Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Without mentioning my audacious plan to Beatrice, I betook myself with the courage of her despair to the street I had so long been avoiding, one that was so short, narrow, and shady that it doesn’t offer many possibilities for increasing my reader’s suspense — what’s in store for Vigoleis this time? Will brigands descend upon him and beat him to death, poke into his empty pockets and leave him to be taken to his grave on donkey-back? Will a mule kick backwards and shatter his kneecap? Will women of loose virtue seduce him to a pilarière and filch his last peseta? Or will the Fates put Dr. Villalonga in their employ and have him scream at him, “Finally, my little friend! Now I’ve got you! Out with those two duros, or else I’ll strap you to my chair and yank your forgetful brain right through your natural orifices, just the way they do it with mummies!”

Nothing of such a highly dramatic sort happened. A few nuns passed by me with lowered glances. Black-clad priests are said to bring bad luck, but nuns…? Hardly had I taken fifty paces into this danger zone when my courage found its reward. A yellowed sheet of paper was fluttering on a balcony. I was startled, but took hold of myself and entered the first-floor hallway. It smelled of fish and very small people, but not of whoresflesh. One minute later I had the key to the apartment and unlocked the piso . Two studios faced the sunless street. There was a long corridor with two sizeable rooms adjoining, and then a large room with a French door that opened on a spacious yard. What met my eye was an expanse of palm, cedar, orange, lemon, banana, and almond, whatever flora one might hope to find in a semi-tropical environment, an oasis in the urban canyon. There was a narrow passageway leading to small pantry space, and even a well with a bucket for hauling up the water. The kitchen featured a built-in cast-iron stove and two charcoal grills, plus running water. Finally there was another room with windows looking out on the yard, like all the windows in this part of the house. Seventy pesetas a month was the price for these sumptuous lodgings; the owner himself lived in the same building, the garden of delights was his property also, and his wife, who had followed me during my survey of the premises, pointed out the patio where at the moment a few girls were having a quarrel — these were the privileged daughters of the landlord who would be accepting our rental payments.

I neither walked nor ran back to the Clock Tower — I flew. Seven rooms at 10 pesetas apiece, one room larger than the next, each room with its own ceiling, polished floors, running water, a well, an Eden of palms, and in the leafy shade, classic golden oranges, everything that had incited Goethe’s yearning for the South and lent him immortality: “Thither, thither will I go with thee, my beloved!” The sight of all this lent me wings.

“Beatrice, 7 rooms, 10 pesetas apiece, a ceiling and a roof, my darling! On the quietest street in all Palma, the General Barceló, where Dr. Villalonga rinses out people’s ears — you know, in one ear, out the other — just a few doors down, nuns and monks live there, the street was black with them, and I am no longer a cowardly toad. Now if I were a pelican, I would make the legend come true: I would tear open my breast and feed my brood with my own blood!”

Beatrice stared at me. She is not afraid of spiders, whom she counts among her allies, but she cowers in the presence of madmen. Had I gone crazy? Had something happened to me? Disappointing mail?

Quick, put on dry clothes. We were going to leave our aquarium, and I would show her a terrarium. And besides, I was more sober than usual, but also more elated.

When just a few hours later I again unlocked the piso to show it to Beatrice, the rooms had become noticeably smaller. The studios were nowhere to be seen, the two rooms adjoining the long corridor turned out to be tiny, windowless boudoirs like the “General’s Room” on the Street of Solitude, and the other rooms could be measured with just a few paces. As for the ceilings, they had in fact remained in place, but were now considerably lower — you could forget about doing a pole vault inside the piso , though you might try a somersault. Still, in the yard nothing had changed; the display of blossoms had not withered, the well had not gone dry. On the contrary, Beatrice discovered there some greenhouse rarities and other botanical wonders whose names I had never heard of. Nevertheless—

“70 pesetas, chérie . We’ve got to have the pesetas. It’s a matter of life or death.”

I rarely invoke the names of the Saints, but Beatrice’s sobering reply brought from me this joyful outburst: “Holy Saint Barlaam, have mercy on my poor, wretched soul!” Beatrice had kept some savings!!! Three exclamation marks, one per each 10 pesetas.

“But Unkulunkula, how on earth did you do it? Did you have that much when we were about to plunge into the ocean? I wouldn’t put it past you!”

The expenses that arose from our suicide would have to be covered by the sale of our combined belongings, for it was not until the night of the tempest at the Tower that Beatrice decided to scrape little coins together. Having no head for figures smaller than those with six zeroes, I of course hadn’t the slightest idea that at certain times we could have afforded one more drop of oil in our saucepan, or one more postage stamp for my intellectual commerce with the outside world.

While Beatrice exercised squatter’s rights in the empty apartment, I sought out the landlord, whose name could easily have caused the superstitious Beatrice to change her mind about renting the place at the last minute. His name was Aguado, which means “filled with water.” As I have said, it never rains but it pours.

One after the other, maids led me from the entryway down several corridors and through several hallways to a family room, where I was presented to a short gentleman. He was in the presence of his pretty daughters, who by now had quieted down. His wife was also there, together with a number of other women, all of them relatives — twelve souls all told, and I made bows to every last one of them.

Don Jaime asked a few polite questions. His French was as fluent as water; he was an educated man, and expressed particular interest in that part of my person that did the writing. His grandfather, he explained, was a writer, and one of his daughters wrote poems — probably the one who was now blushing as I glanced with interest around the circle of females. He was a great lover of literature. Then he asked to see our passports. He made no embarrassing inquiries, perhaps out of consideration for the daughters standing next to him, or perhaps because his penchant for literature elevated him above bourgeois prejudice. The official stamps of our respective consulates were sufficient for him. We were welcome as tenants. And then came the great moment, the most momentous moment of this thrill-packed story: Don Jaime asked one of his beautiful relatives to calculate how much I should pay in advance, until the beginning of the next month, when we could start regular payments. It seemed just fine to him: he would draft a rental contract starting next January 1st. Did we intend to move in before Christmas?

Christmas. We were three days away from the Birth of Our Redeemer, 9 days away from the end of the month… Out of Beatrice’s stocking I pulled forth 22 pesetas and 50 centimos and was presented with a receipt signed with a Spanish flourish. A maid again accompanied me through hallways, corridors, and piles of rubbish to the majestic portal. My mood was so bouyant that I could have kissed her. One kiss for each peseta saved? That would have meant 57.5 kisses.

I gave Beatrice several of them, twice over. It was only the matter of the remaining pesetas that made her lose her composure. She was quite aware that Christmas was just around the corner. That, she said, was something she wanted to keep quiet about, so as not to make me go into a fit of melancholy. She knew that this could easily happen with Germans when they are off in foreign lands. “And how is it with Swiss citizens who have Inca blood,” I asked, but there was no reply. Landlords often make mistakes in arithmetic. But this time, the addition was correct to the last centimo: twenty-two fifty.