Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

A few days later another man appeared at our door, again at the time of morning we reserved for our literary chores. Once again papers were shown, bearing Helvecio’s signature. This time the amount was appreciably larger, a matter of several hundred pesetas, and this time it was for chairs. This new dunning agent, too, got what he came for, and departed with a grandiose gesture of gratitude.

Zwingli again swore up and down at pushy creditors who could be brought to reason only by making them wait. Spain, he declared, was one gigantic debtor’s colony, and who was he to sabotage the customs of his newly-chosen country of residence by sticking to the cheesy scruples of his insignificant little homeland? Then he laughed again like some sea lion telling a dirty joke, and promised to tell us the chair story, too, at some later time.

I was getting itchy about all this, for I was reminded of my paternal grandfather, who dissipated a considerable fortune by buying up things sold at auctions and bankruptcy sales: 500 top hats at one mark each from a factory that went broke! Where else in the world could you get a top hat for one measly mark? A few dozen baby carriages from a furniture store that came under the hammer—5 marks apiece. Where could anybody find a baby carriage with bamboo wheel spokes, safety harness, and diaper receptacle at such a fantastic price? He presumably set aside a dozen or so for his own use, since as I have mentioned, he had nineteen children. Their descendants, including yours truly, are for the most part still among the living; otherwise I would be tempted to make known my conclusions about the old man’s rampant collectomania.

Whatever Gramps didn’t need, which is to say almost everything, eventually found its way up to our attic. But he wasn’t content with just small stuff. A bankrupt velvet-ribbon factory also received his visit and his cash, likewise a broken-down grain-oil mill and a printing press. The latter was actually put back into service later on, and today it is still running under the surname to which I do less and less honor. Even a complete bathroom plumbing outfit joined his other bargain purchases, and this at a time when Gramps’ all-gracious and all-worthy Kaiser, his Lord and Majesty, was still getting soaped and scrubbed daily in a washtub by musketeers wielding hog-bristle brushes. The giant bathtub from this bargain set was passed on to my father, and it remains among the most cherished memories of my family home. Reclining in it at 105º Fahrenheit, I had my first intense experiences of German poetry. With a wooden match stuck in the drain plug, and a sock hanging from the hot-water faucet to muffle the drip, I could retreat to another world, my world…

In the fullness of time, God took mercy on our sorely-tried family, and recalled this ingenious profligate to the Great Auction in the Sky, which is, in fact, also a collecting-place for all kinds of junk, none of which costs anything because no one wants to buy it back from the Good Lord.

Was Zwingli, who back in Cologne heard me tell of my grandfather’s economic speculations, now going in a similar direction? The subsequent days would confirm my gloomiest premonitions. Our next visit was from a couple, man and wife, acting à deux as in any solid marriage. Nothing disturbed their connubial harmony as they presented us with their demand: sure enough, two ice-cream machines, never paid for. This delay was, they said, becoming rather intolerable. Beatrice agreed, and handed the couple the not inconsiderable remittance. Husband and wife expressed their thanks and blessings, then quit the stage to make room for a new debt collector. The next one came all alone, but the bill was all the bigger — and odder. No, it wasn’t for baby carriages or ribbon looms, but for small tables with marble tops, two whole dozen in number. And there wasn’t a single decent table in the house! Gramps, this would have been something for you, for once you bought up an entire bankrupt tavern and fitted it out with new vats, pumps, and spigots, only to go broke yourself as the result of your own progeny’s unquenchable thirst for beer.

Beatrice kept on paying her versatile brother’s growing debts. Did she do this to protect the honor of her homeland? If she had, then today a Swiss lifesaver’s medal would be dangling at her bosom. For she swam farther and farther out on the ocean of her brother’s money problems. I registered no objections. To each his own, was my way of looking at it, and let the chips fall where they may. Should I have warned her? Here, too, the Treasury of German Quotations can offer us just what we need: “Can one forbid the silkworm to spin its thread / as it spins itself ever closer to death?”

We were covering these unforeseeable expenses out of a modest inheritance that had recently fallen to Beatrice. I can’t remember just how large her portion of the estate was, but in any case it came to her in the form of Swiss francs. Converted into pesetas it yielded an amount that one might jocularly call a “tidy little sum,” using the same linguistic ploy we reach for when we make an “elderly” lady younger than an “old” one — to the delight, no doubt, of many who are much older. Anyway, with this tidy sum we could have kept ourselves going for a few years — not high on the hog, mind you, but perhaps on the common folks’ burro , in keeping with our bohemian pattern of living. Not like God in France, but maybe like one of his small-time Spanish prophets.

I say “we” paid the bills, for we practiced joint ownership, although my own contributions, coming from the material rewards for my spiritual labors, would have to be regarded in the category of almsgiving. But what, after all, is money when a man’s reputation is at stake? Besides, I was expecting a batch of money, yes indeed, and a big batch at that. In words: four thousand Netherlands guilders, payable to me, Vigoleis, from a film company in Berlin. What difference would a few more bills make? That wouldn’t suffice to unsaddle us, not by a long shot. Just let Beatrice get her lost sheep back on the right path, and if I can be of help clearing rocks out of the way, I’ll gladly do it. It remained to be seen how large an obstacle Pilar would represent. Would I have to help heave aside this boulder too? I had long ago decided to solve this problem on my own. The path to success, I saw clearly, led across the bed of the woman who was forcing Zwingli to overdo everything. There was a possibility that I would be letting my friend Vigoleis do the hard work for me. But in the final analysis it’ll be the same, considering that he and I are two in one flesh. And that’s exactly what this cutie was out for: two in one flesh.

The manuscript of my Carnival translation was finished and ready for the printer. I sent it off to the publisher with a handwritten blessing: “Take ye and read.” I also wrote a report to the author on how I gauged the market chances for his unworldly stock issue. He and I had not yet become light and cordial with each other. Dr. Menno ter Braak was an extraordinarily erudite and extraordinarily shy person. He was embarrassed, for example, when, in my garret room in Amsterdam, I introduced him to Beatrice as just what she was. I am becoming more and more convinced that self-contradiction is the very essence of life. We do good deeds with an evil heart, and we do our hating with the best of intentions. The author of this bitter carnival satire on bourgeois small-mindedness was himself anything but a mardi-gras carouser. In history there has been case after case of a free spirit who in everyday life was the victim of the very same inhibitions that he was battling against. Nietzsche, ter Braak’s idol and spiritual master, was a taciturn bourgeois once he doffed the chain-mail shirt of the Superman. Count Harry Kessler, who knew Nietzsche personally, once described him to me in just these terms, thus confirming and supplementing the image of the man that anyone can absorb by reading his collected letters. My little portable typewriter was now free for new assignments: some travelogues for newspapers, some editorial repair-work for literary journals, a few opinions on manuscripts for book publishers, a few pieces of short fiction for the desk drawer containing my other posthumous works; and finally some letters to my friends, on which I wasted my literary energies for years on end, amazed as I was time and again to rediscover later my own statements, sometimes even entire stories of mine, in books and newspapers. To think what I could have pulled in myself with the same material!