The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  This time, her 80-year-old skirt-chasing brother-in-law hadn’t chased after one of his female serfs. Instead, he had gone for somebody else’s bank account by way of check forgery—a considerable sum. If they caught him, this ennobled geezer with muttonchops would wander off to the penitentiary, where he would finish his days on bread and water and bereft of little girls. Because the Danube Monarchy was now extinct, the prestige of his exalted name was at stake. Mamú needed money right away to hire a lawyer in Budapest. Her check was already on its way. Just think: off to jail at age eighty!

  “Finally at eighty, Mamú! But be that as it might, Beatrice will be deciding the man’s fate. She loves Hungary. Her grandest memories of life at a castle are connected with the Colloredo-Mansfeld family.”

  Those were Bohemians, Beatrice interjected calmly. She added that her account held only 1000 francs, as Mamú already knew. Mamú should decide.

  This tiny sum—I’m using the diminutive now in its most disparaging sense—was at a savings bank in Basel, a minuscule inheritance that Beatrice put away for emergency purposes. As she so often told me, we could touch it only when the floodwaters were already up to our necks. Now Beatrice and I have different opinions about floods and other life-threatening emergencies. At times I have had the impression that the waters were not just up to our necks, but in our throats, whereas she, with her Indian tenacity, has acted like a beaver. So she never sent the crucial telegram to her academic brother in Basel, not even during our endura at the Clock Tower, not even in sight of the Deucalian Cliff. As a person who lives his life in extremis, I admired her concept of utmost emergency. And so I repressed the whole idea of the Basel bank account.

  Our friendship with Mamú held fast. It was not empty tabletalk, nor was it mere academic philosophy. The telegram got sent. Mamú received the tusig Fränkli, the Budapest attorney was given his orders, and 24 hours later her Prince emerged from his hiding place—where in the meantime he had done some further damage, but this time only to a skirt. Mamú was hoping that before nine months were up she would have won her own lawsuit, and soon our rescue action would be repaid threefold. “Interest at usurious rates?” “No,” Mamú replied. “A small bonus for friendship’s sake.” She tapped her glass, and Jaime once again did as he was bidden.

  Bobby, our seer from the Folkwang School, disapproved of this transaction. Our money was gone, he said. What a shame, considering what we might have used it for—maybe a little house in Valldemosa, where we could have lived together with Mamú.

  Bobby was right. His microscopic eyes had penetrated through Mamú’s millions to discover the tiny point in her life that had remained totally dark and obscure. Still, I told him that as a double-dealer she was forever charming—that he mustn’t deny. And the Christian Science ladies were no doubt acting as her procurers.

  “No doubt at all.”

  “What a shame! That pious little circle always struck me as so real in its Christian social fakery as to be just as believable as the Nail from Christ’s Cross in the sacristy at the Valldemosa Charterhouse. But what it comes down to is the miracles it can perform.”

  Vigoleis never became an anti-Christian, not even following this crushing experience with Mamú. After all, there are some decent Jews, too.

  XXII

  You can catch a mouse with a slice of bacon. And you can also catch a Captain and Baron von Martersteig from Baron von Richthofen’s squadron if the bacon, lean and mellow, is carved from noble German hogs and slathered on German sandwiches with a dollop of Düsseldorf mustard and some good German beer.

  In the Bay of Palma a German steamer lay at anchor, a ship of the Woermann Line. But instead of letting loose a horde of tourists on the island, this ship had arrived at Mallorca with the special mission of luring people on board—German people. To be exact, all the Germans living here who were of an age to vote. The German colony was expected to say “Yes!” to the Führer in a secret ballot. As on a trip down the Rhine, a brass band on board presented the opportunity to link elbows, sing patriotic songs, and shed a nostalgic tear. Plus, as a personal reward from the Führer for voting “Yes,” you’d receive two sandwiches smeared with lard, beer on tap, and all the mustard you wanted. In order to place the voting process under the sovereignty of the Third Reich, the voters had to be taken out beyond the legal limit of Spanish waters. This meant a delightful Mediterranean excursion with kit and caboodle. A fanfare, the anchor chains rattled—Deutschland, Deutschland über alles…

  Starting weeks in advance, the German Consul had sent his agents from house to house passing out leaflets: German Man! German Woman!

  I was approached by a cabinet maker from the German Labor Force, an expert carpenter who oughtn’t to have degraded himself by espousing a movement he deemed ennobling. He reminded me of my patriotic duty. On Sunday at eight the steamer would sail out to sea. It was the Consul’s wish to have the entire colony participate at the ballot box. We had an altercation concerning God, King, Führer, and Fatherland. It was all balderdash, I said, adding that I was just a human being like anybody else, but also that I had made construction plans for a desk, which I would like to show him so he could custom-build it for me. The craftsman explained that he was visiting me as an emissary of German culture, and if I didn’t have it in my heart to comply, then perhaps my stomach might think otherwise—two sandwiches, sliced ham, beer, and mustard from the center of my own homeland, Düsseldorf! Now wasn’t that something? “It says everything” I replied. Take the mustard, for example: I don’t like it—too hot for me. The carpenter departed murmuring something about trying things a different way. I yelled after him, “Slabs of bacon for the onboard Frühschoppen!” I never was a fan of the German custom of Frühschoppen. At noon I met up with Martersteig.

  “Hey there, it’s you again! Vigoleis with a V as in Virginia.”

  “And my captain isn’t confronting the enemy? How are your monkeys? All ready for combat?”

  He wasn’t fleeing from Graves, and his book was almost finished. But, he said, that should not be an issue between us. I bowed, and he went on, saying that he had errands to do in the city, but then tomorrow—surely I knew?—the big sailing trip!

  Sailing trip? Surely he didn’t mean to say that he was falling for that voting fraud? His reply: he had always known that I wasn’t a great strategist. He was of course going to cast his vote, a vote in solidarity with the entire German colony, which was going to vote unanimously with “No”—including the Consul, and including Vigoleis.

  “Great heavens, man! Have you lost your senses? Are you fixed on setting a new record for crash landings? Here I was thinking that one such escapade would be enough in the life of a German hero. The Order Pour le Mérite never gets pinned twice on the same breast.”

  “Sandwiches with bacon, German beer on tap! Doesn’t that say something?”

  “You bet, it tells me everything. And more than everything, if such a thing is possible. Tomorrow your entire army of apes, living now for years as starving conscripts, will get betrayed for a mess of wurst, and Captain von Martersteig will be signing his own discharge papers. A dollop of mustard will put a seal on the transaction. Monkeys—dis-missed!”

  At the Alhambra we drank an anise from Buñola, and parted as friends. It was all a joke, he said. He just wanted to see me hit the ceiling when talking about the Nazi gang that was out to take over our island. Why, among the Germans on Mallorca the two of us were already something like old gentry.

  Early on Führer Sunday the vote-scrounging carpenter rang our bell, making me leap up from our newspaper pallet. It was half-past seven, which is early for a night-owl. He said he had brought a taxi to pick up any stragglers, in the name of the Consul. Quick—everybody else was ready to go! Herr von Martersteig, too? Yes, of course. It was going to be fine weather. The kids had little flags and balloons. I mustn’t miss out on the fun.

  “Kindly give the Consul greetings from his best Führer, and tell him that I don’t want to get in
the way of his other Führer. And when you have some time, come on back and we’ll talk about making my desk. So long!”

  The steamer left port without the island’s best Führer. On board there was singing and dancing, balloting, elbow-linking, flirting, drinking, and a spreading of mustard on sandwiches. Porpoises followed in the ship’s wake, and seagulls accompanied the floating ballot booth, where the Consul was in charge. And true enough, he hadn’t gone wrong with his colony. The Führer emerged from the ballot-box unanimously victorious. After all, it was the Führer himself the voters had to thank for being allowed to vote on German soil in the middle of the Mediterranean while singing and dancing, gobbling sandwiches, guzzling beer, and passing gossip. The sea resounded with shouts of “Heil!” as the sun sent down its stinging rays. God lets the sun shine, they say, on the just and the unjust. But also on crazy people. Captain von Martersteig was pleased to let it shine on his gouty leg.

  Toward the end of the trip—they were approaching the pier, the mustard was all gone, the balloons were wrinkled or busted, the beer dregs were but shallow pools in the steins—the Consul rose to make another speech. He thanked all of them for their loyalty to the Führer, to the Reich, to the Homeland. And he requested permission to request a small fee for the voyage, 13 pesetas per person; those on board were asked to consider that a steamboat like this one was, after all, expensive. The wealthier voters, those who were willing to give the Führer not only their love but their money, paid up, if a little reluctantly. The others were thinking, “Damn it all, we’ve just got stuck again!” But no one dared to utter a word of protest. A human life can be quickly tossed overboard and eaten up by the sharks.

  For all with ears to hear, Captain von Martersteig told the story of the nautical flimflam: 13 pesetas, just think of it, for that money he could have ordered a few complete meals in a decent fonda. Polishing his monocle with a piece of onion skin, he added angrily that as far as the ballot-box was concerned, he had no idea how the others voted, but he had voted “No” and it still came out as “Yes.” Was such a thing possible? A ballot mutating inside the box?

  I told him I thought this was quite possible, considering that the Führer was the very image of his Creator.

  You can catch a mouse with lard, and then drown it in a bucket. This particular cup passed from me. I had remained steadfast. Years later I was again put to the test. Instead of offering me a lard-slathered sandwich, this time the tempter approached me in his underpants. Having escaped the hell of the Spanish Civil War by the skin of our teeth, we found shelter with Beatrice’s strictly academic brother in Basel. Contrary to the hopes of my touchingly Führer-blinded folks on the Lower Rhine, we refrained from making the three-minute trip across the border “to the bosom of the Reich” and into their collective Hunnish embrace. Were the familial bonds no longer effective? Was I immune to the blood of the ancient ancestral Thiudâ, to the magic of herbs and homeopathic nostrums? Well then, they would try to lure me back with textiles. One of my “Get a move on!” brothers sat down to write, asking whether I, Dear Brother, was aware that the glorious Führer, at his own expense, was offering each and every German refugee from Spain a 100% Egyptian cotton undershirt and a pair of longjohns, provided that the refugee would agree to return to the Reich. I wrote back that the Consul in Palma had duly informed me of the Führer’s offer, but what use could such discreet items of clothing be to a man who stood to lose his head, a part of the body he would need in order to feel ashamed of wearing underthings that were baiting him into the Underworld? So Vigoleis resisted this temptation, too.

  In the Bay of Palma a German ship lay at anchor, a vessel of the Woermann Line that called at the port regularly. But this time it wasn’t a balloting ark, but the Monte Rosa with many thousand tons displacement and many thousands of tourists on board.

  Sure enough, the Consul had announced—not in his capacity as Consul, but as head of the Tourist Agency—that the day after tomorrow the Monte Rosa would be arriving from the Reich with 2000 tourists. I was his best Führer, and he needed me. Today was now the day after tomorrow, and the Monte Rosa had arrived in all the majesty implied by her name. She towered like a mountain above the blue harbor waters. Whenever the Consul needed me in the name of his Führer, he met with resistance, ridicule, and open hostility. But if I myself was to be his Führer, and his best one at that—well, allons! Besides, I was the only Führer he could depend on blindly, since I was also a seer. As a result, on tourist days such as this one I didn’t get yelled at, shooed away, or issued a warning in the name of the Consul’s other Führer. Our relationship stayed on the best of terms, although it didn’t keep me from retching.

  Beatrice came along. She was good with mixed groups because she could speak all the languages, the tourists could understand her, and she gave them reliable information. Forty more guides, locals and foreigners, were hired for this project, including members of the German Labor Force who, on this occasion at least, remained politically neutral. The only character who never applied for a job as tourist guide for 25 pesetas a day was Mr. Silberstern. Considering his obsession with money, his omniscience, and his talent for empty blather, why didn’t he? That must remain an unwritten chapter.

  Why did the Consul and the gentlemen of the German Labor Force seem so much friendlier on this day than on other days? Beatrice and I noticed this, and we both reached the same fairly obvious conclusion. It was June of 1934, and they didn’t know how things would play out after the Röhm Purge. Now it wasn’t only Jews who were getting murdered; the Nazis were finally getting at each other’s throats. What would happen if the Nazi gang succeeded in liquidating itself entirely, down to the last man who got on the wrong side of his Führer? The local Party plenipotentiary, an odious, heavy-set school teacher from Westphalia with a doctorate and the medal of the Blood Order, acted as if he had never hurled anti-Semitic slurs at Beatrice. He was barely out of his racist diapers, so he was suspicious of any woman who failed to show blonde, full-bosomed devotion to the Führer. From suspicion to non-Aryan incrimination was for him a simple step. But today he was keeping his crazed epithets to himself. Röhm murdered by Nazis? Maybe he was thinking that there was some truth to our tale of Inca blood—the Incas aren’t Jews, although who knows what they really are? He greeted Beatrice with a bow-legged bow. After all, there are so many different blood lines in this world of ours. The Old Testament alone lists more than a million of them, so isn’t it possible that everybody is all mixed up with everybody else?

  When the first motor launches landed at the pier, the Strength Through Joy tourists didn’t head directly for the cars as they usually did. Instead, they headed for the newspapers. But damn it all, where were the kiosks? They weren’t interested in the island, or in the best seat in the best car which, if you were lucky and if you had long legs, was the Führer’s car. No, the hordes wanted to know what was going on in the Third Reich. On board ship they had been kept in the dark about the outcome of the Röhm Revolt. Now it was Monday, and still nobody knew whether the Führer, too, had been wiped out. And who else? Will all of us who wear the swastika in our buttonholes be executed? Maybe it’s best if we hide it under our lapels. “Excuse me, Herr Führer,” said one of them as we were starting out, “Can you tell me if the Führer is still alive?” “As far as we Führers know, unfortunately he is.” My interrogator’s expression remained unchanged, making it impossible to tell whether he was for or against the Führer’s demise. The Spanish newspapers on the island published extras, listing names and numbers. At the time, what they reported seemed exaggerated, but in retrospect, as is always the case with historical St. Bartholomew’s Nights, the accounts were far short of what actually happened. Excitement grew, as more and more German citizens came on land. The names of the quick and the dead fluttered through the air, and we Führers were bombarded with questions. They were demanding foreign newspapers—what a stupid country, where they don’t even provide a newspaper in a decent language! We tried calming th
em down by telling them that we were on an island, and that the mail ship didn’t arrive on Mondays. But was General Schleicher dead? Yes. And his wife, too? Yes. (Schleicher was a crook, Kessler told me, but he didn’t deserve such an end to his career of machinations.)

  After an hour’s delay, the travel agency with its cadre of Führers finally sent the first thousand tourists on their way. Beatrice and I were part of these groups. As usual with mass disembarkments, we traveled the route backwards—first on the little train from the harbor through the city to the main railroad station and then, after some complicated switching, on to Sóller. On the way, instead of my normal lecture about the island, its kings, churches, beggars, its art works and the Sureda dynasty, all the way to Sóller I sermonized on the dubious greatness, the rapid rise and certain demise of the Third Reich. At first I had as many listeners as my Führer compartment on the train could hold. But as my admonitions and prophecies became more and more bleak and impudent, as my accusations against derelict Christianity turned more and more sinful, more and more of my German fellow citizens simply tuned out and, since they couldn’t make a hasty departure like Silberstern on the line between Clermont-Ferrand and Port-Bou, they gave their full attention to the Mallorcan landscape—which was, of course, what they had come to see.

  The landscape was decidedly more beautiful than the image of Germany I was depicting, which I will suppress here because now it could be, or rather would almost have to be, interpreted retroactively as a simulacrum of the truth. For my views on Germany were just as dismal as Germany turned out to be in reality. The existence of concentration camps was summarily denied. No one was ready to admit that Jews were being killed by the thousands, only that one or the other Jew had been liquidated by mistake. But now what about these bullfights, these bloody entertainments staged by the Spaniards? Weren’t they more barbaric than the racial purification commanded by the Führer? The lady who asked this question was your typical German mother—my sole verbal opponent in this colloquy, by the way, who would probably strangle her entire brood if that would serve nationalist aims. She had a lofty position in the German National Women’s Movement. I liked her. I like patriotic people who wouldn’t flinch if they were told to shoot their own children for the sake of the Fatherland. Her eyes were steely, as were her mind and her heart—but why go into further anatomical details as if this were a Most Wanted poster? Everybody is familiar with this type of goose-stepping Valkyrie, without which no Fatherland can remain calm. She told me she was going to send in a formal protest and would get my name and address from the Consul—but I spared her the trouble. I gave her my business card, mentioned my catalogue of sins already known to the Consul and the authorities in my home town, and hinted that I was on the list of people to be done away with when the time came. “And when will the time come, Herr Führer?” “Well, Madam, for an answer to that question you must turn to the other Führer—unless he’s already been stabbed, which I sincerely hope is the case!”