The Island of Second Sight

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen

  They didn’t like to see us go. As amateur conspirators we had earned everyone’s respect. The Spaniards have a special liking for aficionados. In these circles, no one expected the war to end soon. But all of them, except for the priests, thought it would end well.

  Our taxi driver was one of those Spanish proletarians with the air of a grandseigneur. His co-pilot was no less splendid in his nameless valor. He played the role of herald: “Make way for Catholic Germans on a special mission!” he shouted as we turned onto the Paseo Sagrera and a few dozen rifles blocked our progress. The car stopped. Pistols banged against all the windows. The copilot yelled at the gang and waved a bill of lading. “Friends of the Movimento Salvador! Deputies of the Caudillo! Mission to the Führer! To the harbor! The cruiser won’t wait!” We were allowed to pass through unharmed. There was a clicking of boot heels. German steel helmets, paid for with Mallorcan money, wiggled on heads that were racially too small for them. We sat in the back, fully composed and conscious of our mission. On my lap sat my one and only piece of property, my typewriter. On Beatrice’s lap was our suitcase containing, instead of my “Tombs of the Huns,” some much more dangerous written material. A second armed patrol let us pass, but a third didn’t fall for our ruse. Halt! Passports! Out of the car for inspection! An officer waved to some of his men to approach the car.

  We stayed seated. We were exterritorials! Earlier on I had once accompanied Kessler on a visit to the Immigration Police in Palma, so I knew how ambassadors and envoys were supposed to behave. I had clipped my uncle’s letter to my passport in such a way as to make the Archbishop of Mallorca’s signature and seal immediately visible. The officer studied the Latin text and peered in at me. “Special mission?” Yes, I said, and showed him the letter from the priest to the Archbishop of Paris—we were in the special service of the Church. He made a gesture, his men snapped to attention, and the officer saluted with his sword. It was all very ceremonial, somewhat like a Solemn High Mass. It could have been our funeral. One minute later we were at the pier.

  The scene that now presented itself to our eyes reminds me today of certain illustrations in the old Swiss Chronicle by Reverend Diebold Schilling. I say “today,” for although what we saw on that October morning was no less colorful and quaint, it was by no means a romantic image. But that, too, is only half of the truth. The scene was romantic enough, but we just couldn’t appreciate it.

  As I squeezed forward to get out of the car, I noticed that my seat was sopping wet. It was dry when we had entered the taxi. We were surrounded by a thicket of pointed rifles, each rifle containing at least one bullet and ready to fire. The miracle was that there were still any living people on the island. Even the Spaniards aren’t capable of such rapid procreation. But come to think of it, no matter where you can hear gunshots, at your county fair or on New Year’s Eve or in a war, humans can still activate their libidinous genes. Thus it is likely that the human race will survive the atomic fireworks that will happen in the future.

  Flags were fluttering on tall staffs—the standards of the various consulates. Gathered around them were larger and smaller groups of refugees. Men with arm bands and clipboards, in some cases the consuls themselves or their deputies for refugee affairs, were scampering about. If we had been Dutch citizens, for example, we would have joined half a dozen others with Oranje boven snapping above them in the breeze, signifying that they were now in safety. These Hollanders had regained all of the jovial, weatherproof, and infectious joie de vivre that makes them so unpopular with one another in railroad stations and landing piers anywhere in the world. It was certain that none of them had any early-morning garden snails run away from them on the island. We weren’t Dutch, but neither were we the citizens of any other country that was showing its colors here at the harbor.

  One particular group here wasn’t showing any colors at all, for the simple reason that it wasn’t allowed to, but not because it was politically neutral. I recognized a few faces of German emigrés who had lost their citizenship, a cluster of nobodies, the German nation’s rubbish. Even here on the island, where lead bullets were a dime a dozen, they weren’t considered worth the price of a spoonful of gunpowder. There were Jews among them, politically innocuous people who had kept their mouths shut. We had nothing in common with them, for we had indeed displayed our colors.

  Off to one side, set apart from the picturesque crowd, we saw another flag hanging on a stick, a miserable little rag so tiny that it couldn’t catch any of the morning wind and flutter proudly as the patriotic songs would have it do. It was the Führer’s swastika. Beneath this sign and its promise of a thousand years of glory, there stood the local power center of the Third Reich: our Herr Konsul and a short, shabbily dressed compatriot of his with the party insignia at his lapel and a little mongrel on his arm. He was unshaven, but refugees don’t have to shave. And as we found out later, he wasn’t a refugee at all. He was some higher Reich functionary, sent here on a mission that stipulated outward grubbiness, maybe Strength Through Joy and a little murder plot. But that was his own affair.

  Then came no-man’s-land, and beyond that an enormous pile that I recall as being as high as a house. Trunks, suitcases, crates, bales—the sight of it gave us a shock. Could this be the baggage belonging to the evacuees? Hardly possible.

  The Consul of the Third Reich caught sight of us. He watched our every move. Beatrice wanted to find out more about all the baggage. But of course, the English consular official told her. We could take with us as much as we wanted to—there were no limits.

  Following this new thunderclap, the two of us gathered around the invisible flag of Vigoleis: a white cross on a white background, or a black cross on black—whichever way one wants to symbolize The Void. A sailor approached us and inquired whether we were refugees or service personnel. We gave him our explosive bundle, which he quickly stowed in the jolly boat. So that danger was past.

  Then came the German Consul.

  This bastard, I thought, has robbed us of all our belongings with his lying hogwash, trying to lure us on board the Deutschland. He began with some vacuous chatter. I remained cold as a stone, and Beatrice was non-existent. A mob of Spanish gendarmes was all around us, and it seemed advisable to be on our best behavior. So I took up a conversation with the Consul, saying that it was still not our intention to return to Germany. As he knew, we had relatives in Basel. But proximity to the Fatherland, he countered, would surely make us change our minds once we heard the voice of the homeland beckoning across the border… And then, his voice turning softer, he asked if I would be willing to do him a favor. Just a small matter, he said, but personally important for him. He waxed sentimental. His aged father was living in—was it Hamburg?—and hadn’t heard from his son in a long time. He was worried, since even as a Consul he wasn’t permitted to send private correspondence—only official, censored dispatches. He had a letter, a few lines from a son to his Dad, and would I be so kind as to put it in a mailbox in Marseille? He would give me a few international reply forms…

  Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, saith the whore Pilar, saith practially any decent human being. Here and now, at this early morning hour at the pier in Palma, vengeance was finally being handed to Vigoleis. One simple wave on my part, the enunciation of the one word Oiga! and a Spanish officer would come to where we were standing. The sequel would take place in keeping with the protocol of martial law. Probably behind the customs office, to avoid frightening the refugees.

  I think of myself as an act of vengeance perpetrated by obscure, possibly cosmic forces, cursed with a life that constantly confronts me with stupid questions. So I figured that I had nothing to gain by letting the Consul get shot. I remained silent. I pointed to the man with the dog and the party button on his lapel, those two shoddy emblems of authority, who was now standing guard alone next to the Führer’s flag.

  I said, “Herr Dede, there is no reason in the world why I should do you a favor. You are a bad person. Because of you,
we are leaving this island as beggars. But give me your letter. I’ll take care of it.”

  The Consul gave me the letter with a trembling hand. I calmly placed it in the same pocket as the episcopal documents I was carrying. Then I continued:

  “By giving me this letter you have placed the life of a German Consul in my hands. One little gesture on my part, and in accordance with martial law you will be shot. You know better than I do that these people aren’t fooling around, even though you deny any knowledge of the atrocities that are happening. But have no fear, I will not betray you. The satisfaction I now feel, seeing that you, a party member and the Consul of your Führer, don’t trust that filthy guy over there standing next to your criminal flag, is worth more to me than all the private belongings we are leaving behind us. You’re showing that you have more confidence in an enemy of your Movement, someone you have got to know personally. That is a hopeful sign for us refugees. I thank you.”

  At this moment a siren went off. We climbed aboard the jolly boat. H.M.S. Grenville lay at anchor far out in the bay. A few minutes later, we were standing on English territory and in English custody.

  The boss of the Spanish Harbor Censorship Office, who ought to have inspected hand baggage, had overslept. His loudly honking limousine raced along the pier—too late. To keep up appearances he boarded a lancha, followed us out in a wide swing of the boat and, making an even wider swing, straightaway returned to his Pilar.

  We owe it to my uncle’s episcopal letter, but also to some insatiable Spanish whore, that we escaped the harbor at Palma without getting shot.

  Round about us the grey veils of night had completely lifted. We stepped upon the afterdeck sleepless, spiritually drained, and lightly shivering in the breeze that was now sweeping in from the horizon to reveal the gorgeous spectacle of the slowly receding island palisades. Crimson and gold flames appeared on the cliffside crags and were reflected on the rocky shoreline. Here and there the sea had its black sheen, as yet untouched by the breath of the dawning day. Seagulls were our airborne harbor pilots.

  On board the Grenville the nationalities remained apart in groups. We found places to sit on coils of rope. A gentleman was seated there already, a goateed fellow with a blue beret—I immediately recognized Franz Blei, the Austrian writer whose works I always enjoyed reading. I sat down next to him. At my other side sat a man dressed like a Mallorquin peasant, bent forward and brooding. All of a sudden he let out frightful yells, truly bellowing. They had crucified his son, he shouted. And still he couldn’t believe in God—not he, no, never! They could nail him to a cross, and he still wouldn’t believe, not on his life! Then he again collapsed. I heard him weeping. He wasn’t a Mallorquin; he spoke the Spanish of South America.

  The English officers and sailors were splendid hosts on board His Majesty’s ship. We had everything we needed. If exhausted mothers needed a rest in their cabins, officers played nanny. The meals were first-rate—just as in peacetime, to use an age-old comparison beloved by our civilization.

  I continued my chat with Franz Blei: about the world situation, about Kessler, about the difficulty of traveling as an anti-Nazi with a German passport. Then the peasant started bellowing again.

  He was from Argentina, and he had settled on Mallorca several years ago. He had a small farm, a wife, and many children. His oldest son was arrested by the religious fanatics and hanged from an olive tree for the atheism he refused to recant. “Crucify him!” the gang had shouted. He gave up the spirit within sight of his father. The father, his child’s screams still echoing within him, took heart and fled. But how? He no longer knew. He left everything and everybody behind: his wife, his other children, his farm, everything. Now here he was, half crazed, bellowing his pain and his atheism out across the ocean. If he had been caught, he would have suffered the same fate: Ibis ad crucem!

  There were other Argentinian farmers on board, quite a lot of them, with their whole families. Obstinate characters, they refused to eat the snow-white bread offered them by the Englishmen. They demanded their familiar country bread with the dark crust. I spoke with one of them, a friend of the fellow who had lost his son. God? he said. What was a farmer supposed to know about God? God is the one who sends rain when rain wasn’t wanted. Who sends drought when the earth longs for a drop of rain. Farmers didn’t know anything about God. God was something for priests and nuns. As for the death on a cross that was costing his friend his sanity, what was there to say? Maybe somebody else could understand it, but he certainly didn’t. Pepe’s son was nailed to a cross because the boy didn’t believe in God, and people had told him—he himself couldn’t read—that Jesus Christ, the guy in the Bible, was crucified too. This guy Christ, the one in the holy book, actually believed in God, or at least that’s what he kept on saying. But maybe all this stuff the priests were spreading around was a bunch of lies to keep people stupid. As far as he was concerned,—“Me cago en Dios!”

  I was thunderstruck.

  Off on the horizon we spied a little cloud. Or was it a sail? Fog? The farmers pointed it out to each other. Full speed ahead, we sailed toward the spot, right through a sky that soon changed from azure to black. Suddenly we couldn’t see our hands in front of our eyes. The foghorns started barking, the engines were stifled, and the rolling and heaving ceased. The Grenville seemed to be running on without steam. It was uncanny here amidst the cold bank of fog, for what seemed like hours. Suddenly the cloud lifted, the foghorns went silent, and the destroyer leaped full speed ahead into a resurrected world. Blue, blue, as far as the eye could see.

  An officer came on deck and raised his hand as if to command attention. Aha, I thought, a speech! That’s part of his duties, and at the end we’ll all stand up and sing “God save the King!”

  The officer made it short and sweet: change of course. Instead of heading for Marseille, we would land at Genoa, where other ships would take passengers to their various destinations.

  Italy! From the frying pan into the fire! Were the two of us destined, after all was said and done, to be buried in my home town’s Hunnish tombs? Nailed to the Führer’s hooked cross? Somebody shouted, “Mussolini!”

  Franz Blei rose from his sitting position. In the interest of historical accuracy I should stress that he stood up on one of the coils of rope. He turned to the officer. He was not speaking for himself, he said, for as an Austrian he was still a free individual. But persecuted Germans were on board this ship, as well as stateless persons, and it was unconscionable to land these people on Italian soil. For all of them, that would mean Third Reich, concentration camps, death! Whereupon Franz Blei stepped down from his podium and again took his seat on the rope coil. The officer said nothing and disappeared down a hatch.

  Nothing but water and a black-azure sky, a leaping dolphin, and the music of our stuttering sea journey. Not a cloud in the sky, not a cloud on the horizon. The ship’s wake told us that we were making the wide course change in the direction of Mussolini.

  The father of the crucified boy regained his senses. The Englishmen’s white bread, their pap for sucklings, had performed a miracle. Fortunately the man had one last dark crust in his breast pocket.

  “God,” said Franz Blei, who also noticed this, “God will bless anybody’s true bread.”

  The officer came back on deck with a new announcement. The ship had made contact with the admiral on board their flagship H.M.S. London in the harbor at Barcelona. His British Majesty’s Mediterranean Fleet, the radio communication had said, would not discharge any passenger against his will in a hostile country. Grenville, however, would not be heading for Marseille; she had orders to go to Genoa. We would be landing at Barcelona, where the refugees would spend the night on the flagship and would depart the next day on another destroyer for Marseille. “All right?”

  “All right,” said Franz Blei, to whom the officer had directed his last question. “God bless the King!”

  “God bless him!” added Beatrice with a sigh of relief. She has a wea
kness for anything British, and she is familiar with such slogans. This ocean-going coup of Olde England left me speechless. Such grandeur on the high seas, while their landlubber Consul kept strictly to his orders! One wave to the steersman sufficed to make our ship curve toward liberty. We noticed the change of course by watching the ship’s wake. The circle was closing; with redoubled speed our destroyer first headed back to where we came from, but then wheeled sharply to port.

  Nature herself provided the final thrill, but I don’t want to make it sound melodramatic. Once again the sirens wailed, and once again we were inside a cloud. Was anybody else noticing this? A ghoulish whiteness surrounded us. The ship’s deck was rigid. The world was soundless. The azure maritime day was invisible above us, and down below was night, veiling our destination.

  Our destination: freedom.

  Ever since man was forced to depart from Paradise and enter the nature reserve of his own culture, a place where he can survive only so long as he retains his instinct for creating borders beyond which he is in danger of being executed, the history of his freedom has been a history devoid of meaning. One cannot retell this history without causing acute embarrassment. That is why I have allowed Nature to enter here, allowing Her to arrange a large bank of fog that will now descend upon this final scene in the recollections of Vigoleis, instead of some dazzling, fanciful

  finis operis.

  Correction:

  In my “Notice to the Reader” you will have read that “all the people in this book are alive or were at one time.” What I meant by that pronouncement was that my book is not of the kind inspired by poetic fantasy, but one that takes actual fact as its point of departure—or if you prefer another formulation, it is a book of recollections shaped by poetic means. This makes it different from works whose exclusively poetic authors say, in order to avoid legal complications or other intrusions into their métier, that all their characters are fictional, and that any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.