I turned on the light. The visitor gave his full name once again, and once again explained his connections with the Privy Councillor. They were Silberstern Bros. from Würzburg, Wine & Spirits. Instead of a business card, he handed me a brochure and said, “Here, this is us! You can read it through, but I’ve come for a very different reason. Are you listening?”
His accent was distinctly Franconian, just as my own was distinctly Lower Rhenish. His secret “brother” came out as “pruzzer,” and his brochure was an advertisement for that fellow’s “pruzzerly” enterprise, the production of wine and brandy under a franchise from Würzburg University.
Herr Silberstern stood one-and-a-half heads shorter than me. He had a keg-shaped paunch, in front of which, once he had deposited his briefcase on the floor, he kept his hands discreetly folded. He forgot to remove his expensive hat. Then he started twiddling his thumbs, forward and backward. He addressed me as “Herr Doktor,” just as every barber in every university town does with every customer. Several times he lifted his hat to brush back his short-cropped but somewhat disheveled hair, talking all the while as if he intended to wear me down with palaver. Whereupon he ceased twirling his thumbs, since he needed the latter digits to fit under his armpits as, with expanded chest, he began moving his fingers in wave-like motions. We were still standing opposite each other in our entrada. While I must have missed certain details of his story, this much was clear: Adelfried had fled his homeland just as soon as Hitler had seized power. The SS had found his 2-yard-wide bed empty, the one in which he was in the habit of sleeping with Aryan women who preferred to ignore the racial laws. He had left a fortune behind in the Reich. Countless women were lamenting his fate. All five of his brothers bore exceedingly Aryan given names ending in -fried, -wolf, and -helm, and they had a sister named -linde. In spite of all such precautions, all of their lives were at stake, although his entire family still trusted in the Führer’s generosity. He would not have left the country so precipitously, he explained, if it had not been for the fact that he was a wholesale practitioner of racial defilement. I also learned that there was a certain Nina. “What a babe, my dear friend!” She was from Cologne, and she represented the erotic apex of his entire life, the triumph of his metallic bedstead. Her father was dead, having twice fallen beneath an oncoming train. The first accident cost him a leg, the second his life. Her mother was still alive as the widow of a railroad-crossing attendant, still lifting and lowering the barrier and eking out a living with a few geese, a goat, and her daughter Nina. “What a woman, Herr Doktor! And she’s Catholic, and she’s taller than you are!”
It wasn’t at all clear why Mr. Silberstern had come to see me. Instead of tossing him out of our house, I led him to my study. To this very day, as I sit here writing my account of this encounter with the lecher Silberstern, Beatrice won’t forgive me this huge mistake.
On many occasions I had already given practical advice and/or monetary help to Jews who fled to Mallorca, sometimes even offering them our last duro. They arrived in a state of confusion or intimidation, sometimes pressing their case obstinately—each one according to his or her personality, level of education, or financial wherewithal. One very prominent legal official from Berlin, arriving on the island with his hugely imposing wife and with a daughter right out of the Song of Solomon, gave me a detailed description of his situation. He had foreign bank accounts and personal connections in many lands—just the kind of life I was hoping eventually to lead myself. His plan was to stay on the island for a restful few months, and he asked me about the local German consul: what was that man’s attitude toward Jews? I quickly gave this Berlin judge the true scoop. This particular consul wasn’t of the kind who ate Jews for breakfast. His diplomatic rank had gone to his head, but otherwise he remained in fear of the Party and its snoopers. If he could help Jews in their attempts to emigrate, he would readily do so. But they mustn’t start railing against his Führer, as I myself had done openly. “Well yes,” the judge said, “no doubt your tirade went much too far. After all, we are speaking about Germany. This Führer is a historical accident.”
The two of us went at each other tooth and nail, and parted as enemies. From the top of our stairs, I shouted down to this Berlin judge that he should use his money to get on to Brazil; all of his people were bound for extinction one after the other, and those with cash would be hounded out like pigs for the slaughter. A few days later I met the judge’s wife in the German Shop. She begged my pardon for her husband’s unseemly response to my frank explanations. The fact was, she said, that her husband was terribly nostalgic for Germany. He couldn’t live without Germany; most of all he wanted to go back to Germany, to Berlin. A month later I received a letter from her with a fictitious return address: the judge was in a concentration camp.
Be that as it may, the misery of the German Jews had never before brought us in personal contact with the likes of this charlatan brother of the Privy Councillor from Würzburg. He enshrouded me with a tangled web of chatter, mainly concerning the finest specimens of naked German women, among whom none could compare with his favorite Nina, who was educated and as dark-skinned as a Jewess, but completely Aryan and Catholic. She was a dancer, and a model at Cologne’s most fashionable Hohe Strasse department store. And because she looked so Jewish, she was fired from the store and even threatened with stoning. “Can you imagine that, Herr Doktor? In Cologne, where every year people celebrate Carnival?”
“Carnival? In 1928 I was an eyewitness in Cologne when Katz Rosenthal (or was it Rosenstein?) had his hot-dog stand demolished because a customer found a mouse in his meal, a mouse that a certain journalism student at the university, a friend of mine, had secreted into the menu. As a result, my friend Dr. Ley spent half a year in jail. But if I have understood you correctly, Mr. Silbersteg, you’re visiting me because of a certain Nina from Cologne?”
“Stern, please! Silberstern.”
“Fine, Silberstern. But I’m sorry. I lived in Cologne for quite a few years, but—Nina? But now wait a minute—you’re quite right, I must know her. A tall swarthy type, looks like a Jewess, quite a babe? And wasn’t her father a high mucky-muck in the Reich Railway?”
“Please, Herr Doktor, it’s not because of Nina that I’ve come to see you. The reason why I’ve come has to do with a very urgent matter. It has to do with my pooks. And her mother told her: Nina, this Mr. Silberstern, he’s such a fine gentleman, he’s so educated, he’s from the best of families…”
“Ah, I see. You have come here at the suggestion of your prospective mother-in-law, a woman whom I also don’t know personally. But tell me now, isn’t she likewise a rather full-bodied, imposing personage? But of course, her husband was a gravedigger in Cologne-Poll by the name of Firnich! Am I right? You’re speaking of Mrs. Firnich!”
“You’re not listening to me. I’ll tell you once more: I’ve come on account of my pooks, and we drove in my own car down through all of Germany. Thousands of kilometers with Nina always at the wheel, and we spent our nights only in the finest hotels. But just think, Herr Doktor, she never let me really have her, that’s how proper she was, not the kind that puts out for just anybody, and then Nina said when we were in…”
“I understand, Mr. Silberstern. You’ve come to see me because somebody somewhere doesn’t let somebody have her, and so now I’m supposed to…”
“You’re making a joke out of it, but I’m deadly serious about my pooks. You’ve got to help me! You’re a writer, and you’re an Aryan!”
He was seeking me out on account of his books. Apparently it was an urgent matter. But my manuscript was also urgent. I had reached the passage where the manager of the municipal de-braining department has placed an awl up against the Lord Mayor’s occiput and is already banging away with a mallet, causing the Lord Mayor’s grey matter to spill out into the official Municipal Bucket. A little kid asks his mother, “Mom, what’s that awful man doing with his hammer? He’s going to bash in the Mayor’s head!” “No, no,
” his Mom answers, “he’s just letting the mayor’s brains drain out of his head.” Whereupon the kid asks the childlike question, “And what about you, Mom? Do you have brains, too? And is he going to bash you too?” Before Mom can reply that the Führer does all her thinking for her, the Lord Mayor has already been politically coordinated, and a sprig of mistletoe is placed inside his wound. He leaves the scene amid the thunderous applause of the masses. Feeling the urgent call of nature, he goes behind a tree, where he thinks no one can see him. He lifts his hand to the back of his head, and… it’s gone! Where his cerebrum had been, there is now a Hitlerian void. Ach, mein Führer!
“But I beg you! You’re not paying attention to me. Repeat what I just said!”
I cringed as if caught in some naughty act, and almost stammered, “Oh, sorry, Mr. Stern. Actually I was listening very intently. I’m crushed by what you’ve been through. Nina has stolen your books, and you want me to find you a Spanish lawyer. That I can do. I’ll write a few words to a state prosecutor I know, and everything will turn out just fine.”
The words poured out of me like an avalanche, but behind me I sensed new danger approaching: Beatrice. If she were to come now and catch sight of the newest star in my little cosmology, a comet sporting a ghostly Nina in its tail, and if he were then to say, “Good day, Madam, I am Mr. Silberstern from wherever, and with this and that, and for whatever…,” and if at the same moment his Amazon friend were to show up—there would be hell to pay!
“Mr. Silberstern, your case is urgent, but mine is, too.”
“Then come with me right away. We must set an example.”
As I put on my alpargatas, Silberstern took off his hat and, at a record pace, told me the life history of this head-covering, where he got it, how he haggled down the retail price, all the places where he had forgotten it, how often somebody took it by mistake, how it once got stolen but was recovered with the help of his brother Muthelm Silberstern, attorney in Frankfurt, married, three children, divorced, Juris Doctor—“and also, get this, a Doctor of Philosophy!”
I let him lead the way. As we walked, I was told in passing what he wanted my help for. His main topic was the love lives of the famous conductor Furtwängler and the famous surgeon Sauerbruch, both of whom had entrusted to him the management of their wine cellars.
Four crates of Silberstern’s books, I learned, were sitting in the customs warehouse, branded as prohibited literature and hence confiscated. Through all of his torrent of words concerning women who did and women who wouldn’t, I probably picked up the term “prohibited,” thus got sidetracked from my manuscript. For I am not so cowardly as to give full attention to everything any crack-brain has to say to me.
But how did a lecherous, completely sex-crazed wine merchant like this Adelfried ever get hold of politically suspect literature? But of course, it must be those brothers of his! He’s working for them. Together they intend to unseat the Führer and establish Jewish world domination, with the Island of Mallorca as its capital. But the customs administrator is sharp enough to nip this plan in the bud. I told my companion that we would soon take care of the whole matter. I was, after all, Professor d’Ester’s assistant, I was Professor Wohlers’ left- and right-hand man, so I knew my way around such things. What’s more, I was a consultant to the Honduran Freedom Movement under Don Patuco. Silberstern already knew about this connection; my reputation had preceded me. The German Bookshop, he explained, had passed on certain personal data, but was I aware, he asked, that Furtwängler did not sleep with the soprano Marietta Kefer-Froitzheim? “I’m telling you he did not sleep with her, and this was the greatest shock to the German musical world since the war, because that Ninth of his in Würzburg…!”
“Please, Mr. Silberstern, wait here outside the warehouse. I’ll go in first and talk with the officials, and they won’t be interested in Furtwängler’s Ninth. Madam Froitzheim is another matter entirely. I know her personally, and in the Gürzenich cafeteria we often had knockwurst and beer together.”
At the customs warehouse I knew just who to go to. It was the friendly fellow who had arranged customs for our stuff with Antonio. He dealt with the most serious cases by waving his hand and going back to sleep. But he wasn’t there. I asked for the Customs Director. What did I want from him, I was asked; the Director wasn’t to be disturbed except in highly unusual matters. I told the fellow that my client had just such a highly unusual situation. “There he is, standing over there, the stocky little gentleman with the fancy hat.” The customs officer, taking one look at Silberstern, laughed. “That guy? What a pain in the ass! What a pig!” I motioned to my “client” to be patient a while, and walked to one side with the officer. “What’s up?” I asked.
I was given the following explanation. Some books had arrived from Germany, from some place called “Furzeburg,” addressed to a “Mister Silbersterren” at the Pensión “La Sagrada Familia” in Palma. The customs inspection had revealed an entire collection of dirty literature— pornography. The warehouse walls turned red at the discovery. “It was such a pile of smut, Señor!” But interestingly enough, nobody here realized that there could be such an enormous number of dirty books. The Germans, he said, were very meticulous people. But filth is filth, and we foreigners would just have to learn to abide by the rules of his Catholic country. Then the customs officer snickered, and I snickered back. We both knew all about Catholic manners.
Hiring an interpreter at 10 pesetas an hour, Mr. Silberstern had already started negotiations at the warehouse. The interpreter, a Spaniard in the employ of Cook Travel, got nowhere, since he, too, was mesmerized by the filthy books instead of palavering them out of the possession of customs, pocketing his fee with a redoubled grin. He sent the German pornocrat to the Tourist Office, where the boss was a German who had been in the Spanish tourism business for more than thirty years. He wanted nothing to do with the affair, and sent the emigrant to the German Bookshop, which in turn sent him to me, right up to the edge of my Tombs of the Huns.
“There’s nothing we can do,” said the officer. “The Director has confiscated the entire shipment, which is now under lock and key. In what capacity have you come here?” I had no idea, so I went outside and asked the brother of Attorney Muthelm Silberstern from Frankfurt, Dr. jur. and Ph.D., to tell me quickly what my duties were to be in this morality play. “Haven’t you understood? You are my legal consultant.”
I relayed this information to the puzzled customs officer: I was the jurisconsultus of the gentleman from the city whose name, when pronounced the Spanish way, sounded faintly shabby. My credentials, I explained, consisted in the fact that I was standing here discussing the case. This he seemed to comprehend, and so he went off to notify the Director. He asked my client to enter the building and take a seat. Under my legal guardianship, Mr. Silberstern’s case was becoming official.
The crates containing suspect literature, he then told me, represented only a portion of his personal library—basically just the more frequently consulted volumes. The remainder of his collection was being shipped together with his brass bedstead and his automatic wardrobe. The confiscated material was a small collection of (here Silberstern raised a chubby index finger) scientific erotica, assembled for scholarly purposes.
The Customs Director asked us into his office. I introduced myself as procurator and prolocutor, pointed to my client, and reached for my breast pocket. But the Director didn’t want to see my papers. I said, “Please tell me what’s going on here. My client is experiencing harm by being barred from consulting his scientific literature. In the name of free scholarly inquiry, I wish to protest!”
The Director laughed. Did I want to know what was going on here? “Momento!”
He pulled forth a huge tome, slammed it on his desk, opened it to a dog-eared page, and then slapped the volume with the flat of his hand. “That’s what’s going on here, sir!”
Pink like lard or marzipan, the buttocks of a beauty queen peeked forth from her discr
eetly lowered lace panties. Bent over forward, she turned her head to the spectator, revealing at one and the same time both of her very similar visages. It was only the smile on her second visage that looked any better than the other one.
My client’s eyes swelled out of their sockets, gazing in watery glee at the illustration. I remained in control of the situation. I wasn’t standing in some steamy apartment corridor with María del Pilar. I was legal consultant for scholarly research on the subject of sleaze. So I replied with confident dignity to the Director’s impatient query, intoned as he again slapped the picture, as to what I thought that was supposed to be.
“Director, Sir, what we have here is the hindquarters, shorn of their usual covering, of what I take to be a French virgin—plus a view of her countenance.”
“Aha! Here in Spain we call this stuff filth, horrible filth. The worst kind of filth that anyone can imagine.” Once again his hand slammed down on the corpus delicti. My client asked me to translate what the Director had said about the picture. So I translated, and that brought Mr. Silberstern to life. His eyes bulged out even farther, but now it was from sheer indignation. “The worst kind of filth, you say? Well now, let me show you what’s in this volume!” With a flip of his practiced hand and without the aid of a dog-ear, he laid bare a page where things were really going strong. This time it involved a couple, a she and a he. Once again my client’s expert eyes took on a moist gleam. It was such a long time since he had lost sight of his beloved bare-asses.
The Director clapped his hands a third time, now as a sign for his assistant to go fetch the “whole pile of crap.” Soon the top of his desk was completely filled. The smutty evidence spilled over onto the chairs in his office. Wherever we looked, we saw naked babes, savage pimps, and horny chambermaids in the most flagrant poses, all of them openly engaged in love-making of the most unbridled sort. The owner of this scholarly collection pointed out some particularly significant specimens, naming secret sources, prices, and the availability of discounts for serial subscriptions. Then he asked me to inquire of the Director if he might be interested in subscribing.
The Island of Second Sight Page 90