Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

“Oh come now, Beatrice, that’s nonsense! If everybody who forgets to take a bath is a sexual slave, then I’ll be forced to revise my concept of human freedom. Especially my own freedom, because I don’t always take baths either.”

“This has nothing to do with you. And besides, you have a regenerating skin.”

Like that of a Zulu, I thought, but kept the idea to myself so as not to press my luck.

She was right. The situation we found ourselves in could well be described as frightful, particularly with regard to impending developments and threats of disaster. What is more, the situation was critical in more than one sense of the term. To be specific, the household budget was obviously in a terminal state. A third plunge into my trouser pocket, this time yielding a piece of paper currency, had materialized a midday meal, a feast that, it must be conceded, provided delectable proof that Pilar could be “superb” with the cooking spoon. How enormously talented she must be in bed — this I could easily gauge by the fact that Zwingli, an experienced gourmet compared to whose taste my own would then have best been termed porcine, regarded his paramour’s culinary skills as negligible. Today, incidentally, my standards of cuisine are rather different. My only continual failing in this regard is in the philology of the printed menu. I remain an easy mark for poetic designations of entrees that, once ordered and served, turn out to be nothing more than variations on the theme of the vulgar potato or some other miserable, proletarian vegetable. This happens even in hostelries that should be ashamed of such shameless sham. It’s just one more example of the degradation of elegance in our world.

Here I shall interrupt the course of my memoirs only so long as it will take to report what Beatrice, in Schwyzerdütsch conversation with her kid brother, was able to squeeze out of him. I’d better let Beatrice do the reporting, even though it means shifting into indirect discourse. Her account will by no means stray from our main topic.

Now then, we are already familiar with the “frightful situation”; likewise with the prevailing conditions of unwashedness. But above and beyond these givens:

It was not possible, she told me, to achieve full clarity in the matter of Zwingli’s job at the hotel, though his professional connection there had not been officially terminated. Since he began cohabiting with the “individual,” he would betake himself every once in a while out to the Terreno where the hotel was located, just to see how things were going. Aha, thought Vigoleis upon hearing this. The philosopher Scheler had been right after all, when he responded to the Archbishop of Cologne, who had accused him of unvirtuous conduct, by asking His Eminence if he had ever seen a signpost that had ever gone in the direction it pointed to. There exist certain dictators who can lead entire nations from obscure positions far behind the scenes — why shouldn’t Zwingli, the boss in the brownish-yellow blouse, be able to direct the activities of his minions in their lily-white chemises? At the hotel everything was in good hands — that is, in the best of hands apart from his own. Specifically, things were in the hands of his friend Don Darío and a Baltic secretary. His salary was sent to his apartment with a certain degree of regularity, though at the moment a remittance was late in arriving, and thus he was a bit short and somewhat restricted in his movements; how embarrassing it was for him that we chose to arrive on the first of the month.

As for our living quarters, we could of course take up residence in the Príncipe Alfonso; or if not there, then someplace else. He would prefer, however, that we chose a domicile not quite so far out of town. His strongest preference, in fact, was that we should share his own townhouse quarters, for this would be in keeping with the plans he had already outlined. He had indicated as much in the telegrams he had sent, admittedly in somewhat encoded form, but trusting in Beatrice’s intelligence to decipher the intended message. As to the person he called the “bitch,” the same person whom Beatrice referred to as the “individual”—María del Pilar was a simple girl from a humble background, who was not yet quite what Zwingli intended to make of her, but who was on the way toward becoming the very center of Mallorquine society; only a very few more obstacles remained to be surmounted. She had a certain past — a consequence of her beauty and her liberal attitudes towards living and loving, a state of affairs he was certain we were prepared to ignore. Now it was his intention to obtain access for her to exclusive circles, groups consisting for the most part of the nobility, and surely we could be of assistance in this effort. Music and literature would open doors on this island almost as readily as a master key made of money. He wished to liberate the young lady from the confines of her talent, and educate her up to his own level. This would best succeed if we would consent to move in with him — or rather with her, for she was apparently the one in charge. An increasing familiarity with persons of intellect, good conversation and the like, all this could not help but soften her up for cultural advancement. But we would now have to take an immediate first step toward creating this Pedagogical Province: we must go into town together and buy a bed. We were to note further that the necessary wool mattress, as was the practice here on the island, would have to be custom-made, but that this could no doubt be ready by this very evening…

Vigoleis as the cultural mentor of a beautiful woman, as a prop that was to foster this vine’s voluptuous growth — there have been cases when the tendrils have overgrown their artificial support and strangled it completely.

Beatrice thought that we should stay on, for only in that way could she accomplish something for her brother. Did she intend to minister unto him in true biblical fashion, as Martha and Mary had done with their moribund brother Lazarus, secundum Joannem ? “Lord, by this time he stinketh” was equally applicable to Zwingli, although he seemed to have been dead for longer than four days, and had not been transported by angels to the lap of Abraham. On the contrary, his lap was still very much of this world — more specifically, of this island — most specifically, of this city of palms, Ciudad de las Palmas, a name that refers to the palms of victory planted here by the Roman conquerors of yore.

And it was beneath the city’s palms that we now strode forth to purchase a bed, at the hottest hour of the day, a time when anyone who possibly can do so will take shelter in the shade. The well-to-do circles in particular, known on the island by their Catalan nickname butifarras (blood sausages), are quite invisible in the noonday sun; they have disappeared behind the imposing portals and closed-draped windows of their palaces, the very abodes that were supposed to be opened up for Pilar by the power of Beatrice’s music and my Vigoleisian literature. But wasn’t Pilar’s beauty alone sufficient to cause this to happen? If I were a king and lord of a castle, with a simple gesture I would have the drawbridge resoundingly lowered just as soon as my tower watchman, with a blast on his horn, announced the approach of such a specimen of pulchritude. And since, according to Schopenhauer’s persuasive dictum, intellect is the enemy of beauty, María del Pilar would not even have to be smart in order to subjugate the petty grandees of the extinguished monarchy of Mallorca. If it is true what the chroniclers say about Catherine the Great’s thighs (and what earthly reason might they have for telling fibs about such a tangible part of the body?), that she had but to spread them, and whole dynasties would perish — if this is true, then Pilar certainly could at least put her thighs to use forging the little golden key that would defy the craft of the most expert locksmiths. Why employ Beatrice as a cudgel, or Vigoleis as a battering ram? Why Vigoleis, who as yet has no heroic exploits attached to his name, unlike his eponym Wigalois , the “Knight of the Wheel” in the courtly epic by Wirnt von Gravenberg? I was not yet aware that Pilar kept a dagger sweetly concealed against one of the extremities in question. Nor did I realize at the time that she had been a registered member of the professional organization that ever since Don Quixote has been referred to as the “fair guild,” a sodality that maintains headquarters in every city in the world including, of course, Palma — here, as in so many places, in the twilight shadow of the Cathedral. Sin prefers to ply its parasitic trade at the very place against which the Gates of Hell shall not prevail. That is how sin secures for itself an earthly existence unto all eternity.