The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  It must have taken us three hours to trudge along the bay to Santa Catalina, the working-class suburb of Palma, then through the village El Terreno with its high-class villas owned by foreigners, then onward and onward on the road to Andraitx and the cliff. At a turn in the path we finally spotted it. Far below us lay the tiny harbor. The sea sparkled with a silvery luster. The cliff rose majestically ahead of us. Just a half-hour more and we would be standing at our diving board ready for the launch.

  But “standing” is not the appropriate word after such a strenuous on-the-double march. Once we arrived at the edge of the precipice we would have to rest for a while and take stock of things before taking a dive out of our misery. At the time, there were no such things on Mallorca as catapults for suicidal individuals; the Tourist Office was holding these back until there was official approval of the new gambling casino. This meant that we would have to take recourse to the launching trick used by the bats. Nature knows how to give a helpful shove to the have-nots of this world: we would just let ourselves drop, because afterwards we wouldn’t need to scramble back up the promontory.

  As soon as we caught sight of our fateful cliff, there also came into our view a certain building, a large palace with a free-standing tower resembling a campanile, covered by what looked like a gigantic parasol. It was the Hotel “Príncipe Alfonso.” Is it any wonder that we slowed down our pace? We began scenting like wild game, but what kind of danger were we facing? So we proceeded on our way. We had made a decisive break with Zwingli, so what further concern was he to us? We strode onward. Neither of us had thought about the “Príncipe” when we started out on our journey toward death. But—why should we bother at all about that hotel, and anyway…

  It never rains but it pours. For our part, we had already compiled an entire anthology of misfortunes; porra and puta had descended upon us with a vengeance, we had come face to face with syphilis. So we had no reason to be surprised that the man who was the cause of this final journey of ours was standing in the doorway of his building at the precise moment when we, with our oft-proven somnambulistic timing, chose to pass by—or rather to sneak by, if our linguistic purists are willing to accept the word “sneak” as a description of forward motion with heads held high. For we refused, damn it all to tarnation, to lower our heads on this final trek, and thus we forged ahead step by deliberate step without so much as glancing at that relative with these eyes of ours that were on the verge of becoming sightless for good.

  “Olá! Hey! You two! Bice, Vigo, what are you doing here? Out hiking in this heat? You’re going to get sunstroke!”

  Zwingli had more to say. In fact, he gave a whole speech. But having begun with American slang, the remainder of his warning palaver got submerged in Swiss gutterals. We had already crossed the barrier into the realm of real danger, and were deaf to any shouted warnings. Other voices were calling to us, and we were following them.

  But then there was a dashing of hasty footsteps behind us, and we felt as if we were being accosted in public. Zwingli caught up with us, grabbed each of us by the arm, split us apart, and it was no help at all that Beatrice kept saying “Stop it, please!” or “Just go away!” or whatever one says under such circumstances—I don’t remember her exact words. Nor do I recall the Urtext of Zwingli’s attempt to drag information out of us. What were we doing out here? Had we or had we not come this way with the intention of seeking him out? I felt acutely embarrassed by this washing of the family laundry on a public thoroughfare—perhaps not so rare a spectacle in Spain, but decidedly infra dig for the likes of us Northerners. I hate scenes of any kind; I am much too decadent for robust yelling and gesticulating. Let the two of them go off into the bushes somewhere to deal with their family dirt. But these scrubby pines, one every ten meters or so along the roadway, were public property. Be that as it may, my dear Vigoleis, mustn’t you now admit that when your final journey was so unpleasantly interrupted, you were concerned more about yourself than about Zwingli’s sister?

  Zwingli’s behavior makes this question a moot one. He made short work of the two stubborn would-be suicides. He quickly turned both of us around abruptly and whisked us off to his hotel, at first meeting with vigorous resistance, then less and less, until finally there was none at all. He dominated us with his well-fed physical strength and his iron will-power, trained in the school of Pelmanism, and in the end we just caved in. Such is the origin of any and all moral aberration. Viewing the situation in retrospect, I have concluded that anyone contemplating suicide ought first to enjoy a hearty breakfast, if possible with champagne. And one should give consideration to the digestive system, so as to obviate any necessity of emergency measures on this score. Only then might one proceed toward the inevitable. For otherwise—and exactly this happened in our case—some free-roaming brother or other can easily bring your best-laid plans to nought. You will go as limp as a virgin after stammering prayerfully for the third time, “Oh, please don’t stop!” She means, of course, her own courage against her adversary, but her adversary thinks she means him, and straightaway the deed is done.

  What a cynical attitude! Such, perhaps, is the thought that immediately occurs to a reader who has never set forth from a Clock Tower to a Cliff of Eternity with a beloved woman at his side. If I were a cynic, I would now show Beatrice pushing a wheelbarrow along the Carretera de Andraitx, with myself leaning my shoulder in harness up ahead, the barrow filled with the ruins of the piano previously destroyed by the harpy. In an earlier chapter I made allusion to the Leucadian Cliff from whence the poet Sappho leaped into the sea with her musical instrument. The wheelbarrow/piano combination would not be at all inappropriate, nor would the providential rope I was using to help pull us along. In any case, such trappings of our journey could take effect as products of my abundant creative imagination, which likes to lend biblical ramifications to a given state of affairs. Just the same, I always end up lacking a certain ingredient of talent, for otherwise we would never have foundered on our way to Porto Pí. “Your son,” the school teachers told my father repeatedly, “will never pass the class requirements.” “Well then, he’ll be a cobbler,” was the repeated reply from my father, who was a man of few words. Both superiors, teacher and father, gave me their predictions for my future. I never passed the class requirements. Unfortunately, I never became a cobbler either. God had other things in mind for me, even though he could have made out of me a good mender of soles. If now I replace the phrase “class requirements” with the word “cliff,” then my father was speaking prophetically. I have never reached goals that others have set for me, and I have been extremely wary of setting out little flags for myself. That cliff was Beatrice’s own personal fateful destination, and I went along as an also-ran. Then came the fiasco, and after that no one told us what was to become of us, not even Zwingli, who as Don Helvecio pushed us decorously into the foyer of his “Príncipe.”

  Our existence was shattered. Our dream of nothingness, our plunge into the waves—all this was now wrecked on an empty stomach! We stood there in shame, and there is no need for me to explain how tired and leached out we looked in the reception area of a hotel where the cheapest attic room cost more for one night than we had on our persons. We were grubby and foul; in spite of my clean-shaven chin I felt utterly filthy. Zwingli could have done a turnabout and said to us, “My gosh, you look just terrible!”

  But he, Don Helvecio, who was now once again on top of the heap, said nothing of the sort; it wasn’t his way to pay someone back in like coin. He looked elegant in his duds, the tips of his footwear were mirror-shiny, his hair lay flat and curly on his well-groomed head, there were no scatterings of dandruff, his hairbrush had done smooth work. And behold, at the tip of his right little finger the horn once again jutted out into the world, looking even longer now than back at the harbor and on the Street of Solitude. Not a trace of black under the curve of the nail, and all of his nine other nails were spotless, the result of manicures with almond oil, not even a hi
nt of peeling cuticle. Zwingli was now the complete Swiss hôtelier much in demand, a man of the cosmopolitan world among his international clientele gathered here now for five o’clock tea. Yes, five o’clock: that’s how late it was on this Saturday afternoon in mid-September. A few weeks more and Vigoleis will celebrate his birthday. But first, let us allow him to celebrate his personal resurrection from the dead.

  Zwingli—no, Don Helvecio—lifted his horny finger, and immediately they all entered the scene: tall waiters and squat waiters, a head waiter and a supervisor of waiters and then a supervisor of the supervisor of waiters. They prepared a table in the smaller dining area—“Or Beatrice, would you prefer to dine in the rotunda? That’ll be just fine.” Another flash of his pinky, and a not quite noiseless rush of personnel—not because they were ignorant of hotel protocol, but because many foreigners enjoy a genuine Spanish spectacle. And with so many Anglo-Saxons on hand to take their afternoon tea, we approved of the shift in venue. Our table would be at the far end of the room, with a fine view of the ocean (“mare nostrum,” Zwingli said, and he was thinking of Tacitus; as for us, we were not thinking of Tacitus). “From here the cliffs look especially steep and picturesque. Just take a gander at that one over there. Isn’t it grand? Every year it fills our coffers quite nicely.”

  Yes indeed, with his magic nail Zwingli was pointing to our Leucadian Crag, thrusting up out of the waves, the one that angled out over the water ever so slightly, now gleaming with a russet tint, at its base a fringe of white foam. A shimmering column rose up above the promontory and disappeared in the haze. Our own eyes, too, could perceive only a shimmer, no doubt a symptom of our fatigue. It wasn’t until much later that we realized that we were eating our last meal within direct view of our intended place of self-execution.

  “Don’t you want to spruce up a bit? A bath, maybe?”

  We wanted nothing of the sort. We wanted nothing at all. We were void of all wanting. In response to further magical gesticulations of Zwingli’s nail, our table was set, gold-braided youths leaped forth, and waiters circled around us balancing viands of various kinds. Should I present a detailed description? Oddly enough I can recall precisely all the delicacies we were served, but they would be just as out of place here as they were back there at the Príncipe. Business was flourishing; hotel guests came and went, many of them greeting the eminent Don Helvecio in their best Baedeker Spanish, while Don Helvecio let it be known with disarming directness that he was busy with VIPs: we were his people, his sister and brother-in-law—no need for vagueness on this point—artists both of them, just come in from a stroll—can you imagine, in this tropical heat? They came up through Génova on their way to Bendinat Castle, and now he was helping them get presentable again. This was a merry fable, meant to entertain the British ladies who with their crooked legs never made it past the trolley stop but—who knows?—on a cool day might risk a similar hejira. Don Helvecio assured them that if they wished to try, he could place the hotel limousine at their disposal.

  Was it embarrassment that made him jabber on like this? Not in the least. He even did us the honor of joining us for the meal. And what in Devil’s name did I see there on the table before him? It was a plateful of the General’s Eggs, and he dug into them with a wine chaser—Julietta’s red, in point of fact. It was obvious that he was still, or once again, linked up with a Pilar, yet with a diminished degree of devotion, for otherwise he would never have halted and derailed our funeral cortege in front of his hotel. We ate nothing.

  “Dig in! All you can eat! Don’t be shy, no need for that here! You’re tourists! And you, Bice, no need to hold back. You’ve sat down to dinner with princes and kings. And I want you to come back here someday and tell Es Mestre, our head chef, all about the Colloredo-Mansfeld Castle where the last Tsar’s personal cook wielded the spoon. Mon cher Vigoló can’t hear about that often enough. But what’s eating you two…?”

  The torrent of twaddle splashed on. We were silent—what was there to say? We couldn’t eat a thing. We asked for tea, waited until its temperature approximated that of our bodies, and then dunked zwieback in it. That wasn’t a proper way of dining, but then tourists and artists are quite above accepted table manners.

  What was up with us? Would he have to apply thumbscrews to get it out of us? Surely we weren’t sore about that stupid business with his Pilar. And where were we living? Emmerich told him that we had moved to the Count’s house. He knew the Count well, a fine fellow, a superior anarchist, an artist almost, and with a private gallery of horrors; he intended to go visit us there, just to put a stop to all the gossip. “You know, spread around by dames. But you had already moved out, and Don Alonso didn’t know where to. Antonio didn’t know anything, either, but people saw you with him often. He’s a good guy. By now you’ve become used to Spanish ways. It happens fast—the main thing is to keep your balance. You have to start thinking in Spanish from the very first day, and then everything takes care of itself.”

  I told him that we took a room outside of town, in a house called the “Torre del Reloj.”

  This news almost snapped off our confederated relative’s classy fingernail. What, in the “Clock Tower?!” He would never in this world have thought of looking for us out there. Beatrice in that place? He took his head in his hands and stared at his sister. As for myself, he was probably thinking that I was right at home in such a location, that I had finally found the cozy study I was hoping for. “It’s the most notorious place on the whole island! A flesh factory! Smugglers’ den! Flophouse! Headquarters for counterfeiters! Everybody and anybody who shuns the light of day, even if they go about their business at high noon, finds his way under the Giant’s roof. Out there you’re going to have to be on the qui vive. You’re going to get in trouble with the police. For years now the police have suspected Arsenio of masterminding the opium traffic in the Balearics. I’m going to tell Don Darío about this. The two of them are old buddies, there’s a murder case involved, and the banker Juan March, you know, the billionaire. It’s big-time, all of it, with vendettas like on Corsica. And the sex traffic? I’ve been through it. When the corridas are on and the all the troops come down here from the mainland, it’s party time out there. The boxes get filled with picadores and chulos, the whole herd of swordsmen overflows the Clock Tower. We often reserve beds out there for our guests. Ever heard of the Buttlar Gang? Pietism and libertinage combined. But that was nothing compared to the Torre out there with its cabins and the luxury suite for the rich toreros. You should ask Adeleide to show it to you sometime. Cost thousands. Unique on the island!”

  Zwingli laughed so hard he began shaking. “‘Torre del Reloj’! But wait, isn’t there a corrida tomorrow?”

  So that was the explanation for our Creation Night: the bullfighting troupe had disembarked the day before. Tomorrow the candles would get lit at the Madonna’s altar in the bullring. Ave María Purissima.

  The hotel guests had left the rotunda. We sat alone together, just a tiny bit strengthened. Oh, to stretch out now and sleep in a real bed!

  But we decided to leave, like two dogs after a scolding.

  “How’s things with your exchequer? Probably not too good. Let’s see”—Zwingli reached into his pocket and jingled some metal. “Here’s some change to tide you over, for the tram and such. Later we’ll take care of your other debts. What a shame back then, Bice, you with your scruples and all. But you’ll be staying on the island for a while yet. We should see each other more often. Let me organize it. I’ve got plans for you. I’ll come out to your Tower sometime soon. Vigo will get to learn a thing or two—I mean for his books. Last year a photographer crawled up onto the roofbeams to get a bird’s-eye view the night before the bullfight. He expected to become a millionaire, but the picadores spotted him and beat him half to death. I’ll be sure to come out, Arsenio has some great wines, and Adeleide is famous for her octopus cooked in ink, mon cher Vigo!”

  “And ink is what it’s all about, mon cher Zwingli, e
specially when things are turning black all around you.”

  “So long!”

  “Ciao!”

  “Tschüss!”

  We straggled back to the city without exchanging a word. There seemed to be no longer any connection between us, not even our mutual silence, otherwise so eloquent in itself. We had become enemies; each of us had reached out with a wicked hand, as it were, to prevent the other from doing the deed, and each was now ashamed of the other. Suicide à deux requires a perfect homousia. In novels, it can easily take place on a single page. For ours we were planning a whole chapter, and as yet nothing had come of it. We would have to start over. When we arrived on the Plaza de la Liberdad, we had just enough time to get to the post office and inquire whether any money or letters had arrived. The clerk in his blue smock didn’t know me, and so everything had to happen in neat alphabetical fashion. There was nothing in poste restante. I thought to ask whether he had looked really carefully. You can do that in Spain, whereas in Germany I would never have dared. The man in the smock didn’t even get angry, and as for feeling insulted—not the gratings of a Martersteigian cheese. He smiled politely. “I see. You think that we can’t read because in this office we are the illiterate heirs to the clerical monarchy? All foreigners think that way, and they’re all wrong. But please, if you wish to look for yourself—“ He pushed a whole bundle of mail across to me and went back to his crossword puzzle, which still had plenty to be filled in.