Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

The executioner’s deputy looked up Don Jaime. He found him in the back room of his library, where he and I had so often talked politics and philosophy, and where Don Jaime had been almost drunk with joy at the news of a Red Azaña victory in the elections. It was there that he had asked Vigoleis to drink a toast to the Red Flag. “Oh you Spaniards and your politics!” Vigoleis had said. He, Vigoleis, would turn old and grey before he could comprehend one iota of Spanish politics, and besides, it didn’t interest him in the least. And besides that, he as a foreign guest in the country had no business getting mixed up in internal Spanish affairs. As for Hitler, however, he was a prime authority.

Don Jaime, Verdaguer continued, asked the executioner just why he was looking for this damnable German Catholic. Of course he knew me, he told the man; he knew me all too well. The squad leader pulled out his execution orders: husband and wife, up against the wall, both of them! Whereupon Don Jaime leaped up and cried, “Ha! Give me that! That’s my affair! I’ll get them both, and I’ll take care of them myself, those traitors! I’ll shoot ’em myself!” Whereupon Don Jaime lifted his lapel and identified himself as the boss of the island’s Secret Police. The squad leader handed over his written orders, was given a receipt for the prospective liquidation of Vigoleis and Beatrice, and with that he was rid of his burdensome chore. No doubt he thought to himself that if the boss himself wanted to take on the job, those two must be truly dangerous criminals. Great! Let him do what he wants! But no sooner had the guy left the library when Don Jaime burned the execution orders and told a petrified Mulet how fortunate it was that this Catholic German never bothered himself with Spanish politics, for otherwise he would have searched him out and had him shot. But the Nazis, he said, ought to get rid of their opponents on their own time. For him, Don Jaime, the case was closed.

Now it was only the Christian Scientist ladies who could deliver me up to my enemies. I was terribly afraid of them.

By the way, none of the frequenters of Mulet’s tertulia had ever been aware that the organizer of that institution was for years a secret member of the Franco movement. His reputation was that of a radical leftist.

I still had debts with Bauzá, the premier Mallorcan tailor. I couldn’t pay them, but I didn’t want to escape from the island without giving the store my Swiss address. “Debts?” the proprietor asked. “Have you gone crazy? And what am I supposed to do with your address in Switzerland?” Now you are really going to get shot, I told myself. They were shooting people who, although they believed in God, were causing economic difficulties for other believers. This war, the Bauzá man went on, would be over soon. Franco would be the winner, and then we would return to the island. Paquita had told him how much we loved Mallorca. So now, in order that we wouldn’t crash in on our Swiss relatives in shabby clothes, which would cast wrong signals about Franco and the Holy War, he was prepared to have two more suits made for me. He clapped his hands, and his staff rushed to his side. They showed me some select English yarns. I know a thing or two about fine fabrics, and this display caused me to take fright once again. This was highest-quality stuff. I lied, telling them that my departure was set for the next day. “Not a problem,” was the answer. The custom work would be ready in 24 hours. I could pay when we returned; they had no use for more money; making uniforms was now more profitable than in peacetime. I was sweating tacks. The world around me had gone insane. First I was scheduled for the firing squad, then I was listed to receive a bribe from the Führer ’s own cash box, and now, for reasons of international prestige, General Franco was about to have two suits custom-made to fit my body. I shook a few hands and left the store in haste.

But the English rescue ship didn’t arrive.

Suddenly Beatrice remembered that we had left two books from the lending library in our apartment. We mustn’t leave without returning them — they were, after all, books! Once again she ventured into the most dangerous area of the city, retrieved our books, and took them to Mulet. When Mulet saw her entering his shop he was at first speechless. Then he said, “Are the two of you bound and determined to be executed?” No, said Beatrice, but books were books, and borrowed books were meant to be returned, even in wartime. We even returned Mamú’s precious binoculars, a piece of her late Prince’s military gear that she had lent us. Mamú had already fled from the island, so we gave this item to her cook. Stupidity never ceases, even in wartime. What am I saying? There is nothing like war to bring forth the most sublime forms of human brainlessness.

Once when I was strolling along the Borne, I spied the sign for the Fomento del turismo , and I thought to myself, “Go on in, the boss was always nice to you. He’s an old German ex-pat, totally Iberianized by now, 30 years of experience with foreigners.” His name was Müller, or maybe Schulze, and that was all he had left of his German origins, but this was a common affliction among former Germans. We had a chat, but the fellow avoided any mention of murder and manslaughter — an understandable omission with a state employee, and anyway, conversations can soon come to an end in times of widespread carnage. He told me that sometimes he was consulted as an interpreter, and one time — sure enough, they were looking for some notorious German, some writer or other, some dangerous character who lived on the Calle del General Barceló. They couldn’t locate the guy, but for three weeks they took Müller/Schulze out on a truck as an interpreter. Both of the suspects were supposed to be killed — the guy’s wife was supposedly from Switzerland.

But those two weren’t killed, I said, adding that the lackadaisical Spanish methods had allowed them to escape. Did he know the couple, I asked? Nope — never saw them. The guy was some kind of struggling writer, his wife gave lessons. Failures, both of them. Did he consider myself as a failure? Of course not; I was the best tourist guide on the island. He laughed. Then I told him who I was. Once again, laughter from Herr Meier or Herr Schulze. We both placed our elbows on his office counter. I showed him my passport. When it finally dawned on him that I was identical with my doomed Doppelgänger , he quickly stepped out in front of the counter, grabbed my arm, and shoved me out the door. “Get out of here, for God’s sake! You’re going to be shot, and I don’t want to be any part of it!” I was on the point of telling him that my execution had been delayed, but I was already standing outside on the Borne. Herr Müller bolted the door of his tourist office behind me.

Wherever I went, I was redundant. In similar circumstances, Hamlet would have said, “Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!” Vigoleis wended his way, somewhat less classically, once again to the British Consulate. “Good news, just arrived! Be at the port tomorrow at 4 a.m. H.M.S. Grenville , a destroyer.” A dyed-in-the-wool Englishman would have said, “God bless you!” I shouted, “ Porra !” and sped away.

“Grenville? Grenville?” Beatrice didn’t seem to like the name. She searched her memory and said that it was not at all a good omen if the destroyer in question was named after the famous ocean-going hero during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Spaniards had capsized him in a battle off the Azores.

“The evil eye, across the centuries?”

That evening we went to the Suredas to say goodbye.

The Suredas are, on a national level, a decidedly fertile dynasty, one that has bequeathed divine right from father to son. Seldom do their parcels of land lie fallow or wither back to wilderness, as sometimes happens when one scion or another devotes himself to art or the sciences, becomes a purely intellectual being, gets beyond all the political nonsense in his country, and thus becomes irrelevant to the cause of patriotism. Pedro Sureda is one such example. Families like this one are the joy and the natural habitat of all monarchies. If the monarch should fall from his throne because he is unwilling to relinquish the Imperial Apple in favor of the Adam’s apple beneath a stiff bourgeois collar, or to give up the crown in favor of a soft fedora, then dynasties whose regal legitimacy exists solely on insignias, or in ancestral portraits hanging on their walls, will go on dreaming of royal power and majesty, ermine robes and dalmatic capes. At times when they get impatient in sight of the empty throne, they will band together to heave the King back up where he historically belongs.