Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Starting weeks in advance, the German Consul had sent his agents from house to house passing out leaflets: German Man! German Woman!

I was approached by a cabinet maker from the German Labor Force, an expert carpenter who oughtn’t to have degraded himself by espousing a movement he deemed ennobling. He reminded me of my patriotic duty. On Sunday at eight the steamer would sail out to sea. It was the Consul’s wish to have the entire colony participate at the ballot box. We had an altercation concerning God, King, Führer , and Fatherland. It was all balderdash, I said, adding that I was just a human being like anybody else, but also that I had made construction plans for a desk, which I would like to show him so he could custom-build it for me. The craftsman explained that he was visiting me as an emissary of German culture, and if I didn’t have it in my heart to comply, then perhaps my stomach might think otherwise — two sandwiches, sliced ham, beer, and mustard from the center of my own homeland, Düsseldorf! Now wasn’t that something? “It says everything” I replied. Take the mustard, for example: I don’t like it — too hot for me. The carpenter departed murmuring something about trying things a different way. I yelled after him, “Slabs of bacon for the onboard Frühschoppen !” I never was a fan of the German custom of Frühschoppen . At noon I met up with Martersteig.

“Hey there, it’s you again! Vigoleis with a V as in Virginia .”

“And my captain isn’t confronting the enemy? How are your monkeys? All ready for combat?”

He wasn’t fleeing from Graves, and his book was almost finished. But, he said, that should not be an issue between us. I bowed, and he went on, saying that he had errands to do in the city, but then tomorrow — surely I knew? — the big sailing trip!

Sailing trip? Surely he didn’t mean to say that he was falling for that voting fraud? His reply: he had always known that I wasn’t a great strategist. He was of course going to cast his vote, a vote in solidarity with the entire German colony, which was going to vote unanimously with “No”—including the Consul, and including Vigoleis.

“Great heavens, man! Have you lost your senses? Are you fixed on setting a new record for crash landings? Here I was thinking that one such escapade would be enough in the life of a German hero. The Order Pour le Mérite never gets pinned twice on the same breast.”

“Sandwiches with bacon, German beer on tap! Doesn’t that say something?”

“You bet, it tells me everything. And more than everything, if such a thing is possible. Tomorrow your entire army of apes, living now for years as starving conscripts, will get betrayed for a mess of wurst, and Captain von Martersteig will be signing his own discharge papers. A dollop of mustard will put a seal on the transaction. Monkeys — dis- missed! ”

At the Alhambra we drank an anise from Buñola, and parted as friends. It was all a joke, he said. He just wanted to see me hit the ceiling when talking about the Nazi gang that was out to take over our island. Why, among the Germans on Mallorca the two of us were already something like old gentry.

Early on Führer Sunday the vote-scrounging carpenter rang our bell, making me leap up from our newspaper pallet. It was half-past seven, which is early for a night-owl. He said he had brought a taxi to pick up any stragglers, in the name of the Consul. Quick — everybody else was ready to go! Herr von Martersteig, too? Yes, of course. It was going to be fine weather. The kids had little flags and balloons. I mustn’t miss out on the fun.

“Kindly give the Consul greetings from his best Führer , and tell him that I don’t want to get in the way of his other Führer . And when you have some time, come on back and we’ll talk about making my desk. So long!”

The steamer left port without the island’s best Führer . On board there was singing and dancing, balloting, elbow-linking, flirting, drinking, and a spreading of mustard on sandwiches. Porpoises followed in the ship’s wake, and seagulls accompanied the floating ballot booth, where the Consul was in charge. And true enough, he hadn’t gone wrong with his colony. The Führer emerged from the ballot-box unanimously victorious. After all, it was the Führer himself the voters had to thank for being allowed to vote on German soil in the middle of the Mediterranean while singing and dancing, gobbling sandwiches, guzzling beer, and passing gossip. The sea resounded with shouts of “Heil!” as the sun sent down its stinging rays. God lets the sun shine, they say, on the just and the unjust. But also on crazy people. Captain von Martersteig was pleased to let it shine on his gouty leg.

Toward the end of the trip — they were approaching the pier, the mustard was all gone, the balloons were wrinkled or busted, the beer dregs were but shallow pools in the steins — the Consul rose to make another speech. He thanked all of them for their loyalty to the Führer , to the Reich, to the Homeland. And he requested permission to request a small fee for the voyage, 13 pesetas per person; those on board were asked to consider that a steamboat like this one was, after all, expensive. The wealthier voters, those who were willing to give the Führer not only their love but their money, paid up, if a little reluctantly. The others were thinking, “Damn it all, we’ve just got stuck again!” But no one dared to utter a word of protest. A human life can be quickly tossed overboard and eaten up by the sharks.

For all with ears to hear, Captain von Martersteig told the story of the nautical flimflam: 13 pesetas, just think of it, for that money he could have ordered a few complete meals in a decent fonda . Polishing his monocle with a piece of onion skin, he added angrily that as far as the ballot-box was concerned, he had no idea how the others voted, but he had voted “No” and it still came out as “Yes.” Was such a thing possible? A ballot mutating inside the box?

I told him I thought this was quite possible, considering that the Führer was the very image of his Creator.

You can catch a mouse with lard, and then drown it in a bucket. This particular cup passed from me. I had remained steadfast. Years later I was again put to the test. Instead of offering me a lard-slathered sandwich, this time the tempter approached me in his underpants. Having escaped the hell of the Spanish Civil War by the skin of our teeth, we found shelter with Beatrice’s strictly academic brother in Basel. Contrary to the hopes of my touchingly Führer -blinded folks on the Lower Rhine, we refrained from making the three-minute trip across the border “to the bosom of the Reich” and into their collective Hunnish embrace. Were the familial bonds no longer effective? Was I immune to the blood of the ancient ancestral Thiudâ, to the magic of herbs and homeopathic nostrums? Well then, they would try to lure me back with textiles. One of my “Get a move on!” brothers sat down to write, asking whether I, Dear Brother, was aware that the glorious Führer , at his own expense, was offering each and every German refugee from Spain a 100 % Egyptian cotton undershirt and a pair of longjohns, provided that the refugee would agree to return to the Reich. I wrote back that the Consul in Palma had duly informed me of the Führer ’s offer, but what use could such discreet items of clothing be to a man who stood to lose his head, a part of the body he would need in order to feel ashamed of wearing underthings that were baiting him into the Underworld? So Vigoleis resisted this temptation, too.

In the Bay of Palma a German ship lay at anchor, a vessel of the Woermann Line that called at the port regularly. But this time it wasn’t a balloting ark, but the Monte Rosa with many thousand tons displacement and many thousands of tourists on board.