Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Don Darío listened intently to my jailhouse recollections, but, me cago en Dios ! What did that have to do with that money lady up in Basel? Zwingli, too, knit his brow as if to say, “What’s all this supposed to mean?” My symbolic discourse was apparently not having the desired effect, so I would have to make things clearer. “Are you suggesting,” Zwingli said, “that the way to turn on the money spigot is to start by telling sad childhood stories and get the tears flowing?”

“Precisely! A criminal and a millionaire, they both have consciences chock full of guilt, and they can only be assuaged by tearful stories. Do you want proof? Lift up thy pen, Zwingli Oekolampadius, and take dictation!”

I dictated a letter to his godmother. Christmas was just around the corner, so I had it easy. Our little tree served as Christian inspiration for this un-Christian scheme of mine. It took me but one line to neutralize the good lady’s common sense. In the remainder of the letter, several pages long, I appealed directly to her heart, and from that organ to the complex of glands located in the corners of her eyes. I tore poor little infants from their mother’s breasts, banished young children from their homes, and laid father and mother in their cold, cold grave. My letter was a hit, and that very evening it got sent off to Basel’s highest taxpayer.

Don Darío, for whom we translated every word, dangled his pince-nez. He didn’t know any Swiss millionaires, he said, but to wangle money from a Spanish one you’d have to go at him with putas and curas or — and he was thinking mainly of his arch-enemy Juan March — with a Toledo blade. I told him that Basel was a different kind of place, and I offered him a bet: ten Fränkli per tear, plus a sixfold security surcharge for a guilty conscience — just not for my own, of course.

I calculated just when the money transfer would arrive in Palma. On the appointed day, after summoning Don Darío, all four of us went to the post office, and — nothing! I had lost the bet, and I could have strangled old man Többen, thereby ensuring myself free bed and board for the rest of my life. This miserable day was a Saturday.

On the following Monday a transfer of 2000 francs arrived at the Banca March. I’ll let my reader figure out how many tears were shed in Basel. I myself felt two tears moisten my eyes, tears of pride and gratitude for my genius. I experience such elation only upon success with an invention or a poem, or upon reaching a satisfying interpretation of an obscure passage of prose — as with Pascoaes, for example.

Zwingli offered me half of the transferred sum. But in his eyes I could see that he, too, was now developing an economic theory by imagining that I wouldn’t accept any of this shameful booty. And he was right. “Thanks anyway!” I mentioned that I, too, was banking on the largesse of a millionaire: Mamú of the Royal Baking Powder Trust.

One week after this remarkable conquest of big capital, Zwingli fell ill with mysterious symptoms. Was it remote-control poisoning from his godmother’s chemical laboratories? From Pilar’s witch’s kitchen? Dr. Solivellas calmly announced: typhus.

There you go again! You’re not listening!” cried my mooching client, my cheapskate gadfly. “If you were my employee I would have fired you long ago! Repeat what I just told you!”

Unfortunately I wasn’t Mr. Silberstern’s employee, for if I was, he would have sent me packing, and I would have been forever rid of the miserly sadist. But I remained in his service nevertheless, as the unpaid dupe of a master who, as it says in Mamú’s Bible, doth conceal the ways of the Almighty. And why didn’t Mr. Silberstern just sack me? Hadn’t he noticed that I wrote things for other people for nothing, created inventions for nothing, and plied my very existence for nothing? Vigoleis was the greatest chump who ever lived on the island of Mallorca. And that’s how he has found his way into these pages.

I had in fact turned a deaf ear to what Mr. Silberstern, the man I sometimes absent-mindedly called Mr. Stern, was yelling at me during our businesslike promenade. My thoughts were taking me much deeper, down into the Tombs of the Huns in my home town.

Silberstern had sued the Third Reich for hundreds of thousands, his entire refugee fortune, amounting to half a million rust-proof Hitlerian marks. Converted into pesetas, my Adelfried was a solid millionaire, albeit a have-not compared to Zwingli’s godmother, though such comparisons can be misleading. The only difficulty was that he had lost his legal suit. His lawyers were advising him to appeal, and Mr. Silberstern, putting his thumbs under his armpits, said to me, “Take dictation!”

I wrote, filling page after page with Silberstern’s version of legalese. “You want three copies of everything?” I asked. I was given to understand that the appropriate technical expression was “in triplicate”; that, secondly, since I had no comprehension of business protocol, I should refrain from asking such stupid questions; and that, thirdly, he had three legal advisors who were representing him in his suit against the Reich: his Jewish brother, the one with the two doctorates; an Aryan defense lawyer (a non-doctor); and a proxy counsel-attorney in Zurich (Dr. jur.) who was simply a Swiss and, to judge by his letters, had no particular interest in Silberstern’s case. “Hopeless,” I thought, but I took dictation anyway.

The correspondence ballooned. The Swiss attorney was given less and less to chew on, because certain facts were being withheld from him. In a surprisingly polite note he withdrew from the case. Besides, he was getting hot under the collar, as I found out later: he also had Aryan clients inside the Reich. His quitting meant less work for me.

What got written back and forth was utter nonsense, exceeded in its absurdity only by the Reich in whose baleful name all of this had to be put on paper. I told this to my boss, who then got upset and told me to keep my mouth shut. “The cobbler must stick to his last!” he said, and my “last” was making poems. “And yours is screwing whores,” I thought, but kept this to myself and went on writing.

The result of my legal assistance was a letter from his Aryan attorney telling Silberstern that his case had received expedited attention — that is to say, it was denied. All was lost, with further appeal not only unnecessary but dangerous. Silberstern, a traveling wine merchant who had often been thrown out of the country and often snuck back in, was bursting with rage. But he said, “Take dictation! Justice is justice! I intend to appeal to the court of last resort!”

The last resort was, of course, the Führer . And so I wrote, “My dear Führer !” Silberstern scolded me, but then went on dictating. Letters, telegrams — there must have been much gleeful rubbing of hands in the Palma post office and no doubt also at the Reichspost . The litigant went on twiddling his thumbs, Vigoleis went on typing, and Beatrice went on threatening divorce if this farce with the lecher didn’t come to a halt soon. But this was only the beginning. I learned the vocabulary of jurisprudence and, by training a philologist, I soon realized that the appearance and sound of a specific word may not have a specific thought behind it, and that a specific thought may be lacking a corresponding referent in the real world, but also that you can juggle all three of these variables and still be left with something in your hand. This “something” was sometimes Silberstern’s non-Aryan condition humaine , at other times his money, and finally the blind spot in his eyes, so often bloodshot with fury. As a Jew, I told him, he was long since scheduled to perish, but now he was asking me to write letters again and again to his executioners. “Justice is justice” was all that this modern Michael Kohlhaas could say in reply.