary critic who once lived in his apartment building, also writes a review. Devastating. It may be that she does not know the identity of the poet, does not connect his name to a scruffy fellow who defends pigeons from unpleasant cats. Even so, she has scented blood and uses all her weapons to kill her prey.

  Josip reads her critique, winces a little, then wraps fish heads in it and takes it out to the dumpster. His book is a three-day wonder that is quickly forgotten, for there is an unending supply of writers in this land. Fifty thousand new titles a year are published in English, Caleb informs him, just to set the record straight, just to keep things in perspective.

  In any event, the seraph is now out there in the world. It may be that someone reads it with interest. Perhaps lives are expanded or encouraged or instructed.

  “What can I teach anyone?” Josip asks in a low moment—a rhetorical question. Unfortunately, this little groan is overheard by Caleb, and the young African-American laureate replies with a fiendishly eloquent and somewhat lugubrious rebuke. Josip is suitably chastened. Let God, then, deal with his pride. Humans are unreliable, in praise and condemnation alike.

  Perhaps out there in the world wherever poems are still read, there is a child who would stare at him obliquely if they happened to meet, yet who is like Josip as he once was, walking along the shore of a Bosnian river in the predawn light, testing his damaged soul against the insurmountable. Does he plunge in and learn to sw
im against the current at the command of an inner voice, or in response to messages delivered by unlikely prophets, or impelled solely by the exigencies of youth? And does he, in winter, roam the heights, dreaming before the vast fields of heaven and hell, a child extremely sensitive to the metaphysical impressions provided by natural phenomena? Is there one such child in each station of the human dream? Filled with inarticulate longings, indifferent to the ordinary dreams of warriors and drawn beyond them to less visible conflicts, the existence of which he can only dimly apprehend? And is there a confraternity of these few, scattered like seed throughout all nations, ensuring the preservation of man’s diversity?

  Perhaps it is so. Perhaps not. He will hope for it nonetheless.

  The following year, more of his selected poems are published in English, under the title Beelzebub in Brooklyn. He wanted it to be titled Moloch in Manhattan, but his publisher felt that this was too “political”. Caleb writes a review. The sales are not so great. On the other hand, the Vienna publisher puts together a Croatian language collection of his later poems under the title Loss. This is republished shortly thereafter by a Croatian firm in Split, along with two other volumes of his poetry, The Island and In the Homeland of the Soul.

  There is a distressing event that he is forced to attend. The Seraph of Sarajevo is nominated for the National Book Award in the poetry category. Josip is certain that dear political Caleb is behind this, though he denies it. The banquet, held in a big hotel ballroom in Manhattan, is an ordeal. He feels throughout that he has become what he has so often anticipated—the hideous ornament at a feast of beauty, the gargoyle in the garden. He does not win, thank heavens. Caleb is crestfallen.

  It is all quite amazing and still quite unreal. He asks himself: Who, really, is this man Josip Lasta—or Josip Marulić—who writes those poems?

  38

  Josip swings his legs over the side of the bed and yawns.

  Oh, look, I am still old. I have not grown younger during my dreams.

  When you are this old, you need a few minutes to orient yourself, you rock a little, gather momentum like a boy on a swing preparing to fly, back and forth, higher and higher—Now! Let go of the chains, slide from the seat, and weee! you are airborne!

  Ho-ho, he yawns again, rubbing his eyes. Get up, now, Josip, make the coffee. Check out the window. Oh, too bad, a gray day. Low pressure, sluggishness, and a little tug toward depression. Not a big problem, just something to push against.

  His bathtub guest is sloshing vigorously, aware that the host is awake. It’s a trout, 4.5 kilos. A trout with lampreys attached to the gills. Josip hates lampreys. They look like what they are. Caleb will drop by later in the morning to help cut up the fish. With his terrible cigarettes he will burn away the lampreys, drop them down the toilet—flush! Lampreys are like devils. They quietly attach themselves to the life forces and slowly suck away vitality. Poor fish.

  The phone rings. He looks at it. He should get rid of it. It is covered with dust. Sighing he picks up the receiver, yawns Good morning into it, scratching his bare legs as he listens.

  It is Winston on the line with news. I thought you’d like to know, he says, thought I should call you since you hardly ever read newspapers.

  Josip nods, closes his eyes, says Thank you, places the receiver on the hook, bends over, and puts his face into his hands.

  Winston has told him that New York’s Croatian community is in mourning. Remember that concert in support of Croatian independence about ten years ago? The wonderful violinist? Her funeral will be at such-and-such an hour on such-and-such a day at the cathedral.

  Hundreds of people attend the funeral Mass. The cathedral can seat thousands, so it does not seem full. The replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà is three times larger than the original, on which Josip once meditated in St. Peter’s. He prays before it while waiting for the Mass to begin, prays for Ariadne’s soul, recalls Miriam and the dying stag which in his memory has been transformed into a white one. Then he finds a quiet place at the back, and a few minutes later the coffin is brought in as the bells in the tower ring and the choir sings a Mozart requiem.

  A bishop and nine priests concelebrate. The choir sings traditional Latin and Croatian hymns. There are a lot of weeping people here. Josip sits alone in his pew, not weeping, solemn and still. He goes forward in a long line to receive Communion, and as he passes the coffin in the center aisle, he touches his hand to the top for a few seconds then steps forward and opens his mouth for the sweet fire.

  As the coffin is taken out in procession, he stands. He is aware that it is followed by a crowd of family and friends but he does not look closely. The husband goes past, a dignified man in his late sixties, a stricken man, Mr. Finntree. Out on the steps and sidewalks of Madison Avenue, most of the mourners wait while hearse and limousines drive away with their passengers. It is a chilly day, everyone blowing frosty breath as if exhaling soul. Josip would like to go to the cemetery, wherever that may be, but does not know how he can do it. A woman standing beside him turns and says, “Did you know Mrs. Finntree?”

  “Yes”, Josip nods.

  “So did I”, the woman breaks down crying, covering her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “I am sorry for your loss”, whispers Josip.

  “We played together for years in the symphony”, says the woman. “I was cello, Ari was violin.” She pauses and glances at Josip’s poor overcoat.

  “Did you know her well?”

  Josip nods again.

  “Are you going to Calvary?”

  He stares at her dumbly.

  “Calvary Cemetery in Woodside.”

  “I had hoped . . . But I do not have transportation.”

  “Oh”, she says. “Well, why don’t you come with us? My husband is just bringing the car around.”

  “I would be grateful.”

  At the graveside he stands at the back of the crowd. He can see nothing, knows no one. She was greatly loved by so many people—many, many. It is like other funerals he has attended, the body is mortal and must return to the soil, both the good and the bad lives, the good and the bad deaths. Red stars sucking blood above the cenotaphs of killers, or crucifixes planted in the garden of discarded infants. It is not possible to speak now. He is blinded, stares at his shoes, remembers, remembers.

  I feel certain, my Josip, that ours will be a tale with only joy in it.

  He waits until more people leave, only a dozen or so remain. Who are they? He does not know them, yet they grieve.

  Finally, he is able to kneel beside the heap of soil, which is completely covered with flowers, flowers in winter under falling snow. With his right hand, he clears away a few blooms and places his palm on the cold soil. He closes his eyes and sees her face, he senses her love, as he has countless times since he lost her. Still, he cannot weep. The world is simply empty, like the silence after the end of a story.

  He stands and brushes the slush from his knees.

  “We can take you there”, says the cello lady.

  He nods without thinking, without really knowing what she means, knowing only that he needs to return to the city and to his room. They drive silently across the Williamsburg bridge into lower Manhattan. He pays no attention to where the car is taking him. Soon they turn off a main avenue onto a side street in Greenwich Village, full of stately town houses, three and four stories high. They park, and Josip gets out. Now he realizes that they have not dropped him at the cathedral, where he had assumed they were going. He had intended to walk from there back to 52nd Street. The woman and her husband tell him something, but he cannot quite hear them. He follows them because that is where his feet take him, perhaps to a reception of some kind. He can spend a moment or two there and then leave without being noticed.

  They climb the steps of an old brownstone house, where dozens of people are standing and talking on the wide porch, while others are going inside or coming out. He follows the cello lady into the entrance foyer. On a table near the door ar
e a violin and bow; beside it is a guest book; beside this is a framed photograph of Ariadne, about forty years old; beside her is a younger Mr. Finntree and five children. All very beautiful children, three girls and two boys. Two of the girls resemble Ariadne, the boys their father.

  At the end of the crowded hallway, they enter a large living room filled with antique furniture and paintings, and people, and tables full of food and drink. The noise of conversation makes it hard for anyone to be heard, and the volume increases. From somewhere comes the sound of a Paganini violin concerto.

  Mr. Finntree and his children are standing in a line receiving visitors. The children seem to be in their thirties and forties—yes, there are five of them alongside their father, all red-eyed, letting their tears flow, embracing newcomers or holding hands with all these people whom Josip does not know, these many who knew Ariadne so well. He remembers to remove his cap, holding it in his hands, uncertain about what to do. He does not want to meet her family. Quietly he moves out of the line, turns away, and retraces his steps down the hallway. But there is congestion of new arrivals at the door, people hugging each other, blocking his exit. He steps into a side room off the hall, intending to remain there for a few moments, alone, to remember her. When the entrance clears, he will leave without being noticed.

  The room is a woman’s small study. It has a scroll-top desk, a music stand, impressionist paintings, and shelves of books with Croatian and English titles. A crucifix hangs above a small marble fireplace, and on the mantel beneath the cross is a carving of some kind. He looks closer. It is a wooden swallow. Beside it is a smooth white stone, the size of a dove’s egg.

  He is staring at it, wordless, when a voice interrupts.

  “Hello.”

  He turns to find a woman in her early forties gazing at him curiously.

  “I—I was just leaving”, he murmurs. “I am sorry to intrude in this room. The hall was crowded.”