Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Now that we had become bonafide residents on a street in town, we felt that we must carry ourselves with heads held high, in keeping with the street’s heroic name: Calle del General Barceló. For this reason I took 10 pesetas out of Beatrice’s knitted strongbox and ambled ten doors down to the office of Dr. Villalonga, who greeted me wearing his Cyclopsian head mirror.

“ Olá! ” he said. “My German friend! I’ve been expecting you for a long time, but…”

I blushed and stammered some imaginary story about illness, an urgent trip to Barcelona. The doctor took no notice of my excuses. He handed me a picture postcard and asked me if I was familiar with Düsseldorf, and if I knew a certain intersection of the Graf-Adolf-Strasse and a certain house there. The house was illustrated on the postcard, one of a thousand street-corner houses in Düsseldorf. Without any doubt I had seen this one dozens of times, and I told him so. It was a stately house indeed, and so I quickly invented a story that included, of course, the Bank of Barmen and a street urchin somersaulting on the Königsallee. With a gesture of relief, Dr. Villalonga thanked me. Then he asked me to translate for him the German message on the card. He knew the language but wanted to be sure, since it was a matter of nuances. The card was from a woman. My ipsis verbis professional translation of the text seemed satisfactory. The upshot was that something was afoot, or at least had been afoot at one time, between the sender and the addressee. The doctor put the postcard back in his pocket. Then I reached into my own pocket and begged his pardon for the delay. My duros landed on his glass tabletop with the sound of genuine cash.

“Ten pesetas?” Dr. Villalonga could not recall that I owed him any money, and money that he couldn’t recall was not money that he could accept. Be that as it may, the information I had given him was worth more than the two duros that I should put right back in my pocket. Then he quickly pushed a funnel into my ears — all clear. I was well acclimated, but whenever I needed a rinsing out, I was to come visit him! Yes, I said, that was now a simple matter. We were now neighbors, just across the street. In keeping with Spanish custom, I offered to welcome him in my house. He offered to welcome me in his, and each of us stayed where we belonged.

On the very same day postcards and letters got sent out into the world with our new, firm, unalterable address: Calle del General Barceló 23, for anyone who wanted to visit us. Our post-office box number remained the same: Apartado 112. The postage for all these missives reduced our savings to zero.

Both Julietta and Vigoleis can tell tales about generals who offer aid in emergencies. Julietta told such tales on the public streets. Vigoleis, less impulsive than she, prefers to confine his tales to the pages of his personal jottings.

What a swashbuckler he must have been, this Sixteenth Intercessor with the rank of a general!

After leaving the post office, we went to the Veda Club to inform Antonio of our impending relocation. He was standing on the terrace, waving his napkin. “Good news!” I called up to him, and asked him whether he had a minute. In Spain one always has a minute. Everything gets postponed to the following day, including whatever got postponed the day before. Mañana , “tomorrow,” is the first Spanish joke learned by every foreigner. Zwingli’s successes in this country were in part the result of this mañana ; he was always wishing that he had done yesterday what he was doing today, and so he was constantly ahead of the natives by one day. Women were his undoing, because in bed they were conscious only of today. Thus this Man of Yesterday experienced failure after failure, until he had no Tomorrow at all.

Antonio listened to our story. He showed no understanding for Dr. Villalonga’s satanic 10 pesetas, my reason for refusing to enter Barceló during my search. The apartment had stood empty for months. Antonio wasn’t thinking about Providential intercession; he was thinking about furniture.

Beatrice has a memory that never loses sight of even the most immediate matters. Our couch, the one with the woolen mattress and its cool horsehair lining, our pilarière ! Pilar would have to hand over our furniture, which had escaped my memory entirely. Beatrice was simply not prepared to forfeit our bed, our bookcase, our laundry, 7 clothes hangers, 1 sugar bowl, 1 darning egg, 9 safety pins, 1 comb, 1 pair of shoes, 1 writing pad — all these items were inscribed in gold in the network of her brain. She would forfeit nothing to “that woman”—her use of this term, which can otherwise be suggestive of dignity, turned it into the epitome of disdain and degradation. The person so designated became a specimen of vermin, a maggot, the dregs of humanity. Fine, this bird would have to hand everything back to us. But how? Burglary? Antonio’s gang could take care of that with a one-time operation.

But Beatrice wasn’t for violent action. She asked Antonio to send one of his pageboys from the Veda to her brother’s house and have Zwingli reclaim our belongings. She had spent thousands for Zwingli, and even now, if a late-coming creditor were to make an appearance demanding repayment, she would readily take care of it. But as for that “woman”—she insisted on getting back everything down to the last safety pin.

Antonio shook his head. Everything had changed in the meantime. Don Helvecio no longer lived in the piso around the corner. He and his wife and child were among the missing. No one had seen them for weeks. An inquiry at the post office yielded the information that for quite a long time no missiles had landed there and no screams of fury had been heard from across the street. The concierge was queried, and he called the police. A small crowd of gendarmes gathered at the apartment door and gave the secret knocking signal: no answer. They were presumably all dead. Groups of curious onlookers formed on the Street of Solutide. All of them dead! A cry of “bloody deed!” spread like wildfire in the Count’s “apple.” Barricades. The apartment door was kicked open and the homicide squad entered the Pilarian love nest, taking professional care not to disturb evidence. But there were no corpses to stumble over, no puddles of blood to step in, no dangling bodies to bump into, and Julietta was not discovered in the laundry basket with a gag in her mouth. No trace of a final communication, no greeting to dear ones on the island, or in Basel and environs. No last will and testament containing Vigoleis’ name as heir to a collection of works in the history of art, the manuscript of the Lexicon of Invective, or the coveted Swiss army knife. Instead, the floor was filthy; wherever the murder specialists stepped there was a mess. They lifted fingerprints from all the doorknobs, but where were the matching fingers?

The tenants had flown the coop; as in a case of loss of hair, all that was left were bare spots. The hermandad was confronted with a mystery. Zwingli told us later how he had arranged the whole thing, but I shall refrain at this point from inserting details of that nocturnal escapade. We ourselves must concentrate on a relocation that will have to take place in broad daylight — one that turned out to be a little triumphal procession.

Antonio contacted the Príncipe, where the Swiss panjandrum was likewise regarded as disappeared and already struck from the list of missing persons. The message Antonio got was to the effect that Don Helvecio was welcome to stew in his own juice wherever he was. In a normal situation, of course, things happen in quite the reverse fashion: the person departing the scene leaves word for those who remain behind. But when it comes to womanizing, the Spaniards display an amazing degree of solidarity. They do their whoring hand in hand, and never rub the other guy the wrong way.