On that side of the street the houses were sparser. Two-story family houses in the middle of small decorative garden plots protected by dogs and iron (bars).
From the houses came music, jaunty, bright, holiday-like, middle class; after a heavy lunch, a siesta by the gramophone: operetta, pop hit, march tran-tam, ran tan-tam … Baron Trenk. Once more to offer you my hand before we paaart. When you’re all alone and far from home … A flashing thought of Viviana, bitter solitude, envy of home and hearth … “A home of one’s own.” A homeland have I … What’s “my homeland”? The street, the Give’nTake, Enka’s bedroom, the “separate-entrance room” at Mrs. Ema’s? They’re already looking for the deserting volunteer there … The “New World Order” will by now have been established at the Give’nTake, there’s likely to be a new Kio at Enka’s … Let us go, then, you and I to the broad expanses of our Homeland! To the meadows, to the fields with the shepherd’s pipe … thy flatlands dear … To the pampas, gaucho, to the prairies! To the deserts to gnaw at the roots of prophets and catch grasshoppers in preparation for the great temptation …
He was already striding along outside city limits, through the fields, down well-trodden muddy lanes. He still heard a tram’s ting-a-ling from the suburban terminus. Goodbye, Melkior said to it, the time for joking is over, I’m not accepting the ting-a-ling. I’m off to face Polyphemus the man-eater who now treads the Earth … in order to scuttle between his legs before he plugs the cave entrance with his rock. And when I’m out (if I’m out) I’ll shout for all I’m worth: Cyclops, you one-eyed bloodthirsty brute … — Why do you go and taunt the savage again? — lf only I could rob him of life and soul!
In the distance there resounded a loud crack. At nearly the same instant an angry insect in furious flight whizzed past Melkior’s ear. He hugged the Earth in a trice.
That’s the one from Essen, ha-ha, laughed Melkior’s nose in the wet grass. Missed me, ha-ha! Let the Earth hear, whispered Melkior into the mud beneath, let the pipes play: Polyphemus the Cyclops, the one-eyed bloodthirsty brute, Polyphemus the Cyclops, the one-eyed bloodthirsty brute …
A light was glowing around him, as if a setting sun had pierced the clouds. But Melkior was not lifting his head: he was prostrating himself before his great good fortune which had lain down along his back, pressing him to the Earth. Don’t stir, don’t move a finger, play dead, said Fortune. — I will, I will, I will, he panted obediently. … Because that thing may still be after me, right? asked Melkior sensibly. — Where are you off to, he said to an ant which was clambering up a leaf of grass and using its feelers to examine the strange thicket above its eye (and brushwood and brambles and brackens, says the ant perhaps), why do you go and taunt the savage? Don’t move, play dead. But the ant is not heeding Fortune … there’s nothing that can touch it … it is counting the hairs in Melkior’s eyebrow. Irritating, tickling …
Melkior is not even blinking, not betraying Fortune: if she says you’re dead, that’s it — you’re dead. The main thing is you know it and can tell yourself you’re dead, you mustn’t even blink. To live, now there’s the challenge. So tell the grass (Fortune advises him): don’t grow, spring won’t put forth its buds here. What is the point of flowers and green leaves? He leaves nothing behind, he will trample everything underfoot, browse everything bare … scoff at all of spring. And tell the Earth: don’t wake up … be a cold, icy, darkness-bound, hard, unfriendly rock. Be a dark home to the dead. Be a grave. And tell yourself (Fortune tells him): don’t breathe, don’t stir — he will guzzle your breath, break your movements. Crawl underground to gnaw the roots of hermits, crawl underwater, under the stone like a beetle …
Look, one had just crawled out from under a stone. Making straight for his eye. Horned, hairy on the belly and sides, weighed down by the hard plate glistening metallically on its insidious bent back. Moving awkwardly, clumsily, on long articulated legs — six all told, Melkior counted. The huge monster had filled the field of vision of his one eye (he has closed the other one).
Melkior did not blink.
The giant insect — an omnivore, a pantophage (as described by Edgar Allan Poe) was having trouble pushing through the thicket. It was hampered by its legs, its horns, it was pressed by the heavy armor of its backplate … but it had its eyes thrust exploringly forward, outside its head; it was pushing its greedy way to its target — Melkior’s eye.
Melkior did not blink.
Hear me, ghost … he launched into his speech at the last moment (it’s going to pierce my eye with its horn!), but the unstoppable insect had already covered all of his vision, snuffed the light out, blocked out the world. …
He’s shoved his stone in place as a plug, said Melkior and let his head drop helplessly to the Earth’s bosom: oh, Mother …
He heard a rumble deep below. The Earth trembled beneath him.
The rent, wounded Earth was groaning, his hooves tearing her flesh. “Here comes Polyphemus the Cyclops!”
And when he regained his sight … the sky was burning along the horizon.
Crackling stars were spewing fire from high above.
He heard the bellowing of frightened beasts in the distance.
“Zoopolis!” he said forlornly and an odd smile lit his face with insane glow. “The fortified city!”
“To make petals … in rags worn with dignity …” The body stirred by itself. The legs … the arms … he could no longer tell the difference … The uprightness of the pole — hello, Stoic — the dignity of the foot, the thumb, the index finger … Nothing. Four trotters, hooves, an earthbound life … on the Earth’s bosom …
He gave Earth a lover’s, fiery kiss.
The beasts once again put up a demented bellow: hey, what’s this? Over here! Help!
“Coming …” replied Melkior.
He nuzzled a leaf of grass, tenderly, first with his left cheek then with his right: we’ll never meet again, he’ll trample you, too; and to the ant he said: go underground, you wretch! He kissed Earth again — goodbye — and set off on all fours in the direction of the bellowing of the beasts — don’t shout, I’m coming — and he crawled fraternally into the frenzied city of Zoopolis.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Born on the island of Vis in 1913, Ranko Marinković attended high school in Split and Zagreb and earned his degree in psychology and pedagogy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in 1935. He briefly edited his own literary magazine, Dani i ljudi (Days and People), later joining Krleža on the journal Pečat (Stamp). Marinković’s first play, Albatros, was staged in 1939.
The Italians held Marinković prisoner at a camp in Ferramonte for two years during World War II. Then, after fleeing to Vis with many thousands of Dalmatian refugees after Italy capitulated, he and the other refugees were sent by the British, who were then with the Partisans on Vis, to El Shatt, Egypt, under British control, where he spent a year and resumed his writing.
As soon as the war was over, Marinković first worked for the Croatian Ministry of Education, then the Nakladni Zavod publishing house. He was director of the Croatian National Theater from 1946 to 1950, and in 1951 he became a professor at the Zagreb Academy of Dramatic Art in 1951, where he taught until his retirement.