Island of The World

by Michael D. O'Brien

  Shaking his head, Josip glances at the program, searching the titles of the musical pieces and the names of musicians who performed them.

  “In the Homeland of the Soul”—yes, it is attributed to Iria. He must find a way to speak with Mr. Finntree, ask him by what paths the composition found its way here after all these years. The musicians are listed. And there among the violinists is a name he knows:

  Ariadne Finntree.

  He cannot remember how he is returned to his basement room—he vaguely recalls Winston and Miriam asking if he feels ill, a postponement of the Easter visit to their home, a drive in their car. Unlocking his door in the basement, he goes into the darkened room alone, shuts the door and locks it. He sits down on the bed without turning on the lights. His mind is without thoughts of any kind. He sits for measureless time, staring into the night. Finally, he rolls over onto the bed and curls into fetal position.

  As has so often happened during his life, he does not remember how the following days are spent. For three days he is alive, yet held in the grip of darkness. There are knocks on the door, followed by silence; a phone rings several times, followed by silence. The knife is turning and turning silently in the heart, within the larger silence of God. He will later recall that it is like lying in a tomb, and that it is Wednesday morning when he awakes and sees light in the window.

  Later that day, the lock rattles, and the hallway door opens wide. Coriander and Caleb are standing there next to the manager of the building. The Franklins come in and turn on the overhead light. Coriander puts her hand to Josip’s forehead, checking for fever, while Caleb takes his pulse and asks questions. The old man does not respond, though he looks back with consciousness in his eyes.

  “Maybe just a bad flu”, says Caleb to his mother. “You go on home, Momma, I’ll stay with him.”

  When Coriander and the manager leave, Caleb sits down on the end of the bed.

  “Feel pretty sick, man?”

  The formation of words is too far beyond him.

  Caleb brings a wet cloth from the bathroom, washes Josip’s face and hands, then removes his shoes and socks, washes his feet as well, and pulls the blanket over him. He sits down on a wooden chair beside the bed with his elbows on his knees, looking and looking at the old face that is now completely a mask.

  “Say something”, he mutters at last. “C’mon, Joe, tell me something.”

  No reply. Eyelids shut, head turns toward the wall. “Got any pain?” No reply.

  Another day and night like this. Caleb tries to get him to sit up in bed and drink some soup. Josip keeps his lips firmly closed except for a single glass of water, because only dying is needed, and he need not die in pain.

  After one more day of this, Caleb loses patience.

  “Look, Josip,” he says in his serious professor tone, “you either tell me what’s wrong or I call an ambulance.”

  Josip rolls over and faces the wall. “Go away, Caleb”, he whispers. “I’m not going away. What’s wrong?”

  “Please, go away.”

  “Sheee-it!” No reply.

  “I’ve never seen you like this. What happened to you? Tell me!”

  No reply.

  Caleb reaches for the phone and begins dialing for an emergency ambulance.

  “No”, whispers Josip before the call is connected.

  “Waddayamean, no?”

  “A hospital will not help.”

  “Did you have a heart attack? Any pain in your chest?”

  “No. Please go away.”

  “A stroke? Can you move your limbs?”

  “My body is fine. I need to die.”

  Now it is Caleb’s turn to make no reply. He places the receiver back on its hook and glances at the jagged scars on Josip’s wrists.

  “What do you mean you need to die?” he says in a quiet voice.

  “I want to be alone. Leave me.”

  “You feeling suicidal?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you talking about? Maybe you’re just depressed.”

  “I have to be alone.”

  “I’m not going until you tell me what’s wrong.” No reply.

  Josip turns away again, his back to Caleb. Caleb grabs Josip’s shirt and yanks the old man fiercely until the body rolls over, facing the room.

  “Talk to me!” he growls. Josip shakes his head.

  “I said talk to me!” Raising his voice, he repeats, “Talk to me!”

  “I have lived too long. I am a mistake. I must die now.”

  Caleb lets go of the shirt, drops his hands.

  “You can’t do that”, he stammers.

  “I can.”

  “You can’t!”

  “Go, now.”

  Caleb breathes heavily, shaking his head, covering his eyes with the palm of his right hand.

  “Don’t kill me”, he whispers in a child’s voice. “Please don’t kill me.”

  Suddenly, Caleb jerks forward with a look of rage and terror. “Don’t go away!” he shouts.

  He grabs the shirt in his fists and shakes the old man violently.

  “Don’t leave me!” he roars into his face. “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!”

  Draw the veil. Remember this, but do not speak of it. It is private and holy. Only say that Josip sits up and places a hand on the trembling shoulders of the sobbing man.

  “Caleb. I am very thirsty”, he croaks. “Can you bring me a glass of water?”

  34

  And so the months go on, and life returns to its pace. He carries a numb place in the exact center of his heart. When he works, when he prays, when he eats the fast-food that Caleb sometimes brings him, and even the next Christmas when he opens the gift from Winston and Miriam (a new rod and reel), he feels none of the usual emotions. People are dying, the chronicles of human malice mount high, hundreds of thousands of people are driven from their homes, perhaps hundreds of thousands killed. Stories of atrocity leak into the West, Omarska and Trnopolje and Manjaca, concentration camps that are in fact extermination camps. Muslims and Catholic Croats are being killed in vast numbers. There are orphans in abundance, homeless people everywhere, homeless, homeless, homeless. And then the rapes followed by abortions, degradation of the image of God, more and more and more until the mind goes numb.

  And now Josip begins to notice the emergence of the very thing Winston predicted so many years ago in Central Park when they first met—the abstraction of catastrophe. The killers murder not only their immediate victims; they spread death into the souls of survivors. The free men of the West abstract those hundreds of thousands of violent deaths in terms of geopolitical strategy. What to do with the Balkans? How to make peace? The men of power who preside over foreign affairs do not see people, they see only mass structures and shifts in the configuration of the world. Amritsar syndrome, Auschwitz syndrome, Hiroshima syndrome, Gulag syndrome, Cambodia and Ethiopia and Jonestown syndromes—yes, all the proliferating syndromes. What is a syndrome if not another name for a phenomenon that occurs when evil strikes good and hell is unleashed through the human heart—and the good who survive recoil and seek forgetfulness.

  Father Tomislav said it on Goli Otok, and now his words reach out across the years and echo in Josip’s ears. In the darkness of the prison cell, he approaches:

  “Josip, your heart is not at rest.”

  “It will not rest until the killers are slain.”

  “Do not become Cain.”

  “I am already Cain.”

  “Not true. Let us pray together. Death can come at any time.”

  “Go away.” And later:

  “You would kill your oppressors if given the chance?”

  “With pleasure”, says Josip, seething.

  “Your vengeance would destroy you.”

  “Oh? Tell me, how does a man remain wise in hell?”

  The priest does not reply directly. Instead, he says:

  “A man suffers injustice. He resents it, and his resentment grows a
nd grows and becomes anger. Anger, if fed, becomes hatred. Hatred opens the soul to evil spirits. And when they possess a man, he becomes capable of any atrocity. Afterward, he will not know how or why he became like that.”

  “I will know why. Go away!”

  Now, after all these years, Josip prays and fasts and offers his second loss of Ariadne for the saving of the victims—perhaps some will escape. He clings to the Cross and lets himself be nailed in his own way and understands that this union saves him from the dangers of vengeance and apathy. Of his loss he cannot speak. None of his friends realize what has happened. He makes no approach to the Finntree family and does not seek to learn anything about them.

  Gradually it dawns on him that there is a moral problem involved in his situation. He and Ariadne are man and wife. She and someone else are man and wife. Which of the marriages is valid? Neither? Both? One or the other?

  During the Serb bombardment of Dubrovnik, the world is outraged by the destruction of heritage buildings in the city, not so outraged by the countless murders that continue in Serb-occupied zones. Though U.N. troops strive to keep the peace, there are incidents in which they help the Serbs load prisoners onto army trucks that drive away to slaughter pits.

  Posturing and strategizing, impression-making and money-making, while the spilling of blood continues. Somewhere during all of this, Josip realizes that his own small woe must be resolved. Thus, he brings it at last to Friar Todd. The priest is stunned and silent. He can think of nothing in his theological training or in his pastoral practice to resolve it. He will check with the moral theologians and get back to Josip.

  In the interim, Josip plans to resolve it in his own way.

  I will walk, he declares to the Presence in the tabernacle. I will no longer run from paklensko polje, the fields of hell. I will enter them. I will walk into the midst of this war and bring my armless body in its path. Then my life will end, and I will fly up to you.

  I offer it to you, he repeats, but there is no reply.

  Josip obtains a passport and with his meager savings purchases a flight to Sarajevo through Budapest. In Budapest, he learns that the Sarajevo airport has been closed and that no flights are landing there other than military aircraft. He waits a week in a hotel near the Budapest airport, but the situation does not improve. It dawns on him that he might try walking into Croatia across the Hungarian border. He travels by bus as far as Pecs, where he learns that no one is permitted to cross the frontier because there is fierce guerrilla fighting under way in the Slavonija region. Regardless, he tries to make his way south on foot.

  For two days he walks, and during this time he ponders and prays and listens.

  “Am I offering myself, truly?” he asks. “What is the intention of my heart? Am I trying to take myself out of existence because I want to escape suffering and reject God’s will in my life? Am I subtracting myself from her life, finally and absolutely? Is it for her sake or for mine? Or is it grace in my soul that draws me into this field of war? Is it holy sacrifice or is it suicide? Speak to me, O my Lord, speak to me, I beg you!”

  He hears no reply and continues to walk. While crawling under a fence that divides Hungary from Croatia, he is caught by a border patrol and forcibly returned to Budapest. Exhausted, with only enough money to rebook his flight home, he returns to New York.

  Friar Todd takes him into the rectory office, brings two cups of coffee, and closes the door.

  “Whew!” he begins, shaking his head. “You sure threw me a curve ball!”

  While idioms continue to perplex him, Josip understands that the friar’s research into the status of his marital situation has not been easy.

  “I want to do what the Church teaches”, murmurs Josip. “I will do whatever is right, but you must tell me what is right.”

  “I’ve been trying to make headway with this, Josip. But you have no idea how clogged the marriage tribunal is these days. Trying to get an appointment with one of the moral theologians is like asking for a private audience with the pope. The crowds pushing at the chancery door are bigger than at a Yankees game.”

  Josip waits while the friar vents a little, rubs his flushing face, and blinks rapidly.

  “All those people eager to dissolve their marriages, and here you are trying to figure out what’s the right thing to do!”

  He goes on to describe his perusal of Canon Law and theology texts, and a few phone calls to moral theologians here and there in the country.

  “It’s a mess, Josip—the state of moral theology in America is one big mess. But the bottom line is, the good, the bad, and the ugly all agree that there’s no moral culpability here. Especially if both spouses believed the other had died. I’m presuming your wife thought you were dead, too.”

  Josip bows his head, the pain of this is so great. “I’m not sure. She knew I went to prison, and in those days most people did not survive prison. It has been thirty years since we parted, and she had no word from me in all that time. So, it is likely she believes I am dead.”

  Friar Todd grows quiet, observing Josip struggle.

  “Did you wonder if she had written you off?”

  “Written me off—what does this mean?”

  “Did you wonder if she washed her hands of you, living or dead?”

  “I do wonder about that. So much has happened, I cannot think clearly. It is complex.”

  “Very.”

  “I think it best that she does not know about me. But if the Church tells me to, I will contact her.”

  “So, you haven’t contacted her yet. Is she still a Catholic? Is she married sacramentally to her second husband?”

  “I don’t know; I don’t know”, Josip whispers.

  “Do you know her married name?”

  “Ariadne Finntree.”

  The friar grows absolutely still.

  “Is she married to Robert Finntree?”

  “Yes, that is his name.”

  “Oh, Lord”, breathes the friar. “Then she’s married in the Church. Bob Finntree is a big benefactor of the archdiocese. He’s a Knight of Malta, and the family is . . .”

  “Is what?”

  “Is very devout.”

  They remain in silence for some minutes. Finally, Friar Todd stands and puts a hand to Josip’s shoulder. “I’ll keep trying”, he says. “I have an appointment scheduled for seven months from now. Sorry it’s not sooner. Can you hold on?”

  “Thank you for your good efforts, Friar Todd.”

  “Maybe you should contact your wife to let her know you’re alive.”

  “What would be the purpose? To heal an old grief that may in fact be long healed in her heart? To rejoice in a miraculous resurrection? We cannot restore what we once had. It was long ago. My return would probably create more pain, a great confusion for her new family, especially between herself and her husband. I will do it if the Church says I must. Until then, I cannot.”

  Shaking his head with a mixture of sympathy and perplexity, the friar bids Josip good-day.

  It takes a few months to earn the price for another flight. Winston will not lend him any money for the venture, nor will Caleb. They both tell Josip that he is being reckless, that people are dying over there. I know, he replies, that is why I must go. Still they refuse to help. Nor will any bank give him a loan.

  Finally, after he has saved enough money by missing meals and selling a few possessions, he is able to board a commercial flight from New York to Frankfurt, and then from Frankfurt to Split. He makes it as far as Split, landing in thick fog. He can see nothing from the aircraft’s windows. He is held by Croatian officials in a security zone in the airport because of his lack of funds and no adequate explanation for his presence in the country. He is given a cot to sleep on in a locked hall with other unexplainable people. He is treated courteously and fed well. He tells what he can to guards and an investigator, but it is not enough to admit him into the country. One perceptive official asks him if he is trying to get into Bosnia. Incapable of
lying, Josip nods in the affirmative. “It’s where I was born”, he says. The official tells him that it would be impossible for him to pass through the border, let alone through military lines. They lock him up again with a comfortable bed, regular meals, courtesy, and apologies, but neither they nor the unopenable window in the room permit him to escape. Rain falls every day that week, and a low overcast hides the mountains. He is in Croatia, yet he cannot see it. Finally, he is escorted onto a flight back to America.

  Arriving at his building on 52nd Street, he finds several notes and letters in envelopes pinned to his door, a couple from Winston and several from Caleb. Winston and his Miriam want Josip to come live with them, if he ever returns from Bosnia. Caleb and his Miriam have moved into an apartment on the ninth floor; please call them immediately if he ever returns from Bosnia. Josip goes up in the elevator and knocks on their door, which is decorated with an ancient Coptic cross. The door opens, Caleb flings wide his arms and gives the old man a few back thumps. He goes all inarticulate, then tries street jargon, and then lapses into silence with a smile. Miriam plops baby Jefferson onto Josip’s lap and heads off to the kitchen to make supper for them all. Caleb says he has translated a few of Josip’s poems into English with the help of a dictionary. Pretty cumbersome stuff has resulted. You could hardly call it poetry. Can they work together on it? All right, Josip nods.

  Life goes on, as it must. The manager has been persuaded not to fire Josip. Many tenants missed him while he was away. His unplanned “holidays” messed things up around the building, garbage and graffiti accumulated, et cetera, but, well, a good janitor is hard to find, says the Armenian. Faggedaboudit!

  Friar Todd sits him down in the rectory office. There is strain in the friar’s good face.

  “Well, Josip, I have a bit more for you to think about. I’ve talked with a moral theologian from the archdiocese and a couple of other people and their advice tallies. Here’s the situation in the Church’s eyes, at least the Church in New York. As I told you before, there is no moral wrong in this second marriage. Everyone involved is in good conscience. In the 1960s, they were married by a bishop, a friend of the Finntree family. They have five children, all practicing Catholics. You had what’s called in theology a ‘natural marriage’. It was a civil union under a Communist government, and the Church respects such unions as genuine marriages. But a sacramental marriage takes precedence, especially in cases where there’s a factor they call ‘disparity of cult’. Ordinarily, the Church would demand that an engaged couple formally dissolve any civil union they had with someone else before being married in the Church. That’s not always possible, for all kinds of reasons, and so in certain exceptional cases, Canon Law allows that it’s not necessary to dissolve the civil contract whenever the dissolution would be extremely difficult to obtain. For example, if one of the spouses disappears—usually that means one of them takes off and isn’t heard from again. He or she may be alive but can’t be found. Or, say a civil ceremony was performed in a tyrannical state from which records would be difficult or impossible to obtain. Are you following all this?”