Stig Dagerman - Island of the Doomed

It grows so silent and in the silence he thinks over her words, spoken like a photographer, and then, when it’s too late, he remembers what she was like on the beach during the day, her looks and movements when she discovered what had happened to her during the night, but by then, all of a sudden, the little push has launched him out into space and he doesn’t know if he’s falling like a trimmed nail or like a hero, a lion hurls its roaring memory towards him and perhaps he remembers a tone of voice, the one that said: ‘Why this last act of disobedience, Boy Larus?’

But it’s too late.

11

He’s been walking slowly at first, but suddenly he’s in a hurry and he starts running up the cliff path, without really knowing why. Lucas Egmont, who’s right at the front, feels the tug of a hand on his arm and when he turns quickly, a little bit afraid, he finds Tim Solider standing panting behind him, staring at the wounds in his chest, and then he looks down at the cliff and notices the trail of blood left by an iguana retreating into a bush and when he looks up again, he’s smiling for the first time since he landed on the island.

‘I see there’s a bit of your shirt missing,’ he says to Lucas Egmont. ‘Thanks.’

Then he follows the trail into the bushes, but when he gets into the thick, almost impenetrable undergrowth, he regrets having given way to a temporary whim and emerges again into the grass without having tried to find and kill the iguana that attacked him. Just as he plunges into the grass, he can hear soft, animated voices coming from a nearby bush and withdraws rapidly so as not to disturb them. He follows the jagged line of undergrowth and eventually comes to a sheltered little corner between a steep cliff and a thick clump of bushes, but when he looks up he sees a whole crevice full of motionless iguanas, perhaps asleep. He feels a pain in his chest, but even so he sits down under the cliff: he’s never been the frightened type, never been afraid of people who might want to hit him, injure him; he’s only been afraid of his own body when it has suddenly disintegrated into its pitiful constituent parts before his terrified eyes, when his legs haven’t been able to move because he’s seen an illustration in a textbook about the way leg muscles are constructed.

He’s not strong at all now, of course. His face is quite hollow with hunger and he can’t carry any significant burdens, especially after his latest loss of blood, but then there’s nothing to carry; however, despite all his weakness he doesn’t feel as awful as that time when he thought he’d found a food chest but it turned out to be nothing more than a box of glass beads, a heavy, useless box on which he threw away all he had left of his old strength so that he could carry it back to his comrades in distress. It felt so awful on that occasion because he was alone, he felt rejected by everybody, and when his hunger really started and he couldn’t resist it any longer, he was so happy to be rejected because in that case he wouldn’t need to share anything he found with any of the others, he didn’t need to feel solidarity — but nevertheless, solidarity forced itself upon him; it wasn’t possible to be as solitary as he’d thought, and when he’d calmed down, he realized it was a good thing, that in fact it was the best proof there was that he was still functioning like a real, living person, that when anybody has ever been really under pressure, solidarity is as essential as food and water. You can’t survive without others, it’s as simple as that, and hence solidarity isn’t in fact a trait of character; but there are moments when you feel lonely and abandoned by everybody, and if on such occasions people don’t just think that even an outcast has his pride but instead display solidarity in a given situation when they might just as well have displayed contempt and malevolence instead, then solidarity is the only proof there is that you aren’t an iguana, a creature that simply lets its skin grow when everybody turns against it.

Of course, that business with the glass beads was a terrible shock for him. He’d gambled everything on that possibility, sacrificed several nights’ dreams, sacrificed several days’ terror, and finally struggled hard with himself over how to divide it all up — and the result of his great efforts was simply: Madame’s shrill laughter, the mistrust of the others, and then all the rancorous expressions. In a flash, his world had collapsed round about him, he lay there buried beneath a house of cards, a heap of illusions, and didn’t dare to move in case the whole world came tumbling down.

What was the point of it all, what was the point of all the sacrifices, what was the point of all the courage, what was the use of all the good deeds if they only led to a ridiculous result? The boundless immorality of existence was suddenly crystal clear to him. Life was like running around in a gigantic labyrinth, one of those they have for children at certain sophisticated fairgrounds: in the middle was the pearl glittering so temptingly on its stone, and as a young man, you’d run into it rosy-cheeked and certain in the trust you placed in the honesty of the labyrinth, and you’d run round and round for the first few circuits in the happy certainty that you’d soon reach the centre. And so it went on, all your life through: you just kept on running, still convinced about life’s goodwill towards all those people scurrying around eagerly; and only when it was far too late did you notice that the route you were following only seemed to be leading towards the middle. In fact, the builder had made several routes; and only one of them leads to the pearl, and hence it’s blind coincidence and not all-seeing justice guiding the destinies of the runners, and only when it’s too late to turn back, if at all, do you realize that what you’ve been devoting all your strength to only had a certain value in terms of effort, but could never lead to a practical result. In such circumstances, it should be no surprise or dismay to anybody if the more clear-sighted contestants break away and miss out a few circuits in order to find a short-cut to the centre. Call that immoral if you like, call it criminal behaviour if you must, but you should bear in mind that a human being’s immorality can never hope to compete with the well-oiled, perfectly functioning criminality of the world order. On the one hand a rapidly flaring despair which takes on rather less than balanced forms, on the other hand a conscious immorality, gleaming coldly like nickel, proud of its coldness and its shininess.

Thanks to that terrible failure with the box of glass beads, he found himself more of an outcast than ever; he kept well out of everybody’s way, and was careful to ensure that no one would have any cause for complaint against him. He tended the fire as if it had been a sick little child in need of constant care, and as long as there was still water slopping around in the keg, he dug it deeper and deeper down in the sand every day, so as to keep it cool. But he didn’t do it out of a feeling of solidarity: on the contrary, he was keeping his solidarity on ice. What drove him to act as he did was the effort of a servant to conceal failure, just as obvious a reaction as sweating when suffering from angst.

But then came the morning when the water keg was empty and the sand underneath it soaking wet. He realized straight away that everyone would suspect him, and knotted his face to protect himself from all the heavyweight stares hurling themselves at it to tear it to pieces. The captain’s attack was not as unexpected as that of the iguanas, for when he eventually came round and found himself on the beach with bits of cloth stuck in the big wounds, the giant lizard bites were all he could remember and he didn’t spend much time wondering about how he’d got down there again, he just assumed casually he’d managed to find his own way and then fallen and nobody had helped him; but then, who would dream of assisting a glass bead catcher and a water thief?