Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Once as a boy, befuddled by a licentious tumult of his senses, he secretly pursued a housemaid, and while following the scent, was discovered by his mother. Mothers don’t approve of such things, and when it comes to housemaids and fleshly impulses, they have ineradicable prejudices. But instead of thrashing him as he had expected, this protectress of filial chastity placed certain obstacles in the path of further premature sexual encounters. This brought on feelings of estrangement that Vigoleis bore with him until long after he had outgrown his steamy knickers.

Vigoleis groped along some more, and there — it felt like warm calfskin, something moist and soft. It was naked flesh, and it rose warmly, nay hotly, to his touch. His breathing stopped. Then the flesh twitched, Vigoleis withdrew his hand, but the flesh remained in his hand as if by magnetism. And then a naked arm threw itself around his neck, and then a word met his ears that he couldn’t understand. It sounded as bright as silver, and caused the intruder to shiver. He was overcome. He fled.

Amid stumblings and bumpings I found my way back to the room where Beatrice was talking heart-to-heart with her brother. Zwingli had tears in his eyes. They had shifted into Schwyzerdütsch , the language of their childhood.

“Zwingli, what’s going on here? Who are you holding captive back there in the little room?”

“Captive? Quelle drôle d’idée ! That’s her kid!”

Down below, the doorknocker rapped twice. We heard footsteps on the stair. There was a knock at the apartment door, and Zwingli opened. A man stepped in, identifiable by his uniform as a waiter. He was of medium height, well-groomed, with a handsome face and pleasant manners. His jacket was a blinding white dotted with gold buttons. He brought coffee, which he poured from a copper espresso pitcher, and warm pastry — the famous ensaimadas , an island specialty, a local product which the Mallorcans are almost prouder of than of their greatest son, the poet, mystic, philosopher, and martyr to his own so-called Lullian Art, Ramón Llull. I would soon fall in love with both — the delectable pastry and the ars magna of Raimundus.

Antonio — the name of this waiter who was later to become our rescuer — was on intimate terms with Don Helvecio who, after introducing us, clapped him several times rapidly on the shoulder as if summoning up his own courage. Antonio spoke some broken French, so I was able to join the conversation for a while until they all lapsed back into Spanish. I was in the minority.

The wheel on Zwingli’s mill was once again in motion, the sluice gates were open and things began to revolve. His nostrils flared, he snorted like a horse, his right hand spread out like a fan. The nail on his pinky was set for further action. Whether it was the coffee or Antonio’s superior presence, the depression seemed to have left him — and the rest of us too. The air was suddenly clear again. Even the solitary fly had come in for a landing and was slurping up a spartan breakfast consisting of a tiny grain of sugar. Peace and harmony reigned supreme. Why, when such tranquility is possible on a small scale, cannot the nations of the world achieve it in the large?

There we sat, enjoying the repast, though still rumpled from our nocturnal voyage. But who cared? I no longer thought of taking a bath at the Príncipe, and Beatrice too had probably forgotten that we were supposed to be standing — or with somewhat better luck sitting — at a deathbed. Was she happy to have found her brother, if indeed in a ruined state, then at least not breathing his last? Dirt can be washed away, and one can raise up the inner man to new ideals over which death has no dominion. Would we be leaving by the next ship, or perhaps staying on for just a few days? Let’s find out what the two of them are thinking.

“You see, Baby…” Zwingli opted for the English language to explain how his plan had developed. He was great at developing plans, that I knew. He was a veritable genius at envisioning things on a grand scale, but with the details of implementation he was an utter failure. He could hold his own with women in the plural, but with individual women he invariably went on the skids. He began his explanation plainly and soberly, with just a touch of impishness. But soon he donned the verbal cloak of man of the future, so much so that we were no longer anything but an audience for him, an amorphous crowd to be fed a big line and eventually, against our will and instinct, to be talked into agreeing with him totally. “You see…,” and we truly saw. That is the amazing thing about people with such oratorical gifts. For a little while, we can actually be won over by their prestidigitation. We follow with our own eyes as the buxom lady is sawn in half in her wooden box.

Back in Cologne I had observed Zwingli in superb form. After a lecture by Professor Brinkmann, we returned to my room to discuss a scholarly problem mentioned by that distinguished art historian. Zwingli knew almost all the art museums in Europe, having shepherded around rich people from the States, and especially from South America, as a tourist guide. His “Tours of the Old World Galleries,” which he had organized for groups of seldom more than twelve and with the help of various travel bureaus, were well known and very popular. Over the years they netted him quite a thick wad, which he promptly squandered on women or gave away to struggling artists who acknowledged his kindness with gifts of their own work. His private collection, called “Works of Neglected Genius,” was respectable. Where it ever ended up the devil only knows. The knowledge of art history he amassed in this fashion would be the envy of any university doctoral candidate, as was also true of the instructional material he collected for himself. Whenever he stayed for more than a couple of months in a university town, he would sign up for courses in art history and write down reams of commentary and analysis in preparation for the time when he, too, would be a Professor of Art History. That was his life’s ambition, and he took as his model the great inventor of the discipline, his own distant relative and ancestor Jacob Burckhardt.

But, still, and yet… Whichever opening qualifier we might choose, the fact remains that Zwingli never got his longed-for professorship. The reason was that he applied for it in the wrong field. For not only was he an extraordinary, fully informed, and much-sought-after cicerone in Old-World Collections. He likewise commanded the most astonishing expertise, down to the nicest details of filigree, in the bedrooms of the same metropolises through which he guided so many wealthy devotees of art and beauty. And the art and beauty he got to observe in such places, whose price of admission was usually quite considerable, was not in all cases free of contamination. Because Zwingli never would praise or show a work of art that he didn’t know beforehand, he soon fell victim to certain intérieurs that he admired so much on the canvases of the French Impressionists.

Here over coffee and ensaimadas , and wearing his shirt of historical hue, standing before two exhausted victims who meant the world to him — here he spread out before us a congeries of projects that would affect our future on the island. To wit: he was planning, with the aid of an American millionaire, to establish an International Institute of Fine Arts, and he wanted us as collaborators. He had already worked out all the details. It was to be an enterprise of such imposing proportions that these days not even Unesco could bring into being. I shall return to this project presently, when I describe the nucleus of the establishment on the Calla Caltrava, where it threatened to degenerate into a lupanar and where art verily became impoverished. But as for the immediate future, i.e., what we were to do once we rose from this improvised breakfast table — not one word! It was possible that he had talked over this trivial matter with his sister while my own hands had been otherwise occupied.