Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Pedro from the House of Verdugo is tall, a born dancer. He has beautiful hands that move in enchanting ways. He has a pleasant singing voice, and prefers the old songs of his island. His lungs are messed up, his stomach likewise, and his heart is enlarged. He is an accomplished actor — not on the stage, where he would no doubt be a failure, but in real life, where this art earns more, especially in Spain, where the theaters are bad because they pretend to be good. At the time when we made Pedro’s acquaintance, he had not yet made a final decision about his career, and no one was pressuring him about this. He had certain ambitions as a writer, but even stronger inclinations to become an artist with pencil and brush. But first he had to do his military service. I have never been a soldier, but I know that an army recruit is worth less than a head of cattle. Beastliness has stuck to mankind ever since we emerged from the primeval slime, and that’s why nearly all of us go right along whenever we get the call to don a snappy uniform. Anyone who refuses is put up against the wall. As soon as someone puts on a uniform, he ceases to be what he is. Pedro from the House of Verdugo — let this be said to his credit — tried to preserve his human dignity even as a soldier, and at the time in question this was still more or less feasible. He accomplished this when it came time to get dressed. Arriving at the quartermaster’s store, he fished out a jacket with the arms too long and the collar too wide, a pair of trousers whose hindpart reached to the back of his knees, a belt that he had to wind twice around his waist before he could find the proper hole. His headgear would have been too large even for his heraldic progenitor.

Beatrice met him when he was garbed in this fashion, and she claimed that he was daffy. I got to know him in the same Landsknecht outfit, and as soon as I grasped his hand, I knew: this is a man after my own heart. As a citizen of Switzerland, Beatrice had no idea what it meant to be a soldier. The handful of guys who, to the annoyance of their neighbors, pop off musket shots every Sunday in their cantons while smoking their stogies or between hands of cards, and who in a war emergency can plant a land mine or do some border patrol while remaining free citizens of the Swiss Federation — these types have no say in the matter, although they would like to think they do. Whenever they get tired of the charade, they toss their gear at the feet of the Division Commander, and are never put in front of a firing squad. Pedro himself could have a say in the matter, whereas in Germany — and I believe Captain von Martersteig’s every word — such behavior would land a soldier in front of a military tribunal for sabotage of patriotic duty. “What a disgusting sight, these monkeys in the Spanish Army!” Pedro was not the only one who kept his dignity by flouting regulations. Martersteig: “For each missing button, solitary! For pants that slip down, the brig! How can they ever expect to advance in formation toward the enemy when they have to hold their pants up? And what can be done with an army where the generals put up umbrellas as soon as it starts to drizzle?” Napoleon, I replied, did this, too, and still he won battles. At Waterloo he just didn’t have a parapluie close to hand, and things went badly for him. I have seen many Spanish generals, but I’ve never seen one with an open umbrella. If I had, I would have embraced him. I felt vindicated when I once ran across an illustrated article in a Portuguese newspaper: a review of the national troops in pouring rain. The entire General Staff was sitting on kitchen chairs under open umbrellas. And these officers didn’t even have their batmen hold their umbrellas for them; no, the latter were back home taking care of the kids. My heart is touched at the sight of so much humanity in an inhumane profession. The Negus of Abyssinia carries his umbrella with imperial majesty. But maybe that thing is considered part of the royal insignia.

Just a brief moment more concerning the defense of the badly shrunken Spanish Empire: Pedro’s grandfather, Don Jaime Montaner y Vega Verdugo etc, was an admiral who earned his stripes in the otherwise rather ignominious Cochin China campaign. When still in the bloom of his youth, he was in the thick of things when the Spaniards tried to wrest Ceuta from the Riff pirates. From then on, he added one piping after another to his uniform; one gilded star tinkled next the other, so that the sea-warrior’s aged breast was overflowing at the gunwales when I finally met him in person in his palace. I was awestruck by this Balearic Nelson; his jacket fairly glistened with molded hardware. And such a confession is no doubt surprising coming from me, since I am much more often prone to ridiculing any and all manifestations of secular and ecclesiastical masquerade. Shall I give you an example that speaks volumes? Here it is:

I was to make a formal visit to my episcopal uncle in Münster, whom I had never met. I only knew his aged servant, a fellow named Jean, just like his employer. The two of them were bosom friends, since the elder Jean had once served as a coachman for the bishop’s father. For this reason, the servant felt completely free to drag the high priest down from the pulpit if, upon checking his pocket watch, he determined that the boy’s sermon was lasting too long, and that he would have to reheat the coffee in the sacristy. This impressed me: my uncle paled in significance when compared with his loyal menial. It is true that Uncle Jean’s prestige rose mightily in our family after he was named to the office of diocesan shepherd. Up to then, the issues of the “Steyl Missionary Messenger” and the “City of God” had displayed to one and all my parental household’s piety and modest literary taste. But now such things became of secondary importance. The Titular Bishop of Cestrus overwhelmed the popular Catholic press with his staff and his miter.

I was a non-believer in the sense of Berdiaev’s “non-tragic theology,” which rejects all forms of supplication. It was thus my intention to appear before my uncle as an “enlightened” citizen, as a person in my own right, as a young relative of his from the provinces, presenting myself to him as a fellow human being, as someone who recognized his own servant as a person to whom he was in the habit of bowing down. I knew that you were supposed to kiss a bishop’s ring — Mother really didn’t need to insist that I follow this custom. Yet I also knew that I didn’t care the gratings of a (to me, as yet unfamiliar) green cheese about such medieval malarkey — although I kept this knowledge from Mother. Thus fortified, I entered No. 30 Cathedral Square in Münster with my head full of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and similar weaponry, expecting to press the flesh with my relative: “Hello, Uncle. Here I am, Johanna’s son from Süchteln. How are you? Greetings from Dad and Mom. If you’d like to come visit us, you can say Mass in the hospital across the street, if Jean will let you. After Mass the nuns will give you some coffee in the rector’s office…” But at the door of No. 30 the lady told me, “His Excellency is not in. Come back tomorrow around eleven, that’ll be fine. And who should I say has come calling?”

Punctually at the appointed hour I betook myself to the small palace. A large crowd had gathered at the entrance — but surely not because of me? Or was Uncle Jean, following instructions from my Mother, going to perform a public conversion, with a procession and a Te Deum to follow? Unfazed, I strode through the waiting crowd and the portal into the palace garden. As I entered the vestibule I was intercepted by a young curate, who said that no matter who I was, I had arrived at the wrong time. His Excellency was about to say his first Mass in the Cathedral — would I be so kind as to… And then I heard voices and footsteps and the swishing of vestments. His Excellency the Auxiliary Bishop was descending the broad staircase in full panoply, surrounded by hands busy with adjusting this and that detail in his raiment and ornaments. The garments of Church dignitaries are just as seductive as those of a femme du monde . The unexpected sight of this pageantry caused me, in spite of the safety pins being attached to him as he strode forth in all his dignity, to lose my composure to the extent that I no longer saw in front of me my Uncle Jean but a Prince of the Church. On a sudden impulse, I stepped up to him. No sooner had he reached the bottom step when I cast myself down on my knees before him, grasped his hand and attempted to kiss his fisherman’s ring. The Bishop remained my Uncle. My gesture hadn’t surprised him in the least. He covered the ring with his other hand, drew me out from the circle of his vassals, and said, “That’s what Johanna told you to do. But with me you don’t have to. We’ll do it all differently. Come around tonight at seven. You see that I’m in a hurry. Look, they’re still trying to get me dressed on the stairway.” “ Propinquus meus ,” he said to a foreign-looking monk. It sounded like an apology. And then my theatrical relative disappeared.