Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

The establishment was a furniture emporium, with a selection ranging from potty chairs to bridal beds to caskets — in short, every single item of its kind that might be required by a creature that has descended from the comfort of the treetops to join the civilized world. “So that’s it,” I thought as I entered. My brother-in-law is actually going to have his measurements taken for a mummy-case! You see, I was still preoccupied subconsciously with the image of Zwingli as a terminal patient. But I soon located the fugitive trio in the sleepware department — of course, that’s what we came downtown for. We were looking for a bed, the biggest bed we could find, one that would at once satisfy one’s craving for individual identity, plus the requirements of conjugality. One yard’s width for each of us — to me that seemed about the proper democratic dimension for a life of mutual happiness.

We were soon discussing this subject of size with a salesman who, as I could tell by his tape measure and the accompanying gestures, was proposing that each of us sacrifice several inches of our individual liberty. Since I lacked command of the language, my own doctrine of dimensions got nowhere. No one made eloquent pleas for its validity, least of all Beatrice. Back in the Middle Ages, when kings shared bedsteads with their vassals, I might have deemed such parsimony appropriate. Each partner, the furniture mogul was explaining, should be willing to forgo a full twelve inches of space — this would redound to the benefit of nuptial harmony. Pilar contributed expertise in her rapid, euphonious voice. Zwingli flashed his horned pinky and, to conclude the negotiations, I flashed my money. The entire parley had taken up no more than half an hour. But it was too long a time considering what we ended up with. It was not a bed of the sort I was used to, not one of those on which, in my Lower Rhenish homeland, babies get conceived and born, or upon which I myself, Vigoleis, first saw the light of the world. I have in mind my ancestors’ gargantuan slumber-chests, which permitted their lovemaking, like everything else in their lives, to be a truly earthbound enterprise. What we purchased here was, instead, the equivalent of an army cot, a frame with wire springs and four metal feet that you screwed up to the desired height. I squatted down to indicate the proper distance from the floor, announcing to all and sundry that this contrivance, which more sophisticated personages might designate a “couch,” would be just right for sitting on.

A “couch”? I was strongly reminded of Shakespeare:

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

A couch for luxury and damned incest.

“Incest”? From time immemorial, both civil and ecclesiastical law have sentenced its perpetrators to flogging or to the gallows itself. I could hardly expect anything different, if I should choose to christen this couch with Pilar in the appropriately ceremonious fashion. Would I like to? Did I have any such secret intention? Even before Vigoleis placed the agreed-upon sum in the furniture salesman’s palm, he had already incurred — in his imagination, at any rate — the direst retribution in body and soul. L’acte fût brutal et silencieux , but at least not on a bare floor as in Zola’s Thérèse Raquin .

Pilar blushed; she fingered distractedly at her black lace veil, and freed herself from Beatrice’s arm. Vigoleis, too, was unable to stop the blood from rising revealingly to the roots of his hair. No one noticed as he slowly released his pent-up breath through his nose. Zwingli, who had reverted to Don Helvecio throughout this entire scene, was already out the door, trying to scare up a Little Helper or a jackass to carry the bedframe. Beatrice was the last to leave the store.

Out on the street she said in a language known only by me — which is to say, in language addressed to me and me only—“I don’t like the looks of this.” She loves to utter obscure prophecies of this kind, each time in an irritated tone of voice, implying that we shall allow her premonitions to go unheeded at our own peril. Whenever her predictions come true, everyone, of course, suddenly comprehends what she meant in the first place. Prophets are seldom original. If her auguries don’t turn out, then she too keeps silent — the inscrutability of all sibyls. The immediate state of affairs “didn’t look good to her”—well, small wonder, for I can’t imagine what could ever “look good” as long as our lamebrained friend Vigoleis, that arch-practitioner of Weltschmerz , has his finger in the pie. Or perhaps rather, in the language of a paltry fatalism, if the pie has devoured his finger.

Come to think of it, our adventures had just begun. Or just begun to begin.

Our sprint through the city of Palma continued, at the hottest hour of the day, and, so it appeared, with ever more burning urgency. Our pace accelerated, and I took pity on our coolie. He had jerked our bedframe to his head, which was protected from the springs and wires only by his jaunty beret. He held the dangerously dipping edges of the cot with outstretched arms, avoiding collisions with pedestrians right and left by means of timely yells. With us in the train, he also took on the role of herald, announcer, and strident dispatch-bearer of our headlong hegira. Oddly enough, nobody seemed to take notice of us. After various detours through alleys and courtyards, at times losing sight of our agile delivery man, we eventually arrived at the next store. Somehow this fellow seemed to intuit our destination, for soon we caught up with him at the door of a fabrics shop, where he stood at attention, presenting arms with our metal bedframe. Apparently he had no interest at all in the courtyards of rich people’s abodes. But were they, for that matter, of any interest at all to our family? Without so much as a glance, we hustled our way through this noonday idyll of cats, palm trees, and beggars basking supine on the sidewalks. Those out front gave rapid signals to each other with looks, now and then tossing a quick smile back in my direction, as if to reassure me, then pressing onward in mystifying haste. No slouches they! It was a Saturday, and perhaps that made our shopping tour such a trial of speed.

In this second store we purchased linens and several yards of a kind of ticking, the latter intended as the cover for our woolen mattress. This job, Pilar explained, would be done by a certain upholsterer of her acquaintance, whose shop was located— But presto ! Our human donkey was already moving out, with our textiles piled on top of the bedframe. So back we went, snaking our way through the commercial district of Palma. Following our leaders into the gloom of alleys, doorways, and twilight patios, now and again we lost hold of any sense of reality. It was all as in a dream. Only our cargo-carrier, who at first had struck me as a fugitive from the realm of spirits, regained his earthly solidity. He had placed the package of fabrics fore and aft on top of the frame, thus giving the whole construction the proper swaying balance. His head pushed up almost to shoulder depth in the center. Once we got this mess of wires home, I would have to tighten it all up, commensurate with our bed-weight.

From the upholsterer we elicited a vow to deliver two pillows and a filled-in mattress on the same evening.

Passing through the market square on our return trip, Pilar decided that we should get a few victuals for our supper, in particular some meat. As yet there were no butcher shops in sight, but a certain atmospheric aura clued us in that we weren’t very far. The booths were shielded from the sun with awnings. The entire area stank like a glue factory. As we approached, the shouts of the proprietors and haggling housewives assaulted our ears. As we stepped into this enclave of the meat vendors, Beatrice gave me a high sign. She was green in the face, just about to vomit. Zwingli had a quick word with his inamorata, whose nose, like my own, was apparently able to withstand a few more degrees of odoriferousness. And thus the couples separated.