The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  During the intervening years I have frequently recounted my Iberian adventures in the presence of friends. People have said that I am a brilliant, indeed a peerless story-teller, the master of a rapidly expiring craft. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as human achievement, just as there is no true human guilt. Rather, we all act at all times in ways that, mysteriously, have been planned out for us. Thus, without fear of sounding pompous, I surely may be permitted here to display in its best light this particular facet of my talents, one which, by the way, never really compensates for my chronic blockheadedness. I practice this art and heaven-sent skill of mine in an era when its specialists can manage to earn a living at it only on the island of Ibiza. What is more, I am very particular about the circumstances under which I practice my craft. The setting for my performances is by no means always ideal. This is how I imagine the optimum surroundings: a comfortable easy chair, but one that doesn’t shift my center of gravity so far back that my ungainly body is unable to rise for climactic moments. A bottle of wine, some candy in a bowl—“No, thank you, I still haven’t taken up smoking”—good ventilation, and a small circle of friends. Women? If possible, and if they are pretty, all the better.

  I commence with a few introductory remarks, then with rapid strokes I sketch out the setting and add some people. At this point, while still offering a preliminary overview, I can easily get sidetracked. It often happens that an apparently tangential matter can become the main topic, simply because this or that aspect of the subject, some quirk or other that I had barely noticed up till now, suddenly engages my own attention so urgently that it subsequently turns into a complete, unified story. If I sense that my listeners are falling under my narrative spell, then this has a doubly energizing effect. I lose sight of my normal self and begin to embody all the roles that I intend to present in my tale. I turn into a young girl carrying a jar of oil on her head, or an ancient crone surrounded by a cloud of dust and moths that have eaten away the majestic robe she wanted to show off for me. Or I’m a man with an enormous hat, riding with ridiculous boots and spurs astride a puny jackass, a character who was none other than my own self—I mean the man, though in another tale I star as the ass.

  All such characters become flesh of my flesh. They are true, real, and believable. My talent for mimicry is equal to any imaginable subject. Even if I start out with a bald head—which in reality I don’t yet have—and eschew the makeup-artist’s rigamarole, I can conjure the image of a society dame’s towering coiffure. I do it with my fingers or something—I’m not really sure how. I can even do landscape. In my writings, this particular element of narration gets treated rather gingerly if at all (my reader will surely have noticed by now which world I am most at home in). But when I tell stories aloud, the physical surroundings around my characters take tangible shape, and it is here, as the effect of my own sorcery, that I begin to take notice of those surroundings myself. Just how do I do it? I don’t know. It all simply gushes forth like water from a rock touched by a staff. Good raconteurs have always had an air of magic and mystery about them. And we all know that the origins of poetry are to be found in the ancient creation of myth.

  To offer a concrete illustration of what I am trying to say: whenever I tell the story of our arrival on the island—and if the wine is good, if the chocolate is bittersweet (from the firm of Lindt, if I’m lucky), all this served up by a comely hand, and if the legs I see opposite me are of alluring shape—then the moment soon comes when with a single motion of my hand I consign Beatrice, Zwingli, and my friend Vigoleis to mute roles as observers of the ongoing drama. As if watching a cinematic closeup, my listeners now concentrate intently on my every move. I arise from my chair and push it back with my knees. My audience, sensing that I need space, spreads apart to allow me to move to the far side of the room. It is never necessary for me to leave the room entirely to produce the desired effect. I have an uncanny ability to stand against a wall and induce the impression that I am nowhere to be seen. When the moment arrives, all eyes are surprised to see me appear, as if I were stepping forth from behind stage scenery, or emerging from the wall itself, just as our double steps out of a mirror to greet us.

  Not long ago I had occasion to perform this scene by candlelight in the private quarters of my friend, the writer Talhoff. As before, I vanished from being into nothingness, and suddenly burst forth from nothingness into the quintessence of the woman I was portraying. As soon as the episode was over, my silent but extremely attentive listener could not restrain himself from crying out, “How does the sonofabitch do it!” Well now, the sonofabitch was already working on a second bottle of Orvieto from the private castle winery of the Marchesi Antinori. No wonder that my transincarnation had come off unusually well. Even without the aid of such an exquisite vintage, I am capable of appearing to everyone’s astonishment through that imaginary door. I am ready at any time to match my talent with that of, for example, Christine Brahe at Urnekloster in Rilke’s Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

  With a single word I indicate that all three of us have heard a noise behind that door, and that Vigoleis has taken his heart in both of his hands. Then I raise my right arm to form an obtuse angle. My lower arm is bent slightly forward, my hand with its raised palm and closed fingers hovers in the balance. Everyone sees a delicate, white hand, the one I am portraying, a hand that by pure coincidence resembles my own in beauty and proportionment—which only heightens the illusion, of course. Then I start walking, or rather striding, with my head raised—a beautiful woman’s head, so beautiful in fact that nobody reading these words will ever believe that my unsightly noggin could ever approximate its loveliness. This exquisite head then moves forward to the gentle rhythm of my steps and my extended hand carrying its imaginary vessel. My left hand holds up the hem of my robe, a brightly flowered albornoz. With each step of my right foot I offer my onlookers the glimpse of an immaculate alabaster limb underneath. The delicate pitter-patter you hear is the sound of my little golden slippers, not much larger than those worn by any fairy-tale princess you might think of. By hunching up my left shoulder and taking a deep breath I force my chest forward. No matter what I happen to be wearing—my housecoat, a colorful Portuguese peasant jersey, or a custom-tailored suit—the effect is just the same every time. A single suggestive word, and my audience observes the illusion of something that will, of course, remain decently concealed, but which surges forward beneath the play of cloth folds. One single additional motion, and these breasts would be as palpable as those of Simonetta Vespucci in the painting by the Florentine master Antonio del Pollaiuolo. Yet my reader must not forget that we are in Spain, where women reveal their bodily charms only sparingly. With every second step just a tiny bit of leg—no more than that.

  Just one more glimpse of whiteness, and I have reached the far end of our hallway. While making a careful balancing motion so as not to spill the contents of this red-and-gold-painted receptacle, I open a whitewashed door. Suddenly the ravishing vision has disappeared, and with her the chamber pot in her delicate, royal hand.

  The person referred to on preceding pages between unkind quotation marks as “bitch” or “uneducated individual,” the one we have blasphemously circumscribed (or perhaps circumvented) in analogy to the unnamed deity of the Old Covenant—this person has now made her entrance into Vigoleis’ applied recollections in a manner more stately than could possibly be imagined. Again Vigoleis took a deep breath, but this time it was not, as at the close of Chapter I, to fill his lungs with the air that wafted across the island. This time he inhaled a woman’s aroma, which beguiled the room he was sitting in. Then with both hands he took his heart, which was up in his throat and choking him, and pressed it back down into his chest.

  The child’s flesh, which had clung to his hand in the dark—if such a thing can happen with young flesh, then what must the fully mature flesh of the mother be capable of?

  If I hadn’t been sitting down, it certainly would have been my turn
to collapse onto a piece of luggage. Beatrice was staring ahead, and her eyes seemed not to focus on anything at all. But my dear bamboozled Zwingli—where have you gone all of a sudden?

  Our good friend, the male concubine, had fled the scene entirely.

  IV

  The sun appeared to be sweltering in the glare of its own light as, at the apex of midday, we stepped out on our street, which at this moment was living up to its official name. It was deserted, save for a few errant dogs and cats that were performing the service of public sanitation. Growling and hissing, they slunk into entryways and tugged out to the street the contents of garbage cans, cardboard boxes, and crushed paper bags. As we approached, they scattered. When the Calle de la Soledad emptied out on a square surrounded by decrepit buildings, we suddenly noticed, in the expanse of white dust, a crowd of teenage boys and a few ragged kids standing around a lanky young girl. She was dancing, egged on by wild shouts and the wheezy music of a squeezebox, flinging her naked arms upward amid a clattering of castanets. It was a colorful scene. I was just about to join the throng of young onlookers when there was a piercing scream, whereupon these other disturbers of the noontime peace also scattered to the four winds. The square was thus vacated for the passage of our little group à quatre.

  María del Pilar, as gorgeous in name as in figure, displaying her little Renaissance tummy in precisely the manner savored by Spanish swains (until, swelled up by the Good Lord’s annual blessing, it must be replaced by one having the proper proportions), and with the graceful prominence of her pointed breasts, anatomical features that might never spell profit for a corsetiere but could doubtless be abundantly cash-producing for the personage who sported them—

  Her Helvecio (a.k.a. Zwingli), so sleekly shaven that his face glistened like a blue shad in a running stream in his Confederated homeland. The man was groomed and, quite contrary to his occupation, clothed only in trousers, glistening white shirt, and white cord sandals, making the overall austere impression of a corpse on a catafalque; a handsome fellow of 25 at the side of a handsome woman who was but one minuscule year his senior—

  María del Pilar’s sister-in-law, enlisted as her bosom companion, a broad-minded guest in her darkened apartment: Doña Beatriz, trying rather awkwardly to synchronize her broad Northern European gait to the mincing steps of the individual who, here at least, shall pass without the faintest taint of quotation marks—

  And finally my humble self, her brother-in-law and would-be heart-throb, her premature obituarist, and the as yet unscathed victim of her connubial prowess: Don Vigo, who no doubt occupies her thoughts just as much as she does his…

  Thus this domestic quartet ambled across the square. But then Pilar, too, became aware of the musical entertainers. There was another scream, an echo of the first one but weaker, more like a sob from deep within, like a devout ejaculation uttered in abject despair. And just such an ejaculation it indeed must have been, for it contained the sacred names of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. All doubt of its reverent nature was removed by the sign of the cross she swiftly made with her right hand over her face, following it up immediately with the larger analogue of the same ritualistic gesture. My own mother used to go through the very same motions when proceeding through the Stations of the Cross—more sedately, to be sure, and with more deliberate gestures of self-benediction, while insisting that her little boy follow and do likewise. But there weren’t any Stations of the Cross here. In Barcelona I had noticed that gentlemen tipped their hats when passing a church, and ladies crossed themselves. But here, there wasn’t a church in sight. How silly of me to forget that this same symbolic gesture can be used to exorcise the devil or to ground a bolt of lightning! So many oddities and novelties had descended upon me since landing here—I ought to have anticipated such a twist as a public, gratuitous Declaration of Faith in the Triune God, delivered wholly without expectation of reward. And there I was, thinking that I knew all the ins and outs of Roman Catholicism, a cultural institution that, to be truthful, no longer enjoyed my allegiance.

  Keep your eyes and ears open, Vigoleis! For now you are living in a hyper-Catholic country, the selfsame land that perfected the Inquisition. Perhaps they will no longer escort you in hair shirt and devil’s cap to the gibbet—but be careful just the same! Beatrice, too, must be on her guard here, accosted as she already has been by a terrifying, fanatical glance on that boat on our way over here! Is it obvious from her looks that she is lacking a Catholic baptism? Once again, Vigoleis, take care! You are walking among religious fanatics, oh thou of no faith at all, in an exceedingly religious country. But hold! “Faithless Among the Faithful”—wouldn’t that be a dandy title for the diary you really ought to start writing now that you have begun a new life? A new external life, let it be stressed, for internally, in your heart and in your soul, let’s grant that there’s not much that can be done. Pursuant to the promise you made (permit me this gentle reminder!), do send soon a few diary quotes to your dear uncle, the Bishop in Münster who, prior to his summons to episcopal office, himself once traveled through Spain with a hiking staff and a beret that concealed his breviary. How comical were the tales he told of his extensive wanderings in mufti! And yet he can scarcely have ever found himself in such exciting Spanish company as his nephew at this moment, who, smooth-shaven and pressed to the nines, is on his way to buy a bed.

  A bed? Aren’t you and Beatrice going to reside in the Hotel Príncipe? Or have you decided, rather, to take up quarters in the Street of Solitude? If you are to be the house guests of María del Pilar, then doesn’t she have a guest room with sleeping facility? And what about that nail on Zwingli’s right pinky? Has it lost its magical efficacy? As is well known, the Little Cologne Helpers are wont to perform their lilliputian domestic favors only at nighttime. But of course there are always exceptions. Besides, they weren’t afraid of the light back there at the port of Palma. And Pilar’s apartment was just the place for doings in the dark.

  Earlier, as soon as the lovers had left the apartment by separate doors, each bearing a different burden in hand and mind, Beatrice had whispered to me, “What a frightful situation this is! Poor Zwingli! It’s enough to make you sick. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if what we have here isn’t a severe case of sexual bondage. When that happens, the victim just gives up taking baths.”

  “Oh come now, Beatrice, that’s nonsense! If everybody who forgets to take a bath is a sexual slave, then I’ll be forced to revise my concept of human freedom. Especially my own freedom, because I don’t always take baths either.”

  “This has nothing to do with you. And besides, you have a regenerating skin.”

  Like that of a Zulu, I thought, but kept the idea to myself so as not to press my luck.

  She was right. The situation we found ourselves in could well be described as frightful, particularly with regard to impending developments and threats of disaster. What is more, the situation was critical in more than one sense of the term. To be specific, the household budget was obviously in a terminal state. A third plunge into my trouser pocket, this time yielding a piece of paper currency, had materialized a midday meal, a feast that, it must be conceded, provided delectable proof that Pilar could be “superb” with the cooking spoon. How enormously talented she must be in bed—this I could easily gauge by the fact that Zwingli, an experienced gourmet compared to whose taste my own would then have best been termed porcine, regarded his paramour’s culinary skills as negligible. Today, incidentally, my standards of cuisine are rather different. My only continual failing in this regard is in the philology of the printed menu. I remain an easy mark for poetic designations of entrees that, once ordered and served, turn out to be nothing more than variations on the theme of the vulgar potato or some other miserable, proletarian vegetable. This happens even in hostelries that should be ashamed of such shameless sham. It’s just one more example of the degradation of elegance in our world.

  Here I shall interrupt the course of my memoirs only so long a
s it will take to report what Beatrice, in Schwyzerdütsch conversation with her kid brother, was able to squeeze out of him. I’d better let Beatrice do the reporting, even though it means shifting into indirect discourse. Her account will by no means stray from our main topic.

  Now then, we are already familiar with the “frightful situation”; likewise with the prevailing conditions of unwashedness. But above and beyond these givens:

  It was not possible, she told me, to achieve full clarity in the matter of Zwingli’s job at the hotel, though his professional connection there had not been officially terminated. Since he began cohabiting with the “individual,” he would betake himself every once in a while out to the Terreno where the hotel was located, just to see how things were going. Aha, thought Vigoleis upon hearing this. The philosopher Scheler had been right after all, when he responded to the Archbishop of Cologne, who had accused him of unvirtuous conduct, by asking His Eminence if he had ever seen a signpost that had ever gone in the direction it pointed to. There exist certain dictators who can lead entire nations from obscure positions far behind the scenes—why shouldn’t Zwingli, the boss in the brownish-yellow blouse, be able to direct the activities of his minions in their lily-white chemises? At the hotel everything was in good hands—that is, in the best of hands apart from his own. Specifically, things were in the hands of his friend Don Darío and a Baltic secretary. His salary was sent to his apartment with a certain degree of regularity, though at the moment a remittance was late in arriving, and thus he was a bit short and somewhat restricted in his movements; how embarrassing it was for him that we chose to arrive on the first of the month.