Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

“ O, mon pauvre Vigolo! ”

“I’ll put my hand in the fire for Eva, Mamú. If she had ever let anybody come near her, it would have meant the end of her career. She was always diplomatic. In this exposed position in the German diaspora she was working for the Führer .”

I then told Mamú the whole story in every last detail. Rabindranath listened in, as did Mamú’s pekingese. The two animals had long since concluded a truce, largely in consideration of their mistress’ paradisaical park, which with the chattering of many budgerigars and pink parrots had taken on the aspect of a jungle. The official bird-tender was of course Vigoleis. But Mamú was piqued at Eva for failing to do the honors in her own Paradise, since basically Mamú was too immersed in her gilded Bible to imagine that there could be such a thing as an Eva immaculata , an unblemished woman on an unblemished bed of love für Führer und Vaterland . But then, Mamú was an American and a millionaire, born to bottomless riches, lacking tradition, spoiled by Vienna, and lifted up by her Hungarian dynast to a social rank that she deserved to attain in any case, without the aid of this special liaison.

A blind guitar player and a deaf tenor provided the musical background for Eva’s performances. The singer never heard a note of what the guitar was playing, even though he bent down close to the instrument. This acoustically necessary form of acrobatics forced him to sing downwards toward the floor, instead of out into the audience or directly to the racy, shimmering chastity of the Special Female Envoy of the Führer . The guitar player, on the other hand, couldn’t see what was going on around him, clothed or unclothed. He plucked away at his violent, melancholy canto hondo , his blank eyeballs focused on a blind spot which, if he had been able to see, was Eva’s sickly-green powder puff. The audience, made up mostly of members of Don Patuco’s circle, stayed on into the wee hours, and they, too, kept staring at this ominous green spot.

As a nude model Eva was, according to Pedro, cojonudo —we should probably use the more acceptable term “simply fabulous.” But then again, things were not quite that simple. Pedro had a whole bevy of Evas, whose faces he rendered only in vague outline. Come to think of it, for any artist specializing in nudes, the model’s face is irrelevant. Still, I could have used some more detailed information, since Eva is to be counted among my squandered opportunities.

A Jewish gentleman of German nationality had recently arrived on Mallorca from the Cape Colony to recuperate from a serious illness, and he intended to continue on to America on business. He was a diamond merchant. The German Shop sent him to me for political advice. He was very rich. Every word of his personal explanation was false, and he wasn’t even in need of telling me anything. It was immediately clear to me that he had fled from the Cape Town Nazis, who were after his non-Aryan blood, but also after his diamonds. I advised him, free of charge, to leave the island as soon as possible, because just a few weeks ago a murder had taken place in Palma, a poisoning that was immediately hushed up. It took place in a lithograph studio, a place that contained enough bottles decorated with skull and crossbones to dispatch whole crowds of human beings into the Great Beyond. The police were conveniently silent (“Who needs overtime?”) about this matter, which was connected with the sinister machinations of the Nazis on the island. The Jewish gentleman told me, not without a measure of boasting, that he had a sufficient supply of English pounds on his person to buy out the entire island and send the Nazis packing. This was, of course, one more reason for him to skedaddle. I had no idea, I told him, how much his life was worth, but it would be a shame if the thugs were to get hold of all that sterling in the bargain. “Take the very next ship! It’ll be sailing in just a few hours!” It was only natural that I started cursing the Germans who were letting Hitler get away with all kinds of mischief, and letting the whole world know how proud they were of it. The gentleman objected to my insinuations against his fatherland — I was to understand that he still regarded himself as a German. Before 1933 he was never aware that he was a Jew. In his heart — that is, underneath the thick wad in his porte-monnaie —he was first and foremost a German. What was the German Consul like, he asked. Not the type who ate Jews for breakfast, I told him; he had nothing to fear on that account. Whereupon this German petty chauvinist with a heart of diamond returned to his hotel.

A few days later he was just where the Nazis wanted him. “Suicide,” the police declared. But they weren’t really convinced of this, and began snooping around, since not only the foreigner’s life, but also his money was missing. It wasn’t long before they detected in this affair the heady fragrance of Eva’s sweat. They decided to conduct a fully-clothed investigation of this naked item of Teutonic public relations, and they soon discovered that a woman can conceal an abundance of charms within her own wardrobe. Having duly inspected and disinfected her green puff, the bailiffs said, “All right, get dressed, we’re taking you downtown!” Dressed or not, she was surrounded. The officers of the famous Spanish Civil Guard never cracked a smile, not even when they took her on board ship. Two more officers appeared at the quay in Barcelona. Again there were no smiles, and this is how it went through the various stages of the journey. Up in France, Eva again got the chance to display her puff on behalf of the Führer . The Spaniards were delighted to be rid of a spy and poisoner.

“Eva” was her nom d’artiste , her Second Aspect. Her green powder puff was an ineffectual disguise for her primary occupation, which consisted in ecstatic moaning and groaning underneath the almocrebe s and picadores at the “Clock Tower.” “My goodness, these guys are good!” she used to say. “If my husband ever found me here…!”

In keeping with her policy of patriotic lubricity, her husband never got to see her practicing the horizontal profession at the Clock Tower or at the tasco cantante . Her husband stayed on in Essen. Over time, his nervous breakdowns gave way to a total recovery of sheer nerve, which he placed in the service of the fatherland. His personal motto: Guns, not butter.

Oh, my beloved Kathrinchen! How I would love to have shared just once the secret confines of your pilarière , just once touched your green spot!

“You mean her brown spot, don’t you?” Mamú said. “But you never would have done it.”

Mamú was right. This Frau Doktor worked shamelessly for the Führer .

The very first time Don Matías attended one of Eva’s nude dances, his heart was sold. Likewise Don Thank God, for whom the green puff became a blind spot in his character, which tended toward enthusiasm to the point of patriotic enfeeblement. Fate, once again in the shape of an Eve in full heat, had seized hold of these two fellows, so much so that they put their own fiancées out of heart and mind. For them, the world revolved around the first female homo sapiens . Don Matías was her chosen partner. His lame leg gave him certain advantages behind the curtain. “Thank God” would stoop down in front of this curtain and start suffering. In his mind’s eye, he saw his friend Don Matías just as I myself see him, with bloodshot eyes and with his bum leg drawn up part-way onto the pilarière where she is lying. His brows are aflame, his hands are steamy and moist, the better to leaf through Eva’s poetry manuscripts, the very texts that Don Matías was intending to translate and publish.