Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

I am writing this 13th chapter on the 13th of the month, which also happens to be a Friday. In it I intend to report the sad story of how Vigoleis, the friend to all children, planned to accept a child in place of a child, and how his plans came to naught. But I’m going to play a trick on the superstition concerning the number thirteen. Immanuel Velikovsky, in his earth-shattering book Worlds in Collision , has this to say about Egyptian mythology: “The 13th day of any month is a bad day. On this day you should do nothing. It is the day when Horus entered battle with Seth.”

On this 13th day of the month I shall therefore tell how Rabindranath, our ruinous raven, entered battle with T’uang, Mamú’s golden-tressed darling doggie, and how this event brought undiluted joy to our hero.

“How did it go?” asked Beatrice when I returned from the Immigration Office. “Our papers are all OK, right?”

“Yours are just fine. As a Swiss citizen you’re welcome all over the world. My papers are something else again, and it doesn’t look too good. They want to deport me as a troublesome foreigner, but I wasn’t able to get any details. What’s certain is that the Nazis are behind this, the German consulate, the local Reich Leader who was fired, and officials back home. They’re all working together hand in glove. Anybody who is against the Führer will be eliminated like some second-rate sheep. The herd is what counts.”

My residence permit wouldn’t be renewed. They had received a denunciation telling them that I was an elemento dissolvente —a corrosive, destructive element. “Element” meant, of course, not a basic component of the physical universe, but simply a “guy.” My catalyzing powers were apparently dangerous. I must admit that it was a master-stroke of the Nazis on Mallorca, at a time when everything in Spain was in a state of dissolution, to single out Vigoleis as a source of threatening ferment.

The official advised me to leave the island voluntarily, for otherwise I would get into hot water. They didn’t like keeping files on foreigners who didn’t get along with their consulates. That meant trouble, and trouble meant work, and work was unpleasant. This was The Golden Isle, and that was the end of the matter.

At this pronouncement I ought to have slipped two duros beneath the official’s desk blotter. The German Consul would have come back at him with three duros, but I would have gained some time, probably a full half-year. But I left the office without offering such favors. So now things were lousy for me, and that meant also for our German-Swiss concubinate.

Don Matías, duly informed of our threatened situation, immediately offered to mobilize the Honduran Freedom Movement on our behalf. Don Patuco, he said, had at hand a talented imp who specialized in such cases. He would be given an assignment to make our immigration file disappear, in the same way as happened with our tax documents. I approved of the plan. Matías took down some notes in his poetic portfolio, and while doing so, came upon his latest lyrical creation, which he proceeded to read to us. I praised his effort with the mute glance of a fellow poet who is not unwilling to acknowledge another person’s creative achievement, this time implying my amazement that such a masterpiece must remain hidden in the counter drawer at a bakery. Don Gracias a Dios said he would ask his fiancée to pray for the continuation of our marital concord on Mallorca. Don Pablo Sacramento promised me a powder-filled bone from his father Ulua’s arsenal. Pedro just shrugged his shoulders. Mamú, on the other hand, was seized with fright when I told her that the Nazis had set a fuse to our modest insular idyll.

We were seated beneath a palm tree that, despite the drought-like conditions, still did its work of warding off the hot sun by pretending to create a park. Auma was present, as was her fiancé. Even Mamú, an expert in matters of the heart, could no longer tell which of the two of them was living in the shadow of the other. Soon neither of them would cast any shadow at all, for their Finnish-Mallorcan erotic fever was visibly consuming them both.

Mamú suddenly clapped her hands, which were white, soft, and covered with brownish age spots. She began to totter, and her chaise longue was shaking. Her gerbil-like cheeks, lending emphasis to her gesticulations, wobbled as she cried out, “T’uang!” The creature bearing this name had the same flaming red hair as my pupil Hutchinson, the same crisis-prone nerves as the coal-and-steel tycoon from Essen, a pedigree never gnawed at by any hint of anarchy, and the four paws that were the pride of the Bewerwijns’ tropical hound prior to his sledding party and the Scientific Christian miracle. He was a pekingese, and as such he had a peculiar, droll manner of walking that aroused my sympathy no less than his facial expression, which was a constant meld of almost tearful sorrow and unreasonable, condescending arrogance. Maybe T’uang had worms. He definitely suffered from migraines.

Mamú lifted her beloved canine onto her lap, and held a long colloquy with him in Viennese dialect. The upshot of this dialogue was that the dog was supposed to explain to me that he was no more ludicrous a creature than a poodle or a Basedow pinscher, that he was his mistress’ darling, and that he had cost her $5000.

That was it. His price was $5000, certificate of pedigree included. He hailed from an aristocratic kennel owned by the Esterhazy dynasty, the most famous dog-breeding facility — I’ll take Mamú’s word for it — in all of old Europe. His family tree had its origins in some foggy prehistoric forest, where not even the most savvy canine genealogist could find his way through the gloom. Family trees don’t mean much to me; I’m not in the habit of peering into their leafy crowns, and that’s why I felt such glee when the Nazis, with their racial laws, led the entire science of genealogy down the path to complete absurdity. But T’uang was proud of his eugenic tree. If he were a human being instead of just a degenerate dog, he would have hung a replica of that tree on his living-room wall, just as a butcher does with his guild certificate, or a Spanish doctor with his academic diploma. And why not? No matter whether it’s a pinscher or a human being, a Harz Mountain canary or a German Noble White pig, it’s always good to know why one chirps, oinks, or drools in a certain way and no differently, and why one is superior to all the other chirpers, oinkers, and droolers. I am always deeply moved by the sight of a colored-in family bush. I bow in reverence before such a naive display of faith in marital constancy — a virtue that, at least with a dog, can be sustained by means of a leash. Humans love freedom, as a result of inborn urges that certain people seek to rid them of, sometimes with complete success. But for the most part, humans are responsible for certain gaps in the foliage of their ancestral cult. There are the notorious areas where the genealogical traces disappear, where even the most assiduous of professional researchers come up with blanks, and defer to their patrons’ sense of patience, discretion, and propriety. At such moments the only solution is a grafting operation. A well-known botanical genealogist, who was capable of pursuing the pedigree of any plant in the world back to its roots in the Tree of Jesse, once told me that his art consisted in the clever invention of an ancestor for those spots in the family tree where, when you push the branches aside for a better look, you discover certain horny offshoots that could endanger the entire structure of the family registry. I offered this scholar the consoling observation that while human beings are definitely rooted in their ancestors, not every ancestor confined his climbing to his own family tree.