Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

I could take it easy for a few minutes. The papal maxim “Rather a scandal than a lie” is convincing, but only if you’re a pope. I couldn’t afford a scandal; I had to lie for my 25 pesetas, and this day had to end sometime. “I am better than my blather,” we read in a story by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, in a context about cowardice. But Vigoleis is definitely a coward.

The continuation of our trip, taking us through the city and up into the mountains to Valldemosa, proceeds very slowly. Each column of cars has to wait until the dust settles from the column ahead.

Before leaving the city we visited the San Francisco Monastery, where the mystic Raimundus Lullius is said to be buried and probably even is. To this man’s spirit I devoted a few words that were genuine in every sense, but which did not fall on such fertile ground as had my fantasizings at the Trade Center and the Cathedral. General von Puttwitz — or was it von Puttkammer? — arrived and rescued me from the fetters of truth. We shook hands like old friends; there was no need for lengthy introductions. Each of us conversed with the other using subtle hints and allusions, and it worked to perfection. Germans are always more at home in miasmic fog than they are on the sunny byways of the diaspora. That’s why their attempts to conquer Lebensraum have been such washouts.

We left the city. How long would I be able to doze on the way to Valldemosa? An hour? Not one second! Turning around toward the back seat, my neck craned at a painful angle, I had to submit to a barrage of questions. My own personal data were now more interesting to the tourists than the Mallorcan landscape with palms, oranges, olives. A troop of black piglets gamboled across the red soil, but only Trude showed any interest; the others harkened to the words coming from my bone-dry mouth. Before the car started climbing the foothills, my passengers knew that their Führer was born in Spain, but that he had grown up in the care of a blind aunt in Germany, in a little town on the Lower Rhine known for the erstwhile good works of a Christian saint and for its annual yield of carrots. My father, Consul in Málaga, had been killed in the famous train wreck. My mother, now remarried, lived in Burgos.

“Destiny,” said the man in the back seat. Mom fully agreed with him, because Fritz had a friend whose father was a consul in Turkey and had also died there.

“Destiny,” I said, and turned around to grab a snooze. But once again I had to open up my personal file. This time it was about one of the other Guides, a lady who looked like a gypsy. Did I know her? I did indeed. She was the daughter of an attaché at the Peruvian Embassy in Madrid, had been living for years on the island with her Swiss mother, and was bored stiff. She was acting as a tour guide just to pass the time. Her brother, an airy chap in every way, was the famous balloonist who just recently had risen in a paper-clad montgolfière and set a record for Alpine hovering. Did news of that reach Germany? Daddy vaguely remembered reading about it in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. I was glad to hear that he had.

Our chauffeur was superb. He took the curves with typically Spanish death-defying velocity, but also with typically Spanish driving skill. If I owned a car, I would let it be driven only by a Spaniard or a Portuguese. The chances of breaking our necks with this expert at the wheel were small indeed, which meant that I would have to bear with the other passengers for the remainder of the trip.

We were approaching one of the farmsteads called fincas , and right away the questions started. What kind of a country estate was that? This by no means simple question came from Trude, the one who had spied the black piglets. But her mother promptly reprimanded her: did she expect our Führer to know every detail about everything? Then, turning to me, Mom explained that Trudi was on her first trip away from Germany. In my opinion, Trudi’s question wasn’t in the least annoying, and I came near to begging their pardon for knowing all about this particular finca . Then I started in. I spun my tale slowly, so as to make it last until we reached Valldemosa. Two hostile brothers, romance in dark forests, a dastardly deed under a mulberry tree, a Corsican-style vendetta—“Really? That sort of stuff still going on in the Balearics?”—“Only on Mallorca. Did you see that big cedar tree? It was planted when the families were reconciled. The writer Mario Verdaguer has written a novel about it, that’s how I know.”

Valldemosa! Everybody out!

The high spots in Valldemosa are the Carthusian Monastery and the cells where Chopin and George Sand lived in the famous winter of 1838-39. I would be giving myself a guided tour of the place.

Pedro had told us a few things about the property his family had to auction off, and so I was acquainted with the town and the monastery without ever having set foot there before. The rousing story of the Verdugian matriarch now came in very handy — my listeners shuddered. How can a mother possibly…? The castle turret where Pedro had done his painting provided me with an occasion to tell about a friend of mine who had climbed onto the King of Spain’s family tree, and how as a child he had played football in the monastery garden with Moorish skulls, until Don Juan put an end to this un-Christian behavior, appropriating the skulls for his bizarre collection, meticulously labeled Ibn Mohammed Bar.

I let my charges stretch their legs, take a few inane pictures, and eat oranges. Then I hauled them into the Cartuja in the prescribed sequence: church, sacristy, colonnade, and cells. There wasn’t much to explain in the church. Some saint or other stands on a pedestal holding one eye in her hand — anybody could interpret that one blindfolded. Architecture: I estimate early 18th century, an ugly commission of the local bishop’s treasury, one that no doubt pleases God more than it does modern man with his vast sophistication in matters of art history. I will have to admit, however, that some buildings are beautiful just because they are standing in Spain, just as some rubbish takes on value when it doesn’t deny its age.

My group squeezed into the sacristy. I had fallen behind by entering a technical discussion about raising tomatoes on Mallorca, finding to my surprise that I knew anything at all on the subject. “Oh yes, of course, the sacristía , let’s go give it a look.” I was the last to enter. That was a mistake, for now I could only pray that I wouldn’t get any premature inquiries.

I saw glass cases containing vestments, chalices, monstrances and the like, old missals, things I was familiar with from my one-mass tenure as an altar boy. Oh how far away, how far away … and I commenced: “Over here, please, ladies and gentlemen…” But apparently no one was interested in what their Führer wanted to show them. They had discovered something on their own — the echt German spirit in the outside world, showing its indomitable, pioneering vitality even on a vacation trip — Herr Führer , could you please tell us what this is?”

The sacristy lay in semi-darkness. I couldn’t quite make out what it was they were asking me to identify. And I didn’t dare to part the crowd and walk over to that pointing finger, aimed at some object behind glass. The frame was thick and black. The object, about one span wide, was also black. Everything was black, black as the ace of spades. What can that possibly be?

I had no idea of all things it might be. But what it had to be — that I knew in an instant. The idea came to my mind as swiftly as lightning, by way of one of those baffling thought reflexes that keep psychiatrists from starving. Something pitch black, I thought — and suddenly I had it. I could begin my speech.