The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  The newspapers informed us that the world at large was still unsure about how to respond to Germany’s brownshirt pronunciamiento. Governments were taking matters under advisement, diplomats were hastening back to their capitals for secret briefings, spies were getting bonuses, and the code machines were tapping furiously day and night. The world hemmed and hawed, preferring to wait things out.

  To this very day we are under no illusions concerning our swift and correct decision, which was easy enough for us to make. We didn’t believe in God, nor were we nominal Christians, and this meant that we felt responsible only to our own conscience. We had no need to keep up appearances or protect a private fortune.

  Our conscience said no, the world said yes, and so more heads would roll. Diplomatic relations were not broken off, and it was the same with trade relations. In this regard we stood quite alone there on our isle of second sight. The Vatican signed a Concordat with the brownshirts. Christ and Antichrist ambled off arm-in-arm on the safe middle road.

  As a child I worked up for myself a totally false conception of God, and that is why this life of mine on God’s green earth has veered off in the oddest directions. My devout mother, concerned for the eternal salvation of her four children, detected signs of this oddity early on, and in her old age still finds repeated confirmation of her forebodings. I never became a true-blue Nazi, nor did I ever turn into what I like to refer to in summary fashion as a general manager, that is, somebody respectable and adaptable in human society. All I do is vegetate at the side of the road. Any passing goat can eat me up, any passing cartwheel can crush me. In a word, one that my own family is prone to use, I am a good-for-nothing. No marksman’s badge, of no matter what regiment, decorates my chest.

  When the burnt-out pastor of our home-town parish gave me that bang on the tongue with his St. Peter’s key, my little edifice of inchoate, mystical faith came crashing down. No matter how hard I shoveled, I couldn’t get rid of all the rubble, and in the ruins I recognized God. God had ceased to be a mysterious being, unapproachable, nameless, unthreatening, sacred and demonic. My innate longing for the darkness from which we all proceed led me to the path of poetry.

  The world around me, the tiny world of a tiny town, kept on talking about God, but this wasn’t the same God that I failed to stretch out my tongue far enough to receive. The war presented me with further problems that the curate who gave religious instruction at our school wasn’t able to solve. Wasn’t it blasphemy if “our” soldiers had the name of the Almighty on their belt buckles and, “God With Us,” slit open the bellies of the Frenchies who weren’t wearing such divine armor? It wasn’t until years later that I realized that the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm’s motto “God with us,” cheaply reproduced by the millions in its metal belt-buckle version, was remarkable in religious history for being the only blasphemy ever to receive the imprimatur of all the churches. And wasn’t it blasphemy to celebrate victories by bellowing forth the name of God? I had a lot of stupid questions like these, and the curate ended up by punishing me. He sent a written notice to my parents, and the religious school principal, the same man who was expecting to be named president of the “Rhenish Republic,” had some devout advice for me: “My son, just don’t confuse our teachers with pointless questions. If you keep this up, you’ll never amount to anything, and that would be a real shame. Once you have outgrown school, you’ll realize that there are certain questions that a person should ask only of himself. And you have to find the answers by yourself. Anybody else would have to lie about them. You got that, you little snot-nose?”

  I lied and said, “Yes!”

  In the tenth grade I switched to another “Christian” seat of learning. At this one the religion teacher had the title “Professor,” and he was feared for the questions he asked during the tests at Easter. He never gave answers. He was just as unable as his curate colleague to tell me why God had singled out German bellies for wearing His slogan, and he drew a blank at other queries about things that gave me concern. Upon hearing my third hesitant inquiry, he made sure that I kept seated in class forever. From then on, he gave me the go-by. Erich, who sat next to me, likewise got the go-by. So there we forever sat, two humiliated but by no means dishonest cases.

  The Kaiser gave up the war. Instead of counting the corpses, he counted his money and left the fatherland. In those days, George Grosz drew the crucified Christ wearing a gas mask. A storm of protest broke loose. The Belgian artist Albert Servaes delivered his Fourteen Stations of the Cross to their destination, the Carmelite church in Luythagen. Public indignation at this Expressionist depiction of the mystery of faith was so vehement that the Pope himself was asked to condemn the work. That was in 1919.

  In 1933 Christ was nailed to the swastika amid the thundering jubilation of millions and the tacit approval of billions. People were not as narrow-minded as after the Imperial War. They all went along with this newest Expressionist work of art—all but a few of them, the obtuse art-lovers you can always find, the hecklers and fault-finders. Such people just don’t count. Vigoleis and Beatrice didn’t count, either. They got the go-by.

  If on the day Hitler seized power all the people in Germany who called themselves Christians had acted in the spirit of Christianity, then this man made in the Lord’s image would have wandered off into a sanatorium to be cared for at state expense until the end of his days. The Führer would be a case study for university professors, a laboratory specimen for students to learn from. But there were no more Christians in Germany. God was dead, Christ was dead, only the Führer was still alive. When people woke up from their frenzy and their rigid fast, it was too late. Heart failure.

  The history of National Socialism can never be written as long as Christian hypocrisy persists. Such an invasion of pagan barbarism would not have been possible without the de-Christianization of Western Europe. But we are still far from realizing that ours is no longer a Christian world. Theology is still getting taught, and the name of God is still invoked for a morsel of bread. Bones are filled with gunpowder, and swords are forged in juicy streams of blood.

  The year 1933 was also a milestone for us on our island. What business of ours was that mess, Don Matías asked, so far away from the scene? He was wrong. Hitler was no Don Patuco. Even though he could lift only one of his arms, that one arm of his reached much farther than the Honduran warrior’s. Soon he had the island in his grasp. Fellow countrymen who every day made the sign of the swastika in the name of the divine Führer, Amen, wanted to kill Vigoleis and his suspiciously un-Aryan-looking Beatrice because we were refusing to tithe to the new God. Apart from the fact that it was filthy, we didn’t believe one word of this swindle. We would sooner have believed the Beverwijn dog story. Mevrouw van Beverwijn herself immediately believed in the new Savior. She became angry once when I made fun of the Führer before an audience of female Christian Scientists. Many of these enthusiastic ladies, who were already piqued because Mamú didn’t eject me from her house, became ominously starry-eyed whenever there was talk of the Redeemer of the Germans. It wasn’t possible just to keep silent about the man, as one did with Don Patuco. The Honduran wasn’t one for counting corpses, either, but otherwise he seemed to me to be doing everything wrong, while Hitler was doing everything right. The German Führer had figured it all out right away: God is dead, not a single soul believes in Him any more, but they all keep on acting as if they did, so this is my big chance.

  But what did Mamú think of all this Führer business? On this matter, too, she was marvelous. In spite of her millions, in spite of the important market for the baking powder that was still her baking powder, she rejected the Savior of Germany. She felt pity for the ladies of her bible-study circle, explaining that you can’t change the ways of old spinsters. They had missed their chances all through their long lives, and now, as things were heating up, they were beginning to feel warm and cuddly. There was, Mamú added, a purely sexual explanation for this phenomenon. She was quite familiar with su
ch symptoms of repression. She had known Freud very well, and often cited his opinions. Weren’t the ladies getting enough satisfaction from their Biblical Jesus? Wasn’t he beautiful, too? Mamú put her finger to her lips and said, “You bet your life!”

  The nanny, who wanted nothing to do with Bible Science, but who came from the Black Forest, worshiped the Führer as a leader after her own heart, a heart grown senile in foreign climes. All at once she wanted nothing more than to return to Germany. And suddenly she perceived it as an ethnic disgrace that she had let herself be persuaded years ago by her mistress to become an American citizen. She constantly badgered Mamú to forbid us from entering the house, for she regarded it as the height of depravity to believe neither in God nor in the Führer. Mamú raised her wage and things stayed calm for a while.

  The state’s attorney, pleading his amatory case so poorly that he was still unable to hold Auma’s conch shell to his ear in a way that would have been good for both of them, likewise declared for the Führer. Auma was against him. This increased the tension to the point where they began to hate each other at the same time that each one’s unpolitical flesh desired the other’s more than ever. The pair was approaching the boiling point. Mamú would have liked to toss them both into bed together—the way things like this got done in Vienna. But in Spain? Not on your life. I have no idea how the Finns handle such a situation.

  At the tertulia, as I have mentioned, I was considered the spokesman for German destiny. They thought of me as something like a prophet, albeit a bad one. All I did was take at face value the daily pronouncements of the Führer and his propagandists, which pointed to war as the goal of all national uprisings. This was the reverse of insurrections of the Patuco variety, which begin with a ruckus that stirs up nationalistic emotions, which in turn don’t last very long because they soon unleash just another ruckus.

  Following extended flour-sack discussions, Matías and Gracias a Dios turned anti-Hitler and more and more pro-Patuco. Patuco: for them he meant Honduran Liberty, Equality, Independence, the chance finally to marry those brides yearning for them so chastely all this long time, an end to their impotence one way or the other, peace at the point of a sword wielded by a doubly armored fist.

  Pedro Sureda remained unmoved. German saber-rattling made just as little impression on him as had his soldier’s colorful uniform. It simply wasn’t his affair. Papá, on the other hand, was delighted. He thanked his lucky stars during his daily blood-letting that now he could read the Völkischer Beobachter in the original. He also approved of the Catholic Church’s pact with the heathens. Our discussions got louder and louder. Finally I had to bellow like a Nazi to make myself understood through his stubborn horn.

  The German shop adopted a wait-and-see attitude. A businessman must not show his political colors. The little Swabian maintained a busy silence. Two new arrivals, business partners of some kind, huge fellows, Germans from head to toe, sensed the profit to be earned by declaring in favor of the swastika. But they, too, kept their own counsel. There was jubilation in the palaces of the counts, the princes, and the vice-princes. Soon their own Don Francisco Franco would also be a Führer! And he was a general to boot, not some measly corporal. When that happened, woe to the sub-human Germans!

  As a child, I often put carnivorous beetles in a box. In a very short time they ate each other up. I repeated this cruel experiment many times, because I just couldn’t imagine that all of them would die. One of them, I thought, must stay alive: the strong guy, the hero, the Chosen One. If I had continued on with my research, I would have discovered the secret of Nature. But I just wasn’t sadistic enough. The problem went unsolved. It was too dangerous to ask the curate or the professor of religion about it; they would have eaten me up. And so, after leaving school and in the years of my maturity, the answer was revealed to me by the current, future, and faded Führers of all countries.

  Germans were leaving the Third Reich in droves, seeking refuge in the neighboring countries. Once resettled, they pondered their fate and the closely related question of money. Whoever could do so, moved on. Spain? Why not? You don’t need coal there in winter time (they thought). And Mallorca? The island still enjoyed a reputation for its ideal climate and its even more ideal cheap living. Hospitality was somewhere in between, insofar as the islanders offered any hospitality at all. Refugees from Germany who found their way to Palma also soon made the further short journey to the Librería Alemana, and there they told their stories, countrymen to fellow countrymen. If they spoke with the easy-going Swabian proprietor of this bookshop, they were told to ask for directions to Barceló, just a few streets farther on. There, at No. 23, lived another German who could offer advice. No, not another emigré. This fellow was an old island hand, with very special island experiences.

  The first victim of Hitler who was directed to my door was a Jew.

  His case was resolved quite simply, and with a logic that could have led to the purest insights if it ever emerged from the obscurity it deserved.

  The gentleman was about sixty years old, highly educated, as I soon found out, and dressed in black, so that he looked to me like a Catholic clergyman—which he in fact turned out to be. He had forsaken his rabbi and entered the One True Church of Christ. He took his first vows when he was nearing fifty. He had been a lawyer before he fell into the hands of “the false messenger of God.” The Nazis wanted to lynch him because, as a Jew, he was hearing Aryan confessions. I told him that my uncle, a bishop, once was likewise almost lynched because he gave Extreme Unction to a construction worker who had fallen from a scaffold. Someone had summoned him to attend to a dying man. In such cases a priest doesn’t ask, “Are you a Catholic?” The worker was a Jew, and the pious mob grew restive. My uncle came within an inch of being stoned. There was no lack of stones at the building site.

  My story was no consolation for this emigrant priest. He refused to go back to the jungle. I began swearing at the Catholic Church for tolerating Hitler instead of excommunicating every Catholic who lifted his right arm. In his own particular case, the exemption bordered on the criminal. The convert didn’t share my opinion. On the contrary, after arriving so quietly and submissively at my door, he suddenly broke out in a Jesuitical tirade that was not nice to behold. He defended Rome’s position. The Church must survive, even if that meant marching over corpses—his own, for example: Ad maiorem Dei gloriam…

  “Reverend Sir,” I said, “why didn’t you stay in the Reich? By now, you would be in the appropriate cadaverous condition. And why have you come to me? Did the little Swabian bookseller suggest that I could whisk you off painlessly into the Great Beyond? Or would you prefer that a silken rope be placed around your neck? Go visit the savages in Africa and get yourself converted once again, this time by your Protestant competition. The only thing left is poison. Right around the corner is a farmacía. For insomnia they’ll give you veronal without a prescription. We don’t have a bed for you here. But if you want to stay, we share meals and chairs in ancient Christian style.”

  If the Salvation Army had maintained a station on Mallorca, I would have sent this errant fellow to visit them. He wanted nothing more to do with his confratres. I spoke with one of the padres from the monastery across the street, and he offered to help out. But the Jew helped himself. In an obscure apartment house he took his own life. The matter was hushed up. Neither the secular nor the ecclesiastical authorities wanted anything to do with this marrano.

  In fact, many emigrés now began throwing their lives away, which made them unpopular in foreign lands. First you welcomed them, and then they messed up your household and caused all kinds of trouble. They seemed unwilling to give any consideration to the locals.

  Along with the first refugees, the first spies arrived on the island, followed by the murderers sent to rub out dangerous opponents of the National Uprising. Life again became exciting for Vigoleis and Beatrice. To swim against the tide, you need strong arms. We could have got as rich as Croesus—there was
no lack of opportunity. Just lift your arm, Vigoleis, just pretend, and then cash in. Nobody is interested in what you really believe.

  The first time I was asked to be an altar boy for Mass in the hospital chapel—I was ten—I admitted to the priest, who was also my friend and the principal of my school, that I hadn’t yet learned the Latin responses by heart. An orphan boy had skipped his turn, and I was supposed to take his place. The priest then said—both of us already had our vestments on—“My son, just mumble any old thing. That’s how I do it.”

  The prayers don’t matter at all. If all the priests who stand at the altar believed in God, the Church would long since have gone up in smoke. The bell was rung, and I mumbled something inside my scrawny neck. Just pretend… I was well trained. To this very day, I am grateful to this priest for his candid advice at God’s altar. So then why didn’t I mumble “Heil Hitler” on Mallorca?

  A new German Consul arrived. His predecessor was a pencil-pusher, a dyed-in-the-wool chargé d’affaires and bureaucrat, a conscientious public servant who always kept his stamp pads moist and wouldn’t hurt a fly. In the colony he was known as “Potato Bud,” because even in the golden sunlight he failed to get a tan, and always looked as if he had just been pulled out of long-term hibernation. This gentleman gave up his post, or it was given up for him, and then he washed his hands in innocence and went back to selling oranges wholesale. His successor, likewise, did not emerge from the bright sunlight, although he was brown—first to look at, and then by political conviction. Just a slight change of color, and he had it made. We got to know each other well. He stood far to the left, and started out as a minor employee in a travel office, good at languages and aiming high. He landed the job as director of the Agencia in Palma that I did my lying for as a “Führer.” He approved, since that was a good way to be a Führer. For quite a while he worshiped the hammer and sickle, but then he discovered another path to salvation. I sought my own redemption first in poetry, then in roasts at Mamú’s house. Later it appeared in the form of the donkey at the seaside castle of the Archduke, and again and again it was the bullfight. Many times we saved up money for the tickets by going hungry. Beatrice, clad in a mantilla, was transformed on such occasions into a genuine daughter of the Incas. As soon as the bovine colossus entered the white-hot ring, she lost all traces of her Basel origins and their ck-dt’s.