In the throes of disappointment I had slammed the drawer shut with such force that a little accident occurred inside the table. Doña Carmen momentarily overcame the dilemma of her dual role, and casually pushed aside the offending piece of furniture with her foot. The damage was done. Even a woman must at times stand up like a man, and from then on everything played itself out just as Schopenhauer describes it, albeit in a rather less noxious context, in his doctrine of the Affirmation and Negation of the Will to Life. The Will to Life asserted itself emphatically here in the junk shop. Doña Carmen was again in complete control of herself and her collection of reliques. She stood there with inscrutable, elemental mien; she was the most authentic item in her own bazaar.
Next to the table, which not even three Maguelidas would be able to demolish, stood two rustic kitchen chairs made of knotty pine still oozing resin: a pair of items exactly to my liking. Mumbling words of praise for this and that object on display, I approached the catacomb exit, reached into my pocket, offered two duros for the table and the chairs, hoping that she would agree on the price. I said that I would just step outside and fetch an almocrebe.
When I returned with a donkey, Doña Carmen had already placed the furniture outside her door on the Rambla. While my servant hitched the items to his animal, I placed the pieces of silver on top of a crate containing hopping rabbits and, maintaining a gallant distance, kissed her right hand, which had of course been so closely involved in her dethronement. Smiling, she asked me to convey her greetings to our mutual friend Don José Toboso y de Tembleque from Toledo—for surely that was the person who had recommended her to me.
I am a talkative fellow, and that means that I am no worse than the next guy at keeping secrets.
Beatrice’s eyes lit up when the almocrebe unloaded our complete set of kitchen furniture and accepted his 50-centimos wage plus a princely tip of two pesetas. Such joy when she noticed the drawer! Her first reaction was, “So deep!” Just to think of all the things one could put inside it—bread, cheese, greens for our soup, her entire sewing kit—“Vigo!” Her dream had come true. She kissed me.
But my lips were burning with more than her kiss. From inside the drawer, the “Eye of God” was insisting that I give notice of its presence. I gave a full dramatic account of Doña Carmen, myself, the quail, the child’s coffin. I clapped my hands, made bows, reiterated my remarks as a connoisseur, peered into the twilit back area of the shop, restaged my somnambulistic steps toward the table, described the table, the drawer, opened the drawer—and Beatrice fainted. This was the second time on the island that she lost consciousness.
Using bicarbonate of soda, boiling water, scented candles at nighttime and the rays of the sun during the day, ammonia, “Legia” detergent, vinegar vapors—I scrubbed the drawer over and over again for an entire week. If I had remained silent about Doña Carmen’s Affirmation of Life, I would have been spared a whole lot of irritation, drudgery, and one duro, the price of a novel in the Espasa Calpe edition.
Talkativeness is a symptom of deep-seated pessimism. Without it there would be no pessimistic literature.
Strangely enough, it was Beatrice who insisted on owning a “look-see” chamber pot. I had also entertained the thought, but didn’t dare to broach the ethnological subject for fear of arousing olfactory responses that could be dangerous for a woman so highly susceptible to allergies. “There, do you smell something? I smell something again. Has a cat sneaked in?” Then her nose hit the table drawer that meanwhile contained not bread and cheese, but products of my intellectual activity.
“Vigo, darling, do you know what I would just love to have, and which I think we can now afford…?”
“Wait, let me guess. You’ll see that I am capable of reading your mind. Van Dine, The Scarabs Murder Case!”
“Wrong! Higher! And in a different genre.”
Quick-witted as a born Führer, and making a sudden leap upwards from the underworld, I said, “Either Burckhardt’s Cultural History of Greece in an uncut edition, or a pair of shoes to go with your Indian dress, made by Ulua and nobody else.”
Beatrice shook her head. “You can get all of those things for me later. Now I would love to have one of those receptacles, you know, the kind with a motto printed inside and a Cyclops eye…?”
I embraced this woman whom I had so often accused of deficient imagination. “You sweet one! You want an eye? To look at, eye to eye…?”
“Not quite that kind, darling. What I’d like is an umbrella stand to put in the entrada. With a ring on top.”
“So the eye will always stay moist. Right, I understand.”
People who have an inferior conception of divinity might consider it heretical or repugnant to adorn a chamber pot with the Eye of God. One must not forget that Spaniards often take the name of the Almighty in vain, since they maintain what amounts to a personal identification with Him. Who wouldn’t be knocked flat upon a first hearing of the Spanish curse Me cago en Dios, a phrase that is best rendered by three little dots? I have heard priests shout it in heated discussion, and I am convinced that cardinals also use it. No one thinks anything of it. And after all, who thinks anything of God’s name? Just behold the state of God’s world!
“Beatrice, I shall not rest until the Eye of God looks constantly upon our entrada. And woe to whoever drenches it in tears with other means than an umbrella!”
After careful calculations we set aside five pesetas for our celestial objet d’art. We could save this up by the end of the month, but until then we would have to get by without the evil eye. As it was, things had gone badly enough for us without it for quite a long time.
Now wherever my steps took me, I was obsessed with The Eye. Or rather, since I am for the most part a sedentary fellow and spent most of my time typing my own or other people’s literature, The Eye constantly peered over my shoulder at my text—a form of intrusion that is very much to my disliking.
Alcoholics and serial killers are familiar with the sudden impulse to chug-a-lug a stiff one, the irresistible urge to squeeze somebody’s throat before they explode. Whereupon they calmly get up from where they are sitting and go hunting for a victim. Off they go to a bar or to the city park.
That is how I felt about The Eye. It was absolutely necessary that I betake myself to wherever I might find it, which is to say, where I might locate the receptacle that contained its steady glance. There were five pesetas in our drawer—not meant for a pot but for our daily bread. The Eye of God beckoned me to take the money—for the Eye of God. What if I could get one for one peseta? What if, for once in my life, I were to stoop to commercial haggling, knowing that Beatrice had fallen in love with a Cyclopean eye?
I knew well the City of Palma’s junk, trash, and plunder market, located on the Plaza del Olivar; I had already fished out a number of items from its abundant offerings. But Pedro told me that the chamber-pot dealer had his stand on the square called “Ses Enremades.” There I would be sure to find the Eye I was looking for. But, Pedro said, I should be careful. “En Xaragante” was a crook who chopped up pig cadavers to make sausage out of them. This news didn’t bother me so long as, in addition to any number of blind chamber pots, the crook in question had a seeing-eye crock he would be willing to sell me.
The sun was searing down on a tattered canopy, beneath which En Xaragante sat guarding his collection of crockery. He was very fat and poorly dressed, not at all typical for a Spaniard. The holes in his shirt revealed skin encrusted with grime or thick body hair. The man’s sombrero provided shade in places where the sun leaked through the awning. Seated on a crate with his heavy body all folded up, he was taking a nap, if this term is adequate to describe a condition accompanied by loud snoring.
Next to the sleeping man who looked like an African tribal chieftain dressed in European garb, stood a large round cage that was missing so many bars that a chicken could easily walk out of it. But the black bird sitting inside and getting roasted by the sun couldn’t escape. Profoundly
reconciled to its fate, it didn’t even try. From its ebony beak to its drooping tail it was a good two feet long, and as an experienced breeder of birds I estimated its wingspan at two yards or more. It was a raven, Corvus corax, one that had seen its better days, like everything else that was offered for sale at this location. Unlike its owner, the bird was not asleep. It was unhappy. It seemed to be pestered by vermin, thirst, and a yearning for carrion, but with the wisdom that is natural to all ravens it was keeping its composure. Perhaps it was also aware that its battered wings would never again lift it into the heavens. All around this sleepy focal point lay the vessels I had come for. Fragile as they all were, En Xaragante had spread them out on a piece of canvas. The receptacles for nighttime use stood out conspicuously among the collection, like owls in broad daylight.
Destiny—once again I feel obliged to employ this pretentious term—has often pulled the chair out from under me, forcing me to look for something else to sit on. I have often had to switch residences, and thus have lived in various places in the world. Wherever I have been lucky, unlike my Vigoleis, I have found the familiar little table next to my bedside, and inside it the handy receptacle for emergencies. People who disapprove of such domestic utensils can pay for their aesthetic indignation with kidney stones. Others are grateful whenever, under protection of darkness, they can consult the convenient vessel. That’s how civilization has arranged things, and what concern is that of ours? I am familiar with the Dutch mevrouw’s robust kamerpot, the solid ceramic vase of the German Hausfrau, and our Swiss landlady’s rustic earthenware urn, omnipresent in every one of the cantons. I am familiar with the predilections in other nations; I have held in my hand the exquisite vasosinho belonging to a delicate Portuguese menina—and I must continually agree with Vigoleis, who tends to reduce his chamber pot to its practical utility. For him, a chamber pot is a useful object so long as it conceals what it is used for.
I had never seen an umbrella stand containing the Eye of God. Would En Xaragante have one for me? More than a hundred vessels of various inviting kinds surrounded the trader and his raven. Would an eye in one of those containers open up and say to me, “Vigoleis, I see you”?
The raven lifted its glance from the contemplation of its own disheveled fate and was now watching me with its brown-on-white eye—taking, as it were, a bird’s-eye view of the proceedings—as I gingerly storked my way through its master’s crockery.
Corvus corax wasn’t the only one monitoring my cautious rummaging. Dozens of flea-market shoppers lined the edges of the crockery stand and observed my every step. I had become a focal point of public attention, and was struck with acute agoraphobia and nettle rash. Whenever this happens, I immediately undergo an inward collapse. My innards blush, while my outer complexion stays pale. And the Führer in me starts gabbing away.
All of a sudden I saw The Eye. I quickly bent down, lifted the grail out of the jumble of inferior receptacles, and my two-eyed glance met that of the Mystical Eye. I was in Seventh Heaven.
There was loud applause. The snoozing tradesman woke up, and the raven crowed. Only the painted-enamel Eye remained silent, but the caption beneath it spoke volumes: “You scoundrel, I see you!”
If I was to avoid being attacked by the environment, I would have to start haggling. In my mind’s eye I saw Beatrice seated before me. But no, sorry, not seated upon The Eye, but slaving away in some palace or other offering language instruction to elaborately cosmetized señoritas. I had sworn eternal love to her, and here and now I could prove that I would march over chamber pots for her. Over ceramic and clay pots, over pots made of enamel and pots made of stone—among these piles I even spied a finely polished granite Celto-Iberian urinal—I slowly advanced toward En Xaragante, held my chosen pot under his nose, and asked, “How much?”
“One duro.”
“Just because of the Eye? It has a crack in it.”
“The Eye is two, Lady Hamilton three pesetas, that makes five, Sir.”
Lady Hamilton? What does, or did, Fanny Hamilton have to do with this piece of crockery? I began to have indiscreet thoughts. Don Juan Sureda would have put a tag on the handle that told this story.
En Xaragante said that he no longer knew exactly how it went, but an Englishman had told him that this pot was doubtless from Lord Hamilton’s collection. And so it was only natural that his wife…
Peals of laughter emanated from our audience of curious, pressing onlookers. To my consternation I spied an acquaintance among them, a robust fellow wearing a colorful kerchief and a shopping hat: my employer Robert Graves, who didn’t let on that he knew me—for which I was grateful. As an art collector, historian, and Englishman he had a threefold interest in this transaction. Not a collector myself, I was unmoved by the patina attached to this chamber pot, a feature that testified to Lady Hamilton’s versatility. I desired the pot simply as a medium for The Eye. I would gladly pay two pesetas for it, but not some extra charge for historical considerations.
In the negotiations that followed, I was the loser; my skills as a Führer left me in the lurch. The audience was thoroughly amused at the expense of this foreigner who was trying to haggle with the greasy tradesman while brandishing a chamber pot. Urchins who knew the pot’s secret were teasing me: Yo te veo, bribón, “I see you, you rogue!” The raven squawked and flapped its wings, rattling the cage.
“God lives in every pot,” is how Santa Teresa de Ávila famously put it, and this assertion of hers quickly came to mind as I realized my ridiculous situation. But this mystical insight was of no help. I started wishing for the proverbial hole in the ground where I could disappear together with the accursed eye-pot. But the earth did not open up to receive me. The fat salesman was getting impatient, telling me to make up my mind—he didn’t like wasting time with customers, and especially not with the likes of me. This I could understand. There’s not a junk dealer in the world who feels he must get rid of his stuff—that is the secret of their success. As a sign that neither I nor anybody else was of further concern to him, En Xaragante once again closed his piggish eyes. I ought to have set God’s Eye back down on the ground then and there and walked away. But I was under a spell. I stammered, “And your raven? Marvelous animal! I’ve never seen such a large one. Where I come from, they aren’t any bigger than a fat crow.”
The potier de chambre reopened one of his eyes and peered at me. My praise for his shaggy critter touched a place in his heart as yet unsullied by commerce in such disreputable merchandise. He stretched a hairy arm to the cage and raised it up to be admired. The raven opened its beak, thinking that it was about to get a sobrasada from En Xaragante’s carrion kitchen.
“Is he for sale, too? How much for a devil like that?”
“He can talk. One duro per language, basta.”
“How many languages does he talk?”
“Three, and that makes 15 pesetas. A treasure for your whole life long. This guy will live to a ripe old age. Your grandchildren will still be enjoying him.”
The onlookers shouted “Olé, olé!” and came in closer. The spectacle was getting to be more and more fun, but no one came across the barrier formed by the mute crockery lying on the canvas.
The raven’s decrepit master, who now opened his second eye, put the cage back down and egged me on. “Well?” “Stand your ground, señorito!” shouted the audience. The sweat was pouring from my brow. My brain was boiling. I grabbed the handle of the round cage and held out the animal in front of me, as if to gauge its value. There I stood, in one hand the disreputable pot with its Eye of God gazing at me; in the other, the cage with its mite-infested inhabitant giving me wary looks.
“I’ll take the pot,” I said to Fatso. I placed the vessel on the ground, took the duro from my pocket, and tossed it to the scoundrel. But now the crowd went wild, much as they would at a novillada. My mistake was having the duro in my right-hand pocket and neglecting to set down the cage. “A magnificent animal,” I said as if offering an excuse for not buying
the bird as well. “Three languages—that’s a lot! I know a cockatoo that can speak Spanish and Portuguese.”
One of the street urchins piped up: “And you speak Spanish like a raven!”
At this, even the junk dealer had to bare his rotten teeth and laugh. Was Robert Graves still standing there? Don’t look, Vigo! To top everything, I had now failed a philological test, too, and that spelled my utter downfall. Holding the arch-raven in my left hand, I stepped over the pots to the edge of the junkshop arena. The fat man was yelling something after me that I couldn’t understand. I was completely dazed. The audience was clapping. It was an edifying exit.
I noticed too late that I had botched the whole affair. I was followed by a mob of cheering kids; Corvus corax squawked for all he was worth, and this brought even more kids into the jubilant chorus. They accompanied me with their yelling all the way to the General’s Street, offering practical suggestions all the while as to the proper way of training the beast, how to feed it one live rat and assorted carrion every day, and how I could expect to find lice on it that would gradually eat away all its feathers. I had already noticed this phenomenon, but assessed it as merely a case of natural molting. The kids estimated the squawker’s age at 30 years. For the moment I wasn’t worried about such things. I was finally home. But what now?
My arms were stiff, my joints ached, my billfold was empty. I placed the cage on Doña Carmen’s table and started talking to the bird. He answered in his indigenous raucous lingo, refusing to respond in anything resembling a human tongue. I was experienced with members of the Corvus genus, so I knew that he would first have to get used to his new environment and his new master. Besides, he seemed to be feeling what I myself was feeling: hungry. As they say on the farm: first the livestock, then the hands. Within minutes, this guy devoured everything we had on the kitchen shelf. It wasn’t much, but it would have yielded a modest meal for the two of us people. And still the bird wasn’t full. Certain omnivores consume a multiple of their own weight in a single day. We could simply never keep up! The Eye of God would have been cheaper to maintain. And like all omnivores, this bird stank to high heaven, and he was impudent to boot. When I held out a fly he hacked at my hand with his powerful beak. “A fly?” he probably was thinking. “Who needs a fly? I want carrion, pounds and pounds of carrion, or better yet, sobrasada made from pigs’ cadavers!” En Xaragante had all such stuff. If I had only let him keep the bird. And what will Beatrice say?
The Island of Second Sight Page 81
