Stig Dagerman - Island of the Doomed

‘Then all you have to do is attack that box, split it open, laths and all, grab all the contents and gobble up the whole lot, lie there for days on end, and lick the wood clean when there’s nothing else left. Then just feel how much alive you are, how easily your legs carry you up the steep slopes and over to the camp, and how eagerly your nose registers the smell of an abandoned camp, burnt-out fire, and dead bodies; how keen your hands will be when you seek out a suitably big branch that’ll serve as a spade, and fill the whole of that beautiful beach with seven graves. Don’t forget yourself, you’ll have gained yourself a week or so, and during that time you can stroll around the island like one of those iguanas. Maybe you’ll get a hard shell in the end, just like them. Learn their habits, take up their way of life, and then you won’t have to die for another three hundred years yet! You’ll avoid all those relationships in time and space with other people, all those obligations, all those invisible contacts and mutual dependencies which make human life worth living. But before you turn into an iguana, before you go numb, before you lose the ability to speak, cry out into the silence: my last action as a human being was treachery.’

Seven seas erupted over him, one after another they poured in over the horizon, no, they came from the box, the boundless box; the swell rose and fell, then suddenly it was only falling. Now cauldrons were being emptied in a million kitchens, water was running over all the floorboards, rippling over polished pine, seeping through cracks and swishing in stringy strands out of his dream. Suddenly the box fell silent, something in it died once and for all, and wakened by this silence, scared by it, Tim sat up quickly. The sight that confronted him was fantastic, and he grew first stiff, then limp with terror. The high, black cliff he had clambered down now seemed much higher, its black streaks projected spitefully and brutally like swollen veins; the sun was sinking rapidly into the sea and seemed not to be able to find a foothold on the cliff, but it glistened on the red beaks of the birds as they trooped down the cliff face, spread out in a vast formation, hopping slowly from ledge to ledge, with just a wing’s breadth between them. That was a net he could never penetrate.

If I run, he thought, it’s because I’m running away from the birds. If I take the box with me, it’s so that the blind birds can’t plunder it. Oh, how he ran over the uneven beach, stumbling over stones, splashing into treacherous pools, clawing his way up rocks, sliding down the other side, wading across little inlets where slender rays lived their hermit-lives, half-swimming in deep water around cliffs where there was no beach, all the time clinging on to that heavy box, carrying it on his head, on one shoulder or the other, clutched to his thigh or hanging down his back. Once he saw the bird he had killed: it had floated round a headland and was now just lying there in a pool of still water. At last, the ship came into view on its reef, the sun was playing gently on its skeleton, the fire was burning on the beach, and someone was walking up and down, wringing his hands.

He yelled out in a whisper: here I am, I’ve got food for you, you bastards; and he fell in a heap, gasping. They turned the box the right way up, saw it was marked C.O. (Captain’s Office), and ripped open the lid. Madame, for once enticed out of her agony, suddenly burst into laughter, squirting it out like a whale, as she groped around with her savage fingers among the multicoloured glass beads the box was full of, the pearls for which the Eslamite natives sold their hides and themselves to anyone with enough boats, charts and stars to find their way there.

It was at sunset one day when Madame killed an iguana. She had a stone in one hand, and when she heard the rustling in the grass, she stopped and waited, without a sound. When the animal emerged out of the gloom, she was frightened at first by its size: she hadn’t intended to kill such a big iguana, but with the aid of the stone she soon had it over on its back before it could bite her or run away. Once she’d killed the iguana with the stone, she turned it over on to its belly again, so that it would look as if it were still alive, sleeping in the grass, or on its way somewhere extremely slowly. She threw the sticky stone a long way away, and heard it crash into another one on the beach.

On her way back, she nearly fell over a big iguana sleeping in the grass, whipped it over on its back with her bare hands, and discovered it was dead. On her way back to camp, she’d been going round in circles and returned to the exact spot where she’d killed the iguana. The third time it happened, she decided to scream. She gave a short, piercing scream and, immediately, someone came rushing through the grass; she could tell from the crackling of the canvas and the squeaking of the jackboot that it was the captain.

She stood in front of the iguana so that he couldn’t see it, wrapped her cloth sheet tightly around her as if she were cold, and when he arrived, said to him in a plaintive voice: ‘Captain, help me down again, please. I suddenly feel unwell.’

Without saying a word, they crossed over the grassy plateau, where the horizontal light of the setting sun was lighting up the grass panicles from underneath, so that they looked like lips, blood-red lips pursing to meet other lips. They emerged on to the cliff top, and Madame paused to enjoy the view down the path, over the beach, the ship, the sea, the horizon, which now seemed to be bulging under the weight of the sun. The rocks below them were gleaming red with a modest brick-like colour very familiar to her; large expanses of sea as still as water in a glass had assumed the same soothing hue, and the wavy columns of smoke coming from the fire on the beach also looked red. As usual, the thin English girl was at the boxer’s side, more interested in herself than in him. The captain’s arm was resting gently on Madame’s shoulder; she could feel its wretched inertness through the cloth, and put off by this sensation of coldness, she started on her way down in order to be alone at last.

The small iguanas were scuttling around agilely at her feet, but she no longer had any feelings when it came to iguanas. Ignoring everybody’s gaze, she made her way to her place by the fire, which was marked out by four thin lines she drew in the sand with her forefinger every morning in order to be alone. In order to be even more alone, she curled herself into a ball so that her face was hidden by her hands and her hands by her knees and her knees by the cloth. Thus ensured of her privacy, she felt as if she were sinking down from the world as if in a lift, confused and cluttered up with inessentials, sinking down into a necessary sorrow.

The sorrow took possession of her, cleansing, vehement, untarnished now that the iguana had been killed, and precise and cruel in such a natural way that there was no room for any other thoughts. Pure sorrow is majestic in its ferocity, and for these brief moments in the sunset, she experienced all its necessary stages: the brief, stupefying paralysis when you think you’ve gasped the truth, although you know next to nothing about the truth as yet; something protests inside you and your heart suddenly feels staggeringly strong, as if it were beating outside your body somehow or other. Then the first tears come to your eyes, even though you’re not actually crying and don’t even want to cry. They are unusually big and hot as tears go, and if you tried tasting them, they’d probably be much saltier than your usual cut-price tears. You dry these tears, and all is well again for the moment; but well in a kind of tense, glass-like way. It’s as if you might put your foot through it at any moment, and fall at breakneck speed.