Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “That’s all right”, says the woman, still gazing at him, not unfriendly, not suspicious, but plainly interested. “Did you really want to go so soon? I saw you come in; then you left so quickly. Maybe you’d like to say a few words to Dad.”

  He shakes his head, glances at the floor. “Thank you, no.”

  “Did you know my mother?”

  Josip nods.

  She offers her hand. “I’m Maria Finntree”, she says with a sorrowful smile. He shakes her hand, feeling helpless and confused. “Please feel free to stay awhile. I should go greet the other guests.”

  “Thank you.”

  She turns away then pauses, looking back at him.

  “Where do you know my mother from?”

  He cannot answer. He looks away. He hopes she will leave so he can go out the front door before he is completely blinded, down the steps unseen, away.

  She steps toward him, searches his eyes. For a moment the two of them remain without moving or speaking. Then her eyes begin blinking rapidly, and she glances at the swallow.

  O memory, how blithely we discard you, for you baffle us endlessly, and we cannot endure the confusion, the doubts engendered by our loss. Forgetting, forgetting the severance that connects, losing the possibility of reunion and completion. We are unable to keep vigil under the cross, and even less are we willing to be nailed to it.

  Maria is still standing there, looking at him, her mouth opening a little. She does not let go of his hand. A handsome woman with dyed hair, reddish sable, tastefully cut with spears over her brow, so much like her grandmother’s brow, a woman of Rajska Polja. A fine black dress, miniature white pearls at her neck. A wedding ring on her hand. She has her mother’s eyes, but her face is Lasta.

  Each time she tries to speak, she chokes. He, the same. They sit down on a sofa. Still, she will not let him go.

  “Marija”, he whispers and begins to cry. She puts her arms around him.

  “My father”, she breathes. “O my father, my father, my father.”

  Draw the veil over this. Let it rest. Weep if you must, laugh if you must—but remember that laughter should enfold all weeping.

  Now he falls asleep each night, feeling grief and joy as one thing—a sun in the breast. There is much that he replays in his mind. The meeting with Ariadne’s husband, the man she wed nearly forty years ago. A man who married a refugee and adopted an orphaned daughter as his own. A refined man, successful in the world, yet somehow a faithful believer too. Now devastated by his loss, he cannot really focus on what it means, this return of the original husband. His children are interested, even fascinated for a while, but it is Maria (Marija) who truly understands. She absorbs it, lives it, and begins rebuilding the severed connection. The husband is not really capable of participating in the process, though he makes a good effort during the single meal they share at the family home.

  Marija is older than Ariadne was when she and Josip were last together in the palace by the sea. Sadly, Marija is separated from her husband and has returned to her family name—that is, Finntree. Her only child, Ryan Collins, is studying architecture at Princeton. She hopes to connect him to his natural grandfather when he is next home.

  A month passes, then two months go by, and more blanks are filled in. There are meals at restaurants, a slightly embarrassing visit to Josip’s basement room, the fish he neglected to remove from the bathtub.

  One Sunday, while Josip is visiting Marija at her apartment, Ryan blows in unexpectedly. He is unusually tall for nineteen years old, wears trendy clothing, and drives a sports car of his own. His blond hair is in short spikes. He is distracted in his manner, mostly worried that the resurrected bio-grandfather could pose a threat to his mother’s equilibrium or identity. None of this is spoken, but it is in his eyes. He does not really want to hear the stories of old people, either. He is courteous but somewhat detached. His mother is frustrated by him, takes him into another room and an argument ensues. The boy has made a date to see a Broadway musical with a girl—Les

  Misérables. She lets him go and returns to the living room, where Josip had been telling her the missing portion of her own tale. She is upset about her son’s indifference, hides it, and they resume reconstruction.

  One evening in January, Marija takes Josip out to dinner at a popular restaurant near Park Avenue. She tells him many things about her mother, the wonderful memories. He tells Marija about her mother’s youth, the two or three years when they knew each other. Marija asks about the Croatian side of the family. Does Josip know what happened to all those people? Nothing, he shakes his head. Nothing. He asks if she knows what happened to Vera Horvatinec, her grandmother?

  “Oh, yes, we were very close. The three of us came from Vienna together. She lived with us after Mom and Dad were married. I think I was seven or eight years old when Bakica passed on.”

  Josip bows his head.

  “Tata, why didn’t you contact us when you found out we were alive?”

  This is the hard question they have been circling around for months.

  “If I had known that you were alive, Marija, I would have. Instantly I would have. I had been told that you both died during childbirth. Then, when I discovered that your mother was alive, I assumed that only she had survived. I never dreamed—”

  “You stayed away. You didn’t let her know.”

  “I couldn’t, Marija. The one time I saw her, I understood that she had been happily married for many years. Our marriage was brief, little more than a year. It was a civil one, you know, and she was now married sacramentally to a good man.”

  “Yes,” Marija nods, “Dad is a good man, the best. But still I think—” She pauses reaching for his hand. “I think it would have meant a lot to her, to know that you were alive.”

  “Do you think so?” Josip shakes his head, sighing. “Perhaps. Or it might have been like a ghost returning to haunt her.”

  “It never would have been that.”

  “Did she ever talk about me?”

  “Of course. She told me all about you, many wonderful things. You were the great love of her life, Tata.” Marija stops and takes a few moments to collect herself. “But she knew we had to go on. She was sure you were dead. When we were in Vienna, somehow the secret police found out where she was. They couldn’t touch her because we had friends in the Austrian government, but they tried to hurt her. A message came out of nowhere, a heartless message, unsigned, but with an official Yugoslavian stamp on the letter.”

  “Do you know what was in it? Do you still have it?”

  “No. Mama cried and cried over it, then she burned it. I was only four at the time, but I can still remember her weeping. I had never seen her like that, and I was very frightened by it. Years later, she explained that someone in the Communist government wanted her to know you were dead—that you had died in prison.”

  “Why? Why would anyone lie like that?”

  Even as he asks the question, he knows the answer. When they cannot kill you, they spread death in any form they can.

  “Even though I did not know my Tata, Mama kept your memory alive for me—and, I think, for herself as well. I missed you so badly for years, tried to imagine what you looked like. We had no photos, nothing. We escaped with only our lives.”

  “And with the swallow.”

  “Yes, the swallow and the stone, that’s all. She didn’t tell me what the carving and the white stone were about until I was married. She didn’t want me to think that she loved her second husband any less. But I understand now that while she loved him very much, she had loved you as no other in her life. This never changed. I know that sometimes when Dad was away on business, she would hold the swallow in her hand and remember. Sometimes she would close the door of her study and play violin quietly to herself. I think she was trying to reach back across the years to you as well. Once I found her asleep in the armchair—the one beside the fireplace in her room. The violin was on her lap. The swallow was resting in one hand, and in
her other hand was the stone.”

  A month later, they return to the same restaurant. They plan to make this a ritual. After supper, Marija tells Josip about the company she established five years ago, how well it is doing. She is a successful businesswoman. She also relates a little about the husband from whom she is separated. It is hard for her father to absorb all this, the intimate history of a woman who is closer to him than any other person on earth, yet who remains something of a stranger. They are linked by blood and stories, but by no shared experience. Even so, they both fully intend to remedy the situation.

  By coincidence or divine humor, they are suddenly interrupted by Caleb, who happens to be in the restaurant and is passing by their table on his way out.

  “Joe, my main man!” he exclaims with rather too much street accent. “Why you here in this upbeat dive?”

  “Caleb, allow me to introduce to you my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?”

  Caleb becomes all manners and royal black graciousness. It is sincere, the real Caleb. He sits down with a wondering expression to learn more about his friend’s mysterious past. He listens enrapt, solemn, his mouth dropping open a little, turning his eyes back and forth between Josip and Marija as they take turns narrating their portions of the story.

  “Wow”, says Caleb at last. “That is some awesome! Finding each other after all this time. It must have been a surprise for you to hear that your Dad’s been in this city all your life.”

  “A surprise for both of us”, Marija smiles. “But God has the final word.”

  “In this life or the next”, nods Caleb, Abyssinian Gospel Holiness man that he is.

  “Where is Miriam this evening?” asks Josip. “I would so much like her to meet my daughter.”

  “She had to teach a class at the university tonight, and I had a supper meeting with my publisher. Let’s get together soon, Josip. I’ll talk to her about it and give you a call.”

  Caleb pauses, cracks a grin, and continues in street jargon. “See that man over there in the corner, he give me a cigar!” Pronounced see-gar. Caleb’s accent is reverting by default, or perhaps he deliberately uses it with strangers whenever he is in a mischievous mood, just for the fun of demolishing stereotypes a moment later. “That man he try t’ buy mah soul, but I tell him, no way, Mister, mah soul don’t come cheap, it already been bought on a hilltop long ago. He want me to chill out the symbols, you know, make my stuff more die-gestible to the Zeitgeist literary Nazis, but I dee-clined in spades. Full house, don’t give me no sheet, I tol’ him! He back down, promise me full scale pub-licity for mah new book next spring.”

  Caleb scrapes back his chair, stands, and stretches his spine. “Anyways, Jefferson, he’s with my Momma tonight. She cain’t get enough o’ that boy, packs the candy into him, then eats him alive. She turnin’ him into a butterball! I gotta go pick him up now. Nice to meet you, Marija, very nice. Take care this ol’ man for me, willya?”

  “I will”, she laughs.

  After he leaves, Marija leans forward and says, “Was that Caleb Franklin the poet?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes, I’ve known him since he was a boy.”

  “He’s very famous”, she says. “I have some of his books. How do you know him?”

  She is shaking her head whimsically, trying to understand how a man that famous came to be on such familiar terms with a man like her father.

  “Well, it is a long story”, he replies, frowning with embarrassment. “He was kind enough to write an introduction to my book.”

  “Your book?” she replies with raised eyebrows.

  39

  In June, Josip attends Jefferson Franklin’s first Holy Communion. Caleb and his Miriam now attend Mass at Sts. Cyril and Methodius. They enjoy the multicultural environment and feel like American founding fathers compared to many of the other parishioners, who are more recent immigrants. Caleb still resists “swimmin’ the Tiber”, as he calls it, but he is studying the Catechism and is, paradoxically, more reverent than many a Catholic. Miriam sometimes attends her mother-in-law’s prayer meetings in Harlem. There she dances and sings as she prays.

  Josip has always been intrigued by the languages of worship and how people understand them, indeed how they reconcile them.

  “It’s interior and exterior, Josip”, Miriam explains. “Well, there’s both in each language, of course, but the formal rituals and especially the presence of the Eucharist help us to go very deep.”

  “Like a dolphin”, Josip suggests.

  “Hmmm, good image. Yes, like a dolphin. He dives deep, leaps high, and always remains a dolphin—just what the Lord wants him to be.”

  That month, Josip also attends Christiana Kanapathipillai’s graduation from high school. She is valedictorian and delivers a graceful, erudite address, quotes from Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard speech and John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus, and concludes by exhorting her classmates to defend freedom and moral character. She makes her parents and godfather very proud and not a few people in the audience terribly uncomfortable.

  November in New York is unusually gray and blustery—the month of all souls, the season of mourning. For the first time in decades, the manager of the building invites Josip to his apartment. They share a meal together and reminisce afterward. The manager tells long stories about the Armenian massacre, the martyrdom of countless Christians by the Muslims at the beginning of the twentieth century. Josip speaks about what the Turks did to his people. There are so many histories embedded in hearts, often where one would least expect to find them. Faggeddabouddit, says the manager as his eyes fill with tears—meaning, remember it, but do not condemn, for we are all sons of Adam. Remember, lest the past become present again.

  A card from Slavica brings the news that Emilio has died after years of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. His last food was a bite of chocolate. He was always happy. Slavica now lives in a retirement home in Venezia but remains active in several organizations, notably the communities for troubled youth she helped establish throughout Italy. Her daughter Chiara is married, with three children, and plays in a symphony orchestra in Firenze. Paolo is a respected physician, married, and a grandfather—a very young grandfather, she adds. Yes, this makes her a great-grandmother! Her only regret is that her parents did not live long enough to see the darkness of their times begin to turn toward the light.

  Throughout that year, there are reprintings of his poems by various publishers. In New York, Vienna, and Split, the revised editions appear under his real name.

  Josip’s Christmas is quieter than usual. The Franklins have gone to Jamaica for a month. Winston’s mother died in India not long after being reconciled with her son, and the family has flown to Bangalore for the funeral and for further restoration.

  Though it is now a year since Ariadne’s death, the Finntrees have gone west to Aspen, Colorado, for a skiing holiday, trying to get their minds off their loss.

  Thus, in this hiatus of solitude bestowed by an uncanny convergence of absences, Josip senses an ending and another beginning. He listens for it as he strolls through Central Park night after night, enjoying the Christmas-tree lights and the sparkling snow. He listens as he circles the pond in daylight, wishing he had some strawberries to pop into Jason’s mouth, the tug at his hand and the cry in his ear nearly sensible. He listens as he scatters bags full of crumbled bread to his good friends the pigeons and offers sandwiches to royal beggars. He listens as he drops off an anonymous gift at the office of his old enemy, the literary critic—Gift from the Sea, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh—and he listens as he leaves his usual package of biscuits at the fish market. Now he listens as he visits Ariadne’s grave, praying for her soul, missing her. He listens to his sorrow grow gentle and then come to rest, for love is stronger than death. He does not try to take his mind off his loss, has no desire to do so, for it is a return to their last Christmas together before the darkness fell.

  On New Yea
r’s Eve, he attends the vigil Mass for the feast of the Mother of God, and after Communion receives a particular grace—the knowledge of what he must do.

  In March of the year 2004—March 19, to be precise—on the feast of St. Joseph, he leaves the new world behind. Now it will become the old world. Caleb and Jefferson drive him to Kennedy Airport. Jefferson is somewhat bored, and is miffed that his father has forced him to miss school for a day. As they leave the towers of Manhattan behind, crossing the East River into Queens, he tells Josip that he has changed his name. He is now Jefferson Airplane Franklin the Third.

  “Where you get that name, boy!” his father growls.

  “From you, Dad.”

  “No way, you never hear that name from me, and what’s with this Third, anyway? You ain’t no third and you ain’t no airplane.”

  Jefferson goes off into giggles. Father-baiting is fun, though you don’t want to push it too far.

  Caleb grows silent and fierce with the sense of impending separation, but he is trying to hide it. They make small talk, promise to write letters. Josip invites him to visit when he gets settled in Croatia, and of course bring Miriam and Jefferson. Caleb assures him they’ll come, can’t wait to come. He tells the old man that he should get on the Internet. E-mail is as fast as lightning, he says.

  “Like lightning that fell from the heavens”, Josip murmurs.

  The rest of the banter is of the mundane kind. Jefferson in the back seat plugs himself into his digital music player and bounces through Long Island. Staring straight ahead at seventy miles per hour, Caleb reaches back and pulls the plugs from the boy’s ears. A howl of protest, and an argument breaks out. Good-bye, America.

  As they park at the airport, Josip notices that Caleb’s eyes are getting wet. He’s feeling moisture in his own eyes, too. Should he tousle the untousleable hair one more time, as a parting word? No—such tousling remains something of a risk, a culturally mixed message, stirring up the residual effects of centuries-old paternalism, does it not? A benevolent slave-master, but still, a slave-master. Or would Caleb understand and see the gesture as the airing of an old fear that they can now laugh about—the airing, as well, of an old breakthrough between them. Should he say all the unsaid things? No—that would be too much of a departure from their habit with each other. Implicit words are more powerful than the explicit, which can so easily evaporate, or get lodged in memory as something other than what they are.