The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  Thus, in place of Mamú’s memoirs I am setting before the reader the applied recollections of her friend Vigoleis. Here we have been unable to tell the story of this enchanting fourflusher with the amplitude she so fully deserves, for better or worse. But there is surely enough in these pages to show how greatly I loved her. Never have I enjoyed so much being led down the garden path by a person who was my friend. Not one bad dream has ever darkened my memories of her.

  On the other hand, as I look back in careful judgment of those experiences, there is one figure who returns to memory as fundamentally wicked and mendacious. It is the person who constantly prayed for her human and animal fellows, Mevrouw van Beverwijn.

  VIII

  1933

  In a southern country you can get along best if you succeed in switching off completely your sense of time, and as completely as possible your ideas about space.

  Sometimes it is already tomorrow, when you would swear that it is still yesterday or the day before or, on happy occasions of absolute temporal confusion, no day at all. You can always cancel out Today; that is a mere philosophical abstraction. Iberian Man—and that is the character we are talking about here—is at all times standing on his earth made of clouds.

  During our seven years of politico-poetico-mystical exile in Portugal, at Pascoaes Castle in São João de Gatão—our Mediterranean island and all of Spain were already behind us, Switzerland too, France too, plus the anxious hours of our second escape through Spain. One day I said to Beatrice, looking up from my manuscript, “When is Easter? I’d like to send Mother a Resurrection message up there in her deutsches Reich, which is getting bigger and losing more blood every day.”

  If sent by telegraph, my time-conscious Beatrice replied, tongues of fire might arrive just in time. We were three days away from Pentecost.

  Even with this hyper-Iberian compression of time, there was a certain amount of loss due to friction, for we eventually figured out that the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit would be taking place the very next day.

  That’s how late it was, and we hadn’t noticed anything. While we were snoozing away on our island amidst the raucous daydreaming of the Mamús, Patucos, and Uluas, the vagabond Suredas and Pedro (constantly making progress as a painter), surrounded by porras and putas and Pilars, corpses that weren’t dead and living persons who refused to die—Germany had awakened. And because an awakened Germany meant a Jewry that must croak—there’s no heroism without sacrifice—the nation of poets and thinkers, which is also Hagen’s nation, was joining up with the Führer.

  How large was the number of people who were slated to die with their limbs sticking out rigidly from their bodies? Millions, probably. Two of them could already be stricken from the list. The Führer needn’t worry about them any longer. Adele Gerstenberg and her son were resting from their own death in the cemetery over in Alicante. Millions minus two—does that make any difference? If one million people kick the bucket, are two people of any consequence? If everybody goes along with the plan, the nation can get things done with no trouble at all. Everybody has to help out, everybody! No one can shirk from the business of murdering, for whoever does will get whacked himself. That’s what Hitler and history have in mind. And here is Vigoleis, still insisting that he doesn’t believe in history. Just don’t count the dead: that’s what Don Patuco and Hölderlin teach us.

  After years of national humiliation, ethnic snubbing, and darkness across the entire country, the German dawn was finally approaching—the Dawn of the Gods, an uprising of house and home and kit and caboodle. Now there could once again be collective rejoicing, a closing of the ranks for an orgy of fun-making. The more people who got murdered, the more heartwarming it all was. And because Joy gives rise to Strength, the process was given a name: Strength Through Joy. With the strength that proceeded from joy, the populace embarked on Strength Through Joy ships—for wasn’t our country also a Volk ohne Raum?

  The newly awakened nation also found its way to Mallorca, the end of the world, the hinterland, the underworld—but still world. Here was a scene to be gaped at. You could have joy at the sight of the lowly, such a stark contrast to one’s own cultural heights. Everything is better back home! But things will improve here, too. What a mess! They don’t even have beer! “Oh Führer, sir, where in the name of the Führer can one get a halfway decent…?” But before I, as the local Herr Führer, can pass on these fellow-countrymen’s complaint to the Führer, I have to make sure of just where we stand.

  This I learn from Herr von Martersteig—an informed source, for as I have mentioned, it had finally happened, and we hadn’t noticed it. We didn’t subscribe to any newspaper. My home-town gazette arrived irregularly, and at the German bookshop we read only the literary stuff. At Mulet’s tertulia international affairs were discussed with intensity, but only in their timeless aspects. Mamú’s easy chairs gave us glimpses of royal baking powder on the rise, Jaume’s flour sacks were a site for deciding the fate of Honduras, and on the Suredas’ three-legged chair we discussed the fate of the Sureda family. Everyone was concerned solely with his own little world. Thus I had no idea that overnight I had become the citizen of a master race, and that my Führer in quotation marks was the image of the Lord Himself.

  It was an ordinary day, and an ordinary crowd of people was strolling to and fro on the Plaza Cort at the late-afternoon hour when the paper boys hawk the Ultima Hora with their lusty, high-pitched, singsong paeans to Uultim-mooooooooo-ra!—the genuine swan-song of the “final hour” of world history. Whoever has heard this will never forget it—uultim-moooooooo-ra! But now, whoever was that man limping out of the Colmado Parisién, where only Mamú and other millionaires and perhaps Robert von Ranke Graves did their shopping? It was Baron Joachim von Martersteig, more sallow of complexion than ever, more furrowed of feature, more crippled of gait. We hadn’t seen each other for an eternity. Were things going badly for him here on the Golden Isle, where it is always Blue Monday? With his old, familiar gesture of amazement he placed his monocle to his eye and let it drop again, but this time he had to reach out farther to retrieve it.

  “Don Joaquín” “Don Vigoleis!”

  Like all of the foreigners, we enjoyed playing Spanish. Before we could shake hands, the Captain tried to hide from me what he had just bought in the store. Instead of the gratings of a green cheese, he had bought an entire sapsago. So apparently he wasn’t worse off financially. Presumably Hindenburg had finally yielded to his pestering about the pension for his war injury.

  “Have you heard the news?”

  I was startled, because I hadn’t heard. But instinctively I assumed it had to do with his enemy Robert Graves. For Beatrice and me, it would be a blow if anything had happened to him. Probably got in a fight and smashed his writing hand! Oh ye Muses, preserve Robert Graves until he has finished I, Claudius!

  “Hitler has taken over. Germany has ceased to be what it was. Heads are already rolling!”

  With God and with history, nothing is impossible. Nevertheless, I was stunned.

  “Thunder and lightning, Herr Hauptmann! What a grand opportunity for you! The uprising of the Browns changes the entire strategic situation overnight.”

  Martersteig gave me a twinkle with his healthy eye. Then he cocked his other eye and started sparkling at me with that one, too. He asked stiffly if my intention was to insult him.

  Not on your life, I replied. I was merely thinking of his monkey army and his years-long difficulties with recruitment. Now he wouldn’t have to pound his impressment drum in the jungle. His conscription commissars would no longer have to use bananas to lure the recruits down from the trees, for now, “from the Adige to the Belt, from the Meuse to the Memel,” he could count on mobilizing an abundance of material for his long-tailed regiments. Whereupon the Captain completely lost his composure, hissed an unkind word, hunched himself upright in military fashion, and said with contempt, “I forbid you to insult my monkeys by means of a comparison that you probably mean
to be witty! It’s Germany itself that is at stake! The mob is crushing everything that has been built up over generations. A mere corporal…!”

  We stood there for a long time debating the coup d’état that claimed to be none, but which for that same reason was all the more dangerous. We parted in disagreement. Both of us rejected the new political style; both of us refused to accept the new myth that, in the absence of Jews, made us into “Jew-influenced Aryans.” Martersteig rejected such a notion by reason of his Prussian military attitudes, myself on the basis of my Quixotic, all-too-human nature. Which is to say, my cowardice. Something in me shied away from wringing the neck of a Jew, from forcing him into a condition of non-existence, as my fatherland’s new political program was demanding of every loyal citizen. And although he had been trained to kill, the Captain wasn’t fond of this idea, either. But his refusal was only his way of avoiding getting his hands dirty. Once again, this time with certain questions on his mind, he approached his General and Field Marshal Hindenburg. Was Hindenburg suddenly no longer just a slob?

  Beatrice connected this piece of news with Martersteig’s enemy, precisely because I had heard it from the Captain’s mouth. Had something happened to Graves? Had he left the island? What a blow that would be to my typewriter! After all, what was of any importance to Martersteig besides his apes and his enemy?

  This enemy had approached me. In the German shop, he had been told that I would definitely be available to type a manuscript. In our doorway stood a tall man with rugged features, squinting eyes, and a dark tan. A lock of hair hung across his face. He was wearing a colorful checked shirt, an even more colorful shawl, and an odd straw hat. Was I the person he was looking for? he asked. I confessed that I was indeed that person. The man spoke English. My first thought was: Arsenio, drug dealing, U-boat captain, they’re pulling a job and need a stooge, and they’ve found me. But even before this pirate uttered some phony name, I knew exactly in whose presence I had the honor of standing: Robert von Ranke Graves, the enemy, the lord of 115 volts and 7 watts. One flick of his bison-like brows, and all of Deyá is plunged in darkness! Has he come here to hook me into his shady business?

  There are many different ways to introduce yourself to your fellow human beings. None has ever impressed me as much as the technique used by my friend’s enemy. He said, “Graves,” and then he said in German, “Strich drunter!” This was a spoken visiting card—and what a card it was! How picayune by comparison is Burckhardt with ck-dt, or Meier with an E, or Vigoleis with his Victorian V! “Graves, Goodbye to All That”! Such an introduction precludes any mistaken identity. One knows immediately whom one is dealing with. Voltaire, too, preferred clarity in personal introductions. This great enemy of the Church and baiter of the Jesuits had his own private house-Jesuit named Adam. When introducing him to his guests he would say, “C’ést le Père Adam, mais il n’est pas le premier homme du monde.” It’s a simple matter for people who are known for their books. “T. Mann, Royal Highness! Heinrich Mann, Loyal Subject! Klaus Mann, Mephisto! Or Vigoleis, Vigoleis—but for that, this book would have to be already published.

  Was Graves collecting witnesses against the Captain? A trial? Why doesn’t the man just dispatch him with a stab in the neck? It was a clever move of Graves’s, one that I recognized as such too late, to begin his visit on a literary mission with a literary allusion. He had not come as a bully. He had written a new book, whose title would probably be I, Claudius, Emperor and God. Would I have the time and the willingness to type out his manuscript? This sounded peaceful enough, and it was a paying job.

  Robert Graves’ handwriting was rather difficult to decipher. He asked me to read aloud a few lines. I was only moderately successful; I would have failed any school exam. But the enemy was not as petty as Martersteig made him out to be. I could, he said, take my time to get used to his script, and anything I couldn’t figure out I should leave blank. I wasn’t to add anything of my own, for that would cost him time when it came to reading proof. Did I have a decent typewriter? “Brand new!” Could he please take a look at it so he could check out the font size? It was, I said, still at the factory, with a Spanish teclado. I was having the German umlauts and the Dutch “ij” installed. Wasn’t that a quick-witted lie on my part? I hadn’t the courage to show this dashing writer my rickety Diamant-Juwel.

  We quickly reached an agreement concerning my wage. I named a rather large amount, and Graves found it acceptable. He would let me buy the paper myself, and he asked if he should hand over some money for that purpose. The writer reached into a pocket and came forth with a sheaf of bills. My eyes darted from their sockets. Did this writer-colleague of mine spend his free time as a highway robber? Was he dealing in drugs? Was Goodbye to All That the source for this heap of dough? For such a wad I would gladly say “goodbye” to all of my own past life. He was as trustful as they come. One further sign of a great man: he left his manuscript package with me, a stranger! It was the sole extant copy.

  On his way out he asked me whether I knew Deyá, where he lived. A pleasant artist colony like Worpswede—I should come out for a visit. Well, yes, I told him, I had been out to that swallows’ nest for visits with Three Little Clouds and the German Captain von… What—? Did I know that fellow, too? But who didn’t know him? Graves added in Spanish as a farewell greeting, “No pinta mucho!”—Martersteig wasn’t worth very much. Neither of us ever mentioned his name again.

  From a lie to the truth is but a single step. Beatrice was teaching a certain Señor Alvarez, Don Alejandro, owner of the “Casa Barlock,” where he sold typewriters and office equipment. There I purchased, on the installment plan, the machine I lied about preemptively, and was given 100 pesetas for my worn-out Diamant—a merchandising challenge if there ever was one. Don Alejandro was up to the task. He knew a young man who wrote poems but was otherwise quite normal and had some money, and who could make good use of my old rattletrap. So my writing apparatus simply changed hands, and everything remained as it had been. I often wonder if that Spanish son of the poetic Muse got more out of the machine than I did.

  I opted for a Continental, the latest model with all the fixings except the ones I had dreamed up myself but couldn’t find in any catalogue. It took some time to alter the letters. Don Alejandro had to order new combinations from the factory. As we waited, he let me use a machine on loan, and I started familiarizing myself with Graves’ handwriting and, engrossed by his manuscript, by his English. What I found was not an army of monkeys marching toward a commode from Martersteig’s ancestral attic, but He Himself, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus, marching towards a Continental typewriter. That is why I cringed when the Captain told us the news, and Beatrice felt the same way: nothing must happen to Graves. For if anything did, it would be curtains for our new machine.

  “It’s odd, Beatrice, but I was thinking the very same thing: the enemy and the installment payments. If Graves were to die, it would be a catastrophe for us. But it’s a lot worse than that. The National Socialists are now at the helm, and now they’ll start doing what La Gerstenberg was so afraid of: they’re going to kill all the Jews. Hitler has been proclaimed as the God of the Germans, and as you know, thou shalt have no other gods before him. The first heads have already been lopped off. The first un-German cadavers are floating in the Rhine, ‘Germany’s river but nevermore Germany’s border.’ Patriotism is once again official public policy. You’re supposed to take your hat off when you hear the national anthem. This is weird. It’s like in the jungle. You can’t tell when the dance is going to start up, and you’ll have to put a ring in your nose so as not to be conspicuous. And Martersteig was a little strange. He’s no longer so anti-militaristic, although he rejects any comparison between his monkeys and the hordes of brown-shirt apes. He thinks that great times are ahead. You’ll see—he’ll get his pension raised! I saw him coming out of the Colmado Parisién, where a slice of Edam costs 50 centimos.”

  This marked the onset of political discussion
s on the Street of the General. Whereas previously we had talked only about generals, we now chatted about a certain corporal, for whose sake the Ultima Hora came out a whole hour late on the day when he announced his plans to upend the whole world. Verdaguer, an energetic co-worker at this newspaper called The Final Hour, told me that such a thing had never happened since the paper’s very first hour.

  We talked a great deal, and eventually even Beatrice began to lose her faith in historical progress. I was the optimist, she the pessimist. I insisted that a hundred or a thousand people might go crazy when commanded to, but not an entire nation of 70 million. And after all, the Church was still there. The Church would surely have a thing or two to say about this development. It was the beginning of great times for the Church—“Saint Boniface…”

  “… This time Saint Boniface will go along with the barbarians. At the moment I consider it more important to figure out what we’re going to do about our typewriter.”

  “What has that got to do with the Third Reich?”

  “It’s very simple. Every German mark that we spend on installments will be converted into Nazi poison that can get thrown back at us sooner or later.”

  The next day I explained our situation to Don Alejandro. This Barlock typewriter man thought I was nuts. What was I trying to do, be more popish than the Pope? A puny private boycott of this kind would not alter world history by a single iota. Nevertheless, even though it meant taking on a somewhat higher debt, we shifted our order to an American Royal.

  With this move we declared war on the Third Reich, breaking off trade relations with the newly awakened Germany just twenty-four hours after it commenced its thousand-year-long history.