The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  As an example, let me cite the reaction of cloisters involving both sexes to a stern decree from the Republican government, stripping monks and nuns of the privilege of teaching school. Two religious orders housed on our street maintained separate educational institutions, for boys and for girls. We ran across nuns and monks every day, and exchanged greetings with them. I had many a stimulating chat with one or the other schoolmaster in front of our house. Those people were highly educated. I never spoke with any of the nuns, for that would have been sinful. Some of them were quite beautiful. They gazed out wanly from between the black blinders of their habits, revealing to an onlooker the passionate fires that were consuming them inwardly.

  The School Secularization Law was meant as a coup against the clerical orders. But all it did was create for them the simple problem of choosing the proper attire: off with the robes and habits, on with the middle-class duds. The Pope issued the proper licenses, while the Brothers and Sisters closed their schools for three days. They sailed to Barcelona and returned as bourgeois personalities: Señor González and Señorita Sánchez, Don José and Doña Carmen, the men wearing collars, neckties, and straw hats, the ladies in jacket and skirt or, for those with shaved heads, combination wig-hats. The political Left was furious; the Right was delighted. The satirical papers had a field day in all the parties. Then, as new elections approached and attempts were made to force a victory for the Right, everyone including the nuns had to step up to the ballot box. Even nuns living in lifelong seclusion were given a free day, and re-emerged into God’s sunlight. They instantly became the butt of jokes, but they took all this with dignity and recitations of the Rosary.

  Clothes make the man—and they make for hostility, too. In Mulet’s tertulia the politicking now became hot and heavy, opinion clashing against opinion. As far as internal Spanish problems were concerned, I stayed out of these quarrels, explaining that I had even less comprehension of such matters than the members of the Cortes themselves. But when the subject of the Third Reich came up, I leaped willingly into the fray.

  After Pedro disappeared like a thief in the night, we sat for a long time at the edge of the well and listened. The constellation of Orion was still up there in all its eternal glory, but the night sounds were different. That is, they now had a different meaning. There were gunshots. We heard shouts, children whimpered, dogs started barking. The night around us and below us was speaking to us, but no longer in the familiar language of island nights. Not long before this, I had translated a passage in Pascoaes’ Saint Paul about the rampaging Saul of Tarsus, a passage that the publisher Rascher’s bumbling Leipzig affiliate had taken for a caricature of the Propaganda Apostle Goebbels: “He broke into houses, took the occupants captive, convicted them, and threw them into prison. He was acting as a criminal in the name of the law.” The Disciple Goebbels was likewise breaking into houses, taking captives, and killing them in the name of Audhumla, the Primeval Cow. On the island of Mallorca, mass murder was occurring in the name of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. That is just how the flag-wavers behaved: they took prisoners and killed them by the thousands—no one has ever calculated how many thousands. The other side, the Red side, killed in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. All of them were on a rampage in the name of the Fatherland. Isn’t that what it’s all about, justifying what we are doing by doing it in the name of what is nameless?

  Our island was the scene of the Spanish War’s most dreadful carnage. The butchery committed by Right and Left on the mainland was nothing when compared to the Divine Scourge that descended upon the Balearics. There was no escape. Everybody on the lists was cut down. You couldn’t get through to your political allies on the other side; you were sitting in a trap. The initial salvo of the pronunciamiento caused the island to collapse into the hands of the Catholic General Staff, which proclaimed a Holy War. It was a sudden regression to the Middle Ages. The coup on Mallorca was ignited by a no doubt authentic grandee, Marqués de Zayas, who together with some accomplices was imprisoned in San Carlos Fortress for having planted a bomb at the Trade Union headquarters. He was liberated, and from that moment on he was a rampaging Saul. I have no idea whether he ever turned into a Saint Paul.

  War, the Holy War Against the Saracens, as it was called on the island, had erupted. But no matter how holy a war is, no matter which side claims that God is on its side, no war can go on without gold. The contributions poured in, and whoever refused to contribute voluntarily was shot. Liturgical vessels, some of them of the high-karat variety, were melted down together with secular utensils and sent to the German Führer, who promised to deliver warplanes, weapons, and all kinds of technical assistance. The Third Reich, constantly in search of foreign trade, delivered promptly, but of course only such goods as it had no need for at home. I saw Heroes of the Iron Cross, sporting their uniform buckles with the blasphemous motto Gott mit uns, which neatly matched the maxim proclaimed by Franco: “To die in battle is the highest honor. One dies only once. Death comes painlessly, and dying is not as terrible as it looks. It is more terrible to go on living as a coward. Long live Spain! Long live Christ the King! Long live Franco!”

  An old priest, well known as a preacher at the Cathedral, thought rather differently. That is to say, he had grown so senile in his service to the Creator that he couldn’t think at all any more, and that was his undoing. He mounted the Cathedral pulpit and preached. All his life long he had done nothing besides preach. He had a reputation for being a gripping speaker—a Spanish Monsignor Donders. Many thousands had already been murdered, and the killing went on like the war itself, week after week, as wars tend to do. The combatants were unable to stop. Besides, the problem of available gold hadn’t been solved; there were negotiations with representatives of worldly and celestial powers. In the midst of all this, appealing to the fateful message of Christ, Monseñor uttered the even more fateful admonition: “Thou shalt not kill!”

  Two young brats, members of the Boys’ Militia in paramilitary uniforms showing genuine Mallorquin-embroidered Sacred Heart insignias with their divine shooting arrows—these two kids nudged each other and said to each other, “This is sabotage! If these people listen to him, it’s all over with God’s cause!” They screamed up to the pulpit, “Shut your trap, you old fart! It’s our turn now!”

  The priest, confused as he was, made further appeals to the Lord, just as he had been taught at the seminary 60 years earlier. And lo, he had learned nothing more since then. What is more, God was apparently no longer with him. These two jerks, 13 or 14 years old, like all such little pissers the Great Hope of their Fatherland, tore him down from his pulpit, put their fists to his nose, and dragged him past the silent congregation to the Cathedral portal. The gunshots echoed down the ranks of pews. Holy Mass continued, and when it was over the Bishop blessed the Lord’s appointed executioners. In all nations and at all times, sabotage is in wartime a capital offense. During the period in question, the harried Bishop of Mallorca could scarcely keep up with all the blessings he had to perform. He blessed everything: Italian and German airplanes; Italian and German sailors; the nightly death squads; the Italian warrior Conte di Rossi; the hydrocephalic German steel helmets that not even Nazi heads could fit into; and the streets that, as in all revolutions, were renamed in the interest of posterity, whereas it seems to me that it would be smarter to memorialize heroic deeds in brain cells à la Professor Wernicke. But then again, revolutions are never smart.

  The Bishop kept on blessing all kinds of things. Christians who neglected their Easter Duty were shot, including those who lost the written confirmation that was sent through the mail. Holy Mother Church prevailed. She was never as powerful as now, yet at the same time She never trembled before Her own power so much as during the Holy War on Mallorca. The killing went on out of fear. The archepiscopal prelate kept on blessing out of fear, the same Prince of the Church whom Bernanos pillories in his book on Mallorca, Les grands cimitières s
ous la lune. But instead of calling this man of the Church an outright criminal or a Grand Inquisitor, as I would have done, the French writer identifies him with this even more baneful appellation: Le personnage que les convenances m’obligent toujours à nommer son Excellence l’évèque-archivèque de Palma. This man was the very same fellow, His Eminence Don José, to whom my uncle in Münster had written a letter of recommendation on my behalf. When I began to notice in which direction the Mallorcan winds of danger were blowing, I fished out this handwritten missive and henceforth carried it with me at all times. It was the most helpful report card I have ever received in my whole life: Propinquus meus, oriundus ex familia vere catholica (post-1933: a-catholica) officiis catholicis semper optime satesfecit (My uncle had a marvelous way of interpreting a Catholic’s “duties”) et dignus est ut in omnibus suis studiis adiuvetur. This letter, countersigned by the exalted personage mentioned in Bernanos’ book, and with an ecclesiastical seal affixed, proved to be more effective than any bullet-proof vest. But it wasn’t the Spaniards who wanted to kill me. It was the Nazis. The two of us, Beatrice and I, were on the list of those to be executed, hand in hand as in a wedding photo.

  There are times when people who don’t believe in God, and thus cannot be expected to knife their fellow men in the name of the Lord, can incur the hatred of believers and fall prey to their lust for murder. This was the situation on our island as the woeful fanatics of the faith mounted their trials of heretics. These were the same men and boys who during Holy Week, garbed in penitent robes and with their hoods pointed devoutly toward Heaven, accompanied the Blessed Sacrament through the town, gazing furtively at the pretty girls on the sidewalks while the ladies standing on the piously decorated balconies competed with one another in coquettish devotion to the Lamb of God. Do those guys with the hoods on really believe in God? Are those boys with the Sacred Heart on their shirts the same ones who have been tossing their Dads and Moms into wells and heaving stones on top? A moot question. Whoever loves God and the Fatherland but is unwilling to strangle Dad and Mom if they are against God and Fatherland—that person is unworthy to go on living beneath God’s benevolent sun. That’s why I am reluctant to judge the murderers of Mallorca. They simply made me uncomfortable.

  When we went to Mamú’s house, she was in the company of several Christian Science ladies, and it was the day after Pedro’s visit with us in Génova. She would love to have embraced us both, but her age and her corpulence—the abundance of good food had caused her to gain weight, although her kidneys were in working order—prevented her from doing this. She told us that she had written us notes, sent out emissaries, and mobilized her chauffeur, all to no avail—we were unaccounted for. People on the street where we used to live said, “Those two? They were liquidated on the very first night!”

  Mamú went into a panic. She was Jewish! It wasn’t the Spaniards she was afraid of, but the German agents, and… and… She didn’t dare to take a closer look at some of her ladies who, in addition to the swastika, had embroidered the Sacred Heart and the Fasces on their blouses. At the time in question, everyone carried with him his own talisman. Was my episcopal letter from Münster any better? I have long since forgiven these ladies. They loved Jesus, but also Hitler. They were just too feminine to feel otherwise.

  In such surroundings, Mamú could not remain safe. I considered her household nanny, who was never devoted to Jesus but all the more fervently devoted to Hitler, as a particularly dangerous kind of domestic company. We urged her: “Mamú, get out of here!”

  All the various countries had alerted their consulates. The foreigners were leaving the island in droves. The hotels were either empty or were requisitioned as prisons. Mallorca’s ideal climate was now in the service of the Holy War. There was not a drop of rain, and at all the places where earlier you could see bare-ass foreigners reclining on the beach or swimming, you now saw reclining or floating corpses, equally bare-ass. The banks closed their counters; foreign accounts were frozen. When a man named Vigoleis went to the savings bank to get some emergency cash—it wasn’t much, but it would have sufficed for six months at the Casa Inés—he was told that his money had already been withdrawn for the Holy War, and he was asked if he was perhaps not in favor of the Holy War. Vigoleis replied that he was a German, and a Catholic. The bank manager, whose office he reached by telling this series of lies, shook his hand warmly. Now we were penniless. I didn’t even have the fare for the tram to get me back to Génova, so I went there on foot. I had ceased to exist as a capitalist. Strangely enough, I still didn’t realize that I had no right to go on existing at all.

  One look at me, and Beatrice understood right away that we were poor once again. Despite all the various faces that Heaven has granted me, I am unable to pretend. You only have to look at me when I am telling the truth to tell that I really ought to be lying. That’s when I blush. To quote St. Augustine, I am one of those stupid men who never have to take back anything they have spoken.

  Bankruptcy! It was our old, familiar domestic affliction, one that we had almost got ourselves accustomed to. We didn’t go to pieces as a result. Worse yet was what I observed in Palma before making the trek back to Génova. I had gone to our old apartment to retrieve a few things. Our avenida was swarming with firearms, and those brandishing them were mostly young kids. The Holy War had evolved into a fracas involving adolescents. Cannons were set in place, and machine guns were aimed at exits and entryways along the entire street. I was halted repeatedly and asked to show my papers. I pulled out my episcopal letter of recommendation, and offered explanations. “Foreigner?” these squirts started asking. Yes, a Catholic from Germany. “Heil Hitler,” they then shouted, and let me pass. Hitler and the Pope were the two-armed General Franco’s great models. No wonder, then, that his pimply-faced minions revered them too. Moreover, the Germans had sent their special General Faupel to Madrid, where he was instructed to hold up Franco by both of his arms—which was apparently necessary. But why was there such a rattling of sabers on this particular street?

  Opposite our house stood the Main Headquarters of the Blue Shirts, the Falange. For a brief moment I felt a chill in the seat of my lily-white linen pants, although it was 102 degrees in the shade of this Holy War. But I collected myself and strode quickly and proudly into our house. At the top of the stairs I ran into the woman who lived in the apartment to the right of us next door, to whom we had failed to make the customary initial visit when occupying the place. She ran down toward me several steps, grabbed my arm, and told me to open our blinds on the street side immediately: there were snipers, and closed blinds were a target. She was the wife of a Falange officer. She had informed the Falange boss that the next-door apartment was occupied by a German who had gone off on vacation to the mountains, and that she would guarantee the security of the building. But now, near twelve noon, the deadline was almost up. If by then all the blinds were not open, they would start shooting. There were just a few minutes left. I ran into our apartment, raced to our windows, and threw open the blinds. In the Blue House on the other side of the street they had already set up a machine gun on the top floor. I didn’t like this kind of punctuality. A Spaniard who is ready to shoot today instead of tomorrow—how very odd! I saluted across the street, and the kids saluted back. It was like ships passing in the night.

  I packed a few books, took with me the beginning of my translation of Jerome with the intention of continuing this Pascoaes work in Génova, pinned one of my pretentious business cards to the door, turned the lock four times, stuck some clumps of wax here and there as a security measure, and left the menacing neighborhood.

  Once a day, in keeping with my sound digestive regularity, I stepped out with newspaper in hand into the Princess’s cactus grove. At the same time, another man, our neighbor the sailor, whose digestion was apparently coordinated with mine, also approached the rows of cactus. This spiky venue, conducive to discreet soul-searching, was large enough to permit visitors to avoid speaking with
one another if that was what they wished. But rather than wishing to avoid each other, the two of us sought each other out. The old seadog kept me informed about developments of the insurrection. I combined what he told me with events I witnessed myself, wrote some war reportage and sent my articles to foreign newspapers. To get this done we had to go to the harbor in Palma, where Beatrice made friends with sailors on foreign warships who, for a few cigarettes, agreed to deliver my letters. Evading the censors in this way was a capital offense, but that didn’t prevent us from sending off reports once a week. Apart from my sailor friend, I learned all I needed to know about the crusade against the infidels from a well-placed personage in Palma. To raise the Cross of Christ it takes people who aren’t deterred by thousands of other crosses. On Mallorca, there were plenty of people like that. And I figured that this, too, had to be reported openly.

  Bobby occasionally came to visit, just as in peacetime. Life went on in the daytime, whereas the nights were devoted to bloodshed. Bobby had witnessed a thing or two in Valldemosa, up in the mountains of his new homeland. Doña Clara sent a message, saying that if we had nothing more to eat we should go to her place and await the end of the war in her hospedage. Where there was food for a group of twelve, two more hungry mouths wouldn’t bring about starvation. But we still had a little money, and Doña Inés’ sardine cans hadn’t been used up yet.

  After several weeks, when Bobby returned telling tales of more horror, he found us emaciated. Our money was gone, our bank account was frozen, the sardine cans were empty, and the jug of oil was down to the last half-inch. For three weeks we had been living on tea, vineyard snails, and prickly pears. It was a stroke of luck that Doña Inés’ rock garden was crawling with snails, if one is willing to accept the word ‘crawling’ as referring statically to the great multiplicity, and not dynamically to the back-and-forth weaving and slithering of these tasty creatures. By day they were invisible; like the crusading gangsters, they emerged from their hiding places only at night. While all around us we could hear the death squads in action, while motorcycles roared, and while the populace of the island was getting thinned out according to the perceived degree of Christian faith, or lack of the same, the two of us searched the ground for snails using dimmed candles. One night Bobby took a snail census: he knew exactly how many there were, and figured out their marching routes and crossways. The mollusks had long since ceased being a delicacy, but now, just as in an emergency the Devil will eat flies, we hunted down our creepy-crawlies. Our Folkwang huntsman Bobby, absolutely convinced of his prowess, led me to the places where his calculations told him we could still locate the animals: four underneath that potsherd, two under that moldy cactus leaf, seven under the jagged agave, and two more down near their copulation stone. He would snatch them blindly, if our sailor neighbor hadn’t already squished them with his feet. Our neighbor, however, had done just that, and so all of a sudden we came up with no snails at all. But wait, Bobby said. Let’s not be so pessimistic. There was one more snail out there, he said, and since on occasion he was able to hear his own beard growing, we were confident that he would get on the trail of our very last snail. We had just one match left to cook our last meal. This was one of those Southern nights that are luminescent, and snail trails also glow in the dark. But after a full hour Bobby returned minus a catch, his face flushed with frustration. I went out in the garden myself to try my luck. Nothing doing. Our last snail had got the jump on us, and we couldn’t catch up.