The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  The fortress had been conquered. The mob that was raging in the Land of Poets and Thinkers was demanding its victims here on the island, too. And we, all of us, approved of the betrayal of T’uang’s loins.

  The Man of Power arrived at Mamu’s house, desperate but thrilled. His cadilla, he explained, was not receptive; it would be a while yet, and could he then reach Mamú by phone? It was agreed that, if possible, he would call one day in advance, since Madame would have to make certain preparations. The latter consisted exclusively in my plan to ask Bobby, the Folkwang School artist, to be on hand to make a photographic record of the proceedings.

  Pollution Day fell on a Sunday. At an early hour we left with Bobby for El Terreno. We made ourselves comfortable beneath the park palm tree and waited for the Mother Church to finish its service. Mamú dismissed the ladies; under no circumstances were they to hang around for secular chit-chat, as they normally did. Auma, too, was asked to leave. Mamú suggested that she and her state’s attorney visit the park at Belver Castle, a refuge that was, in any case, too sparse of foliage to permit any double wedding.

  We had an excellent meal; Mamú’s exchequer was once again solvent. T’uang was served beef bouillon with sliced-ham crèpes, and as always he was permitted to lick the blood from the edge of the carving board. The conversation at table centered on remote subjects. Not a single one of the diners dared to make the kind of off-color comment that is so common at wedding feasts. Beatrice and I were filled with reserved expectancy, just as if we ourselves were the ones who would soon be introduced to the greatest of Nature’s mysteries. Our insular fate was to stand or fall with T’uang’s stamina and acceptance of contamination.

  The Commissioner was announced, and Mamú asked that he be shown in. Never in history has a happier father carried a more reluctant bridal daughter in his arms. As this Power Man bent down to kiss Mamú’s hand, all we could see was a patch of glistening canine fur with darker streaks. But this sight sufficed to make us comprehend Mamú’s qualms about the imminent wedding ceremony. Even a non-cynologist would be forced to conclude that Túang’s bride had worm-holes in her family tree. Her parents had not been consistently kept on a leash. T’uang himself, despite his royal lineage in the Empire of Central Europe, would be unable to guide this blood in more suitable directions. Only Dr. Baruch from America, another friend of Mamú’s, could have provided the proper advice, as one might expect from a professional diplomat. I came to admire this gentleman when he was the U.S. Ambassador in Portugal, and we were in a position to observe his behavior quite closely.

  During Hitler’s War, Portugal was germanophile, and opposed to America. Dr. Baruch had a difficult task, although the worst was already over. He was a Jew, but that doesn’t bother the Portuguese. They are too dignified for such an attitude, and besides, they have never forgotten that, since the expulsion of the Children of Israel, their intellectual achievements have declined.

  Dr. Baruch was already an elderly gentleman when in February 1945 he presented his credentials at the Necessidades, with a large white flower in his buttonhole. The Portuguese were less than impressed by his chrysanthemum. The title “Dr.” is not worth much in a country where anyone who has attended a university can expect to be addressed as Senhor Doutor. If Dr. Baruch had been of noble lineage, a Baron, Count, Prince, or some other kind of top-to-bottom decadent blue-blood, he would sooner have found favor with the descendants of the fabled Portuguese tribal chieftain Luso. Yet this American was cleverer than all the citizens of Portugal. He knew just what caliber of artillery he should deploy on the banks of the River Tejo. I saw him a few times. He reminded me very much of Count Keyserling, with whom he shared his given name. But Dr. Herman Baruch wished to remind people of a much more significant personage, and he singled out no less a figure than Jesus Christ. With the aid of a whispering campaign, he began circulating the legend of his descendancy: the origins of his fleshly nature were to be found, he claimed, in Jesus of Nazareth, by way of Mary, and further, along theologically very confusing genealogical paths through the House of David, and further still in the scrolls of pedigree to Heli and Matthat, Levi and Nathan, and finally to Baruch, son of Neria, the magnanimous companion, fellow sufferer, and biographer of the prophet Jeremiah.

  This biblified story made the rounds in the aristocratic salons and tearooms, the Casas de Châ, and became clearer in the telling. Jesus came more and more into focus, while Baruch got increasingly blurred. By the time my Portuguese friend Belita ticked off the list of Adam’s progeny down to Dr. Herman Baruch, behold: the diplomat had lifted his other leg up out of the morass of the Old Testament and now stood securely with both feet on the firm ground of the New. His ancient ancestor was a brother of Christ! As a devout lady from Belita’s circle of friends told me, anyone who attended a garden party at the American Embassy and shook Baruch’s hand was actually reaching across two thousand years and shaking the hand of Jesus Christ. When I gave the lady an incredulous look, she snapped at me and asked if I doubted what she had just told me. I replied that I was convinced that with God nothing was impossible, but—and suddenly a number of people started looking at me. As a friend and translator of the national genius Pascoaes, I enjoyed certain privileges, and thus I could utter things for which other persons, even princes and kings, would get tossed off the premises. —But did we in fact know that Jesus and his brother ever shook hands? Maybe they weren’t even on speaking terms. Hostile brothers: it’s a popular motif in the Bible…

  At this point in our discussion of Baruch’s christological myth, Belita’s mother, the austere Doña María Augusta, felt it her duty to intervene with all the imposing strength of her personality, which was all the more awe-inspiring on the basis of her income from the Quinta do Vesúvio, where Portugal’s finest port vineyards are located. She felt insulted by the barbarity of this American fable, which touched on matters of faith and morals. Another elderly aristocratic lady went even further, declaring that she had heard from an unimpeachable source that the Ambassador could trace his lineage directly back to Christ Himself. Old Dr. Baruch himself could not have worked things out with such precision. He could be satisfied with the genealogical seed that he had already sown.

  It would be just as foolhardy to cast doubt upon the historicity of Dr. Baruch as it would be to call into question the nature of the historical Christ. Christ’s fate as a historical person, along with its much-discussed Palestinian local flavor, is certain. And that is a shame, or perhaps even disastrous for humanity. For if Christianity had based its mission on nothing at all, it would only be a dream, a figment of the imagination or of poetry, and it could never have degenerated to the degree that we are witnessing today with fear and trembling. In the book he wrote about his own experience of Christ, “The Christ of Travassos,” my friend Pascoaes makes a statement that is a significant step toward the mystical de-historicization of the figure of the Savior. He says that Christ entered the world with the first tear that was ever shed, at a place that was later to bear the name Bethlehem. The Christians of the Crusades, the ecclesiastical battles over politics, and the Holy Tunic of Trier are unwilling to accept such an insight. They need the open wound that they can place their fingers into. That is human nature. But every religion that traces its origins to a human founder has failed precisely as a result of human nature.

  Mentir comme un généalogiste, a French proverb proclaims. Baruch’s cleverly planted family tree was a first-rate diplomatic achievement, one that contributed more to the Portuguese citizenry’s understanding of the American people than all the cultural missionaries sent to the country. Until his arrival, whoever judged the USA on the basis of its “crippled” president, the “gangster” Roosevelt, now had to concede with surprise and shame that there were people living in the States who had a lineage that was pleasing to God, people with mammoth family trees that were just as firmly rooted as any in the Old World, trees that no conceivable windstorm could topple. Reaching up into the heavens, such trees
, fertilized by countless human corpses, were totems around which one could dance the Dance of Death, a favorite form of sacrifice for any and every god.

  “Love is blind,” says an old adage that has so often proven true that it has entered the universal consciousness and is cited in all the compendiums of famous quotations. Accordingly, the Commissioner of Immigration Police for All the Balearics was blind in his love for the little bitch he was still cradling in his arms. What a miserable cur this was that he adored so much! What kind of ancestors might Dr. Baruch have dreamed up for this flea-bag? Next to such a mutt, Mamú’s Imperial lap-dog looked decidedly regal as he approached his little mistress on his invisible walking-props.

  The Commissioner set the bride down on the lawn next to T’uang, who provided himself a parasol by raising his tail above his back—a most majestic gesture. It wasn’t until I saw T’uang next to the policeman’s nameless pug that I understood why, for millennia, the Chinese emperors imposed the death penalty on anyone who exported this race of dogs. It seemed certain that anybody smuggling the Police Commissioner’s deviant canine variant into the Central European Reich would likewise fall under the executioner’s axe.

  As I have explained, Mamú’s yard was a park, albeit a very small one. Rabindranath, with the ludicrous dignified gait that is natural to his species, was able to cross it lengthwise in just a few minutes, and could get across the breadth of it in no time at all, with the help of a few hops and a flapping of wings. In the photos that Bobby took for Mamú’s family album, this tiny plot of earth takes on the dimensions of the palm grove at Elche; a flower of the order scorsonera, photographed from the top of a ladder, gives the impression of a segment of the Garden of Eden. The photographic plate is, after all, much more of a liar than the so highly suspect printed word. Don Juan Sureda knew very well why he didn’t include a single photograph in his archive of alibis. What judge would ever base his decision on a photo as evidence? Not even spiritualists would dare such a thing.

  As soon as T’uang figured out why an in-bred mongrel was getting placed in front of his snooty nose, he scurried away to find a hiding place in Mamú’s primeval park of beautiful illusions. Neither Joseph at the house of Potiphar, nor Vigoleis on the Street of Solitude, had acted any less instinctively, although their proffered mates were of a rather different species. No matter how much he might enjoy sniffing or even mounting a canine female, Mamú’s Pekingese was responding to his own millennia-long bloodline. Now, confronted by a strange bitch and threatened with a Maríage de convenance, he balked and simply took a powder.

  Mamú was ecstatic. “Children, those five thousand dollars were worth it! Here you have proof of the blue blood from the kennel of my friend Nikolaus!” But Mamú’s children were anything but ecstatic when they saw T’uang creeping off into the bushes.

  When the rejected bride, whose progenitors seldom felt a leash around their necks, attempted to dart after the cute little lap-doggie, the Police Commissioner grabbed her by the fur and held her back. He knew what was right and proper behavior for a bridal ceremony. This was a sign for Bobby and me to intervene. We did what hunters do in similar situations: we beat the bushes. But the little Imperial guy was nowhere in sight; we would never catch the escapee without ruining the manicured shrubbery. Bobby, the refugee from the Folkwang Art School, put on his Cultural Bolshevist face, made a few silent calculations, and then started poking a long bamboo pole into the bushes. His microscopic left eye, doubtless the secret of his success as a typographer, but at the time a detriment to his hunting skills, took on a look of desperation. That little Chinese twerp was evading the attempts of a kid from the city of Essen to jerk him forth from the greenery! Then he skidded into a hole in the ground left by Mamú’s pet rabbits. What now? That’s when I had my Great Idea.

  The raven has had a terrible reputation ever since the days of the god Odin. With his jet-black coloration he is the incarnation of evil itself; he is said to be capable of hacking out the eyes of his own progeny. If he ever becomes extinct—which Brehm says is quite likely—all of civilization will have lost its most graphic symbol of the battlefield. On the other hand, the raven has also been clever enough to gain renown as a beneficent creature. Mythologists can point to ravenous escapades that are little short of ingenious. Apollo employed ravens as divine messengers. Lusitanian charcoal-burners sing the praises of ravens that fly ahead of lost hikers, guiding them to the nearest human habitation. And then there is the bird’s amazing memory. The raven is a maniacal scavenger, one that can locate hiding places years after the fact. And besides, this particular raven had taken a strong disliking to Mamú’s Asiatic doggie. I cried out, “Rabindranath! I’ll release the raven!”

  Such an instinctive solution of the problem would have been beyond the ken of Bobby’s Folkwang School, even in its Cultural-Bolshevist heyday. I deduced this from the expression on Bobby’s face, whose good eye was now also beginning to cloud over. Envy is a common vice among artists.

  My plan was a dangerous one, but I saw no way around it. A single peck of the raven’s bill would suffice to exclude T’uang forever from Imperial Succession. Mamú broke forth in loud lamentations. The Commissioner turned even paler when he learned that “Rabindranath” was not a famous Indian writer but a bird of prey. He picked up his bitch, and once again cradled her in his arms. Mamú made a grandiose display of compliance and willingness to trust the two trustworthy Germans who would accept all the responsibility. The wedding must not be called off just because the bride has fled the coop.

  When I opened his cage, Rabindranath hopped off his perch and strode with pompous gait directly to a place where, every day, he stashed a half-pound of raw meat, only to discover each time with his characteristic aristocratic nonchalance that parasites had completely consumed his hidden snack, meaning that the meat never reached the desired degree of decomposition. Then he retrieved T’uang’s little silver bell from another place, took immediate fright at the sounds it made, and hid it in a crevice in the palm tree. These were two oft-repeated capers of his, and he always performed them with a sour mien and much angry squawking. Everyone in Mamú’s household was familiar with the routine except T’uang, who was kept inside whenever Rabindranath was let out of his cage. (When the raven became capable of flight, I outfitted him with wing clamps). Only then did he approach the rabbit hole, which presented interesting possibilities of its own. And behold: with hoarse barks, the little |canine shot forth from the cave and streaked past the bewildered bird like a bolt of lightning. Only after returning to his perch did Rabindranath regain his composure, while in the meantime Bobby was able to grab the runaway pooch by the pelt. Once smoked out of his lair in this fashion, he was carried over to Mamú, who now had to decide on the further sequence of events.

  I said, “Mamú, the only solution is brute force. Consensual union is out of the question. We have made a pact without consulting the Emperor of China himself. And who knows? Perhaps the doggie is so frightened now that it has affected his loins, leading to… shall we say… immobility. There are certain phenomena…”

  Mamú herself had experienced all the phenomena that life had to offer, and all of life’s phenomena had visited her. Every Sunday her ladies arrived with new miraculous happenings. There was no need for lengthy deliberation. With firm resolve, she snatched up her pooch: “To the dining room, come on!” We followed her like a company of truculent pimps, determined to rescue a potential deportee while at the same time aiming a blow at the Führer.

  The Police Commissioner set down his morganatic chippy on the dining-room carpet. T’uang, likewise placed on the rug, where he was expected to effect the peaceful consummation of his wedding with the comely T’atsu, immediately darted under an armoire. Was he in terror at the sight of so much Pekingese ugliness? Was he appalled at his own mirror image? I suddenly considered myself already deported from the island. We could hear him growling under the furniture. This was a provocation!

  At this moment I felt
like a true German, like a dyed-in-the-wool, no-holds-barred Teuton, refusing to be intimidated by anyone or anything under the sun. And I knew I could depend on Bobby—he, too, a true-blue, resolute German. More resolute, in fact, than I, for he was already on all fours under the commode, dragging forth the reluctant bridegroom. It was now our intention to intrude upon Destiny Itself.

  “You mean you’re going to…?”

  “Yes, Mamú. It has to be. Otherwise I’ll be deported. The Führer, too, gives no quarter. C’est la guerre!”

  In that case, Mamú replied, the Spaniard would have to leave; there was no need for him to watch the proceedings. But she herself wanted to be present. “But not on my carpet, Vigo! Put the bridal couple up on the table, and bring my chair over. Bobby, go ask Calpurnia for a damask tablecloth.”

  This was not the first bridal union that Mamú had set the stage for. “Dô het er gemachet alsô rîche von bluomen eine bettestat,” in the words of Walther von der Vogelweide, and I sang them for Mamú. “It’s an unjust world, Mamú. T’uang will know his T’atsu upon a cloth of the finest weave. I know some people who make do with a pile of newspapers.”

  I indicated to the Police Commissioner that his presence during the wedding ceremony was not desired. I gave him my word of honor that I would report the outcome in exact detail. Since the gentleman was unaware that I was identical with a certain subject under threat of deportation, he accepted my offer. In this manner I retained my second aspect in order to salvage my first.

  T’uang was still unwilling to cooperate, even on the luxurious oriental carpet. Bobby grabbed the bride by the neck, using the skilled hand motion admired by everyone who has seen his calligraphy. I stood at the opposite end of the table. Mamú was seated in her place of honor, her lorgnette focused on the bridal couple, looking no different than if she were attending a premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House built by her princely spouse.