Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Don’t make fun of foreigners’ infirmities. This maxim holds equally for Spaniards and Americans. Don Darío was incensed when he saw the American imitating his leve cojera as if he had rehearsed it down to the finest detail— caramba ! The American was incensed when he saw the Spaniard imitating his “slight limp” as if he had rehearsed it down to the finest detail. “Damnation!” The two impersonators met in the middle of the foyer, facing each other at the static points they had in common. All the rest was a flurry of curses, each making use of a language that was incomprehensible to the other, just as each had made use of his respective language to mock the other’s physical impairment.

The hotel’s reputation was now at stake, as well as the lives of the two game cocks. But salvation arrived at just the right moment, in the form of a gigantic man with crimson complexion, the eyes of a Kalmuk, a scraggly beard, and the paws of a longshoreman. This man stepped between the two combatants. With his right hand he grabbed the Spaniard, with his left the American. But instead of banging their heads together, which they actually deserved, he held them far apart and let them dangle in the air until he finished his discurso in Spanish and his speech in English. As cultured gentlemen, the both of them should be ashamed of themselves, he told them. Weren’t they both lame enough as a result of their common affliction? This was spoken wisely; a philosopher wouldn’t have handled the situation any more effectively — except perhaps Count Keyserling, whose savvy about human nature exceeded even that of Kessler with his Peoples and Fatherlands . Kessler would have let the two disputants mow each other down with their good legs. Indeed, he wouldn’t even have looked up from his manuscript if he had been working on his memoirs in the foyer of the Príncipe. Keyserling was different. He felt it was his obligation to reconcile these representatives of the Old and the New World, a deed that he in fact accomplished, as we have just seen. The scales immediately fell from the eyes of the Spaniard and the American. Getting sight of each other’s bum legs, they suddenly realized that they were both cripples. Keyserling, the founder of the School of Wisdom, had of course noticed this right away, and immediately caught scent of the bottle of wine that would be his reward for concluding the peace treaty.

The philosopher returned to his own hotel in a light-hearted mood, still grinning at the victory he had won on General Barceló Street, in the apartment of a nameless emigré, over his old schoolmate Harry Kessler. The man from Darmstadt had put the Weimaraner against the wall, and Harry had yielded to Hermann. “A gentleman’s agreement” is how the philosopher characterized the détente they had reached. The diplomat saw it differently: it was pure swindle, he said. A thousand pardons, but it was nothing but fraud.

Count Hermann Keyserling may have been mistaken about Count Kessler, but not about the limping Don Darío. The latter ordered for a him a bottle of wine and a plate of roast turkey.

Zwingli loved his godmother very much, and that is why he begged money from her even at times when he didn’t really need any. Psychologically speaking, this was a perfectly correct behavior. When someone’s godmother is a millionaire and he doesn’t keep asking her for more, that someone will soon come under suspicion of being either hypocritical or a legacy-hunter. Most cases of disinheritance can be traced to clumsy manners on the part of the potential heir. Excessive modesty awakens suspicion. Regular minor blood-lettings, coupled with the wholesale transfusions that become necessary from time to time, are the only way to win the heart of the potential deceased, especially when the potential beneficiary is aware that he can’t be counted among the heirs who simply drop out of the sky post mortem. This was the sunny side of Zwingli’s case. The side turned away from the sun had to do with certain events that still today can make half a dozen faces in Switzerland turn to stone as soon as anyone starts talking about them, even merely as elements in a historical narrative. Every family has its shady spots, and it was by reaching into this foggy, tenebrous realm that Zwingli made the sparks fly. And then one thing led to another.

On a particular fateful day he again put the bite on his godmother in a letter to Switzerland. I’m calling this day a fateful one because the tiny cross that you find on some old calendars indicating “good for bloodletting” had apparently been misplaced, astrologically speaking. The result: Zwingli received a registered letter written by someone else on his godmother’s behalf, in German but with numerous offenses against the grammatical and orthographical rules — a type of gaucherie that I suppose a millionaire can easily afford, though I myself am wont to let Wustmann off his leash for much pettier misdemeanors. Mais enfin , the letter’s message was clear. Zwingli cussed loudly in all of the languages at his disposal. His Lexicon of Invective came through brilliantly on this occasion, but the Swiss Idiotikon , which in this case was being virtually thrown at him, was not a book that he could simply ignore. I read the letter. With my mystical intuitions, which can also be brought to bear on financial matters, I immediately realized the ramifications of this handwritten ukase, a document that seemed to be a harbinger of the Last Will and Testament that would someday arrive.

Zwingli had lost a battle. The power residing in his pinky nail was thwarted. What was to be done?

I elucidated for him my theory of how to keep other people’s property in your own pocket, that is, the concept of capitalism as midwife-toad. It was easy for me to develop such ideas, considering that I was too smart to fall for Communism and too stupid to follow Marx. I simply relied on the teachings of von Wiese und Kaiserswaldau on the one hand, and Heinrich Többen, the Münster prison warden, on the other.

On one occasion, in the amphitheater of his institution, Professor Többen brought forth for ostensibly educational purposes a certain thug who had several murders, manslaughters, confidence swindles, and what all on his conscience. The corpulent professor, who could turn loquacious in the presence of criminals and who had a talent for displaying his monsters with the determined shrewdness of an elephant driver, brought his patient to tears by recounting the fellow’s childhood. The murderer wept the biggest teardrops I have ever seen. Then he pointed to an object now circulating around the auditorium: a metal spoon that he had deliberately swallowed in order to be admitted to the institution. “I’ll never do that again!” he sobbed, and it was only the older students in the audience who realized that he was talking about the spoon, not about his murders and manslaughters. In front of me a female student started sobbing — the young man’s father and mother long since lay in their cold, cold grave. Többen’s romantic narrative had done the trick.

An older student gave her a poke in the ribs: “Get a hold of yourself! If Többen sees you, you’ll be out of here in no time!” The professor didn’t see her, but the girl was immediately served notice by a higher authority. The criminal himself interrupted his Papa’s lecture, announcing that the professor did not permit emotional outbursts in the audience. The only person here who was allowed to weep was he himself, the serial murderer. Whereupon the professor called out to the prison guard that the prisoner claimed to know more than he himself; this was the last time he would bring this guy in for an educational demonstration. But the female student still received a serious reprimand when the swallowed spoon reached her; she lifted it with her fingertips and quickly passed it on. Többen interpreted this finger gesture as a criticism of the sanitary precautions taken in his “laboratory,” an establishment recognized throughout Germany as exemplary in every way. So at least one suspect who didn’t pass through Többen’s hands could be classified as small fry.