Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

In our case, it began with a boycott. We suddenly noticed that our income was diminishing. The elegant people in the palaces started backing off. Had their daughters already learned enough? No, Pedro told us, but all over Palma we were rumored to be Communists. In stores we refused to buy German products, and for that we would have to pay. Communism always had to pay; the world was far from being able to afford such a luxury. Doors were getting closed at our approach. We were getting avoided like Don Juan Sureda’s pack of dogs at sundown. Vigoleis, the Catholic German, and Doña Beatriz, that snobbish product of incest between Basel and Lake Titicaca, were finally unmasked: Communists! How cleverly these types worm their way into big capitalist houses and princely palaces! How well they know how to balance on three-legged chairs, with the intent of undermining society! Was society not yet hollow enough for them? And just consider the final blow they are aiming at — Christian Science, of all things! Can such goings-on be allowed to continue? That’s what everybody was wondering, and with good reason.

Mamú was approached with the Christian admonition to bar us from crossing her threshold. The spokesperson was Madame van Beverwijn, and behold, she now had on her side her old seneschal, the miserable renal case who was impervious to any kind of prayer, and of course all the biddies. No “heretics” must ever enter a house where the Mother Church of Christian Science installed a Bible and a squeaky little organ! Every day they are committing sins against the Führer and capitalism — out with them!

Mamú, who liked to take charge, and who herself represented capital, even though the Royal Baking Gang was challenging her for it — Mamú was not intimidated. She wasn’t afraid of us, and she wasn’t afraid of the biddies, unless in their anger they decided to pray the stones back into her kidneys. In this regard Mamú was not so firmly convinced of the Christian motives of her clucking flock. She remained loyal to us even when we pleaded with her: “Let us depart in peace! Your house has become a place of worship, and we do not wish to make it into a scene of discord. Besides, your internal secretions are in danger. Those ladies are capable of anything.”

“Upon my life, you stay!”

A German lady, wearing the swastika at her bosom and claiming to be the wife of the Swedish consul, was the first to leave the bible-study group on our account. Then some others strayed off; half a dozen of them. Then a dozen decided to go pray somewhere else. They were replaced by new recruits, including some who had fled Germany and had terrible things to report about the Führer : he didn’t like Christian Science, and was persecuting them just like the Catholic Church, the PEN Club, the lodges, and the Rotarians! This came as a shock to Church Matron van Beverwijn. God was putting her to a severe test. While the pious old hags sang hymns in Mamú’s salon and quarreled over the question whether the Führer was sent by God or perhaps by the Devil, the old gentleman with the ragged white beard and a Royal Dutch signet in his buttonhole sat beneath a palm tree in the park, day-dreaming of the headhunters back on Borneo. He praised the Führer , but he was honest and, oddly, smart enough to admit that this was all in the interest of vegetables and the Royal Dutch Bank.

Destiny is an octopus. It has many arms, and they are equipped for grasping. There was no need for the Führer to lift his own arm in order to shake the foundations of the Mother Church.

First there arrived an anonymous letter: Mamú’s private church was stirring up unrest among the inhabitants of El Terreno. She must close her temple and desist from her blasphemous activities. Catholic Spain could not tolerate heathens. Signed: a Catholic Spaniard who reveres the Fatherland and the Church.

This threatening letter was tendered shortly before the divine service. Mamú, who was already seated in her matriarchal chair in the midst of her devout adepts, asked me to translate the text into English, the language used by the congregation. I did this slowly and with diabolical glee, and surely not without mistakes. The Scientific quails immediately started fluttering about like a row of hens—“Heathens? Us?!” A decrepit English spinster swooned and had to be carried to the kitchen, where the cook sprayed water on her. Most of the ladies simply wept at the bitterness of it all. “Us, heathens?” Yes, I said, paganos means heathens, no doubt about it. That’s the “gentiles” of the Bible, the ones who were a thorn in Saint Paul’s side.

Mevrouw van Beverwijn leaped up from her chair. As white as the biblical wall, she pointed directly at me and said: there he is, the low-down slanderer, the writer of that anonymous letter, Mamú’s friend! She tore the letter from my hand — a grand gesture in this place of worship. I was trembling over my whole body, but before the pious hyenas that were still conscious could pounce on me and skin me alive, in my usual cowardly way I had already fled the scene — one more bit of evidence that I was the source of the evil calumnies.

Mamú groaned, and she, too, had to be ministered to. Auma and Beatrice assumed this duty. Everyone thought that Mamú was about to die, and she wouldn’t have a beautiful death after all, giving up the ghost here, amidst swooning old ladies. Was this a sign from God? Wasn’t it obvious that we were Communists? Out with them! Nevertheless, our Sunday roast tasted quite good.

No sooner had the flock reassembled on the following Sunday for devotional services, when a new calamity befell the bigoted band. Calpurnia, one of the housemaids, came running to the palm tree where we were chatting with old man Beverwijn. The local pastor had arrived and wished to speak with the mistress of the house. He couldn’t be turned away. As soon as the maid made this announcement, the cassock-clad gentleman himself made his appearance. I introduced myself as a friend of the household and inquired as to the purpose of his visit. He had come to warn Mamú, and to request that she remove the church advertisement from her front door. Our pagan activities were causing ill-feeling all over the Terreno. The Spaniards, he said, had rather different ideas concerning the House of God. “I do, too,” I replied, and asked the man of the cloth to follow me into the house. Like a wolf entering a herd of sheep, this certified man of God stepped among the heathens precisely at the moment when they began intoning a hymn of praise. One lady from Geneva, who possessed more Swiss francs than musical talent but whose son was a famous constitutional lawyer, was seated at the harmonium pumping away. Devoutly out of tune, the air entered the pipes amid jarring staccatos, for every now and then the lady gave herself a shot of morphine through her dress into one of her pumping legs — she had not yet been prayed free of her addiction — whereupon God’s praises resounded anew in all registers. The saints sang away with a conviction exceeding that of the Bremen Town Musicians. Then it was quiet again: they caught sight of the man in black, plus the black-hearted Vigoleis.

The pastor delivered his message in French, tactfully and sympathetically. He was, he explained, a tolerant man, while other clergymen were less so, and the Church authorities least tolerant of all. The tablet at the front door would have to be removed, and the meetings would have to cease. He was aware of the heathen nature of Scientism, and he was willing to commend them all to the Lord’s mercy. Praise be to Jesus Christ, he added. With my response, “To all eternity, Amen,” the noontime phantasmagoria was at an end.

Nobody fell over dead, no one had to be resuscitated with a spray of water. And yet this was a fierce blow! God had once again sent a sign that worked out in Vigoleis’ favor. Mevrouw van Beverwijn extended her hand to me and begged my pardon. She was willing to take back her accusations, and she was going to pray for me. She said this in Dutch, whereas English was the customary language for discussing God and His Science. I was happy to reply in the same tongue. “Mevrouw,” I said, “please don’t bother. My mother has been praying for me all her life, and it’s never any use. I suggest that you pray for yourself instead. Ask your Creator to let you live long enough to see your friend Hitler start up his war, inundate your Dutch fatherland, and slaughter everyone who refuses to collaborate with the mighty Behemoth. When this happens, think of that poor fool Vigoleis on Mallorca, and think of this moment in Mamú’s house. And if you still have enough strength and enough money in your bank account to go on believing in God, then say your prayers for the Kingdom of the Netherlands!”