Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

My friend Mulet from the tertulia , who had a close acquaintance at the Customs warehouse, observed the execution of the books as a representative of the intellectual segment of Mallorquin society. He took a handful of the ashes home with him in a little cloth bag. One charred page still showed a fragment of naked flesh, but not even the horniest Spanish lecher could have established with certainty where, within the framework of the entire human anatomy, this particular view of unadorned epidermis had originally exerted its stimulating effect. But he consoled me with the revelation that not a single full- or half-page illustration had been lost. He himself had observed how, previous to the burnt offering, everything of value had been carefully removed from the volumes, so that the Customs Director was now without doubt the owner of the best collection of visual erotica in all of the Balearics. He was, after all, an old connoisseur… “And not only on paper!” came a shout from the back room, where the tertulia was in session.

The most faithful customer at the German Bookshop had the alert, beady eyes of a dog in heat, and he had a long, black beard. His hairy garment was held together by a rough piece of rope. He was as poor as the mendicant order to which he had dedicated his life.

This monk was a subscriber to certain Parisian journals which displayed a great deal of unclothed flesh. He arrived at the shop several times a week to inquire whether his orders had arrived. If they were on hand, hidden behind the counter, he snuck briefly into the backroom, the one we already know about as the venue for erotic adventures in natura . He always paid his bill promptly. Acting from pure Christian brotherly charity, little Mr. Hasenbank allowed him a discount for needy clergymen. But when the heavy-set and very wealthy co-owner of the shop offered this destitute man of the cloth a shiny duro and a particular street address, Pater Pachomio declined in the Name of the Lord. A bordello was a den of iniquity, he explained, and he wouldn’t think of entering one. But as for a cloistered brother taking occasional peeks into illustrated magazines, the Good Lord would not think it amiss. Besides, he regularly confessed to a confrater , a colleague who suffered from the same urges and who, incidentally, shared the price of their Parisian magazine subscription.

I presented Mona Lisa’s second visage to this mendicant fellow, who was living under an eternal vow of chastity. He blessed me right in the middle of the shop, before the eyes of all three of the German booksellers. Of all the thousands of people who have tried to decipher La Gioconda’s smile, it is solely Pater Pachomio who will have figured it out in the privacy of his cell.

H eil Hitler! ” “Good morning.”

The German Consul had summoned me to ask a few questions.

“You wish?”

“Do you have certain enemies back in your home town?” The Consul had put on his official face, one that always failed to impress me. He shuffled papers in the officious manner, and this too left me cold. The time was past when I felt the urge to flee the presence of a bureaucratic jackass. “Yes,” I replied, “I’m surrounded by enemies.”

“Can you name the persons who wish to do you harm, and their reasons? It’s important.”

“You bet I can, Herr Konsul. But it will take time for me to list all of them. You can start taking notes: my enemies are the gravedigger and all his minions, each and every hick and bugger and whoremaster, all women typists, all clergymen of whatever shade of belief or disbelief, all greengrocers and all salesgirls, cobblers, tailors, sextons and pharmacists, the madam at an exclusive brothel and her staff, the mayor, the director of rubbish collection …”

“Don’t joke around with me. What are you getting at? Answer my questions! I am asking you in my official capacity.”

“But that’s it exactly! Let’s see, where was I? Ah yes, the garbage men, the town accountant, the dairymen and the alpine herdsmen, all tax assessors, tax collectors, and tax embezzlers, all children with the exception of…”

The Consul objected angrily to my ridicule of the Reich. I was guilty, he now said, of slandering the Führer on German soil, since his office was sovereign territory. I knew this already. Then I was informed that my father had been detained by Party operatives for the purpose of quizzing him about his degenerate son. If I persisted in sending my relatives slanderous letters about the Führer , the Party would find it necessary to take retaliatory measures against the life and limb of my family. I was to consider myself forewarned.

“Herr Konsul, are you telling me that as a result of my complaints, which I do not deny having made, my people will be put in harm’s way?”

Apparently this was exactly the case. The Third Reich was a merciless place, and my name was on the list of persons harmful to the state. The authorities in my home town had already recommended my elimination. “Do you understand?”

This Consul, prior to his swift decline an unassuming, polite, well-bred and friendly German on foreign soil, had by now turned into a true big-shot of the unfriendliest kind, every inch the uptight subaltern of the Nazi movement. As he rose from his chair, his scalp almost touched the frame of the Führer ’s portrait behind his desk. I remained standing and said, “Herr Konsul, my family has flourished for centuries on the banks of the Niers. Our name Thelen can be traced back to earliest prehistoric times. In Middle High German our name was ‘Diuten,’ and among the Anglo-Saxons we were known as ‘Gédithan,’ ‘Thedoan,’ and ‘Thiudan,’ and some tribes called us by the name of ‘Thiudisk.’ In Old Norse we find an early branch of the family by the name of ‘Thiuda,’ which means ‘people,’ Old Irish ‘Tuat,’meaning ‘he who is at home on this land, who thrives on the land, who raises his family on the land, who owns the land.’ It also meant the same as ‘heathen.’ So at the beginning we were heathens, too, German heathens to boot, the kind that Nietzsche relates to the idea of täuschen : deceptive types, dissimulators, charlatans. What it comes down to is this, if you will permit me: ‘Thelen’ is a synonym for ‘German.’ To this day, as you know, the Italians still call us ‘tedeschi,’ which is to say, ‘Thelens.’ And here’s something you may not know: we have connections far over into Portugal, where the bloodthirsty Doña Leonor Telles murdered her way into the queenship”.

“This brief plunge into the murky swamps of ancient history is simply meant to show you that I have a very long pedigree. Although I must admit that, with the exception of the questionable Gothic King Theudis, the tribe of the Thelens has not brought forth the kind of heroes that bards and minstrels keep singing about after all these centuries. But along comes Adolf Hitler, who is giving us benighted latecomers our great moment. My relatives love the Führer . They’ve written to me about this. They will be delighted if they can give their lives for him and his cause. They’ve written that, too. My mother includes the new Savior in her prayers. If there is anything I can do to see to it that my loved ones back home may fulfill their patriotic wish to become fertilizer for the soil of the fatherland — then, Herr Konsul, I am not so perverse as to deny this to them! I am the black sheep of the family, and now, as I refuse with all my might to put on the color brown, for them I have become blacker still. The people in my home town are ashamed of me. You may report to the local authorities up there that I’m in agreement with their plan. Right away I shall send my father a letter with the same message. Would you like a copy for your files? So then— Guten Morgen! ”