Stig Dagerman - Island of the Doomed

‘Couldn’t live’ — oh, he knew full well they only wanted to share their own dread of soon having to die with the cripple who couldn’t look after himself. They’d sit there for endlessly long days on end, inquiring over and over again in their frightened voices, glancing furtively at each other, if he was in pain and if he still wanted to go on living, they were all so very keen for him to be there the day the rescue ship dropped anchor in the bay.

They’d lift off the canvas sheet, and with meticulous dignity unwind the rags from both his legs, shattered between the rocks on the reef and a water keg the night of the shipwreck, and they’d nod at him, their faces distorted by optimism and false cheerfulness. They’d raise his hand and pretend to take his pulse, although the only heartbeats they could hear would be their own. They’d place their hands on his blood-stained shirt in order to feel his heart beating, that is, they wanted to confirm that they were still alive themselves. They’d talk to him about the excellent attention he’d receive on board the ship they were expecting, but only to convince themselves it would come. They’d remind him of his times of glory as a boxer, such as that occasion when he felled three bulls with punches on the piazza at Gadenia and was honoured with the Empire Medal, speeches by three lord mayors, short films and radio broadcasts, and a maternity home had also been named after him — but they didn’t do this to ease his pain, only to remind themselves that they weren’t abandoned after all; they could pretend they were runaway children who are the only ones who think they’re hidden, and any minute now their big brothers will be arriving to take them home.

They’d carefully dip their hands into the drinking water and let him suck their fingers like a calf, and would stick hard crusts of bread or chunks of pineapple between his lips because they thought: our charity will save us, injustice can’t possibly be so harsh that all this charity will go unrewarded. They were watching him die, of course, and as the days passed they became less and less willing to uncover his injured legs; the smell of death noticed by everyone but himself oozed out of the dirty bandages, and their charity became increasingly in the mind, but no less consoling for that. Drowning themselves, they’d watch him sinking slowly like a rotten lifebuoy, but still they were cowardly enough to cling on to him, thinking: he’s sinking because he’s rotten, but we who are unsullied will float thanks to our clothes and our own will-power, until someone throws us a real lifebuoy. They didn’t need to keep pretending the crippled boxer was in fact the one keeping their heads above water, it was just a case of speaking the words of consolation so loudly and so frequently that the cynic inside them could never be heard whispering: where would we be without our dying, what would be the point of our health without our sick, our happiness without the unhappiness of others, our courage without our cowards?

‘Let go of me!’ he longed to cry. ‘What are you doing here, you hypocrites and water snakes! My misfortune is my own, let me die in peace like the rest of you. Why should I be the one to bear all your fear, all your stifled certainty that the rescue ship, as you call it, will in fact never come!’ But he never shouted any such thing, for he was paralysed after all; he’d lain stiffly under the water keg, pressed against the naked rocks of the reef like a beaten wrestler while the long, broken waves lashed his body, stamping in the agony; afraid of being sucked back down into the precipitous depths, he’d tried to cling fast to the rocks with his free hand, and as blood gushed out of his tattered fingers he could feel his life coming and going, sliding out of him and shuffling away over the slippery rocks before having second thoughts and creeping back again. He remembered defending himself desperately every time their octopus-like grip tugged at him anew. He’d tried to kick his rescuers with his useless legs when they rolled the keg aside and dragged him over the rocks by his shoulder, but although he aimed blows at them and struggled with all his body to wrench himself away, his attempts to flee were in vain. He hung in their voracious hands like a morally indignant, stolen parcel, and allowed himself to be rescued on to this cruel island which had surreptitiously clamped its gentle jaws round all their necks like the strands of a man-eating plant.

Full of agonized longing, he’d gazed down like a bird into the overturned well that was the world, with the horizon as the dividing line between the wall of the sea and the sky. If the ship had appeared after all, everything would have been lost and yet saved, his flight would have failed even more pitifully than ever, and as good an opportunity as this would never come again. But his paralysis had betrayed him, it told him he would never be able to flee unless his legs could carry him away to the deep hole under the grass and away from the people roving about on the shore, the ones who were sucking out his own pain, Death, he sometimes thought; but death, said his paralysis, death isn’t the same as running away, death isn’t really running away, just a continuation of the ultimate angst. Everything would have to be cured if he were to be able to flee. But they all had claws, everybody’s nails were growing and no one thought of ripping them off now, and they were keeping watch on him, obsessed with the hope of rescue, obsessed with the hope that he would soon die; we’re healthy and therefore we’ll survive, we’re alive because we’re healthy and have enough strength to wait for the rescue boat.

Are there no cracks in their compact dream? Oh, how he tried to grope his way around those white sepulchral walls in search of secret cavities, but he was too weak, too crippled, too isolated in himself. Then one morning, when they’d all gathered round him again with their commiserations and their chilly angst, he bit hard into the hand of the artillery captain, Wilson, who was feeding him crumbs of ship’s biscuits with the cynical patience of an animal trainer. He remembers how the hand, already on its journey to death, with ragged blue fingers where the flesh was glowing hard and red in deep hollows, hovered temptingly above his eagerly open mouth, whose lips always curled to form a ring without his being able to prevent them. The sea below them was like the giant black wall of a gasometer and the sand seemed to be crunching under the feet of some unseen rambler, while the sky itself was as blue as metal, seemingly bowed under the weight of some unknown force: only the powerful columns of their will kept them up. Then, just before he bit, clouds of birds as white as snow seemed to emerge from the captain’s shoulders, their cruel beaks, with small drops of congealed blood seeming to hang from their vicious, pincer-like tips, were pointing steadily down; it was painful enough to feel, as it were, the pecking which would sever the ailing flesh from his bones, skilfully and triumphantly. Then he shuddered with horror as he noticed the self-satisfied red spot on the end of the captain’s nose acquiring a life of its own, just as vicious and ruthless as the beaks in the air above, and when he looked slowly round, he saw that all the people encircling him had identical spikes of blood pointing directly at him. Scared, but also determined to break down once and for all the secret door behind which their secret hopes were hiding, he first closed his eyes in readiness for the preposterous happening; he suddenly found himself shut in a blood-red cave dotted with stalactites, filled with forgotten, hushed, primitive music; the stalactites dug their long fingers into his soft being and seemed to resound with furious whispering. Then, in order to free himself at last from this horrific company, he tensed himself like a catapult, oblivious to his paralysis, but all he could manage was a weak thrust with his upper body; even so, it was so high and so unexpected that he was able to dig his teeth into the captain’s hand, just under the knuckle of his thumb. He bit as hard as he could, dragging the hand with him as he fell back on to the sand.