Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Vigoleis never became an anti-Semite, not even during this gut-wrenching moment. After all, there are some decent Christians, too.

When the ladies of Christian Science closed their New Testaments, my hour had arrived, the time for me to move my chair next to Mamú’s and tell her stories from the Old Testament. The Scientists knew that I had an obscure relationship with a quirky fellow named Silberstern, who on the night of the Nazi takeover had almost lost his head — or at least his silverware. They also knew that Mamú preferred the Old Testament to the New, which was why she liked to listen to the tales spun by this particular Jacob. And finally, they knew that Mamú herself would never be able to pass the Aryan blood test, and that hence the contested baking-powder millions, despite their Royal camouflage, were dirty Jewish millions, whereas they themselves were devoted entirely to the New Testament, praying for the Führer like my mother, but in their own fashion and in their own languages, none of which, oddly enough, was German. Mamú was Jewish — and that explains her increasing fear of this bible-thumping gang. Bobby had presumed as much all along, while I was taken in by the “Royal” in the baking-powder logo. For the many-blooded Swiss citizen Beatrice, this aspect of things was no problem at all.

Shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, Mamú fled the island under the efficiently organized protection of the American Consulate. But she still was in panic at the lethal threat posed to any Jew by the zealots of the Rome-Berlin-Burgos axis. Her fears were well founded. Several of the Christian Science dames had pinned to their blouses the emblem of the Holy War, the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, next to the swastika. This made them into the hyenas of a movement that would seek to annihilate their own organization. We said, “Mamú, find yourself a ship, the very next ship. Tomorrow might be too late. Jewish, and a millionaire…” She was even afraid of her German nanny, who had turned into a Nazi.

But she had to listen to my Old-Testament stories with all of their chapters and verses, insofar as Silberstern made manifest their eternally human significance. I held back nothing. Because Mamú’s monthly checks were still arriving, she rewarded my palate for the things she was hearing from my loose tongue. We had the time of our lives together. She had praise for my triumph over the Third Reich, yet not enough praise to nab me a position as legal counsel in her very private suit against the Royal Powder Bakers. Her attorney in New York, she said, was doing excellent work. He had already made great strides and had the whole case under his expert care. She read me long letters from this lawyer who talked of “extreme importance”—so extreme that I prophesied that she would soon be a thousand times richer than all Silver Stars put together.

I earned a dish of kangaroo meat by recounting for her a chronique scandaleuse from the international world of music, one that our walking Who’s Sleeping With Whom? expert revealed to Carel and Rahel Mengelberg as soon as they first entered our bible-paper room where, as fate would have it, I was taking dictation.

Carel Mengelberg, no prudish milquetoast but a world-class musician who knows that where you sing best is where you will settle down, since that’s where your voice will be all the fuller and purer — Carel was astounded at all the goings-on inside his own artistic guild. “What? She with him, and he with her…?!” “You can take my word for it,” said Silberstern, taking conceited pleasure in divulging some improbable or even impossible mingling of personalities, replete with when and where and with what consequences. “But now listen to this, ladies and gentlemen. What might have happened — I say might have happened — if this or that personality, or that time instead of some other time, or at that place rather than some other place…” He presented us with a string of Waterloo hypotheticals, the kind of “what if” questions that are considered moot only by people who don’t realize that history actually consists of what doesn’t really happen. In brief, without sins committed against the Sixth Commandment there would be no philharmonic enchantment for the masses. And when Carel swore to my pot-bellied client with a handshake that he was an authentic Mengelberg, no doubt about it, a Mengelberg from the Mengelberg family, nephew of de groote Willem , Silberstern said, “Excellent! I can get you an angashement at the Trocadero. First harp: Madame Rahel. The best of the best!”

Poor Mengelberg, genuine or not. He had arrived with only a dilapidated rucksack, intending to take a few hikes with his Rahel on the Golden Island, but now — conductor at the Trocadero! A lifetime position! Success and glory! Envious colleagues, an envious Uncle Willem! And he came without a suit of tails, with no money except one silver duro. Herr Silberstern promised to betake himself immediately to the nightclub to make the contractual arrangements.

When he actually left after three hours, the Mengelbergs straightaway sank down on Nina’s bed, exhausted. Was it conceivable that ordinary people imagined such hanky-panky going on behind the musical scenes, inside the prompters’ boxes and in the orchestra pits? They had remotely heard of such things — but were they really true? Was Willem Mengelberg in actuality a musically camouflaged “Wilhelm”? Was Abendroth a Schnabel, and was Schnabel an Edwin Fischer? I felt it necessary to interrupt such musings by announcing that they must send a registered letter to Carel’s sister in San Cugat del Vallés, asking her to send him his tails by express, for our unlucky Star was at this very hour wending his way up the incline towards El Terreno, where the all-powerful owner of the Trocadero lived.

Carel’s tails arrived in a mangled package. His sister Leentje — she, too, a genuine Mengelberg, unless we can get confused by Mr. Silberstern’s behind-the-scenes magic — hadn’t been living long enough in Spain to know how to send a suit of tails from Barcelona to Palma in such a way as to prevent it from running away by itself, resulting in a fall, or at least in a late delivery. And to prevent the little black armband from getting lost in transit. Happily, Don Matías, still observing his year of mourning, felt honored to lend the famous Dutch maestro his own black band for the occasion. As always several steps ahead of current events, I interpreted this gesture as a preliminary form of political collaboration: Why shouldn’t Carel Mengelberg create a musical setting of “Thank God’s Hymn to Freedom”? And Rahel, as swarthy as Rabindranath — why shouldn’t she pluck her lyre in the wake of the Freedom March? And then: Carel as Director of the Tegucigalpa State Opera!

“Easy, there!” said Mengelberg’s new impresario Silberstern. First we would have to make sure that the angkashemang at the bar was in perfect order, with 500 pesetas as a beginning wage for the conductor — harp included. With that they could get by quite well on Mallorca, he said, even as an “authenticious” Mengelberg. Beatrice, quizzed by four eyes at once, confirmed this.

So now Silberstern was the impresario for the composer and conductor Mengelberg, who just recently had made his mark leading the 110-man-strong Banda Municipal de Barcelona with the world premiere of his musical sketch “Catalunya Renaixent” in the Palacio de Bellas Artes . The Mallorcan debut was an event that I described in detail to Mamú, with the appropriate enumeration of orchestra personnel, instrumental desk arrangement, and who slept with whom. I portrayed for her the puffed-up impresario’s darting about with flying coattails (I’m exaggerating, of course — coattails don’t exist any more. Besides, to scrimp on the cost of fabric Silberstein kept his jackets tailless), and his dialogues with the boss of the Trocadero, who naturally had never heard the name of Mengelberg. According to the nightclub manager, if this Don Carlos was such a celebrity in the world of nightclub combos, and if Doña Raquel could slam the kettledrums, then let them come, by all means, and try things out with his ensemble.