The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  The two ladies would have preferred to grasp their noses, but such a gesture is bad form in better society. Before our tragedian friend’s cheeks could take on a greenish tint, we were already at the entrance to the Manse. I didn’t have to announce, “Here we are!” Instead, La Gerstenberg cried out, “Oh you dear people! No, Vigoleis wasn’t exaggerating. This is a romantic place. I’m going to have to sit down.”

  I placed her folding chair beneath her, and now she sat there like a field marshal surveying the battlefield, commotion all around her, aides-de-camp scurry to and fro, there is a clatter of hooves, a blaring of bugles, adjutants surround the general’s chair, ready to pass on the latest action report—“Yes, over there to the east there’s that thousand-year-old carob-bean tree. On moonlit nights you can see the dust rise up from the explosions. Our accurate catapults toss cocaine shells onto the field, and trained dogs fetch the booty. I’ve been able to reconstruct the whole strategy. We now can predict with certainty the night when the ship captain will shoot a torpedo filled with drugs onto the coast, and dozens of women will clamber over crags and crevasses to—how’s that? Those black birds? Those are ravens. There are still a few colonies of them that nest on the island; they’ll be extinct unless another war comes soon. Do they belong to the Manse? No, our robber boss hasn’t yet been so successful that the birds of the air obey him in biblical fashion. He’ll go a lot farther with his henchmen and Juan March’s gold. The ravens always feed at the burial pit over at the matadero. I’ve even observed some vultures there. Can you see any, Beatrice? They’re said to be dangerous; besides goat kids and lambs, they can carry infants off to their aeries. Arsenio shoots them down whenever he can. They hinder his work. I think they spook his dogs and prevent them from pointing properly—something like that. I’m no hunter. And see that ivy-covered projection up there on the tower? Originally, it was probably a spout for dropping hot pitch; now a lookout sits up there and counts the catapult missiles as they arrive.”

  La Gerstenberg was thrilled. “But Vigoleis, why don’t you write a book about the ‘Torre’? You must write one. You must! Just the way you’re telling me about it now!”

  I exchanged glances with Beatrice, which spoke mutely of the cadaver murders that took place in the Tower. “But, chère Madame, up to now you have received only an impression of the external business. What goes on inside the Manse is also worthy of being depicted, although it is less original in concept.”

  “It’s wonderful how each and every stone here cries out for literary portrayal! How happy a writer must be that fate has inserted him in such a place! Now I understand a great deal, Vigo, and I’m almost tempted to say that the two of you should be grateful for your destiny. Shall we go in? I am so relieved for your sake!”

  Inside the walls of our robbers’ ranch there was the usual hubbub, the kind you would find in any household with lots of kids and domestic help on any baking-hot late afternoon. The old matron was leaning on her crutch, roasting fish on a spit over a grapewood fire. Using a calabash, she dripped wine onto the roast—no easy matter since the fish, wrapped in strips of bacon, tended to fall apart. She greeted us and, employing sign language and words mumbled into her long whiskers, let us know that we were all invited to partake of the meal. Arsenio strode across the courtyard accompanied by his barking herd of smugglers’ hounds. He was wearing his blue vest with its red sash, resembling down to the very lacings of his raffia espadrillos the image of the Lord of the Island that I had sketched out for our tragedian friend. All he needed to do was clap his hands and call out “Hey, let’s have some wine and anything else you’d like!” A girl came running, and for a split-second Adeleide poked her head through the fly screen at the door. With a wave of my hand I said “No, thanks,” and explained that today Doña Beatriz was having her jour, and that this lady was a great friend of ours from the land of the waltzes that Mr. Arsenio loved so much. Immediately the Giant began jumping around in the rhythm of the Blue Danube. He started whistling the tune that drove Beatrice crazy night after night as it resounded from the red enamel bell of the cylinder gramophone. “This is so cute!” said La Gerstenberg, who usually couldn’t endure noise of any kind. “Beatrice, Vigoleis, how could I possibly have felt sorry you for even one night? When I remember how you got evicted with no money at all, and there you were, marching behind a team of loaded donkeys…”

  “That’s because Madame Adele Gerstenberg has forgotten that here in Spain, when the play is over you don’t see horse-drawn cabs driving up to the theater exit.”

  Beatrice made herself scarce, trotting off to take care of this or that with no servants to help out—ladies comprehend such a move without exchanging words. In any case, it was better to get on with no help at all than with some Spanish maid with a tragic history—

  —and now, following a brief pause, it was Beatrice who clapped her hands in a dignified, almost soundless way, although the sound had to travel around the corner of the house that separated us from her jour. There she stood, the grande dame, up on the open staircase poised for the grand reception. Poised? Beatrice? They were both poised, the staircase and the lady who now descended two steps to greet her guest—“Once again, a warm welcome to you chez Vigos.”

  I offered the tragedian my arm, and felt no less equal to the task than Beatrice with her wide-ranging experience. It was the first time in my life that I had ever “received,” much less at my own place of residence. I no doubt relished the delight that takes hold of a stork when it locates its own special wagon wheel and never gives it up. Weltschmerz, where is thy sting? It was a powerful moment indeed: not a distortion of the actual past, not a pipe-dream of the future, but a singularly pleasant experience of the present, arm in arm with a star of the stage.

  The Giant tried to disperse the crowd of gaping kids, but happily they disobeyed and remained under the spell of our grand occasion. They were determined to witness our spectacle. To be sure, they did not strew flowers and marsh grasses on our path. But they did even more, these snot-nosed half-pints, some of whom were dressed in chemises that didn’t even reach to their navels. This was apparent only to someone who looked at them carefully, for the cloth had assumed the color of camouflage. La Gerstenberg thought that they were all naked. This is what they did for us: they screened off the manure pile and scattered the rats that, day after day and even at high noon, held their own jour on the plank amidst garbage and offal. Infected by the pestilence, they had gradually lost their fear of humans. Tame rats are death itself!

  “What magical, natural grace Spanish children can have,” said our guest. “Where we come from, all that has to be trained and rehearsed, and it is always so stiff and straight-laced. Down here, everything is already fit for the stage.”

  “If you’ll permit me to say so, that’s just why you never get to see it on the stage. In Madrid you will have noticed what Martersteig has told me—no, not the Captain but the Privy Councillor—the stages in Spain are god-awful. Nothing but cheap melodrama, or if you will, just play-acting.”

  We had reached the top of the stairs and let our guest pass in front of us, although I ought to have preceded her into the dimly lit nave. It would have been all too banal for me to say with Schiller, “Through this narrow pathway he must arrive.” We knew that the actress wasn’t fond of theatrical quotations. In any case I couldn’t think of any more edifying apothegm from the classic stage tradition, least of all the motto from Dante that would have been most fitting for this place, the one that admonishes anyone entering to abandon all hope, so inexorable in its Italian vocalization: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate… But this would be valid only at the portal to Cell No 1; in the others, hope began swelling immediately upon crossing the threshold. It’s wonderful to have a wise poet’s line of verse, a divine proclamation, or a well-turned curse for every occasion in life—it makes things easier. Entire professions thrive on catchy phrases uttered by the masters and prophets. Here we had to do without one of Büchmann’s �
�Winged Words,” but we got along nicely.

  Adele Gerstenberg, after being distracted for a moment by the glimmering brightness at the end of the hallway where I had lit a candle at the little shrine, took a look at our room. She gazed up at the suspended netting, and before her eyes could focus through the gridwork at the dome of our private cathedral, she did something that I can describe only with a hackneyed phrase: she turned into a pillar of salt. The blood congealed in her veins, and, as if halted by a supernatural force, she stood there rooted to the spot. Tremors will have been visible in the plaster mask that was her face. Since we were standing behind her, we could not see this change in her features, but it is familiar enough as an image of sudden fright. Nevertheless, her condition of total stupefaction did not last long. In fact, it was a lucky thing that we were standing behind her, for when the spark of life returned to the actress, it was barely sufficient to pass from petrification to yet another commonplace state: the very picture of misery, one that we were just able to prevent from collapsing in a heap. This was first-rate theater in the finest Viennese tradition, but there was no applause. I held the lightweight woman under her armpits while Beatrice lifted our chair over our heads and placed it in the corridor—thus removing the single chair from our salon. where our jour had gone to pieces before it even got started.

  So this was our triumph, our grand premiere with the celebrated artist from the Vienna Burgtheater. She sat there and wept tears that not even a Nobel-prizewinning dramatist could ever squeeze out of her. We let her have a good cry, stepping back from her with the discreet, empty gesture of mourning used by heads of state when they place a wreath at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. But no, I’m being unfair to ourselves; we by no means had such cynical thoughts as we witnessed the genuine pain felt by our horrified friend.

  In the meantime the water had started boiling in our genuine Dutch-made whistling teapot. The steam escaped first with a hiss, and then came a piping noise that got louder and louder as it resounded through the whole barn. Adele, sensitive to noise, suddenly cringed, and it took a few seconds before she cleared the entrance to our cell. I flew into our sty and immediately shut off our “end of the day shift” signal.

  In the next cell, too, things were coming alive. Our teapot could have resurrected the blessed dead, and now two of our neighbors had been wakened from their erotic burrowings. Yet before we were treated to another Spanish theater scene—Sudermann with an Iberian cast—we took our guest out to the courtyard where she perched herself on a wine barrel. She refrained from reciting the line from Rilke’s poem on Confirmation Day—though she might well have cited it while remaining in character: “The feast is over. There is noise in the house / And the afternoon passes more sadly…” The three little dots are by Rilke, too. Our feast was over, but not quite yet.

  Adele Gerstenberg grasped our hands and remained sitting, mute, overcome, and as if aged by several years. Adeleide inquired whether something had happened to our guest—a heat stroke? Arsenio, busy unharnessing his nag, suggested a cold drink. “Bring her right away to the cellar where it’s cool,” he said. Beatrice calmed him down: “She just wasn’t feeling well. She’ll be fine.” Without a word, the Giant hitched his gelding back between the wagon shafts. Taking a palm frond, Adeleide dusted off the seats. And then Arsenio stood waiting like an official coachman. Thus our guest from Vienna got her horse-drawn cab after all, and Beatrice’s “day” ended in less than total disaster. One of the Manse’s hired hands drove us back to the city. The tragedian didn’t want to go directly home—what about a visit to the Alhambra? We accompanied her. A little later, Friedrich joined us at their usual table.

  He arrived in a good mood and with lots of gesticulation. Right away he inquired whether it was nice out there in Grinzing, but he was visibly taken aback by his mother’s dusty appearance. “Begging your pardon, Maman, but you were determined to go out and visit the Tower.”

  “It’s not what you’re thinking, my son. That’s not what bowled me over out there. I am familiar with vice in all its manifestations. But that these people have to live like that, and that they haven’t done away with each other—that’s what truly got to me.”

  After a short time we were joined by the fellow from Cologne, and later still by Captain von Martersteig, who was back in town with his air of suffering and his complaints about new outrages committed by his enemy Robert von Ranke Graves. And then came one of Friedel’s friends, one whom we hadn’t met before: a professional Czech or Polish optician. Tout Mallorque, Adele told us, gazed at the world through his spectacles. She gradually regained her composure, and she became almost merry when her son, no longer than a minute later, started bickering with the retired aviator.

  Before we took leave of each other, we agreed on a date for a return visit to the actress. A jour is, after all, a jour. As far as I was concerned, this was a stylish way of arranging things. She promised to read us a few scenes from her play, and yes, she would expect Martersteig to attend if he happened to be in Palma. That is one more reason, he replied, to stay in the city. And when, she asked, would Vigoleis give her the pleasure of reading from his own works?

  “After you, Herr von Martersteig! First the regular troops, then the home guard. After the capitulation of your Monkey Army, my Cadaver Murders in the Clock Tower!”

  V

  Don Fernando summoned me to the post office secretariat so that he could give me a few tips about how to make sure we could receive, without undue delay, more than half of the items that arrived in our name. That was a decent proposal, and I agreed to it—by return mail, so to speak. Don Fernando knew his way around all the various postal departments; he knew all the tricks practiced by his employees and all the holes in the floor of the crumbling post office building. The proverb O chão não tem buracos—the floor has no holes in it—which the Portuguese like to cite when they can’t find something that has fallen to the floor—was not applicable to the main post office barracks in Palma de Mallorca. There the floor had real holes in it, though perhaps it wasn’t the floor that we would have to search to locate them. As General Secretary, Don Fernando exercised oversight over these leaks within his official quarters.

  I was led to his office down a rickety staircase. He greeted me with effusive congratulations for having arrived without breaking my neck, and was obviously impressed by my daredevil balancing skills. Then we descended farther through dark hallways, stumbling over canvas bags and stepping into mounds of paper—the packing room, said Don Fernando, where lots of mail got left unsorted. It just couldn’t be helped. That was the first hole in the floor. The second hole, a more dangerous one, was one of the colleagues, a professional postal clerk in a blue smock, the most feared postage-stamp thief in all Mallorca, as ineradicable as quack grass or mildew. In the normal course of things, a postal employee will concentrate equally on sender and addressee; this blue-smocked fellow had eyes only for return addresses. Stamps that were missing from his collection, or that he needed for swapping, he loosened from the envelopes using his own method, and they disappeared. If the loosening technique didn’t work properly, he would take a pair of sewing scissors and simply cut away the stamps. Letters or packages that got seriously damaged, he threw away. Over time, he established for himself a proprietary privilege that the post office administration was unable to deny him. After all, he represented a lesser evil amid the egregious large-scale inefficiency of the Spanish postal service, a state of affairs that corresponded exactly with the country’s illiteracy rate, as Don Fernando was able to show me on the basis of statistical studies.

  I was introduced to the stamp thief. This is not the place to set forth a description of the ideal type of the philatelist. I shall mention only this man’s beard, which actually wasn’t a beard at all and wasn’t meant to be one: it was ten-day stubble. It served him perfectly; he kept it that way so as to take the postage stamps from their soaking and hang them on his facial bush, where they dried off and eventually fell away. Mo
re than once I observed him with stamps in his beard that got stuck in the whiskers. Like all robbers, he was a friendly guy, but woe to me if… He knew me and was interested in my dealings with the Netherlands, but he immediately complained that I wasn’t getting much mail from there any more; couldn’t I do something to improve the situation? Holland had just issued a new series, and he was missing a few items. In the presence of Don Fernando we made a gentleman’s agreement. I promised with a handshake to show him all the postal items addressed to me, and to let him keep the stamps. I rented a postal box, an apartado, which made it easier to keep our deal. Not that I would ever be tempted to break it: I am a collector of nothing at all, not even experiences, and thus not even money. But I can imagine that a serious collector must live constantly on the edge of crime. What seems so attractive about this activity is the prospect of cheating—either cheating the other guy or getting cheated oneself. There is always this tension: is that pot genuine? Did Van Gogh paint that bridge himself? Is this bone fragment truly from Saint Kunibert’s tibia? Is this iron nail really from Christ’s cross? I have enough to contend with regarding my own authenticity. Incidentally, my Mallorquin drybeard friend ended up paying dearly. Shortly after the Civil War broke out he was eliminated, as the current phrase would have it, by another stamp collector from whom he had been stealing for years. One of the most praiseworthy aspects of all civil wars is that they develop their own drumhead justice to handle such internal matters, thus relieving the juntas of much superfluous work.