Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

“And is your friend Silberstern now compiling his Roster of Musicians? If so, I’ll send in my subscription right away!”

“If Hitler hadn’t seized power over the German sleepyheads, the first volume, A — Adelfried, would already have been published. But now the editor is no longer au courant , Mamú. As it is, the emigrés are sleeping wherever and with whomever they can. And back in the Reich, this sort of thing is now regulated by the Reich Chamber of Intercourse, which issues its own pedigree lists.”

At this moment Calpurnia rushed hurriedly into the room with a telegram. The maid hadn’t become accustomed to the fact that messages are always urgent, even in the home of a millionaire, but that as soon as the messenger hands them over, these bits of news metamorphose into solemn communiqués concerning either access to new millions or harbingers of utter financial collapse. “Don’t hurry,” Mamú scolded her, but then she herself opened the telegram with alacrity — and Calpurnia lifted her swooning employer from the floor.

Vigoleis remained the single calm element in the tumult that arose over the unconscious woman. He preserved the dignity of big capital. At a wave of his hand, Jaime refilled his glass. It was a 1923 vintage.

As he was leaving the dining room he spied the telegram on the floor, picked it up and, contrary to his habits but in keeping with the spirit of the house, read the return address. “The Prince,” he murmured. “This is going to get very interesting.”

Some weeks later, or perhaps it was only days later, Mamú rode to the General’s Street and wheezed her way up the stairs to our apartment. It goes without saying that she was beside herself, that her cheeks were quivering, and that first of all she had to sit down. She had received a letter from Budapest, her old bad-weather headquarters. But before she set out to explain matters, she inquired whether our notions about friendship, which we had explained to her earlier in connection with the Mengelbergs’ duro, were just meaningless dinnertime chatter, or our true opinion.

I said to her: Mamú, true friendship can be tested only by money. If a friendship comes to an end because of money, then it never was a true friendship, never a so-called friendship based on virtue, never a Pythagorean friendship in the full sense of the term. Even a friendship between God and human beings can be destroyed by money… but at the moment, Mamú didn’t want to hear this. She had come, she said, not as the head of her Mother Church but as a soul in distress, on a matter that the old hags must never learn about. This information calmed me somewhat. It couldn’t be an insurmountable problem.

She wanted to know whether Beatrice still kept an account at her bank in Basel. Yes, a small amount for emergencies. Then came the fateful question: would Beatrice be willing to lend her this small amount, which could mean salvation for her at a time of her direst need?

With no further ado, Beatrice agreed. If Mamú was approaching us poor folk with such a request, her reasons must be so serious that she was side-stepping an appeal to the Scientist ladies, most of whom were as rich as Croesus.

Mamú, with tears in her eyes that gave heartwarming testimony to the caliber of our friendship, showed us the letter she had received from the Hungarian Pusta. “The Prince,” I thought. Surely it was her Prince who was the cause of her reaching out to us.

This time, her 80-year-old skirt-chasing brother-in-law hadn’t chased after one of his female serfs. Instead, he had gone for somebody else’s bank account by way of check forgery — a considerable sum. If they caught him, this ennobled geezer with muttonchops would wander off to the penitentiary, where he would finish his days on bread and water and bereft of little girls. Because the Danube Monarchy was now extinct, the prestige of his exalted name was at stake. Mamú needed money right away to hire a lawyer in Budapest. Her check was already on its way. Just think: off to jail at age eighty!

“Finally at eighty, Mamú! But be that as it might, Beatrice will be deciding the man’s fate. She loves Hungary. Her grandest memories of life at a castle are connected with the Colloredo-Mansfeld family.”

Those were Bohemians, Beatrice interjected calmly. She added that her account held only 1000 francs, as Mamú already knew. Mamú should decide.

This tiny sum — I’m using the diminutive now in its most disparaging sense — was at a savings bank in Basel, a minuscule inheritance that Beatrice put away for emergency purposes. As she so often told me, we could touch it only when the floodwaters were already up to our necks. Now Beatrice and I have different opinions about floods and other life-threatening emergencies. At times I have had the impression that the waters were not just up to our necks, but in our throats, whereas she, with her Indian tenacity, has acted like a beaver. So she never sent the crucial telegram to her academic brother in Basel, not even during our endura at the Clock Tower, not even in sight of the Deucalian Cliff. As a person who lives his life in extremis, I admired her concept of utmost emergency. And so I repressed the whole idea of the Basel bank account.

Our friendship with Mamú held fast. It was not empty tabletalk, nor was it mere academic philosophy. The telegram got sent. Mamú received the tusig Fränkli , the Budapest attorney was given his orders, and 24 hours later her Prince emerged from his hiding place — where in the meantime he had done some further damage, but this time only to a skirt. Mamú was hoping that before nine months were up she would have won her own lawsuit, and soon our rescue action would be repaid threefold. “Interest at usurious rates?” “No,” Mamú replied. “A small bonus for friendship’s sake.” She tapped her glass, and Jaime once again did as he was bidden.

Bobby, our seer from the Folkwang School, disapproved of this transaction. Our money was gone, he said. What a shame, considering what we might have used it for — maybe a little house in Valldemosa, where we could have lived together with Mamú.

Bobby was right. His microscopic eyes had penetrated through Mamú’s millions to discover the tiny point in her life that had remained totally dark and obscure. Still, I told him that as a double-dealer she was forever charming — that he mustn’t deny. And the Christian Science ladies were no doubt acting as her procurers.

“No doubt at all.”

“What a shame! That pious little circle always struck me as so real in its Christian social fakery as to be just as believable as the Nail from Christ’s Cross in the sacristy at the Valldemosa Charterhouse. But what it comes down to is the miracles it can perform.”

Vigoleis never became an anti-Christian, not even following this crushing experience with Mamú. After all, there are some decent Jews, too.

You can catch a mouse with a slice of bacon. And you can also catch a Captain and Baron von Martersteig from Baron von Richthofen’s squadron if the bacon, lean and mellow, is carved from noble German hogs and slathered on German sandwiches with a dollop of Düsseldorf mustard and some good German beer.

In the Bay of Palma a German steamer lay at anchor, a ship of the Woermann Line. But instead of letting loose a horde of tourists on the island, this ship had arrived at Mallorca with the special mission of luring people on board — German people. To be exact, all the Germans living here who were of an age to vote. The German colony was expected to say “Yes!” to the Führer in a secret ballot. As on a trip down the Rhine, a brass band on board presented the opportunity to link elbows, sing patriotic songs, and shed a nostalgic tear. Plus, as a personal reward from the Führer for voting “Yes,” you’d receive two sandwiches smeared with lard, beer on tap, and all the mustard you wanted. In order to place the voting process under the sovereignty of the Third Reich, the voters had to be taken out beyond the legal limit of Spanish waters. This meant a delightful Mediterranean excursion with kit and caboodle. A fanfare, the anchor chains rattled— Deutschland, Deutschland über alles …