Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Beatrice’s unexpected agreement moved me deeply, but at the same time it forced me to make a difficult decision. I said, “Fine, then this evening I’ll go right to the agent and set the day when we can make formal acceptance of our hidalgo . In three days I’ll have put together a crib. Angelita will give me a few empty boxes, and will she ever make eyes!”

Beatrice is not attached to kids. That is why for years she was a teacher who was deified by her charges. She knew how to treat them. She made her decisions with the secure firmness that over the long run can lead to friendship and love, a process that impresses me in certain stories in the Old Testament. At times, the Lord seemed to be speaking through her. Was that now the case, too?

From out of the kitchen of the fisherman’s family living below us came the fishy essence of roasting sardines. The girls in our back yard were in a loud, screeching spat over some triviality. In the upper storey Pepa, seamstress to the upper crust, was leaning out the window discussing matters of high fashion with one of her customers across the yard — it was a familiar scene of rich and poor in their customary exchange of ideas. Nothing has changed. Tomorrow it will all be the same, and the day after, too. Only then will the world in our bel-étage cease to obey the Copernican laws of orbit and gravity. The lord of our universe will be our adopted kid. Will it succeed in curing me of my Weltschmerz ? My hare-brained penchant for self-destruction? To wish one’s own perdition, says Kierkegaard, is too sublime for the likes of humans.

It was late when Pedro arrived. The bottle was empty, the mollusks had been consumed together with their murky juice, the yard girls were long since lost in sweaty slumber, each one yearning for the embrace of her novio , even though she would have been content with a quickie with some guy from the “Tower” gang.

Pedro sensed that something was afoot, but as usual he pulled out his sketching pad and started penciling our images. He casually inquired about Beatrice’s stubborn pupils, about my newest inventions, about Mamú, Rabindranath, and Bobby. I showed him the broker’s letter, telling him that Beatrice suspected Pedro himself of being its author. Our artist, crazy in love, galant , and as always in the pose of a bolero, expressed his heartfelt congratulations and, with just a few lines, made a sketch of this new son of ours who would soon enter our impoverished little world. The image was that of a little fat monstrosity of a child — which immediately soured Beatrice’s notions about Pedro once again, although she was on the point of forgiving him for having suspected him of perfidy.

The sight of Pedro’s sketch made me suddenly aware that I had neglected to inquire about the age of our prospective new family member. After a long debate, we agreed on 13 months. I planned the dimensions of the cradle accordingly.

Do I have to describe the days that followed? How they were filled with hectic preparations? Once again, Beatrice had more layaway cash on hand than I suspected. Pedro’s excitement was contagious; again and again he arrived at our apartment carrying useful items. First he brought a baptismal cushion bearing the Alba coat of arms, 300 years old. Another time, he unpacked a pair of underpants whose label revealed that they had been left behind in the charterhouse by Fortunato, a saintly monk, when the tonsured squad was expelled. More significant still was a bottle containing a half-inch of wine left undrunk, as Don Juan’s inscription informed us, by Rubén Darío, Antonio Gelabert, and Paco Quintana during a stay at the castle, anno 1913. This vintage had had twenty years to improve in the bottle — what cellar in the world could have offered a nobler baptismal quaff?

Paco Quintana is familiar to many, and Rubén Darío is known the world over. But who was this other member of the triumvir, Antonio Gelabert?

As a barber, Don Antonio had several generations of Suredas under his razor, but it was as an artist that he enjoyed the privilege of sharing a bottle with the above-named notables. Moreover, it was as an artist that he was close to the Suredas. Don Juan Sureda was his bosom friend. He began in ceramics, and as a painter he ended in obscurity like Van Gogh. Today his oils are demanding unheard-of prices. He lived in Valldemosa with a maid and a circle of reliable customers. Tired of wielding the scissors, he bought a little house in Deyá and lived there, an artist among other artists, devoted solely to his housemaid, whom he married; to painting, with which he lived on in even more serious libertinage; and to his own ugliness, which inspired him and which might even have captivated a Goya. Weary of all this, he took a rope and hanged himself in the stairwell. The rope was braided from his maid’s hair. Thus Don Antonio had returned to his original occupation.

We were also touched by the solicitude of our neighbor Doña María de los Angeles, an old gout-twisted lady who lived in abject poverty since the alcoholic death of her husband in jail, where he squandered the remainder of their savings with some of the guards, and since the death at sea by drowning of her three sons, fishermen and drug smugglers in Arsenio’s gang. Someday I shall perhaps tell the life story of this once wealthy, once beautiful woman. She offered to take care of our child — a gesture of friendship in gratitude for the food we had long been sharing with her.

For the adoption itself — or, more elegantly, for our “optation”—we agreed upon a Saturday at one hour before noon. The ceremony would be over with by the time Count Kessler arrived for our usual dictation session on his memoirs. He would be given a sip from the bottle, whereupon we could return it to Don Juan, its label adorned with yet another famous name.

In the previous night there occurred a cloudburst such as Palma had not experienced in decades. Our General’s Street was thick with mud from the torrents that swept down from the higher districts all the way to the Plaza Atarazanas. After Beatrice swept the floors, I polished the tiles with a contraption invented by myself for just this purpose. Then Beatrice covered them with a runner made of old newspapers. This would no doubt give rise to comical scenes with Count Kessler, who would of course not comprehend such an improvised technique as the lesson in thoughtful hospitality that it might be for any Spanish guests. Nevertheless, he felt embarrassed to dirty up our apartment, knowing as he did that we had no money for domestic help. In this regard we shared the same degree of penury. Time and again I tried to dissuade him from taking off his shoes at our entrada . It was only later that we hit upon the idea of using felt slippers, the kind handed out to tourists at island castles, in place of doormats.

On the day destined by the stars to bring us disaster, Pedro appeared bright and early with a steaming tray of ensaimadas . He helped us put newspapers on the floor, and then pinned a sign to our corridor door with the mysterious letters NHN, which I had often seen at other people’s entryways and which I had always misinterpreted. The letters do not stand for Nil homo nequit , “nothing that is humanly impossible,” but for no hay nadie , “Nobody home.” It was our desire to remain undisturbed for the solemn acceptance of our Vigoleisovitch.

If today, twenty years after that crazy forenoon, I ask myself whether I was excited, I can aver without exaggeration that the hammer-blows of my heart did not cause me to collapse in a heap. Yet I must admit that on that morning I did not approach our door over pages of the Deutsche Allgemeine with the same habitual, casual stride I used whenever the milkman brought us our milk, which was always at the same point of turning sour. Beatrice was nervous — in fact, too nervous to start an argument with Pedro; she was in the pre-stage of fury that could turn her into a mute pillar. Pedro was simply Pedro, full of silliness even at this highly dubious moment.