Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

My third forward step, and this time she screamed out loud. Doña Carmen threw her hands forward and covered her face while calling upon her Savior, “ Ay, Jesús , have mercy on my soul!”

Women are unpredictable in their chronic climacteric nature. It often happens on trains that the emergency brake gets pulled and a lady tells the conductor that some man was about to rape her. A great to-do ensues, involving written reports and schedule delays, and later the aggressive gentleman is either missing his billfold or he has to pay up some other way, since his alibi is the lady herself even though he had no interest at all in doing her any favors. What would happen if Doña Carmen were now to pull the emergency brake — a specimen of which she no doubt had in her junk collection — and run out on the Rambla yelling bloody murder? It would be curtains for Vigoleis. The situation was critical. Doña Carmen reached for an area of her bosom that was the true or implied location of her heart, and begged the importunate Mallorquinist one last time, “Señor!” I, too, had taken hold of myself, but instead of reaching for my heart, I took the final step that separated me from the coveted table, and grabbed the knob of the drawer. “Ha! A compartment!”

Doña Carmen screamed so loud that it echoed throughout her cavern as though she were the Witch of Endor. She collapsed on some antique or other, and it broke under her weight. I had pulled out the drawer. It was a deep drawer, not one of those skimpy things that are impossible to close after you put in one tablecloth and two napkins.

Inside the drawer was a chamber pot. I felt a frisson of joy as I examined the darkened inside of this vessel: I had finally found one of the celebrated pots that have an eye painted on the bottom, a motif called “The Eye of God,” and beneath it the stenciled legend, “ Yo te veo ,” or “ Yo te veo bribón ”—I see you, you rascal, I see you! For a long time I had been looking for just such a mystical receptacle, and now Lady Luck was kind to me! Yet at the same moment when I felt sure that I was seeing the divine symbol, my nose told me that I was on the wrong track. I quickly shoved the drawer back into the table and suddenly felt pity for the Eye of God, which is forced to let itself be sullied in order to fathom the mysteries of its own Creation.

Professor Stuhlfauth interprets the “Eye of God” as symbolizing God the Father, insofar as it occurs in the typical form of a human eye inside a triangle. Although the origins of this emblem are unclear, you can find it on altars, pulpit screens, shields, and gravestones, on the title pages of books, and in Spain even in chamber pots. The Hispanic variant presumably has something to do with sorcery, a bizarre manner of warding off the evil eye, since the iettatore or the iettatrice remains seated above the eye until the latter is darkened over and no longer capable of seeing clearly. A renowned Spanish ethnologist, Professor Ismael del Pan, once had the kindness to inform me that he regarded the “Eye of Providence” located inside this domestic utensil as an element of exorcism traceable to Judaic and Moroccan religious roots. The progressive hygienization of private bedrooms has caused these vessels to lose their practical value while preserving their magical qualities. Even today a bridegroom will present one, wrapped in cellophane and trimmed with pink ribbons, as an engagement gift to his bride…

When I first entered her shop, Doña Carmen had been exercising her rights, as a dealer in antiques, to the private use of her wares. She was enthroned on one of them when I first clapped my hands to announce my presence. At my second clap she had extended her owner’s rights to the table drawer, quickly pushing the chamber pot inside it so that, when I clapped my hands for the third time, she was able to come forward with a smile and accept Don Vigo’s greetings from Don José Saavedra de Casas Novas. Whereupon destiny, which can be called blind by whomever it pleases, took its course, step by forward step, with a most evil eye directed toward the Eye of the One and Only, which to my misfortune turned out not to be God’s Eye after all.

In the throes of disappointment I had slammed the drawer shut with such force that a little accident occurred inside the table. Doña Carmen momentarily overcame the dilemma of her dual role, and casually pushed aside the offending piece of furniture with her foot. The damage was done. Even a woman must at times stand up like a man, and from then on everything played itself out just as Schopenhauer describes it, albeit in a rather less noxious context, in his doctrine of the Affirmation and Negation of the Will to Life. The Will to Life asserted itself emphatically here in the junk shop. Doña Carmen was again in complete control of herself and her collection of reliques. She stood there with inscrutable, elemental mien; she was the most authentic item in her own bazaar.

Next to the table, which not even three Maguelidas would be able to demolish, stood two rustic kitchen chairs made of knotty pine still oozing resin: a pair of items exactly to my liking. Mumbling words of praise for this and that object on display, I approached the catacomb exit, reached into my pocket, offered two duros for the table and the chairs, hoping that she would agree on the price. I said that I would just step outside and fetch an almocrebe .

When I returned with a donkey, Doña Carmen had already placed the furniture outside her door on the Rambla. While my servant hitched the items to his animal, I placed the pieces of silver on top of a crate containing hopping rabbits and, maintaining a gallant distance, kissed her right hand, which had of course been so closely involved in her dethronement. Smiling, she asked me to convey her greetings to our mutual friend Don José Toboso y de Tembleque from Toledo — for surely that was the person who had recommended her to me.

I am a talkative fellow, and that means that I am no worse than the next guy at keeping secrets.

Beatrice’s eyes lit up when the almocrebe unloaded our complete set of kitchen furniture and accepted his 50-centimos wage plus a princely tip of two pesetas. Such joy when she noticed the drawer! Her first reaction was, “So deep!” Just to think of all the things one could put inside it — bread, cheese, greens for our soup, her entire sewing kit—“Vigo!” Her dream had come true. She kissed me.

But my lips were burning with more than her kiss. From inside the drawer, the “Eye of God” was insisting that I give notice of its presence. I gave a full dramatic account of Doña Carmen, myself, the quail, the child’s coffin. I clapped my hands, made bows, reiterated my remarks as a connoisseur, peered into the twilit back area of the shop, restaged my somnambulistic steps toward the table, described the table, the drawer, opened the drawer — and Beatrice fainted. This was the second time on the island that she lost consciousness.

Using bicarbonate of soda, boiling water, scented candles at nighttime and the rays of the sun during the day, ammonia, “Legia” detergent, vinegar vapors — I scrubbed the drawer over and over again for an entire week. If I had remained silent about Doña Carmen’s Affirmation of Life, I would have been spared a whole lot of irritation, drudgery, and one duro, the price of a novel in the Espasa Calpe edition.

Talkativeness is a symptom of deep-seated pessimism. Without it there would be no pessimistic literature.

Strangely enough, it was Beatrice who insisted on owning a “look-see” chamber pot. I had also entertained the thought, but didn’t dare to broach the ethnological subject for fear of arousing olfactory responses that could be dangerous for a woman so highly susceptible to allergies. “There, do you smell something? I smell something again. Has a cat sneaked in?” Then her nose hit the table drawer that meanwhile contained not bread and cheese, but products of my intellectual activity.