While sorting out the replies, it occurred to me that there were countless beautiful Jewesses in Germany—perhaps not beautiful to look at, but beautiful in the way they described their lot in the letters they wrote. Herr Silberstern wanted, he had to have, the most beautiful of them all, for after all, who would be paying the freight? Because he would be paying the freight, he would reject any beautiful woman who would soon enough leave him for another man. This had the effect of excluding any and all Ninas, plus any non-Ninas whose lives were not directly threatened, and it eventually came down to just one. And this one was a lady—but not in the sense of Adelfried’s way of dealing with “ladies.”
This case, one in a thousand, affected me most deeply. The woman in question, who in all innocence was applying to sweep floors for the anonymous suitor, was the widow of a well-known Berlin banker. Shortly after the Nazi takeover, he strung himself up on his bedroom window frame. His estate was confiscated. Their son—an only child, as I recall—was in a sanatorium. Her letter was brief: she would take on any job, and she had no money for transportation.
Herr Silberstern said that while she was not exactly a beauté, and while her age somewhat exceeded his needs, she apparently came from the loftiest social circles in Berlin, which included Rathenau and, no doubt, Kessler too. He asked me to get information from the Count immediately. He also inquired whether I thought she would sleep with him, although he did think it best if he asked the lady directly since she kept such exclusive company. My response was based on my readings concerning such social circles: without question, gentlemen were in the habit of sleeping with ladies if the gentlemen were perfect gentlemen and the ladies perfect ladies—unless, of course, they just couldn’t stand each other. In the present case, I said, there should be no cause for concern—on the contrary. But first of all, this perfect lady had to be liberated from those finest Berlin social circles.
She came. She was short, thin, haggard, and dressed in clothes that seemed to indicate her decline from the mistress of a Berlin-Grunewald palace to the lowly domestic who would polish shoes for a miser—but woe to her if she put the shoe cream on too thick! Like Nina before her, we got to meet this first lady of Berlin high finance right after she stepped off the ship. Silberstern was in the best of moods. He folded his hands on his belly and twiddled his thumbs, proud as a peacock. Having come up short as a wine merchant, he had finally found the woman who would be subject to him and who, within 12 or 13 short hours, would literally lie beneath him in his bed of brass. Berlin high finance! Where Kaisers came and went!
Beatrice offered to assist the lady during her first days on the island, perhaps by looking in on her at noontime. Her French wouldn’t be of help at the local markets. Herr Silberstern was touched. He said, “Do you see? Was I wrong? My connections are all educated people!”
Beatrice gave careful instructions to the new housemaid. She must be prepared for all eventualities. She must always lock her door and exercise patience. This was to be only a transitional position—we had already made contact with a wealthy Catalan industrialist who was looking for a German domestic.
Just 24 hours later, things went worse than we had bargained for. The perfect lady from Berlin simply refused. Her relationship with the brass bed was limited to polishing the metal and shaking out and spreading the linens. She did not lie down on it. This led to more hand-wringing and bitter accusations, which degenerated into true vulgarity when Silberstern learned that instead of shopping at the open market, this cultivated lady made purchases at the Colmado Parisien because she could converse in the language. We didn’t own a bed, and so we weren’t able to take this Cinderella in as our guest. And there was still no reply from Barcelona. But the lady told us that she had experienced even worse humiliation in Germany. She wanted nothing more than to retake her son into her custody, but the Nazis wouldn’t let her. He was, she explained, somewhat feebleminded, and he would probably be killed.
The Catalan industrialist came in person on his own yacht to Mallorca to fetch his German domestic. We were delighted. Silberstern, close to despair, complained that once again everything had gone wrong. Everything!
Later we received a few letters from the lady. The Costa Brava was heaven on earth for her, she wrote, but she could never be happy while her son remained in Germany. Her Catalan employer offered to use his personal influence, but she rejected that idea. Her plan was to go back to Berlin herself.
One year later she wrote us a grateful note from Paris, where she was on her way to Germany. Her child had disappeared, and she was going to look for him. Then she, too, disappeared. No doubt she was setting out on the same journey as her child, like the millions of children of Israel.
If stones might ever be brought to tears, Silbersterns’ daily lamentations could have done the job. His situation worsened. After his experience with the perfect lady, I suggested that he take in a young man as his valet. But just a few weeks later this fellow, too, was gone. The boy understood a few words of German, having worked for a time in Germany in the tropical fruit business like so many other Mallorquins. Silberstern tried training his “servant,” as he called Jaime, in the business of snagging women. For this purpose Jaime had the use of a special bank account. But the birds he caught never ended up on his master’s perch; the birdman himself listened to their chirpings in his own little spare room. It came to blows. Once again I insisted: find someone to marry! Find a German woman, if you will, but this time one who hails from circles that understand the true ways of the world.
“An artist?”
“An artist!”
“Like Rahel Mengelberg?”
“At least somebody extra-special like her.”
“Well then, take dictation…”
The slaughter of Jews in Germany was proceeding apace, and so, in response to our new advertisement, this one aimed squarely at artist types. We received hundreds of applications. My table groaned under the weight of impoverished non-Aryan art. Prominent names came into view. Amid the unrelenting deluge, drowning souls were reaching out for Silberstern as a life-preserver. My intention was once again to extract a human being from hell at my client’s expense and, once she was in Spain, to see to it that she got a decent roof over her head. But at the same time, this artist would have to be able to put the lecherous millionaire in his place. It took all my oratorical skills to dissuade horny Adelfried from going after a few dozen juicy prospects. I gave prime attention to a middle-aged woman who worked in films. I had a certain weakness for this type ever since I had contact with Victor E. van Vriesland’s attractive film agent, though otherwise I knew nothing at all about movies and movie-making. I will never understand movies, but then again, over my lifetime I have seen perhaps 25 films in all.
This was to be the one. She was so famous that she didn’t have to submit a photo—her face was familiar from the postcards you could buy at all the cinemas. As the divorced wife of an even more famous film director, she was in all respects savvy, and hence just the person I needed for this merry prank of mine, which was also an attempt to save a doomed soul. At first, Silberstern wouldn’t have any of it, but then I flattered his vanity by telling him that he would soon be in all the newspapers of Spain, later of the whole world, for letting this particular star hover above his brass bedstead. Surely he was aware from his experience in selling wines, I said, that women with a bouquet like hers were immune to the aging process. As a film star, she had mastered the art of camouflage. Even her hands, those tell-tale fossils of maturing feminity, could surely be deceptive. “Shall we write?”
“Take dictation…!” Herr Silberstern was already imagining himself in the role of a celebrated Silver Star. His imbecilic egotism, constantly in conflict with his doltishness, made him salivate at the thought of winning this precious booty. He asked whether I thought she would also keep his apartment clean. What she would keep scrupulously clean, I thought to myself, was his bed, and she would know how to clean him out in other ways, too.
/> It wasn’t easy to compose a letter to a movie star, but I finally wrote one in such a way that neither the undersigned nor the recipient would notice how they were both being misused. In retrospect I am just as proud of this epistolary accomplishment as I am of my Christian missive to Zwingli’s millionaire aunt in Basel.
Her reply was encouraging. She even exceeded expectations by offering to travel to Palma and, following a decent probationary interval, giving her hand in marriage to Mr. Silberstern. Among their mutual acquaintances, it turned out, was Silberstern’s brother, the Privy Councilor. She didn’t send her photo, but requested one of her future breadwinner—causing me to take fright, though not because this might impair discretion, which she guaranteed. Silberstern gathered up all the pictures that had ever been taken of his not very attractive person during a life of wining and womanizing. Like the man himself, the pictures spoke volumes, and so we would have to be on our guard. If he sent her one, we would never again hear from this artist, whose own ulterior motives were in any case unclear to me. In order to escape the underworld, surely she had no need of a “star” such as this one. Heaven itself, whose existence I constantly doubt and decry, suddenly provided me with the means to get back at Vigoleis’ exploiter and cost him a wad of money. “A cavalier,” I told him as I handed him back his photos, “would never send his picture to a lady of her standing. He would send himself.”
Was I crazy, he asked? Was I joking? If he went back to the Reich they would kill him on the spot. No, he would send the photos—all of them. “Take dictation!”
A gentleman like him, a lady like her, and an engagement that would attract the attention of the whole world—“Mr. Stern, that’s why the Dear Lord created free Switzerland, the city of Zurich, and the Stork Hotel. But let’s ask Beatrice how you call the hotel in French. That’ll make it sound more cosmopolitan. The stork is, to be sure, a cosmopolitan bird, but there’s something maternal about it that we want to avoid. The ‘Baur au Lac’ is out of the question—as an old capitalist you wouldn’t need a place like that. Let me write her a few lines with my suggestion.”
Struggle. Extremely rapid calculation of the expense. Vainglory, despair, thumb-twiddling, thumbs stuck in armpits, a recital of all of his future bride’s scandalous liaisons, an engagement trip to the “Stork”… and then he asked me to start writing.
Reply from Berlin, by telegram. Agreed. Cigogne. The one who had to travel the longer distance should set the date.
Vigoleis rubbed his hands. If book publishers could only be as far-sighted as this movie actress, his literary production would long since be a financial success.
Having consented to this huge expense—there was no backing down—my pinchgut client wanted to board ship that very evening, and asked me to send a telegram. “Wait, my good man,” I cried. He mustn’t go traveling just as he was, thinking that he could head straight for the Stork Hotel and, once at the Stork, directly into the lady’s nest. Fine, but not in the kind of underpants I presumed he was wearing. Didn’t he know that Catherine the Great once had a prince of the realm lashed to death for approaching her in that fashion—Catherine, who never behaved like that otherwise? Silberstern objected to my meddling in his laundry matters, but he went out anyway and bought a few pair of fancy underduds. As a millionaire, I told him, he mustn’t appear at the hotel in such a shabby suit; he wasn’t rich enough for that kind of reverse snobbery, so he would have to find a tailor. He agreed and said that he already knew a tailor, quite inexpensive, 60 pesetas with extras. Perfect, I said. But Palma had a sastre for just such cases as his: Bauzá, on the Plaza Cort, where Spanish generals had their work done—and also Count Kessler.
“The Count? You’re making this up! Prove it!”
This I could readily do. I had paid the tailor’s bill myself to save Kessler a trip downtown. 500 pesetas, the receipt signed by Paquita, beautiful Angelita’s even more beautiful sister, who manned the cash register at Bauzá.
Dressed in new threads from head to toe, Adelfried set off for Zurich. But he was unable to put off his old Adam, whereas for me this was the crux of the matter all along. As a result, the meeting at the Stork was the expected fiasco. Silberstern had no more hair to tear out; he would have wrung his hands if he hadn’t returned as a dead man.
Vengeance was mine, as with Pilar and Hedwig Courths-Mahler.
I gradually learned some, but not all, of the details of the encounter in Zurich, where the upper crust likes to gather. Silberstern stopped at the modest Hotel zur Krone, on the shores of the Limmat; the actress stayed at the Baur au Lac with some friends from the cinema. There was no opportunity for showing off new underwear. The meeting took place in the lobby of the Stork, and this bird showed no particular interest in bringing the two together. “Did you at least pay the lady’s travel expenses?”—“Unfortunately yes, Herr Doktor, and promptly, too.” What else could I expect of my client? “And did you get your money’s worth otherwise, too? Little girls?” Zurich, he explained, had its own hidden sources of pleasure—rather expensive, though, since the Swiss government refuses to subsidize regular joy houses. That pushes up the prices! So nothing of that sort—too expensive.
One day after this leave-taking, he left for Barcelona. The trip was uneventful as far as Paris, but then some “elements” took their seats in his compartment, and to him they looked more than suspicious. They started whispering in German, and they began looking at him with glances aimed more at the Jew than at his snazzy Bauzá suit. He was overcome with Dachau panic. Spies! They’ll grab you and string you up—racial defilement!—or they’ll just toss you off the train! This was the time when Jews were getting found who had fallen out of trains all over the world. Silberstern knew this. Clumsy non-gymnast that he was, Silberstern snuck out of the compartment, and as the train slowed down a bit, at the risk of his life, he stepped outside and spent the night on the step. His expensive Bauzá hat went flying off. Some French Widow Jensen probably found it later next to the tracks somewhere between Clermont-Ferrand and Port-Bou. Adelfried was wearing his old hat when he returned from his trip and said, “Take dictation!”
So I started writing again. This time it was a letter to Nina’s titled beau in Lisbon, the gentleman whose ancestral line would stand or fall with him—a detail I was of course unaware of at the time. He replied with the courtoisie of all Portuguese gentlemen: he would be happy to be of service. No, Portugal was not yet producing educational films, but Nina’s friend should come over anyway and bring his colleague. He, the conde, marquêz, and barão, could be of assistance at all the preliminary discussions, capital transactions, etc. German experts, he wrote, were much in demand.
Silberstern had located a buddy with whom he now started planning a business venture. It was going to bring in millions, and—pure coincidence—it had to do with the cinema. This colleague, an educational-film expert from Berlin, was living in exile on Mallorca. He had made a name for himself, and it meant nothing that I had never heard of him. Bobby knew him, Beatrice knew him, everybody knew him. Silberstern’s star was rising again.
Millions got transferred from Madrid to Lisbon. The correspondence grew to huge proportions, and it was complicated. I could have learned a lot from it, but didn’t. Items of furniture were also sent to Portugal, since only death could separate Silberstern from his brass bedstead. Too much had happened, and not happened, to keep him off of his special pilarière. Like Mamú, he traveled with his own bed.
Whenever we ran out of centimos and I put the touch on Silberstern, he generously lent me money—up to 50 pesetas without an I.O.U., but only as a favor to me, and never even to his best friend. He always got it back to the last centimo. Honesty, this miser had discovered, was another one of Vigoleis’ pathetic qualities. But now I owed him the postage for a letter I sent abroad, and for weeks I had forgotten to pay up the pittance.
When Mr. Silberstern took leave of us—“This time for good,” he said—he mentioned that there was a small sum that needed taki
ng care of. An ineffable shudder went through me. I thought—truly, dear reader, I actually thought—that the skinflint would now pull out his bulging wallet, remove an envelope, and hand it to me, and that Vigoleis, who doesn’t understand money and thus needs it all the more, would accept it with an obviously embarrassed smile. And I imagined that when Silberstern was finally gone, when the man I had derided, mocked, and ridiculed daily, the man who was driven into profligate expense, the one I had almost killed on the rail line between Clermont-Ferrand and Port-Bou! When this guy was gone—that is, as soon as he departed from our door—Vigoleis would open the envelope and collapse in shame: a check for 100,000 pesetas for services rendered in the court cases of Silberstern vs. Third Reich, Silberstern vs. Nina, Silberstern vs. diverse bordello madams, vs., vs., and vs. Vigoleis.
Silberstern was now reaching into his pocket. Vigoleis, having suddenly recovered, stammered, “Oh, but Mr. Silberstern, that’s too, too kind of you! What I did was such a small matter…” This accursed brother of his brothers said, “Ah, but you mustn’t say that, Herr Doktor. In business affairs, there is no such thing as a small matter. And as you know from our long-term collaboration, I can be quite meticulous. It has to do…” Meanwhile he had yanked out one of his greasy penciled notes. “Ah yes, it has to do with the postage for a letter sent abroad.”
Vigoleis never became an anti-Semite, not even during this gut-wrenching moment. After all, there are some decent Christians, too.
When the ladies of Christian Science closed their New Testaments, my hour had arrived, the time for me to move my chair next to Mamú’s and tell her stories from the Old Testament. The Scientists knew that I had an obscure relationship with a quirky fellow named Silberstern, who on the night of the Nazi takeover had almost lost his head—or at least his silverware. They also knew that Mamú preferred the Old Testament to the New, which was why she liked to listen to the tales spun by this particular Jacob. And finally, they knew that Mamú herself would never be able to pass the Aryan blood test, and that hence the contested baking-powder millions, despite their Royal camouflage, were dirty Jewish millions, whereas they themselves were devoted entirely to the New Testament, praying for the Führer like my mother, but in their own fashion and in their own languages, none of which, oddly enough, was German. Mamú was Jewish—and that explains her increasing fear of this bible-thumping gang. Bobby had presumed as much all along, while I was taken in by the “Royal” in the baking-powder logo. For the many-blooded Swiss citizen Beatrice, this aspect of things was no problem at all.
The Island of Second Sight Page 104