Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Zwingli inquired about my literary activity and Beatrice’s music — how were things going? “Badly? And you don’t have a telephone yet? Well, it’s good that I’m back. All that will change now. But tell me, Bé, have you got anything to eat?”

The two of them had switched roles. Beatrice had asked her brother the very same question on that morning of our arrival on the Island of the Great Puta .

Besides a wad of money, Zwingli brought with him a whole set of new plans. Naive as I am, and easily hoodwinked by the mysterious ways people attain the ownership of hard cash, I asked him to open his wallet. It was chock full of Swiss francs!

“What’s happened? Did you submit your godmother to another blood-letting?”

Zwingli’s godmother had the reputation of being Basel’s highest taxpayer, a desirable acquaintance in a city of more than 400 multimillionaires, no matter what they looked like underneath their gilded apparel. I never knew her, but I was told that she was not only rich but attractive, though not without a proclivity for shady dealings of the sort that can never be proved when multimillionaires are concerned. This aunt of his had financed his de-pilarization, thus offering her services to science and bringing off another of the philanthropic achievements for which she was well known. We need only mention the pesticide DDT. But now, Zwingli said, it was all over with, and he screwed up his conquistador nose in fretful wrinkles. There wasn’t one Fränkli more to be had from that source, not even one Räppli! Fini ! When a millionaire snaps her purse shut, there’s no way in the world to get her to open it again except — money.

I always admired Zwingli. He was a genius. But he never really understood millionaires. I’m not so sure that my own understanding of them is the correct one, and I’m willing to wait until I can test it out on myself. But I had one advantage over Zwingli: I didn’t know a single millionaire. Count Kessler had at one time been one, and Mamú would, we were hoping, be one once again. So we can ignore these two personages. Hence I had an untrammeled perspective on such individuals who, if I understood correctly a lecture I heard in Cologne by the economic historian Professor von Wiese und Kaiserswaldau, were to be regarded as having the mental capacities of boyish pranksters. Later I would have the opportunity to show Zwingli that my economic theory, scraped up during my exposure to three different academic departments, was right on the mark.

Zwingli had earned all his dough in Cologne, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Paris, all of it en passant . The bulk of it came from an American art collector. Zwingli had given this man a few tips and taken him from one art dealer to another, and in Brussels was able at the last minute to dissuade him from taking a phony Cranach back across the Atlantic. When this Yankee boarded ship at Le Havre, he simply left his little Opel standing at the wharf. “Take it!” he shouted down to his Swiss interpreter, who acted without hesitation and later sold the vehicle in Barcelona using the same underhanded tactics as when he smuggled it across the border. I, who lack the courage — or am simply too proud — to sneak a pack of cigarettes across any border — I admired Zwingli.

He unpacked his gifts. Books, more books, and sheet music, still more books, and still more sheet music. Knowing my predilection for the enfants terribles of Church history, he presented me with an exquisite anthology of the Spanish mystics: Santa Teresa in an old, unannotated edition, causing me to give forth a full-throated “ Porra !” Beatrice’s only comment was, “ Buschibuëb !” And that was saying a lot.

Zwingli inspected our apartment and decided he wanted the two rooms looking out on the street. “ Bei Chrut und Uchrut ,” he swore, this place was just what he needed.

“For what? Are you going to stay on the island?”

“On the island, in Palma, and here with you. It’s not the snazziest address, this pirate’s street of yours, but enfin , it’ll do just fine as the germinal cell of the General Secretariat of my International Academy of Art History. Later we’ll move somewhere else.”

“Not a bordello? Professor Scheidegger has fixed you up so well for new mattress escapades that your General Secretariat will turn out to be the waiting room for what’s more like you: a School of Lust.”

No, said Zwingli. He would never touch a woman again. But he had something special for stick-in-the-mud Vigo. He showed me a briefcase, causing me to emit gurgles of pleasure. “Guanaco leather? Genuine? My guess is it cost 5000 pesetas.”

“300 francs. Llama, Zurich, Bahnhofstrasse. Since you’re a connoisseur, you can keep it. But it’s not the briefcase — it’s the contents that are important.”

This was the Zwingli of olden times talking, when he regarded women as sexless entities, apparatuses to be manipulated, objects to be placed on the shelf according to their beauty and practicality. He was charming, clever, generous. If necessary he’d give you the shirt off his back. But if the shirt turned Isabella-brown, it was all over with him.

This briefcase contained packets of herbal tea, blends for every age and sex, all bearing the Künzli trademark, and in addition the bearded pastor Künzli’s magnum opus Chrut und Unchrut . Zwingli was now frequenting all possible paths of rejuvenation. He no longer smoked. I’m always amazed when someone says, “No thanks, I don’t smoke.” He still had his expensive Chinese cigarette case, and as he passed it to us I was forced to say, “No thanks, unfortunately I’m still a non-smoker.” (But because my metabolism doesn’t absorb enough nicotine in our food, every once in a while I get an injection of nicotine. That explains the word “unfortunately”). Beatrice was allowed to keep the cigarette case.

Now reconciled in the most heartwarming fashion, brother and sister together drank some brew from their mountainous homeland. I stayed with wine, but at the risk of offending Zwingli I offered a toast to the famous philanthropic Swiss herbophile Künzli. Not that I meant any offense to that pious fellow, either. On the contrary, I have a high regard for the man as a man.. it’s just that I don’t like his tea. If all the theologians had given their attention to the flowers and the grasses instead of God, Christianity would never have gone to the dogs. To be a specialist in herbs, one must harbor an abundance of love for nature and its Creator; one must possess an uncomplicated mind, a willingness to serve one’s fellow man, a generosity of spirit, and humility. Humility above all, which can merge into genuine modesty. Perhaps one in a million clergymen goes off into the forest to collect herbs; the others prefer to stay in church. To this very day, I prefer wine to herbal tea, although I am willing to concede that when administered correctly, herbal tea can make just about anything disappear, beginning with gallstones and extending to evil thoughts. The mystic Albert Talhoff has very good reasons for lacing his tobacco with a pinch of Künzli tea. But he keeps his posological secrets to himself.

An hour later some workmen arrived. Plaster fell down from our walls. Our apartment echoed to the sounds of labor and hearty curses. Zwingli’s nail gave the commands. Everything was new, everything was nicely matched with everything else. Though he lacked a woman, Zwingli had culture. The desk, the bookcases, the filing cabinet, the divan that with a simple mechanism could be transformed into a pilarière —every item was from the Vienna Workshop and paid for in cash.

Yet another hour later more workmen arrived. More plaster fell from our walls, but this time they brought with them office machines for typing, calculating, copying. Plus one of those little, gaudily decorated strongboxes in Emmanuel style. Just the thing for my posthumous manuscripts! And everything paid for in cash.