Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Gypsies: those were the filthy women with skirts that stirred up dust, wearing heavy gold earrings, striding along barefoot and carrying a suckling infant tied inside a colorful shawl around their waist, leaving their hands free for thievery. That’s how I got to know them in my childhood, the dark-skinned bands of people who went about from place to place in stolen wagons drawn by stolen horses, getting their food by stealing. Their children didn’t have to go to school, nor did they have to go to church — the latter being the privilege for which I envied them most. They trained their kids in larceny, and celebrated bloodthirsty weddings in their camps at the outskirts of town with dancing bears, knifings, campfires, tambourines, and loud chatter. Whenever the gypsies passed from door to door through our town begging and soothsaying, the pugnacious protectors of public order on the steps of the town hall whetted their sabers, used their practiced thumbs to wipe the stains from the blood grooves, and waited just as long as it took for headquarters to draft, compose, sign, and seal the expulsion command. Then it was simply a matter of “That’s it, you bandits! Off with you to the next town!” My mother counted the heads of her loved ones, and then all of us counted our chickens while our neighbor, whose loved ones were horses, counted his horses.

The personage who was now running around in Don José’s house in Valldemosa — or rather who now, at the moment when I wish to introduce her, was sitting around his house with crossed legs and smoking with a long ivory cigarette holder, wearing high-heel shoes instead of going barefoot — this woman was as swarthy as the night and wore her gleaming hair sharply parted in the middle. Her earrings were so heavy that they made her earlobes hang down like pendulums, and every one of her fingers sported a ring. She was indeed a gypsy, and thus she must be none other than Doña Soledad, the authentic Andalusian gitana Bobby had already written us about. By examining palms, cards, and coffee grounds she could read the future and the past, and with her talent for synthesizing could draw conclusions about the present. What was more, it wasn’t necessary to keep doors or drawers locked when she was around. Doña Soledad wasn’t a thief. We were invited to come out for the weekend; Clarita was expecting us. We were to bring Pedro along, Bobby wrote in a P.S., and added in the margin, “There’ll be armadillo with champignon sauce.” So off we went to Valldemosa. We had never met a gypsy who didn’t steal but was otherwise authentic. Not even in the Balkans had Beatrice seen anything like it.

Doña Soledad, wearing a red carnation in her hair and with a question-mark curl at her brow, hailed from the cuevas near Granada. She was rich, and no longer needed to filch anything. In the evening she performed gypsy dances. Pedro beat the tambourine and clacked the castanets. Soledad spoke fluent French, but what made her most appealing, especially to Beatrice, was the fact that she didn’t eat with her knife. Things got a little dicey when she started eating with her fingers, but Pedro explained that this wasn’t a gypsy custom, but the proper and polite way to consume armadillo.

Beatrice’s fortune came first. A man had entered her life — not a major event, to be sure. In fact, more like the opposite. There were no signs that this man would be leaving her just as quickly. She should have patience, and not despair. As for the gentleman in question, certain foreign bodies had entered his life, too, although it wasn’t quite clear whether these were women or perhaps books — in any case they were hard, there was a collision, and that brought an end to it. In addition she saw a voyage, a ship, cannons, once again something hard, a coil of rope. “Do you see a bed?” I inquired. No, not a bed. So we would have to keep sleeping on newspapers. Doña Soledad, as clairvoyant as she was, failed to understand my question. Then she asked, “You’ve told me everything? Added nothing? Then show me your hand.”

The gypsy woman unveiled my past life by taking one look at my left palm. It wasn’t pretty. Then she gazed at my other palm: a woman would enter my life. “A gypsy?” I asked.

“No, why?”

The reason was plain enough: I would love to be abducted by a real gypsy woman. Pilar had certain gypsy-like traits, but she saw everything wrong. And anyway, she wasn’t born in a cave in Sacro Monte. The fiery stream coursing between Doña Soledad’s hand and mine didn’t stop. She saw a person who was both close to me and far away. That person was in danger. Something was going to happen to him. He was going to die. I was hoping that it was Mr. Silberstern. That person was a good person… Oh well, too bad, it wasn’t my exploiter after all. And then Doña Soledad suddenly espied policemen. I was going to have difficulties with the police, though everything depended on my behavior — I held my fate in my own hand. With these words she let go of my hand, which prevented me from imagining that my fate bore the name Soledad Torres Medina. Was that all she saw? No, I would be traveling at sea — cannons, coils of rope, as with Doña Beatriz. Were we going to drown? No, this island was going to drown.

It was all very exciting. Don José put on a wax nose, the better to fill his role as a seer. Nephew Manola, the Sureda dynasty’s fair-haired boy, principal heir and favorite painter, threatened to have a nervous breakdown in front of the church the next day, Sunday, unless Tío José gave him 100 pesetas. Everyone’s eyes turned to Ludwig Salvator’s personal physician, who had of course mastered worse situations during his lifetime. Peering over his extended nose, he looked over at Bobby who, simply using his optical eyes, had evolved into something like the domestic oracle of this hospedage . Bobby, in turn, looked at the gypsy, who had just taken hold of his hand. One brief touch, one glance at his palm, and she turned pale and immediately let go. A curt shriek told us that she had seen Bobby’s future. But what was it that the Andalusian professional clairvoyant actually saw in the lines of this Folkwang student’s hand? Beatrice, who also can read palms and tell a person’s fortune, would have handled a delicate situation like this one quite differently. She would have pulled herself together, declared that she was so tired she was seeing double, and said, “Some other time.”

The fright that we all experienced caused Don José to forget to award his nephew the obolus he was demanding in order to prevent his nervous collapse on the morrow. Bobby and Pedro were pleased at this turn of events, for the next day, at the portal of the Cartuja , we would witness how the talented painter would go about extorting his uncle, throwing himself on the ground and, like the mimic of a gigantic spitting cicada, gathering enough froth at his mouth to make a pushover of his Tío José. And that is actually how it happened. But we also got a small bonus, for when Don José saw his nephew go into an epileptic fit, he too collapsed to the ground and was in need of Samaritan aid. Bobby took care of this.

Back home, the two epileptics negotiated the appropriate economic arrangements, but not before Don José, once again in command of his physical and physicianly shrewdness, turned violently angry and hurled a chair at Manolo. The latter, likewise in full command of his faculties, quickly ducked and fell to the floor, and the chair went flying through the large window pane into the street below. Pistola fetched the debris without chewing a single piece. There followed a grand feast of reconciliation, with gypsy folk songs, superb wines, new glances into the future, and a unanimous protest from our hosts when we announced that we had to return to Palma. The weekend was at an end, but being outvoted we decided to stay on for a whole week more. One more week would eventually turn into two or three — a round month, let us say. We both needed a vacation, they told us. Vigo could continue writing his Hunnian epic or study his Lusitanian mystic, and Beatrice would have a grand piano at her disposal. We accepted, but Beatrice would have to go back to the city the next day to retrieve a few things: some clothes, books, sheet music. She would also have to start up my self-watering flower pots. And so Doña Beatriz departed alone.