Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Once again I ran myself and my heels ragged for weeks without finding anything acceptable. But then one morning Lady Luck smiled at me. I am not superstitious, but if at the crack of dawn a rat with a white tail runs over your body, it can only mean good luck. I found a piso that seemed just perfect for our morganatic bond. The landlady was friendly with me. I was friendly with her. The apartment was newly whitewashed, making it look like friendliness itself, so I said I would rent it then and there, but — I would quickly return with my wife to show it to her. As soon as the landlady saw Beatrice, she made the sign of the cross and slammed the door in our faces. A neighbor who had been watching came forward with the explanation: that lady in there was a beata , a bigoted witch who was always telling lies. To the landlady, my companion’s short hair was the Devil in person. The Church forbade mannish haircuts. Pious women had often blessed themselves when they saw in Beatrice an emissary from Hell. Everyone has his or her own ideas about the celestial and the infernal Beyond and its denizens. As for myself, I cannot claim to be able to distinguish an angel from a devil. That’s why I never slam doors in people’s faces. That is my undoing.

In the earliest movies, where it was always raining and the actors went through their mute and jerky paces as if in constant fear of themselves, the passage of non-filmworthy time was indicated by a placard saying, “Years later…” Heart-rending music underscored this rapid flow of time. One saw clouds drifting past, the snow melted off the garden gate, the trees came into blossom, a newborn lamb skipped into the world. And then, suddenly, the rejected lover made his reappearance. In the meantime he had bumped off his rival and made a bundle in the States, while his girl had gone off with somebody else. The dance could continue.

Our existence on the island, likewise eternally rained in, eventually reached a point where I could say, “Weeks later…” Three or more dots can indicate the occurrence of nothing much at all. Beatrice gave language lessons, and we made up with the hotel owner Doña María; the Captain’s armoire joined Don Antonio’s hotel-room wardrobe on the junk pile of furniture we got cheated out of — the Fates that rocked our cradles just didn’t include these items in their list of goods we would obtain on earth, and to this day we have got along without them. Over and over again I took my Sitzfleisch for long walks through the city, with casual stride but acutely observant like a policeman on his beat, constantly on the lookout for anything resembling a white piece of paper. Palma was abuzz with moving vans. I knocked on many doors. I learned a good deal about municipal architecture, and like the gas man, I poked my nose in countless households. And found nothing. Oh, Unkulunkulu, Thou god of the shiny-skinned Kaffirs, Thou shelterest my Beatrice from the rain, but when wilt Thou perform a miracle for me? I beseech Thee, lead me on the right path, one, two, three flights upstairs…!

During the hours when I squatted in our cell, I wrote reams of airy stuff, finding my subject-matter mostly somewhere beyond the clouds. But can a true poet ever let a cloud bank cheat him of his creativity? Too precious for putting on paper, too lousy to get published—“So he’ll be a cobbler,” my father used to say, and if I had taken his advice, I wouldn’t be sitting in a brothel. I would long since have sewn up enough shekels for an armoire and a wardrobe with built-in mirror. One publisher to whom I sent a set of stories wrote me a cordial, encouraging letter: not quite what he needed, but he would bear me in mind as I kept him informed concerning my “growth” as a writer. I did no such thing, of course, but I kept on applying fertilizer to my little plant. Lord knows my life provided me with plenty of manure.

Three times a week Beatrice went to the Suredas’ house, where she got to know the whole clan. Papá, she said, seemed to be even crazier than Pedro. It was now time that I, too, made their acquaintance. Yet as far as craziness was concerned, I had best put my own house in order, which I proceeded to do.

With a clear conscience I could pass through all of the streets of Palma with one exception, a place I just mustn’t dare to go. Every person has a dark spot in his past, and I was no different. My dark spot had the name Villalonga, and the street where the man lived, the one I had to avoid, was the Calle del General Barceló, just a few steps past the anarchist’s palace. Dr. Villalonga was one of those specialists for anatomical cavities who, if he’s treating you, can cause the cessation of hearing and sight. I owed him money. The dust on the island had stopped up my ears; I was deaf. Don Alonso recommended the doctor just around the corner. The treatment was exemplary. Back in Cologne not even the Professor of Otolaryngology had squished out my ears as elegantly as this fellow. His fee was a mere 10 pesetas. I intended to pay up without delay, but was asked to come for a follow-up in two weeks’ time. Dr. Villalonga had studied medicine in Germany; he was fond of digging up memories, and told me the names of his old professors. I still remember one unusual clinical case he mentioned: a soldier had been shot straight through the head, and the professor had patched him up successfully; whatever was said to that man afterwards went in one ear and out the other.

By the time my two weeks were up, Beatrice and I were on our grape diet, and I was unable to pay my bill. Like Zwingli, I now avoided the street where I had no business being anyway. Then came the period when I wandered the streets looking for white sheets of paper. I didn’t dare to enter General Barceló, for fear that I might meet up with the doctor. For me and my strategy, the city map of Palma was reduced in size by one street.

There are writers who use many words to say little, others who say much with few words, and still others, rare ones, who can say everything with a single word. Let the reader decide to which category Vigoleis belongs, for I am unable to decide for myself. One thing about me is clear, however: I shall never inscribe this single word. I prefer to circumscribe it, paraphrase it. That’s why I have constantly altered my mode of expression when describing the brothel, since what I have tried to express was, once we got accustomed to the variety of tones emitted inside its shaky walls, so mind-numbingly monotonous.

I have employed a host of synonyms to designate our accommodations at the lecherous bandits’ redoubt. In private, Beatrice and I referred to it for a while as the goat pen, after a billy-goat one day leaped up the open staircase, and on his second jump landed right in our cell, causing such havoc that even I, old apocalyptic pessimist that I am, started weeping copiously. Perhaps “hellhole” is the proper term, but it never occurred to me — or perhaps I have simply avoided naming our misery in such radically precise fashion. Yet now that our lodgings were no longer waterproof, now that the rats patrolled the partitions more brazenly from day to day, now that the moisture drove gout into our entire bodies, now that the storms raged and Beatrice arrived at such a slough of despond that she spent an hour every day in tears beneath her Unkulunkulu, threatening to manifest a malignant form of hispanophobia, whereas by rights she ought to have burst forth with the symptoms of acute Vigolophobia — amid all of this, I suddenly called to mind my little friend from the Street of Solitude: Julietta, I thought in a mood of inward jubilation, child of a general who brought you such joy when you were a little child — why shouldn’t Vigoleis, too, place his final bet on red trouser stripes and stars on his guerrera ? What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.