Stig Dagerman - Island of the Doomed

But of course, like all the rest, the man walking through the desert is just as keen as all the rest on preserving his fragile life and is prepared to sacrifice anything, even his life, in order to preserve it. He wants to create a shadow, a big, deep shadow like the one cast by the chestnut trees of summer, and armed with that shadow he’ll traverse as much of the desert as anybody manages to traverse in a normal life, and he’ll bend under the shadow like an all-too-small cross — let’s face it, there are pitiful little crosses that bend under the people carrying them — in the vain hope that the shadow it casts will be so soothing, the slumbering creature of the desert will not be wakened unto life until he himself has passed away, since ‘if anything, I regard it as a basic human right, perhaps the most basic human right, to choose the manner in which one dies. In a way, I think it was more humane in the old days when some people at least could be executed by the sword. As for me, I’d like to be crucified, crucified in a desert like this one, provided the cross could cast enough of a shadow, cold enough to keep the animals of the sand in check until I’d managed to die. But somebody will say you can’t crucify an innocent man, assuming you can talk about abstract concepts like a crucifixion when there are so many concrete alternatives, and I reckon it’s obvious you can’t, but it all depends on the fact that my attitude to innocence is quite different from that of lots of other people’s.

‘I think that being innocent means that either you haven’t been born, or you’re dead, and once anybody has got as far as agreeing with that, I’d probably be prepared to admit there are many kinds of guilt: a sort of guilt that’s more innocent than most, and a sort of guilt that’s more burdened with guilt than any other, guilt positively dripping with guilt, and guilt which merely drips. Many people can’t see that, they can’t understand that, they’ll never have the faintest idea of what it’s all about, they’11 just go to sleep by the fire and they’ll have forgotten all about it by the time they wake up and are overcome by the heat and all they can yearn for is a shapely woman, a juicy orange, a glass of sweet wine, a better class of toothbrush, or nothing at all.

‘But for me, wandering through the sands of the desert, always having been wandering through the sands of the desert, and at last aware of the fact that I shall die in the sands of the desert, all that is no longer hard to understand; but it’s true that it’s only just recently even I’ve begun to catch on, once upon a time I too had a fire to sleep by -1 was lying when I claimed I’d always been wandering through the desert, that’s something which must have happened to me quite recently, in fact — but the difference between me and lots of the others was that when I woke up, I was so cold I was shivering and my teeth were chattering and I hadn’t the slightest yearning for any of the usual things, the things you ought to be yearning for if you’re normal. But as I lay there freezing and agonizing, I kept thinking after a while that I too had a yearning, that even I wanted something, just like all the others, but at that time I was so frightened of not being normal that I never dared to put it into words — but now that I’m finally wandering through the desert and nobody but me can hear my confused words, I can say it however many times I like.

‘I yearned for the deepest feeling of peace there is, a peace that passeth all normal understanding, not the peace of the tranquil creek, not the peace of the fishing rod, not the peace of the bank after closing time, not the peace of the cellar when the rest of the house is asleep, no, a peace which can only be found in innocent solitude, the peace of a lonely man who hasn’t forsaken anyone in order to be lonely, a lonely man who stands apart from all contexts of blood and suffering without anyone being able to pin any responsibility for that on him. And maybe I was aware even then that there was one place on earth, that there was a desert somewhere or other where that kind of peace is possible, or rather that there’s a place in that desert, not a banal oasis, oh no, on the contrary: a place which is sandier, hotter, more unbearable than any other in this sandy, hot and already inherently unbearable desert, and if I haven’t yet found that place, I’m still wandering around looking for it and if I don’t find it even though I think I’ve got down and stuck my nose into every hollow there is among the sand dunes — well, gentlemen, in that case I would beg to be crucified, in that case I’m guiltier than anyone else, guiltier not because I’ve acted more unjustly than anyone else, but because my self-reproach, my feelings of guilt and my part in so much suffering had a higher temperature than those of anyone else.

‘Being guilty is feeling guilt, not the result of crimes committed; being innocent is being happy and joyful and not letting one’s peace and contentment be affected by all the terrible things that happen and take place. In my view, therefore, the judicial system has gone off course when they execute the less guilty instead of the more guilty, execute the criminals instead of those who feel they are bearing the guilt of the whole world in their hearts. It’s like executing children for things they’ve done in the dark because they were so unaccustomed to the darkness, they couldn’t understand how their bodies functioned in it. No, as the only criminals are those who feel that they’ve committed criminal acts, the judicial system responsible for tracking down and passing sentence on criminals could be abolished and replaced by a judicial system which executes those who deserve it, since after a while there’s nothing a guilt-laden person desires more than to be allowed to die, to be allowed to die because of his guilt and that of the world, and he hasn’t the slightest doubt, nor the slightest fear of death, for as there’s nothing more to hope for, as he’s plumbed the very depths of the world, he can beg the judicial system to grant him his sentence of death — and no head will ever bow down before the guillotine more gracefully than his, no woman has ever felt her most precious necklace caress her neck with more ecstatic tenderness than he feels as the rope settles around his neck.

‘Myself, I want a cross. I’ll take the storeman with me to the warehouse and pick out the most attractive one, I might choose one made of chestnut, because I’ve always liked the deep gentle shade of the chestnut, or maybe one made of poplar, since there was a tall poplar in one of the back yards where we used to live and I loved that tree as if it had been the only piece of greenery in the whole world, but there is one tree I don’t want and that’s the one which creaks like a gallows when the wind blows, and I’ll ask the storeman what kind of a tree it is because I don’t want a cross that creaks like a gallows when it’s a crucifixion I’ve asked for. I don’t want any help with the nails and I don’t want any help with carrying it, I want to be my own executioner right to the very last and if there is one thing I want at the very end it’s that the shadow cast by my cross is so big and so deep that the animals of the sand don’t wake up until it’s all over.’

But the sun is always devising new games for anyone who wanders through the sands of the desert. Sometimes it puts a blow-pipe to its lips and amuses itself by spurting glowing lava into your bone marrow till you collapse and wriggle on the sand like a snake. No, like a worm, like a maggot, you can feel the angler’s brutal finger and then suddenly he sticks the hook into your belly and he can’t have heard you screaming because the hook just goes further and further in and it’s hot and it’s glowing red hot and it hurts especially much when it goes on up through your throat and one of the barbs has got stuck there and is struggling desperately to break loose because the hook has to keep on going, right up into your head, it’s just longing to bathe in your brain, it’s probably been lying on its side in a box at the ironmonger’s thinking of nothing else but the prospect of bathing in some human being’s brain. But then comes the most brutal twist of all, it feels as if your legs are being ripped off — and nothing is too incredible, too horrible, too impossible to endure; of course, your legs have in fact been ripped off, let’s face it, you can’t expect to be left alone no matter how long you are and the angler can use your legs next time, and all of a sudden there you are in the sand, you struggle, you wriggle around as much as you can, but you can’t do all that much about it, you ought to have practised wriggling more often while you still had the chance, but in the end you give up because there’s no point and you just let yourself sink down and the sand closes in over you like flames and you keep on sinking further and further: your heart has to go under, your neck has to go under, the whole of your head has to go under and then you go deeper and deeper down, deeper towards the ultimate horror, the hottest fire — and you just wish you still had your legs left so that you could feel your way, so that it would have taken a little bit longer between the first touch and the terrible knowledge which suddenly flares up in you about what’s lying there hidden under twenty-five feet of sand. But as things are, as things are your nerve ends hit him straight away and your scream comes all of a horrifying sudden — oh, if only there were another three feet to go, just another three feet of bone, flesh and sinew to cope with that first horrific contact, you evil devil of an angler, do you realize what you’re doing! — and you scream and scream and suddenly of course you’re full of sand like a sack.