Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Having no less interest in Pilar’s flesh than in the flesh offered for sale here in these shops, I gave the girl my arm. The pushing and shoving of the assembled crowds took care of the rest. We squeezed our way from booth to booth, holding each other tightly. Strictly speaking, I ought to have been overcome by tingles of ecstasy, if you realize that I held my right arm in such a position as to allow her left breast to press against the back of my hand, the pressure increasing with the size of the multitudes gathered at the cheaper butcher stalls. I ought, in other words, to have reaped sensual profit from the low-grade viands being hawked at these crowded shops; like the mob surrounding us, I should have been feeling certain inner surges and swellings. Yet oddly enough, my blood pressure remained normal; there was no danger that the channels and spillways of erotic energy might burst. I ought to have been on Cloud Nine; instead, we found ourselves amid billowing clouds of flies. As for the olfactory ambience, I shall refrain from describing it, fearful that I might forfeit readership among those who, habitually and as a matter of principle, suppress all natural fragrances of the human body with the aid of sprays and ointments. And anyway, Vigoleis, you carnivorous old cockroach, beware! The stink of decomposing meat signals without fail the defeat of fleshly pursuits!

We remained arm in arm, a relatively innocuous form of human contact. Finally Pilar spotted the hirsute meatman she had apparently been looking for, and I was glad when she let go of me. Cupid and raw chops are simply not compatible, especially if the noonday sun threatens to scorch the meal.

Despite the advanced hour of day, this shop was still filled with meat products of all kinds. Large pieces of carcass hung from iron hooks, and smaller items lay out on boards. Large or small, nothing in this display gave the appearance of being flesh of its own flesh. The single clue to its identity was the blood-drenched human character standing behind the counter, wielding hatchet, saw, mallet, and long knives. Everything was blanketed by a thick layer of flies; those that weren’t busy sitting and sucking were buzzing about, waiting for the change of shift, which was set in motion every time the butcher let his hatchet drop to slice off a new chunk for a customer. Then the protective blanket vaporized, and for the length of a lightning stroke, the customer was able to see a greasy cut of beef, pork, lamb, or fowl. Then the shimmering curtain descended once again. Any particular fly that wasn’t on the qui vive would have to circle the landing area until signaled by a renewed blow of the hatchet; an emergency landing strip presented itself every now and then in the form of the slaughterer’s blood-spattered arm. My fertile mind suddenly conceived the idea of butchers with bovine tails for swatting flies. Why hadn’t the Good Lord completed His job when he created Spain?

Pilar blew expertly on a cluster of flies, bringing to light just the cut that she knew would do the trick for our Sunday fricco . In addition, she purchased a variety of giblets, tripe, liver, ovaries, hens’ feet, cockscombs, turkey wattles, and the like, all of which smelled no sweeter than the more respectable items. I paid a modest sum for the lot, and then it was Pilar’s turn to take my arm and press it softly. Did she mean this as a gesture of gratitude, simply for my having provided the few necessary pesetas? Had I been able to speak her language, I would have refused her thanks — Oh please, it’s hardly worth mentioning, happy to be of service, and can’t we now take leave of this rotten, fly-ridden inferno?

Instead, I contented myself with a tender bit of counter-pressure against a sensitive portion of her body. The girl’s eyes, enticingly embellished with pencil and mascara, met mine from below with a glance that traveled up and down my spine, and then down again and up again — strange behavior for a glance, when you come to think of it. So strange, in fact, that I do believe it was the kind of “first sight” at which, as the popular phrase has it, love steps in. Lord, how I began to yearn and burn for this woman! Her sheer presence made me forget the flies and all that they concealed from my gaze, which was busily engaged with other visible objects. The charnel-house stench became a seductive aroma; the package of meat in my left hand I now imagined as a tangible pledge of what my right hand was able to express but feebly. Shoving, getting shoved back, squeezed together and bathed in sweat, we left the meatseller’s lane that now took on the aspect of a haven of purest bliss.

If we can believe the Old Testament, which knows all there is to know about such things, sweat is just as integral a component of love as is our daily bread. Be that as it may, huge drops of perspiration now covered my brow. Luckily, Pilar soon spied the siblings sitting in the dusty shade of a sidewalk cafe. Our coolie was with them, drinking weak beer and talking a blue streak. Zwingli was gabbing away at the same time, likewise the waiter, likewise the guests at the neighboring tables, and it was hard to tell which part of the body was more active in conversation, the tongue or the upper extremities. Quite a lively gathering, I thought; one false word and we’ll have a donnybrook on our hands. Tables and chairs will start flying out on the street, knives will be brandished, bottles will descend on skulls. Throats that came here to be slaked will be neatly throttled instead.

But nothing of the sort happened. All the noise and gesticulation was simply a public manifestation of Spanishness itself, an outer show masking the peaceable heart that resides within. It was merely a pyrotechnic exhibition, replete with whistling skyrockets and fiery pinwheels, but destined to fizzle out promptly in the midday sun. The little flame glowing in my heart was actually more dangerous. Still waters, as the saying goes, run deep; still fires burn even deeper.

For the homeward trek, which turned out to be another lengthy detour, we grouped ourselves differently. Each male was assigned to his proper female, in keeping with the injunction that thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s. And here I was, coveting like crazy! An exchange of the sort that occurs in certain novels was out of the question, unless Vigoleis was inclined to force the matter. Let him try things out with this babe, just once! He’ll soon see how feathers can fly…

Pilar, I mused, as we marched through the streets, had a guilty conscience towards her new female friend. No need, she surely was thinking, to embark right away on adventures with Vigoleis. He won’t run away, and tonight he’ll be sleeping under my roof. It’s just a matter of time until we can say “sheets” instead of “roof.” It was as simple as that.

At eight o’clock the mattress would arrive. But before we stretched out on it, we would have a fine feast, including the wine we were buying just now. Zwingli knew all the vintages the world over, and he knew just which one would be best to accompany the contents of the package I held in my left hand, swinging it like a censer at High Mass. The aroma it exuded was, however, different; to me it was a narcotic, and most assuredly not one to give rise to pious thoughts.

Presumably, Zwingli had made use of his Italian to explain to Beatrice the true reason for our zig-zagging haste on this shopping trip. The enigma had the simplest of solutions: Don Helvecio was up to his unwashed neck in debt. Not a single street in Palma didn’t harbor some establishment where he had overshot his credit.

And the streets of Palma are narrow. The owners of stores like to sit out in front, and thus it requires a certain amount of strategy and planning if one wishes to avoid one’s creditors. “You’ve got to hand it to me, Beatrice, Bice, Bé. I’ve done it again! Thanks to my perseverance and knowledge of local affairs, you’ll be sleeping tonight on some genuine Mallorquine wool. A fine layer of horsehair will keep you nice and cool, and you’ll soon find that you won’t want to bed down anywhere else. As for your friend Vigoleis, the congenital pessimist, he can find his peace on any old bunk whatsoever. He’s a great guy, but still a little shy. That hasn’t changed since the old days in Cologne. We’ll soon take care of that. We’ll have to get him to do some hard work. First some Spanish, an hour every day. You can teach him the theory, and the practice, the palaver, he’ll pick up by palavering. He’s not much good at languages; otherwise he never would have started studying linguistics. Or is it the other way around? We Swiss types are born with one mother tongue and a bunch of cousin tongues. But the Germans have to learn everything by the seat of their pants. That’s no picnic for a linguistically retarded country. It’s only when they get outside their borders that they start coming alive. It’s an example of the collective apron-strings phenomenon — pretty sad, really.