Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  A hand shoves a photograph in front of Josip’s face.

  “One of your fellow Dolphins”, laughs the voice.

  It is Vlado, his mouth wide open. Where his eyes should be are raw sockets of bleeding flesh. There is a bullet hole in his forehead.

  “He begged us to kill him”, says the smiling wolf. “You will, too.”

  “Unless . . .”, says the other wolf.

  Josip vomits and chokes. He falls off the chair. Someone kicks him between the legs, and he is dragged away.

  How much longer? Is it days, weeks, months?

  “Horvatinec is in prison for life. We have all your friends.”

  “They fly, they dive”, whispers Josip. This is all the resistance he can muster. That and silence.

  “Antun Kusić is dead. Ana Kusić in prison. All the others, dead or in prison.”

  “Who was Tatjana’s contact? How did she get out?”

  “Did Ivan compose the song?”

  “Stjepan has confessed everything. Let’s hear it in your own words.”

  They know everything.

  “Where did Vera and Iria go? Who warned them? Are they in Austria, or in hiding here?” They have just told him something valuable, a thread of hope. They do not know everything.

  “How much did the CIA pay you?”

  They are fishing for more, not knowing there is no more. “My wife was not involved”, he cries. “Let her go.” Laughter.

  “A violinist without fingers is not a pretty sight.”

  “Please, the baby!”

  “A shame about the baby. A baby without arms and legs—” Josip goes mad, leaps to his feet, roaring, howling, punching anything in the room. He is struck from behind and crumples to the floor.

  In the absolute dark, relieved only by the sensation of rough cement on his bruised flesh, he makes a decision. Their power is absolute. His fear for his family is their greatest leverage. They can kill him if they wish, but there is no worse threat than their promise to hurt his wife and child. They show him more photographs of people who died in agony. Among the mutilated bodies, none are Ariadne or the baby. So, he understands what they are doing—they would undermine his resistance with the tool more powerful than pain.

  But how to resist? Should he tell them lies? They are too clever to believe him; moreover, he lacks inventiveness in this skill.

  Truth then? Yes, the truth will confound them. Turn the language of truth against them.

  “I will tell you everything”, he says at the next interrogation. And he will. Everything. A unified field theory.

  “At last you have come to your senses”, says the smiling wolf.

  “Don’t try to fool us”, says the growling wolf. “We will check what you tell us, and if we find you are lying, you will end like Kusić ended, only slower. Then you will beg. Oh, yes, then you will beg to tell the truth. But it will be too late.”

  “It need not come to that”, says the friendly wolf.

  He reads a list of Dolphins. It is fairly accurate, but missing a few names.

  “Who else was involved?”

  “Max Planck”, says Josip.

  They scribble the name onto a pad of paper.

  “Who is he?”

  “A scientist.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He has fled.”

  “Who else?”

  “Eugenij Kumičić.”

  “Tell us who he is and where he is.”

  “He is a novelist, author of Olga i Lina. He is dead.”

  “Go on. Names, Lasta. Give us names.”

  “Vatroslav Lisinski, a musician. Dead.”

  “Continue.”

  “Fra Anto.”

  “His full name?”

  “I forget. He is dead.”

  They pause. The friendly wolf leans back in his chair and exhales through his nostrils.

  “All dead. How convenient. You’re not lying to us, are you?”

  “I am telling you the truth. All of these were involved in the spirit of the Dolphins. Planck was not a Dolphin, but he would have been.”

  “What do you mean by would have been?”

  “He developed quantum theory.”

  “What is quantum theory?”

  “The truth about everything.”

  “Don’t play with us.”

  “The Nazis executed his son.”

  “So, this Planck was an anti-Fascist?”

  “Yes, always. He was against war.”

  “Was he a Stalinist?”

  “No.”

  “All right. Who else was a member?”

  “Theseus.”

  “His full name.”

  “Theseus of Athens.”

  “That’s a code name, isn’t it. You all had code names.”

  “For the most part we used first names only.”

  “That’s not what the other Dolphins told us.”

  “In the beginning it was first names. After a few meetings, we learned each other’s full names, some of us, not everyone.”

  “Stjepan, for example.” Josip nods.

  “Oh, by the way, here is a recent photograph of the great unpublished Croatian novelist.”

  The obliteration of much of Stjepan’s face, and the bullet hole, cannot hide his identity.

  “All the manuscripts are burned, too”, says the friendly wolf. “He wouldn’t talk. Such fools only talk on paper. Now the fool and the paper are ashes in the wind.”

  “You too, Lasta, will be ashes in the wind”, says the unfriendly wolf.

  “Unless you tell us everything”, says the other. “We want to know all contacts. The smallest detail.”

  “What was Theseus’s role in the group?”

  “He was our amorphicist”, says Josip. “What is that?”

  “He was a warning.”

  “What do you mean,” snorts the friendly one, “a warning?”

  “He reminded us of our fragility.”

  “Political, you mean?”

  “Human.”

  “Human?”

  “The vulnerability of conscience”, murmurs Josip. The wolves laugh. “Conscience!”

  “He taught us with amorphisms.”

  “What are amorphisms?”

  “An amorphism is a fragment,” mumbles Josip, “a fragment without discernible connection to a whole. In another sense, an amorphism is that which functions as an antidote to the narcotic influence of morphine. Alternatively, it is an antidote to a dream world or dreamlike state of mind.”

  “You mean he kept you alert to the dangers.”

  “Yes, the internal and external.”

  “The external being the UDBA. What were the internal?”

  “Our tendency to live in illusion. Also the split between temperament and character.”

  This puzzles the wolves for a few minutes. “Theseus is Simon Horvatinec, isn’t he?” Josip shakes his head. “No, Theseus is a Greek.”

  “Where is this Theseus now? Is he in hiding?”

  “He is dead.”

  “Again, dead.”

  Josip’s chin falls onto his chest. His body is aching, and he is mentally exhausted with the effort to think carefully about what he says.

  The nice wolf snaps his fingers. Guards return Josip to his cell. Later, he is brought food and drink. He eats it ravenously and vomits. He is given a light beating, to his body only, not to his head. Another meal is brought to him later in the day. He eats it slowly and keeps it down. The return of food sparks his hunger for more. He sits in isolation inside his cement box, gazing at a bar of light slowly moving down the wall. The tiny window, so far above his head, offers no chance to see what is outside. It is all inside, everything is inside.

  To think of Ariadne is to be totally consumed by terror for her and the baby. It is to go completely insane.

  He forces his mind elsewhere:

  He is in a cement cellar, surrounded again by pain and death.

  An armless man says to him, “In your life, Josip,
you will have much to fear. You will suffer, and this suffering will bring much good to others.”

  “I do not understand what you are saying”, says the Lastavica of the Mountains.

  “You do not need to understand. Only remember: you will be afraid. But do not be afraid.”

  “What can this mean! Tell me what it means!”

  “You will be afraid. But when you are afraid, do not be afraid.”

  Josip is choking back his sobs; he is a boy with nowhere to go other than a place where a wolf wants to kill him.

  “Look, Josip”, says the Lastavica of the Sea. “Look at the light.”

  A bar of light is crossing the floor.

  “Do you see?”

  Josip shakes his head.

  “Surely you see”, says the man.

  “I see the light, but the walls imprison it.”

  “The light has entered the prison. Nothing can keep it out.”

  “If there is no window, the light cannot enter.”

  “If there is no window, the light enters within you.”

  The next day the interrogation resumes with a hard slap across the face.

  “Max Planck”, snarls the bad wolf. “You were playing with us. And if we find that the other names—”

  “Easy, easy”, says the nice wolf. “Look at him, look at what he has been through, poor fellow. He can’t get everything right all at once. Give it time.”

  “No, let’s cut him to pieces now.”

  “We know that you regret your involvement with those radicals, Lasta. We know you intended no harm. It would speed your return to the university if you were to state clearly all that you know and also your political position. This unfortunate situation can be remedied quickly, and you can get back to your life without further trouble. And your wife.”

  “Where is my wife?”

  “She is in prison. Each day you prolong her internment. Why do you do this to her?”

  Josip tightens his lips but says nothing.

  If there is no window, the light enters within you.

  “All right. Let’s begin”, says the nice wolf. “There are missing names. People who attended the meetings, some dropped out, some did not give their full names. We need a few blanks filled in. There was a philosopher present.”

  “There were many”, says Josip.

  “What was his role?”

  “He listened.”

  “Listened only? Surely he had something to say. What was his name?”

  “I forget.”

  I will forget Zoran’s name. I will forget, I will forget, O God, help me to forget!

  “What was his role?”

  “He taught us. Like Theseus, he taught us.”

  “What did he teach you?”

  “He said that joy is the aesthetics of love at light-speed.”

  “What?”

  “Joy is the aesthetics of love at light-speed.” The wolves roll their eyes. “What else did he say?”

  “Very little.”

  “He proposed the use of violence against the People’s Republic, didn’t he?”

  “No one was advocating violence.”

  “Then for what did you organize? Why the secrecy? Don’t lie to us! The others confessed about the guns and explosives.”

  “There were no guns or explosives. We never talked about that kind of thing. It was not our way.”

  “What was your way?”

  “Culture.”

  The wolves snort again.

  “You were planning to assassinate President Tito.”

  “We had no plans to assassinate anyone.”

  “We know that your stated intention was to destroy a legitimately elected government, which you called a tyranny.”

  “We believed that our art could demolish the dehumanizing power of all tyrannies to the degree that it is obedient to the universal laws.”

  “From your own lips—demolish tyrannies.”

  “Without weapons”, says Josip.

  “What a liar you are, Lasta! Here, take a look at this.” He throws a small notebook onto the desk. “Your journal. It’s all here, every seditious and traitorous thought known to man. Let me read you a few samples:

  “Art reinforces tyrannies to the degree that it obeys the diktats of social pressure, gnostic myths, and political expedience.

  “Malevolent governments are no more than gangs of unhappy children. So are benevolent governments.

  “In the politics of the playground is written the politics of the nation; in the politics of the nation is written the politics of the playground.

  “Social pressure is the fascism of the democracies. Fascism is the democracy of the ruthless. Yugoslavian socialism embodies the worst of both worlds.

  “Social engineering is the opiate of romantic intellectuals.

  “The state of our culture will be the culture of our state.

  “The artificial state will be brought down only by weapons used in good conscience.”

  The nice wolf looks up with a smile. “Kiss your wife good-bye.”

  Josip goes mad, is restrained, and tossed back into his cell.

  The Trial. It takes ten minutes. Not worth recalling though it cannot be forgotten because of the faces of men who use law to betray justice. He has never before seen such faces, and thinks they are more frightening than the wolves of Pačići, for they are not brutal men, it seems. Memorize those faces, he tells himself, do not forget what you see in their eyes. They are the slaves of the wolves. And worse, they know what they are doing. What kind of minds do they have? What goes on within those skulls? How do they live with themselves?

  As Josip stands up in the courtroom, awaiting his sentence, the judge shakes his head in disgust.

  “Such a pity. What good you might have done for our country. Such a promising future. You were used by others, that is why I will be lenient. You are sentenced to twenty-five years at hard labor.”

  Josip stares the judge in the eye and, speaking for the first time with a clear voice, he says, “Why don’t you just take me out into the forest and slaughter me, as you did to so many of our countrymen?”

  Hastily, he is silenced, manacled, and taken away. Back in his cell he is beaten senseless by three guards.

  He hopes he is dead, but the rhythmic heaving of the floor beneath his body confirms the worst: he is alive. A thrumming motor. Metal all around. He is lying on his belly, his hands tied behind his back. Water is sloshing backward and forward, soaking his prison uniform. He is afflicted with a terrible thirst, and sucks at the water—salty, tainted with diesel oil. He spits it out.

  The sound of a motor dies, and the rocking motion ceases. Above him a hatch opens with a squeal, and light burns in along with the cries of sea gulls. Blinking, squinting in the blinding light, he sees that there are other groaning bodies in the dark with him.

  A man in a military uniform jumps down into the hole and drags the five prisoners to their feet one by one. Hands from above pull them up. They find themselves lying on the deck of a small boat, moored alongside a wharf below some low barren hills. There, they are permitted to rest for a minute until their eyes adjust and they are able to see.

  A guard shouts a command at them to stand and line up. Wrists still manacled behind their backs, the prisoners roll onto their sides, struggle to their knees, and then stand upright. They shuffle forward. Guards escort them toward a plank leading to the wharf, where more guards are waiting for them, armed with rifles. The faces of the guards are fierce, cynical, and bored. Without warning, one of the prisoners breaks from the line, staggers to the seaward side of the boat, and topples over. The guards rush to that side and shoot their guns into the water. Satisfied, they reholster their pistols and shoulder their rifles.

  “Lunch time for sharks!” says one. “The Croat bar is open!” says another.

  From the wharf the prisoners are marched up a rocky path to a cluster of low cement buildings divided by a paved avenue leading into the hills. More guards are w
aiting there, in two lines, a dozen on each side. Many are smirking in expectation, as if to welcome the prisoners. Truncheons are in the hands of all. The pavement is splotched everywhere with old stains, bleached by the sun.

  “Skin the rabbit!” shouts one of the guards. Josip is last in the file of prisoners, and he sees what is coming. One by one, each prisoner is stripped naked, then shoved between the guards.

  “Run, rabbit!”

  The first prisoner staggers forward. A hail of truncheon blows fall on him from both sides. He stumbles, cannot rise, and is kicked again and again until he gets up on all fours, then crawls onward under furious blows. When he is through the gauntlet, he collapses on the pavement, blood seeping from beneath his body. “Run, rabbit!”

  The next prisoner refuses to move, falls to his knees, sobbing. Immediately, the guards converge on him and beat him. Blood spatters everywhere, the thumping on human flesh does not cease. They stand back. The man is dead. Two guards drag the body back toward the wharf by the ankles.

  “Lunchtime!”

  The next prisoner runs—and ends like the first. Now it is Josip’s turn.

  “Run, rabbit!”

  He is propelled toward the truncheons with a kick to his backside. Staggering forward, he feels every strike upon his body as the storm hits, sees his own blood splattering ahead of him, his blood flowing into the blood of others, all mingled.

  “This is a strong one! A big one too!” Laughter.

  Now his progress is slower, each step purchased at the price of countless blows. Everything is exposed, everything receives its portion. He staggers, falls; the guards step close to finish him off. He pushes himself up on hands and knees, then rises. His feet slipping on blood, he lurches forward a meter, then another.

  Now he is through the lines and collapses beside the other prisoners.

  “Let’s send him back again.”

  “No, don’t waste an ox like this. He’ll be good for work!”

  “Let’s see what he can take.”

  “Back you go, rabbit!”

  They drag him to his feet and spin him around until he is reeling from dizziness. “Run, rabbit!”

  He staggers back the way he came, one step, another step, under a rain of truncheons and boot-kicks. He collapses onto the pavement where he began. They converge on him.