The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  I threw a cloth over the cage, sat down on a crate, and began meditating. Oh Eye of God, why hast Thou cast false glances at me?

  Beatrice drew in her breath through her nose and said, “What smells so strange here? Has Pedro brought in another model who never takes a bath? I won’t be able to stand this much longer.”

  Pedro had outfitted one of our rooms as his studio, with his easel and a sheepskin for his models to sit on. One of his nude models was named Joan. Joan hailed from Ireland, and she had a decidedly illegal smell about her. A degenerate aristocrat who was in love with her also had evil body odor, and he asked Pedro to paint his portrait, too. —“But this time, Beatrice, it’s not Pedro’s models. It’s the typical gamey aroma of all carnivores. And just imagine, this bird can talk in three languages!” I added that he ate every day as much as three people could eat. But Beatrice was no longer listening to me.

  I uncovered my present: not a gift from Heaven, but a diabolical feathered monster. And I spoke approximately as follows: “Beatrice, chérie, it was my intention to offer you a surprise with the Eye of God, but no such luck. While negotiating with the salesman I lost my concentration. The guy must have had more than 500 pots for sale, and now we have a genuine raven, Corvus corax L., but the price was the same. I didn’t let the tradesman gyp me. On the contrary, he was asking three duros for this prize specimen! I got him for just one duro, and he’s a bargain!”

  “That was our last duro!”

  “Darling, I know. But this was a unique opportunity. It will never come around again.”

  Beatrice made no more inquiries. She didn’t even ask if I had gone mad. One glance at our table revealed that the bird had already consumed our supper. She had some leftover lice repellent, and she emptied it over the raven and covered over the cage. In a harmonious marriage, one should never quarrel over a pet raven. Besides, I quickly offered to visit Don Matías to buy a loaf of bread on credit.

  Don Matías listened to my bizarre story. He suggested that I put the raven out on our balcony and dust it with wood ashes to ward off vermin. Then he gave me my loaf of bread and a handful of mice that Jaume had whacked with his dustpan. One of them was still wriggling, and Don Matías said that this one would be a special delicacy for our raven of misfortune.

  He meant well. Our gallows bird didn’t touch the proffered mice. He squawked for carrion and gruel. Since he could no longer fly, we couldn’t get rid of him by releasing him to the winds. Pedro said, “Give him away! A raven still makes a marvelous gift.” —“Mamú!” I cried out. “How could we have forgotten Mamú?”

  It would soon be Mamú’s birthday. I had already composed a poem for her, and now I learned it by heart. It was a very atmospheric piece, with the moon sailing like a barkentine through a sky filled with little white clouds… The raven would be a more original idea. It was, after all, the first time in my life that I would be reciting a self-created poem to a millionairess. Besides, Mamú was already spoiled by such poetizing friends as Rilke, Hofmannsthal, Werfel, and others. So I didn’t hesitate for a moment to exchange my lyrical product for the raven, which I had already substituted for the Eye of God. Beatrice gave her approval, but expressed her regret that Mamú hadn’t come into the world just a few days earlier.

  Mamú was inundated with presents. Telegrams arrived from all over the world. The Christian Science ladies sang a chorale with organ accompaniment. Auma looked her luscious best, and the state prosecutor seemed ready, as always, to gobble her up. The chef prepared something in secret, while the nanny remained sour and dull even on this special jour. Then Vigoleis and Beatrice arrived with the bird. The cage was polished clean, the crooked bars were bent straight, and a pink ribbon decorated the handle on top. Fastened to the ribbon was a tag bearing the name we had hurriedly decided to give the ravenous beast: Rabindranath.

  Rabindranath literally hacked the eyes out of all the other birthday gifts. Mamú wept with emotion; the tears flowed down her rather wobbly cheeks like drops of candle wax. The ladies sniffed the odor of game and garbage, and closed their Bibles with a snap. Mamú’s pekingese had a nervous breakdown.

  “Vigo, my Vigolo, you marvelous fellow! A raven from A Thousand and One Nights! Tell me how you caught him!”

  I gave her an account of En Xaragante and his Cyclopic chamber pot. The scientific ladies took further umbrage at this story, since they were convinced that magical chamber pots were my own invention. I gave the saga a somewhat fanciful twist, allowing myself to leave the battleground as a hero. This angered the praying biddies; they would have preferred to kill me off. Such incorrigible hypocrisy made me furious, and so I decided to go on the attack and get rid of this science once and for all. I took the birdcage and set it down right in the midst of the pagans. This raven, I explained, had unfortunately lost his three languages. Would anyone volunteer to pray at least his mother tongue back into him? In the eyes of the Lord, a bird is, after all, worth at least as much as a dog.

  That hit the mark. There was a sudden rustling, as if of wings. The pious old crones departed the scene forthwith, while Rabindranath continued his inarticulate squawking. Mamú was even more grateful. The feast could begin.

  Rabindranath was given a volière in the yard, and a meal such as he would never have been able to scavenge together in a natural setting: raw meat, Vienna pancake with filling, Quaker Oats, and eggs à discrétion. His feathers lost their shabbiness and turned smooth and glistening, his beak took on a polished gleam, and the whole bird, including his soul, reverted to intense, ravenish black. With Mamú’s pekingese it was a case of hostility at first sight, and nothing could be done about it. Mamú’s turtles left him cold. He never could be trained to let someone hold him on his hand. On the contrary, he became more and more ornery and pecked at any hand that was offering him something to eat. An authentic gallows bird, he was fixated on human blood.

  Shortly before we left the island—Mamú had already fled—I released Rabindranath. Now, finally, he could follow his man-eating instincts, for in the meantime our island had become what Bernanos chose as the title for his book on Mallorca: The Large Cemeteries under the Moon.

  Les grands cimitières sous la lune: with its funereal message that is a good title for a book in which, from the first to the last page, a mortuary mood of human slaughter prevails. Nevertheless, the title presents a slight shift in imagery. A cemetery is a place where the dead are laid to their final rest. It is a place set aside for personal liberty, where in earlier times even criminals were safe from pursuit, where one could rest in peace. On Mallorca, however, the holy war claimed so many victims that they couldn’t get buried even by adding nighttime shifts of gravediggers. They remained where they had been slaughtered, or where trucks dumped them by the thousands, day after day, as carrion for the birds.

  It was likewise left to the birds to carry out the practical work of human decency, which the Church lists as the Seventh Work of Mercy that it recommends to the faithful: Bury the Dead. By letting my Rabindranath return to the skies, I partook ever so marginally in this act of divine mercy, one that had to be ignored by those who piled up corpses in the name of the Lord. Later, when evil emanations began to threaten public health, the cadavers were strewn with lime. The feathered gravediggers no doubt resented this action by the Chief of Public Hygiene, for this meant that they, too, would soon go the way of all flesh.

  XIII

  I am writing this 13th chapter on the 13th of the month, which also happens to be a Friday. In it I intend to report the sad story of how Vigoleis, the friend to all children, planned to accept a child in place of a child, and how his plans came to naught. But I’m going to play a trick on the superstition concerning the number thirteen. Immanuel Velikovsky, in his earth-shattering book Worlds in Collision, has this to say about Egyptian mythology: “The 13th day of any month is a bad day. On this day you should do nothing. It is the day when Horus entered battle with Seth.”

  On this 13th day of the month I shall theref
ore tell how Rabindranath, our ruinous raven, entered battle with T’uang, Mamú’s golden-tressed darling doggie, and how this event brought undiluted joy to our hero.

  “How did it go?” asked Beatrice when I returned from the Immigration Office. “Our papers are all OK, right?”

  “Yours are just fine. As a Swiss citizen you’re welcome all over the world. My papers are something else again, and it doesn’t look too good. They want to deport me as a troublesome foreigner, but I wasn’t able to get any details. What’s certain is that the Nazis are behind this, the German consulate, the local Reich Leader who was fired, and officials back home. They’re all working together hand in glove. Anybody who is against the Führer will be eliminated like some second-rate sheep. The herd is what counts.”

  My residence permit wouldn’t be renewed. They had received a denunciation telling them that I was an elemento dissolvente—a corrosive, destructive element. “Element” meant, of course, not a basic component of the physical universe, but simply a “guy.” My catalyzing powers were apparently dangerous. I must admit that it was a master-stroke of the Nazis on Mallorca, at a time when everything in Spain was in a state of dissolution, to single out Vigoleis as a source of threatening ferment.

  The official advised me to leave the island voluntarily, for otherwise I would get into hot water. They didn’t like keeping files on foreigners who didn’t get along with their consulates. That meant trouble, and trouble meant work, and work was unpleasant. This was The Golden Isle, and that was the end of the matter.

  At this pronouncement I ought to have slipped two duros beneath the official’s desk blotter. The German Consul would have come back at him with three duros, but I would have gained some time, probably a full half-year. But I left the office without offering such favors. So now things were lousy for me, and that meant also for our German-Swiss concubinate.

  Don Matías, duly informed of our threatened situation, immediately offered to mobilize the Honduran Freedom Movement on our behalf. Don Patuco, he said, had at hand a talented imp who specialized in such cases. He would be given an assignment to make our immigration file disappear, in the same way as happened with our tax documents. I approved of the plan. Matías took down some notes in his poetic portfolio, and while doing so, came upon his latest lyrical creation, which he proceeded to read to us. I praised his effort with the mute glance of a fellow poet who is not unwilling to acknowledge another person’s creative achievement, this time implying my amazement that such a masterpiece must remain hidden in the counter drawer at a bakery. Don Gracias a Dios said he would ask his fiancée to pray for the continuation of our marital concord on Mallorca. Don Pablo Sacramento promised me a powder-filled bone from his father Ulua’s arsenal. Pedro just shrugged his shoulders. Mamú, on the other hand, was seized with fright when I told her that the Nazis had set a fuse to our modest insular idyll.

  We were seated beneath a palm tree that, despite the drought-like conditions, still did its work of warding off the hot sun by pretending to create a park. Auma was present, as was her fiancé. Even Mamú, an expert in matters of the heart, could no longer tell which of the two of them was living in the shadow of the other. Soon neither of them would cast any shadow at all, for their Finnish-Mallorcan erotic fever was visibly consuming them both.

  Mamú suddenly clapped her hands, which were white, soft, and covered with brownish age spots. She began to totter, and her chaise longue was shaking. Her gerbil-like cheeks, lending emphasis to her gesticulations, wobbled as she cried out, “T’uang!” The creature bearing this name had the same flaming red hair as my pupil Hutchinson, the same crisis-prone nerves as the coal-and-steel tycoon from Essen, a pedigree never gnawed at by any hint of anarchy, and the four paws that were the pride of the Bewerwijns’ tropical hound prior to his sledding party and the Scientific Christian miracle. He was a pekingese, and as such he had a peculiar, droll manner of walking that aroused my sympathy no less than his facial expression, which was a constant meld of almost tearful sorrow and unreasonable, condescending arrogance. Maybe T’uang had worms. He definitely suffered from migraines.

  Mamú lifted her beloved canine onto her lap, and held a long colloquy with him in Viennese dialect. The upshot of this dialogue was that the dog was supposed to explain to me that he was no more ludicrous a creature than a poodle or a Basedow pinscher, that he was his mistress’ darling, and that he had cost her $5000.

  That was it. His price was $5000, certificate of pedigree included. He hailed from an aristocratic kennel owned by the Esterhazy dynasty, the most famous dog-breeding facility—I’ll take Mamú’s word for it—in all of old Europe. His family tree had its origins in some foggy prehistoric forest, where not even the most savvy canine genealogist could find his way through the gloom. Family trees don’t mean much to me; I’m not in the habit of peering into their leafy crowns, and that’s why I felt such glee when the Nazis, with their racial laws, led the entire science of genealogy down the path to complete absurdity. But T’uang was proud of his eugenic tree. If he were a human being instead of just a degenerate dog, he would have hung a replica of that tree on his living-room wall, just as a butcher does with his guild certificate, or a Spanish doctor with his academic diploma. And why not? No matter whether it’s a pinscher or a human being, a Harz Mountain canary or a German Noble White pig, it’s always good to know why one chirps, oinks, or drools in a certain way and no differently, and why one is superior to all the other chirpers, oinkers, and droolers. I am always deeply moved by the sight of a colored-in family bush. I bow in reverence before such a naive display of faith in marital constancy—a virtue that, at least with a dog, can be sustained by means of a leash. Humans love freedom, as a result of inborn urges that certain people seek to rid them of, sometimes with complete success. But for the most part, humans are responsible for certain gaps in the foliage of their ancestral cult. There are the notorious areas where the genealogical traces disappear, where even the most assiduous of professional researchers come up with blanks, and defer to their patrons’ sense of patience, discretion, and propriety. At such moments the only solution is a grafting operation. A well-known botanical genealogist, who was capable of pursuing the pedigree of any plant in the world back to its roots in the Tree of Jesse, once told me that his art consisted in the clever invention of an ancestor for those spots in the family tree where, when you push the branches aside for a better look, you discover certain horny offshoots that could endanger the entire structure of the family registry. I offered this scholar the consoling observation that while human beings are definitely rooted in their ancestors, not every ancestor confined his climbing to his own family tree.

  When I started poking fun at this petty-bourgeois genealogical nonsense, Mamú assured me that T’uang’s pedigree was absolutely authentic. It was not something cobbled together by some clever professional researcher, and that was why she rejected the idea of coupling T’uang with the pekingese pooch owned by the Commissioner of the Immigration Police. This man had been pestering her for a whole year with his genealogical ambition: he wanted offspring with T’uang’s bloodline! Mamú humored him all the while, and eventually refused to allow his canine bastard to enter her house. I knew all this. The Police Commissioner visited Mamú often. He was a flamboyant fellow who, apart from his own love life, was wholly absorbed by the amorous affairs of his four-legged pets. He was bound and determined to soften up Mamú for a copulation deal. Whenever he came for a visit, his chauffeur waited outside with the rejected bride. Don Fulano did Mamú certain favors with regard to her non-Spanish domestics. And now, with a regularity dictated by the estrus cycle of his pekingese bitch, he was courting Mamú. As a policeman, he knew fully well that the quarry was bound to fall into his trap eventually.

  Mamú indignantly refused his first proposition, pressing T’uang protectively to her bosom as if to say, “My poor little doggie, they want to make you mate!” Her entire household shared her repugnance at such an idea, including the members
of the pagan coterie, whose profound concern for the heavenly purity of T’uang’s behavior arose from the fact that it was a miraculous dog that had permitted them to erect their Ark of the Covenant in Mamú’s house.

  Then the two of us arrived with our own rather different life-and-death emergency, and Mamú, filled with dire premonitions, clapped her hands. T’uang came waddling toward her, was taken up into her lap, and learned of the calamity about to befall his aristocratic lineage. This occurred with a great deal of cuddling and Viennese sentimentality, but also with Viennese sang froid. In the presence of witnesses, and in unequivocal language, the doggie was informed that he would have to commit a sin against his pedigree. Upon being told the identity of the dubious young lady who for the longest time had been awaiting his advances, T’uang looked into Mamú’s eyes with the languid expression of his noble race, and gave his nose a twist exceeding the one which he had inherited. Fortunately Mamú overlooked the despair that spoke through her darling’s eyes. She turned to the state’s attorney and asked him to get in touch immediately with the Police Commissioner.