Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

He had a ready answer. He reached into the breast pocket of his elegant jacket and produced a few pages that even a Professor Karl Kerényi would have a hard time interpreting in mythological terms. At the sight of this fraud, a quivering Mr. Silberstern stammered, “One thousand marks each! Tell him that we protest in the name of literature! I’ll sue him for damages!”

The Customs Director simply snickered. “A thousand marks? In Paris you can get stuff like this much cheaper, en nature . We know all about it, we were over there once in our younger days. Nowadays, with a wife and kids…” He replaced the porno sheets inside his jacket pocket, and declared the meeting finished. His verdict was laconic: the entire lot was to be burned. I threatened to inform the Consul. Consuls and Customs Directors need each other. We were granted a delay of 24 hours.

Don Joaquín Verdaguer was not only a professor, a writer, and an expert in tobacco pipes; he was also the Ecuadorian Consul. It was he, of course, and not the German Consul, that I had in mind. I explained the case to him, requesting his aid in the name of erotic science.

At this, Don Joaquín turned morose. He showed me his official Consulate rubber stamps, now twisted and desiccated from disuse, including the dried-out stamp pads, the yellowed Consulate letterhead, and the empty Consulate cashbox. For years, he said, he had been the local representative of the glorious Republic of Ecuador, just waiting for someone to come along and request his protection. But now I had arrived, and I wasn’t even an Ecuadorian! I was to go visit his German colleague, who would treat it as the simple matter it was: a delay in the name of the German Reich, investigation by the proper legal authorities, and consultations with experts at the Biblioteca Nacional. That way, we could gain time. The German Consul would pursue the case with vigor and if necessary send a telegram, at my client’s expense, to the German Foreign Office. But — was this such a serious affair? The Spanish nation was accustomed to all kinds of questionable goings-on. The Barrio Chino in Barcelona was like no other place in the world, including Paris and Marseille. — “And blasphemous? The very worst kind of stuff? What can that possibly be, the ‘worst kind of stuff’?”

I reached into the inside pocket of my decidedly un-elegant jacket and pulled out a page. “This is what the blasphemy in Mr. Silberstern’s collection looks like.” It was the most titillating specimen in all of Western art: the Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile, seen from behind.

Don Joaquín sucked on his pipe, and retracted all he had just said about vice in Barcelona. “Pilfered?”

“No, not exactly, my friend. Using a stratagem of my new profession, I took possession of it as a form of official credentials. Now I can present myself anywhere as my Jewish client’s procurator and prolocutor .”

“Did you say Jewish?”

“I did indeed. And that’s precisely the fly in the ointment. Silberstern is non-Aryan, and the reason for his escape was profanation of the blood. So he can’t expect his own Consul to offer him protection.”

The Ecuadorian Consul explained that if a Jew still had a valid passport, the Consul was obliged to assist him.

With my credentials in my jacket pocket, I went to visit “our” Consul. I explained that if he did not handle this matter with dispatch, his official prestige was on the line; that I had discussed the case with my friend Verdaguer, the Consul of Ecuador, and that by tomorrow morning each and every accredited consular official in Palma would be aware that the German Consul didn’t know how to run his business.

The Consul replied that he knew his business inside-out. A Jew was a Jew, but Justice was Justice. He was, he said, the representative of a nation based on laws. “So let’s get at it!”

The warehouse Director stuck by his guns. To him, filth was filth. He took forth certain volumes, slapped page after page of unveiled hindquarters and forequarters, mixed-company frolics, and erotic trapeze exploits. But the most incriminating specimens had disappeared, for by now the duana officers of Palma were swimming in a sea of porn. Still, what the representative of the Third Reich got to see was enough to place him in a moral dilemma. “It’s horrendous!” he said. “For heaven’s sake, just take a look at that!” It was material for scientific research, I retorted, and the one thing was not mutually exclusive of the other, quite the contrary. Wasn’t he familiar with the classic dictum that we are all born twixt urine and feces? This, I elucidated further, was the tragedy of humankind, the source of all human error, the vital subject of artistic endeavor, and nowadays the reason why the waiting rooms at psychiatrists’ offices were filled to bursting. It was indeed difficult to overcome this natural heritage. In a small voice, the Consul said, “You know me well enough to realize that I’m not a scholar but a businessman. But if this stuff here is supposed to be scientific material, then I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Back home in Germany this is what we call sheer crap.”

I responded that what he and I regarded as crap back in Germany might not be one and the same thing. I asked him to telegraph the German Embassy in Madrid, at my client’s expense, and request a delay against the private verdict of the Palma Director of Customs. I myself would send a registered letter to Miguel de Unamuno, informing him that now Spain, too, was starting to burn books just as in the Third Reich. Unamuno replied with a sarcastic postcard, saying that in Spain a much bigger fire was about to break out. There were arsonists at work all over the place, he wrote, and may God save his beloved homeland.

The Director of Customs expressed his regrets to the Consul of the Third Reich; his Bull of Immolation was already formulated and signed. He showed us the document and then put it back in his pocket, covering with it the naked backside of some whorelet — a symbolic gesture if there ever was one. Case closed: on to the pyre for an auto-da-fé. At my insistence, the German Consul suggested that the crates be sent back to the return address in Germany. “Impossible!” said the Director. This filth would never leave the warehouse. I leaped into the breach with a request in my client’s name that the scientific material, the entire four boxes full to bursting, be sent to the National Library in Madrid as a donation from Señor Adelfredo Silberstern from Furzeburg.

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was stupid of me to make such a suggestion. The larceny of the skin pix would come to light, and the Director and his staff would be reprimanded for purloining piggish printed matter. The Custom’s Director’s scolding was anything but music to the ears of the Führer’s representative: how could he, whom the Director had thus far considered to be a person of sterling qualities, stoop so low as to defend such trash?

The Consul left the scene. He had suffered a defeat.

I stayed on. I at least wanted to save the pigskin and calfskin bindings, as well as certain innocuous title pages. But I was shown the door. I left the scene. I had suffered a twofold defeat.

My client wrung his hands when I reported the ineffectuality of my efforts on his behalf. I mentally estimated my legal fee at 100 pesetas, but Mr. Silberstern saw no reason to pay me. He never so much as asked what he might owe me for my consultative services.

The auto-de-castidad took place in the Customs Office courtyard. Valuable first editions, a number of out-of-print volumes and pornographic rarities, but also such harmless books as Fuchs’ History of Morals and illustrated editions of Boccaccio — every last tome was put to the flames, including a monograph on the Oberammergau Passion Play, illustrated Bibles, plus a textbook of gynecology. My client observed the immolation of his hobby through a knothole in the fence. He figured his loss at 25,000 marks.