So they sailed south, far south, to what we call the gloomy latitudes, where the lichens curl as thickly as quarto pages on the windy dripping trees, and ferns lurk in the crevices of boulder-cliffs. Arriving at a certain nameless island, the Lazar shortened sail, then dropped her mudhook, following which the two friends rowed carefully between the remnant ice-floes (it was summer), beached their dinghy in the rocks, shouldered spades and vanished into a meadow of red peat at the forest’s edge. Once more Jovo Cirtovich imagined that he was entering a new world. Meanwhile the crew, not being paid for idleness, killed a whole herd of elephant seals, skinned them and salted the meat. Whatever their master was up to, they retained confidence in his luck, and thus in theirs. They dreaded neither this dull grey sea flowing rapidly nowhere, with its ugly oily whitecaps breaking out like pustules, nor that other tall black island not far ahead — which place the Illyrian mapmaker had likewise declined to name.
Praying to Saint Sava, who rules over snow and ice, and offering their most heartfelt invocation to Prince Lazar, our two principals now followed the river to the gentle slope of dark scree on whose crest the white boulder waited. (Perhaps they should have also prayed to Saint Thomas.) The wind blew stronger, so they sat their fur kalpaks on their heads. It was the hour between the two dog watches. Their aspirations resembled the glow of golden icons in a dark room.
Do you see it now? said Cirtovich.
God help us, yes! Master, don’t you? It’s wriggling all its arms down in there, and it’s watching us through the ground—
That’s enough, Vasojevic.
They drew a magic circle in the sand, then kindled a fire and burned mastic, aloes and frankincense. Through the fragrant smoke they passed a pentacle drawn in scarlet ink upon a virgin lambskin. Then they commenced to dig; and before we describe the object of it all, before the corpse arrives, carried through the window by two stoic men, the mother need do no more than stare into the night, waiting and worrying, while the boy called Jovo gets for an instant longer to keep the precious certainty of his father’s invulnerability. Then comes the sight and above all the touch of death. Their father has fallen. Death has ruined him — he who should never die. But now everything will be put right; any instant now our spade-edges will bite success.
And so their shovels struck wet sand, then ice, then gravel, and suddenly something hard and hollow — wood or metal? — The latter, of course — a bronze casket, as ancient as the three broken basilicas at Salona.
Remember, master, what the Patriarchs have said: There is no resurrection without death.
I’m not afraid. Are you?
Didn’t Lazar choose death?
Spoken like a Serb! And now, dear friend, let us be armed with the sword of God’s Word!
Adonai, they sang, then offered up a last prayer to Saint Sava, hoping that if they could accomplish this one magic thing their lives would be perfected, or at least mended. Although he should have kept his mind on the ritual, Cirtovich could not help but think on Tanyotchka biting her lip in half-mastered grief as he departed their home. Vasojevic was lucky never to have begun a household. His master knew that if they ever did return, the house would be smaller and sadder, the people older.
Now listen, Vasojevic. What’s next may require fast work—
With all respect, I’m still young enough!
I’ve never doubted that. But do we agree on what to wish for?
By all the saints! We came here to—
Yes, on our own behalf. But what about Prince Lazar? We could seize this chance to bring him back. Wasn’t that our old dream? Think about it. We could save our tortured country.
Or defeat death itself, as you used to say—
Knowing from the despairing hope in each other’s eyes what they both longed for above all else, they fell silent. Then Vasojevic said: Lazar, God praise him, made his choice and can take care of himself. I don’t say this for my own sake.
So you relinquish that dream?
Just as you say.
And death?
Endless life, and endlessly seeing that face before me — well, I’d rather not.
Raising up the chest, they tried to open it, but although green light began to bleed out as soon as they undid the clasps, the task required violence. They prayed once more, longing for their church’s smell of candle wax. With shovels they attacked the lid until it was a ruin like the multicracked shell of a boiled egg squeezed in the hand. Then they twisted with their Saracen blades, and it sprang aside.
Up rose their old companion like an emanation of the Great Godhead, closer and more corporeal than ever before, freed from the glass, neither larger nor smaller than it needed to be to fill the newly available space, its flesh breaking out in purple-brown ventral chromatophores, and all ten arms beating a tattoo against the sides of the casket before reaching out into the chilly air. The two men stepped back once it began discharging liquid from the funnel in its head, Vasojevic longing to sink a boat-hook into it and Cirtovich imagining those arms curling and tearing at his face. But fixing on them its jewel, that beautiful lidless eye, it grew calm, as if it recognized and trusted its friends. Before it had invariably appeared omniconscious, not to mention gruesomely hateful on account of the hatefulness which on their behalf it busily foresaw. And now it opened its beak like a baby bird. Which of us would not on occasion prefer to be dependent?
Almost as suave here as in Philadelphia, Cirtovich propitiated the thing with Friulian wine until its tentacles wriggled as sweetly as a baby’s toes. What did he care? After all, not even it could match his childhood dread of his father.
He drew out the dark-glass, proving to himself and his companion that it was not only transparent, but void. It seemed that the monster could not exist in two places simultaneously. Then, uttering another prayer, he poured another bottle of Friulian crimson into the creature’s beak. Drunkenly, wine drooling out of its beak, it draped one tentacle around his neck — the first time in all these years that it had ever touched him. Well, it felt no stranger than touching a corpse! Trusting in it not to hurt him — after all, what had it done him but good? — he knelt down, and raised it to his heart. At once it flushed red-violet, as does the giant octopus when disturbed. And Jovo Cirtovich felt moved to tenderness. But seeing Vasojevic standing quietly stubborn in his views, whatever they might have been, he set the creature gently down in the rocks.
In the box beneath where it had lain was another casket, which he withdrew. From it issued the scent of an unknown flower, but when he opened the lid, there was the head of his father, smiling at him. So grief came to him in truth.
Are you my father?
No.
Who are you?
I am the one you sought, it said, and its voice resembled the vivid strangeness of the gold on certain Byzantine icon panels, which as one alters one’s angle of view appears to shift its underhue from cool reptilian green to sanguinary red. Around it shone a soft light whose rays brought sweetness and tears.
We have come for a wish, said Cirtovich.
What would you?
Hesitating, thinking perchance to dicker with this being as with some Cincar trader, he demanded: Will you advise us? Shall we rid ourselves of that nightmare?
If you choose. What would you?
Or should I ask to hear death’s voice? Or preserve my favorite daughter forever, or find out where my father has flown?