Page 19 of Island of The World


  This morning is one of the finest since last autumn. The light is stronger after the short winter, the air still cool, and in his backpack he carries a wool sweater, a flask of water, and some bread and cheese. Beaming with pleasure, he spreads his arms wide and sings in a baritone voice, O More Jadransko, O Jadransko More, O Adriatic Sea, my beloved, my beloved.

  He laughs at himself and wonders if anyone suspects his secret passion. A mathematics major, member of the swim team, sweeper back on the soccer team, a man of few words who moves among the crowds of students as if he were a giant. So tall, so remote, that the affairs of mortals cannot touch him. Yes, a towerer, defying gravity, striding higher and higher through the forest of Communist beeches, religious oaks, and the simply atheistic birches who are good at heart and declare their independence of all ideological loyalties. Like these latter, Josip the ever-striding adheres to a politics whose sole aim is to contest the limitations of his flesh, expanding its capacities in tandem with those of his mind.

  But what am I striving for, my beloved? he asks the sea. Where am I going? And what am I, really? For I am neither a giant nor a swallow, though my companions tell me I am a giant, and voices from the past tell me I am a swallow.

  But the sea does not reply in words comprehensible to man, for the sea informs its devotees by swelling and receding in cyclic rhythms without ceasing, its waves spreading toward the outermost reaches of the world until the end of time. It will permit neither analysis nor mental capture, for, as he knows full well from his studies, a dot at the exact center of a circle cannot enclose the circle.

  Such musings, among countless others with which he entertains himself, are pleasurable. They are never fully conclusive. It is enough to enjoy the presence of the elements in fathomless forms and volumes, to savor the way they stimulate states of consciousness in which such ponderings float to the surface and give him release from the realm of the specific, precisely because they are not logical.

  Do you know that I love you? he asks the sea. How can one not fall in love with one’s liberator! Is your determined pattern an equation properly stated? Is love itself the liberator, or are the messengers of love mistaken for the one who sends them?

  He shakes off the thought. In that direction lies the return of sentiments, doubts, and loneliness. He loves solitude. He loves the interior. He dislikes intensely the habits of mind and emotion that dominate his fellow students. It seems that he is immune. Yet for all his dislike, he will not take issue with their beliefs or nonbeliefs—to do so in this country is a futile exercise—he simply avoids it all.

  Josip now removes his socks and running shoes, and stretches out on the rock and closes his eyes. The radiant sun rises from its base in Bosnia, over the crests of the mountain range, and floods the city. Sweat has soaked the jersey and shorts of his soccer uniform. He shivers a little, though within minutes the combat between the sun and the sea breeze is over, and the sun has won. It burns his cheeks and warms his limbs, the bare arms and legs and wiggling toes soaking it up hungrily. His body stretches luxuriously, the heartbeat is slowing now, the heaving of his chest subsiding.

  How does one put an end to all this growth! It is conspicuous to be so tall. People notice and want to see what is inside; they especially want to probe what is in the mind.

  During his first year he could hardly focus on his studies. All the beautiful, beautiful girls, everywhere around him. And so many interested in him! His metamorphosed appearance, no doubt, transformed by those years of swimming during high school, the summer work as a laborer on the Jablonica dam, the muscles, his clear skin and golden hair, perhaps even his diffidence—a persona onto which the lonely can project anything they like. People always seem to fall in love with an image first, never the substance, for to know the substance of man would spell the end of the human race within a generation. Well, perhaps not. But certainly the end of marriage, and not long thereafter, the end of civilization.

  Hard to say if this surmise is true or not. The only certainty is that people simply will not stop falling in love, and he is as guilty as the rest of them. During that first year and well into the second, there were three girls: a Communist, an unaligned atheist, and a Catholic—all beautiful. The first and the second were interested in going to bed, and then maybe afterward to the state ceremonies that would have chained him to their beds indefinitely. As much as he yearned for the former, the threat of the latter corollary kept him chaste. The third girl, Suzana, was different: nonpredatory, intelligent, and even humble, a student of literature. He really liked her—no, to be honest, he was intoxicated and obsessed with her for months. Neither he nor she was completely dominated by desire for sexual expression, for they both were certain that their feelings for each other were absolutely the most singular outpouring of mutual human love in the history of mankind—to consummate it prematurely would weaken it. They had kissed a few times. So unexpected that pleasure. Well, they had respected each other right to the end, she for religious reasons, and he because, well, because he was torn with longing for the union but repelled by what it might cost. Human love always brings ecstasy and anguish, he told himself at the time. The ecstasy is the bait, the anguish is the snap of the trap. In the end, they parted because their differences were hurting them too much. He told her he could not go back to the ways of his childhood, and she told him with copious tears that in her heart of hearts she could not marry a man who did not love Christ. This was startling, shocking really, but it was good that it resolved the dilemma.

  Since then, for a year and a half, he has not fallen in love. He repels all probes, makes none of his own. Early warning signals of potential love slam into the wall of his apparent distraction. His face registers nothing, responds neither appropriately nor inappropriately. It is as if he has not noticed the overtures, and in this way he remains the catalyst of small disappointments but never the cause of offence. He is the quiet guy, the strong and gentle, smart and disconnected guy who seems to wish everyone well as he lumbers down the faculty hallways with a goofy look and a stack of books wedged under his armpit. Only occasionally is another tactic needed: with commissars pressuring students to join the Party, it is necessary to glaze his eyes, drop his jaw, breathe noisily through his mouth, and in the worst cases, drool a little. The drool always works.

  Total isolation is kept at bay by camaraderie on the soccer field with his rowdy teammates, and also with a smaller fraternity of swimmers, some of whom are like him in temperament. To this must be added the fascinating discussions with impassioned math majors, who are stimulated not so much by sports or sex but by problems in quantum mechanics. Though Josip is not a humorous person generally, the soccer guys have taught him to banter and to play, the swimmers have given him a quieter community of fellow solitaries, and the math people have enabled him to foresee a future in which it is possible to function successfully without political or emotional commitment.

  Now the breeze stiffens, the sun is directly overhead. The day will be hot, and his clothes are drying. He sits up and gazes out beyond the tip of Čiovo, toward the larger and more distant islands of Šolta and Brač Today there is a yellow-orange haze on the water, and the islands float on it like purple ships. In the middle distance, a tiny vessel coasts northward; only its sail is visible, a white triangle cutting through the saffron.

  In that instant, he recalls the journey he made with his father to the sea when he was a child. He was eight or nine years old at the time. It was during the war, the Italians were still here, the Germans were still in the east, and the Partisans were still an unthinkable specter of the future. This memory never fails to elicit a constricting of his throat, a moistening of the eyes. He tries not to recall it in detail and permits only a brief replay of a vague sense of ocean and vast spaces, the golden light beneath the waves, two mighty hands pulling him back to the realm of open air, a bird that landed on his fingers for a second or two, and a sailing ship—commanded by Odysseus, he was sure.

  Eno
ugh! He slips on his shoes, ties them with trembling hands, which he soon brings under control, steadies his thoughts, and jumps to his feet. Saluting his lover the sea, he turns and runs back down the mountain.

  The following Saturday: he awakes with a feeling of affection for his little cell, which is situated on the fourth floor of a concrete tenement on the uphill side of Velebitska. He would like to take a shower, but usually at this time of day there will be a lineup for the bathroom down the hall. The crucial plumbing is shared by the residents of the eight apartments on this floor. Despite its limitations, he loves his room, three meters wide and four meters long. It contains the usual items: a cot and mattress, sheets and a pillow. A sink and tap. A wooden desk and chair, a hotplate and kettle. His few articles of clothing are hung from nails on the door. He has not yet been able to purchase planks for proper shelving on which to house the growing collection of books, which are stacked along the walls and in little piles here and there. A striped goat-hair rug, orange and white, relieves the gray decor with some color, augmented by magazine photos taped to the walls—mostly scenes of the Adriatic islands. The single window opens onto the docks of the inlet behind the city. Across the water he can see the miniscule amphitheater of ancient Solin, where he once played soccer with a group of street boys.

  He has been reading Aristotle since dawn. The integration of science and philosophy is intriguing. Modern thought divides them. Why? Is a philosophy of mathematics possible? Needed? If so, why? If not, why not? Thinking about these intricate problems, he hops about the room on one leg trying to get the other leg into his running shorts. Mind and body—are they possessions of the self, or are they the self?

  Dressed, he ties his running shoes, bolts out the door, thunders down the staircase, and bursts onto the street. Turning left he begins to trot, and then he breaks into a gallop, feeling the familiar exhilaration flood his body, his chest expanding, his lips pulling back into a grin. He waves at students he knows and excuses himself as he swerves around the matrons and elderly people trudging toward the markets.

  He likes to vary his route to the base of the Marjan, and this day he decides to pass through streets that will offer him more challenges: a maze of narrow cobbled lanes within the palace complex, where there will be less space, less predictability, and more people, all of which will demand instant reflexes at high speed; in short, not only animal power but intelligence. So, through the north gate he plunges, hitting no one in passing, though there are a few near misses—people, unless they are deaf, tend to move to the side at the sound of galloping hoofs. It is the sharp turns into side streets that offer the best perils, because you never know what you will meet, be it man or beast or myth.

  He turns left, right, left again, heading in a more or less constant direction toward the east gate, which will bring him to the great market on Zagrebačka Street. From there he will turn onto the waterfront promenade and break into top speed toward the base of the Marjan. And then, running uphill, accelerating even as he must ease his pace, he will arrive at the highest point of the city, from which he will once more survey the entire world in a state of exultation.

  Before he has reached the east gate, however, he turns into one last side street, only to find his way blocked by a cluster of old women who have their heads together over an article of baby clothing that one of them has knit and is proudly showing to the others. He screeches to a halt and waits until they notice him. They can hardly ignore him! He is a massive slab of presence, sweating and huffing and puffing, hands on hips, pawing the cobblestones with his hooves. He will not push past them, frail and deserving of respect as they are. His clearing of throat and request for passage through is ignored, perhaps not even heard. These women can focus! A flash of yellow catches the corner of his eye. He glances at it.

  In a shop window, by his right arm, stands a display of antique items and folk art. On a shelf in its center is a toy sailing ship. Its hull is painted bright yellow, its bow and stern carved in the bold curves of Dalmatian fishing boats. Its sails are made of white cotton, and its rigging is fashioned from red thread. A miniature black net is coiled on its deck. A wooden fish lies beside it. A tiny captain stands at the wheel, his face turned to hail passersby.

  Josip stares at it a few moments. Then he bursts into tears. Covering his face with his hands, he sobs loudly and uncontrollably. The old women fall silent and stare at him with open mouths. They part to let him pass. He does not see them. He wheels and runs straightway back to his room.

  It is the kitchen at home. The time is a few months after his first journey to the sea. Snow is falling in the dark outside the window. His mother is baking bread for the coming Christmas, bustling around the room, muttering about the wet firewood that they forgot to cover after the sunny day was over, little realizing that a heavy snowfall was about to ruin things. Now the wood that should be dry has become wet, and the heat it produces is not quite right. Don’t fuss, says his father, your bread is so great and unique with its secret spice that no man would refuse it even if it turned into charcoal. She kisses him on one cheek and pinches the other, and then they laugh together. His father is seated at the table, drawing something with pencil on a sheet of paper.

  “What are you doing, Tata?”

  “A secret, Josip”, says Miro, covering the paper with his forearm.

  “Is it a Christmas secret?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Is it a secret you wish to keep from me?”

  “Yes, certainly”, his father smiles. “What else!”

  “And that is why you will not tell me what you are doing on the paper?”

  “You have deduced correctly.”

  “Oh, my Tata”, the boy croons, sidling up to his father, rubbing shoulders, and rolling his eyes in a way that is considered charming and irresistible. “Oh, please, please tell me, my Tata!”

  “Never!” barks his father, though it is his joking bark.

  Early the next morning, Josip climbs down the ladder from the loft. His parents are still sleeping. He lights the candle in the dawn and goes prowling though the parlor in search of the secret. He feels a little guilty about this, but he is desperate to know what his father was doing last night. A piece of paper cannot be a Christmas gift, so it must be thoughts about the gift. To know these thoughts would not entirely ruin the surprise. It might even increase the pleasure—so he justifies it to himself.

  Under a stack of his father’s school papers, on the floor beneath the family altar, he finds the piece of paper. It is a drawing of a lovely sailing ship. Tata must have used Mamica’s egg paints to color it. Its hull is yellow, its sails are white, and a small captain stands at a wheel. Written at the bottom of the sheet is: This year or next, for my Josip. In memory of our journey to the sea.

  Beneath this, the words: “My father, time will show you what my spirit is.” The Odyssey. Book XVI.

  This is very nice but somewhat puzzling. He hides the paper again and never mentions it. That Christmas, Josip is not given the drawing as a gift. Nor does he receive it on his feast day, March 19, nor at any other likely celebration. From time to time, it comes to his mind like a fine idea that has been abandoned. This year or next could mean anything. Perhaps his father intends to take him on a second journey. Perhaps it means something else that cannot be understood until it has happened. The mystery becomes clear one day in January of 1945, when Josip is rummaging through the house in search of a missing sock. Perhaps Mamica has stuffed it into her sewing basket and intends to darn it with wool when she has a free moment. She usually keeps the basket beneath her bed. On hands and knees he peers under, finds no basket and no sock. However, he spots a wooden box on father’s side of the bed. He has never seen this box before. Crawling farther under, he tips the box sideways so he can look inside. It contains a little wooden sailing ship, the carving of its hull nearly completed, unpainted, not yet smoothed of splinters. There is also a spool of black thread, a wad of white cloth, and the old drawing. Jo
sip crawls out from under the bed with a smile on his face and says nothing to anyone about his discovery. Three weeks later, the Partisans come to Rajska Polja.

  Recurring sorrows, memory erupting into consciousness. He understands why it happens. He is not entirely its victim, for he recovers from it more quickly than he did during his younger years. Even so, it can still afflict him when he least expects it. It is triggered by certain colors or a strand of song floating on the night wind, the strum of a bandura, the sight of a mother and father and young son walking side by side on the promenade, anything too close to what once was. In such moments, the blow of a hatchet splits his rib cage, and agony pours from the severed arteries. Whenever this occurs, he is able to bring it under control by changing his thoughts, and then he is slowly able to change his emotions. It passes. Such incidents are becoming less frequent as years go by. Life goes on. It must. That’s the way with human beings, and like it or not, he’s part of the species. Besides, others have suffered far worse than he has.

  After he left Sarajevo to enter the university in Split, he returned for only a single summer to live with Aunt Eva. Before that, they lived together for six years in the same dingy apartment, though Josip helped to make it less desolate as he grew older. Salvaged wood and cloth turned a part of the main room into a bedchamber for him. Its walls gradually filled with photographs clipped from newspapers and magazines. Pictures of the Adriatic islands, fish and birds, sunlight and seagoing ships—emblems of escape and transcendence. The badges from his school swimming club, which Eva displayed proudly to anyone who came calling. His graduation certificate from high school. The letter announcing his scholarship to the university.

  The death of his uncle was never mentioned again. Numerous were the times, after Josip’s sanity returned, when he pondered the single burning image that could never be erased: Eva, seated at the end of the bed, rocking her body back and forth; Jure, lying as if asleep, his finger on the trigger, the barrel in his mouth, the top of his skull blown off. Has he destroyed himself, this man of laughing callousness? Or has she killed him? Has she grown frantic about Josip’s week-long absence and come to believe that her husband disposed of the boy permanently and is lying about it? He has killed many people, told many lies—thus, why would he not eliminate this interloper whom he hates so much? Did she come upon her husband as he was sleeping, drunk and open-mouthed, insert the barrel of the gun gently into the unsuspecting mouth, and pull the trigger? Did she calmly arrange the gun, the arms, and the finger, so that she would not become the third victim?