Stig Dagerman - Island of the Doomed

At the peak of his career, the supreme pinnacle, he was always being exposed just as painfully to his pursuer’s arrogance; he had conquered almost everything: the nation had presented him with a house by a lake teeming with salmon, a dazzling white villa surmounted by a cupola bearing the national coat of arms, and moreover surrounded by just as many yards of barbed-wire fencing when the top men of his country came to visit him; but what was the point of it all when he ended up by barely daring to set foot outside the front door? Every little breeze blowing over the great lake carried with it his merciless pursuer. The first time he tried out his new boat, he was whipped up into a state of fury, ran aground and sank. It might well have been easy to die, but even so he allowed himself to be rescued because during the few seconds he’d been fighting against death he realized that for someone who’s running away, it’s just as pointless to die as it is to live, and his desperation held him up like a giant float.

Then came the period when he was evidently so great that no one expected anything of him any more; like a star, he was firmly fixed in the firmament and he no longer needed to box — indeed, to do so could be harmful to his fame; he was only allowed to perform at big events staged for the imperial family, fighting against famous, but not too famous boxers, young bulls who had been prepared before the match like noblemen’s shields that are to be broken at a funeral, and suddenly they would collapse under his punches after the stipulated time, But as he crouched in the cave into which his long flight had banished him, he realized he was in fact less protected than ever and this would be the end of his flight even so; in the innermost of the eighteen caves forming his escape route, he beat like a madman against the stone walls in an attempt to pass further, but in vain; and when he tried to withdraw he found the entrance door to the final cave had closed as well. Locked in the vault where the nation kept its heroes, he ran around ceaselessly like a squirrel in a wheel, while the applause from the stalls and the dress circle bored its way like drills into his brain, heart, kidneys. Now he longed for the trapdoor to open, and then the rapid fall to the source of his agony, the green swamp of his memories, oh, let the sticky wave of decay break over him, flow into his throat and lap around his lungs, rock him like a swollen corpse in all eternity; even the harshest of possibilities now seemed to him almost like paradise — anything but the torture he was now subjected to. Salvation through ignominy was the only possibility, but how could he humiliate himself when even the slightest error on his part was immediately excused with reference to his greatness?

Then he made a terrible attempt to prise open the trapdoor himself. During a gala performance, as the imperial family were scattering flakes of silver over the stage from their box, he suddenly fell headlong and stayed down with his head in his hands; indeed, he was almost holding it in his hands like a fruit. Pale with emotion, the young boxer who had felled him staggered over to the ropes, all the time staring wide-eyed at his hands as if they were splashed with the blood of an unknown person. The red lamp over the stage was suddenly extinguished, and subdued grey-green light filtered down on to the sacrifice that had been accomplished. As he waited for the furious yells of disappointed hope to ensue, Jimmie lay prone, although the back of his neck probably trembled a moment in expectation of the sharp blade; but otherwise he awaited the trapdoor with the calm only extreme desperation can give. There was a subdued rustling like the sound of thousands of sweet-bags falling, then nothing but a transparent, crystal-clear membrane of silence as the man in the white coat emerged from the wings and announced quietly, like a priest at a funeral: he’s ill, he had a sudden attack; I suggest we rise to our feet and give the unfortunate man an indication of our appreciation. The orchestra struck up a patriotic tune, and men picked him up carefully by his limbs, made sure his head was still attached, and then carried him off the stage in time with the music.

He lay there helplessly in their arms, more cut off than ever before from any possibility of running away from flight. Then just as the curtains were closing behind him, he heard them giving three cheers for him, the eternal victor who can win everything but defeat. Oh, how he would have loved to tear himself loose from those sixteen sticky hands and run out on to the stage, screaming out his agony, spraying his angst like an untamed fountain until it swamped the whole world; but all he was still capable of was to twitch a little, a pitiful death-throe which merely served to make his bearers tighten their firm grip.

Ah well, as he was ill he was at least allowed to go away on holiday. He loved wandering around oriental harbours where nobody recognized him, and loved accepting the feelings of contempt and disgust directed towards him. Of course, he was never really alone; the nation had invisible spies keeping watch on his every move from a distance, but even so, even this form of solitude helped him considerably. He could sink down behind the raffia basket of the snake charmer, close his eyes tightly and shut out all other noises apart from the soft, velvety rustling from inside the basket and think: now I’m only a Tartar lying here in the heat, far away from home, to which only a chain of broken horses links him. Or lie in the bottom of a river-barge hung with brocade, like those used by the sailors from Belize, just drifting around in the little harbour; longboats weighed down with small fruits sparkling silver, smelling strangely of caraway and despair, their oarsmen shouting merrily, wend their way among rafts bearing drowned sacrificial animals; masses of dead horses were also floating around in the becalmed waters, and on the shore clay gods peered from the ape-laden trees; occasional music, the lavender beat of a drum spreading slowly from the brown, summery huts half-buried in gorse, many of them desolated in the latest revolution. From the bottom of the boat, however, the only view was the silken tent of the bright day, and the many desiccated wisps of grey smoke puffing out from the clearings among the cedars. Then he thought: what am I but a drowned man, rescued too late among the horses, floating here for ever without even knowing whose body I am? He was stupefied by the pleasure the thought gave him; the swell rolling in from the sea brought tranquillity in every wave, and the gentle thuds each time the boat hit a drowned animal spread a feeling of warm well-being throughout his body; life was merely a sleepy stretch of water into which he’d fallen like a raindrop from a cloud. Oh, what bliss to surrender oneself to a lake!

Then the monsoons came, smoke columns fluttered wildly and aggressively like battle standards, and natives in the huts were preparing for slaughter. The animals not yet sacrificed and kept tethered in the cedar forests wailed as they were led home, and small, nearly naked boys hung on to the bulls’ horns, shouting away and trying to recall the joys of summer, but in vain. Soon a blood-stained column of terrified bellowing rose up from every hut, a bitter stench gathered beneath the trees, and the natives, rarely visible, clamped their hands over their ears at the sight of the stranger, screeching as they disappeared from view.

It was time to go, that was clear. In a stabilized paddle boat he made his way through rough, blue-black weather up the coast, with its frightening white sand bars extending between land and sea like hyphens. The voyage took three days; the nights were the most difficult, when he was possessed by extreme anxiety and frequently thought he’d been swallowed by a monster in whose belly he was now floundering about. The oarsmen he’d hired were deathly silent, and their white arms swinging to and fro in the darkness hardly proved they weren’t in fact dead. He flung himself down and trailed his hands over the side of the boat, filling them with water from the silent sea, and drank until his tongue swelled with fire. At peace once more, he collapsed into the bottom of the boat; but his old dreams of being rocked into silence, unknown to anyone including himself, were finished even so.