Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Sure enough, the Consul had announced — not in his capacity as Consul, but as head of the Tourist Agency — that the day after tomorrow the Monte Rosa would be arriving from the Reich with 2000 tourists. I was his best Führer , and he needed me. Today was now the day after tomorrow, and the Monte Rosa had arrived in all the majesty implied by her name. She towered like a mountain above the blue harbor waters. Whenever the Consul needed me in the name of his Führer , he met with resistance, ridicule, and open hostility. But if I myself was to be his Führer , and his best one at that — well, allons ! Besides, I was the only Führer he could depend on blindly, since I was also a seer. As a result, on tourist days such as this one I didn’t get yelled at, shooed away, or issued a warning in the name of the Consul’s other Führer . Our relationship stayed on the best of terms, although it didn’t keep me from retching.

Beatrice came along. She was good with mixed groups because she could speak all the languages, the tourists could understand her, and she gave them reliable information. Forty more guides, locals and foreigners, were hired for this project, including members of the German Labor Force who, on this occasion at least, remained politically neutral. The only character who never applied for a job as tourist guide for 25 pesetas a day was Mr. Silberstern. Considering his obsession with money, his omniscience, and his talent for empty blather, why didn’t he? That must remain an unwritten chapter.

Why did the Consul and the gentlemen of the German Labor Force seem so much friendlier on this day than on other days? Beatrice and I noticed this, and we both reached the same fairly obvious conclusion. It was June of 1934, and they didn’t know how things would play out after the Röhm Purge. Now it wasn’t only Jews who were getting murdered; the Nazis were finally getting at each other’s throats. What would happen if the Nazi gang succeeded in liquidating itself entirely, down to the last man who got on the wrong side of his Führer ? The local Party plenipotentiary, an odious, heavy-set school teacher from Westphalia with a doctorate and the medal of the Blood Order, acted as if he had never hurled anti-Semitic slurs at Beatrice. He was barely out of his racist diapers, so he was suspicious of any woman who failed to show blonde, full-bosomed devotion to the Führer . From suspicion to non-Aryan incrimination was for him a simple step. But today he was keeping his crazed epithets to himself. Röhm murdered by Nazis? Maybe he was thinking that there was some truth to our tale of Inca blood — the Incas aren’t Jews, although who knows what they really are? He greeted Beatrice with a bow-legged bow. After all, there are so many different blood lines in this world of ours. The Old Testament alone lists more than a million of them, so isn’t it possible that everybody is all mixed up with everybody else?

When the first motor launches landed at the pier, the Strength Through Joy tourists didn’t head directly for the cars as they usually did. Instead, they headed for the newspapers. But damn it all, where were the kiosks? They weren’t interested in the island, or in the best seat in the best car which, if you were lucky and if you had long legs, was the Führer ’s car. No, the hordes wanted to know what was going on in the Third Reich. On board ship they had been kept in the dark about the outcome of the Röhm Revolt. Now it was Monday, and still nobody knew whether the Führer , too, had been wiped out. And who else? Will all of us who wear the swastika in our buttonholes be executed? Maybe it’s best if we hide it under our lapels. “Excuse me, Herr Führer ,” said one of them as we were starting out, “Can you tell me if the Führer is still alive?” “As far as we Führer s know, unfortunately he is.” My interrogator’s expression remained unchanged, making it impossible to tell whether he was for or against the Führer ’s demise. The Spanish newspapers on the island published extras, listing names and numbers. At the time, what they reported seemed exaggerated, but in retrospect, as is always the case with historical St. Bartholomew’s Nights, the accounts were far short of what actually happened. Excitement grew, as more and more German citizens came on land. The names of the quick and the dead fluttered through the air, and we Führers were bombarded with questions. They were demanding foreign newspapers — what a stupid country, where they don’t even provide a newspaper in a decent language! We tried calming them down by telling them that we were on an island, and that the mail ship didn’t arrive on Mondays. But was General Schleicher dead? Yes. And his wife, too? Yes. (Schleicher was a crook, Kessler told me, but he didn’t deserve such an end to his career of machinations.)

After an hour’s delay, the travel agency with its cadre of Führers finally sent the first thousand tourists on their way. Beatrice and I were part of these groups. As usual with mass disembarkments, we traveled the route backwards — first on the little train from the harbor through the city to the main railroad station and then, after some complicated switching, on to Sóller. On the way, instead of my normal lecture about the island, its kings, churches, beggars, its art works and the Sureda dynasty, all the way to Sóller I sermonized on the dubious greatness, the rapid rise and certain demise of the Third Reich . At first I had as many listeners as my Führer compartment on the train could hold. But as my admonitions and prophecies became more and more bleak and impudent, as my accusations against derelict Christianity turned more and more sinful, more and more of my German fellow citizens simply tuned out and, since they couldn’t make a hasty departure like Silberstern on the line between Clermont-Ferrand and Port-Bou, they gave their full attention to the Mallorcan landscape — which was, of course, what they had come to see.

The landscape was decidedly more beautiful than the image of Germany I was depicting, which I will suppress here because now it could be, or rather would almost have to be, interpreted retroactively as a simulacrum of the truth. For my views on Germany were just as dismal as Germany turned out to be in reality. The existence of concentration camps was summarily denied. No one was ready to admit that Jews were being killed by the thousands, only that one or the other Jew had been liquidated by mistake. But now what about these bullfights, these bloody entertainments staged by the Spaniards? Weren’t they more barbaric than the racial purification commanded by the Führer ? The lady who asked this question was your typical German mother — my sole verbal opponent in this colloquy, by the way, who would probably strangle her entire brood if that would serve nationalist aims. She had a lofty position in the German National Women’s Movement. I liked her. I like patriotic people who wouldn’t flinch if they were told to shoot their own children for the sake of the Fatherland. Her eyes were steely, as were her mind and her heart — but why go into further anatomical details as if this were a Most Wanted poster? Everybody is familiar with this type of goose-stepping Valkyrie, without which no Fatherland can remain calm. She told me she was going to send in a formal protest and would get my name and address from the Consul — but I spared her the trouble. I gave her my business card, mentioned my catalogue of sins already known to the Consul and the authorities in my home town, and hinted that I was on the list of people to be done away with when the time came. “And when will the time come, Herr Führer ?” “Well, Madam, for an answer to that question you must turn to the other Führer —unless he’s already been stabbed, which I sincerely hope is the case!”