Evald Flisar - My Father's Dreams

I turned away from the sea. Behind us was a gently rising hill, covered in boulders and pale rugged rocks, with patches of shrivelled grass here and there. On my right the hill continued into a long promontory, which jutted out into the sea, cradling the little cove like a protective arm. How big was the island? That I didn’t know; on our way to the cove we had seen no more than its western side. I began to walk towards the top of the hill. I wanted to see what lay on the other side. I walked barefoot, stepping carefully to avoid getting cut on the sharp rocky surface. The sounds of the sea gradually weakened and became distant, almost inaudible. As I turned around I could barely see Mother’s body in the cove below; it was tiny, insignificant, like the body of an unknown bather.

When I finally reached the top of the hill I could see at once that the island was much bigger than I had expected. An undulating surface of white-grey rocks and boulders, interspersed with rare tufts of grass, stretched out before me as far as the eye could see. Only far away was it possible to make out the vague shape of the mountain which towered above the little town we had come from. The distance was such that it would probably take me the best part of the day to walk to the other side of the island. I looked around to find the neighbouring island to which Father had gone with the boatman to help him load bricks. I looked in all directions but all I could se was the mainland on one side and open sea on the other. There was no neighbouring island.

I ran as fast as I could back down the slope, jumping from rock to rock, from boulder to boulder, caring little for grazes and cuts which my feet suffered on the way.

“Mother,” I shouted when I reached the cove, “we’ve been left on the island!”

“What?” she mumbled, emerging from her stupor.

Suddenly everything had fallen into place! The way the boatman laughed before disappearing behind the promontory. That scornful look on his face during the journey to the island. The strange behaviour of the staff at the hotel. The heaviness, the sly persistence of the sea. We were superfluous, we had to be got rid of, and the boatman had been selected to take us to the bare island, and leave us there. Father must have realised this; why else would he have scrambled back into the boat at the last moment, if not to prevent the boatman from carrying out his evil deed, and to force him to return? By doing so he must have hastened his own end, for as soon as they were out in the open sea, the boatman must have pushed him overboard, after first hitting him on the head with an oar.

“Mother,” I cried, “we’re going to die!”

“Are you dreaming again?” she snapped. “They’ll be here any minute, they must have got delayed by a bottle; you know what men are like.”

“Mother, look at the sun. The night will be here in no time at all.”

She rummaged in her carrier bag, pulled out her silver watch and stuck it under my nose. “Four o’clock. Why don’t you go for a swim?”

“Mother,” I whined, “we came at eleven.”

“Or a walk,” she said, stretching out on her towel.

I ran up the incline again, this time not to the top of the hill, but alongside it towards the promontory jutting into the sea, and over it to the other side, where I could see another little cove, and behind it a second, similar promontory, slightly lower than the first, and behind it a third, higher again, and behind that one, barely visible and almost the colour of the sky, a fourth and fifth, and behind those perhaps another, too distant to be seen in the haze. The island was very jagged, with a number of little coves and pebbly beaches, and suddenly I was filled with the hope that there might be other belated tourists in some of the coves, brought by other fishermen.

This gave me new strength and I hurried on, along the steep rocky incline, to get to the top of the second promontory, from where I might see people in the cove behind it. My feet were already badly cut and I was leaving a trail of blood drops on the rocks. Strangely, I did not feel any pain. A dry wind began to push in from the sea, spreading in random waves, most of which missed me by a yard or two, but those that hit me were so powerful that they nearly pushed me over.

When I reached the top of the promontory, I could see no one in the cove behind it. My disappointment was not too great; for some reason I was convinced that if there were signs of life on the island, I would find them only in the fourth or fifth cove. Although tired, I hurried on, this time toward the top of the hill again, suddenly hoping that from a higher vantage point I would see two or three coves at the same time. But when I reached the top my eyes beheld something I would not have expected to see even in a dream: a vast rocky plain spreading all the way to the horizon and beyond it, into an endless, invisible space. It was darkened in places by patches of withered grass. I turned around. The cove had vanished, and so had the sea; as if I were no longer on an island at all. The rocky surface was neither white nor grey, but vaguely bluish, like the colour of the sky.

Strewn around as far as I could see were sharp stones of various sizes. Barely perceptible waves of warm air travelled across the plane. The warmth wasn’t caused by the sun; it reminded me of the heat waves produced by a powerful radiator fan. The wind was blowing into my face regardless of where I turned, as if the streams of air were coming from all directions at once, with their paths intersecting at the point I happened to be at any one time. I knew that my physics teacher would dismiss the idea as ludicrous, but that was the only explanation that made any sense.

Time did not seem to pass in this unfamiliar land, or, if it did, there wasn’t the slightest sign that would confirm this. The land and the sky did not change their appearance; everything seemed to be standing still. I could feel neither thirst nor hunger, neither fear nor elation; definite proof that my body was no longer subject to natural laws. I felt like lying down and waiting for something to happen. In the end, however, it seemed better to walk, anywhere. Maybe far away, in the invisible distance, things were different, maybe I would at least meet animals, if not people, or angels, if this were the afterworld.

I closed my eyes and swivelled around. I walked in the direction I was facing as I opened my eyes. After five minutes of walking I got the strange feeling that I wasn’t moving at all, for I seemed to be leaving nothing behind. The rocky surface under my feet seemed to be going past me, or coming toward me, and yet, in spite of the very long steps I was taking, I seemed to stay in the same place. I carried on anyway; in the end it made no difference whether I walked or stood still, especially as I did not feel any tiredness, not even after walking what seemed like ten miles.

Suddenly I noticed, lying among the stalks of withered grass, a large bone, smooth and shiny, definitely a human bone, a tibia. The world was no longer empty; I had found a trace of a living being: once, however long ago, the rocky plain had been visited by humans. Perhaps only one, who had wandered onto it by mistake, like myself, and couldn’t find a way out. I picked up the bone and was surprised to discover that it was much heavier than I had expected. I decided to take it with me; if I were attacked I could use it as a bludgeon. Carrying a large human bone on my shoulder I felt safer, almost warm at heart.

A few minutes later, I came upon what at first looked like a large patch of grass, but upon closer inspection turned out to be a small pond, filled with very dark water which was ruffled by the crisscrossing winds in the most unusual pattern of tiny wavelets. Sitting in the middle of it on a large oak leaf was a creature with the head of a frog and the body of a three-year old baby, beautiful, pink, with tiny legs crossed lotus fashion, like a small Buddha. Lying in its plump, tiny arms was an open book.