Stig Dagerman - Island of the Doomed

The catastrophe saved him, indeed, here was no place for hypocrisy, and the shipwreck actually saved him from the worst — and now, as he races through the island’s blond morning only a few rocks away from the longed-for hollow which will swallow him up, everything is childishly simple, like a croquet lawn where every hoop has learnt to obey the swishing of the balls. The sun released its cluster of balloons as it detached itself from the sea and lay there shivering half an inch over the horizon, metallically yellow but still chilled by the night frost; as he approached rapidly, the bushes stirred slightly in the gentle, still-cool breeze the sea was blowing nonchalantly at them, and even before he could see it, the grass was rustling sleepily in front of them. His feet now launched him upwards in a series of little bounces, and ignoring the iguanas slithering over the rocks, he breasted the tape triumphantly as he entered the thicket, thrusting the branches effortlessly aside as if he were diving into water, and suddenly he found himself in the long grass.

He felt dizzy and stood absolutely still, everything was so fantastically different and his sense of liberation enveloped him like a breeze, laden with his own warmth and filled with mysterious scents. Seen through the latticed tips of the grass which was much taller than a man, the light flowed past like cool, silent streams, the warm shadow of the cathedral pressed gently down upon him and he sank slowly to the ground, overcome by events. It was windier now, but he felt nothing of it, merely saw it in the grass high above him as the expanse of panicles straining towards the sun swayed violently, and white butterflies with thin red markings on their left wings bobbed up and down like distressed boats on the elevated ocean. He felt he was lying on the sea bottom, no pain touched him any more, no chill cut through him, no heat attempted to embrace him, no hatred flowed over him, no love seemed to scratch him, no longing to carve him up.

He was dragging his fingers over the ground, flat, hard, still slightly damp after the night, then suddenly cried out in alarm as he came up against an obstacle, and when he looked down and round about him he realized to his indifferent surprise he was already lying in a hollow in the ground. The sides were like polished crystal, but the bottom was soft and fluffy, a clump of low grass was waving like a cloud at his feet, weak puffs of invisible warmth were blowing down regularly between the blades of grass and the peaceful church-light was reflected in the oystered edges; yes, this was a hollow for all eternity. He lay there on his back for a long time without attempting to move any part of his body, not even in his mind, as butterflies fluttered lazily like listless sailing boats in the grassy swell above and small, green insects and small, spherical blobs of sticky fluid sprayed down, urged on by the wind to sink beneath the surface like drifting mines.

Then something ominous glinted high above in the slowly swaying tips of eternity; he saw it straight away of course, but tried to forget it, clenched his fists to form a cushion under his neck, and kept his eyes firmly shut. But he knew nevertheless, indeed, he could see behind his eyelids that the spider was getting closer and closer, the yellow thread swung gently between the downy stalks of the grass; in a vain attempt to embrace the whole world with its graceful claws, the big, red body expanded and throbbed menacingly, filled with animal desire, animal agony, and a kind of human despair. Jimmie suddenly cried out, but when he attempted to leap out of the deep hollow, a shudder passed through his body like a swollen vein and he lay paralysed as the spider’s body hovered large and lazy, indeed, it was the laziness that scared him most, just a hand’s breadth above his face. Powerless and at the mercy of the insect, his face distorted by his terrified muscles, more helplessly naked than ever before, deprived of any vestige of hard-won dignity, he waited for the spider to fall. The wait seemed endless, and the very delay was the high point of his torture; only a moment more and the disgusting contact would be his liberation.

Suddenly a gust of wind dispersed the suffocating atmosphere, the spider glided over him, lacerating Jimmie’s left cheek with a hastily lowered claw on its way past, and landed on the left-hand edge of the hollow with a soundless thump, throbbing against the silence. Then the spider lay there, crouched diagonally above him, motionless as it lay in wait for some motionless victim, its colour shifting with awe-inspiring speed from grape-green to deep blue and back again; shadows dancing in the grass seemed to gasp in horror when they settled here, and a butterfly which had gone astray and wandered into the darkness was pulled down irresistibly as if it had wings of iron.

Suddenly, the spider darted out from the edge and swung quickly past him, a thread trembled just above his mouth and then, before he knew what was happening, the red web was secured above his face, and the spider lay there, fat and self-assured; it swung lightly to and fro so that the whole web dipped down towards him, as if its mere existence were not torture enough. Oh, if only it would break and embrace him stickily, he would prefer slow suffocation despite everything. But the spider kept on swinging tantalizingly back and forth, as if trying to imprint its image upon its prey; he had been blind thus far, it seemed, but now he was overwhelmed by certainty; the red peril invaded his eyes and in the midst of his agony he cried out for help, pinioned by his fear. His words stretched the mesh in desperation, but eventually they fell back into his mouth, as cold and flaccid as coins. He could no longer count on the feelings of fellowship he had so laboriously dismantled, but would have to remain in the web for ever, always alone.

Then he felt as if the bottom of the hollow were giving way, he was sinking slowly, the spider shrunk into a tiny grape as the web suddenly came loose and drifted slowly down towards him. Deeper, deeper, he cried out in desperation and fell faster and faster; the ferocious outline of the web imprinted itself as a shadow against the icy grey mouth of his grave, and with a final, pitiful gesture of self-defence, after years of agony, he reached its blind bottom.

Once more he was on his knees outside the stone base of the barracks, in one of those years when all was indescribable confusion. Hulks of merchant vessels floated in the harbour where they lived, pillaged and plundered by the locals; no coachman dared direct his horses into the harbour district any more, horses had been slaughtered in broad daylight by the starving masses, grass had already overrun the harbour railway lines, the harbour rats were thin and easily provoked, the cannonades from the sea grew more intense by the day, and on certain mornings he could never forget, the local children followed their mothers with empty baskets to the barracks at the top of the hill. They lay alongside the long, cold, perimeter wall, shivering vacantly, without a word, without a smile, without a glance at their neighbour, and they had long since given up trying to interpret the wild laughter and terrified shrieks which engulfed the barracks. ‘Did they hit you, Mum?’ he yelled the first time she came out on to the steps, holding on to the wall so as not to fall, and he snatched eagerly at the basket full of whatever the soldiers did not want.

‘They didn’t hit, just fondled.’

His childhood was full of dreary games. Deadly serious, they would smash the windows in the cockpit of the crane with pebbles from the forgotten store, and for hours on end would crouch — crouching was their constant characteristic — on the girders of the crane and pretend they were being besieged by rats; one morning, next to the first of the cranes where his father moored the boat he used for smuggling, they found a tall, oblong bundle tied firmly to a pole. They crowded round the canvas parcel like a flock of jackdaws, clambered up the pole, fiddled with the red string, danced around it like Red Indians. The July heat pressed down heavily on all their heads, and next day they were met by an unknown smell lurking around the bundle; strangely subdued, they sat down on the quay frowning like old men until the harbour patrol arrived in their armoured car, cut the red string, slit open the white sack and flung the naked corpse on to the wharf. Then they all ran off home, shouting, taking pieces of string with them as souvenirs.