The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  Don Patuco was said to be amazed, indeed moved in his patriotic heart by this baptism of fire of Ulua’s offspring, who had been given up for lost. I myself was surprised by the un-Spanish punctuality with which the bone got tossed. Later that evening Pablo told us the revolution had failed precisely because of this punctuality, because the main actors were still sitting in a café when the internal marrow blew apart the bone—and nothing else.

  “Anarchy and punctuality! Don Enorme, voilà, there’s the topic for our next lesson!”

  “Enorme, Don Vigoleis, enorme!”

  Ulua as cobbler: in the opinion of Don Matías, the spiritual advocate of all Honduran affairs, his work was of the finest custom craftsmanship. “Elegant fit,” the increasingly feeble bard added. “Not as bad as one might expect,” said the shoemaker’s own son, who preferred his employer’s mass-produced footwear to his progenitor’s hand-sewn products.

  My own homegrown shoes were long since worn down to the inner soles. In summer and winter I now wore nothing but alpargatas, the footgear of the little people, 50 centimos the pair. Yet there came the day when we had saved up enough to afford a pair of shoes for myself—ordinary shoes, nothing special. But just a few months more, said Beatrice, and we could place a custom order—with Ulua the cobbler! So we waited. This was as natural as the black powder in the shoemaker’s hollow bones.

  Our links with the Honduran cause were meanwhile so close that even without an awareness of certain prospects I would not have offered a commission to any other craftsman. What was the nature of these prospects?

  Don Matías left for the pueblo not only to serenade his beloved, teasing notes from his guitar that were meant to soften the girl’s heart and direct her healthy gaze at his eyes full of yearning. During each visit he also met with Don Patuco to report on world events, insofar as they affected Honduras. Enfeebled though he was, albeit not in the heroic manner, over time he came back into the general’s good graces, and now exercised the office of messenger and advisor. After the revolution, he was slated to enter the Ministry of Culture as specialist for combating illiteracy. All this was contained in the as yet unwritten new Honduran Constitution. At the very next opportunity Don Matías intended to bring “my case” to the General: I was to be appointed attaché for Western European intellectual affairs, to the extent that they had bearing on Honduran matters. My philosophical attitudes, my antipathy to Church and State and their forked-tongue, two-armed emissaries, my inventive talents, my Sitzfleisch; Doña Beatriz’ half-Inca heritage, her half-Swiss allegiance—the latter important with regard to the gold reserves behind the Honduran lempira—all of these qualities increased my chances as a member of the revolutionary government. It is no wonder that I started picturing myself in Tegucigalpa, sitting in meditation behind an empty diplomat’s desk made of solid rosewood, 3200 feet above sea level and immeasurably far above my own self.

  This was not the first time in my life that I came in line for a government job. “My good man,” my teacher and friend Dr. Wilhelm Kremers said to me on more than one occasion, back in the days when he was recruiting up and down the Lower Rhine for his Separatist coup d’état, “My good man, I can use someone like you when we proclaim our Rhenish Republic. I’ll need you for our Ministry of Culture!” At the time, I was either a weaver or a mechanic, but wasn’t interested in upward mobility. On the contrary, I was hoping to enrich my biography in the opposite direction. Nevertheless, this prospect of official employment hung by a single hair—a fateful state of affairs, since the hair in question was one of those that grew back on the previously tonsured pate of the lapsed priest Kremers, and it didn’t have much tensile strength. The Separatist Putsch in October was an immediate failure. Dorten and Smeets, Kremers and Pepi Matthes had built up their ideas for a Rhenish Free State in league with boozehounds and beer-bellies, phony beards, swindlers, pimps, and degenerate army veterans. It’s common knowledge that priests and soldiers create havoc when they engage in politics. But perhaps it’s different in a Wild West country; Don Patuco would have to test this out. In the case of the Separatist Kremers and in the current case of the one-armed general, it is biographically significant that everything be planned far in advance, and that the leaders have a talent for picking their co-conspirators. Once in power they must be able immediately to appoint major and minor functionaries, or else their coup will be a flop with the direst of consequences. On the day of the Röhm Putsch in Germany, Count Kessler, who was quite shaken by the event, asked me this: if Hitler were ever actually toppled, what then? The German emigrants were ineffective; they were a phantom element, and there was no one to depend on inside Germany. Don Patuco would not be a phantom, I said. Don Patuco? Who was Don Patuco? So I told him a few things about the fate of my Honduran friends, about the tertulias and Jaume’s flour sacks. For the author of Notes on Mexico, none of this was out of the ordinary. “Since the publication of my Notes there’s been a price on my head in Mexico. But speaking in general, I think all of us should emigrate to South America.”

  So I would order my new shoes from the cobbler Ulua, with or without the promise of a government ministry.

  This was the beginning of exciting times. The Swabian bookshop owner, once he was duly clued in about the goings-on, willingly provided us with foreign magazines. Don Pablo brought us illustrated catalogues from his shoe factory. Pedro, beholden to his art and to nothing else, came forth with some designs for my new footwear. Vigoleis compared, considered, rejected, selected. Beatrice was listened to. And eventually we arrived at the solution which tended from the very beginning in the direction of the point-toed shoe.

  I know of no other country outside of Spain that gives as much attention to shoes. They must fit exactly right, they must be polished to a mirror shine, three or four times a day if the shoe tips get dusty, or if one hasn’t anything else to do. For every Spaniard there are 100 generals, for 50 Spaniards there is a cura, for every 10 a limpiabotas, and for each and every last Spaniard—general, priest, or bootblack—there is one María del Pilar.

  I could have climbed the stairs to Ulua’s workshop to issue my official commission. But no, I preferred to savor the whole idea; I postponed the day when, with my elegant new footwear, I would saunter among the beautifully shod citizens of the island. I let a month pass by in cognizance of the fact that the journey is more fulfilling than reaching the destination, that the hope for redemption is more blessed than redemption itself, as the Old and New Testaments both assert. But then the time came after all. Philosophically schooled readers are familiar with the phenomenon of intellectual hyper-pregnancy (superfoetation), which I chose not to forego just for the sake of a pair of new shoes.

  Ulua was a shoemaker of a definitely original cast. There was nothing at all mystical about his craft, and he didn’t possess a crystal ball. His tripod was squeaky-clean, a sign that his manner of sewing leather was conscientious. He had a remarkable thumb, unmistakably a thumb for mixing and tamping gunpowder, one that could fit into even the largest hollow cattle bone. As I entered, Pablo’s mother, a native Mallorquine, quickly stuffed a clump of horsehair back into an upholstered stool and asked me to take a seat. Our conversation immediately took flight—to be precise, we landed at 3200 feet in the center of the capital of the embattled and besieged Central American homeland that was waiting for its liberator. Then we hovered back over the headlands where the ghost of Karl Marx lay in wait for us. Just as Don Matías had stopped in his limping tracks in the funeral procession when he learned that I had never read a line of Krause, now Ulua stared at me when he learned that he was sitting opposite a man who had not only never read Marx but wasn’t about to do so, either. My candid confession resulted in a lengthy summary by Ulua of his “Carlos’” aims and goals in the world. His dissertation, plus a mug of pulque and a few slices of turrón, made me forget why I came there in the first place.

  A second visit to this versatile craftsman’s workshop was devoted to the clarification of fascism. Seve
ral monasteries would get blown up, the Jesuits once again banished from the country, Juan March hanged, and his millions funneled over to the Honduran Freedom Movement. Ulua was prepared to accept responsibility for all of this. Not wishing to remain idle or to seem cowardly, I volunteered to rip the ribbons from every general’s uniform and the red stripes from their pants, just as I had witnessed in 1918 as a schoolboy in Germany. But with these suggestions I had come to the wrong man; after all, Don Patuco, the future breadwinner for all of us, was also a general. But the anarchist’s disappointment rapidly subsided when I told him that it was only the two-armed generals I had in mind, and more specifically the Prussian-German exemplars of that caste. I named name after name, and was back in my interlocutor’s good graces when I remarked that very soon an army of monkeys would be ready to march in Germany. On this occasion I also learned that Honduras had swiftly declared war on my Kaiser just as he was getting ready to pack his bags. Then Ulua took my foot measurements. He praised my noble nether extremities—not a single bunion. They had never felt the pressure of army boots.

  It wasn’t until my third visit that we settled on the material. I sat on the stool and listened to long explanations of the various types of leather. I checked them over, and was told at the very beginning of our workshop conference that Europe had no such thing as good cattle. This was puzzling. Mussolini had already forced millions into his black-shirt legions, and Hitler was about to brand the entire herd of the German people with his hissing swastika. But of course, Master Ulua meant the skins. Good skins were to be had only on the savannahs! If Ulua were a Mongol he would place all his bets on the Upper Tartar water buffalo. In the end I decided on Czech uppers, German inner linings, and soles curried in genuine Spanish tanning bark. This was, Ulua said, the most expensive combination, but I would never regret having chosen it.

  I could expect my custom shoes to be ready in about a month, provided that no unforeseen political developments forced the shoemaker to stuff bones or to—but who could dare to take this thought to its conclusion? Certain things were going on; there was once again unrest at the Mosquito Coast; people were rebelling against the Yankees who had established themselves in the region. A certain double-armed general and certified doctor named Don Tiburcio would have to be eliminated. I learned from Don Matías that Carnita was staying up late nights bent over her embroidery frame, sewing the complicated coat of arms on the flag, and that Gracias a Dios was deeply immersed in his heroic life as a pilarierista, yet not without intoning a daily tribute to his far-off political fiancée. I can still see him before me on his sack of flour, this anemic human vessel into which the final, as yet unrealized stanza of the Honduran Horst Wessel Song would soon be poured. Ripeness is all, said Ulua in the melancholy tones of an exile who will soon rush forth into freedom, but who hasn’t seen things go so very badly for him away from home. In my selfish way I replied with the hope that the course of world history would allow Master Ulua to put my shoes on his last before the big bone went off. “And then, my good friend, I can use my new soles to make my entrance at the Cultural Ministry of the Honduran Republic.”

  I don’t like bread. To me it is as insipid as the potato, and because it lacks nutritional content you have to fill your belly with large amounts of it to stave off rumblings that can happen at just the wrong time. Nevertheless, we filled our bellies with bread; during the weeks preceding delivery of my new shoes we didn’t have the necessary pesetas for more nourishing fare. The Czech upper leather was beyond our means, and we had to save up for it by stuffing ourselves and going without real food. Jaume made a profit on us.

  I quizzed Don Matías intensely on the status of our business. When did he think things would start up? Over and again I steered our flour-sack discussions toward Tegucigalpa; together we worried about the chances of success with the bone-tossing that was supposed to bring about a change in both our lives.

  Sometime during this nerve-wracking period of bread-eating, Don Pablo casually interrupted our philosophical musings to mention that my shoes were ready. The Master would be honored if he could bring them to me himself… Oh my noble foot, thine hour is at hand!

  Ulua appeared in his Sunday best, a large package under his arm—his masterpiece, wrapped in the Diario de Honduras. We greeted each other with the cordiality of old fellow-assassins. I had obtained cigarettes and coffee, a Costa Rican blend since the only decent kind, the Honduran variety, was sold nowhere on this island of ours behind the moon.

  No longer a child, I suppressed my curiosity. First, while still wearing our alpargatas we bestrode with giant steps the paths of politics, clarified certain major aspects of the pronunciamiento, filled our state treasury with other people’s money, imposed German language and literature as required subjects at all Honduran educational institutions, settled minor border disputes with Nicaragua, and discussed this and that concerning Don Patuco. Then the Master unpacked my shoes. A page was being turned in our history, and you could hear it.

  When Beatrice returned from one of her distinguished houses, Ulua had already left with his reward and my assurance that the shoes were enorme, and that he shouldn’t apologize for billing me extra for adding reinforcements for my perfectly normal feet—a pittance. We parted as friends with a handshake, a clap on the shoulder, and a huzzah for the Revolution.

  The cobbler had poor eyesight, and that was lucky for me, for he didn’t notice how close I was to tears when I caught sight of the monstrosity that emerged from the Diario de Honduras. Were these the pointed shoes we had spent weeks saving up for with bloated bellies? These were indeed pointy-toed shoes, but there are many kinds of points; it all comes down to your personal idea of what a “point” looks like. Ulua had not emulated Pedro’s artistic notions, but rather Nature itself. He had taken as his model the bill of the pelican, whose massive lower jaw is a network of folds of skin. That is what my “pointed” shoes looked like. Instead of an elegant narrowing towards the tips, these “points” gradually broadened out like the open maw of a hippopotamus jutting out from a putrid puddle in a zoo. Yet since the hippopotamus is not indigenous to Honduras, even this allusion to Nature was distorted. What is more, during the months of planning and design the cobbler’s documents containing sketches and measurements had somehow got mixed up with other papel, with the result that, to be on the safe side, the Master had added a size or two when he put leather to last. Later, when his son asked me in passing how I liked his old man’s handiwork, I replied, “Enorme.” “Enorme? How so?” He was surprised, for while his father was good at making revolutions he didn’t know how to make shoes. I was his very first customer for custom work, and I was a German! Ulua was bursting with pride, and Gracias a Dios was going to put this event in the annals. When in exile, don’t just twiddle your thumbs—this, too, was a Honduran trait.

  “Don’t cry, darling,” said Beatrice, “We’ll get over this calamity, too. I saw a pair of shoes at the Sindicato, and I’ll give them to you for Christmas. Until then you’ll just have to keep wearing your alpargatas.”

  I embraced the woman, not because she promised me a new pair of shoes, but because she refrained from adding the usual consolation that walking on alpargatas was healthy. I am aware that everything poor is healthy. Kaiser Wilhelm’s turnips were also healthy.

  The first time I put on my Uluas was the day we left the island. Their size was such that I could place in each one an insole made of forbidden literature.

  In these unrhymed recollections of mine there are two names that can be said to rhyme after all: Ulua and the writer Muschler.

  A friend of mine from my Hunnish home town, a fellow named Matthias who has lived for many years in Mexico where, as Don Matías, he had met his share of Patucos, Pilars, Sacramentos, and Uluas—how I envy him for this!—this friend once recommended to me Muschler’s novel Bianca Maria as a literary delicacy. I made a note of this “White Mary” for a later time when I would be in need of mental diversion. This moment arrived during our
exile in the CantonTicino, in Auressio. I had translated Pascoaes’ Hieronymus into German and Dutch, an accursedly difficult exercise in “applied” mysticism. I was exhausted. Christmas was just around the corner. I felt that I couldn’t stand to look at a single other book. But such a spiritual fasting never lasts long with me. Whatever I started to read, it would have to be simple and refreshing. Then I remembered Bianca Maria; the hour had arrived for me to indulge myself with a pleasure I had been postponing for years. My friend Peter Jud, a book dealer in Locarno, Libreria Internazionale “Under the Arcades,” had it in stock. I ordered it. Beatrice remarked that I probably knew what I was doing and what I was picking out as a means to spoil the Christmas season, be it Muschler or marzipan. Besides, she said, Muschler was now a Nazi bigwig. “Just think of Ulua!”’

  “Ulua?”

  “Nous verrons!”

  In the meantime, my Uluas had been expertly reworked by the cobbler Schira in Loco into hiking boots that could withstand glaciers and granite. I now wore them every day. What did Beatrice mean by her warning? These clodhoppers were still giving me excellent service.

  Christmas Eve in the Casa Peverada, beneath a crumbling ceiling covered with prancing cherubs, in front of a crackling fireplace and within decaying walls that you could see through to welcome all the Good News descending from heav’n above and the snow-topped Salmone—on this Holy Night the big present waiting for me was Muschler’s novel. I hadn’t yet got indigestion from the sweets sent with the book by the bookshop owner Barbara, a kind mentor to all the starving writers who lived down in this part of Europe. I threw my legs over the arm of the rickety easy chair, got good and comfy, and started making the long-sought, long-delayed acquaintance of White Mary. Beatrice also had a Christmas writer, and each of us a seven-armed candelabra.