Two Islands

A colleague in Dalmatia, whom I have written about before here, mentioned a pair of islands in the Kvarner Gulf, the idea of which has fascinated me since last summer. A couple of weeks ago I finally got there.

The islands are paired in a distinctive sense: one, which is called Sveti Petar has the cemetery for the other, which is called Ilovik. Sveti Petar is otherwise uninhabited, though it does have some rather shy sheep. One of the two ferry drivers who took me there (I went twice) also said that sometimes the “brothers” come in the summer, by which she meant the Benedictines, who used to have a permanent small presence on the island. Some sources call it a former monastery, but that’s saying too much. It does have a small chapel, however, which is well maintained, as well as a fenced in garden, probably to keep the sheep out. So it appears that someone comes around sometimes.

Otherwise, the only reason to set foot on the island is to visit the Ilovik cemetery. People seem to do that regularly, judging by the well-tended graves, but it too is fenced in and behind a locked gate with a high wall. Circumstances helped me out with that part, as the ferry man on the second day probably thought I was descended from a local. I was speaking to him in Croatian, and I had noticed several times that people I interacted with in the area thought I was one of “theirs” — they often called me “naš” (ours), even if my Croatian is not native and I make mistakes.

The thing is this region has seen a lot of emigration over the years to the U.S., and many of those folks have had children and grandchildren, who learned to speak up to a point. I suspect they thought I was one of these folks because who else would be coming to get the ferry for the abandoned island for Ilovik where maybe a hundred people live year round in the wee hours of the morning?

So he asked, as he was dropping me off, if I knew where the key was, and, when I said no, he explained to me twice where I could find it to let myself in through the locked gates. I asked my driver whether people were still coming back from the U.S. to enter the cemetery, and he said, “slowly” to which I responded “slowly is good” (because who wants a bunch of dead people showing up all at once, after all), and he smiled. This, I’m pretty sure, was why he was so willing to help. He thought I’d come home. The many names listed inside with the letters “USA” next to them made this even clearer.

When he picked me up, he asked whether I had anyone there, and I answered honestly no — Yasuko says I should have answered “not yet” — and he didn’t seem at all alarmed that he’d dropped me off and explained with such care how to get in. I told him I’d read about it, and I found it peaceful and beautiful, just as it ought to be. There was no one else inside.

I was too self-conscious to ring the little bell but gave all the souls a respectful bow before closing the gate carefully and putting the key back where I’d found it.

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