Stig Dagerman: Island of the Doomed

So as not to be overshadowed himself, or for some other reason he may not even know about until quite long afterwards, he takes out his silk handkerchief, bends down and polishes his brown shoes, made of the very best patent leather. He does it very slowly and carefully and methodically: first the long, rather pointed toes, till they sparkle like a halberd in the sun, and then the rest as far as the nicely rounded heels. All the time, he keeps glancing surreptitiously at the bare feet of the gardener’s children; he wants to see them trembling, digging their toes into the sand, quivering with impatience before running off into the park. He simply wants to defeat their breathing. Then, with the same preposterous care, he brushes the dust from his riding breeches, all the time glancing guardedly at the gardener’s children’s bare legs: he wants to see them start dancing, shattering the strained silence — but nothing of the sort happens. Their legs are as still as Pontiac’s dead ones. The dust from off his clothes just falls slowly down on to the dead horse’s body, on which the sweat has now dried, and the slime from its very last panting is already being invaded by flies.

For quite a while, in fact, nothing at all happens. The gamekeeper’s dogs, whose chains can usually be heard all over the district, don’t seem to be stirring from their kennels, and there’s no sound of hammering from the castle smithy, either. He takes off his short, red velvet jacket in bewilderment, and flaps it around a few times over the horse; in eerie silence, masses of insects are now sinking their stings into its soft flesh, and an army of red ants marches out from the grass, crosses over the path like an open vein, up the horse’s tail, which has suddenly lost its sheen, and spreads out over its back and belly in fan formation. The long arms of the jacket have been embroidered by his grandmother: a man reading books suspended in mid-air, white roses over naked sabre-blades, the family coat-of-arms. In order to delay the life-or-death decision, for that is what it could easily be, and in order to gain control of the gardener’s children’s breathing, his hands dwell for an eternity on each rose and each sabre. Is there still no sound to be heard in the silence of the park? The splash of an oar in the pond, subdued whispers from the lads cutting the hedges? No, only the breathing. Its hands, sticky with low desire, are now approaching Lucas from all sides. He looks at the pendulum-cord arms of the gardener’s children, more motionless than ever; the slightest little movement — they could bend down with respectful expressions on their faces and stroke the horse, on its hindquarters, for instance — anything could yet come to his rescue; but silence and being rooted to the spot are still equally unbearable. And then, it being the only respite he has left, he takes off his red hat extremely slowly and beats it over his knee, at the same time keeping an eye on the gardener’s children’s hair, which seems to have been pulled together and held in place at the top by a dull copper ring; but they’re still as marble statues, leaning against the horse in silence. And then all is lost; cap in hand, he suddenly has no option but to react to their brutal breathing and, beside himself with sorrow, fear, regret — indeed, everything, Lucas looks into the eyes of the gardener’s children, one after the other. Implacable flames of hatred, like the flames from a welding gun, shoot back at his own eyes, and with a shudder he acknowledges the triumph with which they’re celebrating his fall and the dead horse, and he’s possessed by feelings he’s had to learn to suppress from the very start in connection with cricket, riding, hunting with his falcon Ajax, and perhaps also all those shy detours to avoid confronting the local poor children: it’s very much like what he knows as guilt feelings.

For a moment, nothing but motionless pain; like a brook of bitter wine, the red ants are now streaming over the road, and the dead horse’s belly and hindquarters are soaked in ants; flies and other winged insects take fright and fly silently up into the treetops. And then, without meaning to do it quite so violently perhaps, he delivers a kick right into the horse’s side, so vicious that one of its hooves rises up a little, killing several ants underneath it.

Now the boy’s running as if he means never to return, as if he wants to place light years between himself and the park, down the white summery path, where the wheel tracks of the caleche and the hoof-marks from its four horses are imprinted in the dust like an endless trail of silver coins between two parallel lines. - And the man who’s dreaming knows full well why the boy’s running and why he kicked the horse as well, but the little boy on the white path with the red velvet jacket over his shoulder knows nothing, except that the hedge is suddenly closing in on him and the frog he’s so afraid of is lying there green, smelly and disgusting at his feet; he runs between looming carriage wheels, big carthorses, ploughs lying on the ground and white hens fluttering in all directions, he reaches the castle garden, runs over flower beds, past groups of lilies and his mother’s elegant society lady-friends, sleeping on the lawn with handkerchiefs over their faces, runs through the little door and up to the library and only now bursts into tears as he dives on to the fur rug and burrows his whole self into its aroma of bear’s blood and cigars.

Now the years go by, and he slowly learns to understand. He avoids the park; filled with a strange sort of despair, as the evenings wear on he often stands at the french windows in the tower, staring down into the darkness between the trees; if he sees a raven dive down among some blue trunks in the direction of the windmill, whose halting sails are the only thing unchanged, he immediately imagines the horse is still lying there on the path, old carrion with deep cavities in its flesh, marks made by beaks and teeth, and in a state of confusion and despair, he wants to race down the tower staircase and dig a grave for his old friend, but darkness is falling fast and he always collapses into somebody’s arms and is carried unconscious through the cold, damp halls, stinking of dust and rotting portraits, back to his room in the green shadow of the wing wall.

Sick, they whisper in the castle. Barmy, out in the village. Indeed, psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, all those concertinatuners of the soul, come rolling up by train, motor cycle, car, bus and aeroplane to his bed, like suitors in old marriage sagas: schemes are drawn up, diagrams multiply, ink is always having to be ordered from the town, armouries and store-rooms for the family mummies are now adapted to make libraries and laboratories, questions are placed before him from left, right and centre, with the greatest solemnity, all requiring answers; throw paper aeroplanes from the roof, the oscillations of the soul must be investigated thoroughly; a steady stream of equipment looking like small fountains or dish-washers keeps turning up, and everything is very interesting and very confusing.

But the terror remains, and the guilt, all the other flotsam as well; somebody wants to lead him down to the park like a bull, they show him samples of gravel from the park path and from entirely different ones and tell him, quite correctly, that there’s next to no difference between them. Certificates with all kinds of warranties state, quite correctly, that pony Pontiac was given away as food to a starving family dependent on the estate, people who’d never been dissatisfied with their lot and become involved with those agitating for better food. But in order to understand for himself — that’s what’s being denied him, after all — how to sort out the dark secrets of the events, he runs away early one morning, as the servants are approaching with ropes and a palanquin to take him out into the park, races up the blue spiral staircase and out on to the roof behind the old defences, the haunts of jackdaws and the place urchins would love to visit. Dark points gather among the statues in the courtyard below, drawing-pin-small faces suddenly open out like buds from their black calyxes.