Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  Throughout the day, Josip is content merely to be there. He says little. They demand nothing of him, not a hint of prying. Slavica speaks of her childhood in a village near the shrine of the Mother of God of Bistrica, the Queen of Croatia. She tells of the numerous little churches scattered throughout the mountains in that region north of Zagreb and about the pilgrimages she went on as a child, before the troubles. Emilio asks where Josip is from. Bosnia i Herzegovina, he replies and says no more.

  “I’ve never seen it”, muses Emilio. “Lots of mountains back there, I hear, beyond the Dinarics.”

  They have a supper in the evening, outside on the patio again. After the meal, Emilio lights a fat candle in a jar in front of the statue of St. Anthony and another in front of a standing crucifix on the table. The dishes, wine bottles, and baskets of uneaten food are not yet cleared away. The sky is burning red, then dusk settles quietly upon the land, and the heat of the day is replaced by a cool breeze from the ocean. The family prays the Rosary together in Italian. Josip sits silently throughout, feeling some pain, staring at the flagstones, or gazing up at the sky as he listens to the murmured prayers and the peeping of chicks in the nest. How strange, he thinks. Do Italian birds hatch their young in autumn? Maybe they are late-comers. He cannot recall birds doing such a thing in his homeland. Perhaps they do, and he never noticed. Or is it spring now? What month is it? Slavica told him, but he has forgotten.

  There is too much to remember, too much that would crack him open, though he knows full well what it is: everything that he left behind beyond the wall of the Dinarics, the wall of the sea, and the wall within his own heart. He wonders if shock treatments wipe out essential things. If they do, you cannot know what is missing. Perhaps that is their purpose. As the prayers continue, he tries to remember a little mathematics, but the mental strain is too much. He focuses on the saint and the fish and the children’s faces.

  After the Rosary, they go inside the house to watch television. The living room has a thick carpet and imitation baroque furniture. Hanging on all four walls are religious paintings of the sentimental kind. Sitting on a shelf are a few pieces of Croatian pottery, a painted egg and a heart-shaped biscuit dipped in red glaze, inscribed with the word Zagreb. The sofa has a lace throw on it and red and white braided cushions.

  “Have you been following the mess, Josip?” asks Emilio switching on the television set. “No? Well it’s really bad, a big showdown. Kennedy has told the Russians to back off. If their ships bring any more missiles to Cuba, there will be war.”

  Slavica claps her hands and tells the children it is time for bed. There follows an elaborate ritual of kisses and hugs. Seated in a corner armchair, Josip watches it all, the pain in his heart increasing, not by the threat of war, but by the happiness of these secure children. Perhaps, too, by the braided cushions just like Mamica used to make. The boy crosses the room on crutches and bends toward Joseph, shaking his hand again. The little girl kisses his cheek, hugs him, and flies away toward a staircase, leaving the faint perfume of innocence in the air.

  “Another war”, sighs Slavica, after the children are safely tucked in. “And this one will be the last.”

  When the news program is over, she drives Josip back to the hospital and accompanies him into the building, lingering a few minutes by the entrance to his ward.

  “Did I pass my test?” he asks.

  “It was not a test”, she replies with a hurt tone. “Truly, I wanted you to meet my family. We are both far from our homeland, we both have lost so much.”

  “Your husband will become jealous—yes, in time he will imagine things.”

  She smiles and shakes her head. “My husband and I love each other very deeply. And as I told you, he likes Croatians. It is plain to see he likes you. We hope you will accept more invitations to visit us.”

  “If you wish”, he mumbles, dropping his eyes.

  “You are honest, Josip. You are also proud. But I think maybe it is not such a bad pride. I believe it is because your trust has been broken—badly broken. It can be rebuilt. Can you let us help you?”

  “Why do you want to help me?” he asks in a neutral tone.

  She does not reply immediately. Finally, she takes a deep breath.

  “My father took his own life. That was after we came to Italy. He had lost everything: our family, our home, our life. I had lost the young man I loved, but my loss was not like Tata’s because most of my life was still ahead of me. He could not learn this language or the ways of the people here—so alien to us. So deep were his sorrows that he sank and sank and did not rise. And when my mother died—I think from weakness due to all our hardships—he just went after her.”

  “I am sorry for your family’s misfortune”, says Josip.

  “He was a writer, a professional journalist. Over the years he was arrested in turn by the Ustashe, then by the Italians, then by the Tito regime—and they all tortured him, then released him. Each time he was taken away, I was terrified, and I learned to pray as never before. And each time he was returned to us, I learned to be thankful.

  “But our prayers weren’t enough for him in the end. I don’t know why. He was a strong man in many ways, a fighter, and very courageous. Perhaps his confidence was in himself and not in God.

  “When the Communists arrested him that last time, my brother was arrested along with him. He was so much like our father, and he was beginning to say things in print too. He wanted to be a man of truth, and of course Tata encouraged him in it, despite the risks. In prison, they forced my father to watch as they put my brother into a huge drum of water. It was not to drown him. No, they wanted something worse. They wanted to take his soul—my father’s soul and my brother’s soul. They put Pavao inside and closed the lid.

  “The drum was on its side, so a person could only float on his back within it, with a couple centimeters of breathing space on top. For five weeks he remained inside that drum. There was air inside, he could rest, he could drink the water he floated in. There was a tiny pipe for ventilation, but the drum was entirely packed in layer upon layer of cotton. No sound could enter or escape. It was neither hot nor cold. My father later said he thought they were taking away his son’s senses, one by one, so that in the total darkness inside that drum he had only his own mind, a little air, and no feeling. The mind alone, cut off from all outside communication, turns in upon itself. Some men survive this but are changed for life; most men disintegrate.

  “My father tried to shout to Pavao and was beaten for it, but it was useless, because not a sound penetrated that evil cell. In the end, they took off the lid and pulled my brother out. He was alive but completely insane. Then they just shot him there in front of my father. Then they kicked Tata out onto the street, and he walked home in the dark from Zagreb to our village. Not long after, we decided there was nothing left for us in our land. We walked from the mountains, and later arrived at the coast, and from there we found a fisherman who smuggled us across to Italy.”

  Slavica pauses, sighs.

  “My father was not only a journalist, he was something of a poet too—though his poems were a private matter. I thought you were a poet, because your eyes are so much like his. He was always observing birds, like you, not as others would watch them. He told me once, when I was a little girl, that they sometimes spoke to him. After he died, I was certain that he had suffered from clinical melancholia, and that the sickness had killed him. Now. . .”

  “You no longer think so?”

  “It may sound strange to you, Josip, but I no longer think in those terms. In fact, I no longer trust the assumptions of psychology.”

  “Yet you are an excellent psychologist. You have helped me.”

  “I am a poor psychologist. I did little for you. It is you who chose to live. Only you can choose to live or die, and no one else can make this choice for you. Indeed, you chose rightly.” She smiles suddenly. “It has been a long day. Tomorrow I will see you again, and then I will have good news to tell
you—if the Soviets and Americans have not incinerated the planet during the night.”

  Josip is now a patient at a private clinic on the mainland, about thirty kilometers inland from Venezia. The clinic is a large manor house surrounded by tilled fields, orchards, and greenhouses. He has a room of his own in an unlocked ward from which he can freely go in and out of the building and throughout the grounds. He no longer wears pajamas during daylight hours, just ordinary casual clothes—slacks and shirt and shoes. Visitors are never quite sure whether he is a patient or a staff member. He is undoubtedly a patient, and Slavica still sees him for an hour of consultation once a week when she is not at the hospital in the city. His new doctor has taken him off all medication and is pleased by the way Josip can speak calmly about the traumas of his childhood and his more recent experiences as a prisoner. Certain crucial details remain archived in Josip’s mind, known to him alone. It is not necessary to tell everything. He no longer yearns to die—this afflicts him rarely, and then only when he is unusually exhausted or troubled by nightmares. The nightmares are declining in number and intensity. Depression and its accompanying ennui can return at odd moments, but they last no longer than a few days at a time. His depression is dispelled more quickly whenever he overcomes feelings of despair with an exercise of will—above all, the will to physical labor.

  He spends most days weeding in the garden, pruning trees or burning underbrush in preparation for spring. Then summer returns, along with its crushing heat. Birds build their nests, hatch their young, and the young fly away. The planet is not incinerated. As summer turns to harvest season, he spends more and more time picking fruit in the orchard.

  He is good with other patients, those who are able to respond. He is learning Italian, too, and can engage those who are more aware with his attempts to draw them out—out of the sealed drums of self. The doctor hints that part-time employment is a possibility, at least for a reduction of his fees.

  “What fees?” Josip asks, with some surprise. The question of who is paying for his care, and who has been paying for it during the past year or more, had never crossed his mind. A bad sign, he thinks.

  He asks Slavica about it the next time they meet. She tells him that when he was first brought to the hospital, it was as a ward of the state, but the authorities now no longer accept responsibility for him, because the worst is over and he is not an Italian citizen. She admits with some embarrassment that she and Emilio have been covering the clinic costs. Josip is appalled that they have taken this burden upon themselves. It is too generous! How can it ever be repaid? There is no need for repayment, she replies, as if it is no great matter.

  But if he is to be released soon, he asks, what should he do? He is getting stronger day by day, so perhaps he will be able to find employment.

  “I will work at anything”, he declares.

  “The authorities may not let you”, she says with a look of anxiety.

  “What would happen then?”

  “They may deport you to Yugoslavia.”

  His hands begin to tremble.

  “It might not come to that, Josip. I am working on it. I have a friend. Soon she is moving to Roma from America, and then I am sure she will spend a weekend with us. It could open some doors. I would like you to visit us when she’s here. Will you do it?”

  He nods, still staring into a black pit.

  Dr. Amaliani, the physician in charge, says there is no problem obtaining a weekend pass because, frankly, this man is not mentally ill, it’s a complete cure, he really shouldn’t be here. It would be a loss if he goes back to Yugoslavia, a loss to the clinic as well, because he is proving to be a real help with some cases. The way he can get the speechless to speak, or the immobilized to move, or the despairing to give a little smile now and then. It is all quite marvelous, though of course there are no funds to hire him as an untrained assistant.

  “A volunteer, then?” Slavica asks Amaliani.

  “It might be arranged. Of course, there could be no payment of wages by ordinary means.”

  Amaliani and Slavica exchange smiles. It will be done the Italian way, they explain to Josip, no paper trail, a little cash stipend for his needs, a room in the clinic’s service quarters, and all his meals for free. A splendid arrangement, is it not?

  “But what about the danger of deportation?” he asks.

  “It can be delayed as long as you remain invisible”, replies Amaliani.

  “And if I am noticed by officials?”

  “Then we will be forced to admit that we do not yet have conclusive data about your origins or the nature of your pathology.”

  “He means, Josip,” says Slavica with an arch look, “that we will cover for you and cover our own hides as well!”

  “Indelicately expressed, Dr. Mazzuolo”, frowns Amaliani, though his eyes are glinting with pleasure.

  “If I were ever discovered,” says Josip, “I don’t know what I would do. I would kill myself before letting them send me back.”

  “Ah, excellent”, says Amaliani staring at the ceiling, rocking back and forth on his leather chair. “In that case, if the authorities were to decide for deportation, we would argue that you are suffering from suicidal tendencies, indicating that your cure is not yet complete, and thus you would have to remain here as a patient.”

  “Wonderful!” declares Slavica, rising and shaking Amaliani’s hand.

  So, apparently he is no longer mentally ill. This is very nice, but it is rather shaky soil to stand on. What exactly is mental health? At what point did he cross the frontier from insanity? And are there not a lot of pieces missing from the puzzle of his inner world? There is so much he cannot bear to think about. People he cannot bear to remember—the good ones especially, those whom he loved. The lost.

  Today he is picking oranges in the orchard with the sun on his bare back and a warm breakfast in his belly. At the base of the tree stands a psychotic youth, a boy from Verona he is helping to come off drugs. The lad is for the moment without hallucinations, and seems happy enough holding a basket at the base of the tree, into which Josip drops oranges and cheerful comments. Birds are performing aerial acrobatics in the branches. An excellent morning.

  Suddenly, the smell of orange peel dilates his nostrils and sends an electric shock through his brain. He bursts into sobs and must cling to the tree lest he fall out of it. His father is with him as they stand side-by-side on a cliff above the sea; they have climbed up from the shore, and Josip is carrying little white stones; the beach is clicking inside his pockets, and he is chewing a winter orange with its juice dribbling down his chin. Sweet, he cries with joy, leaping into the air. Sour, says his father with a smile.

  So, is he crazy or isn’t he? No, says Slavica, he is definitely not crazy. He has suffered some serious blows to his heart and memory, and these sorrows rise to the surface from time to time. She would be worried if they didn’t, she tells him.

  Another day. It is early afternoon. He has recited passages from The Odyssey to the young drug addict, and though the boy does not comprehend them, he has been calmed by the cadence of the lines and the mysteries embedded in noble phrases. It has been a good challenge to translate passages from memory into the Italian language. Not quite as poetic, but still rather good. Josip likes to read dictionaries at night in his little room. If he can stay in this land long enough, it might be possible to become a citizen.

  The boy informs Josip that since leaving Milan, where he was a prostitute because of the drugs, he has become Telemachus again, but no one else knows his secret. Josip promises not to reveal his identity, and says that Telemachus has a long journey ahead—it is always a long journey to find a missing father. The boy smiles gratefully and goes back into the clinic for a siesta.

  Josip remains in the orchard, lying beneath an orange tree while all Italy takes its daily nap. His legs are crossed at the ankles, and his arms are lazing in the surrender position with hands open beside his head as he drifts into half-sleep. A few drops
of orange syrup trickle into his mouth. He can taste it. He sits up, looking all around. No one is there. No oranges in the branches above are leaking their juice. He shakes his head and lies down as before.

  Once again the juice drips onto his tongue. He hears some creature sniffing about his feet—a little dog, he supposes. His eyes fly open, and he sits up. There is no one there, no person, no dog, no leaking fruit. He swallows the juice. Or is it an illusion that slips so sweetly down his throat? He shakes his head again. It was imagination. How powerful the imagination is. He lies down and falls asleep.

  Chicklet sends a message via Slavica. He is to be married on such and such a day. Will Josip honor him by being in attendance? Sì, certo! Of course he will.

  The wedding takes place in the basilica of San Marco in Venezia, and Josip accompanies the Mazzuolo family to the celebration. For the occasion, he has borrowed a suit and tie from a staff member at the clinic. He is feeling elated because to be a wedding guest is a sign of restoration to the world of normal things—the glorious, extraordinary, ordinary things. As he and the Mazzuolos cross the piazza toward the wide stone steps of the church, they must walk carefully along a causeway of boards, suspended above the overflow of an untimely flood. As he approaches the front steps, an uneasiness grows within him, which quickens into fear, then terror. The big bells are booming, and a party of eager people are waiting at the doors for the bride’s arrival.

  Chicklet is dressed in a white three-piece suit and white tie, white leather shoes, a yellow flower in his button hole, a bouquet of orchids in his hand, all capped by his flaming red hair slicked down with pomade. The bride appears at the far side of the piazza and tiptoes carefully along the causeway, holding her voluminous white dress high above her ankles. She arrives safely, greeted by cheers, a child-size woman with bright yellow hair, no taller than the groom himself. Like her betrothed, she is about sixty years old. Taking each other’s hands with adoring smiles, the bride and groom enter the basilica. No one notices that Josip lingers behind; and when everyone else has gone inside, he crosses the piazza and leans against the wall farthest from San Marco. Trying to calm his breathing, he works hard to keep sobs inside his throat. He cannot enter the church. After all this time, he still cannot enter. His mind tells him how ridiculous and irrational this is, but every other aspect of his being rejects the reasonable arguments. Fear wins.