Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Our apartment had no stove. Should we start a fire on the terrace? The smoke would alarm the Blue House. That left only the toilet. I tore the pages to shreds, tore the shreds to smaller shreds, and sent my creation chapter by chapter to the same destination that no doubt some of my readers would have chosen for it. I tore up the pages and pulled the chain, tore again and pulled again, with ever greater intervals in between tearing and pulling, since the cistern on our roof was almost empty, and the bowl was filling up more and more slowly. Desperate as I was, this afforded me a certain pleasure at my own downfall. In between page-tearings and chain-pullings I read through a few passages, made some editing and deleting, and then once more pulled the chain. This game of cowardly egotism lasted a full three hours. If my opus was to go the way of all sewage, it at least ought to go in print-ready condition.

What a memorable auto-da-fé! I, who already had annihilated so many of my artistic creations, discovered at this moment that I was a born writer. Not one word of mine was to leave the house without my own imprimatur. After drowning all my Huns, whom I had got to like while writing about them, in place of the still unwritten final chapter I flushed down a bunch of suspect letters into the cloaca maxima Maioricensis . Then I asked Beatrice, who was standing guard like a dame de pissoir , for some paper for myself.

We spent the night at the Casa Inés. There, too, we arranged our belongings provisionally and left instructions as to what to do with them. Early the next day we walked to Palma, each of us carrying a small bundle in each hand, just as the Consul had told us. At the English Consulate we learned to our horror that no ship had arrived and that none was expected soon.

What now? No money, and no house. That meant hiking back and forth to Génova in the blazing sun. And we hadn’t eaten a thing in two days.

Our grace period was over. We were doomed.

“It is folly to try curing the incurable” Thus spake Zarathustra. So let them perish!

“But it takes more courage to make an end of things than to create a new verse — all physicians and poets know this.” Thus, too, spake Zarathustra, or thus speaks life itself — which amounts to the same thing.

Where could we go? On the steps of the English Consulate, our bundles at our feet, we told each other that if the anarchist Count’s and the anarchist Countess’ offer—“Our home is your home”—was not just a local figure of speech but a sign of genuinely anarchistic generosity, then we could make our way to the Pensión del Conde — if in fact the Conde was still alive.

Old, familiar paths, familiar faces, but no olás and olés . Hadn’t Josefa, the maid with the smoking bosom, made the sign of the cross? Doña Inés opened the gate a crack, made the little shriek appropriate to the occasion, and let us inside. “You? You’re alive?” It was still the same vestibule, the same paintings, the same rocking chairs. But the Countess looked different: tinier, paler, thinner. We knew several languages? That was important now, she said. She went to fetch Alonso.

Don Alonso welcomed us in a whisper. A place to sleep? Fine, as long as the rebels didn’t blow up his house, which could happen any day now, at any hour. It was, he said, a miracle of his anarchist Madonna that the house was still standing. House searches once every week — fine, although he had declared himself pro forma in favor of the Holy War in order to keep his conspirators in hiding. He could have used us during the first days, he said, but on Barceló Street he was told we had been eliminated— despachados was the term used. The Count gave a soft whistle. Doors opened, and conspirators appeared from all corners of the house, men and women by the dozens, most of them intellectuals, to judge by the way they looked. I got the cold shivers. We had escaped the neighborhood of the Blue House only to find ourselves now in the Citadel of Anarchism. It was only the drawing-room anarchists who had left the scene; these were people who were ready for anything.

We, too, were ready for anything. After a snack — something I had been dying for — we were mobilized for the cause. Upstairs under the red-hot roof was an attic alcove, formerly a dovecote. There they had put together the parts of a radio transmitter in such a way that it could be disassembled on a moment’s notice. Everyone in the house knew exactly where to betake himself in case of a house search. Don Alonso, the ingenious tinkerer, had planned everything. A number of anarchist priests, amazing people, were serving as fronts to the world outside. But house-raiding squads sometimes came down from the roof. To warn against them, guards were posted, including dogs. The radio was turned on, and we took up our listening post. The skylights and walls were made soundproof with blankets, and as a further precaution they threw a flea-ridden manta over our heads. We heard radio static. It was our job to monitor foreign broadcasts and to translate. They wanted to know what the outside world was thinking and saying about the Holy War. Beatrice listened to a few sentences, and then she translated while I listened on and translated in turn. It worked like a charm. In this fashion, we two candidates for execution didn’t lose any time at all. We earned our keep by sweating and getting bitten by fleas. I would like to have put on a bathing suit for these listening sessions, but Spaniards observe etiquette in all situations.

We waited ten days for the English ship, days during which more than one tragedy occurred inside our fortress. One of the priests fell in love with a school teacher. But he wanted to keep on saying Mass until the war was over, when he would finally hang up his cassock and begin a new life with his novia somewhere on the mainland. A Communist sailor, a fellow who wanted nothing to do with anarchism, became rebellious and had to be bound and gagged. A citizen of Manacor hanged himself from a rafter when he learned that his entire family had been killed in a raid in his home town. Don Alonso cut the rope; groaning, the man came to. It’s not easy to break your own neck. In this house there was always something going on, and always in whispers. Vigoleis held forth on the subjects of human dignity, free will, peoples and fatherlands — sublime topics all, while the murderous rampages continued on the island outside our doors.

We maintained contact with the English Consulate. One of us went there every morning, every noontime, and every evening.

Bobby offered to take all of our belongings from our risky apartment to Valldemosa, where they would be in safe keeping. Doña Clara insisted that we stay during the winter in her hospedage , but we declined. We didn’t want to put anyone’s life in danger. We were marked people.

Don Joaquín Verdaguer, the author of a serio-comic catechism for pipe smokers, had run out of shag. Deprived of his customary puffing, his pipe couldn’t fall out of his mouth when he opened his door in response to our knocking. He turned white as a sheet when we announced that we had come to say goodbye.

Don Joaquín is the one who told us all about the plans for our execution.

Our names were on a list drawn up by the Germans. The Spaniards weren’t particularly interested in liquidating us, but considering that an overall cleansing operation was to take place, they didn’t shirk from eliminating us along with all the others. One favor deserves another. Verdaguer’s account tallied on many points with the one given us by the German Consul. After three weeks of fruitless searching, the leader of the Spanish death squad had had enough; he wanted to let us get away. But then someone told him that these two Germans were good friends of his, Don Joaquín Verdaguer’s, so maybe he could provide further information. Verdaguer was grilled. He told them everything he knew about me: I was a member of the literary tertulia run by the man Mulet, but besides that, nothing suspicious. “Involvement in Spanish politics?” No such thing that he knew of, and highly improbable besides. But the best source of information was the owner of the lending library, Señor Don Jaime Escát, who would doubtless also give them a positive report.