Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

No hay mal que por bien no venga , goes a Spanish proverb: “misfortune can have its good points, too”. Beatrice wasn’t feeling well — nothing serious, but she decided to stay in bed.

Her bed rest saved our lives, or at least one of our lives.

The whore arrived at noontime. I immediately fainted, and was still shaking as she shouted to be let in. With the clear conscience enjoyed by all atheists, I rapidly set my affairs in order with the Powers Above. Just let her approach, dagger in hand! I could have wished a nobler form of widowhood for Beatrice, but such things lie beyond the control of man.

“Do you want us to go back with you? Is your Helvecio dying again?”

She had arrived, she declaimed, to settle matters, but now with both of us. No more fooling around. Where was Beatrice? These words spewed forth from her pretty little mouth, from beneath her quivering little nose. She had forgotten to powder it, which she suddenly realized when I focused my eyes sharply on it. Women don’t like that.

My cosmetic ambush gave me an advantage.

If she came to settle matters, I said, then she would have to betake herself into the back room to Beatrice’s bed. Beatrice was sick.

Fearing the worst, Beatrice had been listening at the door and now dove back under the covers as we entered the bedroom. I let the vengeful woman go ahead of me. Our apartment was like a cave animal’s burrow, with the nest at the end of a set of tunnels: you couldn’t go astray. But this wasn’t just a casual hunting expedition.

My own back was secure from the dagger’s thrust — but what about Beatrice’s breast?

The woman stopped at the bedside and hurled her customary hate-filled glance at Beatrice — or was it a lethal glance? Hardly lethal, since she possessed other means for killing. Before we knew it, Pilar reached under her skirt and pulled out this dagger that by now is probably so familiar that it has lost its effect — stylistically, I mean. As a weapon it was still dangerous.

Beatrice remained motionless, lying in wait. Perhaps she had secreted some weapon of her own under the bedspread, ready to brandish it at the proper moment. Or perhaps she knew from reading detective stories that it’s difficult to stab somebody through bedclothes and pillows. Nonetheless, I grabbed a kitchen chair to smash the whore’s skull with. This chair, however, was badly carpentered; as I lifted it, a splinter went straight under the nail on my middle finger. I yelled “Ouch!” and dropped the whole chair. At the very same instant Pilar shouted at us that Helvecio was gone and she had come here to…

“… to murder us, too,” Beatrice interjected coldly, as she rose up incautiously on the bed. “We know the whole story. The police have been here. They’re looking for you. Who else but you can have killed my brother, sale femme !”

Who would have expected this of Beatrice? Instead of water, this time she was hurling an accusation! Pilar turned rigid; the dagger fell from her hand. She called out the names of her loyal Saints, then groaned “ Ay Jesús !” and threw herself down on the bed. She started weeping so violently that it almost broke both of our hearts. The murderous crisis was over; the arrow had flown back to hit the archer.

We let the poor wretch wail herself out. I offered to brew us some coffee. Beatrice asked for a cigarette.

I gave Pilar a briefing: we knew that Helvecio was missing. According to rumors, he had been done in by a jealous concubine. The police were notified. When Beatrice heard the news, she lost consciousness. Bad heart attack. There she lies.

Pilar threw herself down on the floor and beseeched me with choking voice not to believe that she ever laid a hand on Helvecio. Helvecio, the only man she ever loved! The scene was frightful in its phony melodrama. The woman literally coiled up on our floor. I thought it best to go into the kitchen and heat up the stove. Beatrice got up, and I noticed that she pulled a dust pan from under the covers — she probably meant to use it either as a shield against the dagger or to smash the fury’s nose in. Now she calmly replaced it on its hook, but not before sweeping up demonstratively a few bits of dust. María del Pilar took no notice of this; she was busy with her own misery. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph came to her aid, and she was soon over the worst.

Had the police been there, she asked? Yes, but not on her account; they came in connection with the murder a few doors down the street. But where was Helvecio? She had just visited the steamship office and asked to see the passenger list. He wasn’t on it, not even under the name Zwingli. What could she do? Would we help her relocate her man? All these questions were interrupted by sudden bursts of tears, moans, imprecations, vague gesticulations. She powdered her nose, applied rouge, made hesitant suggestions. I advised her to flee before the authorities started a serious search for the missing Swiss citizen. Go in hiding? But where? In Barcelona, of course, where no one would find her, but where she might find her Helvecio. She liked this idea. She would dissolve her household immediately, sell everything, throw it away for cash to the highest bidder. Would we…? Why not? We would like to get our few pieces of furniture back — our wardrobe, especially our table, and our bed linen — you remember, don’t you, little Pilar, back then—? Renewed sobbing, “ Ays!” —invocations of the divine intercessors. What was I thinking, now, at this moment of her great sorrow, her desperate situation, her unbearable solitude — to have the nerve to bring up long-forgotten stories! Pah! She was right. It was cruel of me to come at her with the apple of discord. Things would go better if I paid mind to the old saw about building golden bridges behind the fleeing enemy. This harlot has fire in her eyes, Vigo. You won’t be safe from her until the Mediterranean Sea lies between you.

“Fine, Pilar. We’ll buy a few of our… er, pardon, a few things from you. If you have, let’s say, a wardrobe and a serviceable table, one that I could do my writing on, and some bed linen — how would that be?”

We agreed on a price between friends, plus a small amount in consideration of her emergency situation, inclusive of moving costs.

Our leave-taking was memorable. The two women embraced and kissed each other on the cheeks, their eyes partly tear-filled, partly glazed over. It wouldn’t have surprised me if one of them fell over dead with a knitting needle in the aorta. Vigoleis stood by and wondered whether “that woman” was going to throw herself around his neck, too. But this horny pontifex had no need to build such a golden bridge as this one; he gave her one final handclasp and a glance that takes us back to Book One and the Street of Solitude, when the insatiable doxy tried to lure the stranger to her poisonous bed.

Before my eyes could focus again properly, she was out the door.

“Oh ye olde whorish glory, whither hast thou gone?” I whistled. Then the doorbell rang. I opened up. Porra ! Pilar!

María del Pilar was smiling. My resistance crumbled. Now or never — but not here! On your pilarière , Pilar, just around the corner, I’m coming… Then she asked me for her knife. She had forgotten it in all the excitement.

Beatrice fetched it from the rubbish can.

Cleaned out of house and home, Pilar left the island. Our furniture deal went through before she departed; the Swabian book man lent us the money. Zwingli’s archive had disappeared. We never found out who the bitch might have sold it to.

We received a postcard from Zwingli in Switzerland. This time he was not on his deathbed but on clean sheets in Scheidegger’s homeopathic clinic in Basel. Old Grandpa’s drops and his millionaire godmother’s francs would, he wrote, soon have him back fit as a fiddle.