Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

This brought the lecher to his knees. Now all he did was whine. Was he speaking words in Hebrew? In any case, he presented the image of misery, and this made me feel sorry once again for the rogue. What else could I do for him, I asked. Silberstern squirmed out of his agony. New possibilities seemed to be glistening in his greedy, sex-mad eyes. “Something in writing,” he said. “Write down a few lines to the patrona , asking her to give me credit, a chit good for making a switch — for the next time.”

I prepared a document on azure-tinted notepaper. It was lightly perfumed, from which you may deduce that I raided Kessler’s stock. It was the lateness of the hour and the bizarre nature of the situation that emboldened me to commit this larceny, for otherwise I have the deepest respect for other people’s property. Silberstern, duly informed of the fact that his whoremongering ukase was written on paper hand-drawn by Gaspard Maillol, set off proudly for the city. There is nothing like a sense of justice accomplished to lift the spirits of a person who feels that the world is out of joint. And if that person has it in writing, on world-class hand-drawn paper… Months later Silberstern showed the document to our friend Bobby from the Folkwang School. He kept it in a special folder marked “Complicated.” He had displayed it to the madam, and wiped clean the affûtage on that very same evening with a two peseta payoff. He was holding on to the document because it was written on a real count’s personal stationery. And now he insisted on meeting the count in person. “Watch out,” Bobby said. “This guy is worse than a ferret.”

A few weeks went by, and finally the first sign of life arrived from Nina. And with it, I’m pained to say, came a bad omen. It was a telegram from Casablanca, where the blonde Rhenish maiden, now with her hair dyed just a little too black, was waiting in a ritzy-sounding hotel for the transfer of a considerable sum that would pay her hotel bill and her passage back to Mallorca. It was unthinkable, Silberstern said, that he would send her the money. He had other means of forcing his doll to return to him. Well and good, I replied, but why should he be wringing his hands? He should go ahead with his “other means.” But he oughtn’t to be surprised if Nina starts playing her trumps. “That tizzy? What do you mean, trumps? She can’t even get her humps unless I pay for them!”

A single hint at possible intervention by the German Consulate General was sufficient to clear up this minor matter. For a few thousand pesetas, a miserly millionaire of the Silberstern ilk could be spared the guillotine. He received a grateful reply from the luxury Estoril spa in Portugal, saying she would be arriving soon via Marrakesh. “1000 kisses, Nina.”

I explained to my client, who was now in the throes of yet another inner crisis, that the love bestowed by all first-rate females had its own special geography. He was making the mistake, I said, of drawing lines on the map simply as the crow flies. Nina was obviously a migratory bird with many separate breeding grounds and a deficient homing instinct. Patience!

On Mallorca anybody could be a count, a doctor, a professor, a best-selling writer or a neglected painter. A tall guy with the hairy legs of a jockey could present himself as the son-in-law of Franz von Papen’s equestrian groom. A grande dame could live there on a minuscule pension, the same lady I was in the habit of entertaining with my pidgin-English tirades against the Führer -Pope Axis, quoting from books I had been sent from Amsterdam by Het Vaderland for review — some of them quite intelligent books, by the way. The lady smiled often, feeling flattered in her maternal solicitude. She soon knew by heart lines from the writings of Prince Hubertus zu Löwenstein, Wertheim, and Freudenberg. And we should just imagine, she added, all the great things her intelligent son was going to write…

Just as people on our island were able to maintain their various personalities, in similar fashion the men of Marrakesh inside their tents, where Nina was submitting to them on beautifully woven carpets, were no doubt all quite authentic. Surely they were all genuine sheikhs, and instead of offering her stockings from some Cologne bargain basement, they were favoring her with spikenard and saffran, precious incense, gold and silver trinkets, and for Widow Jensen, a stud camel in place of a puny goat. In return, Nina was presenting them what she received from her Creator: a pair of thighs like marble columns set upon golden pedestals; her sweet palate; and her breasts, which were like watering-troughs for the divinities. These sheikhs, descendants of Old-Testament power and glory, were naturally more skilled than Katrinchen’s Spaniards at the Clock Tower. But a woman who has once shared the sack with a genuine sheikh could never be persuaded, for all the wealth of the world, to return to Silberstern’s brass bedstead. Certainly not for a pair of cheap hosiery.

Back in Palma, once again ensconced in her detested master’s living quarters, this Shulamite from the left bank of the Rhine had nothing on her mind except dancing. And soon enough she was doing just that at the “Trocadero,” the just-completed, most lavish dance hall in the city, where a short time later an authentic Mengelberg would wield his baton in front of a combo made up of genuine gypsies, plus the arpeggios of a genuine Rahel. Dancing, dancing! This was all that Nina wanted to do — but never with the repulsive Silberstern, who in any case wouldn’t be up to it.

A number of Spanish suitors lay at her feet. They gave her their excited piropos and made tempting offers. She allowed one of them to come close to her enchanting presence: this was a wealthy, handsome young fellow, and she gave him the key to her belt. He owned an elegant piso , a yacht, and a greyhound upon which Silberstern, a great fan of the dog races, once placed a winning bet. Instead of setting up shop with Adelfredo on Palma’s market square, where neither of them could manage a word of Spanish, she preferred to amble about in the company of her señorito , thereby attracting the glances of so many other señoritos that the young man decided to abduct her. This rapto occurred in broad daylight, within sight of the brother of a twice-doctored German attorney — an indication that it is not always sufficient to have a powerful brother. Once again Silberstern came running to Barceló Street. This Nina was his Nina, he insisted. It was he who had brought her back. It was he who had busied himself with her clothing — not in the sense of un-clothing, to be sure, since things had not yet returned to the point of “racial defilement.” It was he who was feeding her, and still he had to employ a maid. And what thanks was he getting? She was shacking up with a Spaniard.

Calm yourself, I said. I’ll get her back for you. It would cost him a few of his crummy pesetas — not for snatching her away from her beau, which I could bring about at my own expense by means of a simple telephone call to the Spaniard. No, the real expense would be for her de-pilarization, for now his Nina was surely beschmettet from head to toe.

“Be-what?

“ Beschmettet . It’s a Dutchism I’ve learned, and it has something do with syphilis. We must face the facts directly.”

Nina was gone for a whole month. Then a letter of hers arrived whose dreadful contents were mitigated only by the touchingly juvenile railroad-track German in which it was written. The señorito was holding her captive at his finca . He was a sadist, and he, too, was syphilitic. Adelfried could have her back, unconditionally, if only he would rescue her from the claws of this Spanish monster.