Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Don Fulgencio was busy blowing his nose, but otherwise seemed to want to address me straightaway. I felt no need to snap out of my meditative mood for his sake, and yet I had no desire to fritter away the time. Besides, certain noises at the door indicated that the servant girl had taken up a post just outside, eager to learn what kind of business this strange mahatma intended to discuss with her boss. But before I allow these two dignitaries to enter conversation with each other, I wish to offer a description of the gentleman about whose existence Beatrice had serious doubts.

The man’s overall bearing was stiff, although when walking he manifested a certain insecurity about setting down his left leg. I don’t mean that he dragged this leg behind him, only that the left didn’t seem to function as well as the right. A cane would have been of some help, but he would have rejected such a support on the basis of an old man’s vanity. Field Marshal Hindenburg was a shining, internationally acknowledged example of this kind of proud senility, an attitude that cost Germany dearly. Don Fulgencio’s hands were attractive but unkempt. I studied them carefully, purely on account of their shape. Very few people have beautiful hands, and there are even fewer artists who can paint a human hand. Don Fulgencio was annoyed by my constant gazing, which he misinterpreted. He quickly set about removing the grime from under his nails, employing other nails on each of his hands that served this specific purpose. This he accomplished skillfully, as if he had spent a lifetime in practice. Incidentally, this was not the first time that I, with my mania for observing hands, became the mute agent for an auto-manicure. If only people would realize that, far from wishing to cause embarrassment, my interest in dirty nails stems from a very personal envy of such persons. They embody an attitude toward life, a measure of pride and self-confidence that I have never achieved. They keep dirt for themselves, where it’s meant to be kept.

Don Fulgencio offered me a chair, and again sat down behind his desk, which was covered with a large plate of glass. Underneath the glass were letters, picture postcards, newspaper clippings, a lock of hair, handwritten poems — a veritable herbarium of yellowing testimonials to his sentimentality. The walls of his office contained calendars with pull-off pages, showing a plethora of past and future appointments. Clearly there was a reason behind such a display in this decaying palace where nothing, not even my own self, seemed left to chance. Opposite me, above the old man’s head, was a richly carved Black Forest clock; as I watched, the cuckoo flew out of the little window and started squawking. It squawked four times, with a beating of wings.

Immediately Don Fulgencio drew from a pocket in his embroidered vest a snap-top watch, and checked the time. “Accurate to the second, sir,” he said, and these were the first words he spoke. “Here, see for yourself.”

He extended the golden timepiece in my direction, and I quickly affirmed his declaration. He was absolutely right, and because he was right, I suspected right away that something must be wrong. Black Forest cuckoo clocks are notorious for their inaccuracy. In my family household each member had his or her own cuckoo clock — hasty purchases made during the inflation, which entered its most murderous phase just as we were spending our vacation in Triberg. Each cuckoo had its own sense of time, which every day sent my meticulous father into a rage, while I thought it was romantic and natural. No two thermometers or hygrometers ever show the same degrees. At Fulgencio’s house, however, apparently a stray bird had flown in to show the Spaniards just what German punctuality is all about. In Spain, as is well known, it is only the bull fights that begin on the dot. Amazed at this attack against the Iberian sense of time, I asked the gentleman to explain the origins of his aberrant clock.

“This masterpiece,” Don Fulgencio said as he replaced the watch in his vest pocket — making it necessary to pull in his belly just a bit—“This work of art is a gift from a happily married couple in Titisee. You know, in the Black Forest. Thirty-seven years ago I gave them a child with smooth black hair and a fiery temperament, who adapted well to the Teutonic bushlands. I should add that this was my sole export arrangement with Germany. The transalpine races seem to prefer Nordic suppliers. There was a good reason why I simply gave away this young orphan, but that is neither here nor there. When the girl was four years of age, her parents sent me this clock. Ever since then it has never once stopped — to me, an excellent sign that she is getting along just fine. If it ever stopped running, it would mean that her life’s thread would have unraveled.”

“But what if you forget to pull up the weights? If I understand you correctly, you have a human life in your hands.”

“If someone might ever neglect to wind up the clock, it would imply a cause-and-effect relationship with the destiny of that child. In that case, forgetfulness would be tantamount to destiny.”

I would like to have continued chatting with this Spaniard about accidence and providence, hoping to make some gains in personal awareness — all the more so, as neither of us was a professional philosopher with the typical penchant for disputations that are as interesting as they are futile. Such colloquies resemble a game played with several balls, many of which remain suspended in thin air. It is a matter of daily practice to see how many balls one can juggle at any given time. Born philosophers are rare. Most of them grow on trees, and that is why almost all of them need the greenhouse ambience of universities, “Schools of Wisdom,” or scholarly articles in print.

But I remained silent. Don Fulgencio gave me time to digest what he had just said. The emptiness of his glance beneath his furry brows told me that he was mentally up there in Titisee. Was this pure superstition on my part? In my younger years I was quite snobbish toward superstitious persons. Back in those days, on the basis of my bible-paper philosophers I believed that certain effects result from certain causes. I regarded superstition as a pathological excrescence, as a kind of myoma that attached itself to true knowledge. Nowadays I am cured of such dreadful notions. Besides my reading in the Occidental mystics, above all Teresa de Ávila, my recovery owes much to my years-long sojourn in Catholic Iberia, where an apostolic-nihilistic inclination towards superstition is often mitigated by a very moving form of humaneness. It must be apparent from much of what I am recounting here, concerning my own or Vigoleis’ life experiences, that it is no accident that I have become the translator of a mystic, Pascoaes. For this I was predestined. This gift was placed with me in my cradle.

Here in Fulgencio’s office it was as quiet as a monastery. The clock ticked softly with its little balance wheel. The cuckoo was perched expectantly behind its little window, and behind the office door crouched my host’s domestic servant. Don Fulgencio was still far away in the Black Forest. I waited until he could finally return to me from the thickets of Northern Europe. As one born to wait, I would make an ideal prisoner with a life sentence in solitary, an ideal obedient monk, or a constantly praying hermit. But in order to enter prison I would have to commit a crime against a fellow man. To enjoy cloistered solitude I would have to commit a crime against myself.

All of a sudden Don Fulgencio was back with me, and so we proceeded to the business at hand — a business the nature of which was still unclear to me. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. My special mission had achieved fulfillment when I reached the top of those three flights of stairs. Beatrice’s incredulity was refuted by my sighting of the company’s sign at the door, and Pedro had been washed clean of any suspicion. I could have got up and left. I should have. I was in serious danger of having a child foisted on me by sheer garrulousness. Rabindranath is still a fresh memory for all of us. But I stayed on, and like the cuckoo, I became a cog in the snail-like motions of the cosmos.