Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Beatrice offered to assist the lady during her first days on the island, perhaps by looking in on her at noontime. Her French wouldn’t be of help at the local markets. Herr Silberstern was touched. He said, “Do you see? Was I wrong? My connections are all educated people!”

Beatrice gave careful instructions to the new housemaid. She must be prepared for all eventualities. She must always lock her door and exercise patience. This was to be only a transitional position — we had already made contact with a wealthy Catalan industrialist who was looking for a German domestic.

Just 24 hours later, things went worse than we had bargained for. The perfect lady from Berlin simply refused. Her relationship with the brass bed was limited to polishing the metal and shaking out and spreading the linens. She did not lie down on it. This led to more hand-wringing and bitter accusations, which degenerated into true vulgarity when Silberstern learned that instead of shopping at the open market, this cultivated lady made purchases at the Colmado Parisien because she could converse in the language. We didn’t own a bed, and so we weren’t able to take this Cinderella in as our guest. And there was still no reply from Barcelona. But the lady told us that she had experienced even worse humiliation in Germany. She wanted nothing more than to retake her son into her custody, but the Nazis wouldn’t let her. He was, she explained, somewhat feebleminded, and he would probably be killed.

The Catalan industrialist came in person on his own yacht to Mallorca to fetch his German domestic. We were delighted. Silberstern, close to despair, complained that once again everything had gone wrong. Everything!

Later we received a few letters from the lady. The Costa Brava was heaven on earth for her, she wrote, but she could never be happy while her son remained in Germany. Her Catalan employer offered to use his personal influence, but she rejected that idea. Her plan was to go back to Berlin herself.

One year later she wrote us a grateful note from Paris, where she was on her way to Germany. Her child had disappeared, and she was going to look for him. Then she, too, disappeared. No doubt she was setting out on the same journey as her child, like the millions of children of Israel.

If stones might ever be brought to tears, Silbersterns’ daily lamentations could have done the job. His situation worsened. After his experience with the perfect lady, I suggested that he take in a young man as his valet. But just a few weeks later this fellow, too, was gone. The boy understood a few words of German, having worked for a time in Germany in the tropical fruit business like so many other Mallorquins. Silberstern tried training his “servant,” as he called Jaime, in the business of snagging women. For this purpose Jaime had the use of a special bank account. But the birds he caught never ended up on his master’s perch; the birdman himself listened to their chirpings in his own little spare room. It came to blows. Once again I insisted: find someone to marry! Find a German woman, if you will, but this time one who hails from circles that understand the true ways of the world.

“An artist?”

“An artist!”

“Like Rahel Mengelberg?”

“At least somebody extra-special like her.”

“Well then, take dictation…”

The slaughter of Jews in Germany was proceeding apace, and so, in response to our new advertisement, this one aimed squarely at artist types. We received hundreds of applications. My table groaned under the weight of impoverished non-Aryan art. Prominent names came into view. Amid the unrelenting deluge, drowning souls were reaching out for Silberstern as a life-preserver. My intention was once again to extract a human being from hell at my client’s expense and, once she was in Spain, to see to it that she got a decent roof over her head. But at the same time, this artist would have to be able to put the lecherous millionaire in his place. It took all my oratorical skills to dissuade horny Adelfried from going after a few dozen juicy prospects. I gave prime attention to a middle-aged woman who worked in films. I had a certain weakness for this type ever since I had contact with Victor E. van Vriesland’s attractive film agent, though otherwise I knew nothing at all about movies and movie-making. I will never understand movies, but then again, over my lifetime I have seen perhaps 25 films in all.

This was to be the one. She was so famous that she didn’t have to submit a photo — her face was familiar from the postcards you could buy at all the cinemas. As the divorced wife of an even more famous film director, she was in all respects savvy, and hence just the person I needed for this merry prank of mine, which was also an attempt to save a doomed soul. At first, Silberstern wouldn’t have any of it, but then I flattered his vanity by telling him that he would soon be in all the newspapers of Spain, later of the whole world, for letting this particular star hover above his brass bedstead. Surely he was aware from his experience in selling wines, I said, that women with a bouquet like hers were immune to the aging process. As a film star, she had mastered the art of camouflage. Even her hands, those tell-tale fossils of maturing feminity, could surely be deceptive. “Shall we write?”

“Take dictation…!” Herr Silberstern was already imagining himself in the role of a celebrated Silver Star. His imbecilic egotism, constantly in conflict with his doltishness, made him salivate at the thought of winning this precious booty. He asked whether I thought she would also keep his apartment clean. What she would keep scrupulously clean, I thought to myself, was his bed, and she would know how to clean him out in other ways, too.

It wasn’t easy to compose a letter to a movie star, but I finally wrote one in such a way that neither the undersigned nor the recipient would notice how they were both being misused. In retrospect I am just as proud of this epistolary accomplishment as I am of my Christian missive to Zwingli’s millionaire aunt in Basel.

Her reply was encouraging. She even exceeded expectations by offering to travel to Palma and, following a decent probationary interval, giving her hand in marriage to Mr. Silberstern. Among their mutual acquaintances, it turned out, was Silberstern’s brother, the Privy Councilor. She didn’t send her photo, but requested one of her future breadwinner — causing me to take fright, though not because this might impair discretion, which she guaranteed. Silberstern gathered up all the pictures that had ever been taken of his not very attractive person during a life of wining and womanizing. Like the man himself, the pictures spoke volumes, and so we would have to be on our guard. If he sent her one, we would never again hear from this artist, whose own ulterior motives were in any case unclear to me. In order to escape the underworld, surely she had no need of a “star” such as this one. Heaven itself, whose existence I constantly doubt and decry, suddenly provided me with the means to get back at Vigoleis’ exploiter and cost him a wad of money. “A cavalier,” I told him as I handed him back his photos, “would never send his picture to a lady of her standing. He would send himself.”

Was I crazy, he asked? Was I joking? If he went back to the Reich they would kill him on the spot. No, he would send the photos — all of them. “Take dictation!”

A gentleman like him, a lady like her, and an engagement that would attract the attention of the whole world—“Mr. Stern, that’s why the Dear Lord created free Switzerland, the city of Zurich, and the Stork Hotel. But let’s ask Beatrice how you call the hotel in French. That’ll make it sound more cosmopolitan. The stork is, to be sure, a cosmopolitan bird, but there’s something maternal about it that we want to avoid. The ‘Baur au Lac’ is out of the question — as an old capitalist you wouldn’t need a place like that. Let me write her a few lines with my suggestion.”