An hour later some workmen arrived. Plaster fell down from our walls. Our apartment echoed to the sounds of labor and hearty curses. Zwingli’s nail gave the commands. Everything was new, everything was nicely matched with everything else. Though he lacked a woman, Zwingli had culture. The desk, the bookcases, the filing cabinet, the divan that with a simple mechanism could be transformed into a pilarière—every item was from the Vienna Workshop and paid for in cash.
Yet another hour later more workmen arrived. More plaster fell from our walls, but this time they brought with them office machines for typing, calculating, copying. Plus one of those little, gaudily decorated strongboxes in Emmanuel style. Just the thing for my posthumous manuscripts! And everything paid for in cash.
Had Zwingli bought the bogus Cranach himself and then shoved it on to some museum for a cool million? Before our expert could offer some comment along these lines, the doorbell rang again. It wasn’t more workmen, just a man. All alone, short, limping, and dirty: Don Darío.
Yes, good reader, it was one and the same Don Darío from the Príncipe, Don Helvecio’s personal spokesman, the crippled goad to his virility, the originator of the winged words about a man having to stand up like a man to avoid falling down; the anarchist who had been tossed out of the Conde’s gunpowder chamber, the sworn enemy of the Pope and all of God’s black-robed subalterns; the owner of a bullfighting arena in Felanitx; the political schemer, the man who swore bloody revenge on the banker Juan March. It was the man, in a word, who was everything but a martyr to his wardrobe. Just to imagine that I almost missed out on this character! This book of mine has grown in size; chapter has followed upon finished chapter. But Don Darío has been seemingly reluctant to submit his person to my chronicling research. Just a while ago I promised my reader to stage a special parade in which he would appear in the festive get-up of his filthiest suit, a set of duds to which I might attach a fleck of Juan March’s blood as a decoration Pour le mérite, the highest order issued by the Mallorcan vendetta.
Well, here he finally is, a latecomer, just in time. His murderous intentions haven’t mollified his awkward limp, but you can easily read them in his glistening eyes, as always just visible behind his permanently fogged-up pince-nez. He is given a cup of coffee, and straightaway he spills it. He smokes a clumsily rolled cigarette, and lets the dropping embers burn holes in his pants, his underpants, and his skin. He refers to this behavior proudly as his own form of Inquisition, a quest for liberty, backed up by a sizeable bank account—though decidedly not one at Juan March’s bank.
Beatrice would never touch Don Darío with a ten-foot pole. Happily, she didn’t even have to try, for Don Helvecio had his rooms in a part of the house that was several flea-jumps away from ours. Don Darío had fleas, too. And because there is nothing in the world more infectious than these animals, Beatrice was already imagining that her beloved Zwingli was scratching himself again. “No doubt it’s typhus,” she said. “Just you wait.”
The two gentlemen slunk around like conspirators inside the lavishly furnished General Secretariat, making obscure remarks to each other. At my inquiry as to what they were planning, and what my function might be in their International University, I received a reply that sounded like a rebuke: “First we’re going to get legally incorporated. Then things will start up.” It was Zwingli who made this announcement. Don Darío seconded his partner’s plan, and added, almost like a command, that they would start out by testing the utility of certain inventions—“Let’s see your list!”
My hour had arrived!
I brought them the list of all my inventions, which by now had grown to considerable length. From my doodad for factory outlet shops to my revolutionary thingamabob for book production, it contained a broad display of possibilities for a company with limited liability and unlimited resourcefulness.
Wielding a silver automatic pencil, Don Darío checked over everything. Far-sighted businessman that he was, he crossed out anything he “felt rather sure” had already been invented—which is how he expressed himself, probably to avoid offending me. He didn’t know me, my notions concerning creativity, or my lyrical tendency toward excessive modesty. In short, he didn’t know Vigoleis. Nevertheless, quite a few items remained on the list; apparently my inventive vein hadn’t dried up like Zwingli’s godmother’s largesse. I recommended that the Sociedad Anónima test out my idea for an adhesive writing tool, a gizmo that today is known the world over as a “ball-point pen” and can be had for one Mark. A soda bottle with its neck broken off just below the stopper gave me the idea of having a spherical stopper rotate inside the point of the pen, an economical way of supplying ink. To Beatrice’s amazement, I succeeded in scribbling something on our whitewashed apartment wall using the bottle. But Don Darío and Don Helvecio were skeptical. My ink-delivering sphere, they opined, would be practical only as a micro-mechanism, and such tiny balls were impossible to manufacture. So—cross it out; it’s only a toy; we are a serious enterprise. I insisted on the practicality of my invention. What were the advantages of an adhesive pen? I explained to the terrorist that it could be used to write under water, based as it was on the principle of adhesion. All that was necessary was waterproof ink and waterproof paper—essential materials for anarchists who suddenly are forced to submerge. Pearl fishers, coral divers, or sponge gatherers could calmly take notes under water; victims of shipwrecks could preserve their diaries. There were hundreds of possible applications above and beyond traditional handwriting, which was in itself a strong recommendation for my invention.
“Cross it out. Typical German pobretería!” Likewise my self-watering flower pot, my compressed-air bicycle wheel spoke, my Unkulunkulu, my Kwik-Stitch Wheel, my fluorescent typewriter platen for composers of late-night love letters, my zippered envelope—these all got crossed out. My city map with electrical direction indicator? Don Darío swung his pince-nez and asked me to explain this contraption. The unlimited entrepreneurs suddenly came alive. Zwingli went out on the balcony and whistled to a passing beggar boy: “Wine, coffee, on the double!” Coins bounced on the street below. Using a hotplate, he brewed himself some ascetic tea. I delivered my report, drew some sketches, and demonstrated my technical brilliance down to the last detail, before I let the wine plunge me into the ecstatic notion of possessing millions as a result of what these two coldly calculating businessmen would accomplish with my invention.
Some months later, the first automatic city map in the world was hanging on the wall at the Café Alhambra. And the world didn’t even observe a moment of silence, as happens at the grave of even the most unknown soldier. The Spaniards up on the terrace kept on drinking their café negro, kept on playing billiards, and kept on gabbing about their whores. The famous writers kept on writing their undying works: Marsman, Kessler, Keyserling, Helman, Graves, Miomandre, Don Gracias a Dios, Martersteig, Franz Blei, Verdaguer, Bernanos… But why list them all, when there were countless more of them? Down below, the nameless inventor stood in constant awe of the streets, squares, department stores, and touristic sights of all sorts that he illuminated with the press of a button. The commercial circles of Palma had given generous support to this installation. Any business that wished to appear progressive rented a little square on the electric board, and was given its own little lamp within the maze of the city plan. The legal rights to the invention had already been sold to Barcelona, Madrid, and Buenos Aires. Why varnish the truth in a book that, like any set of memoirs, stands or fall with truth itself? Vigoleis’ pockets never received a single centimo. To be sure, the two crafty entrepreneurs didn’t cash in millions, either. But many, many thousands of pesetas flowed into their Emmanuel-style strongbox.
The company and its owners flourished, especially once they intuited that all they had to do was pour wine—and let it be said to his shame, not always the best vintage—down Vigoleis’ inventive gullet. Each time, the result was a copious flow of ideas, in confused abundance. I shall spare my reader further details, co
nsidering that it would require another bottle of wine to continue the list, and considering that my inventive ideas have never even yielded enough cash to buy ink for setting them down on paper. How much might Hitler have paid me directly in 1939 for my U-boat respirator? And would Don Darío, with his benighted entrepreneurship, have crossed out my adhesive pen if I had described its practical applications more accurately within the framework of the real world?
The company flourished, and its owners flourished, while Beatrice and Vigoleis kept on starving. Beatrice with her Lladó, Vigoleis with his mystics.
Like every self-respecting Spanish male, Don Darío hated the clergy, the priests, as the source of all that was evil in Iberia. He asked me to invent a gallows that would dispatch a cassocked felon in a single stroke. I referred him to my fellow countrymen in the Third Reich, who were now the experts in mass executions. A postcard to the Führer would suffice. I told Don Darío that the clergy were not my favorite people, either, those sinister mercenaries of the Lord, trained in fanaticism from childhood on, and woe to anybody who refuses to accept the faith! And yet, basically these fellows were just poor dolts with very little income, unless you totted up the not inconsiderable wherewithal they raked in on the side with their brothels, their bullfight arenas, and their schools—which in many cases were schools for scandal. But why string them up? They contributed a great deal to the country’s picturesque image, and were thus invaluable for the tourist trade. Don Darío viewed them, of course, as more than just minions of the Almighty who went around handing out blessings, or just as shrewd businessmen who waylaid his own commercial schemes. Oh, if only all the clergymen in Spain would stick to cultivating the above-named activities—how harmless they would be! Then there would never have been an Inquisition, today there would be no General Franco, and God’s Creation would belie its most painful contingency that allows life to go on only at the cost of other lives. God, conceived of as a monster—it’s an idea that outside of the Book of Job I have found confronted frankly only in the writings of Pascoaes. In any case, I prefer mercantile priests, thieving priests, and whoring priests, men who can do fuller and more appealing justice to the idea of God’s inscrutability, to the sanctimonious vultures and craven cowards who see in each and every human being nothing more than a child of the Devil.
Still, neither in Spain nor later in Portugal did I ever succeed in persuading the witch-hunters that a curate or an abbot commits less mischief if he goes about his work in the interest of financial creditors rather than the souls of the faithful. Would the pastor in my home town ever have driven my politically naive mother, a member of the Catholic Mothers’ Society, into the arms of the Führer if he had gathered herbs on Süchteln Heights, if he had been a partner in the local railway enterprise or, more attractive still, owned the little corner cathouse? He was fanatically devoted to God and the Fatherland, and that’s how he brought about the downfall—not of the Creator, but of his local congregation.
Don Darío regarded my theory as, quite simply, bonkers. Soon enough the Spanish Civil War taught him a lesson. Or rather, it was then too late, even for Don Darío. On his suit he sported not the blood of his ecclesiastical and secular enemies, but his own. He was brutally murdered.
I wrote and wrote, invented and invented. I constructed models, played at being a Wustmann describing Peoples and Fatherlands, and during sleepless nights longed inconsolably for my hour of death. Beatrice practiced and practiced at her Lladó, so persistently that I began thanking my lucky stars that she wasn’t a soprano. And she read and read, and gave lessons, and mended and cleaned. What she was wishing for was not her death or money, not a hat from the Casa de Modas run by the German with hay fever, not some delectable porcupine dish. No, what she longed for was to hear Vigoleis finally giving his imprimatur to some product of his pen, instead of tossing it into the stove or on the manure pile. During all this time Zwingli did nothing at all, and yet of the three of us, he was the one who kept raking in the money. Certain of my inventions achieved success, but that didn’t put any dough in my pocket. For that to happen, I would have to have come up with some specialized manufacturing techniques, and my inventive genius didn’t carry that far. Every creative person is familiar with this defect; it’s the one that all the parasites cash in on, and it’s an age-old conundrum among the academic theologians.
Still and all, every day we had tropical fruit to eat. Zwingli saw to it that our bowls didn’t remain empty. Before this period when he acted as our “house illuminator,” I had often felt nostalgia for my days in Cologne, when with my monthly allowance I was able to buy a single orange each day, and sometimes even a banana, at a particularly friendly greengrocer’s stand. In Spain we usually couldn’t afford such things. Lemons were very expensive. Tropical fruit is a bargain when you can steal it directly from the tree. Once packed in crates, it gets affordable only after it crosses the borders. I had similar experiences in Portugal. Pineapple from Madeira for a song, whereas figs from the Algarve or grapes from the Douro were a luxury. Nevertheless, Zwingli was earning enough from my pobreterías to overcome the prevailing economic tensions. He himself liked Swiss cheese, the real kind that you can obtain in Switzerland only if you have the right connections at Parliament.
Our communal accommodations with my genius brother-in-law went along swimmingly. He did honor to his nickname “Oekolampadius”. Wherever he went, he beamed forth like a lamp into the darkness. There were no womenfolk to steal his light from us, and the dirt carried into our house by Don Darío stayed in the streetside rooms.
Zwingli kept busy planning the foundation of his Academy. His card files were filling up, and “Buschibuëb” kept bringing home various island fruits such as apricots, which were normally reserved for the finest kind of pig swill. Our stock of Künzli tea never ran out. Wherever one looked, it was a scene of peace and concord. It was as if the word puta had been struck from our dictionary. Don Darío had his own putas, but we never got to see them. In this he was being discreet, like any Spaniard.
But one day this limping exploiter of my inventions arrived in an advanced state of anger. What was wrong? Had some priest stolen my idea for a rolling bordello, and then gone ahead and constructed one? Were my wagons already coursing through the Mallorcan countryside? Had some cardinal snuck away without paying his hotel bill? Had Count Keyserling, the hotel’s most lavish resident, driven away guests he himself had attracted to the establishment by putting his “joviality” on excessive display? But no, it was only an American millionaire who had enraged my putative business partner. Upstairs at the hotel in his luxury-class rooms, this American millionaire was himself choking with rage at a damned stupid little Spaniard with a pince-nez and a mild limp.
Don Darío was sitting at his reception desk, calculating how much he had earned at his most recent bullfight, how much he would earn later by mobilizing his German inventor, how much he had lost through his most recent lover, and how much he would have to invest in his future lovers. Then he looked up from his ledger, and somebody approached the desk. “Porra! That’s going too far!” And it was happening, so to speak, in his own house. He stands up and limps into the foyer, dragging his left leg behind him. There follows a moment of stasis, as the weight of his body rests solely on its right-leg support acting as a axle for the left; his left leg swings forward with an almost merry abandon, causing his body to jerk forward with what one might refer to as a step.
The American guest with the million-dollar bank account proceeds across the foyer with a mild limp. He explains that he has come to Palma for the express purpose of hearing a lecture by Keyserling and to watch Keyserling eat a meal—two talents that this epicurean philosopher loved to display in public. Now the Yankee culture-vulture is limping through the foyer; he is dragging his right leg. There follows a moment of stasis, during which the weight of his body rests solely on its left-leg support acting as an axle for the right; his right leg swings forward with an almost merry abandon, causing his bod
y to jerk forward with what one might refer to as a step.
Don’t make fun of foreigners’ infirmities. This maxim holds equally for Spaniards and Americans. Don Darío was incensed when he saw the American imitating his leve cojera as if he had rehearsed it down to the finest detail—caramba! The American was incensed when he saw the Spaniard imitating his “slight limp” as if he had rehearsed it down to the finest detail. “Damnation!” The two impersonators met in the middle of the foyer, facing each other at the static points they had in common. All the rest was a flurry of curses, each making use of a language that was incomprehensible to the other, just as each had made use of his respective language to mock the other’s physical impairment.
The hotel’s reputation was now at stake, as well as the lives of the two game cocks. But salvation arrived at just the right moment, in the form of a gigantic man with crimson complexion, the eyes of a Kalmuk, a scraggly beard, and the paws of a longshoreman. This man stepped between the two combatants. With his right hand he grabbed the Spaniard, with his left the American. But instead of banging their heads together, which they actually deserved, he held them far apart and let them dangle in the air until he finished his discurso in Spanish and his speech in English. As cultured gentlemen, the both of them should be ashamed of themselves, he told them. Weren’t they both lame enough as a result of their common affliction? This was spoken wisely; a philosopher wouldn’t have handled the situation any more effectively—except perhaps Count Keyserling, whose savvy about human nature exceeded even that of Kessler with his Peoples and Fatherlands. Kessler would have let the two disputants mow each other down with their good legs. Indeed, he wouldn’t even have looked up from his manuscript if he had been working on his memoirs in the foyer of the Príncipe. Keyserling was different. He felt it was his obligation to reconcile these representatives of the Old and the New World, a deed that he in fact accomplished, as we have just seen. The scales immediately fell from the eyes of the Spaniard and the American. Getting sight of each other’s bum legs, they suddenly realized that they were both cripples. Keyserling, the founder of the School of Wisdom, had of course noticed this right away, and immediately caught scent of the bottle of wine that would be his reward for concluding the peace treaty.
The Island of Second Sight Page 99