I concluded my endorsement of this remarkable letter from the broker by saying that I myself had grown up in a totally unscholarly household devoid of books. Never, ever had I enjoyed the privilege of doing my business while sitting on a sacerdotal throne. At such a tender age I never committed transgressions against what was held sacred.
“And now you are making up for it, mon cher!”
“There is a time and a place for everything, ma chère. Sooner or later each of us will have his tongue rapped with a key, and then it will be obvious whether or not he will remain in divine tutelage. I left the State of Grace forcibly but willingly, whereas your departure had other reasons. Now we’re in this mess together, and we seem to be getting along okay—not brilliantly, but okay. That’s what happens when people are coerced into attending service on the day when the Lord took a breather. But that’s a whole different story. Can you imagine a God who designs and creates entire universes and then on the seventh day, like any upright citizen, takes the day off? Do your Papa’s posthumous manuscripts contain anything on this subject?”
“Vigo, you’re hallucinating! What’s all that got to do with this letter? It’s from Pedro or one of his henchmen. And in order to avoid admitting that once again you’re the fall guy, you start lambasting the two Christian religions, whose melancholy products we both are, and setting them one against the other. And in the process you get things all confused.”
“I am by no means getting things confused. It will very soon be apparent to you how all these things are connected. I’ve told you a lot about my uncle the bishop, who was in truth a great man whose mind was in no way affected by having to wear his precious miter cap. In his house in Münster, Am Domplatz 30, I got to see certain things that went on behind the scenes in the residence of a Higher Deputy of Jesus Christ. Let’s assume that all of these relatives of ours, each of them having his exclusive place amid the heavenly hosts contending for eternal salvation, were honorable men who put their intellectual and humane talents to work in the service of a cause that, to put it mildly, has very little that is intellectual or humane about it when politics demands its due. Just think: my Pope is already negotiating with Hitler, which means that belief in God and worldly expediency are in the balance. My Uncle Jean was well aware of the dilemma he would face as he was elevated to the rank of Bishop. In fact, he refused twice to accept the shepherd’s crook. When I asked him—he was by then a Bishop—whether he believed in God, he gave me a look that would have revealed all my misery to me—if indeed I felt miserable. He said, ‘I pray a great deal, my son.’
“Your Papa must have experienced similar crises of conscience, but soon enough he decided to get away from the sterile and musty air of Basel intellectual circles. Surely he felt uncomfortable there, for otherwise why would he have gone off to the pampas to spread the Word of God to the gauchos and the Indians of the savannahs? I’m impressed by the thought of the scion of an age-old scholarly dynasty abandoning his stand-up desk to lift himself up onto a mustang and start baptizing Araucans and Tehuelches. That cost him his life, but at least he escaped the fate of getting swallowed up by Nestlé Theology.”
“By what?”
“By Nestlé Theology, an important branch of Swiss seminary pedagogy. It’s concentrated, it’s germ-free, and if you keep a lid on it, it will stay useable for years. Every country brings forth its own special type of industry, with its own brand name and with no imitations permitted. This is a gripping story for which I have already found a title: God’s Gravediggers. I chatted a lot with Uncle Jean about these matters—always behind closed doors, so his butler wouldn’t hear what we were saying. One false word, and we would have a scandal on our hands. My uncle was a tolerant fellow, and he let me bring up any subject I wanted to. Only once did he get mad at me, and that was after I heard lectures by Barth and Mausbach. I recommended that he commission the writing of a modern theodicy, a justification of God not because of the evil and suffering in the world but because of the existence of theologians, who for me were convincing proof that God couldn’t exist, for otherwise He would have long since, using Old Testament techniques such as brimstone or plagues of locusts, got rid once and for all of these detractors.”
“That poor bishop! Did he come back at you by saying that God is immune to attacks by Men of God, especially when you consider that He Himself saw them coming, or even made them what they are? The gates of theology shall not prevail against God. I’ll bet your uncle blessed himself three times whenever you came to visit.”
“You’re mistaken there, too. He and I got along just fine. He never even tried to convert me, since he himself bore a heavy burden of respectability. That miter alone must have weighed ten pounds. One time he put it on my head, and it gave me a dashing look. Just imagine: Vigoleis as an episcopus, in partibus infidelium, with a princely wine cellar, with chamberlains, a personal confessor, confirmation ceremonies—or wait, let’s leave out the confirmation ceremonies, they can do any bishop in, they’re too much for even the strongest stomachs—and with a 13th century Lower Rhenish Madonna in a niche in the library…”
“But leave me out of this!”
“You would regret it, because you would get to play an organ even finer than the one played by Mosén Tomás of the Capilla Classica.”
“Mon chéri, tu es maboul. Je n’ai pas le talent d’être la maitresse d’un évèque.”
I would like to have replied that she had never experienced a temptation of this sort, even though she had lived long enough in places where Princes of the Church were conspicuous if they didn’t sleep in a double bed. But I kept silent. How could I defend myself against this siege in the French language? My French was, is now, and will forever remain barbaric, and not only as regards my accent. The failure of German-French entente is a matter that concerns the philologists more than it does the politicians. But it’s always the wrong people who try to bring about ententes—just look at the mess I got myself into by attempting to bring my child-broker down to earth from out of the clouds of mystification. I had ended up by crushing him!
“Beatrice,” I interjected, “I won’t ask you again whether this offer interests you, considering that you have your doubts about the very existence of this man’s business. I will simply go to the address we have, behind the Archepiscopal Palace, and seek out the proof in person. Perhaps I can discuss with the broker some matters that can give a new direction to our lives. On the way back I’ll visit Angelita; you can stay home and practice.”
“Go ahead! You won’t find the broker. I’ll do the shopping myself, because as soon as Angelita gazes at you with those angelic eyes of hers, you’ll lose your equilibrium, and who knows what you’ll bring home with you. It’s just that tonight I’d like once again to have a genuine meal. There are two pesetas left.”
“Don’t worry, there is only one Rabindranath, and if those aunts aren’t in the store, for our two pesetas Angelita will sell me more than we can gulp down in two whole weeks. That girl is truly an angel, and not only in name.”
“And you are truly a utopian, and not only on paper. Those aunts are always in the store.”
“If so, we would long since have starved to death. I’m on my way, and don’t forget: my ways, too, are sometimes miraculous.”
I had emerged from our theological disputation not exactly victorious. And to be truthful, I was myself beginning to doubt the existence of Fulgencio. Doubt can be the first step toward knowledge, but there was no point in worrying; the Calle Morey would provide the precise information we were looking for. On my way there I again studied the broker’s missive, which I now regarded as a kind of test for a lower-level course in psychology. Certain turns of phrase in it were formulated in a scurrilously elusive, overwrought style reminiscent of Unamuno—was this Pedro’s doing? Pedro was a master stylist, as I knew from reading his remarkable diaries.
At this point I wish to append a further detail from the broker’s letter, one that I discovered only while perusi
ng the text more closely: our entrepreneur was offering me a monthly clothing allowance of 10 pesetas, to be paid out of a special fund for hijos de algo in cases where the adoptive father lacked the means to clothe his adoptive kid. In order to feed the kid, we could depend on a pious Vincentian foundation. But in both cases we would have to provide proof of my penury. Far from regarding this clause in the agreement as a personal affront, I thought it was quite appropriate. I may often be the victim of my own misery, but never its true cause—a state of affairs that Beatrice could corroborate if she were ever in the mood to do so. As a heavy consumer of crime novels she is aware that each and every word “will be used as evidence against her.” And as a human being among human beings, I am aware that where there is no food, there can be no kid—although the reverse is usually the case.
Perusing and meditating, I wended my way to the Calle Morey, past the Cathedral with its coloration of burnt earth, the earth of Mallorca. I quickly located the broker’s house, a mummified palace from the Moreto epoch, modified in later times and resulting, through a patina of decay, in a combined style that was not without a certain unified effect. In Spain, this crumbling and erosion of masonry under the influence of sooty time begins at the moment when the architect hands over the key to the owner, just as a living organism taking its first breath starts breathing its very last. In Portugal, such fatally creative decay—creativity, as always, considered as a form of decline—begins with the laying of the cornerstone—a fact that could lead us to even more telling analogies in the human sphere. As I grow older, again and again I see more and more clearly that the preservation of human creations is an exercise in intellectual impoverishment, a tragic admission of impotence and impossibility, a futile attempt at rescue. To avoid sinking, all we need is a slab of wood. No sign of the grand gesture arising from personal initiative: people saw things apart, they glue things together, they take a thousand shards and stick them together to remake a Madonna, and we heap praise on the clever fellows who show so much patience. As for myself, I love to watch things collapse. In the noise, the showers of ashes, and the clouds of swirling dust I can suddenly discern a gesture, witness the emergence of a word and a deed that captivate me. In such events I detect a tone that, in my enraptured state, can lead me toward the ineffable more readily than the sight of anything that is firmly grounded, supported on all sides, anchored, held fast with mortar and pitch. In the realm of language, poems by Trakl can have this effect on me. In the absence of words, gestures, or sounds, I can still sense the fantastic metamorphoses that take place amidst all the rubble.
Lost in thought, I found myself standing inside the palace courtyard. Fiery-eyed cats slunk around in the hot sun, like the demonic veiled beatas and the erotic priests in their Faustian cassocks—a dozen from among the thousands that make up the veritable feline zoo that is the City of Palma. Cats, padres, and nuns give the streets of Palma their characteristic stamp.
I had to climb three flights of stairs to reach the porche, a narrow arcade that led to a dull mahogany door with a bronze knocker in the shape of the nest of a bird of prey. To the left of the entry I spied a sign set in the sandstone masonry—behold, the salesman’s name replete with all the honorifics of his lineage. So Pedro hadn’t duped me after all! And as for Beatrice’s instinct for truly criminal machinations—why, she was deceived by too much literature! I would simply never be able to put her on a trail that began with any measure of improbability. It was humiliating to discover that my Inca maiden was proof of my contentions—not in black and white, to be sure, but in close approximation of that graphotechnical figure of speech. And just look, the sign contains more information: Corredor de niños, and beneath this, Gran surtido en ambos sexos. Of course, with a single glance Beatrice would have deciphered these words while I was still preoccupied with the cats—I, Vigoleis triumphator, who shall now read the text and translate: “Large Assortment of Both Sexes.” We know from the letter that he is already sold out, with the exception of the single item that has led me upstairs to this official sign. Underneath the sign was an enamel plaque, apparently added as an afterthought and depicting the Divine Friend of Children—nothing unusual, by the way, since nearly all Spanish households have a contract with Heaven, the least expensive Watch and Ward Society. Under the picture was the obligatory ejaculation to the immaculately conceived Mother of God: Ave María purísima sin pecado concebida. But where I expected to read further, “…pray for us,” there stood, penned out in an approximation of calligraphic hand, the words, “Please knock.” This was a discreet hint that apart from paying tribute to the Almighty, the urgent concerns of everyday commerce were to be observed here as well. And so I knocked.
A maid appeared, an island native in the familiar costume of the servant class: a kerchief of white tulle tied under the chin, called rebocillo, a long pigtail, and a little cap. Thus far, nothing out of the ordinary. Every halfway respectable family had a bunch of these servant maidens. The only thing unusual about this girl was her bosom, which was in constant motion and which moved me, too. I therefore made a bow that was too deep by a few vertebrae, still caught up in that transitional phase between the ludicrous German bowing of my student days and the natural casualness of Mediterranean greeting customs. I had not yet advanced to the universal shoulder-drumming, dust-producing embrace, which in any case would have been out of place with this girl. I simply presented her with my card, which contained a single word of identification: Vigoleis.
This domestic servant—and yes, that is what I wish to call her instead of “maid,” a term that all too quickly reminds me of the girl made famous in a poem by Christian Morgenstern, the “maid” who secretly had to nurse a baby “with a head made of cheese,” a mental association that could prove deleterious to my admittedly dubious intentions upon entering this house. Besides, I had no particular need for this associative borrowing from Herr Morgenstern, the creator of the Gallows Songs. Using his own inner rhyming dictionary, Vigoleis was perfectly capable of filling psychoanalytical gaps of this sort. And as far as this particular girl was concerned, he was determined to set a personal example, no matter if she was a “chaste, self-styled kitchen maid, / neither clean nor bright, / brazenly deceiving her employers / in plain sight” and was not nourishing a cheesy brat at her bosom. If I were writing as a Romantic, having come into the world a century earlier, it would be almost automatic for me to spice up these jottings with rhymes in the manner of Eichendorff’s Ne’er-Do-Well, who every few pages breaks out in song. Such exuberance has been out of fashion, indeed it has been considered shameful, ever since people no longer hike their way through the wide, wide world but instead take elevators and are constantly fleeing from potentates. Poems have in fact become literary contraband. Our publishers are anxiously on guard against verse getting smuggled into prose, which is what they make their money from. In the realm of rhyme, as in so many other ways, the Romantics were closer to reaching the Blue Flower than we starless descendants in our century of literary sham.
The domestic servant read the single word on my card. Why, she could actually read! She looked at me, then again at my card, smiled, and asked me something that confused me even more than her bosomy appeal: Was I a Vigoleis? Indeed I was, and decidedly so, I said after a moment’s pause during which I pondered myself as if suddenly casting a bolt of light on my own person. But then I realized that her question meant something rather different. A “Vigoleis”—she interpreted the word as a title, a designation of profession, an indication of social rank on the order of “Voyvod,” “Padishah,” or “Mahonda,” someone before whom one must sink to one’s knees if one weren’t such a pretty girl with flirty eyes and a long pigtail that stuck out stiffly in back and that had at its very end an even stiffer piece of string that signified her boss’ dignified rank. “You wish…?”
I handed her the letter, explaining that this was why I had come. She asked me to follow her. We entered a room that contained, besides a cuspidor, a single mouse. T
he latter skittered away, leaving me alone with the ceramic pot, while the domestic servant disappeared behind another door. She soon re-entered and, still smiling, beckoned me into an adjoining space, the waiting room. The servant girl retired. I made another deep bow.
Now I was free to examine the testimonials and letters of gratitude that were displayed on the walls. The sequence of documents had been arranged with the skill of a museum curator who knows just how to force a visitor to wander along the exhibit, taking everything in and educating himself in the process—art for art’s sake. The arrangement forced me in addition to pursue a train of thought concerning the psychology of the waiting room—a subject that cries out for scholarly investigation. Generally speaking, the installations range from that of a pre-torture chamber to a Shrine to the Blessed Mother of Merciful Succor, and on to the boudoir of a wealthy bordello madam. Don Fulgencio apparently aimed for a synthesis of all such types. I didn’t mind waiting.
The texts of these testimonials were instructive. Two of them, in particular, caught my attention. The first was written in the hand of His Royal Highness the King—a clear refutation of Robespierre’s claim that kings were illiterate. The letter was a request to Don Fulgencio that he provide a child free of hemophilia. The man who wrote this was already living in exile, perhaps now liberated from any worry about the mysterious corpuscles whose lack of coagulatory capability may have had no influence at all on the fall of the monarchy, as was bruited about among utopian monarchists during the early years of the Republic. The second document informed the reader that an order of nuns in Alicanta was willing to entrust all the orphans in its care to the good offices of Don Fulgencio.
The Island of Second Sight Page 86