This Count, who was also a baron and a marquis, horny as only a Portuguese can be, and Catholic, reacted to Nina’s “I’m back!” telegram by traveling to Cologne. Together they prayed in the Cathedral and in St. Mary on the Capitol, and they also sought out the secular venues that had made Nina into Nina—above all, “Grubby Kunibert’s.” But they stayed away from the railroad crossing where Mother Jensen was now tending a goat and a goose. When the Count ran out of money and objects to hock—his last landholdings in Portugal had already gone under the hammer— he returned to the land of his forefathers, did some calculating, and married a menina who had no body to speak of but owned some vineyards in the Douro Valley. Their union was consecrated; old nobility gave rise to new nobility, and two kids were already in the cradle when Nina showed up on Mallorca. Now she wanted nothing more than to dash off to her Conde in Lisbon.
What was Silberstern to do, buffeted as he was between vanity and avarice? “It’s not the end of the world,” I whispered to him., “so, better now than never.” Once he’d got hooked on the charms of this super-chick, separation would be all the harder, even for just a few days. During this period, as Silberstern wrestled with the angel of his own stinginess, Nina kept everything under lock and key: her room, her chastity belt, and even her pretty lips. They communicated in writing, passing slips of paper under her door. She took meals only when the besieging general was out of the house. Behind her narrow brow there resided the instinct of all females who know how to hold off until their hour has come. Nina’s hour now involved the Count. And now Silberstern’s angel tapped on his wallet. Wringing his hands once again, he bought her a ticket to Lisbon. Nina saw fit to thank me for my service as an intermediary. Whereupon she shoved off, in regal fashion. The shabby Silberstern was left holding the bag, but he also had the satisfaction of entrusting his Nina to the care of a conde, marquês, and barão for one week.
Now Silberstern began to fret like an Albigensian undergoing the endura—or rather, since that simile does seem a little grandiose for this goofy erotomane, like a goat that for unexplained reasons suddenly refuses to eat anything. The bordellos of Palma were unable to cheer him up. Nina wasn’t writing to him, not even a postcard view of her Count’s castle. His money was gone, and the traveling coat he had bought her on Vigoleis’ advice—gone too! It was enough, he lamented, to make him tear his hair out! That’s fine with me, I thought, but please do that in your own apartment.
Was this one more night with millions of stars? Were dreams again floating around in the palm trees? Was the beautiful girls’ pet armadillo once again poking along under the bushes? I just can’t recall. And it doesn’t really matter in which astrological sign Mother Nature was located as, hour after hour, I tapped my noiseless way through the Hunnish tombs of my pagan tribes. Like all history, this account pretty much wrote itself. In order to graft onto the Thousand-Year Reich a few memorable shoots, all I usually had to do was look in my hometown newspaper to watch the nationwide German depravity send forth its most grotesque sprouts. But then our doorbell rang, and after a moment or two of fear—I am a night owl—I opened for Mr. Silberstern and, pleading that the late hour belonged to me and my brainless characters, I asked him what was wrong this time. He looked terrible. I went to get him some water.
He said I had to come with him immediately—no time for Huns, no time for Kessler, no time for my own wife. No man who considered himself a man, he averred, would stand for anything like this! And on top of it all she had insulted him, the brother of Privy Councilor Silberstern of Würzburg!
So it was Nina. Was she back? And was she back with him…?
In brief, with no ifs, ands, or buts, I was being asked to accompany him to the Casa del Fortunón—as Palma’s outstanding tourist guide I was aware what kind of place that was— to let this “fortune” lady know in no uncertain terms exactly what was on his mind. He would be demanding the return of his money, or another lady entirely. The one he had got was simply not of his caliber. “One whole shiny duro! Just think of it, Herr Doktor!”
“I see. It’s another case of affûtage, but this time in the literal sense of the word. That’s not my specialty. And besides, I don’t have the necessary probing instruments.”
Resistance was useless. This disturber of my nocturnal peace was not to be shooed away. I just had to come with him, he said. One whole duro was at stake, as was his reputation as a German. I was to step in once again as interpreter and legal advisor… “Oh, but wait,” I said. “If I’m supposed to be your advisor, then only in sexual matters. And as for having your honor besmirched as a German man, that’s what the German consulate is for. As long as you haven’t been officially deprived of your citizenship, you have a right to seek assistance. You know where the Consul lives. Take a taxi from the Alhambra.”
At this, Silberstern went raging mad. He lowered his head like a bull and started threatening me. Fine, I was leaving him in the lurch. Fine, I didn’t want to help him. Fine, but this wasn’t the end of the matter. Not that he needed me at all—he would now go straight to my wife and ask for her opinion, her advice, her assistance, and…
The man was almost weeping with despair. Knowing the lay of our apartment, he placed his pigeon-toed feet on the first newspaper page in our hallway, with the intention of rushing from paper to paper on his way to our sala immaculata, where the pages were piled on top of each other, and where Beatrice lay fast asleep. Suddenly sensing the courage of my Huns, I grabbed my crazed client by the collar and thundered at him, “Don’t you dare harass my wife with your thermopylic tribulations! If you do, you could suffer the same fate as Origenes—and by my own hand!”
This brought the lecher to his knees. Now all he did was whine. Was he speaking words in Hebrew? In any case, he presented the image of misery, and this made me feel sorry once again for the rogue. What else could I do for him, I asked. Silberstern squirmed out of his agony. New possibilities seemed to be glistening in his greedy, sex-mad eyes. “Something in writing,” he said. “Write down a few lines to the patrona, asking her to give me credit, a chit good for making a switch—for the next time.”
I prepared a document on azure-tinted notepaper. It was lightly perfumed, from which you may deduce that I raided Kessler’s stock. It was the lateness of the hour and the bizarre nature of the situation that emboldened me to commit this larceny, for otherwise I have the deepest respect for other people’s property. Silberstern, duly informed of the fact that his whoremongering ukase was written on paper hand-drawn by Gaspard Maillol, set off proudly for the city. There is nothing like a sense of justice accomplished to lift the spirits of a person who feels that the world is out of joint. And if that person has it in writing, on world-class hand-drawn paper… Months later Silberstern showed the document to our friend Bobby from the Folkwang School. He kept it in a special folder marked “Complicated.” He had displayed it to the madam, and wiped clean the affûtage on that very same evening with a two peseta payoff. He was holding on to the document because it was written on a real count’s personal stationery. And now he insisted on meeting the count in person. “Watch out,” Bobby said. “This guy is worse than a ferret.”
A few weeks went by, and finally the first sign of life arrived from Nina. And with it, I’m pained to say, came a bad omen. It was a telegram from Casablanca, where the blonde Rhenish maiden, now with her hair dyed just a little too black, was waiting in a ritzy-sounding hotel for the transfer of a considerable sum that would pay her hotel bill and her passage back to Mallorca. It was unthinkable, Silberstern said, that he would send her the money. He had other means of forcing his doll to return to him. Well and good, I replied, but why should he be wringing his hands? He should go ahead with his “other means.” But he oughtn’t to be surprised if Nina starts playing her trumps. “That tizzy? What do you mean, trumps? She can’t even get her humps unless I pay for them!”
A single hint at possible intervention by the German Consulate General was sufficient to clear up
this minor matter. For a few thousand pesetas, a miserly millionaire of the Silberstern ilk could be spared the guillotine. He received a grateful reply from the luxury Estoril spa in Portugal, saying she would be arriving soon via Marrakesh. “1000 kisses, Nina.”
I explained to my client, who was now in the throes of yet another inner crisis, that the love bestowed by all first-rate females had its own special geography. He was making the mistake, I said, of drawing lines on the map simply as the crow flies. Nina was obviously a migratory bird with many separate breeding grounds and a deficient homing instinct. Patience!
On Mallorca anybody could be a count, a doctor, a professor, a best-selling writer or a neglected painter. A tall guy with the hairy legs of a jockey could present himself as the son-in-law of Franz von Papen’s equestrian groom. A grande dame could live there on a minuscule pension, the same lady I was in the habit of entertaining with my pidgin-English tirades against the Führer-Pope Axis, quoting from books I had been sent from Amsterdam by Het Vaderland for review—some of them quite intelligent books, by the way. The lady smiled often, feeling flattered in her maternal solicitude. She soon knew by heart lines from the writings of Prince Hubertus zu Löwenstein, Wertheim, and Freudenberg. And we should just imagine, she added, all the great things her intelligent son was going to write…
Just as people on our island were able to maintain their various personalities, in similar fashion the men of Marrakesh inside their tents, where Nina was submitting to them on beautifully woven carpets, were no doubt all quite authentic. Surely they were all genuine sheikhs, and instead of offering her stockings from some Cologne bargain basement, they were favoring her with spikenard and saffran, precious incense, gold and silver trinkets, and for Widow Jensen, a stud camel in place of a puny goat. In return, Nina was presenting them what she received from her Creator: a pair of thighs like marble columns set upon golden pedestals; her sweet palate; and her breasts, which were like watering-troughs for the divinities. These sheikhs, descendants of Old-Testament power and glory, were naturally more skilled than Katrinchen’s Spaniards at the Clock Tower. But a woman who has once shared the sack with a genuine sheikh could never be persuaded, for all the wealth of the world, to return to Silberstern’s brass bedstead. Certainly not for a pair of cheap hosiery.
Back in Palma, once again ensconced in her detested master’s living quarters, this Shulamite from the left bank of the Rhine had nothing on her mind except dancing. And soon enough she was doing just that at the “Trocadero,” the just-completed, most lavish dance hall in the city, where a short time later an authentic Mengelberg would wield his baton in front of a combo made up of genuine gypsies, plus the arpeggios of a genuine Rahel. Dancing, dancing! This was all that Nina wanted to do—but never with the repulsive Silberstern, who in any case wouldn’t be up to it.
A number of Spanish suitors lay at her feet. They gave her their excited piropos and made tempting offers. She allowed one of them to come close to her enchanting presence: this was a wealthy, handsome young fellow, and she gave him the key to her belt. He owned an elegant piso, a yacht, and a greyhound upon which Silberstern, a great fan of the dog races, once placed a winning bet. Instead of setting up shop with Adelfredo on Palma’s market square, where neither of them could manage a word of Spanish, she preferred to amble about in the company of her señorito, thereby attracting the glances of so many other señoritos that the young man decided to abduct her. This rapto occurred in broad daylight, within sight of the brother of a twice-doctored German attorney—an indication that it is not always sufficient to have a powerful brother. Once again Silberstern came running to Barceló Street. This Nina was his Nina, he insisted. It was he who had brought her back. It was he who had busied himself with her clothing—not in the sense of un-clothing, to be sure, since things had not yet returned to the point of “racial defilement.” It was he who was feeding her, and still he had to employ a maid. And what thanks was he getting? She was shacking up with a Spaniard.
Calm yourself, I said. I’ll get her back for you. It would cost him a few of his crummy pesetas—not for snatching her away from her beau, which I could bring about at my own expense by means of a simple telephone call to the Spaniard. No, the real expense would be for her de-pilarization, for now his Nina was surely beschmettet from head to toe.
“Be-what?
“Beschmettet. It’s a Dutchism I’ve learned, and it has something do with syphilis. We must face the facts directly.”
Nina was gone for a whole month. Then a letter of hers arrived whose dreadful contents were mitigated only by the touchingly juvenile railroad-track German in which it was written. The señorito was holding her captive at his finca. He was a sadist, and he, too, was syphilitic. Adelfried could have her back, unconditionally, if only he would rescue her from the claws of this Spanish monster.
“What? Now I can have her back, now that she has the schmette?” It was enough to make him start tearing his hair out. “And to think that I had her come all the way from Cologne!”
I recommended Professor Scheidegger in Basel. For 3000 francs he would admit her to his purification plant, though it might cost as much as 5000—it all depended on the number of bacilli that the Spaniard had infested her with. After six months she could be back on the job.
Silberstern’s reply to my matter-of-fact explanation consisted in two large tears. But he wasn’t shedding them for Nina. They would have been more effective with her mother.
“It’s the familiar emigration story,” I said. “Some get it in the neck, others in the behind. And it’s always aimed at your bank account.”
I wrote the Spanish señorito that he was harboring a dangerous Third Reich spy, an activity that could come to the attention of counter-spies. She would be killed in any case, and if her corpse were found in his bed…. Three days later a limousine stopped in front of our house: in it was Nina.
Nina was given a 3rd-class rail ticket back to the railroad crossing between Cologne and Neuss, plus a letter of recommendation for potential respectable employers—a document that, oddly enough, she insisted upon. Then she was off, back home to the Reich. But in the meantime her own Reich had expanded, and it began in Barcelona. Herr Silberstern escorted his squeeze, who for him was now hardly worth a sneeze, to the harbor. Always the cavalier. And who knew—she just might…
And now the mosaic of love again ran into the money, no matter how cheap each of the little stones was that Silberstern added to it. During this exciting epoch with Nina he had rid himself of affûtage by engaging in cash-free commerce.
A Mallorquin maiden with pigtail and rebocillo, and with bosom and legs swathed beneath seven protective layers of skirts and petticoats, moved into Silberstern’s apartment. Beatrice sounded a warning: that man had better not any get funny ideas, for otherwise some island gang would lynch him.
After three days the young lady took flight. But she refrained from denouncing her employer, since at my insistence she got her month’s wage in advance. So once again, disaster was avoided. But for how much longer?
Not much longer, as it turned out. For this was not life as Silberstern wanted to live it. “In Germany…” Over and over again I had to hammer it into this emigrant’s skull that he wasn’t living in Germany, and that even if he was experiencing a certain degree of erotic deprivation, he should consider that co-religionists of his were being crowded into concentrations camps, sans women and soon enough sans life itself.
The Bible came up with the idea that it isn’t good for a man to stay alone; he should have a fitting helpmate. But the Bible doesn’t offer an answer to the question of which helpmate would be fitting for an Adelfried Silberstern. And that’s why Vigoleis had to do all that was humanly possible to close this gap. Indeed, whose rib would bring forth the right woman to grace this Adam’s brass bedstead, above which hung the photos of all the females who had played a direct role in this piece of erotic furniture? There were about fifty of them—fifty stellar hours in the life of H
err Silberstern.
I vowed to myself that I would let my sun’s rays shine upon this wretched client until vengeance was mine. One day I asked him to figure out whether it wouldn’t be cheaper to get married than to hire both a housemaid and cathouse whores, quite apart from the moral advantages of having a stable household—a household, a German home in the barren diaspora! German domestic warmth! German Gemütlichkeit! And who but himself, I added, would have the wherewithal, intellectual and material, to create a model household in this foreign country, while back in Germany the households were fast becoming incubators of racist madness? Let the choice of a partner for you be my concern, I said, for my conscience tells me that I should make up for giving you such bad advice in connection with Nina. In any case, Nina was probably too close a neighbor of my own from the Lower Rhenish hinterlands.
I composed a personal ad, which produced an outcome different from what the suitor was imagining. He was looking for a housemaid, “later marriage not excluded”—which is to say, the kind of arrangement that the Dutch newspaper ads qualify with the phrase met gebruik van mijnheer, though of course it’s vice-versa—“dowry desirable but not obligatory.” The ad appeared in the largest newspapers of the Third Reich. The reactions were astounding. Even Silberstern was struck dumb by the realization that so many women wished to escape certain death. Jewish descent was one of the stipulations I mentioned in the ad. Yet Silberstern’s reaction focused on his own vanity: so many women wanted to share his bed!
The Island of Second Sight Page 103