A tertulia is a circle of people that can open up and then close again quite casually, a lodge for empty chitchat, a forum for plying one of Spain’s favorite social vices: verbal idleness. Its particular attractiveness as an institution derives from its higher aimlessness, its unique method of killing the already dead hours. No one can resist it who has even the slightest taste for the void. For me the void is its own purpose; I am a stick-in-the-mud and shy, and therefore the tertulia went straight to my heart. In Spain some tertulias run in 24-hour cycles, at full strength. But to belong to one of these you must have a fat purse, a big mouth, and a willingness to put your shoes on a new polisher’s box every few hours. All tertulias have their own bootblack, a fellow who usually is the center of the group’s attention. His opinions about all kinds of daily and nightly matters are as respected as those of any successful writer. Famous Spanish statesmen have attended a tertulia before launching a coup d’état, checking things out with the limpiabotas before staging their revolt. In Spain, the man of the people is not to be confused with the “man on the street” in other countries. My barber José was a philosopher whose spoken Spanish was just as pure as Unamuno’s or Pedro Sureda’s. Only he didn’t write down his thoughts; for him, he told me, what grows on top of people’s heads was more lucrative than what was inside.
At Mulet’s tertulia I regularly met a young man who drew my attention by the careful way he filled his pipe. He would start “really” smoking it only when it came time for him to leave. Cleaning, blowing through the stem, tapping the tobacco in the bowl, extruding the tobacco from a sack made from the scrotum of a fighting bull, rubbing, partially filling, completely filling, pushing down—he went through all these motions as if they were a liturgical ritual, with long pauses for joining the conversation with his invariably witty sarcasm and dreaded mockery. This was Don Joaquín Verdaguer, the only writer I know who actually follows the path he recommends in his books. He had already written his treatise on El Arte de Fumar en Pipa, and now he was living a life devoted entirely to this archetypal art. It didn’t bother him at all if he burned holes in his pants. Once his pipe was in his mouth, he never lost his composure in front of the students he had to teach in German, English, French, and social economics, or when faced by the super-challenging writings he translated by Nietzsche, Zweig, Dickens, Papini, Mann, Kipling, Istrati, and other fellow-smokers. When he learned that I was a non-smoker, he reacted with a broma, a witticism. He could accept the fact that I was a writer, but the idea that I could translate without smoking a pipe—as a German I would of course use a long one—this presented him with problems that he was unable to solve even with his own pipe. “How do you do that and not go crazy?”—As a Spaniard it hadn’t occurred to him that you could take on such a challenge in the aforementioned condition. My double-sewn leather Sitzfleisch took care of the rest.
His brother Don Mario was at that time working on his translation of The Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann had told him in a wonderful letter that he was unwilling to explain breakneck passages to his translators. So I took over this job, while Don Joaquín helped me in turn when my cart got stuck, and even Pedro didn’t dare to pull me out of the mud. It is with pleasure and sorrow that I recall those years, when the course of world literature got decided in a little lending library, urged on by the bleating mirth of Mulet, the man with the magic beard. As the sole representative of the Nordic branch of literature, I didn’t have an easy time with these indigenous tertulians, whose ranks included notably the two Villalonga brothers, Don Miguel, Army Captain ret., and Don Lorenzo, physician and psychiatrist. Both of them were well-known writers, especially Don Miguel, who is certain to enter Spanish literary history as the “Mallorquin Proust.” This man was, if not the ambulatory, then the sedentary quintessence of melancholy, a satirist who could hold his own against the likes of Lichtenberg. A few chapters later, Count Harry Kessler will take flight from his presence. And Verdaguer’s pipe went out whenever Don Miguel started airing his bleak mood, in the back room where the elite of the tertulia gathered, a group to which I wasn’t admitted until after a year. That’s when I finally had sufficient command of the language to take up a cudgel for my own brand of Weltschmerz. Incidentally, I tried to stir up interest in Villalonga’s charmingly scandalous Miss Giacomini, but with no success.
Some also-rans: Don Felipe, a botanist and astrologer; Busquets, a rich wine merchant who as a typical Spanish autodidact compiled in his bodega an Arabic-Spanish dictionary that was prized by specialists. Whenever he hit upon a word he didn’t know, he sailed to Morocco, got the answer from sheiks he was friends with, and returned with a bag full of the most amazing stories. I must resist the temptation to relate them here. This “Arab” took on special importance for me, because in his library he had the poems of Pascoaes.
The manager of this literary cabaret seldom showed up. His interests tended more toward high-level politics than to the liberal arts, although we gave plenty of attention to political affairs in our conversations. A genuine tertulia doesn’t shrink from any topic; the more vigorously you shoot the breeze, the more convinced you are that you hold the destiny of the world in your hands. When contrary to all rational expectations the Third Reich emerged from its baptism of fire and blood, I was elevated to the position of expert on domestic German affairs; I became purely and simply an authority. It was only when I started prophesying that my prestige diminished, in contrast to the true prophets like the one who was the cause of defeats such as my own. Thus I was forced to realize that I was unaccepted even outside my own country. My clairvoyant eye lifted the veil from things too horrible to contemplate: new Battles of the Marne, a new Compiègne, the Führer flees the scene leaving Germany as a heap of rubble—unless Baron von Martersteig can make a timely appearance on the scene with his Army of Monkeys. I permitted myself this minor proviso; the prophets of the Old Covenant also kept their back doors open. Captain Villalonga, who had served for several years in Africa and had first-hand knowledge of monkeys while his German colleague was merely consulting Brehm, presented the case this way: I must dismiss from my mind any of my friend’s notions about recruiting monkeys. Germany had produced a Goethe, a Bach, a Nietzsche, and so forth, and the country wasn’t about to go to pieces because of some army private. Don Lorenzo, the scientist of the human soul, supplemented this assertion by saying that as is well known, insanity begins inside the head; a nation is no different. The bottom-up insurgency that was happening in my patria would never affect the brain; it was nothing but mud, and it would forever remain weighted down by itself. Erudite as these brothers were, there followed a hail of learned quotations. But Vigoleis stuck by his guns. Since when can soldiers and psychologists claim to know anything about the human soul? Both of them move along in trenches that are forever colllapsing, so there is never an end to the shoveling.
One day I was out for a stroll with Pedro on the Borne. This was at the hour when the Mallorquin either takes his promenade, or rents a metal chair from the Tourist Office and makes the pedestrians run the gauntlet. We had no money for a chair, and so we bumped our way through the crowds. Suddenly there was a commotion. The promenade came to a halt, and all eyes went upward. A bird of prey of the falcon family came plunging out of the blue sky, aiming for a domestic pigeon. The pigeon made a few twists and turns in the air, and then fell among the crowd as good as dead. The attacking bird broke its plunge just above our heads and soared away into the air. The pigeon lay on the Borne with outstretched wings. This aerial combat took place so rapidly that the Spaniards had no opportunity to cheer it on with “Olé!” Now everyone was gazing at the lame and frightened bird. Then a new hubbub arose on the boulevard. An elderly gentleman in a white linen suit and with an armful of books was running as fast as his long legs could carry him straight across the Borne; the throng parted to let him through. He narrowly missed crushing the pigeon with his foot. Some people laughed, others cursed. A boy picked up the pigeon and carried it safely away from further
attempts at assassination.
“Great heavens, Pedro, just take a look at that sprinter all dressed in white! I wonder who’s chasing him?”
“Nobody’s chasing him. That’s Papá. He’s racing over to the ‘Circulo’ to read French newspapers. He’s just finished reading the English ones in some other club, and afterwards he’ll race off to grab the German papers. It’s high time that you were introduced to Papá. You’ll take a novelistic interest in the man. No one could ever invent such a character.”
It was Don Juan Sureda Bimet of the House of Verdugo, the wacky aristocrat who in his youth had been one of the wealthiest landowners on the island. He became so important for my own intellectual development that he deserves his own chapter in my recollections. I shall make no attempt to give shape to this balmy hidalgo beyond his own anecdotal self, nor do I intend to out-gossip Diogenes Laërtius, the ancient inventor of the historical bisbigliamento.
IV
Was it a coincidence that I made the acquaintance of Don Juan Sureda at the time when the intelligentsia of the Western world was gearing up to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Goethe’s death?
The book dealer Emmerich had a bottle of bubbly in readiness for offering toasts with his customers to the greatest sales triumph of German literature since the beginning of the “Library of Golden Classics,” whose interests he represented in the Balearics. In Mulet’s tertulia I was asked to say a few profound words, and chose as my topic “Goethe and Germans in Foreign Lands.” Mulet was thrilled, and asked me to write down my speech so that I could deliver it as a bonafide conferencia before an invited audience. Nothing came of this, because in this case Mulet was his twin brother, and the other Mulet, to whom I handed my essay a few days later, corrected by Pedro and neatly typed out, didn’t or couldn’t know anything about this arrangement since he probably wasn’t the right Mulet anyway. The Goethe celebrations reached their climax on the evening of March 22nd, the unforgettable date when we were invited for a stand-up visit with Pedro’s parents.
Beatrice was a frequent visitor in this apartment, so she was familiar with the customs one had to observe in order to avoid being odd man out. She knew, for example, that there was only a single chair in the reception room, one that had never been sat in by any famous personages, for the simple reason that it had only three legs. In this townhouse it stood against a wall, not in the company of its one-hundred kinsmen in the Sureda arsenal in Valldemosa. Pedro’s mother, the princess, Doña Pilar by name, was of course a consummate hostess. But she was not only a representative of the highest aristocracy, she was also an artist, and as such she possessed a different sense of social hierarchy, and at times forgot to observe the niceties. It was up to her, for example, to indicate to her guest with a smile that he should take his seat very carefully, placing the weight of his so very welcome body as far as possible toward the back of the chair, so as to prevent it from tipping forward, since oddly enough there was a leg missing and no one knew where it was. Usually the guest would say, “Oh, that’s quite all right, I’ll manage just fine, thanks.” But things wouldn’t go just fine at all. It takes practice to sit down politely on a three-legged chair. But the family was used to such mishaps; they always stood in front of the guest with open hands, ready to catch him as he fell or at least to warn him by means of this gesture to lean back against the wall. This usually succeeded in keeping him put. Beatrice knew how to take her seat, but getting back up was always a problem. Still, her years-long experience with the Mensendieck technique of gymnastics came through at the critical moment: just a quick lunge forward, and you’re already standing.
Pedro had also instructed her in the second rule of decorum among the Suredas: when asked if you would like some tea, you must say, “Oh no, thank you!” There were no useable teacups in the house, since famous people had drunk from them and now piles of them were preserved in moldy straw out at the Valldemosa arsenal. Papá could never bring himself to free them up for domestic use, and ever since they were forced to vacate the Valldemosa palace for lack of funds, famous people no longer came to visit them in their townhouse.
Don Juan and Doña Pilar welcome their son’s language teacher’s husband. The latter glances intently at the parental couple. He is standing. Beatrice takes a seat on the chair as Vigoleis presses it firmly against the wall, smiling all the while as if he were having his picture taken. Down deep I am not in a light-hearted mood. I know Beatrice. She has no technical savvy, and in the heat of her conversation with the princess, in French, she will forget that there are certain laws of statics that must be observed. And sure enough, the moment arrives when she starts getting up to approach our hosts. With remarkable presence of mind I place one foot on the chair brace. It cracks, but equilibrium is maintained. No one pays any attention to the little accident—a bagatelle for these aristocrats who have already had an entire palace come crumbling down on them. People like me, who come from the bourgeois milieu, can be disturbed by the merest ripple of trouble.
Pedro’s mother is a small woman who dresses very casually. She was respected as a portrait painter; the King posed for her at a time when portraits of kings were only copies made from postcards. It was rather confusing that her name was Pilar. For me this name had become a symbol of merchandized carnal lust, whereas this woman could not deny her dignified lineage even when dressed, as she was now, in an artist’s smock smeared with blobs of paint. Unlike the slut of the Street of Solitude, she obviously rejected the idea of standing on a pillar.
Behind her stood Don Juan.
In his hand he held a trumpet and, prepared as I was for all eventualities, I imagined that he might treat us to a military march or a romantic song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. If he were to do so, how could I keep from laughing? When I feel that I can’t behave, it usually helps if I press the nail of my middle finger under my thumbnail. But here? As a precautionary measure I stiffened the part of my body that ought to have been relaxed, and asked the aristocrat, “Oh, you play a wind instrument? Please play us something!” The grande placed the mouthpiece to his ear and the bell to my mouth, and said, “How’s that?” He was not a musician, but simply deaf.
Now the conversation became loud. Don Juan swung his trumpet like an elephant’s trunk; now he held it to this person’s mouth, now to someone else’s, in order to take part in the repartee. His comments revealed, however, that he wasn’t very quick on the uptake. Pedro explained to him that I was the Catholic German he had told him about. Papá didn’t catch this, so Pedro shouted, “El alemán católico!” The horn conveyed this information effectively; the old gentleman nodded with satisfaction and then explained to his wife that the first phase of the visit was complete, and the guests could now follow him into his study. This was a small room piled high with books, most of them old folios. And behold, it contained some real chairs and a canapé. We sat down with no danger of breaking a leg.
Pedro tooted into the trumpet that this Catholic German knew everything—all he had to do was ask him questions. Then he took Beatrice’s arm and led her out of the study. It would be better if Papá had his German all to himself.
Don Juan shifted a pile of books, drew forth a stool, and sat down facing me, ready to receive information. With my weak lung I have often had doctors sitting in front of me like this with their auscultating apparatus in hand, asking me to take a deep breath. Don Juan placed his mammoth stethoscope near my breast, but first set about wheezing and sputtering himself. Then he said, “Goethe is dead.”
The trumpet bell was now at my lips. Don Juan closed his eyes and held his head with one side turned upwards, so that part of his face was before me as in a concave mirror. It was yellow and wrinkled. A sprig of hair jutted from one nostril, and it moved up and down in rhythm with his breathing. When this fellow is dead, it won’t be necessary to hold a feather under his nose to check whether he’s still alive. Long, stiff hairs also protruded from his ear and covered the bony mouthpiece of his hearing apparatus. I remained silen
t, and the old deaf gent thought his trumpet might be plugged up. He banged it a few times with his hand, stuck the mouthpiece more firmly into his fur, and repeated the century-old communiqué that Goethe had died.
I was quick enough to reply, in English, with the almost century-old expletive “Dead as a doornail!” The hidalgo nodded. I had hit the nail on the head. After a pause for reflection there came the first question, one that caused me no little amount of confusion: “Now that Goethe has been dead for a hundred years, what influence do you think that this has had on his style in his later years?”
I made no reply. Don Juan continued: “As a German you will have pondered this problem. Ich bin ganz Ohr.”
The German he had taught himself in the john and with a program of reading at the club was not all that bad. To be ganz Ohr—this was no mean feat for a Spaniard. On the other hand, if a deaf man says that he is “all ears,” he means of course his trumpet. To prompt a reply, Don Juan poked my chest with it a few times, then placed it again at my mouth and closed his eyes. “Well?”
The Island of Second Sight Page 56
