Island

by Johanna Skibsrud

  “It’s not like you to get so upset,” Rachel interrupted. “I mean, really, Phil. To you—to Ø—when has no ever meant no?”

  By this point, nearly all of Ø’s South Pacific cable lines had been transferred to sea stations; the island was the company’s last land access point. Practically speaking, this meant that—compared to competing cable networks—Ø had almost zero regulations.

  “The future has been decolonized,” Phil had told Rachel proudly when they first met. They’d been walking on the pier, behind the old station—which offered one of the best sunset views on the island. Phil had stopped walking and was looking out over the water. The sea, Rachel remembered, had been almost eerily calm, reflecting in diminished colours the vibrant red glow of the setting sun. He’d extended his arm toward the water—spread his thick fingers as if to indicate the way that everything, if it had not yet already dematerialized, was just about to. “We’ve never been wireless,” he said. “And as far as I can tell, we’re never going to be. But at least we can clear out a little of the old mess, give ourselves a little breathing room. The wires aren’t the problem—it’s what they’re tangled up with. All the other companies, you know, they just keep laying one technology over the next. Fibre optic over coaxial over telegraph. Even if there’s a better route, a more direct one, it doesn’t matter to them. The old route is always safest, and safest—to all the other companies—means best. Every time a new layer of wire is laid, history repeats itself. We’re wireless in the same way we were once diplomatic, or imperial. All the old hierarchies, all the old imbalances get laid along the exact same lines. But for us, there is no history. For us, there’s only the future. And the future,” Phil had concluded, winking at Rachel, “has no allegiances.”

  Now he was saying, “It’s not that easy this time. This is a major obstacle, Rachel. A major obstacle. I want you to talk to Vollman.”

  “Okay, sure. And tell him…what?”

  “Tell him he’s got his fist jammed down the wrong hole! That if he wants a future for this island, he’s got to let go of the past. There’s no money in it, tell him! The past was all about land and loyalty—how much real estate you owned and how you got it and why. But the future is liquid, tell him. It’s about money, and nobody cares where you got it. I’ve told him all this myself, of course, but maybe, coming from you…He likes you, Rachel. He does. He’s going to miss you.” A pause. “We all are.”

  Grigor was beeping again. Rachel slung her purse over her shoulder and continued down the stairs. “Thanks, Phil, thanks,” she said dryly. “But I really don’t see what I could—”

  “You know, us old guys, we all look and sound alike. But you…”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Yeah, it’s like that. No offence intended, all right? It’s an advantage.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  Rachel hung up the phone.

  THREE

  Lota took another brief, hard look at herself in the glass, then stepped toward the door. She hesitated. Feeling certain she’d forgotten something, she glanced back—looked searchingly around the little room. She saw her bed, unmade; her suitcase, left open—though it hardly contained anything; the sink where the tap, which had been turned off firmly, continued to drip, contributing to a permanent stain.

  There was nothing that could be left behind.

  So why had Verbal wanted to stall everything? Why had he wanted to find some way to keep them forever only approaching, rather than actually realizing, their goal? Lota found her mind returning to the question unwittingly. He was like every other island boy that way, she thought—didn’t want anything to change, really; was afraid that he’d be the one required to change it…

  But then, it hadn’t mattered in the end—Verbal’s suggestion. When Lota had thrown up her hands and said, “We can’t possibly take everything into account,” everyone else had agreed. First Norma—peeking out from beneath her pulled-down cap, then Hannibal, Baby Jane, Mad Max, Bruno, Alex DeLarge…Pretty soon even Verbal—with only a fleeting glance toward Lota—had nodded and, along with the rest of them, raised his fist in the air.

  “Fidel Castro,” Kurtz had said in a low voice when they were quiet again, “Fidel Castro himself once said that, for revolutionaries, there are never any obvious truths.” She lifted an eyebrow and a single hand in the air. “There may,” she continued, “also not ever be any obvious times. The horizon is always shifting, after all.” (Briefly, she seemed to look directly at Lota.) “What’s up ahead remains ahead, out of reach—permanently unknown. Castro, he said—” (she raised her voice slightly, but the hand came down) “that obvious truths were an invention of imperialism, that they are used by those who are big in order to oppress those who are small. Well,” she said (and raised both hands this time), “let us not—any longer—be oppressed by the obvious!” (She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. Lota, along with the rest of the soldiers—Verbal included—lifted theirs, too. Lota’s heart soared.) “Let us instead embrace the uncertain!” Kurtz shouted at the acoustic-tile ceiling. “Let us advance fearlessly into the unknown!”

  It was a few minutes past eight; as Lota left the building the sun had just begun to peek its way over the tallest trees. Bo Brown, reeling home drunk, spotted her from across the street and waved. He’d been singing the refrain of a popular radio song she just barely recognized, and now he raised his voice so that she clearly heard the repeated last lines of the song: nothing brings me down…no, no, no. Lota waved back.

  No, nothing. Nothing brings me down, Bo sang.

  A few early-morning regulars were sipping tea outside of Josie’s canteen and did not look up when she passed. She walked quickly. Past the broken clock tower, the hospital, the grocery store—everything still closed, even the hospital, deserted looking. A tree next to the grocery store shaded a few kids sneaking in an early game of two-up before they were called in to get ready for school. Past a few new kit homes, a row of rundown tract housing, the school, then a few more new homes. Finally, she arrived at the depot. The police dog, Juno, a big red mastiff pit bull cross with watery eyes and a torn ear, got up reluctantly, barked once, then settled back down. A mix of sullen disinterest and affronted longing—typical for the breed. The dog stared at Lota as she crossed the yard and disappeared around back.

  She knocked once; a moment or two passed before Kurtz opened the door.

  All the fans were on inside, and the wall-unit AC was blasting musty cold air. Everyone was standing around, drinking coffee and Kool-Aid. In the middle of the table, a half-eaten box of doughnuts gaped.

  Lota pulled up a chair and reached for a jelly doughnut. The doughnuts had sweated in the heat and were sticky. Kurtz checked the clock on the wall, then sat down at the head of the table. Everyone else grabbed a chair and sat down, too. It was as if she’d fired a gun at the starting line; they all nearly jumped.

  Kurtz, though—as usual—took her time. She always began every meeting the same way, by staring around the table, careful to look each one of them in the eye. After that, she invited them to report on whatever they’d learned or observed since their last meeting. They all had to come up with something.

  “Mrs. Wah is dealing again.” “The embassy closed early this week.” “Mr. Gregory’s wife left him.” “I no longer feel afraid.”

  Kurtz would write everything down, and when they had gone around full circle and everyone had said something, she’d nod her head, and the crease that ran like a crooked scar between her eyebrows would—very slightly—deepen.

  But this morning, after carefully catching each one of their eyes, she simply said, “That’s all of us—except Pinky and Khan. They’ll meet us at the embassy.” Then, drawing herself up and narrowing her eyes so they seemed almost to become one, she said: “This is it, friends. This is history. A moment that will now repeat itself forever—that can never be taken back.”

  No one spoke. The AC hummed; the clock ticked like a bomb on the wall.

  “Is eve
ryone ready?”

  Still no one spoke.

  “All right,” Kurtz said. “Let’s go.”

  Nobody used their real names. A security precaution—but an island superstition, too. It was inconsiderate and unwise to speak the names of the dead because they were still too much like the living; they got distracted and jealous, lonesome, confused. It was entirely possible that if those who’d only recently passed heard their name spoken, they’d get turned around and come back, disrupting the balance between this world and the next.

  By giving themselves new names, Kurtz and the rest of the members of her Army indicated that they now had only one direction to go—and had made the commitment all the way.

  For a while it had felt odd to Lota—like a game—but after a while she got used to it. When she did, she found it was a relief to come into the station, to leave “Lota” behind. At the station she was always Zilla—and she held herself differently. As Zilla, she doubted herself less, was calmer, cooler, more self-assured.

  It had been a joke at first, choosing the names of villains from popular movies or comic books or television shows. “Ha! I’ll be Alien.” “Hello, Leatherface!” “What should I be?” “Ha ha! Baby Jane?” But it had been a long time since the names were funny—or referred to anything beyond themselves. They were just names now: Mystique. Hannibal Lecter. Killmonger. Jack. Joker, Predator, Dr. Szell…But they were names with power.

  “A villain is only a villain to those who fear her,” Kurtz had said. “A villain is only a villain to those who tell her she doesn’t belong.” So far, Kurtz had explained, in the whole of human history, we’d only ever managed to replace certain elements in the system and even “total” revolution had failed to completely change anything.

  “We have to learn to think differently,” she said. “We have to think like our ancestors did. Before they were taught to be afraid of the darkness. When they still understood that the world and everything in it is based on a complex relationship—not a clear separation—between what we call good and evil, darkness and light.”

  And another time: “You’re never going to be a superhero. Anyone here, by the way, because they want to be a superhero?” She stared at them, a mocking smile playing at her lips.

  No one said anything. Or moved. Or even seemed to breathe, until Kurtz relieved them all with a short laugh. “Let me tell you,” she said, “you’re in the wrong place for that! Have you ever seen a superhero that looked like you?” Again she laughed sharply. “That talked like you?” Her voice hardened still more. “That came from an island that, so far as the people who make the movies are concerned, doesn’t even exist?”

  Their name, Black Zero, had been taken from the DC comic books. Black Zero was a villain in some stories. In others, it was a terrorist organization, or a computer virus. In all cases, Kurtz told them, it was dark, sinister, and defied rationale. When it was a human being, it had no fingerprints and its most destructive weapon was “the secret in its brain.”

  “We also have a secret,” Kurtz had said, standing in the middle of the police department’s basement room, chin lifted, feet spread wide, thumbs resting on the top of her belt. “Look deep inside yourself,” she’d said. “Past all the superhero garbage, past the hope—which you’ve always known is in vain—that things are going to work out for you the way they always seem to work out for them. Past the impossible, deluded fantasy that you’re going to wake up one day and find yourself—a hero—right at the centre of the story.

  “Our secret is, it’s not our story. Our secret is, it never has been. Our secret is that we exist, and have always existed, outside of every system through which they’ve tried—repeatedly—to either save or destroy us. The plots of their stories are always the same, right? More or less? What’s different—what changes, what can never be defined—is what shapes the plot from the outside. It’s why every movie has a sequel, right? Why they can never arrive at the end. Because what threatens them—what they try to seize or destroy—is bigger than they are and can’t be reduced to a simple arc.” She drew the top of a triangle in the air. “Or a ‘happy’ ending, either—an ending that brings us, more or less, back to the place we began. Because what threatens them is whatever it is they’re not, and that’s bigger and more powerful than they are—and can’t be eliminated.

  “That’s the secret.” Kurtz was practically whispering now, but everyone heard. “Our secret. Look down,” she said. “Deep down. Find the part of yourself that knows that. The part of yourself that knows that history does not have to endlessly repeat itself. That knows we can do things differently this time. Find the part of you that feels silenced, excluded, overlooked, betrayed…

  “Think back!” she commanded. “Think back to the stories that your grandmother told you. Think of the way her voice shook whenever she spoke about leaving the island—or of coming back again. And if she never did speak? Think of that silence. Think of all the empty places in the world where her voice—her story—is not.”

  Kurtz raised her hands from her belt and extended them toward her assembled soldiers, who—hearts slamming in their chests—stared back, horrified, invigorated, and amazed. “That,” Kurtz said, gesturing with her arms in the air as though the blank, silent, unknowable thing she was referring to were a physical object that existed between them. “That silence is our secret. And because of that secret,” she concluded, “we can’t lose. I promise you. With that secret, we’ll win every time.”

  Lota had first heard about Kurtz from her younger brother, Miles. That had been over three years ago now, when he was still working at the police depot. Less than a year later, he got fired for stealing confiscated drugs. “It’s not like everyone else isn’t doing it too,” he’d told them—which, of course, had only made things worse. Afterward, he admitted it would have been better if he’d just told them he was sorry.

  “Yes, sorry! So, so sorry,” he would say later, in fun, when it was too late to be sorry. “I won’t do it again, Officer,” he’d say, “promise, I won’t…”

  He was always nearly out of his mind; his nose running, his eyes all wobbly. Even while he had the job at the station he was like that—which is why the job hadn’t lasted too long.

  “They meet in the basement,” Miles had told her. “I see them go in. One after another—every fifteen minutes or so. So they think nobody notices. Roy has a hand in the business, I guess. Must figure there’s no place safer than right under everyone’s nose.”

  Roy was Mad Max’s real name. He was second-in-command to Kurtz and also to Frank Ramon, the chief of police. Frank was almost eighty and had lost most of his wits, but he was kept on out of—equal parts, probably—inertia and respect. He’d been around forever; could still remember the bombs. Could still remember the island before the bombs. Before they’d all been shipped off, and then back again, and there was nothing for miles but cement and sand.

  Remember! You bet he could. He was like all the old people that way. They didn’t talk about it much, but they couldn’t forget.

  “What kind of business?” Lota asked.

  “Oh, Sister.” Miles grinned. “Some real bad-ass revolutionary shit—swear.” He opened his mouth to laugh and Lota could see that his gums were bad. “And that woman,” Miles said, still laughing. “She went away, you know, lived on the mainland for years. Thinks she’s Che Guevara or some shit, that she’s gonna change things. Change the island—right?” He gave another short shout of a laugh, choked on it a little, then spat.

  Lota had noticed the woman walking past the school on her way to the station on plenty of occasions. She was tall, all angles, with a long forehead and tight, close-cropped curls turning grey at the edges. A deep line ran like a scar between her surprisingly close-set eyes.

  Lota didn’t need to be told that this woman had lived off island. She held herself differently than island folks did—looked less like an “auntie” and more like someone out of the pages of a book: a doctor, a poet, an Egyptian queen. It
was, in any case, not at all difficult to imagine that at least some of the rumours were true. That she spoke six languages, had gone to university and to prison; that she was an artist, a political radical, a gun runner, a spy…

  But until Miles told her about Kurtz and Mad Max and the basement of the police depot, the idea that the island could change had never once crossed her mind. She’d only continued to feel the terrible impossibility of living there. Increasingly, she’d felt it—as she entered high school; as her mother got sick, and then well, and then sick again. No way to escape, she’d thought; then—angrily—no way to remain.

  After Miles told her what he had, Lota began to watch for the woman every day. She stood out back of the school gymnasium after class let out, straining in the direction of the depot, and feverishly rehearsing what she would say: “I know.” (She’d mouthed the words to herself.) “I can help.”

  Only a few days passed before she saw the woman. Long neck arched, eyes fixed straight ahead, sailing toward the horizon like the figurehead of a tall ship. Lota’s heart leapt, her mouth felt dry. How could she possibly approach this person? What—she suddenly wondered, even after all the time she’d spent thinking about it, and rehearsing her lines—could she say?

  She almost let the moment pass. Almost let Kurtz sail on, out of sight. But then some other part of her took over and she gave a kind of a yell, then double-stepped to catch up.

  “I—I wanted to speak to you,” she said, hating the way her voice sounded. Like one of the kids on the wharf begging for a dime.

  She forced herself to continue. “I’ve heard of you. Of…what you do, and I wondered”—she paused, swallowed, then finished weakly: “…if I could help?”

  The woman had stopped in her tracks but she’d kept her eyes level, pointed straight ahead. Now she turned slightly.