Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

My mother screamed; there were tears in her eyes. Was she at all aware that there existed such a thing as professional immorality? Probably not; she came from a happy family. I pity the people who frequent such establishments, or who depend on them for their living. But I regard them as much less despicable than professional mass murder, which involves not only mass graves but also ribbons and medals and heaps of money, and which also has to do with love — the pathological form of love that is called “patriotism.”

Once we reached the street, we didn’t dare to look at each other. It is embarrassing to be taken for a fool with your mother in a brothel; I have never forgotten the incident. I led my mortified parent to a nearby church, leaving her in more comforting surroundings while I continued my search for a room. I found one in a house where I wasn’t assaulted by naked women; instead, I was greeted there by a pious old lady who attended Mass every morning, and who took cash from my pocket using rather different methods.

Provincialism will always be provincialism, no matter if it is accompanied by a boxful of highbrow culture. And provincialism will be all the more provincial if this box, before it arrives at its big-city destination, is already falling apart. For I mustn’t forget to mention that this journey to my urban alma mater had an ill-starred beginning. Two accidents occurred at my hometown train depot. First, while being loaded in the freight car, the crate containing my books burst its seams. And then, just as I was about to join my parents in their passenger compartment, two gentlemen appeared for a last-minute inspection: our town pastor, and his shadow and evil spirit, a prominent local gossip and threadbare dignitary, a man who survives in my memory solely in a symbolic role: he was the Hagen of the Nibelungenlied , but in petty-bourgeois, small-town recrudescence, an elemental German type that has periodically abetted Germany’s downfall. These two worthies caught up with me and made a final attempt to dissuade me from my academic apostasy; the salvation of my soul, they insisted, was at stake. They had seen my crate full of books get broken, and perhaps there was still time to reconsider the whole trip… But in an instant the locomotive engineer took pity on me and drove steam into the cylinders. I had escaped the henchmen of the Inquisition. Beatrice would have tossed a bucket of water at these village Torquemadas, as she will do in a later chapter when she sees her Vigoleis in a similarly stressful situation. But I didn’t even know her at the time, and thus I had to defend myself alone against the evil eye. In any case, after arriving in Cologne my troubles only began.

That night in Palma, Emmerich’s account of Pilar’s early career conjured the image of my mother, and I saw her praying for me. Prayer is a form of grace and a source of consolation, but you have to know how to do it. I have mastered it only in rhymed form, in poems, which are of course monologues, expressions of Self distinct from any Thou — which isn’t what prayer is supposed to be about. Thus I saw my mother, that good soul, rushing to my aid here on the island; she accompanied us across the square to the woman’s abode, where (heaven forfend!) those Cologne chippies would have been made flesh in even more perilous fashion. The words of Scripture fit this Spanish lush like a glove: “For the lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death.”

In place of the word “sword” I would prefer to say “dagger”; and as for her feet — well, we already know that they walk in little golden slippers.

María del Pilar was the daughter of a poor family from the hinterlands of Valencia. As she grew up, her doll-like beauty proved to be more than just a temporary adornment of her childhood. She turned out to be a beautiful girl, conspicuous for her visible charms in a country where, as in all countries, beautiful females are a rarity. While still very young she was raped by her father, and she ran away. A fisherman had pity on her, and took her aboard his boat. Later she worked on Menorca as dishwasher in a tavern. There she was discovered by Don Julio, our General of eggs-and-sausage fame. He found her a job in the officers’ mess; then he became jealous of his comrades, and arranged for Cinderella to join his spouse in their own kitchen. Following the adventures related before, she landed on Mallorca, and soon got tired of playing party girl for raunchy sailors in the quayside bars. She was even more disenchanted as an employee in respectable households, where for no extra pay she was continually pursued by turned-on señoritos .

A woman as beautiful as Pilar can always use the witches’ cauldron of her sexiness to achieve higher pay, though hardly ever without concessions in the form of overt love-making. And without love-making, nothing, it seems, is possible; for otherwise the world would become extinct. Anyway, the Creator didn’t fail to include Pilar in His Eternal Plan, for our Valencian beauty soon found herself in the employ of several well-heeled men in succession. A highly-placed prelate of the Church was among those who feasted on this latter-day Shulamite, and it was this Monseñor , by the way, who financed Julietta’s education at one of the island’s convent schools. When his mistress learned that he had disinherited some extra-ecclesiastical children of his own, she threw him out of the red-silk-lined domicile he had set up for her in a Palma townhouse. Shortly thereafter, she was, in turn, set out on the street by the landlord. The nuns wanted to keep Julietta in their school at no charge, but her mother refused: no Peter’s Pence for her! Then she found a position in a bordello, where she no longer had to go out looking for paying employers.

Pilar’s entry into the Casa Marguerita (I am still following the chronique scandaleuse as recited by our friend from Cologne) was an event widely discussed in every Palma club and society. At the time, this was the best cathouse in town; the patrona always had first-class ladies for hire, including some from foreign lands. None of the girls was permitted a tenure of more than six years. “A swell establishment,” was the opinion of our bookselling informant, who obviously had not passed up the opportunity to check out the mother superior’s entrepreneurial success. It was there that Don Helvecio, in his capacity as director, manager, or whatever he was at the Príncipe, made the acquaintance of Pilar while on an inspection tour of the city’s sporting houses. In Spain, Mr. Emmerich explained, the assignment of showing male guests through the local love centers was customarily carried out by hotel personnel, from the bellboy to the managing director. One evening Helvecio entered the Casa Marguerita to give some elderly British lords the chance to lavish their wealth in a fashion suitable to their caste. The patrona took him aside and whispered, “Something very fine, for very rich clientele, just arrived, and beautiful, bee-yootiful, Don Helvecio! Just one taste, and they’ll be back for more! Her name is María del Pilar.”

Don Helvecio, mindful of the good name of his hotel, explained to the Englishmen that he had something very fine for them, something exclusively for guests of some means, just arrived, and bee-yootiful! They would, he vowed, not believe their own eyes. “Just one taste, mylords, and you won’t want to leave this island for the rest of the season!” But since the gentlemen would need special arrangements in view of their somewhat advanced years, he would first have to make certain preparations personally. In the meantime, would my lords please be so kind as to repair to the reception room, where they might read newspapers or play dominoes. Coffee was also served there, and every now and then a girl would pass through, so they wouldn’t have the impression that they were sitting in a railway station restaurant.