Stig Dagerman - Island of the Doomed

‘Don’t mention it,’ said the captain modestly to the English girl, although he was the one who started it off, with his I know about organization, I’m a soldier you see. These catastrophes will happen, you know, and so I naturally take over, organize things, get a grip on things, if you like. It’s just our duty, you see, duty, my dear lady; my young friend the airman and I know best when it comes to that sort of thing — isn’t that right? Take my boot, will you, and buff it up as well as you can, it’s the twelfth of May today, if I’m not mistaken. No, don’t mention it, my young friend and I are no heroes, it’s just that we’ve learnt how to organize things.

What about Tim, then? Oh no, nobody said a word about him. He would have liked to shout out in disgust: organization! Come off it, panic more like! But something held him back. Every time one of the survivors turned to him, he felt as if a stream of cold air was flowing towards him; it only happened when there was something that needed doing, something dirty, something that had broken, something that hurt, something involving a risk. You’re so big and strong, etc., you’ve been coping so well, you’re in better shape than any of us, and so on, but their voices were hard and superficial. It was all orders, no requests, no warmth, they just wanted him to do as he was told. Even so, at first he was proud of the way they appealed to his body; he didn’t see through their brutal cunning until his hunger became so strong he realized it would never be satisfied. His body refused to obey him, it became extremely difficult to move a single limb because, all the time, he could see the dead bones moving underneath his skin, his cranium was gruesomely bare under skin and sinews, his heart compressed and opened with a rhythm that was worryingly unsteady.

Now nothing was quite so easy any more, he built up his mental barricades in the hope that he might one day be able to fight on them; he lay there at night, calm on the surface but all the time hunted down ruthlessly by his ego, along the beach, up the cliffs, through the jungle, and down again along a vertical crevice with few holds for his hands and feet.

Who am I, he would think, who am I? Why should I? Why should I sacrifice myself for all these people, when none of them is prepared to sacrifice himself for me? Aren’t we all castaways? I was a crewman on the boat, that’s true, but does it matter any more what any of us was? Haven’t we changed our lives fundamentally, hasn’t some of what we were been destroyed? Aren’t we all equally naked, aren’t all our fingers equally greedy when the food is shared out, aren’t all our fingernails equally sharp when we gather round the water tank? Is there anything here apart from skeletons, our skin and our guts to indicate that anybody should have power over anybody else? It may well have been the case on board the boat that somebody could shout to somebody else: listen here, slave, I’m hungry; but surely that right, if indeed it was a right, must have lapsed now that we’re all living in the same conditions, where money, social position and background have been stripped away from us all? Haven’t we been resurrected from the cruel sea, or are the memories of how things used to be going to dictate the way we treat each other for ever? Shouldn’t whoever is strongest, who does most to ensure we can live a bit longer, be the one in authority, the one who gets most credit, the one who earns everybody’s respect, the one who glows in the warmth others bestow upon him? And if not? Well, if that isn’t the case, why not stop delivering the goods, why not just lie down on the sands and listen to the cradle-song of the sea, get up when you feel hungry and go hunting on your own account, for it isn’t necessary, nor even possible, to take responsibility for people who have nothing but contempt for your services and yourself.

But a new day dawned, and when everybody had woken up and gone for their usual walk round the white rock and come back again, he could feel the instinct to obey taking possession of him once again, and it was terrible. Although nobody said a word to him, although nobody shouted at him, they only needed to gesture towards him and he found himself helplessly subordinate to these people; jump like a fish, wriggle like a snake — no, nothing was any good. It was his fire burning on the beach; the others might well lie watching its cool blue flames or throw a twig on when the mood took them, but he was the one who had to keep it going, he was the one who had to break off spiky branches from the bushes although he disliked doing it because they seemed to conceal so much that was unknown, he was the one who had to keep a constant check on the height of the smoke column over the beach and the intensity of the flames, and he was the one everybody would set upon if the fire should go out, complaining, accusing, passing judgement, sentencing and banishing.

Oh, what was it that held him captive? Was there some special quality present in the others which made them so superior to him? He observed them all in turn, weighed their every word, analysed their every movement, scrutinized their every action, and eventually concluded that even the softest of them, the gentlest, the most sensitive of them treated him with a kind of self-evident brutality nobody but he seemed to notice, precisely because it was primarily directed at him. The English girl would wade out into the water, in exactly the same way day after day; her brown calves were attractively taut, just for one rare moment the cloth she had wrapped round her would glide down from her right shoulder, which glowed a dark white colour, stimulating but chastely repulsing his gaze; the beautifully tense curve of her neck would resist all efforts to bend it down, and no, there was no trace of subservience, everything seemed to belong to her with a kind of mystical naturalness, although she herself didn’t raise a finger to acquire it. The women he’d known before he was sentenced to death here on the island were different, and didn’t even dare to own what they’d acquired. Everything had to be asked about over and over again: are we allowed to sit here on the grass, just think if somebody comes, are we allowed on this road, isn’t it private, am I allowed to like you, don’t you belong to somebody else? He’d never owned himself either, and he was just like the women he’d had. Always being aware; nothing is mine, least of all my body; all those movements I make under the tap when I get home from the smithy, they’re just on loan; all those thoughts buzzing around in my head are just tourists stopping there for the night, homeless pairs who have rented somewhere where they can make love; the noise from the dredger’s crane will always be heard, the moments of sweet unrest in my heart are stolen from the shipping company that employs me.

What cure is there, what should a desperate man do when he becomes aware of his own impotence? One day he’s a little drunk and merry and has a bit more money than usual, takes his old lady to a little pub away from their usual blue-grey haunts, an upper-class pub. Let’s have a bit of fun shall we, and let the dredger go to hell, and that stink of sewers and rotten fish we have to put up with every day, poisoning the atmosphere in our gloomy flat. Now they can forget all that, the wine is sparkling just like it does in the adverts, laughter is bubbling away, everything round about them will smell nice for once, of wine and flowers, clean glasses, big soft carpets and the musicians all dressed in white — but why does everybody stare at them when they come in, it cuts him to the bone, pierces right through the effects of the drink he’s already had, and his wife Sally by his side, why is she whispering: oh, it’s so posh, do we dare go in? But why does everybody stare at you when you’re carving the joint so that you get all nervous and your knife slips, why does everybody hold their breath and listen in such a provocative way when you laugh, why does Sally go on all evening about the price of the food, the quality of the tablecloth, the age of the musicians, instead of turning her back on all that, like some people can? No, they all stare at you all the time: do you still smell of sewers even though you have clean clothes on and have had several baths during the course of the afternoon? Yes, that’s it exactly, you always smell of sewers, there’s an invisible cloud around you giving off a smell which always prevents you from assuming the handsome mien of supremacy which certain other people can, you can never move about in complete freedom, you always have to ask yourself: am I allowed to do this, who’s in charge of this, how much does all this cost, will it break if I touch it? How do you think anyone can escape from it all? You are sitting there as securely as anybody can, but secure in your own filth, secure in your own poverty, secure in your own impotence.