Through the window I have sent out into the night that whole heavy stench seeping    
through the cracks round the thin double door of the bedroom and gathering in    
a suffocating cloud of foul sepulchral odor. From the next room I can still hear the
thick porcelain wash-basin ringing with the deepest notes of percussion    
instruments, and in that ancient chime I make out the squeezing and squirting    
of the sponge with which my wife's unhappy hands are washing Madonna's abdomen.    
I shudder in the damp south wind and do not yet dare breathe with even half    
my lungs. Even the tea is poisoned: I just steam my face and eyes in the rum    
evaporating from the warm cup. From the bedroom Madonna croaks: 
     "Me romperà the cups, quel wretch in there! He'll smash everything!"
      The thin door shakes like cardboard as it opens. 
      "Hold that nose!" Cara smiles at me. 
      Cara smiles, oh yes, yes, she smiles, and smiles . . . When she carries the pot out 
like that, her smile is no more than a dim circle round her lips, it spreads concentrically    
over her chin and nose and shades her eyes. My wife, her eyes blind, dead, bears    
the heavy earthenware pot before her like an urn to the courtyard wall. There she climbs 
onto a stone, onto the pinkish marble stump of an ancient column, and tips the vessel over 
towards the sea. The ashes of our Madonna are borne away by the holy rivers. 
      The Ganges will wash away the generations, and this Madonna will continue to 
send her remains every eighteen days over the wall into the shallow Adriatic. She is 
indestructible, dying lengthily as she watches my wife and me age by her side. 
      The Doctor crosses himself before her and says: "Well, Signorina Madonna! How 
long shall we go on like this, dear lady?" She replies that he should be patient a few more 
days "until I recover! Pazienzza!" The Doctor then goes on crossing himself, in our room, 
angrily. Under his breath. For him she is a Great Riddle of Nature. Humane reasons 
prevent one, of course, there's no question of that but how humane they are is another 
matter . . .    although it would be just and merciful for us, who are still relatively young, to 
devote ourselves to our children. In God's name . . . so, her hearing's good and her 
eyesight! And, really, every eighteen days . . . like clockwork! There's, quite simply, 
nothing like it in the medical literature. Nothing. And how old is she? Why, she's old, 
really old . . . almost incalculably! And we aren't even relations . . . . Incredible, 
impossible, completely unrelated! He taps his pockets, crosses himself at the door, and in 
the courtyard; he probably crosses himself again, round the corner, for his own sake. 
That's how it is every time. He is the first to greet me in the morning at the fish market, 
compassionately; he asks me nicely, rhetorically, just to tell him how in God's name it's 
possible. And why on earth should I tell him anything! I'm not surprised at the dead 
continuing to live and keep us their service, submissive. I'm surprised by the living, at 
how they come by such strength in their frailty and helplessness, I'm surprised at myself 
and wonder how we can go on like this. And that is not a rhetorical question, my dear 
Doctor, it's a question beyond hope that I keep asking myself, and nothing is impossible 
for her, nor for us, we are all kith and kin, tied by blood to the dead, in faecal kinship 
with the dying, with the blueadriatic, with this polluted oxygen we are breathing . . . But 
we'll buy these few fish that have been fattened beneath Madonna's courtyard wall, 
Doctor, and all go about our own business in brotherly and kindred peace. We shall be 
united by grey mullet. Enjoy your meal! 
      My own business is worse than the Doctor's, but I've almost learned to enjoy my 
food. 
      "You make a start," I say to Cara, "start frying the mullet so I can't hear the old 
woman ranting." 
      She has washed out the pot and turned it upside down on the terrace to drain. 
      "Start frying those mullet," I say, "they're clean." 
      My wife goes on washing her hands for a long, long time, poor thing, I'll have to 
fetch water tomorrow. 
      "Child!" calls Madonna. 
      "What is it, Madonna?" I ask from the doorway. "What the devil is it now? Tell    
me!" 
      It is dark in her room. She moans as she breathes from the depths of the room. 
She's hardly there. She's crumpled up in the hollow of the bed, as in a rocking cradle. 
But she fills the empty, acoustic room with her wheezing, and it seems as though she 
has squeezed all this murk and gloom out of her body like a cuttlefish. 
      "Child! Are you deaf, eh?" 
      Cara pushes me away from the door.
      "We did everything beautifully just now, did our business and washed; so what    
is it now?" asks my wife, stepping into the darkness of Madonna's room. She doesn't find 
it difficult to enter this mausoleum; she spends days and nights here, poor creature. 
      "If you aren't quiet, I'll sleep right through the night and I shan't come at all, all 
right?" 
      "She would too, she would, si. If there were no Hell. Criminals! But then I'll cry 
at the top of my voice, my dear, and shout. Tutta la notte. I will, you know!" 
      "What's wrong?" asks blackmailed Cara. "What's wrong now?" 
      "I can't hear the Hail Mary being said, that's what's wrong. A Christian soul 
needs . . . " 
      And what can I do, I quickly start mumbling anything that comes into my head, 
withdrawing into our kitchen-living room, and Cara has come with me, she has started 
rolling the fish in flour and praying  under her breath: "Give them eternal rest and eternal 
light for our souls you'll have to bring some water there's none left and I must wash 
before the journey souls in Purgatory and then you can rest as long as you like rest in 
peace. Amen . . . " 
      The nuns have been ringing the evening Angelus from their little bell-tower for 
nearly a thousand years now without ceasing. Since the eleventh century 
mesdamesetmessieurs. A model of architectural achievement. More precisely,    
St. Andrew's, as you see . . . 
      I took the zinc bucket as one takes a child by the hand and carried it through the 
back yard into the garden, I rang it, ringing out a response to the thousand year-old ditty 
of St Andrew's by the Southern Sea, drumming my knee on the bucket. The bell hopped 
two or three more times on one leg, shocked by my shameless zincogram and then fell 
silent as though it had dropped into the sea, not leaving even so much as a romantic hum 
in the air over the warm evening furrows. 
      There is none of that at St. Andrew's. Its bells are tin. Once they've done their 
clanging, it's all over, and you can't any longer tell where it ended. 
      And one day no one will be able to tell exactly where my one and only life ended 
either. Here - so many years ago, when I took up my watch over the dying Madonna- 
or in freedom, if I survive the captivity.    
      I had not yet left the back yard - on the edge of the verandah behind me I made    
out the clatter of my wife's overshoes. I thought I heard "for the priest." I stopped, and 
then I almost ran to her. Out of the darkness she held out the rag ring for my head. I had 
forgotten it when I set off with my bucket. But still I asked: 
      "What . . . . has anything happened?" 
      "Lord no, don't be daft!" sighed my wife. 
      "Piero! Little Piero!" came a call from the other room. Madonna was now calling 
my wife by the name of her brother, who, they tell me, died while still in his cradle. 
       Cara called back crossly and then whispered to me:    
      "We can always change our minds. I'll stay. But please don't act the fool!"    
      The bucket suddenly seemed full of wet clothes; it had grown heavy in a gust    
of the south wind and was pulling me through the garden. I'm not clever enough    
to know how to act the fool. The south wind was blowing. There were eighteen    
days ahead of me in this huge house. Solitude. The vestibule of the grave. Life    
with a corpse. 
      The fresh air was stifling me, with its sticky damp and the smell of decay 
from the gardens. And there are no warm furrows here or any of that romance, of 
either dusk or dawn. The little bit of earth that has collected in the gardens 
among these rocks is not even earth. The houses, walls, streets, courtyards -- 
everything is rock on rock, and the gardens are dunghills and rubbish heaps and 
graves, rotted bones, skin, where something clammy is fermenting,left behind by 
the passing generations, like sediment in a quarry. Where else would the black humus 
in these great stone bowls of walled courtyards have come from? Anything that could 
not rot in this compost heap is still scattered through the gardens, lurking in the wings: 
cement heads with buns, capitals, tiles, glass, earthenware vases and chips of majolica. 
In the viscous, greasy, amorphous gravy of decay which is earth for us, where 
magnolias, pittosporum, laurel and evergreens are planted. 
      I knocked at a neighboring ground-floor window, holding the rag ring like a halo 
over the balding top of my head. Then I raised thehalo, as though removing a mighty 
tiara, and, as though paying my respects to Christ's grave, I greeted the terrible face 
of my neighbor on the other side of the pane. What I bowed to was in fact the image 
of fear, disfigured by natural ugliness and unnatural boniness, blueness and 
whiskeredness. 
      The most attractive thing about her is her name, which seems neither attractive 
nor hers. Our friend is called Hermione. Not Erinye. Hermione. And for some years now,
ever since we began neglecting our well, several times a week she has been frightened all    
over again, because I am eccentric and wicked and her nerves are bad in any case, bad fr 
fromher mother swomb! 
      "I said didn't I that this was sanpietro come forforfor water, motherofGod! With a 
ha-lo!" 
      "And my wife has invited you to come over this evening for a while." 
      "Alright, for goodness'sake, the poor woman's go go going away . . . oh, but you 
gave me a start!! I know, I know she has to go. I'll go with you. Why shouldshe 
shouldshe worry, just let her go!" 
      We drew the water from the well, poured it into my bucket and some of it over the 
bucket; the wind ruffled the water and sprayed it over the top of the well, which 
Hermione does not like, for the old folk always taught us that water that comes out of a 
cistern is no longer healthy if it fallsba fallsba ckagain inside, indentro. 
      She took one of the bucket's handles, and I the other, and I did not need the ring, 
so I waved it about to keep my balance, because it is heavy. It is stuffed with stitched up 
remnants of old-fashioned homespun waistcoats, bits of felt slippers, hats, wool and silk 
in whip-shaped shreds, ribbons from old ladies' gowns, moth-eaten plush collars and the 
sediment of centuries-old lye, and this heavy, tightly filled pie wafts from my hand an    
acrid smell of slops and boiled vegetables, which, when combined with the sweaty fumes 
emitted in waves by my breathless neighbor, lost its individuality and merged into one 
single bitter taste of amaranthus and these courtyards, this south wind and this destiny. 
      When we reached Madonna's garden, Hermione put the bucket down in the dark 
dangerously suddenly, just in front of my toes, and said solemnly: 
      "She's going to die, you know! Didn't I ss sayso before? Well, she will, the old 
lady will die soon now while you're on your own. I swear. Before Christmas, before. Any 
anyday now." 
      I lit a cigarette so as to turn away from her face, and silently blew the smoke off 
to the side. If she had spoken the truth, maybe I would have lit a candle to St. Andrew 
instead of a cigarette. But then, again . . . 
      "She's a devotee of the Co . . . Community of Worshippers of the Mo . . . st 
Precious Blood of Christ. She is. Perhaps you know that,but you don't know that they all 
died before Christmas, all of those . . . them. If not exactly on the Eve, then a day before 
or after. This one and that one, and all. I know them all, on my honor (I am untouched!), 
not all the women, I didn't say that, but those dev . . . otee . . . dammit, you follow? 
Not one of the worshipful sis sisterssur survived Christmas Eve! paroladonor!" 
      "Oh come now, Hermione! At least seventy, each one of them." 
      "No, no, lovey, they haven't, not that that last . . . most important one. That's 
what I'm saying. No, really. They didn't when I sayso! Now you know." 
      We couldn't reach an agreement. I bent to pick up the bucket, she bent down 
quickly as well and we set off like two dumb fools through the dark garden into the 
courtyard, lashed by the south wind. No one should ever dare think that he might not 
one night find himself in this windswept universe humping the same stupid load with a 
person he does not understand, who has wandered off somewhere onto the other side 
of reason and settled there in some dry bloodless little bed forever. 
      "We won't say anything to Cara, remember, will we. Hold your tongue like 
this . . . as though you didn't have one. Why, it's as clear as clear! Because poor Cara 
will be al . . . armed, because then she'd stay. And that would be some Chris . . . tmas 
and Newyear, honesttogod!"    
      We soon reached the terrace, put the bucket down and plunged into a cloud of    
smoke from the frying oil. My wife was blinking over the spitting pan the way she blinks 
over the crater of the chamber pot, and Hermione hurried into Madonna's room to savor 
another's inferiority. I stretched out on my couch and heard the  same conversation I have 
heard goodness knows how often. First, the identification process takes a while, 
although Hermione spends as much time in our house as in her own. But Madonna often 
meets Cara and myself all over again, so it's only to be expected with Hermione. And 
when she has finally established that she is neither this nor that late relative but 
little Hermione, her late father . . . bel campione! . . . and that late hussy's daughter, 
then Madonna concludes that she does not know her, for she has not seen her since 
she was in nappies.
       "You are . . . that is . . . young. Little. It's alright for you, Godknows," Hermione 
laughed jerkily: "why, Hermione isn't in nappies any more, goodheavens!  She'll soon be 
restin . . . restinpeace, too! How . . . how old are you?" 
      "A hundred," says Madonna firmly and proudly. "A hundred inpunto." 
      "Ah now, it can'tbe . . . can'tbe . . . beso much, signora Madonna!" 
      "How much then, exactly?" asks Madonna inquisitively and provocatively. "In 
your opinion." 
      "Well, roughly, oh how should I know. Lotslotsless. Plenty."      
      There was a short silence. Suddenly Madonna screamed:      
      "Aiuto, my little one!" 
      "Oh just leave her," said Cara, "she frets the whole day whenever there's a south wind." 
      But Madonna was roaring hysterically by now: 
      "Give me back my Kampor you thieves! Criminals and farabutti! This is my
house, all of it's mine, from top to bottom!" 
      Cara was draining the last mullet on a fork. She flung the whole thing onto a plate 
and went in. 
      "Dunque?"    
      "My guardian angel, drive this witch and Beelzebub out of my house!" 
      With elaborate gestures, Cara drove Hermione out of the room. 
      "Shoo, maledetta Communist witch! Shoo! There, sit down, while the fish is hot, 
have some with us. I'll close your door, Madonna, so the smoke doesn't hurt your eyes." 
      "Close the gates of Hell, the committees have taken everything away from me! 
Kampor, the woods, the Sheepfold, Pidoka, the Kopun vineyards, the Castle, everything I 
owned, Barbat and Supetarska, Kalifront . . . all those villages and relics . . . and now 
they send witches to steal my years! Ladri! Assassini! Which I came by honestly . . . 
accumulated. Cento anni precisi! I am, I am! A hundred! Esatto!" 
      Her tears reminded her of her losses, and their memory provoked more tears. That 
is all she is still living for: to mourn her possessions, which she exaggerates hugely. And 
that is all she still remembers from the time of her more lucid old age: that confiscation of 
twenty years ago, which completely unsettled her. Since then her spirit just staggers 
through the wrongly disconnected regions of her younger days, among so many dead and 
in the timeless gloom of the non-existent.
      We ate slowly, and my wife prepared a fish for Madonna, arranging flakes of pure 
flesh along the edge of the plate. Crunching little bits of fried skin and licking the bones 
clean as she went, she told Hermione to be sure and keep an eye on me and Madonna. 
Hermione just repeated from time to time: 
      "Forgoodnesssake, I know, I know! He doesn't need comp . . . company and 
letsay . . . let's say friendship from me. Just look in and lend a hand." 
She always talks rapidly, breaking up her words crossly and chewing her thin 
whiskers as she stretches her skin and lips into grimaces of inexpressible contempt and 
disgust, while    her eyebrows leap and collide above her nose as though they were artificial,    
stuck onto the face of a melancholy clown, while beneath them two little bulbs spark in 
turn, as though each eye belonged to a separate head. 
      Then she went, saying goodbye to my wife: 
      "You don't have to tell me morethanonce, farrò quello . . . quelloche potrò! Don't 
you worry about anything. 'Bye!" 
      For a long time after we were left alone, we could hear Madonna crushing her 
soggy little supper greedily and eagerly with her gums. Cara prepared the tub and heated 
the water for her bath, and I put on my pensioner's cape and stepped out into the somber    
Lane of the December Sacrifices. I'm not saying that is actually what the street is called, 
but it is December and my real sacrifices are just beginning. And  anyway, it doesn't 
matter what these streets are called. Everyone calls them  by the name of people they 
know who live in them in any case, or the arcade, or the tavern, or the well. They all 
display new stone plates with presumptuously huge historical names fit only for the devil. 
They all bluster with heroisms or boast of army divisions, and even the most bare-handed 
and blustering division would have to file through them endlessly one by one, from 
daylight to daylight, on dry rations, suffocating from each other's foot-cloths in the 
narrow passage. The ancient, bashful past of these little streets is disfigured here by the    
arrogant history of the new world, so that old Kekina's courtyard is actually  called 
Thomas Woodrow Wilson Square, and not Kekina's Manse or The Green as it has been 
from time immemorial. Each of these signs takes up half the street, for porches are 
Squares here; little broken flights of steps are Streets. And it would all warm a local heart 
if Madonna would only be done with her stools once and for all. 
      It would all be familiar and treasured. We would live up there with our Son and 
Daughter, with their exams, notes and little problems, and in summer we would find a 
room and an electric ring in some acquaintance's house, and everything would be, as I 
say, familiar and treasured as in prehistoric times. Even that stupid Woodrow. Or 
Hermione could cook for us. Or it could it all be, heaven knows, quite different. God 
could walk on the Earth as he did with Enoch and the Mother of God could cook oriental 
food for us and I would  eat baklava. It could be as it never was and never will be. I would 
not haveto go out wandering like an idiot in the dark and the south wind, while my wife    
washes herself with soda in a trough so as not to take any traces of Madonna  up to the 
children in town, and I would not have to be glad that I am here, airing my lungs from the 
hundred-year-old stench of a rotten stomach. I would play cards on the kitchen table in 
Zagreb instead. Or children's roulette, mahjongg, dominoes, or whatever. Perhaps I 
would survive a serious tram accident, report objectively from the scene. Walk along leafy 
Zrinjevac Square and criticize, fart softly, write reader's letters. Be a member of 
parliament! Elect and be elected! 
      But no. I am a civil peacetime war cripple. The old woman up there -- she is a 
cripple of confiscation, nationalization and collectivization . . . -- an historical cripple! 
While my poor wife and children, drunk on freedom and electrification, amply enjoy the 
ruits of Madonna's and my great sacrifices. Deo gratias! 
      If they ever succeeded in forcing me to be what I would never agree to being 
forced to be, I would have all the brochures, large scale and nautical maps of this dear 
Island reproduced . . . somehow . . . in negative. Where the Island is, there would be 
a lagoon, maybe even a brackish lake, and the sea would be drawn like dry land, pasture. 
Everyone would have to abide blindly by the decreed order. To live, finally, in a new way! 
No longer to interpret the world, but change it fundamentally. Scientifically. Or at least 
cartographically. Then whoever survived would have to make it to the cliff under which 
Velebit mountain washes its corns in the Barren Island Channel, get there as best he  
could, and then hitch-hike along the coast road to the next garrison . . . and get on with it! 
      For the time being it's better if I just wander in lightlessness. At this time of year 
there aren't any visitors, it's not the season, there's no "tourist traffic," so there's no light 
on these heroes and divisions, only stone steps in the gloom and acrobatics, you have to 
choose where to put your hoof. And be chosen. 
      "Good evening!" I say. "Drawing something again?" 
      "Just copying these few more plots for some land - registry summaries tomorrow." 
      "Of course . . . of course . . . ." I quiver like a moth in the light. "You alone have 
the fate of us all in that bottle of ink." 
      "Of what?" 
      "Er, of us all. Us all." 
      "Aha, not Saul? No, us all, you say." And he goes on drawing, ruling lines,   
inhaling smoke from his cigarette, then says again: "Us all, eh?" 
      "That's right . . . I was thinking about something . . . . You know!" 
      "Yes, yes, one does think," my one . . . friend here replies with understanding, or -
what should I call him - we play cards from time to time. A stupid game that I never find    
entertaining. "People do think when there's a south wind. Indeed. Not that it helps." 
      It doesn't help in a north wind either, I think to myself. It does not help even 
when it helps. In the silence the little steel feather of his drawing pen does not so much as 
squeak, but it still carves out boundaries and dry stone  walls and chops through little 
roots in the sandy, salty red soil: this is yours . . . that is his, this is how it is, that is how 
it will remain. The steel tip glides along, greased with sweat and blood. Complain unto the 
Lord, oh ye ploughmen! 
      And into the room comes my one . . . or how shall I put it . . .  his lady. She 
usually watches while we play cards. And makes us coffee. She asks compassionately: 
      "So, please tell me: how is the poor old lady?" 
      "Thank you. Oh just the same. Aha. In fact, she's a little better today." 
      "Oh that's good!" says his lady. 
      Hehey, couldn't be better. And I see there's no chance of that game of cards. 
What do I care! The man just keeps on inking and sketchingthose plots . . . . 
      "Pardon?" she asks out of the blue (perhaps I've already begun thinking aloud). "I said 
'that's good'!" 
      "Of course," I said. "I've even been able to pop out for a bit . . . Makes a 
difference straight away."
       "Excuse me, I'll just go and put some coffee on!" says this one and only wife. Although
other wives say the same thing. 
      "Oh no," I say, "thank you! I must be off."    
      "This wretched thing's urgent, damn it. But if you waited a little . . ." says my one and 
only. 
      "Besides, my wife's leaving on the midnight boat, so . . . ." 
      It was as though I'd lit a fire-cracker. Leaving! And how will I manage with Miss 
Madonna? Of course, the children, Christmas, New Year, holidays. Once a year at least! 
They're quite grown up, it's true. But always so far away. It's not easy, but then what can 
we do. We all have our cross. Still, it's the most sensible thing we could have done. 
Radical. Only, how will I manage? 
      Besides! Besides, my wife is leaving! Besides what? There is nothing apart from 
the fact that she is going. Not even a cross. Nothing so significant has happened for a 
long time. And it won't again soon either. There is no salt lake, only these plots and the 
land-registry, we affirm ourselves on the old ground. And there  are no cards either, not 
today, or for the next eighteen days. Nor good black coffee. Nothing. Farewell! 
      Freedom Square has huddled completely under the umbrella of its one solitary 
holm-oak. It was planted forty years ago, and while its symbolic adoptive sister Freedom 
was being born in torment, stunted and then regenerated, but the oak spread beautifully 
and, lice-ridden as it is, archedover its space. Beneath the tree the square is dry when it 
rains, there is no sun or sky over it, and in fact there is no more square either really. 
Only the tree of Freedom scattering acorns into its too narrow concrete bowl. But no little 
pigs come here. Others come, people with no need of acorns, who find no freedom . . . 
they come because of the sea breaking against the town's foundations below the square, 
as below a captain's bridge. They feel stronger here. They come to dream of sailing or of 
death, like me now, while out there lighthouses wink rapidly like a devilish brood, illuminating 
nothing. They light up for their own sakes. At the end of the land or the edge of the sea? 
Somewhere in the heart of the endless dark that has no contours. As in a dream.