Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

“Very pleased”? Why am I trying to conceal my true feelings by the use of a phrase that gets tossed off thoughtlessly every day on streets and thresholds all over the world? “Pleased”? Yes, I was pleased, but it’s better not to inquire how utterly overwhelmed I was. To be truthful about it, I was so shocked that I fell against the wall. I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Standing before me there in the dim light of our apartment entrada was that same young man from the ship, my substitute Helman sans albatross, and now sans Saratoga bag but still dressed in the fur coat that thousands of moths were just waiting to gobble up. The seconds that followed were like a confused dream. This stranger was appearing before me as part Helman, part Saratoga youth, and it is certain that he gave me a winning smile, for that was his customary way. I just stood there with mouth agape. Heaven, in its infinite wisdom, can arrange everything so that even inside a pauper’s cottage, when an event takes place that exceeds in shock value all that is imaginable, it will still provide a door that can be opened. And thus our visitor stepped into one of the seven empty apartment rooms adjoining our entrada .

As on the day we moved in, we had distributed boxes and suitcases around the rooms where “we’re expecting the paperhangers tomorrow.” A Spanish family, for whom the piso was originally built, would have achieved the same effect with children. But since we had no children to offer, we at least gave each of the rooms a nice name. Names can imply value judgments. Any mystic knows this, while philosophy hasn’t quite sensed it. I knew a man in Amarante by the name of Homem Cristo, “man-Christ” or “Christ-man.” He owned a tavern, and he himself was his best customer. Things were always busy there. Whores and pimps held their rendezvous within its walls, and it was moving to hear people call out the name of the proprietor. There is a millionaire who lives in Lisbon and whose bank bears his name: Banco Espírito Santo e Commercial. The man’s name is Espírito Santo, Holy Spirit, and in free translation the name of the bank is Holy Spirit and Commerce Bank, a title that does full justice to the spirit of such establishments: Bank of the Holy Spirit of Commerce. I like very much to maintain contact with higher powers in this way. By giving our rooms suggestive names I rid them of their yawning emptiness. I turned suitcases and book crates into godparents. One room was christened after the luggage company Mädler, another was called “Bible Paper” after our multi-volume edition of German philosophy. We had a “Sala de Africa,” named for a the popular soft drink, and a “Cabin Room” that we nicknamed “ck-dt” because it contained one of our overseas trunks labeled “ck-dt.” For our bedroom, which for reasons mentioned above we heretofore had simply called our dormitorio , we invented the name “The Newsroom.”

Feigning self-control, I led the stranger into the space that we simply called The Room, since it contained the only piece of furniture that could have made it into a true bel-étage : an authentic Mallorquin chair, the product of a local craftsman, painted red and blue on a simulated gold ground, on loan from one of our palaces, but later the legal property of Vigoleis. I beckoned the young man to have a seat, and asked him what had brought him to us.

Well, he said, he was coming directly from the German Bookshop on the Borne. My name had been mentioned there as a teacher of German. He was intending to stay on the island for a half-year or longer because of his lungs, which could benefit from the Mediterranean climate. Then he would move on to Heidelberg to continue his study of philosophy. He had a degree from Princeton and a certain familiarity with the works of Kant, but was having difficulty reading him in the original. And so the gentlemen at the Librería — if I might have the time and interest — philosophy being my field…

Yes, I had the time, I was interested, and philosophy was, cum grano salis , indeed my field. We agreed on a wage and a schedule. He would come three times a week for an hour each. We could start the very next day — preferably in the evening because of the heat. Hutchinson thanked me for this consideration, which he interpreted as being offered because of his lung condition, which was in such contrast with his fur coat. In Spain, even if you don’t have TB you prefer to conduct all your business in the natural shade; it’s only a bullfight that is in need of direct sunlight above the zenith. Our newcomer of course didn’t realize this. What he took for a gesture of solicitude and concern for his damaged pulmonary passages was merely an appeal to local custom and my own personal comfort.

Now German is a language I think I know a little about, although for years now our private language has been Portuguese, and Portuguese is the language I think and curse in. German is and will remain my mother tongue. Besides, I have had a very active intellectual relationship with it. I can read Goethe without scholarly annotations, Stefan George without getting a stiff neck, and Kant without recourse to a medical or liturgical miserere . On the other hand, I am no good at offering anybody linguistic instruction. To do that, you have to have a completely different attitude toward language, and under no circumstances the meditative approach that is my own. Still, what this eager student of philosophy wanted was so-called “conversation,” which was fine with me since it is just what, from the very beginning, so many people have found me good at. For the most part I just blabber away as if my conversational partner were either myself or Don Matías or, to name a very special case, my mystical friend Pascoaes. Chats with him reach for the stars… but now I was being offered cold cash for this virtue of mine. And why not? I was, after all, a Führer . Moreover, this conversation business struck me as having a less than rigorous aspect. It was not bound up with any pedagogical method, much less with any school furniture. Free association inside a free space — that was something I could venture upon using the only chair we owned. “Then we’ll see each other again tomorrow, right? Fine, at six. Goodbye.”

Following this visit Beatrice and I had a conversation that was strategic in nature. Its focus was our sole existing chair. At the dialectical periphery stood a second chair that we would have to purchase, and somewhere else, in realms beyond the breathable atmosphere, there hovered a table — would it ever descend to us? It dissolved in mist when I explained that my pedagogical talent was so untrustworthy that I deemed it advisable to wait before making any more purchases — perhaps a month. If my pupil was then still willing to risk his lung and my tongue on the island, we could go ahead.

And how, pray tell, did I intend to teach a pupil with only one chair? Just how did I imagine doing such a thing?

At such moments of hesitancy and cowardice I am in the habit of playing certain pious trump cards, although they seldom faze this prodigal daughter of a theologian, while to me, the heretical nephew of a bishop, they come automatically: “We are in the hands of God, chérie . What harm can mere mortals do to us?”

We shall soon see what mere mortals can do to us if we neglect to take preventive action. Let us now re-enter the room where the pupil is waiting for his teacher, so that our plot can continue.

During our first lessons we engaged in little skirmishes of politeness. The youth, from a good family and thus possessed of fine manners, refused to take a seat while his teacher stood. But the latter coerced him, with a smiling word or a philosophical maxim, into utilizing the single sitting surface in the apartment, which was crafted at the precise anatomical height that has been standard in all of human history. He sat, but in a pose as if ready to leap up again at any moment. I noticed this.