The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  And so he departed, leaving his two protégés in the care of Arsenio, who could put hordes of enemies to flight with a single fist. We had no more worries, he declared, and Bona-nit ladies, Bona-nit gentlemen. As imperceptibly as his lips pressed into a straight-line smile, he disappeared into the night.

  But to what kind of devil’s kitchen had he brought us? From what I have recounted up to now, my reader will not have made much sense of the place: The “Clock Tower,” a community of considerable size, neither castle nor fortress nor even a normal house; a large number of people gathered in biblical solemnity around a matriarch and our solicitous host and benefactor Arsenio; an almocrebe whose pack animals have their home stables at the Manse. They serve us wine—by Bacchus, not at all a shabby vintage. And then we are offered coffee from the espresso containers so tediously familiar to us. Those are the details so far, plus the remark I let slip above that our caravan was headed for a nest of thieves, not to mention my even earlier statement that the Inca bird with the all-encompassing vocabulary was being prophetic. Where are we?

  We rose and followed the lady of the house, who would show us to our room. Surely this would raise by an inch or two the veil of mystery that seemed to be woven around everything here and, for that matter, still seems to be draped over all of us on God’s earth. Antonio was unwilling to provide explanations. The responsibility was all his, he said; at the Tower we could rest easy at his expense. He asked only that we return sometime and knock at his basement door—no, no, no thanks necessary. With agile fingers he twirled yet another cigarette, we clapped each other on the shoulder: That’s how it was when Antonio vanished into the night.

  Now the drawbridge can be hauled up. The campfire crumbles to ashes, and the only light comes from fireflies. And from the moon above. Will the moon remain true to my fable?

  Good night. That wasn’t just a figure of speech, for the hour was far advanced. Not much longer and the ghosts could make their entrance at our bewitched Manse. But the clock tower was as mute as the matriarch, who had dozed off on her crutch. It was a directorial error of Antonio’s not to have twelve peals of an iron bell descend upon us now from on high. Instead, the air was filled with buzzing and fluttering sounds—huge stag beetles with pincer-shaped antlers were flying around above our heads. Fireflies lit up, faded out, then lit up again. Bats as big as pigeons swooped down out of the void, paused in mid-flight, and disappeared with a hoarse screech. All we lacked was the scent of jasmine, almonds, and oranges, to give us a romantic night under a starry Southern sky. But the asphyxiating stench in the air wasn’t coming from pretty beds of blossoms. The wind, still from the wrong direction, was blowing its memento mori from the abattoir, a penetrating reminder of the evanescence of the flesh, one that might have converted me then and there to a vegetarian life—if only the comestible so poetically named “cauliflower” didn’t stink just as horribly.

  Walking behind our new hostess, we entered a colonnade and noticed how the moonlight beamed through its vine-covered ribs and arches. Soon we stepped out on an open area surrounded by various buildings. The moon had now fully risen, but still we were unable to tell what kind of structures they were—perhaps stables, sheds, or barns for storing grain. In the background we saw a particularly conspicuous building, one that we hadn’t noticed from the road because it was hidden partly by the tower and partly by the main house. Its gables were covered with grapevines that had grown out over the yard to attach themselves to trees and trellises. A wide stone staircase minus a handrail led to a kind of portal, whose architecture reminded me of the horseshoe-shaped gateways of Islam. There in the moonlight our hero and heroine took each other by the hand, as if expecting some nocturnal initiation ordeal. Were new dangers lurking ahead?

  Just as the air above us was filled with swarms of winged creatures, the species that creep upon the ground were by no means absent either—thus providing full manifestation of the Lord’s fifth day of Creation. Long-tailed rats skittered to and fro, but not with the lightning speed I had observed in countries where people actually want rid of them. Here no one cursed Noah beyond the grave for obeying the Lord’s command and taking rats, too, aboard his ark. The beasts weren’t exactly well-liked, but they were tolerated; these simple island folk honored the Almighty’s sacred decree, though they weren’t averse to kicking one of the critters once in a while. But no, the hustle and bustle displayed by these repulsive rodents here on Arsenio’s open range must have had intraspecific reasons of an urgency unfathomable to outsiders like us. Perhaps their intention was to reproduce as numerously as possible, requiring that they run around day and night, offering full tits to their insatiable whelps while trying not to eat each other up in the process. I can never forget the old silver-haired witch rat who, in the declining years of her life as a rover and chewer, appeared to have found a peaceful hole somewhere in the hospitable Clock Tower. On that very first night she darted across our path, as if heaven had sent her to us with the divine injunction, “It is well that we are here. Let us make booths!” Later I spied her night after night on the same path near the open latrine, always moving with the same dignity and tail-dragging gravitas. At first glance it looked as though she might be part albino, for her coat was flecked with white. But when she came so close that Beatrice screamed and I could easily have counted the scales on her tail, I saw that she had reached an advanced and incurable stage of the dreaded mange. We stood right near her, and one kick would have sent her out of our way and off to the rattish Beyond, but she kept moving at just the same deliberate pace. In fact, our hostess did give her a poke with her foot, but only a gentle one. She shoved the old lady to one side and said that we would soon get accustomed to the comings and goings of the rat population. This old beast wouldn’t hurt anybody any more, she told us; even the dogs left her alone.

  At Beatrice’s request I later sinned against this animal. One clandestine moonlit midnight I did the old lady in—it had to be. Once the deed was done, Beatrice shook my hand in silence. To this very day the poor soul has no idea what I used as a murder weapon. Were I to go into detail here, disgust would again well up in her after all these twenty years. At any rate, I can understand full well how bishops in the Middle Ages saw the necessity of controlling the pests by pronouncing maledictions on rats. Still, such a device for interfering with Creation isn’t exactly edifying.

  The woman led us up the steps and told us our place was inside. She had arranged one of the corner rooms near the entrance. We would be comfortable there, she averred; a room like this one would surely get more air and light. The main entrance was closed off only chest-high, by a half-door of the kind they often have on old farmsteads to prevent the livestock from strolling in at random. I am very fond of doors like that; to me they symbolize peacefulness and domestic leisure; they seem built to encourage meditation. Here the top half had been removed. It would be replaced in winter time, our landlady explained, probably anticipating an objection from us. That was hardly necessary. Every last feature of this house was material for a whole volume full of objections, as the reader will soon find out.

  Ahead of us was darkness, which swallowed up a long corridor that I would later pace off at sixteen of my footfalls, each measuring two feet six inches. In the dim light we could barely make out that there were doors to the right and left, many doors. In fact, the corridor walls seemed to consist of nothing but doorways. Were we standing in a hallway flanked by cells? Monastery cells? As a child I often played in a historical tithing barn used for rolling cigars. I recalled that now, perhaps from a similarity of smell. In any case I immediately associated this place with something religious such as cloisters and storage sheds. By now my eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, and I made out at the far end a large mound. Our luggage, as I determined with a certain measure of relief. We were standing in front of the first right-hand door.

  “Where your baggage is, there you shall feel at home,” my landlady once declared when I was a student in Cologne
. So now we had come home once again. But why hadn’t the almocrebe taken the trouble to put everything in the room, when helping hands were there for the asking? Oh well, we’d take care of that ourselves in the morning, and we’d do it our own way. But now my typewriter, of all my possessions the one nearest and dearest to me—where is my precious Diamant-Juwel? Ah, that black object up on top! And then I watched as the black object started to move and divide into two, three, four black objects. Was my writing instrument giving birth, and I hadn’t even noticed that it was expecting—except of course the progeny of my mind? The pups plopped one by one to the floor and scampered between our legs. Once more Beatrice screamed. Rats again. “Throw water at them,” I said, but it was a poor joke. These spreaders of the plague carried on their voracious gnawing even within the sacred confines of a cloister.

  The woman—her name was Adeleide, and they called her Señora Adeleide because she wasn’t of the proper standing for Doña—Señora Adeleide opened the door and switched on the light. There in the yellowish gleam of a bulb with the lowest possible candlepower, we saw just how poor we had become and how little our trusty guarantor Antonio was worth, even among friends. “Here’s your little room,” said Adeleide “How do you like it?” We both replied with a single voice: yes, we liked it, we liked it a whole lot. We were in such a rush to spit out our lie and get rid of the woman, who said “Good night” in Mallorcan and left. We were alone.

  Vigoleis, how did you feel as you stood there in Beatrice’s way, and as your darling Beatrice stood there in your way, after the door was closed? For we each stood very much in each other’s way, contrary to the proverb that says there’s room even in the tiniest cottage for two people in love. Didn’t our heroes love each other any more? Was it all over, fini? Had they grown tired of one another? Had La Pilarière undermined their relationship? Was this a whore’s revenge, with a time fuse set for the moment when Adeleide leaves the couple alone with two or three creeping creatures? No, kind reader, none of the above. It is rather a purely technical form of repulsion. An architectural disinclination had taken hold of our two friends, or to be more exact: an antipathy based on room design. For where one of them stood, there the other would have to stand also, whereas for both of them to stand on the selfsame spot was a clear impossibility. Therefore Beatrice fell immediately onto the bed; in this little booth every structural detail seemed calculated to force one of the pair to fall on the bed, and the other to fall on top of the first. Once that had happened, the problem of living space was solved in a highly pleasureful manner for both. Because it was night and we needed sleep, we solved the problem exactly in the spirit of the house Antonio had delivered us to. In doing so, we sinned against a certain Judaeo-Christian myth I was quite familiar with, though not in the sense that we sinned against any Tree of Knowledge. I am fond of making love in the shadow of that particular tree, but I resist the idea of being asked to join in the harvest. And I don’t like fallen fruit at all.

  Beatrice embraced her Vigoleis tightly, and Vigoleis didn’t move. He thought he heard her sobbing; he had the impression that her body shuddered every now and then, but these perceptions were perhaps only illusory, caused by the partial dream state he had already drifted into. The wine had been heavy, and now it made him light as a feather. As in classic nights of love, the two lay together and slept the insular sleep of their merged bodies. This occurred beneath the third roof of their continually disrupted Spanish sojourn. Let us grant them peace and privacy, slumber and joyful dreams; it will be morning soon enough. The cocks will crow them awake all too soon, and the asses that led them to this place, one and all under the spell of Arabian fairy-tale magic, will be prompted by the first sign of daylight to trumpet forth their bone-shattering, stuttering yells. Dogs will start barking, human voices will flutter about. Then Beatrice will rise with a start. She will open her arms in fright, freeing her husband from her almost botanical embrace—exactly the opposite reflex to that of the sensitive mimosa plant. Vigoleis, already disposed to looseness in earthly matters, will forfeit his last hold on things—a mere half-turn at first—and then promptly fall out of bed. Then, we presume, he will rub his eyes, but also the back of his head where a bump is beginning to swell…

  Let us spare Beatrice the discomfort of having us as witnesses as she drops her beloved Vigo on the very first morning in their new home. Let us, rather, return to the blackness of night—which God the Almighty did not create in order to confound the Day, although human behavior might often lead one to believe otherwise. At this point, and for special reasons, I am more than willing to aid and abet nature’s nocturnal schemings. I do so for the benefit of my heroes, for whom this particular night cannot last long enough.

  Once again we shall place asterisks at the end of a section of our book—three little stars from among the myriad that have risen over Vigoleis and Beatrice, even though they themselves may not notice them. There are always stars in the heavens that we humans do not notice—perhaps because the world around us hasn’t yet turned sufficiently dark. If you look up a chimney on a sunny day, believe it or not, you’ll be looking at a tiny portion of the starry firmament. “Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are…?”

  Three starlets have now been borrowed from the heavenly regions, where no one will miss them as I put them to use as a closure for my Second Book. There they stand, twinkling away, doing their best to fend off the pinions of night, a night that is allowing our heroes some sleep and giving me some time to work out a continuation of our narrative—but now especially to deal with this vexing problem: how can I possibly let our two schlemiels know that they have just jumped out of the frying pan into the fire?

  Two customs have now been established quite naturally during the writing of my memoirs: the division of the book into Books, and at the end of each segment of our journey together a detached, philosophical discussion that we hold at the bedside of our guileless heroes—who now are of course asleep. This means that I have now begun a tradition to which I intend to conform from here on in—though I’m prepared to admit that it is questionable to refer to something as a “tradition” that has up to now happened only once. This is not unlike the disturbing but ultimately frivolous puzzle of the creation of a heap. One grain doesn’t make a heap; add another grain and we still haven’t got one. Even a third grain won’t do it quite. When, then, does a heap begin to be a heap, if the addition of a single grain will not suffice to form one? A similar but contrary game gets played by armchair philosophers with the concept—one that is closer to those who derive amusement from such things—of baldness. How many hairs must one be lacking to be considered a calvus? For me, such conundrums have long since ceased to be a problem at all—ever since I had first-hand experience of the “heap” of money that two pesetas can represent. That’s why I have no hesitation in calling something a “tradition” that has now taken place twice only.

  “Insofar as I, the author, have any say in the matter…” —You may recall these words from my Prologue; they are evidence of sheer grandiloquence and authorial hubris, especially considering their markedly declining relevance as we press onward with our story. Therefore, at this juncture, I shall come right out and confess that I have less control over the destiny of my heroes than the lowliest almocrebe on this island has over the stubbornest of his jackasses. With any set of memoirs it comes down to a question of the writer’s devotion to truth as the basis for the quality of his memory. How easy it would be for me to bend the course of events here and there in a more positive direction! Instead of having myself lie in Beatrice’s protective embrace on a shabby, sinful mattress, I could depict Vigoleis reclining in one of Mallorca’s palaces, whose gates have been stormed by Beatrice’s music and my unchallenged literary talents–in a four-poster, with mosquito netting to shield us from the frantic, bloodthirsty dance of diverse flying insects. Instead of being under a gangster’s heel, with a single stroke of my pen I could make myself into the adopted son of a ri
ch and lusty American heiress. I could be luxuriating at Miramar, one of the estates belonging to the Austrian Archduke Ludwig Salvator. Would you ever believe that, dear reader?

  Truth demands that the forces of envy will demolish Vigoleis’ capitalistic dream in Book Four. Why aren’t I carrying out here, on an ostensibly neutral sheet of paper, what I once did to my dear mother—a little act of hypocritical mendacity I am mortified to recall, although I committed it in the interest of preserving her peace of mind? It went this way: I told her that my marriage—which in reality I entered into only in secular fashion under hilarious bureaucratic circumstances in Barcelona—I pretended to her that this bourgeois farce had received the blessings of the One True Church. Thus far it might have been one of those little white lies that become necessary every so often in our devout daily lives. But no, I traveled farther on the path of iniquity. I wrote down on paper the supposed divine message given to us on that happy occasion. In the house chapel of a friend, I claimed, a Jesuit priest (no less!) had given us a special exhortation as we set forth on the journey of holy wedlock. In a few pages I gave free rein to my sacerdotal eloquence; I spoke as the Light of the World and the Salt of the Earth, taking as my model Monsignor Donders of the Cathedral at Münster, that consummate artist of the Sunday homily. He could have done it much better, of course, but for a layman apprentice—or rather counterfeiter—this was quite an achievement.