Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

But this student just wouldn’t let go. He pestered me no end with his insistent prodding, and when several more tourists rejoined my group and started listening intently, I had no choice but to start talking in earnest. I abandoned all rationality, donned the mantle of smugness, and found the solution in a flash: mystical inclination. The columns inclined that way as an expression of a mystical tendency. This kind of statement must, of course, be delivered with loudly echoing chest tones. Then it does have its effect. “ Inclinatio mystica , sir! Surely you are familiar with the concept. We have before us here the sole example of medieval mysticism translated directly into architectural space.”

The young academician motions to the intent crowd that he is, in fact, familiar with the tendency in question. Ten minutes more of reverberating rhetoric, and I have explained how the medieval technicians were able to raise the columns without causing the collapse of the whole edifice. One of the tourists, probably an architect, pointed out that the damned columns were not only inclined inward, but that they were positioned asymmetrically to the central line of the nave. Vigoleis, once again into the breach! Hod carriers! Vigoleis mobilized thousands of hod carriers to fill the entire nave with sand, thus preventing the columns from falling. To me it seemed like a perfectly cogent explanation. But now there were audible skeptics. Even some of the uncultured faces started grinning. One gentleman pulled out a pocket slide rule and said, “Now wait, my good man, how much sand? I’ll have that figured out in a second.” My knees turned to rubber. Slide rules aren’t reliable beyond the decimal point, and even in front of it they leave much room for the imagination. But I was about to be exposed, and all I was doing was making up stories for 25 pesetas. Never let a question go unanswered! Der Führer knows everything!

“Well now, my good friend, it figures after all. Congratulations! When the Suez Canal was built…”

All ears were on the Suez expert. I took a deep breath. I was liberated. The crooked columns collapsed, the Cathedral of Palma sank into nothingness, and nobody noticed at all. For meanwhile, an argument had started among the gentlemen over whether Ferdinand “von” Lesseps, the architect of my savior the Canal, wasn’t himself a German, and whether an envious world wasn’t trying to rob Germany of his accomplishments, too. It was, somebody piped up, the same as with Johannes Gensfleisch, known to posterity as Gutenberg. Those goddam Dutchmen were always claiming that their man Coster…

God was with me, and against my German clients. Who’s to say that He doesn’t abide in the houses named after Him?

We continued our tour. I pointed to the rose window and explained that German stained-glass artists had had their hand in the brilliant result — a remark that didn’t fail to win approval. After that I again lapsed into fiction. Things got especially hairy when we came to the marble sarcophagi, whose separate contents I mixed up hopelessly. Not one carcass stayed in its proper holy place, and none got correctly ascribed to the person it had been in real life. No one noticed, for somebody in the group mentioned that German carcasses were much better anyway. Comments like this diverted attention.

Things proceeded in this fashion, beyond our allotted time. I made springs gush forth where there were no springs, I pulled stars down from the sky, entombed living persons, all for 25 pesetas. But happily, people who travel First Class are so very cultured that they’ll swallow anything.

Up comes a gentleman, introduces himself, we shake hands, he offers me his cigar case, genuine German Brasil, or would I prefer a throat lozenge? He compliments me on my absolutely superb explanations. Donnerwetter , he says, that’s the best thing he’s had on the whole trip. Surely I was aware of the ignorance that you meet up with nowadays in the field of tour guidance! Unbelievable! Then he takes me by the arm and gets confidential. I think to myself, now he wants to know the way to the nearest house of bawds — I’ll be happy to send him to the Clock Tower with my compliments. “But do you realize, Herr Führer , what kind of people you have as clients? I mean, have you noticed just who is here among us?”

I confessed that I hadn’t noticed. I wasn’t about to tell him that I regarded the whole lot of them as idiots — I wouldn’t mention that until tonight at the pier, when we would be saying adios . All we were told was that this shipment contained nothing but academicians and high-class types, but that you could spot that right away by the way they disembarked. After all, the disciples at Emmaus also had an idea who was standing among them. The gentleman puts his mouth to my ear and hisses forth his secret: “Von Puttwitz!”

“Von…?”

“Exactly! The general! I’m afraid he’s in another group, but I’ll get him over here. I want him to meet you. You know, he’s the one with the…”

“Oh, that one? With the two…?”

“Two? What do you mean, there were three!”

“Oh, of course, if you look at it that way.”

“Nowadays that’s how you have to look at it. Otherwise the German nation is lost. We have very hard times ahead of us. But Puttwitz…”

I knew less about any General von Puttwitz than I did about the builder of Palma Cathedral or the corpses that repose in its vaults. I had noticed a middle-aged man with dueling scars and a Vandyke, accompanied by two women. That one could very well be a general, and that is why I was about to ask whether it wasn’t the one with the two ladies that this guy was talking about. But in General von Puttwitz’ life the number three was apparently the magic digit. Maybe he had been divorced three times. Or jailed — for political reasons, of course. Or maybe he had made three attempts on the Führer’s life, or on Poincaré’s. At any rate, this conversational misunderstanding brought the two of us only closer together.

“By heavens,” I said, “Ill have to report this to my friend Martersteig this very night!”

“Martersteig?”

“No less! Baron, or General von Martersteig. He holds claim to both titles.”

“You don’t say! Wait a minute: Battle of the Marne…”

“Sorry, von Richthofen Fighter Squadron.”

“Oh, of course! That’s where he was. Great flyer. He’s living here? Recuperation?”

A small group of tourists had come close by, so I put a finger to my mouth and whispered into the gentleman’s ear, “Secret mission!”

“Aha! I understand. And you?” He winked at me. I winked back, and pointed meaningfully at my official Guide number. Our confidential bond was established — not, to be sure, at a table of regulars in some rustic German inn, but in patriotic surroundings at one of the frontier outposts in an anti-German world. My fellow conspirator bowed slightly; he would report to the General and bring him over to my group with a few other colleagues. “And then we’ll drink to our Führer !”

I bowed. “Oh sir, you are too kind!”

But this was yet another misunderstanding. For the Führer he was talking about was not Vigoleis, but that other Führer , the non-quixotic one. It was Adolf Hitler.

My skull fumed, my stomach churned, my mouth filled with a bilious liquid. And this was only the beginning of the tour.

I drummed my people together, gave each one of them a kindly word, and received thanks and peppermint candies in return. Not one of them gave me 25 pesetas. If any had, I would have sped homeward right then and there.

Mom, Daddy, Trude, Lore, and Fritz had taken their seats in the car. They smiled at me; now I was one of the family and was offered chocolate and cigars. “Thanks, but I don’t smoke.”