Night. The barrack is dark, the wind is howling outside. No one sleeps, everyone huddles close to others, begging some body warmth. Many are whispering about the demise of the snake. They are hoping he will die, but of course a broken leg cannot kill a guard; broken legs only kill prisoners. Daring a look out, Propo and Prof examine the compound and report to the others.
“It’s quiet. More spotlights on all fences; the gate is locked. No guards walking about, only those in the watchtowers.”
“Are there more watchers than usual?”
“Of course.”
“If Zmija blames us, we’re dead.”
“He might do that. Or maybe he lost consciousness before he knew he was falling. The other guard will give witness. And being drunk on duty—”
“Also, their little brains would never be able to imagine what nearly happened. If it crosses their mind to suspect it, they’ll dismiss it no matter what Zmija says. They would assume that if he fell among us we would finish him off and make a break for it.”
“That’s true. Who wouldn’t!” Sova nods. “Brbljavac almost did. Good thing you stopped him, Tata”, says Propo.
“He hasn’t got over Kruno and Dalibor”, says the old man. “Give him time.”
“Why didn’t the other guard notice?”
“I had to wake him up”, says Prof. “A close call—”
“We survived by a thread.”
Josip is curled into a ball on his pallet, staring at the darkness, in the blackest mood.
Prof shakes his shoulder. “Josip.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Do you forgive me?”
“For what?”
“For striking you. I am sorry. You could have killed us all for a moment of revenge.”
Josip sits up with his back against the wall and puts his head between his knees.
“You should sleep”, says Prof. No reply.
One by one, the others fall asleep. Josip remains awake.
Slowly he lifts his head. Moving carefully, so as not to disturb the others, he gets to his feet and turns over his pallet. Several pieces are missing from the underside, and these are inside his burlap shirt. Now he unfolds the entire pallet and with his bare fingers widens a tear in the center. He pokes his head through and lets the cloth fall down over his body. It is like a small tent, old and threadbare, a stained green army canvas that has lost its stiffness.
He is still undecided. Should he risk a run for freedom? Is this the night? The cold and the wind will keep some guards inside, but not all of them, and besides there are extra spotlights now. Is it the best time or the worst? He does not know.
Josip is on the verge of lying down and going to sleep when, in an instant, total darkness falls on the world. From beyond the barracks, shouts erupt, a whistle blows, though the bura carries the sounds away westward.
Dropping to his knees, he shakes Prof’s shoulder.
“What is it?” he mumbles.
“A power failure. The wind has torn something; there are no lights outside.”
“Is this true?”
“Look around you!”
“Yes, the generators are down. But for how long?”
“I am going. Come with me.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“I am going.”
Prof grapples Josip’s hand and shakes it. “Then God be with you!”
“Good-bye, Vladimir Lucić. I hope we meet again.”
The barrack door is locked. If he had a tool, he might be able to break it open. Trying not to step on bodies in the dark, Josip makes his way to the windows. Only a child could squeeze through, but he knows of a place along the wall where a brick is loose, one of the verticals that divide the windows. He has tried to loosen it before to no good effect. He finds it, wiggles it, noticing as well that beams of flashlights are waving out there in the dark—along the fences, it must be. All else is blackness. Suddenly, someone is beside him, grabs his arm, pushes a sharp piece of stone onto his hand.
“You are going?” It is Propo’s voice.
“Yes.”
“Well, then, let’s get this brick loose.”
Josip scrapes at the mortar while Propo wiggles the brick. It hardly moves, and their fingers begin to bleed from small cuts. They keep on trying, the wind screaming so loudly that there is no danger anyone will hear. Indeed, they can no longer hear each other. How much time passes? As the brick is loosening in its socket, there are fewer flashlights in the compound.
Finally, the brick is free. Now they use it as a hammer to bang the others loose. One by one they remove bricks until there is a gap wide enough for a man to pass through.
“Go!” shouts Propo into Josip’s ear.
“You come, too!”
“No, I stay.”
“Good-bye, Ante.”
“Good-bye, Brbl”, he shouts back. “If you make it, babble about us somewhere out there in the world, will you?”
“I will not forget you.”
Then he dissolves, becoming a deeper shadow within a world of shadows. The tent is over his head in an instant, cutting down the chill. He crawls blindly to the barrack’s firepit, where the wheat is reboiled. Spitting into his palms, he makes a paste of ashes and smears it over his face and hands. That done, he crawls along the building, flattening on the ground whenever a light flashes near the wall. There are many walls, and the guards are few. None of them want to be out in the storm. Besides, all barracks are locked, and the gate of the compound is also locked. The fence is twice as high as a man and is capped by barbed wire; it cannot be climbed with ease, even by a healthy man on a fair-weather day, and certainly not by donkeys who are locked inside their exhaustion.
Between buildings he crawls as if through a city of mausoleums, for no light or sound comes from any of the barracks. The ferocious wind snaps the tent wildly, sometimes slapping him in the face. He keeps his eyes shut as he turns toward the eastern end of the compound. Leaving the buildings behind, he scrabbles up the slopes and within minutes is bumping his forehead into the chain links of the fence. He removes the tent from his body and folds it into a compact square. Then, using all the force at his command, he hurls it high, hoping that it will pass over the barbed wire. But it falls back under the force of the wind and lands a few feet behind him. The bura is ripping the clouds away, and a slice of moon appears, a fiendish grin of a moon. The light is enough to show him where the canvas has landed. The bura is unpacking it, tossing it, and it is about to be taken away like a sail when he throws himself onto it and fights hard to bring it under control. Finally, he has repacked it into a tighter cube. Then he removes his boots and ties them together with the cord laces.
He must not make the same mistake twice. There is more light now, under the moon and the stars—very little, but enough to draw the watchers’ eyes if any are turned this way.
He waits—the minutes creep by torturously. Suddenly, there is a drop in the wind’s velocity, the world pauses for a second or two, inhaling between gusts. Instantly, he hurls the cube high, followed by his boots, and both land a few feet beyond the fence.
Now he leaps into action. The links are too small for his feet, but his big toes go through. Hand over hand, he swiftly climbs as the bura resumes its fury. Nearing the top, he struggles to hold on, for the pressure pushes against him with renewed force, seeking to tear his fingers and toes from the threads upon which he climbs.
Gripping the top crossbar, he pulls himself upward a few more inches. There are three rows of barbed wire above the bar, and if he tries to go through, they will rip him to shreds. Even if he were able to stand with his toes in the topmost links, it would be impossible to hoist a leg over without numerous cuts to the inside of his thighs. Paralyzed by indecision, he remains for some moments wobbling in space, debating with himself. Should he endure the tearing it would exact as the price for freedom? What would happen if he should make it to the sea, and then swim for hours leaving a trail of blood in the water? Surely the sharks would fi
nd him!
Desperation makes the decision for him. Gripping the topmost wire in two spots where there are no barbs, he pulls himself higher, with his toes pushing his body upward. This is the worst risk of all. If the wire breaks, he will fall to the rocks below, inside or outside will not matter.
The wire holds. Now his toes are on the upper links, his body is bent double, and his belly arches inward to avoid the barbs in the space between his hands. The wind drops for a second or two. Then, without thinking, he does it. Gripping the wire as tightly as he can, he flips himself over the fence and hangs suspended above the outer perimeter. The backs of his forearms are torn in two or three places by the lower wires and his spine is rammed into the links by the force of the wind. He commands his left hand to let go of the wire, and then twists his body around, grabbing the wire again. This time he has hit a barb, and it cuts into the mount near the thumb but does not impale it.
Now he descends, fingers and toes seizing the links as though they were life itself. The wind is helping because it holds him against the fence, no longer seeking to blow him off like a fly from a spider’s web.
His feet flatten on cold stone, and he drops to the ground, curls into a ball, and flashes his eyes around to make sure no lights are pointing at him. None are visible nearby, though sparks can be seen beyond the barracks’ roofs at the other end of the compound.
Boots quickly onto his feet, tent over his head, he crawls up through the uneven rocks toward the rim of the compound’s stone basin. The last few meters are the worst, as the wind’s scream is now deafening, and a horizontal rain of dust and flying gravel, twigs and weeds has begun. He has reached the rim, and with renewed effort he pulls himself over it and into a crevasse between the rocks. There he rests for a time.
Whenever there is a respite, a few seconds, he moves onward. How long does this silent crawling out of hell really take? Is it a matter of minutes or hours? He does not pause to think about it, nor to measure anything other than the fundamental elements of survival—the integrity of his body’s resources, the direction in which he must go, and the velocity of the wind, which now seems close to thirty or forty meters per second, hurricane force.
He comes to one of the gravel tracks that lead up into the hills. He forces his body to standing position, sustaining it with effort against the bura’s animosity. One step, two steps, three, he staggers toward the east, but even a strong man would not be able to resist its power for long. It is better to crawl. But would the gravel and sharp little stones shred his knees and make him more vulnerable to sharks? And how much energy would this crawling consume with a kilometer or two of rough terrain to cross? Well, he must begin.
He removes some of the extra canvas padding from beneath his shirt and packs it inside his trousers, wadding it about the knees. He moves ahead, feeling the toll on the unused muscles he now needs for a constant crawling motion. He ignores their complaints, lashing them onward. He keeps his head down and his eyes to the dirt in front of his face, giving the wind as little sail as possible. The moon crosses a quarter of the sky. Will there be enough time? Will he reach the east shore before dawn, and will his absence be discovered early or late? It may be that the guards will leave all prisoners in barracks today because work will be impossible. If so, his escape might be undiscovered until the following day. But there is no predicting anything. If the bura dies down, the work routine will resume, and guard boats will be circling the island again, as it is said they do whenever there are no storms. They would spot him easily.
Now, though the wind does not cease its roaring, its force seems less. And yes, glancing all around, he sees that the track has entered a narrow valley. It runs due east, at an angle away from the trajectory of the wind. The hills are also swelling higher on the left. Now it is possible to stand and proceed with better speed. His body must still bend, however, but there is relief as his muscles uncramp, and he can stretch his limbs. A crouching run is possible in short bursts. It is of utmost importance to keep his eyes on the track, lest he step off of it and stumble, sprain an ankle or break a leg, and end like the horses that are regularly shot on this island.
An hour passes, then another. Are they hours, or are they minutes stretched interminably by distortions in the mind? How far has the moon traveled along its course? Oh it is far, far! Too swiftly, it is bringing the morning closer and closer—though in the east the sky is still black and riddled with stars, no hint yet of approaching dawn above the mountains.
The mountains? Yes, there they are! He can see the shadow of the Dinarics ahead, rising like a giant’s fortress. He has come farther than he thought. Now the trail turns to the right and begins a descent. Where is it going? He does not know this path. Then it turns left again, winding eastward and higher, then north-eastward and lower, up and down, this way and that—yet ever toward the east. Whenever it passes through narrow defiles, or out into folds in the hills that are at odds with the direction of the wind, he runs. He is running as he has run only once before in his life. It is the same lurching-stagger of his return to Rajska Polja after the wolves came to Pačići, and the memory of it is in his flesh, his lungs, his heart. Is he once more running from terror into horror? He does not know. He knows only that he must keep going.
The trail ends. Glavina is on his left. The foothills below his feet roll over and begin their steep descent to the eastern shore of the island. The passage between it and the mainland is visible because the water is whipped into a frenzy of whitecaps, and the lights in the heavens illumine them sufficiently to present them as a blur of lesser shadow among the shadows of the world.
Now the dangers are changing. He must pick his way slowly and blindly down the slope, which is sometimes smooth limestone yet more often a maze of crevasses and precipitous drops. The drops may be no more than a meter or so but are enough to break a leg or smash a skull. His fingers are his eyes’ pilots; the soles of his boots transmit other information. Combined, they guide him along, meter by meter. He is still too far south. At the shore, the route might be blocked by steeper drops and deep cuts in the stone, inlets and coves—if there are any—that would increase the number of steps he must take, slowing his progress toward the easternmost tip. Now he cuts to the left, descending diagonally in a line that will bring him abreast of a spark of light on the mainland.
Is it a village or a solitary house? He does not know the northern coast of the Adriatic, though he has a vague sense that a few villages and lonely farms are strung haphazardly along hundreds of kilometers of shoreline. He recalls that the distance from Rijeka in the north and his home in Split is about four hundred kilometers. The city of Zadar is about halfway between the two. Hundreds of islands and inlets are somewhere in all of this. He has no recollection from his life before arrest about the precise location of Goli Otok. The other prisoners have said that it is closer to Rijeka than to Zadar. He knows from his reading of maps where the great islands of Krk and Rab are, and during his imprisonment he has learned about the little nearby island of Prvić. But where is he, really?
No matter, he will focus on his destination. Yes, first to the distant shore, then to Split, to Ariadne, to the baby!
This thought infuses him with renewed strength, and he overcomes his terror of the near-blind descent, taking more and more risks. Despite a few tumbles, none are serious, and they give him only minor bruises.
Lower and lower he goes. There is no grass anywhere, no hint of shrubbery. The wind contains less debris, too, though it is now damper. The tent continues to shelter his torso, keeping vital energies within. Yet his head feels severely chilled, and his inner ears are aching. The wind is now at its maximum velocity with nothing to mediate it. Again and again, he is pressed down to the stone and can only slide. It is impossible to stand or kneel or even progress at a crouch. He slithers downward on his back, and the wind helps him, for it acts as a brake on the pull of gravity. From time to time, his feet hit a bump or a sharp protuberance, slowing him still further. The s
park is now more visible—just there—across the water. Beneath his feet, a line of pale turbulence appears, indicating that the shore is near.
Then a great gift—his right boot dips over the edge of a ravine. He slows to a stop and considers. It is not possible to see how deep or sheer it is, but undoubtedly it descends directly to the waves that are now pounding against the rocks below.
Carefully, he lowers himself into the hole and gasps with relief as his boots hit jumbled rocks. It is neither deep nor sheer. Little by little, he picks his way down, and within minutes he is huddling in the mouth of the ravine, with sea spray pelting his face. The scream of the wind and the roar of the surf swirl into a single unending shriek of pandemonium. For the moment, he rests.
What hour is it? The sky is entirely full of stars and still is not paling in the east. This means he will have some time. With luck he will reach the distant shore before sunrise.
Now the major hurdle: the wind is bitterly cold, and the water will be only a little less so. He cannot swim with the tent. If a storm-tossed abandoned boat were to float past, he would take it and use the canvas as a sail. But no miraculous craft appears. The bits of wood-wrack battering the rocks are out of reach, and doubtless these twigs and branches would not offer sufficient float. He needs swift, economical speed—against the wind, at that!
He can waste no more time. Fighting his physical reluctance, he removes the tent from his body and wraps a large stone in it. He throws it out into the water and it sinks. Now he is shivering. He removes the canvas pads from beneath his shirt and throws them into the water, where he hopes the wind will blow them elsewhere in the dark. Now the boots, a stone in each, and they too are gone. His trousers are so thin that they tear easily just above the knees. The arms of the shirt go as well. He will need the bit of canvas that remains on his flesh to slow the release of energy into the water. But he must retain only the minimum—anything more than this would increase the drag.
The windchill could kill him if he does not move quickly. He crouches again, his teeth chattering, his whole body shaking, and then comes a second or two while the bura pauses to catch its breath. He springs and leaps out into the water.