That was the big problem. Nobody knew whether the Great Leader was still alive. Otherwise this Nazi lady would have given me a haymaker and, with the help of a few fellow German citizens who were smirking with Schadenfreude, heaved me out the train window. You could have found my grave in Buñola, which is the town we were passing through at the moment.
On that particular day, contrary to my usual spiel for the tourists, I refrained from defending the bullfight as an institution when my fellow countrymen, who at the time were sending millions into the gas ovens, accused it of being a savage manifestation of the “Spanish folk soul.” The multiple slaughter of the Röhm Purge, occurring within Hitler’s sphere of influence, placed new and different demands on my tactics as a tourist guide. I was unable to focus my audience’s attention on the small-scale but significant and bloody Spanish form of popular entertainment, in a manner that would do justice to a national pastime that I had come to admire. I would otherwise have explained to this gathering that Spaniards were no more brutal, no more archaically bewitched or inhumane than any other good Europeans including the Germans, who at that very moment were providing the world with laboratory evidence for psychotic epidemics. I would have presented my listeners with my usual comparisons: why was a bullfight to be considered sadistic, but not horse races, the force-feeding of geese, or quail hunting? Or swatting flies? Or training cavalry horses for combat in war? How about the nags forced to slave away in the mines? Or those anthelmintic tapeworms which, God knows, have just as much right to their parasitic existence as any human being? Not even to mention the shooting of pigeons, vivisection, and the plight of John Q. Public sitting at his melancholy office desk? Directly or indirectly, all of these things served to satisfy certain basic human needs.
But as soon as one segment of my audience took the side of quail hunting as a perfectly acceptable form of human endeavor, and another segment voiced a contrary opinion, somebody always would say, “But Herr Führer, what about the bloodshed?” That was indeed the big question, the one that humankind has always evaded, ever since we started murdering our way upwards as sentient beings, constantly learning how to live and how to kill. It was fortunate that we never really noticed it—I meant the blood that poured from the bull’s wounds when the banderillas hit home, or the blood that flowed when a German soldier was given the Iron Cross First Class. Otherwise, why would anybody display that military decoration on the occasion of, for example, a baby’s baptism? Is that a time when we want to be reminded of our mortality? That mass murderer in the Münster penitentiary, the guy who was hoping, praying, scheming that Professor Többen would bestow on him just such a commendation as a first-class homicide, may not have had it so wrong after all. Presumably he was now a member of the SS. Death in the afternoon, I explained, was Spain’s traditional bloodless form of recreation.
“But certainly you don’t mean to imply that the bull doesn’t suffer terrible agony when his blood starts flowing—that ‘bloodless’ blood of yours, Herr Führer!”
“A bull reacts to pain no differently than a crazed human being, for example a soldier in the midst of the most sacred battle for liberation—Hölderlin’s youthful hordes, if you will. The thrill of combat can constrict a person’s consciousness to the point where he feels no more pain. A bull in the arena feels only heroic rage, and that can be a glorious spectacle. After spending so much time ruminating in some gloomy pen, now he lowers his horns and charges after the gaudy dude who is challenging him for a place in the sun. When the juice of life starts bursting forth, not even the old British spinsters in attendance pay any heed—the ladies who along with their parasols have brought with them their readiness for hysterical protest. Spaniards get plenty angry at these ladies who sit there as if it were five o’clock teatime at a café terrace on the Borne. At the bullfights you get to see such an interesting crowd, such an array of colorful, noisy people, half of them on the sunny side of the arena, the other half in the shade, the whole assembly rising up toward the sky. You see, that’s Spain! You accept it all, and it’s marvelous. The way the troop marches into combat, the torero, trumpets and drumbeats, the formal greeting in front of the president’s tribune, the countless beautiful women who, when seen from the cheap seats occupied by the English spinsters, look like the most beautiful women in all of Spain. In the bullfight arena, Carel Mengelberg would have his choice among them. And the mothers with babies at their breasts.
“Now just look at that! The president has thrown the key to the toril down onto the sand, a colorfully garbed fellow picks it up and hands it to another colorfully garbed fellow, who then opens up the bull pen. Around the entire stadium there is a deathly silence, rising up from thousands of human hearts. Only the sun moves one heartbeat onward. And then comes the yelling. Suddenly the bull is standing there with lowered horns, a colossus in the ring, taking on the challenge. And one by one the English ladies collapse stiffly onto their seats, paralyzed with fear. One of them even goes so far as to perform an act that is permissible here only down on the arena floor: she contends with death itself and loses—a suerte de capa that lasts but a few seconds. The Spanish caballeros pick her up and, accustomed as they are to fainting attacks among the female British audience, lean her up against another lady who, while still conscious, is standing there as stiff as a board. Then they turn back with renewed interest to the game of catch being played down below.”
“But Herr Führer, why do those ladies go to watch such things? If they are so afraid, why don’t they just stay away?”
“When Cook’s pilgrims go to Rome they want to see the Holy Father. In Paris it’s naked women, in Lourdes it’s a miracle, and in Spain it’s a corrida de toros. You can watch a game of football anywhere in the world. If the Spaniards were the brutal monsters the animal lovers talk about, they would take all the spoilsports who for no reason fall over in a faint at a bullfight or, as on the rarest of occasions, fall over dead as though they were back home somewhere—they would take these people and kick them under their seats or hurl them down onto the arena floor. But that never happens. One time and one time only, I was a witness as an enraged aficionado, which is what they call someone who is a fan of the bullfights, took the parasol away from a female spoilsport who had simply fainted away, broke it in two, and when she came to, gave it back to her with the words, ‘Don’t let me ever see you here again, do you hear me!’ Whereupon the lady mumbled something about not having understood what the man had said. I stepped in as interpreter and told her that this fellow, superstitious like all Spaniards, broke her parasol in order to ward off evil magic. Fainting at a bullfight signifies death for the torero—’or for you, milady! It always means death!’ The lady, already a full shade paler, offered her hand to the Spaniard. That is to say, she started to offer it, but that didn’t work. Down in the arena a death was taking place that she had been spared: a suerte suprema. The spell was broken, and while the British lady pulled up her woolen stockings the crowd went berserk, clapping and stamping their feet. Beatrice was beside herself…”
“Beatrice? Who is that? Excuse me for interrupting.”
“My wife…”
“Oh, of course. She’s Spanish? From Valencia or somewhere…?”
“From Kleinbasel, the other side of the bridge. Beatrice is beside herself, clapping and shouting Olé! Hats, skirts, mantillas get thrown down onto the arena floor, where the bullfighter, having come within a hair’s breadth of getting killed himself, accepts thanks from the most beautiful specimen of Spanish womanhood. It is only now that one notices that blood has been shed—just as it is when you visit the dentist and he says, “Now rinse.” Chulos arrive on the scene with a mule team and drag away the bull’s enormous carcass. Other workers rake sand over the black pools of blood, and then the aficionados start arguing among themselves so vehemently that it looks as if they, too, want to shed some blood.”
“But excuse me, Herr Führer. What about those horses that they say always get slit open? You don’t hav
e to give us the details, but you must have seen that kind of thing?”
This is an embarrassing question, often asked and difficult to reply to. But I’m able to parry it just as a powerful bull shakes off a badly applied banderilla. I refer my interrogator to Montaigne, who, I say, in the second volume of his essays provides an incontrovertible answer. I say this while trusting that no one would ever admit ignorance of a literary passage that was never written, and one that I myself have never read.
In Sóller matters were getting so tense that the nautical-travel boss asked the land-travel boss to pick out his best guide. The German citizens would have to be distracted by holding a general roll-call. Vigoleis would take care of this. “Get them to think about other things. But do it so that it’s all Greek to them. We’ve got three hours to kill.”
Vigoleis gave a lecture—a very good one, I was told—on the choice of Spain as a new homeland. Nothing political, and therefore edifying and even constructive. But Vigoleis can never stick to his subject. He’s not a nuclear scientist, and always finds more interesting things going on at the margins of any problem. Soon enough he was talking about the rise and decline of the House of Sureda, although it wasn’t very clear just who did the rising and who did the declining. Afterwards we would be visiting the Cartuja, so I explained that each and every stone at that place breathed the breath of a Sureda. And then there was the cute story of the Cell Rebellion: for years, two particular cells at the monastery were shown to visitors as the places where Chopin and George Sand had kept house. But all of a sudden someone claimed that the famous couple had made love a few cells farther on, or downstairs off the corridor. This led to trench warfare, since the precise location for the lovemaking would bring in hard cash for whoever owned it. Foreign tourists, it was said, must be shown only the genuine article, as in a museum. The two cell owners battled it out. There were experiments with a dowsing rod and with telepathy. Finally Count Hermann Keyserling stepped in and uttered the philosophical words that saved the day: “The two cell suites are in different corridors, so why don’t you show both of them?” The second cloister apartment was quickly furnished in identical fashion with the one sanctioned by tradition. Then began a scramble to find the proper tour guides, who were bribed with cigarettes, wine, and anise. On days when the tourists arrived in crowds, the groups were kept apart and nobody noticed. It was only when just a few people had to be dragged through the Cartuja that things got dicey, since the sacred hallways then took on the aspect of a bordello, in which the madam makes the assignments, and each girl has a separate room.
I lack historical intuition, I don’t smoke, and I spat out the terrible wine offered me by the hostile cell-owners. From the start, I left it up to my tourists themselves to smell out the authentic cell apartment. Chopin’s piano, I explained, the one he played on when he was here, had in any case long since been removed to Paris. Later, in Valldemosa, I would show my group the very house lived in by the man who sold it in person to a French antiques dealer. The man I had in mind was my friend Don José, personal physician to His Royal Highness Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria. Soon enough, I heard myself talking about the disobedient dog responding to the name Pistola, the clinic pet that ran away as if shot from a cannon whenever its instinctive Izibencan cowardice came to the fore. If we were lucky, I told my group, Don José himself would be standing in his doorway. I would point him out to them, considering that personal physicians have gone out of fashion. If he wasn’t standing there—which was most often the case, but I didn’t say so—I would point to some other man and some other dog. This always worked. Great is the power of suggestion. Any Führer can testify to this, whether he is guiding tourists or entire nations. It’s only people leading bears around who have to be on their guard. They solve this problem by carrying a long cudgel to keep the chained animal from molesting the guide himself.
On this historical Day of the Führer I closed my oration, as always, with a discreet bow to my audience and a studiously humble word of thanks for their kind attention. Stormy applause! Bravos! Hurrahs! Waves of gratitude as never before: “Long live our Führer!” No people on earth, I was thinking, has been so unlucky as the Germans in their choice of a Führer. And yet I had to admit that they were better off raising Vigoleis on their shields as Führer here on the Plaza Grande in Sóller, than that other bigwig back in the Thousand-Year Reich. Assuming that the latter hadn’t already been massacred.
The bloodthirsty German Mother in the crowd was steaming with indignation. Others, too, and not only women, regarded such a spontaneous demonstration of reverence for their Führer as out of place, in particular those who had heard my earlier Speech to the German Nation in the train compartment. But no one dared to murder me. The big unanswered questions were of course: who can ever be the genuine leader of a genuine nation? How do you bring down a bogus leader? How and when will he kick the bucket? These problems could obviously not be solved on the island of Mallorca; on this day they couldn’t even be put up for discussion. They were being answered back in the Reich with revolvers, and without a trace of doggish Ibizencian timidity.
Beatrice, too, wouldn’t soon forget this day. Her great moment occurred with an ocean view, at the seaside cliff with its wave-spilled gorge, the Ponta de la Foradada. This was a favorite spot, one that delighted the tourists even when it was raining. Beatrice loved places where nature revealed itself with a purity otherwise seen only on picture postcards. The whole group focused its eyes on the big hole in the cliff, admired the rocky arch formation, speculated on its diameter, compared the sight with other famous holes at other locations in the world, and gazed into its depths. “Yes indeed, 400 meters! And just look over there to the right, do you see something moving? No, a little farther, under the rock with the tin can on top of it. That’s an octopus! Look how its arms throw ghostly shadows! With just a single reach of its tentacle it could grab a person and pull him down…” But I don’t want to interrupt Beatrice’s harangue. In brief, while nature was unfolding its marvels to a grateful assembly, one gentleman kept staring at the group’s guide, with the result that his bile got the better of him. Mixed in with the bile was this fellow’s honorable Teutonic blood, and there began a swelling and heaving to match the foaming ocean surf far down below. He looked around in a fury, and shortly found the person he could address with his grievance, who was none other than Vigoleis. He cried out, “Herr Führer, this is going too far! I protest! Where can I register a complaint?”
I pointed to my badge and told him he could start with me, and that I would pass his words on to higher authorities. Had he not had enough to eat in Sóller? Was he taking into consideration that today’s tour had unusually numerous participation? Could I offer him another sandwich…?
The gentleman, a German compatriot of the nationalist persuasion, pointed to Beatrice and said that he had been bothered by that suspect person all along, especially when every time he heard her speak she was using a different language. It was an insult, he said, on a tour with Strength Through Joy, on a German ship, to be served up a Jew as a guide at a time when the Reich was trying to get rid of those people. And this woman is supposed to be some kind of Führer? Incredible! This was followed by the usual obscenities. This was a German group, so there was no need to tolerate the use of foreign languages. The world would just have to learn to employ the German tongue. Anybody who claimed to be a guest on German ships of the line must speak German, and not the gibberish this lady was talking.
This man, feeling so humiliated in his racist proclivities, was unfortunately making a valid point. Aboard the Monte Rosa were many non-Germans, bunched together in Babel-like fashion. Beatrice greatly enjoyed leading such a group, passing from one language into another, since it allowed her to forget for the length of one difficult day her inborn mistrust of the human race.
The gentleman worked himself into such a lather that he could hardly restrain himself from rushing at Beatrice. As long as he exhibited such self-control,
I felt I could let him bluster away. The scene had already upset a number of other tourists. The only person noticing nothing was the foreign tarantula, the ‘lady’ who had stung my compatriot so fiercely. This guy was probably some fancy Party official, since nobody tried to stop his harangue. On the contrary, the group moved sullenly away—the hole in the cliff no longer had their attention. My German compatriot kept up his barrage of expletives. I nodded in his direction, a gesture that he took to mean encouragement—and this prevented me from doing what I wanted most to do. Once he was finished tossing up his bile, I wanted to grab him by the sleeve and whisper to him, “Watch out! One never knows the company one is in. This ‘lady’—you could get yourself into trouble with her, diplomatic trouble. The woman you regard as a Jewish sow is no more and no less than Madame Enderun, wife of the Persian Consul to the Balearics. As such she is hyper-Aryan, maybe even Ur-Aryan. Have things come the point where the Führer is willing to unleash international incidents?”
The Island of Second Sight Page 107