The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

I drummed my people together, gave each one of them a kindly word, and received thanks and peppermint candies in return. Not one of them gave me 25 pesetas. If any had, I would have sped homeward right then and there.

  Mom, Daddy, Trude, Lore, and Fritz had taken their seats in the car. They smiled at me; now I was one of the family and was offered chocolate and cigars. “Thanks, but I don’t smoke.”

  I could take it easy for a few minutes. The papal maxim “Rather a scandal than a lie” is convincing, but only if you’re a pope. I couldn’t afford a scandal; I had to lie for my 25 pesetas, and this day had to end sometime. “I am better than my blather,” we read in a story by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, in a context about cowardice. But Vigoleis is definitely a coward.

  The continuation of our trip, taking us through the city and up into the mountains to Valldemosa, proceeds very slowly. Each column of cars has to wait until the dust settles from the column ahead.

  Before leaving the city we visited the San Francisco Monastery, where the mystic Raimundus Lullius is said to be buried and probably even is. To this man’s spirit I devoted a few words that were genuine in every sense, but which did not fall on such fertile ground as had my fantasizings at the Trade Center and the Cathedral. General von Puttwitz—or was it von Puttkammer?—arrived and rescued me from the fetters of truth. We shook hands like old friends; there was no need for lengthy introductions. Each of us conversed with the other using subtle hints and allusions, and it worked to perfection. Germans are always more at home in miasmic fog than they are on the sunny byways of the diaspora. That’s why their attempts to conquer Lebensraum have been such washouts.

  We left the city. How long would I be able to doze on the way to Valldemosa? An hour? Not one second! Turning around toward the back seat, my neck craned at a painful angle, I had to submit to a barrage of questions. My own personal data were now more interesting to the tourists than the Mallorcan landscape with palms, oranges, olives. A troop of black piglets gamboled across the red soil, but only Trude showed any interest; the others harkened to the words coming from my bone-dry mouth. Before the car started climbing the foothills, my passengers knew that their Führer was born in Spain, but that he had grown up in the care of a blind aunt in Germany, in a little town on the Lower Rhine known for the erstwhile good works of a Christian saint and for its annual yield of carrots. My father, Consul in Málaga, had been killed in the famous train wreck. My mother, now remarried, lived in Burgos.

  “Destiny,” said the man in the back seat. Mom fully agreed with him, because Fritz had a friend whose father was a consul in Turkey and had also died there.

  “Destiny,” I said, and turned around to grab a snooze. But once again I had to open up my personal file. This time it was about one of the other Guides, a lady who looked like a gypsy. Did I know her? I did indeed. She was the daughter of an attaché at the Peruvian Embassy in Madrid, had been living for years on the island with her Swiss mother, and was bored stiff. She was acting as a tour guide just to pass the time. Her brother, an airy chap in every way, was the famous balloonist who just recently had risen in a paper-clad montgolfière and set a record for Alpine hovering. Did news of that reach Germany? Daddy vaguely remembered reading about it in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. I was glad to hear that he had.

  Our chauffeur was superb. He took the curves with typically Spanish death-defying velocity, but also with typically Spanish driving skill. If I owned a car, I would let it be driven only by a Spaniard or a Portuguese. The chances of breaking our necks with this expert at the wheel were small indeed, which meant that I would have to bear with the other passengers for the remainder of the trip.

  We were approaching one of the farmsteads called fincas, and right away the questions started. What kind of a country estate was that? This by no means simple question came from Trude, the one who had spied the black piglets. But her mother promptly reprimanded her: did she expect our Führer to know every detail about everything? Then, turning to me, Mom explained that Trudi was on her first trip away from Germany. In my opinion, Trudi’s question wasn’t in the least annoying, and I came near to begging their pardon for knowing all about this particular finca. Then I started in. I spun my tale slowly, so as to make it last until we reached Valldemosa. Two hostile brothers, romance in dark forests, a dastardly deed under a mulberry tree, a Corsican-style vendetta—“Really? That sort of stuff still going on in the Balearics?”—“Only on Mallorca. Did you see that big cedar tree? It was planted when the families were reconciled. The writer Mario Verdaguer has written a novel about it, that’s how I know.”

  Valldemosa! Everybody out!

  The high spots in Valldemosa are the Carthusian Monastery and the cells where Chopin and George Sand lived in the famous winter of 1838-39. I would be giving myself a guided tour of the place.

  Pedro had told us a few things about the property his family had to auction off, and so I was acquainted with the town and the monastery without ever having set foot there before. The rousing story of the Verdugian matriarch now came in very handy—my listeners shuddered. How can a mother possibly…? The castle turret where Pedro had done his painting provided me with an occasion to tell about a friend of mine who had climbed onto the King of Spain’s family tree, and how as a child he had played football in the monastery garden with Moorish skulls, until Don Juan put an end to this un-Christian behavior, appropriating the skulls for his bizarre collection, meticulously labeled Ibn Mohammed Bar.

  I let my charges stretch their legs, take a few inane pictures, and eat oranges. Then I hauled them into the Cartuja in the prescribed sequence: church, sacristy, colonnade, and cells. There wasn’t much to explain in the church. Some saint or other stands on a pedestal holding one eye in her hand—anybody could interpret that one blindfolded. Architecture: I estimate early 18th century, an ugly commission of the local bishop’s treasury, one that no doubt pleases God more than it does modern man with his vast sophistication in matters of art history. I will have to admit, however, that some buildings are beautiful just because they are standing in Spain, just as some rubbish takes on value when it doesn’t deny its age.

  My group squeezed into the sacristy. I had fallen behind by entering a technical discussion about raising tomatoes on Mallorca, finding to my surprise that I knew anything at all on the subject. “Oh yes, of course, the sacristía, let’s go give it a look.” I was the last to enter. That was a mistake, for now I could only pray that I wouldn’t get any premature inquiries.

  I saw glass cases containing vestments, chalices, monstrances and the like, old missals, things I was familiar with from my one-mass tenure as an altar boy. Oh how far away, how far away… and I commenced: “Over here, please, ladies and gentlemen…” But apparently no one was interested in what their Führer wanted to show them. They had discovered something on their own—the echt German spirit in the outside world, showing its indomitable, pioneering vitality even on a vacation trip—Herr Führer, could you please tell us what this is?”

  The sacristy lay in semi-darkness. I couldn’t quite make out what it was they were asking me to identify. And I didn’t dare to part the crowd and walk over to that pointing finger, aimed at some object behind glass. The frame was thick and black. The object, about one span wide, was also black. Everything was black, black as the ace of spades. What can that possibly be?

  I had no idea of all things it might be. But what it had to be—that I knew in an instant. The idea came to my mind as swiftly as lightning, by way of one of those baffling thought reflexes that keep psychiatrists from starving. Something pitch black, I thought—and suddenly I had it. I could begin my speech.

  Well now, I explained—with the infallible instinct that has made our German nation the foremost nation in the world, my devoted followers had picked out at first glance the one item in the collection that made it worth our while to spend any time at all in the sacristy. All the other objects in the cases and on the walls were of no account, the usual sacralia, but that item over
there—and then things went black before my eyes, jet black, my mind blackened out the sum of 25 pesetas. But then came the second bolt of lightning: The Black Death! God’s Avenging Angel! Angels of the Lord wreaking Heaven’s vengeance on earth! Let them perish by the plague, these sinners, unmourned and unburied, and let their bodies litter the fields as dung and a feast for the birds of the air!

  In just a few seconds it all took shape as in a dream, across centuries and continents, a crazy jumble of thoughts and images: the Justinianine Plague of the 6th century; passages from the Old Testament; scores of woodcuts from the broadsheet exhibit at the “Pressa” in Cologne; the devastating Black Death of the 14th century, thinning the ranks of Europe’s population almost as efficiently as a mechanized war. I waxed as eloquent as an Old Testament prophet; they hung on my words, no one paid any more attention to the black object that had spread the Great Dying all across the island. Here in the Valley of Muza, the sheik who had given his name to this place, Vall-de-Muza, here in this valley the Grim Reaper had raged more fiercely than anywhere else in these parts. People died like flies, the area stank like the pestilence, healthy persons simply collapsed dead in a heap, and their boils burst open, emitting fumes of new death. Blasphemers turned instantly into pious worshipers, god-fearing monks cursed the Lord, devout believers echoed Job on his dung-heap.

  This went on for years, I explained further. If it had lasted one or two more years, Mallorca, the Golden Isle, would have been like an extinct volcano. But behold, in the classic hour of direst need, a priest (“old and gray,” naturally) received a miraculous inspiration: a penitential procession! Amid lamentations and sacred hymns, amid prayer and self-flagellation, let all the able-bodied pass though the mountains at night and implore Heaven for surcease, and the Mother of God for Her succor: Lord, have mercy on Thy suffering children from the Valley of Muza!

  The image I sketched out of the nocturnal cavalcades was gruesomely appealing: plague victims straggling in long lines through the very landscape that the tourists could see around them. Imagine that it is nighttime: dark clouds scud overhead, moonlight hovers over the scrubby pines, the chalky ridges, the desolate palms. There is a smell of death.

  Slowly, I backed up toward the exit, hoping to draw my rapt audience away from that accursed black object before I let go with my punch line. For once that was out, all eyes would of course turn again to the object just explained. “Lo and behold, ladies and gentlemen, the processions hadn’t taken place but a few nights when the Avenging Angel lifted his hand from the tormented Valldemosans. Fewer and fewer of them died, and then suddenly there were no more deaths at all. Their wounds healed, their scabs fell off, only their terrible scars remained as testimony to the disaster. The last bodies were buried, and they threw their plague-infested garments into the fire. The Black Death had been conquered! But not before he demanded one last sacrifice: the old, gray priest. He died like the wizened old mother in Goethe’s famous poem.

  “Centuries later, as a memorial to the devout processions, one of the monks in the Charterhouse carved in miniature a torch just like the ones fueled with pitch and carried at the head of the procession on those nights, adding their eerie glow to the mournful tones of the Miserere, and visible far and wide in the mountains. The Archbishop of Toledo blessed the replica before it was framed and exposed to the reverent attention of the faithful. Once a year this so-called taeda pestis is shown in the open air. And every 13th year this eloquent relic is carried in solemn procession over the very same route as that followed by the Valldemosans so very long ago. May the Good Lord preserve us from hunger and pestilence, Amen!”

  Round about me it had become perfectly silent. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop, but only if somebody dropped one. And besides, outside in church and colonnade we could hear the tumult of the tourist mob, munching figs and oranges and drinking beer from bottles and wine from calabashes. Several were already drunk. They were thus doubly out of character, for a Spaniard never gets soused on fermented spirits. He has other means of intoxication.

  No sooner had I capped my pious fable with the final “Amen,” than I heard another guide noisily approaching the sacristy. It was a Spaniard, and he was doing his level best with his German and his Germans. He trumpeted forth: “Lady anda gentaman, nowa I showa la sacristía witha genuina naila froma True Crossa ofa Christa ina beautifula frame-a!”

  I broke out in a cold sweat. A nail from the Cross of Golgotha! Oh Lord, Who wert crucified for us, why hast Thou forsaken Thy Vigoleis? The most obvious answer—why hadn’t he thought of it? Long ago Schopenhauer put his finger on a peculiar defect of the Germans: that they can’t see what lies at their very feet and go looking for it in the clouds. And the same Schopenhauer also realized that any charlatan could lead Germans by the nose if he just kept on mouthing nonsense at them. Was there something of both in Vigoleis: a charlatan and a man of the clouds? Is Vigoleis’ personality bisected in this authentically German way, as with the incomparable Nietzsche, Heine, and Börne, and on down to the dullest German teutonophobes? Be that as it may, I had done a masterful job of spouting nonsense!

  I was able to evade the Spanish Führer and lead my group out into the fresh air. No one noticed anything amiss.

  Outside I sat down on the parapet. The Avenging Angel came within an ace of snatching me up and flinging me into the abyss. I was already starting to hear my bones rattle when Beatrice came over to me with a smile. I never would have thought that prostitution would give her such pleasure. But she had “charming people” in her group, she told me. Why, there was even a publisher among them, and she had mentioned my… “But Vigo, what’s happened, you look awful!”

  “Beatrice, I’ve just escaped the Black Death!”

  The Peruvian ambassador’s daughter stared at me, then she quickly sprang to the rescue. “You come with me, over here in the shade! I think you’re getting sunstroke!”

  “Ah, chérie, the emergency is over. I’ve already had a stroke. Just let me sit down. Tonight I’ll explain everything.”

  “A woman?”

  “Much worse! You’ll hear all about it tonight—that is, if I’m able to talk any more.” Before Beatrice could push a wedge of orange into my mendacious mouth, we were surrounded by a circle of gentlemen: General von Puttkammerwitz and his Staff.

  “Aha, now we’ve got him, our disappearing artist! A little flirting, eh? Jaja, great landscape, as I’m beginning to notice, odd similarity to certain chalk deposits in the Dolomites, could this be the same strat…? Ach, I beg your pardon, didn’t mean to disturb…”

  “Not at all, Herr General. Permit me to introduce you.”

  The daughter of the Peruvian diplomat in Madrid had no objection, and behaved in keeping with her background. Herr von-zu-und-auf-Putt-und-Kammerwitz cracked his heels together. Not only he, but the entire Staff clicked to attention and each member barked out his name in turn. I remember only one: Lieutenant von der Hölle. Beatrice made her “snooty” face, and the General Staff seemed to appreciate that, though they were somewhat less charmed by the fact that she preferred to speak French. It was a first-rate scene, and they all racked their martial brains to recall “who we have sitting over there (they meant in Lima) at the embassy.” But before they could agree on a qualified diplomat, an elderly lady appeared, walked up to Beatrice with a glowing smile, and in purest Swiss German began an earnest conversation with the Peruvian woman, beginning with “Do luege Sie emol” and continuing out of earshot of the General Staff.

  In fact, Beatrice left the scene with this Frau Sopzin, or Sarasin, or Phischer (ph as in “photo”), or whatever. The gentlemen in the company of Herr von Witzprittkammer put on amazed faces—now then, wasn’t that Swiss German we just heard? I enlightened them: “Her mother’s Swiss.” —Ach so! And then they wanted to learn more about my “secret mission.” Although I had given my word of honor, this much I could tell them: never again a Marne outrage, never again a Compiègne. I was about to add “Never ag
ain a Kaiser on the lam,” but caught myself just in time to avoid such a gaffe. For all I knew, these guys might be members of a monarchist cadre serving under the man from Braunau.

  “Gentlemen, it has been an honor! Führer duties, you know how it is. But by all means don’t miss the little town of Deyá, on the left up on a hill—I’ll tell your driver. That’s where he lives, our Herr von Martersteig, in a tower called Atalaya. Within the foreseeable future Germany’s fate could well be affected in no small measure from that little place, where a great man still exercises quiet heroism. His enemy lives there, too. Surely you all have heard of him: Graves, Robert von Ranke Graves?”

  Someone slowly puffed air through his lips, and then said, “Good-bye To All That?”

  “The very same.”

  “That miserable swine?”

  I heard no more, for again I made myself scarce, leaving the General Staff to itself in the shadow of the Charterhouse, which in its day had dealt with other powerful personages. Pedro’s Papá surely would have liked to speak a word or two in that gathering, and to show around certain objects bearing labels.

  In Sóller new challenges awaited the Führer. The farther this tour took him, all the more tenuous did his hold on German culture become. We were to have our noontime meal in this town, which we knew from previous visits. The tourists were distributed according to precise lists among the restaurants and fondas of the little railway junction. The train station, of recent vintage, had a very good restaurant named “Ferrocarril,” where up to a hundred guests could be fed at a given time. The tables were already set, an elating sight for starved, dusty, sweaty tourists. The guides had to direct the guests to their tables: You over here, you over there. Truly a game of patience. I had to accompany ten people to a small fonda, which I myself couldn’t locate without the help of a street urchin. It was an ancient house with a dining terrace not much lower than the roof that covered it. Grapevines were everywhere, their fruit hanging in huge bundles right down to the tables. There was a glow and a fragrance over everything; it smelled of wine and olive oil. Dust and flies filled the air and covered the entire scene. It couldn’t have been more Spanish. But my guests turned up their noses. Protest! Were they worth any less than the people eating in fine style over at the “Ferrocarril?” And did their Führer realize how much they had paid for this trip? A thousand marks per, jawoll! And did he expect them to be fed like common laborers in some greasy spoon? Where were the complaint forms?