Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Zwingli was in every respect a master organizer. In all my life I have never again run across the likes of him. The girls in the brothels all loved him. Several of them received gifts of money from him, meant to lift them out of their misery and return them to a decent life. He was familiar with their troubles, large and small, but also with their aptitudes in bed. Seldom, he once told me, had he ever sent the wrong man to the wrong woman. Because of his skill in these matters, he stood in high regard in the hotel business. Zwingli’s expertise and fetching ways paid off in this activity, as in so many others. He administered tests in person, and then oversaw further arrangements. This new girl from Valencia was “quality product,” to judge by the praise heaped on her by the proprietress, who was not accustomed to exaggerate when describing her girls’ selling points to the hotel escorts.

Zwingli gave his new female colleague the highest honors possible in his school of sexual studies: his exam went on endlessly. In this particular discipline, as we all know, high marks in the prelims do not automatically qualify for a waiver of the orals. Zwingli’s test lasted so long that the lords got impatient; they knocked on the door through which the hotel manager had disappeared. I never learned whether they spent time later with other girls. Probably the hotel limousine returned them in immaculate condition to the Príncipe, together with the flasks of mercuric chloride that you can always see peeking out of Englishmen’s pockets when they go cruising.

Late in the afternoon of the following day, Zwingli finally resurfaced at his hotel. “You have to stand up like a man,” quipped his bosom buddy, the hotel’s co-manager and co-owner (no one really knew exactly who owned or managed how much of the establishment). “ Hay que ser hombre , Don Helvecio! But this time you come straggling back like a battle casualty, for Pete’s sake! Hey, waiters! Get him some eggs, quick! Ham, bananas, champagne! Let’s get this man back on his feet! Tomorrow, Conde de Keyserling’s coming with his School of Wisdom, and the place will be packed!”

Don Darío knew what a man needs when he has stood up like a man.

During the following night, Zwingli absconded again. When early the next morning the famous philosopher arrived in port to have his even more famous bearlike hand shaken by the hotel manager, Zwingli was nowhere in sight. Don Darío, the short fellow with the limp, did the honors.

It was the same story night after night, and finally Zwingli stayed away from the hotel altogether.

María del Pilar fell in love with Helvecio. She gave herself to him completely, the first time in her life that she had done this with any man. Her much-touted talents were only for show; up to the moment when this fellow from Switzerland entered her life, she had remained untouched. This is how Zwingli himself explained it, and who was I to doubt his word, considering how much Tolstoy and Dostoevsky he had read. You only learn what you truly are when others confirm it for you. Besides, there are more hookers lying in legally sanctified nuptial beds than on the jerry-rigged cots in joy houses — which, incidentally, owe their popular name to a basic misconception.

Zwingli was fascinated; he felt like Tolstoy redivivus . He sensed an important new mission in his life, and ventured forth on the task of salvation and renewal. This girl must be lifted out of the morass, the same swamp where he had been spending all this time with her over the past few weeks, happy as a pig. This mud-bath of love would have to be moved elsewhere, for (and this was a somewhat less Christian notion) he wanted this beautiful sinner all to himself. It was a case of Resurrection with interchangeable roles. This too I can understand.

Zwingli rented a second-floor apartment, called a piso , and furnished it lavishly. On the walls he hung paintings and drawings by his neglected geniuses. He also dribbled away his money on behalf of his neglected new girlfriend. And thus began their domestic existence together. Julietta added a serious note to the arrangement. The generous nuns had taught her manners, prayers, and craft skills. It was an ideal family, and it lasted quite a while before things started going badly awry. The difficulties began with feelings of jealousy on Pilar’s part, and soon Zwingli was smitten by the same madness. This all-powerful impulse quickly brought both of them to the brink of despair; love, hatred, and fear got all mixed together, and before long they started hitting each other. Pilar felt for certain that Helvecio was having his flings down at the Príncipe; she was well aware that those women from Germany, especially, were known world-wide for such tricks, and that they came to Spain for the sole purpose of having romantic adventures. And what was more, she knew full well that her señorito worked nights for his hotel, visiting the same kind of houses that he had pulled her out of. The daughter of joy turned into a raging Fury.

Zwingli worked out a new agreement with his hotel. From now on he would appear there only a few hours each day to look around, take care of the correspondence, and manage the world-wide advertising. The remaining time he would spend at the domestic hearth. Daddy would read books on the fine arts, Mommy would knit, or better yet crochet (Pilar was aiming, after all, for finer habits), and at their feet the little bastard-child would play with her toys, the precocious youngster to whom fate had granted a new father — albeit not a new General, for Switzerland does not support a standing army, but an upright member of the Swiss Civilian Foreign Legion.

Conjugal happiness is an art mastered by the very few. Genuinely happy people are as rare as Christians who believe in God. In most cases one goes through the motions, though one can actually achieve a great deal with the use of such camouflage. Pilar was not happy, certainly not “blissfully” happy, because Zwingli was unable to provide for the necessary bliss. She was bored. She couldn’t read; if she could, she might have killed the long hours by devouring trashy novels. Trying on cosmetics, using this or that product to stiffen her eyelashes, was after a while just a pain. Could they travel together? Helvecio had a job where the customers did the traveling — he was obliged to stay put. Pilar was an active person, still quite young even by the standards of Spain, where women grow old early. And she had a pretty daughter, for whom she wished the same glorious future that Zwingli was supposed to be providing for his querida .

That is why one day, in the increasingly stuffy atmosphere of their home, Pilar tossed out the suggestion, “Helvecio, let’s become independent! Let’s start a business! A business where I can use my talents, too!”

Dear reader, you are probably thinking exactly what I am thinking. But really and truly, Pilar had in mind only her culinary abilities. The dream of liberty is the primeval ideal of all humankind. Beatrice and I have been considering the same idea over and over again for twenty years, it’s just that we can’t seem to agree on which of our talents we should exploit. Thus all we’ve ever seen is a faint, pinkish dawning on the horizon. Down in Spain we sometimes felt that the sun was just about to appear, but then fog always swept in, without fail. As I write these lines we are surrounded by impenetrable haze. Zwingli has been dead a long time, and I, Vigoleis, am not adept at clearing away banks of heavy murk.

Pilar’s finesse with pots and pans was fully equal to Zwingli’s magic fingernail. I have never tasted such bonito as came from her skillet. Zwingli, in his own mind a neglected genius, was an easy mark for any kind of new business venture. He mulled over Pilar’s suggestion, consulted with headwaiters, rooming-house managers, the theories of Pelmanism, and his bosom friend Don Darío, and finally emerged with the idea that an ice-cream parlor, strategically located in the city of Palma, was an undertaking that without the slightest doubt would yield a handsome profit. No need right away for marble fixtures and artificial palms — it was best to start simple: a few potted geraniums, here and there one of those rangy cactuses. “It’s a solid idea, Don Helvecio,” was Don Darío’s reaction, and he was the one to know, considering the lucrative part-time enterprise he could be as proud of as a Spaniard (if he weren’t one already). In his home town of Felanitx he ran a bullfighting arena where the so-called novilladas were staged, the skirmishes involving novice toreros and young steers — the marionette tryouts, as it were, for the big-time national theater. A young man with ambitions to be impaled on the horns of the huge miuras in the metropolitan stadiums could achieve early success in Don Darío’s sandy pit, especially since the atheistic owner had placed his enterprise under divine auspices. The Mother of God, he claimed, lent her succor to each and every bullfighter; a novillero , like any humble beginner in this world, could be certain of her intervention with the Lord. Darío was a devout man, though hardly of the orthodox variety. His atheism was deceptive whenever he started in about his beloved Virgen , the Holy Virgin, who in his opinion would also offer her protective benevolence to the new ice-cream bar. It was bound to be a success.