The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  And Vigoleis?

  He, too, added sentence to sentence and clause to clause on this tabletop, and he rhymed “love” with “stars above” and “newt” with “shoot” and many other things besides. None of this granted him immortality, but it made him a fitting target for the Nazis’ bullets.

  XI

  The young American remained among the missing; our single chair remained an orphan. Worry held sway in our apartment, along with sadness and a mood of Quo vadis? Then Pedro arrived, danced his paso doble for us, snapped his tongue and his fingers, and said, “Come with me to Valldemosa! Why stay here without any furniture and without a bed? We still own a cottage in the village that used to belong to a nanny. It’ll be swell out there. And it’s about time that you made the acquaintance of Don José, the former private physician of His Royal-Imperial Majesty, Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria.”

  He didn’t have to say this twice. We locked the apartment and went out to Valldemosa, where Chopin and George Sand spent their famous tragic winter of love in the Sureda family cloister, and where now a small colony of emigrants were causing no less irritation than the hard-pressed lovers had done a whole century previous. George Sand strolled around the village wearing trousers, and hiked across the moonlit mountains in no more than a shirt. Now, Pedro told us, a German nobleman was trying to emulate her by claiming that he was the son-in-law of Franz von Papen. He didn’t wear trousers, and the shorts that were meant to cover his aristocratic nakedness were tailored in such a way that the legs ended exactly where they began; out came His Excellency’s long, hairy gams, always powdered to prevent premature tanning. Tanning drove him crazy, because it reminded him of his “brown” father-in-law, whom he would rather disown except for his stable of racing horses. Otherwise, this powered nobleman was a friendly fellow who bred poultry, collected stamps, and taught German to our friend Paquito, the son of the ducal private physician. Teaching German is what almost all the emigrants did. They converted their mother tongue into a tongue that would earn them their bread, for most of them had been unable to smuggle anything else out of the Third Reich.

  The nanny’s cottage, now the property of Don Juan Sureda, was on the Calle de la Amargura, Number 11. Amargura means “bitterness, sourness,” but also “worry and trouble, woe, weariness, and lovesickness.” It connotes all that is in the highest degree painful, anxious, and objectionable; with some authors it means disease, distress, and dismay, displeasure, discontent, and disaster. That little word contains so much, and much of what it contains is what the Suredas had to go through: Papá, Mamá, the deceased, the living, and the surviving children. This gives them the right to have a little street named after their fate, especially when you consider that in Palma a whole palace still bears their family name.

  An old, dented, sickly-blue bus stood with a head of steam on the Plaza Olivar when we began our journey with our minuscule baggage. Because of the steam, we couldn’t depart. The engine was overheated, bursting the radiator. They would have to do some drilling, boring, hammering, and soldering, the bus-line manager told us. He used this opportunity to change a tire, too; that would obviate the need to perform this operation on the way to Valldemosa. The tire, he said, was bound to blow out otherwise, without any doubt. “Any doubt about it?” he asked a passenger whose expression doubtless conveyed certain doubts. This fellow shrugged his shoulders, walked three paces to the nearest tavern, clapped his hands, and was served his coffee. The Spaniard likes to have his café close at hand, and his bus stop close to a café.

  Beatrice was annoyed. She was still unaccustomed to Spanish schedules, although she ought to have been thankful that nobody observed them. How many pesetas did she earn over the years by teaching pupils who were always punctual with their payments, but hardly ever showed up on time for their lessons so that their teacher could follow her own pursuits? Day after day she came up with dire epithets to hurl at her tardy students. I myself, who had only a few pupils, cursed every one of them who, contrary to custom, arrived on time. Whoever stayed away from my classroom gave impetus to my private life.

  There on the Plaza Olivar I would like to have offered Beatrice some consolation for her “vapors,” as was customary a hundred years earlier in my fatherland. But I didn’t have with me the Complete Works of Ludwig Börne. They were inside a crate in our piso on Barceló Street. The priceless “Monograph on the German Postal Snail,” Börne’s contribution to the natural history of mollusks and testaceae, could easily have blown away the clouds of her impatience.

  An hour later, Pedro showed up carrying an easel and other painting gear. “One hour late,” he said glancing at the bus, which meanwhile mechanics had completely taken apart, “and obviously a couple of hours too early. That’s fine. Yuñer and Puigdengolas will still make it. They’re coming along, and they always figure on a three-hour delay.”

  Yuñer and Puigdengolas—weren’t these the two painters who were introduced to us at the Count’s rooming house? Exactly. They had returned, one of them from Barcelona, the other from Paris, to capture the light of the island on their palettes in Valldemosa. The stone-deaf Yuñer was occasionally successful with subjects that eluded Puigdengolas, owing to the fact that the latter’s preoccupation with film had given him a rather different attitude toward sunlight. We were in excellent company.

  Around noon the bus manager sent street urchins out to alert the scattered passengers. Just an hour more, and the bus would be repaired to the point where they could hazard a departure. But in the meantime his customers had gone so far afield, or had become involved in such gripping conversations, that we thought we would be traveling alone. Pedro, versed as he was in the ways of the local bus companies, pointed to a group of passengers who had been standing on the Plaza with kit and caboodle, waiting for the departure of a bus that was scheduled to leave one hour after our own, but which had not yet returned from Sóller. These people would now take advantage of the marvelous opportunity of leaving on schedule with our vehicle. This kind of schedule-shifting took place all day long. It was only in the evening hours that passengers were left stranded, forced to spend the night on the street and wait until the following day’s mixed-up schedule. By one o’clock the two painters had not yet arrived. Pedro gestured to the bus manager: as far as we were concerned, they could start out. The engine snarled at idle; the mechanics smiled and accepted plaudits from all sides. They were experts, after all! The jacks were carefully lowered, and everybody waited tensely for the moment when the weight of the vehicle would hit the newly replaced tire. It didn’t burst. We could get on board.

  It was a glorious trip, and all the more glorious since I didn’t have to play “Führer.” We putt-putted past all the celebrated sights, and I wasn’t required to explain a thing. Everything stood there like Creation itself, l’art pour l’art, including the clouds of dust. The mood among the passengers was excellent, especially since most of them, contrary to their expectation, sensed that they would be arriving early at the destination. Indeed they would have, if the mechanics hadn’t changed the wrong tire. At the Son Puig Estate, up in the heights, the correct tire let us know with a loud report that it was, after all, the wrong one. The manager, who was at the steering wheel, took a deep breath. The bus hit a tree and was stuck fast. We were out of danger. There was yelling and wailing, and everybody got out to inspect the damage. The driver said that he had a strange feeling all along; that tonto of a mechanic picked the wrong wheel, and he just knew that something would happen. But he said that we had him to thank that we weren’t all lying in a ditch with smashed bones. The engine was steaming again, but now it had time to cool off. Everybody tried his best to get comfortable. Pedro entertained the passengers by telling gruesome stories about trips to Valldemosa in the good old days, when it took braces of mules a whole day to reach the mountain heights. Back then there had been loud bangs, too, but they came from highwaymen with their muskets. A peasant in picturesque native get-up, who made this trip often and kne
w that mistakes were made all the time, took down his basket from the roof of the bus and started a picnic to which he invited everyone to partake of his tinto from Binsalem and smoked chicken. Pedro and I set to eating. Beatrice lost herself in contemplation of the landscape. Landscape is something, I said, that wouldn’t run away, whereas I had never before tasted smoked chicken. The porrón made the rounds, with each diner letting his portion stream down his gullet. This was a wine to make note of: a Binsalem.

  The remainder of the journey went off without incident.

  On the way, I made friends with the Mallorquins who were sitting next to me, behind me, and in front of me, as well as with those who had shared the chicken, and with Amilcar, the bus manager to whom we owed our lives because, angry as he was, he had driven our vehicle with special care. I made friends with everybody, and these were friendships made to last a lifetime. Cordiality of this kind, which is common in Spain, never disappoints. There is never another meeting, and thus there is no temptation to lend your amigo money or, in case of a literary aficionado, books. Beatrice was the only one among us who refused to dirty her hands with smoked chicken or hearty handshakes. Accordingly, she was treated with special respect. Ordinary folk can tell right away if a person has mistakenly entered a Ford jalopy instead of his own Rolls Royce.

  The Street of Bitterness didn’t look as bitter as I had expected; it probably spoke only for a low-grade form of amargura. On the contrary, it seemed friendly, clean-swept, and populated with more cats than Beatrice wanted to see. A few natives, squatting in front of their doors, gave us mistrustful looks. These were progeny of the Valldemosans who made Chopin’s and Sand’s stay in the Valley of the Muza so miserable that the lovers decided to pack their valises soon after arrival. Incidentally, those two were the first tourists in the history of the island. The natives didn’t profit much from them, whereas in our own day the cash registers were already overflowing from the mobs of foreigners, especially the machine at the entry to the cloister where the famous couple devoted themselves to art, love-making, and sin. You can visit their cells. This is how they are compensating for what they did wrong. Posthumous fame is always more lucrative than fame itself.

  Pedro showed us to our room right away, on the second floor. It was a dank space, stuffed with boxes, suitcases, and assorted junk. In the middle there stood a small mountain that reached almost to the ceiling, a veritable pyramid of a bed. That is to say, there was no point at the top, so I should rather call it a desert mesa made of mattresses. I shall explain everything, but not in my capacity as a Führer. No, I shall do so in accordance with the truth, which can sometimes be pleasant and is never boring when it has to do with the illustrious House of the Suredas.

  Pedro’s father Don Juan had become a beggar overnight, ripe for a lucrative squatting-place in front of the cathedral. This fact, in and of itself, is nothing original. Most of the island aristocrats suffered the same fate, and all of them bore it with the unbowed dignity of a Spanish grandee, one of whose traditions is never to impede the progress of degeneration. Don Juan Sureda became a pauper in exemplary fashion, displaying more imagination than one might expect from a denizen of Iberia.

  Don Juan was the landlord of the former cloister. His father had held the same position, and the tradition went back through many generations of fathers to the moment when it turns murky and becomes a playing field for historians. Back then, what is today the Cartuja was still a royal palace, headquarters of the Kings of Mallorca, founded around the year 1320 by Sancho I, who suffered from asthma. The next to occupy the fresh-air castle was Don Martín I of Aragón, likewise Mallorcan King, which he ceded in 1399 to the Carthusian monks as a charterhouse. The regulations of Saint Bruno “Hard Fist” stipulated that each monk was to prepare his own meals in his cell, and so the monumental palace kitchen was remodeled into a chapel. Where previously people baked and fried, they now prayed and fasted. In 1835 the monks were driven out. Pedro’s grandfather returned the ruins of the Chapel of the Hair-Shirted Brothers to its secular purpose. But in place of a kitchen—there wasn’t much left to eat in the house anyway—he had a ballroom erected on the premises. Anyone can dance anytime, and pray anywhere.

  The cells were rented out, and among the tenants were Chopin and George Sand. In the House of Sureda, they say that it was some mercenary French woman who first came up with the idea of displaying, for an entrance fee, the cells where the consumptive composer linked the name and the person of his girlfriend, the enterprising “literary cow” (Nietzsche), to his own greater immortality. Tradition does not reveal exactly which cells they lived in, but that is unimportant. History, with its pronounced instinct for local accuracy, will always find a solution to such problems, as it did with the exact location of the Garden of Eden. All you need to do is announce to the foreigners in a firm voice, “And here, ladies and gentlemen, you see the cells in which Chopin and George Sand…” The tourist will start sniffing, and sensitive as he is to fine fragrances, he will capture the fleeting scent of fleurs d’amour permeating the walls that formerly kept the pious brothers healthy by exuding the smell of garlic. “We,” Pedro told us, “were always proud to show the historic cells without asking a centimo. But Jacobo”—Pedro’s brother, whom I hope to bring on stage before a finis operis closes the door of my recollections in my own face—“Jacobo once charged a duro to take a look at the place, thereby dishonoring the name of Sureda once and for all. Papá would have shown him the door, if he hadn’t already been standing outside. And because Jacobo was already out in the world and got around a lot, he knew that back in Valldemosa things could work out in an emergency, even without charging a duro. And there has surely been no shortage of emergencies.”

  This was the time when Papá started laying plans for all kinds of emergencies.

  When Don Juan went bankrupt and his banker alerted him with the customary local tardiness, his reaction was not to feel knocked down by a feather—or rather, he did feel that way, but only by his surprise that things had kept going for so long. Even the banker couldn’t explain how the calamity had happened. In such cases, nobody really knows whom to blame. I myself was convinced that the family must have arrived at beggary in the most honest and proper way. Pedro informed me that Papá’s lively imagination played a role in the process, since it wasn’t only gambling and women that had undermined his fortune. Don Juan let himself be robbed in style. He kept silent in style when told that his own majordomo had cooked the house’s books and built himself a country estate with the proceeds—“Oh, what’s the difference?” I admire this kind of attitude, one that leaves the big hole unmended and lets the little hole grow bigger, and you gradually get poor without sacrificing your self-esteem.

  Later, at Pascoaes’ palace in Portugal, I learned what it means to live in style in an expensive abode. The person in charge was the aforementioned prehistoric mistress of the house, whose true age was undocumented, and which I can best convey by describing her diamond ring. It was an heirloom, and she had worn it day and night since childhood. The stones were worn down to the metal setting. This was her perpetual calendar, with the pages torn away one by one. The sight of this ring on this hand had the same overpowering effect as the sight of the armchair in which the poet Pascoaes sat and wrote, and in which he still sits and writes. The arms were completely ragged, the polished wood peeked forth from behind the desiccated horsehair chair-back, making it appear like the tonsure on a mystic’s head.

  One day I was a witness as a distraught daughter and a distraught son announced to their mother that 100 contos were missing from their safe. 1 conto de reis = 1000 escudos. “A hundred contos?” asked the old dame. “Children, are you sure you counted correctly?” The children had done so, with the help of the family’s completely honest financial manager. The money was gone. Doña Carlota burst out laughing and said, “Well now, make a note of this: if Doña Mariola (a wealthy friend who lived on a nearby wine-producing estate) got such news she would faint dead away. An
d with good reason, because then she would be broke! I can afford a loss such as this one. Ask Americo to bring the car. I’m going over to tell Doña Mariola in person, and I’ll ask her what it would be like if such a thing happened to her.” Before leaving she snuck into my study to ask me what I would do if I discovered that someone had robbed me of 100 contos. After duly congratulating her on her sudden loss, I said, “Dear, revered Senhora Doña Carlota, on the island of Mallorca I lost my house and all my possessions. What are 100 contos to me? And my friend Don Juan Sureda Bimer of the House of Verdugo, as a Vasconcellos an ancestral relative of your own family, lost very, very much more than a few measly contos, namely an entire palace, and still he didn’t fall over in a faint. True nobility comes into its own when the foundation starts to crumble.”

  “You lost everything on Mallorca? Everything?”

  “Everything, minha Senhora!”

  “Then it’s too bad that you didn’t steal the 100 contos!” And with that, she left to avoid being outdone by her own reputation. In the evening I gave her a long, drawn-out account of the subject at hand.

  Don Juan’s splenetic temperament and Doña Pilar’s passion for art, a trait that her husband shared with her, not as a practicing painter but as a connoisseur, hastened their financial demise. Matters were not helped by their tradition of holding large parties, though this was nothing out of the ordinary: a palace is just the place for large receptions. Things begin to get doubtful, however, if, an hour before your guests are expected, you tell your majordomo that the two of you are going out to catch some fresh air for a few minutes and will return in good time, and that the Princess will give him further orders. Everyone knows how strenuous the preparations are for such a feast, particularly if you are dependent on a passel of servants who, though carefully trained, are yet Spanish servants with idiosyncratic notions concerning party-giving and the following of orders. Doña Pilar had to take care of all the preparations herself. Everything was all ready except for the sheep cheese from Mahón—it didn’t taste as piquant as usual, and perhaps the chef was forced to substitute a Mallorquin variety. Oh well, one cannot be everywhere all the time, especially if you are a painter. The servants were aware of this, too, so then our Princess went out the door on her somewhat bent-over grandee’s arm.