Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “What is the winepress?” Josip asks as he drops onto his pallet and curls into a ball, longing for sleep.

  “If you anger the guards,” whispers Prof, “they will make you carry two slabs uphill on your back. Then on your next trip it is three slabs, then four and onward. No water all day as they add weight to weight until you collapse. If you drop the stones and they break, you will be shot. It’s like a game of dice for the guards. If you drop the stones and they don’t break, you are merely beaten. They don’t let you die, just bleed. If you survive that, they think you are strong enough to keep working. But mostly the stone breaks.”

  “You have seen this?”

  “A few times.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Two and a half years.”

  Two and a half years ago Josip was running up and down the Marjan and accepting a position as professor of mathematics at the university as if the entire world were operating more or less as it should. At the time, he was sure that the injustices around him were severe but temporary aberrations, which the slow evolution of civilization would change for the better. Two and a half years ago, while he was blissfully ignorant of all that was approaching, a professor of history in Zagreb was being interrogated and condemned to prison for teaching the truth.

  “They banish truth”, whispers Josip to Prof.

  “They banish everything human”, Prof replies.

  Then they sleep.

  So it goes, day after day, week after week. From time to time, Josip sees other crews falling under the lash or individual prisoners being chased by groups of lackeys who repeatedly drive their victims before them with a rain of blows. Often, a prisoner will be forced to run while carrying a metal box loaded with stone chips, the tray hanging about his neck by a wire loop. The lackeys beat him, faster-faster-faster they scream, until the victim’s lungs burst or his heart bursts or his legs collapse, or the wire cuts too deep into the neck and his blood pours out onto the white stones. Going to and from the barracks compound, which is called the Wire, Josip sometimes notices dead bodies that have not been taken away, ravens perched on the skulls pecking in the eye sockets. They pass one such corpse, and Sova whispers, “He was head of a state ministry.” They pass another, and Propo whispers, “That one was a poet.”

  It is now three months since Josip arrived. The rabbit has grown new skin and also developed other coverings. His hands are calloused and his wounds healed, though the deeper bruises are still sore. He feels less emotion than he did in the beginning. He observes every detail of their lives (he forces himself to do this, for the suction of fatigue and indifference is constant). He thinks about the personalities beneath the masks of his fellow inmates and is heartened whenever a spark shows beneath the limestone dust. He still has eaten none of the reboiled wheat. His six companions have stopped feeding him their rations. Every few days, whenever he can endure the extra hunger, he gives half of his daily portion of bread to one or another of them. They always refuse at first, and in the end the accept. Only Prof remains constant in refusal. No, there is Tata as well—a man of mysterious moral strength—his character different than Prof’s, but just as strong. A puzzle, these two men. Who are they, really?

  “You have been here more than three months”, whispers Tata on a homeward journey not long after.

  This statement of the obvious is not intended as information.

  It is Tata’s affirmation of Josip’s existence. He is saying that time and identity still exist—and individual destiny. Josip recognizes this as a gift from the old man, better than bread.

  “Thank you”, he whispers. “Thank you.”

  Tata smiles. This is the first genuine smile Josip has seen since his arrest. The old man understands—understands that Josip understands.

  “And you, Tata? How long has it been?”

  “Four years and two months.”

  “May I ask what your work was before your arrest?”

  But a guard has spotted them whispering, or suspects them of whispering, and shouts a warning. He is not one of the more brutal ones and thus there is no retaliation. The prisoners trudge onward in silence.

  As they wearily shuffle along a track Josip has never used before, a view of the sea opens up for a few seconds. Between two hills the open water is as purple as a bird wing, the sky darker still, and an island in the distance is flaring rose from the setting sun. Josip’s eyes gulp down what he sees, then the next hummock of stone blocks the view, and they plunge into the valley of the prisoners.

  “They cannot banish the sea”, whispers Tata.

  A bird swoops down over their heads, rises upward in a fantastic trajectory of aerial dynamics, and then is gone.

  “They cannot banish birds”, whispers Josip.

  After he has eaten his soup and bread, he collapses onto his rags, grasping for sleep, but desperate also to take the image of the bird into his dreams. He will dream that he is the lastavica rising over the sea.

  The last thing he hears is the cry of a newborn baby. He is too exhausted to climb back out of half-sleep to cock his ears and wonder where it has come from, yet he knows that his own baby has by now been born. Yes, somewhere in this world his child has been born. Thinking about it hurts so much that in other circumstances he might have remained sleepless all night, but now he sinks and cannot awake until the harsh whistles rouse the prisoners to another day of work.

  The greatest challenge is to remain mentally alert. In this way a prisoner can detect the signs of descent into total docility—then dehumanization, and then reconstruction. Most prisoners loathe the political lectures, which are held one evening a week in a building called “the school”. Though everyone understands what is being done to their thinking, a few readily succumb, pretending to believe the ideology (or actually embracing it) in hope of an early release. Propo calls them the optimists. Regardless of their politics, he says, no prisoners will be released. As far as he knows, no prisoners have ever been released— except through the gate of universal mortality.

  The lectures offer Josip a mental challenge. Beneath the propaganda, he can hear twisted brains ticking away with their subtle and not-so-subtle plots. Between the lines he sees the minds of the jailers, the minds of the theorists, the mind of the regime. Know this mind, he tells himself, know it as you know the eyes of the judges and the eyes of the wolves and the servants of the wolves. Every word, phrase, sentence, every theme has materialized—apparently out of nowhere—for a purpose. It has been deliberately formed for the sole purpose of reshaping your thoughts, and in such a way that it will be most effective. They have had years of practice, and that they continue to use this approach shows you that it is successful, though to what degree is still not clear. One of their tactics is the good wolf and bad wolf routine, the wolves working hand in hand to soften resistance. Most guards are brutal, but the indoctrinators at the weekly session are reasonable in tone. They speak to the prisoners as if they are men, and there is an extra ration of bread on those evenings.

  After every session, the whispering in the barracks contains observations such as, “You see, they’re not so bad.” And, “What he said about Tito tonight was true.” And, “Well, at least prosperity is coming to our homeland.”

  Such comments usually pop out of the mouths of the weakest and youngest, and on occasion the most desperate, who are hoping an informer will report their reactions to the administration, thus speeding their way out of this hell.

  No one tries to refute such self-delusions, because an informer might report the refutation and speed one’s way deeper into hell.

  “Poor souls”, says Tata.

  Prof shakes his head. “They believe that tractors fall out of the sky.”

  Josip listens and muses.

  Occasionally, while a hundred or so men are seated on wooden benches in the “school”, the commandant enters the lecture hall to check on how the evening is going. No heads turn, though all are aware he is here. A portly, sixtyish m
an in a fine uniform with brave medals on a brave breast, his gruff style declares that he is a decent soldierly fellow who wants no more than to see a smoothly running institution and the successful rehabilitation of sociopaths. He is no bureaucrat, and though he has personally beaten men to death, he does not make a habit of it. He was once a major in the Partisans, but he made a few mistakes along the way and that is why he is here. So the rumors go. They may or may not be true. In any event, he is known among the six as Zmaj, “the dragon”. A fat little dragon with a growing belly. Whenever he throws his shoulders back and scowls and strides up and down the aisles, inspecting prisoners’ faces to see if they are paying attention to the lecturer, splits of white undershirt are exposed between the buttons. Vertical smiles. A friendly dragon, this Zmaj.

  His assistant, a taller and slightly leaner officer with a deep scar cut diagonally across his nose, right cheek, and upper lip, is not so friendly. He is referred to as Sokol, “the hawk”. He has been known to pull a “student” from a bench and drag him outside, and then follows a pistol shot. Both men appear to be well fed. Whenever the wind is right, the smell of onions frying in butter blows into the prisoners’ compound, and often the smell of cooking meat. At such moments, prisoners suck at the air as if it contained nourishment.

  These hints of a meta-zone are a flaw in the regime, because the olfactory language is vastly magnified among the prisoners and becomes that much more significant, evoking a myriad of unspoken reactions. Their own zone is not so much a spot on the island as it is a psychological state. The faintest evidence of another world helps them to realize this—and to resist.

  Are there more ways to resist? Josip wracks what remains of his brains to find some. One night he turns on his pallet and whispers to Prof.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have an idea.”

  “Do not waste energy on dreams of escape, Josip.”

  “There are ways of escape that do not involve fleeing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We can develop a culture within the island.”

  “A culture?”

  “A clandestine sub-culture. Not truly subversive because it will be positive. Our captors are the real subversives because they kill. We can find ways to live as men.”

  “How?”

  “We will have dialogues.”

  “Dialogues”, murmurs Prof. “Do you like the taste of hemlock?”

  “We can do it.”

  “Josip, go to sleep. I cannot keep my eyes open.”

  “Listen, listen to me, Vladimir.”

  “Enough! If we keep on whispering like this, a rat will scurry to speak to the dragon.”

  The next morning they are passing through the fold in the hills toward a distant quarry. For some reason, fewer guards than usual march them along, just one at the head of the line, another behind. Prof is in front of Josip.

  “What kind of dialogues?” he mumbles over his shoulder.

  “Anything we like. Free men can discuss anything they like.”

  “A recipe for destruction. They are always watching.”

  “We’ll do it one word at a time as we go up and down the paths to the trucks.”

  “One-word dialogues?”

  “It can work, Vladimir. It can work. Then we will have ideas in our minds, and our thinking will move again. Slowly at first, but then maybe it will gather speed.”

  “And with it will come the return of full consciousness. And with that will come mental anguish.”

  “Pain is the price of consciousness.”

  “It’s too big a risk—”

  “Let’s try. For one day at least, let’s try.”

  Now they are filing down into an artificial rock cut, about twenty meters wide and sixty long. During the previous days, another crew, using gasoline-driven blades, sliced hundreds of fine stones from the cliffs and stacked them neatly at the bottom, waiting for the beasts of burden. The crew from Josip’s barracks groans and bends, and in turn each man picks up his piece of stone. They slowly re-climb the path toward the crest, where more guards have arrived and a truck is waiting for cargo. The path is narrower than most; a prisoner coming back down after delivering his load must turn sideways to pass those coming up. One false step would cause a fatal fall. Prof is among the first, Josip among the last. As Prof is coming back down, he turns sideways to allow Josip to go up.

  Without moving his lips, Josip breathes, “Despair.” In a moment, Prof has moved on, and nothing is noticeable from above.

  When they pass again as Prof ascends and Josip descends, the latter adds a second word: “is”.

  At their next meeting Prof whispers, “Despair is?” His look communicates that he is wondering if Josip has gone completely mad.

  On the next pass Josip adds more: “toxic waste.”

  The next, Prof replies, “Despair is toxic waste?”

  Josip makes as if to stumble, giving them a few extra seconds.

  “Yes.”

  A guard shouts down, “Watch it there, you stupids! Don’t kill yourselves—that’s our job!” Other guards chuckle.

  The next pass, Josip whispers, “produced by—”

  The next: “internal—”

  The next: “combustion—”

  The next: “of—”

  The next: “false—”

  Finally: “assumptions.”

  By this point, Prof is smiling with his eyes as they pass. To smile with the mouth is too visible and would invite official curiosity and retribution.

  It takes three hours. At the water break, the prisoners collapse into the limestone dust on the quarry floor, panting.

  Lying on his back a few feet from Josip, Prof whispers without moving his lips, “Despair is the toxic waste produced by the internal combustion of false assumptions.”

  Whistles blowing, guards barking, “Get to work!”

  Prof heaves himself onto hands and knees and rises, his back to the guards, his face to Josip.

  “I understand. Now it’s my turn.”

  During the three hours between water-break and lunch, Prof makes his reply:

  Roman—

  civilization—

  fell—

  because of—

  obsession—

  with—

  gladiatorial—

  games.

  At lunch break, they gulp the soup and water dispensed from barrels on the back of the truck, then return to the pit and collapse again into the dust. They will have fifteen minutes, perhaps, though talking is not allowed. As before, they lie on their backs a few feet from each other.

  Josip: “Roman civilization fell because of obsession with gladiatorial games?”

  Prof: “Yes, you got it.”

  Josip: “It’s hardly a reply to my part of the dialogue.”

  Prof: “It is. Wait and see, there’s more.”

  Whistles blowing. “Get up, you lazy animals!”

  Three hours of sweating under the ferocious afternoon sun lie ahead. But the work seems easier now because the mind is engaged elsewhere. What is Prof trying to say? In what way does it connect to Josip’s sentence? And what is the more?

  On the first pass he begins:

  Carthaginian—

  civilization—

  fell—

  because of—

  child—

  sacrifice.

  Men are dropping because of dehydration. There are a few cursory kicks and blows, but the senior guard gives permission for an extra water-break. Lining up by the barrel, Josip makes sure he is behind Prof. No lips move, no head turns, nothing at all to indicate that men are communicating with each other.

  “Carthaginian civilization fell because of child-sacrifice”, breathes Josip as Prof steps up to take a tin cup from a lackey who is shouting at a comrade and not paying attention. A risk, but it works.

  Prof nods as if sipping from the cup. “Yes.” Then he drains the cup. “There’s more.”


  “No more, you bastard!” the lackey bellows at Prof. “One cup per prisoner!”

  Prof turns away and goes back down into the quarry.

  They resume their work and their dialogue. As Prof has indicated, there is more to come on his part.

  “Our”, he begins, followed on subsequent passes by:

  civilization—

  will—

  fall—

  because—

  of—

  both.

  Josip can barely contain his excitement. They now have a key to an entire world of resistance. Internal thought, a flow of human discourse among the dehumanized.

  “What are you smiling at, you donkey!” shouts a guard. “No water for you at break!”

  Well, it was worth it. He can do without the water, for he now has something a thousand times more valuable in his veins.

  The following hours are hard and dry, yet three more sentences are exchanged:

  Josip: “How will we hasten its fall?”

  Vladimir: “More important: What will take its place?”

  Josip: “Does conspiracy to bring down evil regimes breed counter-conspiracies that become more evil than the ones they replace?”

  His head is swimming from this long thought, his eyes blurring by the time the last whistle blows, bringing another work day to a close. There is no time for a reply.

  Later that night, as everyone else in the barracks sleeps, Josip turns to Prof.

  “Vladimir?”

  A grunt.

  “Vladimir, how did you like it?”

  “I liked it”, mumbles the professor of history. “Let’s continue. But now, I beg you, sleep . . . sleep, sleep.”

  During the following weeks, Josip witnesses several beatings of clumsy or insufficiently servile prisoners. One shooting of a madman who makes a run for the sea. Pistol shots at night, fewer in the daytime. Screams at any hour. A truck that passes with several corpses on it. Whatever he feels, he has learned to keep a mask firmly on his face.