The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

Bobby fled to Paris, after having enlisted the aid of a high party functionary in converting his savings into foreign currency and transferring them in monthly installments to France. For this, the functionary was shot. But Bobby had money and, as such things go, he eventually landed on Mallorca. There he fell into the hands of a kleptomaniacal German woman, who in turn was in cahoots with a kleptomaniacal Spaniard, who in turn was involved in odd jobs for the German consulate. His story became a rat-cluster of forged signatures, confiscated letters, and extortion, until the Spanish police finally stepped in and liberated Bobby from the hands of the crooks. The Consul wanted to have him deported at the expense of the Third Reich, which would have snuffed out the whole case along with Bobby. Then Manolo appeared on the scene. Manolo, Doña Clara’s son, a painter and a man of artistic sensibility, said, “Bobby, you dare not go back home to the Reich. Come to Valldemosa. You’re much too precious for Nazi bullets.” The old jalopy of a bus provided transport. Bobby became the darling of Don Juan’s household, and he continued writing everything small, subject only to his own self-criticism.

  This German fellow was skilled not only with pen and pencil, but also with hammer and saw, awl and paintbrush, glue pot and asparagus knife, grafting tool and soup spoon, enema syringe and larding-needle. Don José noticed all of this. Bobby was inventive, too—just the right combination of talents for any respectable doctor. Why shouldn’t he also learn to handle delivery forceps, too? “He will be my assistant. No one else is going to take over my practice.”

  At that time, former judges of the Reich Court were eking out a living on the island by selling sauerkraut and chickpeas. Famous U-boat captains were smuggling opium and cocaine. University professors were tilling gardens and making apricot jelly. Clergymen were reaching for vials of poison. Famous physicians wearing false beards were sneaking through the night to patients whom they could not treat in broad daylight for lack of a Spanish medical license. A German whore, on the other hand, could walk with pride the streets of the Borne, as if she were on the Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. And Bobby of the Folkwang School now refused to accept an honorable job! He eventually did put on a white physician’s smock, but instead of holding visiting hours or going off to treat patients, he painted the entire Hospedage del Artista in Folkwang hues, and created for Doña Clara a brooding Madonna al fresco on the wall above the staircase. But he went no further. He had no desire to assist a woman in her hours of labor—I won’t speculate about women in their hours of relaxation. Don José was desperate. His intuitions about human nature had failed him. His wax-nose method had no effect on this beleaguered German emigré. Bobby remained true to his artistic calling. He never again took up serious painting, but his hobby was serious typography. Today his name is well-known. He is presenting his business card with the type design of these jottings of mine, as evidence that nobody shot either him or his author.

  When we first entered the doctor’s house, we met with turmoil that was unusual even by Spanish standards. Don José was passing through all the phases of annoyance and displeasure, from simple vexation to unbridled anger and wild, passionate fury. Don José the Wise? The friend of mankind? Had he been bitten by a tarantula? Pedro was certain that this raging individual was in fact the physician. His coat-tails were fluttering and his mustachios were aquiver, but he was still a handsome man having a handsome fit. Had someone stolen a three-penny Mauritius from his collection? Had someone damaged his pickled multuplets? He ran into the house, then back out again. He waved his arms around and shooed away people who were trying to calm him down, they too cursing and waving their arms. We were given a display of the strict family hierarchy of helpfulness: first Doña Clara, then Manolo, then Paquito. They shouted a mixture of Spanish and Mallorquin; I couldn’t understand a word, so I was at a loss to figure out what kind of catastrophe had befallen the hospedage at the very moment when we were to be introduced as new guests. This was embarrassing. In situations like this, one doesn’t know how to behave, and thus one doesn’t behave at all—which is exactly what we did. It usually turns out later that this form of sympathy with distress has created bonds that not even apparent death can break asunder.

  Beatrice listened carefully to the tumult happening around us, and began some cerebral analysis, dissecting the fragments of language that to my ears were simple noise and inarticulate grunting. She then tied them back together to shape an initial hesitant hypothesis: something awful must have happened in the doctor’s office. A pail of bandages…

  “Stop, chérie! Don’t say one word more! I know everything! That pail! Don José has discovered in his pail a human body. Some frightful mother has smuggled the fruit of her womb into this most innocuous of places, and now Doña Clara is refusing to hand over one of her pickle jars.”

  “Yuck!”

  “What do you mean, ‘yuck’? Don José is an embryophilogist, so what else would he want to pickle—herring, maybe?”

  But this was something different. There was no need for the courts to step in. No mother had committed a crime against a burgeoning human life. Beatrice could now hear certain things more clearly: the doctor’s office assistant must have forgotten to empty the hermetically sealed rubbish pail. Don José, Inspector of sanidad, was understandably incensed by this dereliction—but why was he so wildly out of control? In Spain? Messengers were sent into town to fetch the assistant. Don José was still fuming. He took no notice of us whatever.

  A short, fat, roundish, thoroughly pudgy woman, Doña Clara, greeted us cordially. We were welcome as friends of Pedro’s, but this unfortunate incident… “Pedro, take my place for just a minute, I…”

  There was renewed commotion in front of the house—which is to say, the commotion was coming from the direction of the village and getting closer. Now they were chasing some poor dog! The dog-chaser was a pale young fellow with long legs and pitch-black hair: Paquito, Clarita’s youngest son, who had been fleetingly introduced to us during the earlier attempts to calm down the physician. Everybody was shouting: “You coward! You bad dog! You miserable beast!” So now, in addition to everything else, their dog had run away. It never rains but it pours.

  From one moment to the next, Don José stopped his raging and was once again the dignified private physician of His Royal Majesty. He stood still, smoothed his laboratory smock, pulled out a red handkerchief, and blew his nose with a loud report. A small crowd gathered reverently around him, and at his feet lay the whining bitch. The office assistant seemed completely forgotten; a greater crime was here awaiting its punishment. Spinning on her own axis in the dust of the road, the dog wagged her tail and cowered as people berated her with epithets. The anathemas were uttered in Mallorquin dialect, so I didn’t understand a word. But the dog seemed to know exactly what was meant, even though, as I later found out, she wasn’t a native Mallorcan. She came from Ibiza, the little island of the Balearic Group, and she was a pure-bred Izibenca, from a race of some of the most beautiful dogs I have ever seen. She was a bit like a short-haired greyhound, ocher-colored with white spots. One characteristic of the breed is that it is confined to Ibiza and can procreate only in that environment. Even the short move to Mallorca can shorten its life. The ancient Carthaginians knew this dog, praised it, and ate it.

  “You miserable cur!” Don Juan probably was shouting. “Just what do you think you’re doing, running away like that? So that’s the thanks we get…!” There followed a list of the reasons why the dog should feel grateful to its master. And then the doctor’s mood softened. That was the end of his moral diatribe. “Adelante!” he shouted, “Onward!” The Ibizenco registered her master’s change of tone, wagged her long, sickle-shaped tail in joyful obedience, and jumped up at the doctor’s denim trousers. But Don José shouted, “Get away! Do your duty!” and pointed sternly in the direction of the house. Pistola obeyed, thankful for this resumption of trust. With a single bound she leaped over the window sill into the doctor’s office.

  Pedro motioned us closer to the wind
ow—it would be worth our while to watch the proceedings. The dog stood in front of the pail, placed one paw on the lever at the bottom, and pressed it. The lid lifted slowly, and Pistola began emptying it. Beatrice screamed with disgust. Now sick as a dog, my wife had to submit to pharmaceutical treatment by Don José.

  This performance, which to me seemed like a perfect display of animal training, was in fact an example of Ibizencan dilettantism. Attracted by the contents of the hygienic container, the dog had taught herself the trick of opening it. She didn’t even belong at this house; she didn’t have any home, but just strayed around the village. For years now she had been performing this minor service in Don Jose’s office with amazing punctuality. The only times of irregular rubbish removal, said Pedro, occurred when the dog was in heat. Incidentally, the doctor had no other clinical assistant, and this was one further reason why he wished to take on this German Folkwang School fellow as an apprentice. What the dog did for him, Bobby could do in his sleep.

  Don José never considered me worthy of donning the clinical smock, even though on a number of occasions I offered him proof of my skill as a handyman and a quick learner of matters technical. Besides, as a university student I had dabbled a bit in medical subjects and even taken first steps toward starting a collection of embryos. I wouldn’t have rejected such a career. It would have given my life a new direction. But then Pascoaes would have remained undiscovered and this book unwritten—which of the two would be worse?

  We stayed in Valldemosa for three weeks. I finally became acquainted with the Charterhouse that I had so often shown off to other people. Pedro explained everything to us, including the nail from Christ’s cross, which was Don Juan’s property and only by chance had not been taken to the nursemaid’s home by his pious servants. Some ancestor of the Suredas had gone off to the Holy Land on a mission of piracy and brought home the nail as a relic. Since I regard Pedro as a better Führer than myself, I had no reason to doubt the authenticity of this sacred piece of hardware. Nevertheless, on my own tours I stuck to my legend of the plague torch, which never failed to grab the tourists—and that’s what my employers wanted. There are thousands of Nails from the Holy Cross, but my taeda pestis was unique.

  We also got to know a postman who was no less crafty and resourceful than the bitch Pistola. He was of course illiterate, but he had the capacious memory of such lucky souls, a phenomenon that historians often underestimate because it doesn’t fit in with their theories. The postmaster, who knew how to read and write, sorted the mail and read off the addresses in the sequence of the delivery route. The letter-carrier memorized the names and delivered each item without ever making a mistake, which certainly can’t be said of your run-of-the-mill literate postman.

  We took hikes down to the Valldemosa cala and caught fishes and turtles. Our nets didn’t trap any man-eating sharks, not even the little sharks that my touring compatriots tucked away with such relish when I told them that they were not the common fish you could buy cheaper and better in Germany. We camped out, collected driftwood, and cooked our meals over it. Because of the mosquitoes, we kept the fire burning day and night. Pedro told us pirate stories and filled in the history of his family, supplementing his chronicle with romantic, classical, and heroic medieval details, and arrived at the tale of a certain uncle, a tío twice removed, who met his death in the belly of a sea monster. In the waters of Cabrera and Conejera, the island homeland of Hannibal, a shark swallowed this fellow whole, skin, hair, and bones, with all of the debts, shady dealings, disappointments, and hopes that clung to him as a Sureda from the House of Verdugo.

  Pedro was ten years old when they took him to the little island populated by goats, where the funeral was held for a gentleman of whom it can at least be said that he knew how to hide from the prying eyes of the world—which, by the way, seems to be a talent that this dynasty passed on by inheritance. At the back of the procession was the wobbling casket, which had been caulked with pitch, just like a sea-going vessel. Now it stood on a cliffside in the midst of the bleached bones of the 8000 French soldiers who were abandoned here on Cabrera after the Battle of Bailén. One cannot imagine a more appropriate final resting place for a phantom corpse. The devout family was of the opinion that the fish would eventually deliver up their uncle, since his body contained a soul, and since he was, after all, not some insensate being that one simply devours in order to stay alive. Once he was spewed up on shore, a family member would have to arrive at the spot immediately to place the cadaver, which would no doubt be in sorry condition, into the coffin with the customary Christian ceremony.

  Despite their intense patriotic piety the Suredas did not believe that Almighty God would go so far as to keep their uncle miraculously alive in the sea monster’s belly. Perhaps they were also aware that their uncle’s pattern of living was such that he was undeserving of being spit out whole, and that they would have to be content with his return in any shape whatsoever. I don’t recall how long the island vigil lasted. In any case, the uncle never showed up. But every so often people caught sight of a shark’s fin, a dolphin’s nose, or the tail of some unfamiliar sea animal. Whenever this happened, the lookouts would catch their breath and think: if only this were our uncle! Then the sea would close up again, the waves would resume their rhythm of breathing with the air that coursed above them. The loyal family made the sign of the cross, ended their long wake in the name of the Lord who giveth and taketh away according to His will, and rowed back to Mallorca.

  An aged fisherman, who was familiar with the ways of man-eating sharks, explained to the Suredas that all of their watching and waiting was useless. One simply could not expect that the fish that had swallowed the gentleman would ever vomit the gentleman out again. If some mysterious case of nausea were ever to cause the shark to do so, then it was certain that one of its less finicky cousins would immediately rush to the scene to devour the gentleman for a second time, and in so doing would turn over on its back, making the attack all the more grisly to behold.

  If this uncle had been a prophet, the fish would in all likelihood have spit him back up onto the beach, permitting him to fulfill God’s mission on terra firma—just as had happened with Jonah, who, after his release from probationary imprisonment, went on to spread God’s words of anger against Nineveh more eagerly than ever before. But this Sureda fellow was only a Spanish grandee, a debtor to boot, and on top of it all a man in the habit of writing down his weak-willed, desperate thoughts in letters that later fell into Pedro’s hands. From these, Pedro concluded that his uncle had every good reason to turn himself into a missing person. There was little doubt that he had decided to take up his hiking stick and vamoose far away from his island homeland, at the very same time that his relatives put on mourning and had Masses read for him, and as little Pedrito sat on the desolate cliffside weeping because the big fish wouldn’t give him back his uncle.

  “Did you cry a lot over your lost uncle? And didn’t you think a lot about the biblical story of Jonah, who was also swallowed by a big fish?”—I could just see the pageant of yesteryear, painted in bright Mediterranean colors: a weeping boy sitting next to a coffin on a rocky, weather-beaten cliff that juts up from the surf, like Salas y Gomez in Chamisso’s poem, the sea gnawing eternally at the shoreland.

  Pedro hadn’t thought of Jonah, but he was reminded of the three youths in the burning fiery furnace, Daniel in the lion’s den, and Lazarus in the state of decomposition. And he hadn’t really cried, since he didn’t even know that uncle of his. All he did was keep a lookout over the ocean. Perhaps this relative that the family was telling such tales about might come walking on the waves, a puta on his arm. For even then, Pedro sensed that some woman must be part of the story—a rather advanced apprehension of human nature for a ten-year-old.

  When I was as old as Pedro was then, I wasn’t sitting on a cliff next to an empty coffin, waiting for some up-chucked uncle. I was sitting obediently on a much too narrow bench at school, listening to our rel
igion teacher, who was trying to sow the seeds of biblical truth into our souls. Since this priest lacked real experience of God, his instructional method was patterned on the reform-school model. His approach to the Book of Jonah was to portray it as the saga of a minor prophet’s mission, disobedience, and punishment. He claimed that the great fish was a whale, and that in addition to the insolent prophet, it also swallowed a table and a stool for him to use inside its roomy guts. This was a time when one of our classmates’ fathers was in prison for having neglectfully caused a fellow-worker to fall into a ditch, an accident that had a lethal result. We kids were terribly stirred up by this incident, and when the story of the minor prophet’s imprisonment came up in religion class, we imagined Jonah as being like Otto’s father and vice-versa, with the sole difference that Jonah could not get to see visitors through iron bars. Later, when I started dabbling in theological matters myself, I learned to my amazement that it probably wasn’t a whale at all but an authentic man-eating shark, or according to some expert zoologists the feared Jonah Shark itself, Carcharias verus L., which rendered full credit to its scientific name by gulping down that very prophet. Back then, I believed every word of what the priest told us, even though I knew from reading books that a whale’s esophagus has only enough room for a middle-sized herring to pass through. The miracle—and this aspect of the story is what the Church deemed important—seemed all the more miraculous.

  Our priest wouldn’t have been able to hoodwink Pedro with such a tale. At ten years of age he was so mature that he was already visiting bordellos in order to familiarize himself with that national institution. We boys up in Germany, holding our teacher’s hand, visited a traveling menagerie. We got to see a flying dog that didn’t fly, and a rattlesnake that didn’t rattle, all for the 10 Pfennig that Mommy had given us. For 10 centimos, which he stole, Pedro too went with his whole class, but sans teacher, to a menagerie of lust, and made his first grab into the bosom of Mother Nature, who had not yet decided between animal and human characteristics. In order not to lose out on more lucrative business, it was usually the proprietress herself who undertook the erotic initiation. She sat on a chair, loosened her garments, asked each of the inquisitive rascals first to drop his coin in her hand. Then she made certain gestures and said, “Basta, otro!” and in this fashion serviced entire grades of school kids in just a few short minutes. As soon as you pass beyond the borders of your home town, things become radically different: here is Jonah at latitude 52º N, sitting obediently on his stool in the belly of a whale, waiting for a bell that will signal his release. And at 40º, in the Mediterranean, here is a boy sitting on a tiny island waiting for a fish to spew up a real Jonah who happens to be the boy’s real uncle, though twice removed. And to think that fate had already permitted this selfsame boy to touch a woman’s breast, an object that some of us kids in the German school may have imagined to exist, but which our religion teacher denied under threat of extra homework. Not even Eve in Paradise had a breast. Her kids were fed from a bottle containing Soxhlet-brand formula—that’s what I, too, believed. The Bible as a collection of tales from A Thousand-and-One Nights—it’s a ticklish subject, even today.