An Anthology of Croatian Literature

Nedjeljko Fabrio (1937- )

Nedjeljko Fabrio (1937– ) Born in Split and raised in a mixed Croatian-Italian family in Rijeka, Fabrio has an abiding connection to Italian literature and culture, but from a thoroughly Croatian point of view. He was a member of the “Croatian Spring” and was silenced for it until after the death of Tito and the loosening of some literary restrictions. He has written stories, novels, and dramas, many with historical and autobiographical components. Among his noted works are the play Čujete li svinje kako rokću u ljetnikovcu naših gospara? (Do You Hear the Pigs Grunting in Our Masters’ Summer House?, 1969), an anti-regime work pulled from the stage after a couple of performances; and the novels Vježbanje života (Practicing Life, 1985) and Smrt Vronskog (Vronski’s Death, 1994), the latter on the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The following excerpt, from the story entitled in the original “Paklenski dominikanac” (1990), is from Croatian Tales of Fantasy (Zagreb: The Bridge, 1996): 147–51. An Anthology of Croatian Literature 284 The Infernal Dominican (Excerpt) My lord the king, on my life and your grace, truly do I tell you that of all worth and beauty there is nothing dearer to me, nothing that my eye has longed for or that has cleaved to my heart or exalted my mind than the devil that beguiles mankind. Barlaam and Jozafat, 17th century Dubrovnik manuscript Whenever I happen to be in that area, I make haste to visit the island; you might actually say that it’s because of the island that I do visit the region, at the bottom of Europe, in the south of Croatia. The island is like all the islands of the region: conical, rocky right down to the sea, but otherwise packed, the crickets, the swifts, the soft magnolias and blown dandelions, with the bell-tower of the Dominican church planted high on the very peak of the island, dark blue in winter, then again yellow. To get to the church at all you have to climb, wind, twist round the deformed old stone housings, but the sky peering in patches of azure from slashes in the walls draws you constantly on and at the top, when you have arrived at the small stone terrace in front of the church, you are given up to the sky itself. Because at the top there is nothing any longer: the actual sheer infinity of the firmament, scrawled over from time to time by a gull or some other bird, with a cross thrust in it. Deep down below you, the sea wrinkles, the altitude is appalling, and everything that fell or sank into the sea ages back is down there before you quite clearly on the bed, until the sea depths quite overpower both your gaze and the looming heights. The impoverished eye will see down there just smashed bottles, pieces of rope and machines, tin cans, battered pots and pans, and yet the eye that is attuned to the imagination sees cannonry and galleons, banners and lanterns, rudders, Venetian cannonballs, and fallen local saints. Both the one and the other are right: the property of the sea smoulders under the light blue veil of the heights, and the depths and time. The church is visited only by the most determined, others being put off at the very beginning of the climb by the heat (for no one comes in winter), the steepness, uncertainty about how much of the way remains to be covered. You go upwards, round about, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, sometimes there are steps, sometimes there simply aren’t any, and you do long jumps until they are there again, the abraded staircase sometimes, for no reason at all, bypassing the houses and storehouses of the laborers, sometimes coming back, retreating, and so on in the same way right until the very last step that lands those travelers who have persisted on the terrace at last. Nedjeljko Fabrio 285 It was built by the Dominicans, at the same time as the church, some time back at the end of the 14th century, or more accurately at the beginning of the 15th, when their bloody persecutions of the Bogumils were already memories, if not legends. It was not the fabric of the church that attracted me to that area, although inside it was covered with drawings of the devil and...