The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  The philosopher returned to his own hotel in a light-hearted mood, still grinning at the victory he had won on General Barceló Street, in the apartment of a nameless emigré, over his old schoolmate Harry Kessler. The man from Darmstadt had put the Weimaraner against the wall, and Harry had yielded to Hermann. “A gentleman’s agreement” is how the philosopher characterized the détente they had reached. The diplomat saw it differently: it was pure swindle, he said. A thousand pardons, but it was nothing but fraud.

  Count Hermann Keyserling may have been mistaken about Count Kessler, but not about the limping Don Darío. The latter ordered for a him a bottle of wine and a plate of roast turkey.

  Zwingli loved his godmother very much, and that is why he begged money from her even at times when he didn’t really need any. Psychologically speaking, this was a perfectly correct behavior. When someone’s godmother is a millionaire and he doesn’t keep asking her for more, that someone will soon come under suspicion of being either hypocritical or a legacy-hunter. Most cases of disinheritance can be traced to clumsy manners on the part of the potential heir. Excessive modesty awakens suspicion. Regular minor blood-lettings, coupled with the wholesale transfusions that become necessary from time to time, are the only way to win the heart of the potential deceased, especially when the potential beneficiary is aware that he can’t be counted among the heirs who simply drop out of the sky post mortem. This was the sunny side of Zwingli’s case. The side turned away from the sun had to do with certain events that still today can make half a dozen faces in Switzerland turn to stone as soon as anyone starts talking about them, even merely as elements in a historical narrative. Every family has its shady spots, and it was by reaching into this foggy, tenebrous realm that Zwingli made the sparks fly. And then one thing led to another.

  On a particular fateful day he again put the bite on his godmother in a letter to Switzerland. I’m calling this day a fateful one because the tiny cross that you find on some old calendars indicating “good for bloodletting” had apparently been misplaced, astrologically speaking. The result: Zwingli received a registered letter written by someone else on his godmother’s behalf, in German but with numerous offenses against the grammatical and orthographical rules—a type of gaucherie that I suppose a millionaire can easily afford, though I myself am wont to let Wustmann off his leash for much pettier misdemeanors. Mais enfin, the letter’s message was clear. Zwingli cussed loudly in all of the languages at his disposal. His Lexicon of Invective came through brilliantly on this occasion, but the Swiss Idiotikon, which in this case was being virtually thrown at him, was not a book that he could simply ignore. I read the letter. With my mystical intuitions, which can also be brought to bear on financial matters, I immediately realized the ramifications of this handwritten ukase, a document that seemed to be a harbinger of the Last Will and Testament that would someday arrive.

  Zwingli had lost a battle. The power residing in his pinky nail was thwarted. What was to be done?

  I elucidated for him my theory of how to keep other people’s property in your own pocket, that is, the concept of capitalism as midwife-toad. It was easy for me to develop such ideas, considering that I was too smart to fall for Communism and too stupid to follow Marx. I simply relied on the teachings of von Wiese und Kaiserswaldau on the one hand, and Heinrich Többen, the Münster prison warden, on the other.

  On one occasion, in the amphitheater of his institution, Professor Többen brought forth for ostensibly educational purposes a certain thug who had several murders, manslaughters, confidence swindles, and what all on his conscience. The corpulent professor, who could turn loquacious in the presence of criminals and who had a talent for displaying his monsters with the determined shrewdness of an elephant driver, brought his patient to tears by recounting the fellow’s childhood. The murderer wept the biggest teardrops I have ever seen. Then he pointed to an object now circulating around the auditorium: a metal spoon that he had deliberately swallowed in order to be admitted to the institution. “I’ll never do that again!” he sobbed, and it was only the older students in the audience who realized that he was talking about the spoon, not about his murders and manslaughters. In front of me a female student started sobbing—the young man’s father and mother long since lay in their cold, cold grave. Többen’s romantic narrative had done the trick.

  An older student gave her a poke in the ribs: “Get a hold of yourself! If Többen sees you, you’ll be out of here in no time!” The professor didn’t see her, but the girl was immediately served notice by a higher authority. The criminal himself interrupted his Papa’s lecture, announcing that the professor did not permit emotional outbursts in the audience. The only person here who was allowed to weep was he himself, the serial murderer. Whereupon the professor called out to the prison guard that the prisoner claimed to know more than he himself; this was the last time he would bring this guy in for an educational demonstration. But the female student still received a serious reprimand when the swallowed spoon reached her; she lifted it with her fingertips and quickly passed it on. Többen interpreted this finger gesture as a criticism of the sanitary precautions taken in his “laboratory,” an establishment recognized throughout Germany as exemplary in every way. So at least one suspect who didn’t pass through Többen’s hands could be classified as small fry.

  Don Darío listened intently to my jailhouse recollections, but, me cago en Dios! What did that have to do with that money lady up in Basel? Zwingli, too, knit his brow as if to say, “What’s all this supposed to mean?” My symbolic discourse was apparently not having the desired effect, so I would have to make things clearer. “Are you suggesting,” Zwingli said, “that the way to turn on the money spigot is to start by telling sad childhood stories and get the tears flowing?”

  “Precisely! A criminal and a millionaire, they both have consciences chock full of guilt, and they can only be assuaged by tearful stories. Do you want proof? Lift up thy pen, Zwingli Oekolampadius, and take dictation!”

  I dictated a letter to his godmother. Christmas was just around the corner, so I had it easy. Our little tree served as Christian inspiration for this un-Christian scheme of mine. It took me but one line to neutralize the good lady’s common sense. In the remainder of the letter, several pages long, I appealed directly to her heart, and from that organ to the complex of glands located in the corners of her eyes. I tore poor little infants from their mother’s breasts, banished young children from their homes, and laid father and mother in their cold, cold grave. My letter was a hit, and that very evening it got sent off to Basel’s highest taxpayer.

  Don Darío, for whom we translated every word, dangled his pince-nez. He didn’t know any Swiss millionaires, he said, but to wangle money from a Spanish one you’d have to go at him with putas and curas or—and he was thinking mainly of his arch-enemy Juan March—with a Toledo blade. I told him that Basel was a different kind of place, and I offered him a bet: ten Fränkli per tear, plus a sixfold security surcharge for a guilty conscience—just not for my own, of course.

  I calculated just when the money transfer would arrive in Palma. On the appointed day, after summoning Don Darío, all four of us went to the post office, and—nothing! I had lost the bet, and I could have strangled old man Többen, thereby ensuring myself free bed and board for the rest of my life. This miserable day was a Saturday.

  On the following Monday a transfer of 2000 francs arrived at the Banca March. I’ll let my reader figure out how many tears were shed in Basel. I myself felt two tears moisten my eyes, tears of pride and gratitude for my genius. I experience such elation only upon success with an invention or a poem, or upon reaching a satisfying interpretation of an obscure passage of prose—as with Pascoaes, for example.

  Zwingli offered me half of the transferred sum. But in his eyes I could see that he, too, was now developing an economic theory by imagining that I wouldn’t accept any of this shameful booty. And he was right. “Thanks anyway!” I mentioned that I, too, was bank
ing on the largesse of a millionaire: Mamú of the Royal Baking Powder Trust.

  One week after this remarkable conquest of big capital, Zwingli fell ill with mysterious symptoms. Was it remote-control poisoning from his godmother’s chemical laboratories? From Pilar’s witch’s kitchen? Dr. Solivellas calmly announced: typhus.

  XXI

  There you go again! You’re not listening!” cried my mooching client, my cheapskate gadfly. “If you were my employee I would have fired you long ago! Repeat what I just told you!”

  Unfortunately I wasn’t Mr. Silberstern’s employee, for if I was, he would have sent me packing, and I would have been forever rid of the miserly sadist. But I remained in his service nevertheless, as the unpaid dupe of a master who, as it says in Mamú’s Bible, doth conceal the ways of the Almighty. And why didn’t Mr. Silberstern just sack me? Hadn’t he noticed that I wrote things for other people for nothing, created inventions for nothing, and plied my very existence for nothing? Vigoleis was the greatest chump who ever lived on the island of Mallorca. And that’s how he has found his way into these pages.

  I had in fact turned a deaf ear to what Mr. Silberstern, the man I sometimes absent-mindedly called Mr. Stern, was yelling at me during our businesslike promenade. My thoughts were taking me much deeper, down into the Tombs of the Huns in my home town.

  Silberstern had sued the Third Reich for hundreds of thousands, his entire refugee fortune, amounting to half a million rust-proof Hitlerian marks. Converted into pesetas, my Adelfried was a solid millionaire, albeit a have-not compared to Zwingli’s godmother, though such comparisons can be misleading. The only difficulty was that he had lost his legal suit. His lawyers were advising him to appeal, and Mr. Silberstern, putting his thumbs under his armpits, said to me, “Take dictation!”

  I wrote, filling page after page with Silberstern’s version of legalese. “You want three copies of everything?” I asked. I was given to understand that the appropriate technical expression was “in triplicate”; that, secondly, since I had no comprehension of business protocol, I should refrain from asking such stupid questions; and that, thirdly, he had three legal advisors who were representing him in his suit against the Reich: his Jewish brother, the one with the two doctorates; an Aryan defense lawyer (a non-doctor); and a proxy counsel-attorney in Zurich (Dr. jur.) who was simply a Swiss and, to judge by his letters, had no particular interest in Silberstern’s case. “Hopeless,” I thought, but I took dictation anyway.

  The correspondence ballooned. The Swiss attorney was given less and less to chew on, because certain facts were being withheld from him. In a surprisingly polite note he withdrew from the case. Besides, he was getting hot under the collar, as I found out later: he also had Aryan clients inside the Reich. His quitting meant less work for me.

  What got written back and forth was utter nonsense, exceeded in its absurdity only by the Reich in whose baleful name all of this had to be put on paper. I told this to my boss, who then got upset and told me to keep my mouth shut. “The cobbler must stick to his last!” he said, and my “last” was making poems. “And yours is screwing whores,” I thought, but kept this to myself and went on writing.

  The result of my legal assistance was a letter from his Aryan attorney telling Silberstern that his case had received expedited attention—that is to say, it was denied. All was lost, with further appeal not only unnecessary but dangerous. Silberstern, a traveling wine merchant who had often been thrown out of the country and often snuck back in, was bursting with rage. But he said, “Take dictation! Justice is justice! I intend to appeal to the court of last resort!”

  The last resort was, of course, the Führer. And so I wrote, “My dear Führer!” Silberstern scolded me, but then went on dictating. Letters, telegrams—there must have been much gleeful rubbing of hands in the Palma post office and no doubt also at the Reichspost. The litigant went on twiddling his thumbs, Vigoleis went on typing, and Beatrice went on threatening divorce if this farce with the lecher didn’t come to a halt soon. But this was only the beginning. I learned the vocabulary of jurisprudence and, by training a philologist, I soon realized that the appearance and sound of a specific word may not have a specific thought behind it, and that a specific thought may be lacking a corresponding referent in the real world, but also that you can juggle all three of these variables and still be left with something in your hand. This “something” was sometimes Silberstern’s non-Aryan condition humaine, at other times his money, and finally the blind spot in his eyes, so often bloodshot with fury. As a Jew, I told him, he was long since scheduled to perish, but now he was asking me to write letters again and again to his executioners. “Justice is justice” was all that this modern Michael Kohlhaas could say in reply.

  “Summum jus, Herr Silberstern, summa iniuria. The adage wasn’t written by St. Augustine, but one could easily ascribe it to him, unless he is in fact the originator. It contains all that I know about legal matters. In your case, what the judge is interested in is your head and your money, which will fall into his lap when your head rolls. And since here on the island your head can at best fall into some puta’s lap, the judge will grab your money with the alacrity that is common to the mindless profession of the law. As for your Aryan attorney, he will not run the gauntlet for you unless you grant him as a fee your entire fortune, now frozen in banks in the Reich. You can cross out your brother with his two doctorates—he’s due for hanging; his Aryan first name will give him away. The Privy Councilor, too, will end up on the gallows. All of you Silbersterns will have had it, together with your fortunes, which you yourself have admitted amount to several million marks. You keep trusting in legal codes and codicils, when you really ought to be trusting in your money. The court of last resort may still let you have everything back, but only if you’re willing to do it the Jesuit way. For once, you should take a lesson from the Catholic Church. You’ll get your money only by spending money.”

  Silberstern was sitting on a crate in our apartment, breathing heavily. Instead of twirling his thumbs, he now began twirling his greedy eyes. Words such as “money” and “puta” formed the core of his lilliputian vocabulary. Now he would have to pay attention. What’s this would-be poet saying, anyway? A guy who can’t even negotiate his own fee for legal counsel? Writers are stupid when they write what they write. “Take dictation!”

  The documents kept piling up. Silberstern was in his element; he dictated for hours at a time. In order not to let Kessler’s memoirs suffer, I had to stay up late at night, and did it willingly. I recuperated from the day’s labor by typing out the Count’s life history. After that, a few more pages of my Tombs of the Huns, although more than once, at the crack of dawn, Beatrice found me lying in a decidedly unheroic tomb of my own—fallen asleep over my manuscript.

  Weeks went past on the island—maybe it was months. Then came the great moment when Silberstern was asked to formulate and notarize a declaration to be forwarded to the highest authorities in the Reich. His Aryan attorney informed him that the matter would proceed swiftly. Now it was va banque with Silberstern’s pieces of silver.

  I wouldn’t have minded at all if this blockhead, this pretentious miser with a soul of corruption, were to lose all his usurious gains. But I didn’t want the Nazis to get hold of them. So I started fighting with all the zeal I could muster for good or ill in another man’s name. I presented him with an equation similar to the one I used in the case of Zwingli’s godmother. The Többen coefficient remained the same, but this time I altered the larger unknown. Outlining my theory, I hammered away at the man with a “star” in his name, but he remained adamant. “The Reich is the Reich, and justice is justice!” “Porra!” “Don’t you meddle in my personal affairs! Take dictation!” “All right—bye-bye, ye starry millions!”

  I handed over the neatly typed documents to my boss. With beads of sweat on his brow he studied them carefully, signed them, and sauntered off to the post office. There’s no helping a guy whose head is as fat as his a
ss.

  It was already past midnight. The moon wandered slowly through the park of the beautiful daughters. The wind was rustling in the coconut palms, the field mice were out hunting, their piercing squeal sounding much like the bats that were coursing through the sultry air. In addition, the girls’ monthly flags were swinging like little ghosts on the clothes line—a captivating memento quia pulvis es on this night of a million stars.

  Beatrice lay sleeping next to me on the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. She is an early bird, whereas I am a night owl. With the aid of two of my inventions I had made my typewriter almost soundless. Wet cloths damped what little of the tapping noise was still to be heard, while serving also as a coolant. Nothing disturbed my lover’s sleep as I wrote down Kessler’s past life and Vigoleis’ future, which was still dormant in the Hunnish tombs near the banks of the Niers.