The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  Vigoleis was unable to develop his topic further. Antonio was getting impatient and urged us to get going. Herr von Martersteig, who happened to be in the city, had joined us without saying a word, his crooked spine attempting to maintain the ramrod pose that was just as unconvincing as the pension awarded him by the Reich government that had made him a cripple. Count, countess, and count-in-law were also on hand, and even the cadre of low-wage servants stood by at attention. We took leave of each and all with dignified, restrained camaraderie. Our farewells were unsullied by any thought of offering tips. Our blue-blooded bomb-thrower offered me his studio for practicing my construction hobby. Doña Inés assured us that her home was ours too. And Josefa, who in the rush had forgotten to hide her pipe in her bosom, reminded us that we were all in the hands of the Triune God. Beppo was on his chain, so we didn’t have to fear any surprises from his palm tree. And the cockatoo chattered away in his usual winning way, since one couldn’t put a chain on his tongue. Dear Lorico, with his interminable squawking about porra and puta—how could we have guessed that he was uttering prophecies, and not making snide remarks about our past experiences on the Street of Solitude?

  Our exchequer had shrunk to the above-named amount, one quite easy to remember: one silver duro, a coin that can be easily forged by any halfway clever Spanish counterfeiter. The one we owned, minted in such-and-such a year, was genuine enough. If it had been fake, I would be careful not to mention that here, so as not to add poor taste to our poor fortune.

  I am trying not to flavor my chronicle with “local color” by tossing in an excess of Spanish vocabulary. The use of such exotic spices would be a cheap way of hispanizing my narrative. A reader who lacks command of the language will get nothing out of such condiments; on the contrary, the recipe could irritate him, just as I am irritated by authors who write dialect. Someone who, on the other hand, is familiar with the country, its inhabitants, and the language they speak, will already know how a given event will have happened in its original setting. I am of course in no position to judge whether I will be successful at recounting Vigoleis’ adventures from memory, in a way that will strike my reader as sufficiently Spanish in taste. I trust, though, that the reader will forgive me for using the little word almocrebe—for one thing, because the context clearly shows that it designates a donkey-driver, for another and more importantly, because the word derives from the Arabic, where it means “mule-driver.” almokerí: I delight in this word all the more because I don’t know any Arabic. I’m using it now as a talisman to put myself back in the fairy-tale mood I was in as we set out on our journey behind crossbreed quadrupeds. By the way, only two of the four animals carried loads; our worldly possessions, packed in large baskets made of coarsely woven palm fronds, hung from each saddle almost to the ground. The lead jackass bore the more enormous burden, followed at regular intervals by the others, each attached to the one in front by a rope. This procession automatically puts me in mind of the Arabian fantasy world. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves could serve as an analogy since we, too, were heading toward a robbers’ den.

  But I’m getting ahead of the nomadic pace of the animals, which is to say, the proper sequence of events. Antonio hadn’t said a single word about where we were going. Well, yes, past the city gates to a friend’s place—but this hush-hush destination was all we learned for the moment. Rather than ask indiscreet questions, we simply let our fate hang in the palm-frond baskets. We were demoralized, and preferred to wait on whatever surprises the future had in store. We didn’t even ask each other where this man was taking us. Questions like that would only reveal a lack of trust in the fellow who had rescued us and was now our guide. So we trudged along submissively at the rear of the caravan, which left San Felio Street to turn into Borne Boulevard, followed the latter straight along, then down San Jaime past moribund palaces, farther past Santa Madalena into Olmos Street, whose elms had long since succumbed to the pestilence. Then we reached a part of town that got more and more unfamiliar to both of us. On our starvation treks we had never gone beyond the bullfight arena and the railroad station square. We left the city limits behind us and followed a road lined with almond trees, tree after tree in full blossom—in this season of the year? And without their narcotic fragrance? We already were familiar with this phenomenon, this fakery of nature that requires you to exercise your imagination a little in the opposite direction—or mobilize Beppo the tree-shaking monkey—in order to return the trees to botanical reality. This road, Antonio told us, led to Sóller, about 20 miles through fields of red earth and past eroded farms, the fincas. Martersteig had told us this and that about the little town of that name. Valldemosa, higher up in the hills, we knew from world literature. Our pack animals (I don’t know whether they were donkeys or mules; I can’t keep the hybrids apart) apparently knew exactly where they were supposed to lug our belongings, for the almocrebe had joined us at the rear and was discussing politics with Antonio.

  Monarchist anarchy had given way to Republican anarchy. The latter was only a few months old in Spain, and therefore still gave rise to the fondest hopes, whose realization was being championed by the conspirators in the seven-daughtered Count’s powder room, a cause that must be fought for by every last person, without exception, that is, by anyone who has an iota of pride in being a Spaniard. Now it would be possible to toss bombs on weekdays too. Think of it: every day of the week a holiday, even for the workers! “If you’re planning on staying with us for a while,” Antonio told us, “you’ll have to start throwing bombs too. Now you know where you can get them.” At a Saharan pace, we anarchists, who hadn’t ever thrown anything more explosive than water, took up the rear of this romantic hegira. How I would have liked to mount one of the burden-free animals! But I didn’t dare to for Beatrice’s sake, who suspected that there were more fleas in those gaudy saddle blankets than in the jacket of our backpacking holy man Porfirio. As Wigalois, chevalier à la roue, it would be more fitting for me to ride to our new castle than to plod toward it through the dust. A castle? Another castle? I had no idea what was up ahead, but here on the road to Sóller we were, at the moment, on a pilgrimage toward a dreadful stench, possibly a mass grave. It reeked of corpses and carrion. Where were the enchanting fragrances of my Araby?

  “The slaughterhouse,” said Antonio. “The wind is blowing the wrong way, from the Sierra del Teix. That’s unusual. You won’t have this pestilence every day.”

  With five pesetas in your purse, I thought, there’s not much hope of fighting a wind from any direction. I glanced anxiously at Beatrice, who was once again getting green around the gills, just as at the meat market. When you set out on a trip, I told her, you just have to expect certain minor inconveniences; back home anyone can seal himself off hermetically—an argument Beatrice refused to buy. “Fine,” she said to our guide, “but how much longer until we get past the stink zone?”

  “A quarter of an hour,” he replied, rolling another cigarette, thin as a goose quill, probably his hundredth of the day. Our almocrebe was smoking a clay pipe. The road was still dusty. Not a soul to be seen far and wide. Not only did it smell here of finality and decomposition, the world itself seemed to end at this spot. For a while we hoofed it through the very twilight of doomsday, but then the animals quickened their gait, the ropes between them stretched tight, and each donkey seemed to urge haste and pull the others along. Yet the sudden excitement proved too much: a suitcase slipped out of its girth and crashed to the ground. We stood around in a cloud of dust inspecting the damage. The almocrebe swore at the beasts; I thought he did them a grave injustice, for the entire procession had come to a halt, and the animal waited patiently for the suitcase to be cinched back in place. Then with a heya! they started out so fast that we couldn’t keep up. They’ve got the scent of their stable, the driver told us. There was nothing holding them now. I wanted to reply that if that were so, we should be all the more grateful to them for stopping while our suitcase was picked up and refastened. But I sa
id nothing, feeling that I wasn’t quite up to this particular Arab.

  The clatter of hoofs died away, and when the dust cloud cleared we saw nothing more of our quadriga. Ravens were squatting in the olive trees, and some eagles circled overhead, made ravenous by the stench we still had in our nostrils. Up ahead we now saw a large settlement, consisting of various structures built up against or inside of each other, the whole complex dominated by a tower. It wasn’t a castle, nor was it a fortress. But it wasn’t an ordinary residence either, or any Balearic finca of the kind I had already seen. Whatever it was, the first word that entered my mind was “romantic.” Add a fiddle, take Beatrice on my arm, sing a little song about God favoring us by sending us out into the wide, wide world to the gates of this human habitation—and I was Eichendorff’s Ne’er-Do-Well all over again. It was indeed “far, far away,” but could this hostelry possibly be meant for us? With five pesetas and a hotel waiter’s verbal voucher, it’s hardly likely that we could find refuge in such an inviting shelter.

  I looked around for a separate cottage, but didn’t see any. “Tired?” Antonio asked, then pointed to the tower, bent his head to one side and put his cheek in his hand, mimicking sleep. So it was true! We were at our destination, Antonio was a saint and master magician, and for once God appeared to have taken sides with the poor in spirit. And so I sang His praises with the words, “And were I to perish in this dungeon, I shall return like the phoenix!—Beatrice, we’ve finally got the long end of the stick for once! And it doesn’t smell so bad here.”

  But that was a bonafide olfactory illusion. Beatrice had just enough time to voice her annoyance at my constantly referring to a God I didn’t believe in, and not only metaphorically at that, when a man strode toward us, tall and handsome, like so many men on Mallorca. This one was colorful and picturesque in the extreme, so that my attention was diverted from God to one of his most magnificent creations, one that could earn Him respect even beyond Eternity. Not to mention our respect for Antonio, for the fellow approaching us with brilliant cries of “O, o, o!” barked out like little explosions from the back of his throat—this man was Antonio’s friend, the Lord of the Manse, to assign a temporary title to the settlement we had arrived at.

  The ceremony of mutual introductions was splendid. Our impression of this procedure’s grandiose courtoisie, its transmundane sublimity, was heightened by the fact that no names were mentioned—just as at a meeting of kings, where everyone knows exactly how the crown fits. Antonio was no longer a hotel waiter, he was an ambassador at a foreign court. We were not vagabonds with a damaged valise, down to our very last fiver: just behold our cortege! Only titled guests would arrive in such panoply with steeds and knights; the dust on our garments and boots gives testimony to our long journey. Beatrice’s sedan chair? A minor accident on the highway—what matter? “Now you are here, welcome to my abode. Heya, my good people, get on with it!” The warrior claps his hands, and the broad area where we are standing—half riding arena, half castle approach—is instantly filled with people of all ages and sexes. The crowd of welcomers begins with an infant in the arms of its dwarflike nurse. It includes tittering, awkward teenagers, rises to the more sedate adults, and culminates with the exalted, awe-inspiring, yet also pathetic figure of a white-haired matriarch. She approaches us, accompanied by yapping dogs, with the aid of a brightly polished, high-backed chair that she’s using as a crutch. Twice she gives us a toothless “Bona-nit,” the Mallorcan dialect form of “Good evening.” Then the aged woman sits down on her improvised crutch, thus forming the natural center of this biblical tableau. Let us give her, again temporarily, the matriarchal name by which she actually was called: Na’ Maguelida, the hundred-year-old. We foreign emissaries bow down before her.

  The lord of the tribe was named Arsenio. I might have expected him to bear the title “Don” in keeping with Spanish custom for men of his standing. But he wasn’t a count, either; he was just a Mallorcan. Arsenio dominated by his behavior and gestures: a few waves of the hand, and everyone quickly obeyed. Zwingli with his Magic Horn would go pale with envy. In action here at the settlement, he was even more impressive than his torso and limbs might already cause a passive observer to think possible. He looked down on my puny five-foot-ten dimensions from the height of his shoe length. His shoulders were made for putting under heavy pieces of furniture. In a railway switchyard in India he could substitute for a working elephant; in a circus he could assemble singlehanded the iron cages for the menagerie. I could add any number of similar comparisons, but what it all comes down to is this: Arsenio was a giant. And he laughed like a giant. In response to some remark by Antonio he shook with mirth in a way that made us shrink back just a little. But he was at the same time a gentle giant; he meant well for us. He was overcome with pleasure—you could read that in the enormous expanse of his face. Each wrinkle of laughter was a special welcome greeting, “hahahahaha, o, o, o, o!” and then he extended his hand toward me, fraternally, jovially. I gave him mine. His monstrous paw closed. We looked each other in the eye, man to man, and when the pressure abated, something bloodless fell downward and swung feebly at my pants seam. But I didn’t cry out! Nor did I cry out when, a few years later, my hand entered a similarly vise-like claw, that belonging to the philosopher Hermann Keyserling. You endure such things every time they happen, and every time you are amazed that you’ve survived without a plaster cast. I’m forced to admit, though, that I prefer such virile handclasps to the limp extremities some people extend to us, amorphous appendages that feel like some obscene object we aren’t prepared to touch.

  Beatrice was spared the vise. Our warrior-receptionist bowed down before her, which is to say, he inscribed an arc with his torso, downward and then up again. His right arm made a gesture of homage and hospitality; to make the courtly scene complete, we had to imagine that it held a hat bearing shimmering feathers. What a character for a cowboy movie! In America this guy could make a million, but he’s probably not interested in playing a villain. He’s content to live here on his estate amid his thriving populace, sans mustang and sans flecks of blood on vest and chaps. I estimated his age at about fifty.

  Compared to this Anakite, the lady of the house must be called small. She was rotund, with a pretty face and the soft features one often sees in heavy-set mothers. She wore earrings made of precious gold. She parted her raven-black hair neatly in the middle; it shone like freshly poured asphalt. Like the matriarch she spoke only in the island dialect. Surrounding her were a number of girls—some gorgeous, some ugly—of various ages. All of them were giggling behind raised hands and skirt-hems, just like the adolescents back home. They whispered things to each other about us, whereupon Arsenio thundered at them to desist on the spot. His voice was so persuasive that even some of the dogs fled with their tails between their legs. “Get away now! Enough of this staring! Off to the hall! Go get some wine, sheep cheese, donkey curds, olives, butifarras, grapes, and paté for Madame! Right, Antonio? That’s what our guests deserve, arriving here this evening after such a busy day. From Germany and Switzerland, you say? My, my, a goodly portion of the world is assembled here at the tables of our golden island!”

  Arsenio, like two of his older sons, spoke in marvelous Castilian, though at times they lapsed into Mallorcan, especially now that our almocrebe had joined us for a drink. The wine was good, an island vintage. What am I saying? It was the house product of our movie villain, who bottled several hundred liters annually. Beatrice took part in the conversation in my stead. The talk was about trivial matters, but the Spaniards got excited nonetheless. Arsenio wanted to know what the “outside world” thought of the end of the monarchy. We couldn’t tell him, because we had been too busy coping with our own decline and fall. No offense, and once again they talked about the weather. I was still unable to participate in any diplomatic pseudo-conversations, for my tongue would not obey, no matter how eagerly I might have wanted to contribute my profound thoughts about weather prognoses and the incompe
tence of every last forecaster, despite all their isobars and isobronts. The most I could add was a single speech-fragment that I tossed into the conversation, one that emerged as I let my thoughts hover around our own private weather forecast. In that realm the wind was still blowing from the direction of Armageddon—it was blowing the wrong way, Arsenio would say, and I would have to agree with him. To this very day, the wind refuses to blow as it should. The ravens are still squatting at the roadside, and the vultures are still circling in the air above.

  This house, the proud landlord began in explanation, was known to everyone as the “Torre del Reloj,” the Clock Tower, named after an iron rod cemented at an angle into a wall and overgrown with grapevines. A century before, this rod had been the indicator of a sundial; as a child, the matriarch had read the passing hours on the tower wall. He, Arsenio, couldn’t recall the rusty metal pointer’s horological function. Earlier the settlement was called “Ca’n Costals,” but the true original name, the Giant told us, had dropped out of memory generations ago. As the place gradually deteriorated, local lore preserved the quainter designation—oddly enough, for if the sun had continued to tell the hours on the wall, no one would have thought to substitute “Clock Tower” for “Ca’n Costals.” People, he said, often ignore what is right in front of their eyes. But whether it was “Ca’n Costals” or “Torre del Reloj,” he assured us that the house, in accordance with the ancient Spanish tradition of hospitality, was now our house too.

  My hobby, the creativity of decay! What a shame that my tongue was still tied, preventing me from entering a discussion on the topic with an unprejudiced mind, and adding a word or two about the sinfulness of God and the renewal of the universe. In any event, at the time I had nowhere near the command of the subject that I have today, after decades of work with the mystical writings of Pascoaes. Even now, it’s tempting to work out an imaginary conversation between Vigoleis, the later discoverer, exegete, and translator of the Portuguese savant, and Arsenio, the cocky part-time philosopher and man of the Spanish people. To do so would not run counter to usual methods of writing personal memoirs, as the selfsame Vigoleis would later observe when, as the personal secretary of a memorialist of world stature, he got a peek into a workshop where past events were not infrequently simply guessed at. Very instructive indeed; Vigoleis was continually amazed at what he saw. Details will come to the fore as soon as Count Harry Kessler gets his own chapter in my chronicle. For now I would prefer not to stray from the Manse, since Antonio deserves a little more attention as our savior. He interrupted the Giant politely—he would have to leave: night duty on the club terrace, where meanwhile even the most habitual of sleepers had awakened and would have to be kept alive until dawn and beyond with coffee, dominoes, and tales of womanizing.