The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  In the summer of the year 1601, Archduke Albrecht of Austria, the Spanish viceroy in the Netherlands, took up the siege of the city of Ostende. Isabella, who as daughter of Philip II of Spain had presented the Netherlands to her consort Albrecht as a dowry, vowed never to change her chemise until the city had surrendered to the Spanish army. Albrecht’s incentive to bring the siege to a rapid and victorious end was therefore very great, but the princess had underestimated the power of the Ostenders to hold out. The siege ended on the 20th of September, 1604 A.D., with a Spanish victory. Princess Isabella had thus worn her blouse for more than three years, offering proof of her patriotism and moral rectitude. There were solemn fanfares as she publicly dipped her blouse in a washtub. It turned the suds an inky color that today bears her name: a brownish-whitish-yellow tint like café-au-lait, known as “isabella.”

  Surely no one will doubt the truth of this traditional account, insofar as the precise coloration is concerned. I myself regard the background circumstances also as authentic. Who might ever have profited from inventing such a story? Or perhaps “legend corrects history,” as Pascoaes says. I can only agree with him.

  Historical authenticity on the one hand, with its dry and rarefied scholarly mission, or on the other hand, legend as leaven for poetic truth: both impulses have combined most effectively here to help describe—but my reader will have guessed what I was getting at—Zwingli’s shirt. It was of “isabella” shade from top to bottom, save for blackish areas on collar and underarms. Had Zwingli, too, taken a vow? Had he pledged himself to someone in eternal grubbiness? Was he besieging something or someone, or was he perhaps himself under a state of siege? The subsequent course of events will provide historical answers to all these questions.

  Earlier, as we were driving to this domicile where “she” was reported to be so superb in bed, Zwingli had waxed progressively more subdued and fainthearted. This fact, together with the fruitless reach of his hand into his bottomless pants pocket, had led me to conclude that the uneducated “individual” who was as yet unnamed, or whose identity was being anxiously circumscribed like the One and Only God of Hebrew Scripture—that this person must be a powerful force indeed. And here inside the apartment I received further confirmation of this conjecture. Zwingli’s shirt, plus the kitsch hanging on the walls—whoever could put up with such menaces must be in possession of superhuman strength.

  I might have gone down to defeat at the sight of Princess Isabella’s chemise, but I am invulnerable to kitsch. More than that, I love kitsch wherever it is appropriate, which is to say, wherever it fulfills the purpose it is without doubt intended to serve. The important thing, of course, is to understand what that purpose is. The fact that we as yet don’t know what its overall objective is, need not deter us from our research. Why, even today, we still have no idea why the common flea, the crabgrass of the fields, or mankind itself stands in the midst of Creation. Were we ever to find out, then at that very hour everything would lose its poetic or religious meaning. I regard myself as so immune to kitsch that I would even permit Paulus Potter’s Bull to hang in my study with no danger to my soul. I have just cited an enormously famous work, one that I consider a classic example of the genre.

  The longer Zwingli remained silent, all the louder did those reproductions on the walls speak to me.

  “Nothing to eat around here?”

  This question, posed by Beatrice although it had been bothering me for quite some time too, put some life back in my brother-in-law. Fruit in a picture frame is lovely to look at, but it remains nature morte and in the long run cannot satisfy even the birds that occasionally peck at well-painted grapes. In reply Zwingli put both hands in his pants pockets and pulled them outward in the manner of a circus clown. So I made my second dive for loose pesetas and dribbled a handful on the table.

  “Is this what you’re looking for? Go ahead, help yourself!” Money rules the world right down to the tiniest corner of our planet, right here to the darkest Street of Solitude. Money can get you anything. Kings and popes have groveled in the dust before it. All that matters is the purchasing power we assign to those thirty pieces of silver. If the scribes and high priests had taken back the blood money, Judas Iscariot would never have strung himself up in a fig tree.

  I have seldom observed the power of silver as on that morning when it breathed new life into the ebbing Zwingli. It was clear that with my transfusion of cash, I wasn’t mistaken in the blood type. Zwingli took the pesetas and stepped over to the window. As he opened the shutters, light, air, dust, and noise flooded the room. He let out a sharp whistle, shouted a few words down to the street, and threw the money down after. This performance impressed me, even though it was taking place at my expense. That’s how the powerful of this world act at great moments in history: they show themselves on balconies and toss gold to the rabble.

  “Are the masses standing assembled down there?” I was about to ask, but before we heard any “Huzzahs!” or “Long lives!” the sovereign ruler closed the shutters, and our silent vigil could continue. I’m told that people sit around like this in the waiting rooms of maternity wards. Well then, let’s wait for the event that, if our luck continues, is bound to be another miscarriage. “Shall I make some coffee? Where’s your kitchen?” Beatrice didn’t want to stay idle, but her offer was refused.

  “Coffee is on its way. I ordered it from across the way at the club. Our kitchen is over there.” Zwingli pointed his thumb at a narrow door in one corner. “But she’s going to want to use it right away. I mean, it’s still so goddam early!”

  Meanwhile it was nine o’clock, quite early indeed in a country where evening begins at midnight and where most people, like the pigs, sleep well into the daylight hours.

  Although the two siblings had much to say to each other, they had not yet had a private discussion. Were they inhibited by my presence? Hardly, for over the years I had become just as much a part of their extended family as my reader is doing at this very moment. Even so, I didn’t quite fit this melting-pot of a family—though I don’t mean to imply that my role was supposed to be that of a simple metal lid. No, for the proper fit I had to be ground to size like an engine valve: a dash of emery powder, a few drops of oil, and the rest is taken care of by rotary motion.

  “No mail from Basel?”

  Beatrice began talking about their mother.

  I stood up and walked across the room. In the background was a third door I hadn’t noticed before. It was partially hidden by one of the palm stands, and wasn’t easily recognizable as a door because its surface blended in with the whitewashed walls. I thought it would probably lead to that special place one could enter without asking. So I opened it and disappeared without ado into even more intense darkness. Brother and sister, their tongues finally unstuck, had started a conversation. Beatrice was using French, and that meant that matters were serious. Zwingli took refuge in Spanish. That’s all I heard, and then I closed the door behind me and stole away as if not wanting to disturb lovers in a tête-à-tête that could make or break their affair. Inwardly surrounded by a murkiness seldom pierced by a ray of light, from childhood on I have been a successful if rather timid groper in the dark. Now this compensatory talent once again came into its own. The wall along which I was fingering my way was rough to the touch, and was probably whitewashed also. I felt a doorframe, then a door that was slightly ajar, inviting me inside. It seemed the natural exit from a narrow corridor that led, or so I believed, to a larger room. The door was of the type with a hinged fold down the center, and when I put my shoulder to the outer panel it stuck a bit, shook, and rattled. As I entered the new premises the gloom became even more impenetrable. Out of habit I felt the wall for a light switch. There was none.

  When one of the senses fails, another will take over the job. I was sightless, and so I began using my nose. How wise of Mother Nature to arrange things this way! And what now entered my nostrils—Vigoleis, that’s something familiar! When you were a boy it intox
icated you, and now—just sniff it! It is the fragrance of natural body vapors, veiled by dried petals of rose and violet to minimize their deleterious effects on clothing. Vigoleis, no matter how vigorously you whiff and scent and snort, what you are smelling is none other than the sweat of a woman’s armpits, and she is right near you, and that urge you are beginning to feel, I understand it only too well, at such an early hour and in such a strange place, what can this possibly lead to, and now, led by the nose one step farther into the darkness, oh Lord, he’s standing next to the bed!

  Once as a boy, befuddled by a licentious tumult of his senses, he secretly pursued a housemaid, and while following the scent, was discovered by his mother. Mothers don’t approve of such things, and when it comes to housemaids and fleshly impulses, they have ineradicable prejudices. But instead of thrashing him as he had expected, this protectress of filial chastity placed certain obstacles in the path of further premature sexual encounters. This brought on feelings of estrangement that Vigoleis bore with him until long after he had outgrown his steamy knickers.

  Vigoleis groped along some more, and there—it felt like warm calfskin, something moist and soft. It was naked flesh, and it rose warmly, nay hotly, to his touch. His breathing stopped. Then the flesh twitched, Vigoleis withdrew his hand, but the flesh remained in his hand as if by magnetism. And then a naked arm threw itself around his neck, and then a word met his ears that he couldn’t understand. It sounded as bright as silver, and caused the intruder to shiver. He was overcome. He fled.

  Amid stumblings and bumpings I found my way back to the room where Beatrice was talking heart-to-heart with her brother. Zwingli had tears in his eyes. They had shifted into Schwyzerdütsch, the language of their childhood.

  “Zwingli, what’s going on here? Who are you holding captive back there in the little room?”

  “Captive? Quelle drôle d’idée! That’s her kid!”

  Down below, the doorknocker rapped twice. We heard footsteps on the stair. There was a knock at the apartment door, and Zwingli opened. A man stepped in, identifiable by his uniform as a waiter. He was of medium height, well-groomed, with a handsome face and pleasant manners. His jacket was a blinding white dotted with gold buttons. He brought coffee, which he poured from a copper espresso pitcher, and warm pastry—the famous ensaimadas, an island specialty, a local product which the Mallorcans are almost prouder of than of their greatest son, the poet, mystic, philosopher, and martyr to his own so-called Lullian Art, Ramón Llull. I would soon fall in love with both—the delectable pastry and the ars magna of Raimundus.

  Antonio—the name of this waiter who was later to become our rescuer—was on intimate terms with Don Helvecio who, after introducing us, clapped him several times rapidly on the shoulder as if summoning up his own courage. Antonio spoke some broken French, so I was able to join the conversation for a while until they all lapsed back into Spanish. I was in the minority.

  The wheel on Zwingli’s mill was once again in motion, the sluice gates were open and things began to revolve. His nostrils flared, he snorted like a horse, his right hand spread out like a fan. The nail on his pinky was set for further action. Whether it was the coffee or Antonio’s superior presence, the depression seemed to have left him—and the rest of us too. The air was suddenly clear again. Even the solitary fly had come in for a landing and was slurping up a spartan breakfast consisting of a tiny grain of sugar. Peace and harmony reigned supreme. Why, when such tranquility is possible on a small scale, cannot the nations of the world achieve it in the large?

  There we sat, enjoying the repast, though still rumpled from our nocturnal voyage. But who cared? I no longer thought of taking a bath at the Príncipe, and Beatrice too had probably forgotten that we were supposed to be standing—or with somewhat better luck sitting—at a deathbed. Was she happy to have found her brother, if indeed in a ruined state, then at least not breathing his last? Dirt can be washed away, and one can raise up the inner man to new ideals over which death has no dominion. Would we be leaving by the next ship, or perhaps staying on for just a few days? Let’s find out what the two of them are thinking.

  “You see, Baby…” Zwingli opted for the English language to explain how his plan had developed. He was great at developing plans, that I knew. He was a veritable genius at envisioning things on a grand scale, but with the details of implementation he was an utter failure. He could hold his own with women in the plural, but with individual women he invariably went on the skids. He began his explanation plainly and soberly, with just a touch of impishness. But soon he donned the verbal cloak of man of the future, so much so that we were no longer anything but an audience for him, an amorphous crowd to be fed a big line and eventually, against our will and instinct, to be talked into agreeing with him totally. “You see…,” and we truly saw. That is the amazing thing about people with such oratorical gifts. For a little while, we can actually be won over by their prestidigitation. We follow with our own eyes as the buxom lady is sawn in half in her wooden box.

  Back in Cologne I had observed Zwingli in superb form. After a lecture by Professor Brinkmann, we returned to my room to discuss a scholarly problem mentioned by that distinguished art historian. Zwingli knew almost all the art museums in Europe, having shepherded around rich people from the States, and especially from South America, as a tourist guide. His “Tours of the Old World Galleries,” which he had organized for groups of seldom more than twelve and with the help of various travel bureaus, were well known and very popular. Over the years they netted him quite a thick wad, which he promptly squandered on women or gave away to struggling artists who acknowledged his kindness with gifts of their own work. His private collection, called “Works of Neglected Genius,” was respectable. Where it ever ended up the devil only knows. The knowledge of art history he amassed in this fashion would be the envy of any university doctoral candidate, as was also true of the instructional material he collected for himself. Whenever he stayed for more than a couple of months in a university town, he would sign up for courses in art history and write down reams of commentary and analysis in preparation for the time when he, too, would be a Professor of Art History. That was his life’s ambition, and he took as his model the great inventor of the discipline, his own distant relative and ancestor Jacob Burckhardt.

  But, still, and yet… Whichever opening qualifier we might choose, the fact remains that Zwingli never got his longed-for professorship. The reason was that he applied for it in the wrong field. For not only was he an extraordinary, fully informed, and much-sought-after cicerone in Old-World Collections. He likewise commanded the most astonishing expertise, down to the nicest details of filigree, in the bedrooms of the same metropolises through which he guided so many wealthy devotees of art and beauty. And the art and beauty he got to observe in such places, whose price of admission was usually quite considerable, was not in all cases free of contamination. Because Zwingli never would praise or show a work of art that he didn’t know beforehand, he soon fell victim to certain intérieurs that he admired so much on the canvases of the French Impressionists.

  Here over coffee and ensaimadas, and wearing his shirt of historical hue, standing before two exhausted victims who meant the world to him—here he spread out before us a congeries of projects that would affect our future on the island. To wit: he was planning, with the aid of an American millionaire, to establish an International Institute of Fine Arts, and he wanted us as collaborators. He had already worked out all the details. It was to be an enterprise of such imposing proportions that these days not even Unesco could bring into being. I shall return to this project presently, when I describe the nucleus of the establishment on the Calla Caltrava, where it threatened to degenerate into a lupanar and where art verily became impoverished. But as for the immediate future, i.e., what we were to do once we rose from this improvised breakfast table—not one word! It was possible that he had talked over this trivial matter with his sister while my own hands had been otherwise occupied
.

  “I intend to establish, as an adjunct to the Institute, an academy for the selection and training of nude models. Beautiful bodies are not sufficient for a painter; they must know how to utilize their anatomy, and this they will learn at our academy. I also intend to mount a campaign against the prejudice that nude models meet up with practically everywhere. Down here you can’t even get a prostitute to sit for you. Women of all classes will soon regard it as a personal and professional honor to be listed in my files with all their anatomical and aesthetic qualifications and idiosyncrasies!”

  “And you, you sly old lecher-in-law,” I could not resist interjecting, “you’ll be the meat inspector for your international model-selection bureau. You have a practiced eye and an excellent grasp of womanhood—just as long as they don’t have you by the…”

  “Not just a good grasp, my dear Vigoleis! Women are a full half of my life…”

  “Sure. The half that lies below the belly-button. And with you, no matter how a mathematician or a geometer might object to the phrase, with you that is the greater half. The other half of you has other preoccupations—art, for example, or at least the visual kind of art. And maybe the Hotel Príncipe Alfonso. Or was that a vehicle from your private motor pool that drove us up the ramp here?”

  How rude of me, in light of that classy transportation and the clever style of breakfast, to express doubts about the way he divided up his interests. Zwingli no doubt was about to floor me with a snappy rejoinder. But before he could come out with it, we all heard a noise coming from behind the door that had led me to the enchanting darkroom. This was the prelude to a brand new episode. We didn’t have a revolving stage, and we could already hear the preparations going on backstage for the ensuing scene, but this only heightened our suspense. From two sources of knowledge—from Vigoleis himself who experienced the drama as co-actor, and from my superior perspective as narrator—I am aware of what is about to happen. Otherwise I would now be pressing my hands to my heart, just as I did following the shock I felt in the sleeping girl’s bedchamber. And already I had to steel myself for a new set of confusions. The door opened, and in came…