There are writers who use many words to say little, others who say much with few words, and still others, rare ones, who can say everything with a single word. Let the reader decide to which category Vigoleis belongs, for I am unable to decide for myself. One thing about me is clear, however: I shall never inscribe this single word. I prefer to circumscribe it, paraphrase it. That’s why I have constantly altered my mode of expression when describing the brothel, since what I have tried to express was, once we got accustomed to the variety of tones emitted inside its shaky walls, so mind-numbingly monotonous.
I have employed a host of synonyms to designate our accommodations at the lecherous bandits’ redoubt. In private, Beatrice and I referred to it for a while as the goat pen, after a billy-goat one day leaped up the open staircase, and on his second jump landed right in our cell, causing such havoc that even I, old apocalyptic pessimist that I am, started weeping copiously. Perhaps “hellhole” is the proper term, but it never occurred to me—or perhaps I have simply avoided naming our misery in such radically precise fashion. Yet now that our lodgings were no longer waterproof, now that the rats patrolled the partitions more brazenly from day to day, now that the moisture drove gout into our entire bodies, now that the storms raged and Beatrice arrived at such a slough of despond that she spent an hour every day in tears beneath her Unkulunkulu, threatening to manifest a malignant form of hispanophobia, whereas by rights she ought to have burst forth with the symptoms of acute Vigolophobia—amid all of this, I suddenly called to mind my little friend from the Street of Solitude: Julietta, I thought in a mood of inward jubilation, child of a general who brought you such joy when you were a little child—why shouldn’t Vigoleis, too, place his final bet on red trouser stripes and stars on his guerrera? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Without mentioning my audacious plan to Beatrice, I betook myself with the courage of her despair to the street I had so long been avoiding, one that was so short, narrow, and shady that it doesn’t offer many possibilities for increasing my reader’s suspense—what’s in store for Vigoleis this time? Will brigands descend upon him and beat him to death, poke into his empty pockets and leave him to be taken to his grave on donkey-back? Will a mule kick backwards and shatter his kneecap? Will women of loose virtue seduce him to a pilarière and filch his last peseta? Or will the Fates put Dr. Villalonga in their employ and have him scream at him, “Finally, my little friend! Now I’ve got you! Out with those two duros, or else I’ll strap you to my chair and yank your forgetful brain right through your natural orifices, just the way they do it with mummies!”
Nothing of such a highly dramatic sort happened. A few nuns passed by me with lowered glances. Black-clad priests are said to bring bad luck, but nuns…? Hardly had I taken fifty paces into this danger zone when my courage found its reward. A yellowed sheet of paper was fluttering on a balcony. I was startled, but took hold of myself and entered the first-floor hallway. It smelled of fish and very small people, but not of whoresflesh. One minute later I had the key to the apartment and unlocked the piso. Two studios faced the sunless street. There was a long corridor with two sizeable rooms adjoining, and then a large room with a French door that opened on a spacious yard. What met my eye was an expanse of palm, cedar, orange, lemon, banana, and almond, whatever flora one might hope to find in a semi-tropical environment, an oasis in the urban canyon. There was a narrow passageway leading to small pantry space, and even a well with a bucket for hauling up the water. The kitchen featured a built-in cast-iron stove and two charcoal grills, plus running water. Finally there was another room with windows looking out on the yard, like all the windows in this part of the house. Seventy pesetas a month was the price for these sumptuous lodgings; the owner himself lived in the same building, the garden of delights was his property also, and his wife, who had followed me during my survey of the premises, pointed out the patio where at the moment a few girls were having a quarrel—these were the privileged daughters of the landlord who would be accepting our rental payments.
I neither walked nor ran back to the Clock Tower—I flew. Seven rooms at 10 pesetas apiece, one room larger than the next, each room with its own ceiling, polished floors, running water, a well, an Eden of palms, and in the leafy shade, classic golden oranges, everything that had incited Goethe’s yearning for the South and lent him immortality: “Thither, thither will I go with thee, my beloved!” The sight of all this lent me wings.
“Beatrice, 7 rooms, 10 pesetas apiece, a ceiling and a roof, my darling! On the quietest street in all Palma, the General Barceló, where Dr. Villalonga rinses out people’s ears—you know, in one ear, out the other—just a few doors down, nuns and monks live there, the street was black with them, and I am no longer a cowardly toad. Now if I were a pelican, I would make the legend come true: I would tear open my breast and feed my brood with my own blood!”
Beatrice stared at me. She is not afraid of spiders, whom she counts among her allies, but she cowers in the presence of madmen. Had I gone crazy? Had something happened to me? Disappointing mail?
Quick, put on dry clothes. We were going to leave our aquarium, and I would show her a terrarium. And besides, I was more sober than usual, but also more elated.
When just a few hours later I again unlocked the piso to show it to Beatrice, the rooms had become noticeably smaller. The studios were nowhere to be seen, the two rooms adjoining the long corridor turned out to be tiny, windowless boudoirs like the “General’s Room” on the Street of Solitude, and the other rooms could be measured with just a few paces. As for the ceilings, they had in fact remained in place, but were now considerably lower—you could forget about doing a pole vault inside the piso, though you might try a somersault. Still, in the yard nothing had changed; the display of blossoms had not withered, the well had not gone dry. On the contrary, Beatrice discovered there some greenhouse rarities and other botanical wonders whose names I had never heard of. Nevertheless—
“70 pesetas, chérie. We’ve got to have the pesetas. It’s a matter of life or death.”
I rarely invoke the names of the Saints, but Beatrice’s sobering reply brought from me this joyful outburst: “Holy Saint Barlaam, have mercy on my poor, wretched soul!” Beatrice had kept some savings!!! Three exclamation marks, one per each 10 pesetas.
“But Unkulunkula, how on earth did you do it? Did you have that much when we were about to plunge into the ocean? I wouldn’t put it past you!”
The expenses that arose from our suicide would have to be covered by the sale of our combined belongings, for it was not until the night of the tempest at the Tower that Beatrice decided to scrape little coins together. Having no head for figures smaller than those with six zeroes, I of course hadn’t the slightest idea that at certain times we could have afforded one more drop of oil in our saucepan, or one more postage stamp for my intellectual commerce with the outside world.
While Beatrice exercised squatter’s rights in the empty apartment, I sought out the landlord, whose name could easily have caused the superstitious Beatrice to change her mind about renting the place at the last minute. His name was Aguado, which means “filled with water.” As I have said, it never rains but it pours.
One after the other, maids led me from the entryway down several corridors and through several hallways to a family room, where I was presented to a short gentleman. He was in the presence of his pretty daughters, who by now had quieted down. His wife was also there, together with a number of other women, all of them relatives—twelve souls all told, and I made bows to every last one of them.
Don Jaime asked a few polite questions. His French was as fluent as water; he was an educated man, and expressed particular interest in that part of my person that did the writing. His grandfather, he explained, was a writer, and one of his daughters wrote poems—probably the one who was now blushing as I glanced with interest around the circle of females. He was a great lover of literature. Then he asked to see our passports. He made n
o embarrassing inquiries, perhaps out of consideration for the daughters standing next to him, or perhaps because his penchant for literature elevated him above bourgeois prejudice. The official stamps of our respective consulates were sufficient for him. We were welcome as tenants. And then came the great moment, the most momentous moment of this thrill-packed story: Don Jaime asked one of his beautiful relatives to calculate how much I should pay in advance, until the beginning of the next month, when we could start regular payments. It seemed just fine to him: he would draft a rental contract starting next January 1st. Did we intend to move in before Christmas?
Christmas. We were three days away from the Birth of Our Redeemer, 9 days away from the end of the month… Out of Beatrice’s stocking I pulled forth 22 pesetas and 50 centimos and was presented with a receipt signed with a Spanish flourish. A maid again accompanied me through hallways, corridors, and piles of rubbish to the majestic portal. My mood was so bouyant that I could have kissed her. One kiss for each peseta saved? That would have meant 57.5 kisses.
I gave Beatrice several of them, twice over. It was only the matter of the remaining pesetas that made her lose her composure. She was quite aware that Christmas was just around the corner. That, she said, was something she wanted to keep quiet about, so as not to make me go into a fit of melancholy. She knew that this could easily happen with Germans when they are off in foreign lands. “And how is it with Swiss citizens who have Inca blood,” I asked, but there was no reply. Landlords often make mistakes in arithmetic. But this time, the addition was correct to the last centimo: twenty-two fifty.
VII
Now that we had become bonafide residents on a street in town, we felt that we must carry ourselves with heads held high, in keeping with the street’s heroic name: Calle del General Barceló. For this reason I took 10 pesetas out of Beatrice’s knitted strongbox and ambled ten doors down to the office of Dr. Villalonga, who greeted me wearing his Cyclopsian head mirror.
“Olá!” he said. “My German friend! I’ve been expecting you for a long time, but…”
I blushed and stammered some imaginary story about illness, an urgent trip to Barcelona. The doctor took no notice of my excuses. He handed me a picture postcard and asked me if I was familiar with Düsseldorf, and if I knew a certain intersection of the Graf-Adolf-Strasse and a certain house there. The house was illustrated on the postcard, one of a thousand street-corner houses in Düsseldorf. Without any doubt I had seen this one dozens of times, and I told him so. It was a stately house indeed, and so I quickly invented a story that included, of course, the Bank of Barmen and a street urchin somersaulting on the Königsallee. With a gesture of relief, Dr. Villalonga thanked me. Then he asked me to translate for him the German message on the card. He knew the language but wanted to be sure, since it was a matter of nuances. The card was from a woman. My ipsis verbis professional translation of the text seemed satisfactory. The upshot was that something was afoot, or at least had been afoot at one time, between the sender and the addressee. The doctor put the postcard back in his pocket. Then I reached into my own pocket and begged his pardon for the delay. My duros landed on his glass tabletop with the sound of genuine cash.
“Ten pesetas?” Dr. Villalonga could not recall that I owed him any money, and money that he couldn’t recall was not money that he could accept. Be that as it may, the information I had given him was worth more than the two duros that I should put right back in my pocket. Then he quickly pushed a funnel into my ears—all clear. I was well acclimated, but whenever I needed a rinsing out, I was to come visit him! Yes, I said, that was now a simple matter. We were now neighbors, just across the street. In keeping with Spanish custom, I offered to welcome him in my house. He offered to welcome me in his, and each of us stayed where we belonged.
On the very same day postcards and letters got sent out into the world with our new, firm, unalterable address: Calle del General Barceló 23, for anyone who wanted to visit us. Our post-office box number remained the same: Apartado 112. The postage for all these missives reduced our savings to zero.
Both Julietta and Vigoleis can tell tales about generals who offer aid in emergencies. Julietta told such tales on the public streets. Vigoleis, less impulsive than she, prefers to confine his tales to the pages of his personal jottings.
What a swashbuckler he must have been, this Sixteenth Intercessor with the rank of a general!
After leaving the post office, we went to the Veda Club to inform Antonio of our impending relocation. He was standing on the terrace, waving his napkin. “Good news!” I called up to him, and asked him whether he had a minute. In Spain one always has a minute. Everything gets postponed to the following day, including whatever got postponed the day before. Mañana, “tomorrow,” is the first Spanish joke learned by every foreigner. Zwingli’s successes in this country were in part the result of this mañana; he was always wishing that he had done yesterday what he was doing today, and so he was constantly ahead of the natives by one day. Women were his undoing, because in bed they were conscious only of today. Thus this Man of Yesterday experienced failure after failure, until he had no Tomorrow at all.
Antonio listened to our story. He showed no understanding for Dr. Villalonga’s satanic 10 pesetas, my reason for refusing to enter Barceló during my search. The apartment had stood empty for months. Antonio wasn’t thinking about Providential intercession; he was thinking about furniture.
Beatrice has a memory that never loses sight of even the most immediate matters. Our couch, the one with the woolen mattress and its cool horsehair lining, our pilarière! Pilar would have to hand over our furniture, which had escaped my memory entirely. Beatrice was simply not prepared to forfeit our bed, our bookcase, our laundry, 7 clothes hangers, 1 sugar bowl, 1 darning egg, 9 safety pins, 1 comb, 1 pair of shoes, 1 writing pad—all these items were inscribed in gold in the network of her brain. She would forfeit nothing to “that woman”—her use of this term, which can otherwise be suggestive of dignity, turned it into the epitome of disdain and degradation. The person so designated became a specimen of vermin, a maggot, the dregs of humanity. Fine, this bird would have to hand everything back to us. But how? Burglary? Antonio’s gang could take care of that with a one-time operation.
But Beatrice wasn’t for violent action. She asked Antonio to send one of his pageboys from the Veda to her brother’s house and have Zwingli reclaim our belongings. She had spent thousands for Zwingli, and even now, if a late-coming creditor were to make an appearance demanding repayment, she would readily take care of it. But as for that “woman”—she insisted on getting back everything down to the last safety pin.
Antonio shook his head. Everything had changed in the meantime. Don Helvecio no longer lived in the piso around the corner. He and his wife and child were among the missing. No one had seen them for weeks. An inquiry at the post office yielded the information that for quite a long time no missiles had landed there and no screams of fury had been heard from across the street. The concierge was queried, and he called the police. A small crowd of gendarmes gathered at the apartment door and gave the secret knocking signal: no answer. They were presumably all dead. Groups of curious onlookers formed on the Street of Solutide. All of them dead! A cry of “bloody deed!” spread like wildfire in the Count’s “apple.” Barricades. The apartment door was kicked open and the homicide squad entered the Pilarian love nest, taking professional care not to disturb evidence. But there were no corpses to stumble over, no puddles of blood to step in, no dangling bodies to bump into, and Julietta was not discovered in the laundry basket with a gag in her mouth. No trace of a final communication, no greeting to dear ones on the island, or in Basel and environs. No last will and testament containing Vigoleis’ name as heir to a collection of works in the history of art, the manuscript of the Lexicon of Invective, or the coveted Swiss army knife. Instead, the floor was filthy; wherever the murder specialists stepped there was a mess. They lifted fingerprints from all the doorknobs, but where we
re the matching fingers?
The tenants had flown the coop; as in a case of loss of hair, all that was left were bare spots. The hermandad was confronted with a mystery. Zwingli told us later how he had arranged the whole thing, but I shall refrain at this point from inserting details of that nocturnal escapade. We ourselves must concentrate on a relocation that will have to take place in broad daylight—one that turned out to be a little triumphal procession.
Antonio contacted the Príncipe, where the Swiss panjandrum was likewise regarded as disappeared and already struck from the list of missing persons. The message Antonio got was to the effect that Don Helvecio was welcome to stew in his own juice wherever he was. In a normal situation, of course, things happen in quite the reverse fashion: the person departing the scene leaves word for those who remain behind. But when it comes to womanizing, the Spaniards display an amazing degree of solidarity. They do their whoring hand in hand, and never rub the other guy the wrong way.
The next day, Antonio found out where the pilarière was located. A little later a messenger came to us with the news that Doña Beatriz’mattress was already on its way to our new apartment, balancing on the skull of a street loiterer. The señora had, however, not been willing to part with bed linen, pillows, the darning egg, the comb, etc. Antonio, the psychological anthropologist, advised the one woman to refrain from provoking the other. In good time we would have everything back. Mañana.
I then went to the customs warehouse, where I obtained the release of three of our crates of books, under the proviso that the rest of our belongings would remain there as surety.
The Island of Second Sight Page 46