Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

In the center of the city he rented a half-derelict villa for his Academy. His millionaire sponsor was still hiding behind his bank account, but was expected to arrive on Mallorca, where rooms in the Príncipe were long since awaiting him. Yet because this man was still invisible, Zwingli was hard at work with his local genius for the founding of institutions, Don Darío. My inventions had already earned them “quite a wad.” They were now investing the wad in higher art education. This started with a series of sketching classes with nude models for beginners and advanced students, plus a master class. There were peepholes for the “ aficionados of nudity,” and the entire enterprise went forward under the aegis of Spain’s famous painter Doña Pilar, whose full surname was several lines long although her single noble title would suffice to fill the classroom with standing-room-only. It goes without saying that Pedro’s mother had no idea what mischief was being perpetrated in the name of her alba . She learned about it from her indignant relatives, who had seen their name emblazoned on banners, posters, and leaflets. One more crazy Sureda escapade? That’s what people were asking. The sketching classes were a front, they said. This was surely a bordello with a fancy new cachet.

It was a fact that Zwingli could hardly keep control of the applications for his academy. He had only a single model: Konákis. Old geezers, bored with their sterile club activities, applied for admission as beginners. They were loath to pass from this life without sketching a live nude. They had never done anything like it, and didn’t even know that it could be done. For them, women’s bodies existed to be fallen in love with, stared at, slept with, married, locked in, beaten, sent to church, and allowed annually to enjoy the heaven-sent gift of pregnancy. But now a domestic animal of this kind could be possessed with the aid of an artist’s pencil at Don Helvecio’s International Academy of Art. Who could resist?

The posters and brochures announced that, in addition to the modeling studio, there were two further new affiliated educational institutions: one for foreign languages and one for herbal tea.

Zwingli distributed thousands of advertisements across the entire island. He hired minions to cruise the Borne, shout the name of the new academy, and pass out fliers to pedestrians. One time I heard my own name being called out. Curious as to what Vigoleis had now got himself into, I took one of the brochures and learned that the new Academy had obtained for its faculty a certain Professor Vigoleis, trained at German and Dutch universities, widely traveled, and famous as the inventor of the One-Chair System of Pedagogy. Attendance at his ¾ hour One-Chair seminar was listed as costing 25 pesetas, instruction in any of the major languages, and “Please turn.” When I turned, I found this: Mens sana non potest vivere in corpore sicco —Rabelais’ parody of Juvenal’s famous motto: “A healthy mind cannot live inside a dried-up body.” Ergo : “Drink Pastor Künzli’s Herbal Tea! Samples served at the Academy!” The trinity of wine, women, and song was hailed in this broadsheet, along with the little deviancies that can make such a combination so fruitful. The wine was Künzli Tea, the woman’s name was Konákis, and the song would have to come forth from Vigoleis’ throat.

Elated by my appointment to the faculty of the new Academy, I rushed home. This was, finally, going to be my great stroke of luck. Beatrice must be the first to hear about it.

In front of our house, furniture was being loaded into vans. Zwingli was in charge of the procedure with his pinky nail. Next to him on our balcony stood Konákis, a desirable specimen of Mother Nature even when fully clothed. Neither of them noticed my arrival. I ducked beneath a desk some guy was lifting, and entered the stairway.

I found Beatrice in our spare room. Had she been crying? After so many years and so much trouble in a constantly vulnerable marriage, it is difficult to be sure in retrospect. There is no question that she had reason to shed tears, not to mention tearing her hair out. I could claim the privilege of all writers of memoirs and have her behave here in just this way, but only if she had a natural inclination toward theatrical masochism. Just this much: brother and sister had just emerged from a terrible fight. She had tossed water at him, and he had tossed bottles of medicine at her, with his Greek squeeze goading her earthy troglodyte companion to clobber his prude of a sister. Beatrice accused Zwingli of exploiting the honorable name of Pedro’s mother, telling him that she knew full well that his new establishment was nothing but a brothel camouflaged as an academy of art. With that, Beatrice had uttered the fateful word, and the above-named objects started flying about our apartment. Zwingli’s choice of bottles of medicine to toss must be understood in the context of the bout of typhus from which he had just recovered, a disease we had nursed him through for several months. We had to summon Dr. Solivellas, because neither brother nor sister had any further confidence in their grandfather’s homeopathic drops. Zwingli didn’t trust Spanish hospitals. Vigoleis didn’t trust Zwingli. And so forth…

It’s such a shame. If Konákis hadn’t been on the scene in her fully clothed state, instead of squabbling, brother and sister would have embraced each other, and Zwingli would have moved off to his Institute of Female Art. But as it was, he now burned all his bridges behind him. The only thing he took with him, at Konákis’ insistence, was the list of my inventions. I was flattered.

I soon convinced Beatrice that we should be happy that Zwingli’s cathouse academy was not to be located inside our own apartment. I meant this as a form of consolation, but quickly enough it became a fly in the ointment. Beatrice was unable to rid herself of the idea that the very possibility of such a development had desecrated our living quarters. She was unwilling to stay where we were, yet she wasn’t suggesting that we once again try jumping into the ocean. A move to the Archduke’s palace at Miramar would be possible only when Mamú’s millions were finally available. But in the meantime, Mamú wasn’t even in a position to pay back the tusig Fränkli we had lent her.

“OK, let’s move out,” I said. “You’re sick of this apartment. For you it stinks of this Konákis woman. I’ll go look for another place.”

I found a new apartment on the 7th floor of a new building on a street we knew, one named after a more than familiar personage: the Avenida del Archiduque Luis Salvador. “Salvador” means “redeemer.” The Suredas had recently moved with kit and caboodle into a flat just a few doors away from us. Could we have hoped for a nicer neighborhood? When we negotiated the rent, the paint was still wet, but that didn’t mean that we were “dry renters”. This piso had a bathroom, a custom-made kitchen, and a roof garden with ocean view. Our finances were in satisfactory condition, but our health had gone to the dogs. It was over-exertion, Dr. Solivellas told us. We should go out into the countryside, into the mountains, for three or four months. For that length of time the two of us should do no work at all, for up to now we had knocked ourselves out like slaves. He offered us his cottage at the seaside near Pollensa. But mountain air would be better, he said. Valldemosa, Génova, Monasterio de Lluch…

Mamú had a woman friend who didn’t belong to the Christian round table, a Swedish painter of indeterminable age but of quite determinable lineage. She called her Swedish king “Uncle,” an appellation she employed every year during the vacations she spent at court with her relatives. One of her passions was tennis. Her name was Agnes, so on our island she was known as Doña Inés. She let us use her house in Génova for four summer months. So our switch to the new address on Archduke Luis Street was in effect a twofold removal.