Raf turned quickly and decisively and started to lift his arms.
He sank into the boy’s eyes, heard the question through the unmoving lips and whined:
“Too late, too late, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!”
The name collector thanked him and left.
The receptionist opened his right eye again. Still nothing? Good.
Raf was crying at the edge of the cliff. The waves carried the two halves of the body in different directions and he did not want to look at it anymore. He should move his head, look in a different direction, think of something else but of his guilt, his powerful and infinite guilt. With his own clumsiness, panicking, hesitating, thinking and fear he had killed a man, who was now dissolving down below. He had killed everybody in the campsite, on the island and in the whole world.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!” he sobbed, during a breath in.
He had killed himself.
He tried to remember, even though his contact with the child seemed like the memory of a dream.
Did he ask me? Did I tell him?
He just could not remember whether he had answered. But the question was quite clear in his mind, just like the boy’s thank you. Oh, no, no, I’ve been condemned. Another few minutes and then How long did it take with Alfonz and Max? Half an hour, no longer. Another thirty minutes before I sink into madness and then into death.
He jumped up. Ran across the meadow, kept tripping, falling and rolling in the grass. Grabbing at the grass and pulling it towards him.
I’M GOING TO DIE I’M GOING TO DIE!!!
I’M GOING TO DIE I’M GOING TO DIE!!!
He bit into the soil and clenched his teeth with all his strength. He felt very clearly that the grass was something different, something outside him, just like the sky, the stars, the night, the rest of the world. It would all still be there when he was gone. He remembered that time at school when Max said he was not afraid of death, just the end of the world, and Raf said to him it was the same thing. How easy it had been to say that then! To use names without really understanding the things they referred to.
He knelt in the grass and something slimy poured out of his nose and mouth.
I’m not a part of all this around me, I’m separate. I’m not immortal. I’ll die, I’ll die.
I’ll be nothing. In half an hour or less. With every second, that moment is getting nearer and nearer.
He moaned and tears ran down his cheeks, mixing with snot and saliva. With a corner of his eye he noticed a figure of a child entering the campsite and he did not care anymore. That was not his world anymore, let those who belong in it take care of it.
It was the end. How was it that he had never before understood death and mortality? He did know, of course, nobody had hidden it from him, everybody talked about it, keeping it away only from very small children. He had listened and never imagined it. He had just accepted the name as if that was all and he had never thought of the meaning of the word. Did all names have a meaning or only some and were all of those with a meaning like land-mines in the middle of a field, which explode and destroy our lives when we step on them?
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOh!
How much more time did he have? How much?
This time the receptionist opened both eyes. He had a feeling that a small figure, resembling a shadow, had crossed the edge of the lit-up concrete platform in front of him. He walked over to the door, opened it and looked out. He could not see anybody.
He went back to his chair and dozed off again.
The motorcyclist was dreaming a funny dream: he was sleeping and even though his eyes were closed, he saw a boy, standing over him and waiting patiently. He opened his eyes to see the boy better and the child asked him his name, without opening his mouth. Funny! He told him his name and went back to sleep.
“I’m testing,” said Luka, “can you hear me?”
One, two affirmative answers. Adriano was nearly deaf anyway, since his good ear had started deteriorating and there was no point in asking him. Luka looked down towards his legs and kicked Adriano gently. Adriano turned around and gave Luka such a big smile that his false teeth moved in his mouth and after that he did not take his eyes away from his leader.
“Miro, did you pump the oil in?”
“I did!”
He even sounded a bit out of breath.
“Bruno, did you remove the plug from the barrel?”
“I did!”
“Now we’ll wake the dead!”
He looked down to the left and all he could see were Bruno’s thighs and hips.
“Bruno, start it up! That’s it that’s it LET’S GO!”
The rumble suddenly turned into an explosion resounding around the bay, spilling over to the other side of the island. The crickets became silent, the birds stayed still. Thirty two tons of steel jerked forward with a groan and a rumble. A flame hissed out of the exhaust pipes, the caterpillar track rattled and the tank started moving off its base.
The memorial plaque was smashed to pieces.
“Shit,” swore Luka to himself, “I forgot to remove it.”
He looked at the sheet of paper in his hand. No, he had not forgotten, he had just overlooked point three. OK, they would make another one, but he was still angry.
“How it started, just like new,” Luka heard Bruno’s voice through the earphones.
“Yes, short, sweet and noisy!”
He looked out of the turret and leaned back. He could not see Bruno’s head in the bottom part of the tank but he could admire his skills. After all those years, Bruno had not lost any of his driving abilities. Well, just a few maybe – one of the mooring stones had just been smashed to smithereens by the tracks.
Not one light in the village came on and no window opened. That was precisely why Luka loved that village and that island, there were just enough people to stop life being too boring and not too many to make it impossible to agree on things and keep them to themselves. He took a deep breath. There was nothing he enjoyed more than leaning out of the top of the tank and riding through a warm summer night. They did start the tank occasionally, but always in the winter, when it rained and there were low clouds, when the ferry only came in once a week, when there was nobody but the natives on the island and the possibility of anybody seeing them was minimal. The thunder of the tank in that kind of weather could never compare to the sound echoing through a warm, early summer night. The only time it was even better was in the desert in the middle of nowhere when the battalion and the tank.
He ran his eyes over the steel around him and quietly repeated the names of all the parts around him. He knew them all, as always. Everybody laughed when he stuck a label in the middle of the turret, saying:
TANK SHERMAN
MODEL M4A3E8
How could anybody forget anything like that, they said. You could, said Luka to himself, remembering his parents. They were both still alive, the oldest on the island. But their minds were like those of the youngest inhabitants: they could not remember anything, they did not recognize anybody or anything and it seemed they had even forgotten how to speak. I’ll never be like that, Luka had promised to himself. Every morning, he would list the names of everything in his room, making sure that the process of forgetting had not started that night. Because he was the oldest child there was no way of telling whether his parent’s extreme senility was hereditary. His middle sister, who had married on the mainland had died in a car accident. His other sister was ten years younger than him and was not a really suitable guinea pig, but in spite of that he still observed her carefully. She looked after her parents and her older brother, just like the youngest female child was supposed to do and that was another reason why Luka liked that place so much.