Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

In the Count’s housing complex, the couple found a suitable locale on the “respectable” corner opposite the men’s club, whose clientele would surely enjoy a dish of ice cream dispensed by Pilar. Most of the club members already knew her from her previous dispensation, and as for the Conde himself — to finish this sentence would be to indulge in mere gossip, which has no place in my chronicle. Antonio, the hotel’s majordomo and headwaiter, is responsible for my having started the sentence at all. This is the same Antonio who served us our coffee back in Chapter Three. He was a prince of a man, and he was devoted to Zwingli. Later he took us to his heart. For a few years he had worked as a waiter in Nice, but family exigencies had forced his return to Mallorca. He was a grandseigneur in his profession, quite free of the behavioral folderol that makes so many headwaiters objectionable people. Most men in that position, I have found, act like secret agents who are hired to keep a constant eye on you. I’ll grant that anyone in a job of this kind has to have a little of the con-man in him. But with Antonio, his native Mallorcan temperament, which he never tried to conceal, served to minimize this aspect of his activity. The superiority of the Southern races over their Northern counterparts, who like to make believe they are some kind of nobility, is most apparent in the servant classes.

On the days preceding the opening of the “Bar Valencia,” as Zwingli had christened their new enterprise in honor of his co-proprietor and chief advertising gimmick, there was a flurry of activity. The most active of all was the boss from Switzerland. He had thousands of brochures printed in four languages. He stretched banners over Palma’s streets that read BAR VALENCIA. He hired sandwich-men and street barkers. Invitations went out to every exclusive and inclusive club and society on the island. If you know Spain at all, you can imagine what the bills for all this came to. Every hotel, pensión , and movie house in town distributed leaflets designed by Zwingli’s friend, a German graphic artist in Barcelona known as “Dibujante Knoll,” who in turn had them printed by a first-rate Barcelona fine-arts press (Beatrice later paid this bill, too).

Don Helvecio’s economic independence was meant to have the stablest foundation possible. Only a natural catastrophe could cause it to fail, one that would simultaneously plunge the entire island into the sea like an atoll. Hadn’t the same man, years ago, rapidly resurrected the Príncipe to its present standing as an A-number-one establishment, after it had been plundered by gangsters and avoided by customers lacking sufficient courage? The new owner, who had wrenched the facility from the robbers by means of a naked power grab, hadn’t accomplished anything with his new property until Zwingli came along. I have never found out all the details of the transaction, and the wildest stories coursed around the island. The truth is that the filthy-rich owner, one of the most influential lawyers on Mallorca and at the same time the alcalde or mayor of Palma, turned over the helm to the completely unknown entrepreneur after a single half-hour conference. That magic nail no doubt played a role in all this — I mean the one sported by Zwingli, for although the crafty solicitor had grown one, too, his just wasn’t long enough to solve all the problems of existence. It was Emmerich, by the way, who drew the newly-arrived Swiss citizen’s attention to the empty, haunted hotel. Zwingli had come to Mallorca in the season of the almond blossoms “just to take a look around.” By Christmas a large spruce tree was brightly lit; German and English carols greeted the Savior, whose birth then got celebrated in sentimental carousing with popping corks, mulled wine, crackling spruce needles, and sparklers that smelled like incense. Power of attorney and a fat checkbook had brought about this yuletide miracle.

This selfsame Zwingli, the man who meanwhile had risen to the dignified rank of a Don Helvecio — wasn’t it likely that he could make a go of it with a little experimental dispensary for lovers of ice cream? Particularly with a waitress like this one, who wouldn’t emerge from the kitchen all too often, but when she did, would cause commotion among the clientele? With her as a partner, Zwingli could even have risked opening up a kiddies’ lemonade stand. Of course Zwingli wasn’t planning to have Pilar scooping cones forever. At the beginning, well yes, but later, when things had settled down, he would let her share the management duties. To make this possible, he would have to hire an expert confectioner, a genuine Paris-trained professional from the Valais with international experience. He had already sent off the appropriate advertisements to the Swiss trade journals.

The equipment and accessories were all bought, partly in cash and partly on promise. As Don Helvecio, Zwingli enjoyed almost unlimited credit. One phone call at the hotel, and even an over-cautious dealer would load up his handcart and push it himself to the Conde’s “apple,” where carpenters and plumbers had been at work for days. If ever the credit confirmation for some reason wasn’t satisfactory, Zwingli would appear arm in arm with his business partner, and resistance would immediately melt away, just as the ice cream later did in the super-heated store.

Women should play with fire. That is their element, but never with anything that’s frozen — this bit of folk wisdom from Zwingli, whose own account is the main source for what I am narrating here. Emmerich knew only the bare outlines of the saga. The details and refinements were served up by Zwingli, the boss himself. For example, the incident in a well-known mirror factory, Espejo Mallorquin. “You should have seen those chaibe Siëche turn into midgets when I showed up with Pilar! They wanted cash before delivery, but my order was in the thousands. Maybe you can sell ice cream at the North Pole without mirrors on the walls and ceiling, but not in Spain. To understand such things you don’t have to be Swiss, with congenital experience of scaling glaciers! But just try to explain these subtleties to somebody who has never in his life seen a snowflake melt in his hand! Reflected light creates just the right polar ambience. I had to have mirrors, otherwise the Mallorcans could go on for all time spooning up their sopas , for all I cared. In the packing room at the factory, where we met the director in person, there just happened to be some fun-house mirrors standing against the wall. Let me tell you, what with the instant changes we saw from fat to skinny and from tall to squat, we got the credit approval before we even reached the guy’s office. Put some products like those in the halls of mirrors at international conferences, there’d never be another war!”

One week later there wasn’t one square-inch of wall to be seen in the new ice-cream parlor. It was wall-to-wall crystal.

Grand Opening: Saturday afternoon at five o’clock. Zwingli had hired from the Príncipe a young doorman in blinding blue livery, as well as a bartender from the same familiar source. Pilar’s assignment was spooning out the ice cream. She was dressed in fine silk chiffon, an outfit meant to insinuate coolness — quite some feat for this hotsy-totsy, but a fashion designer from Barcelona seems to have done the trick. Zwingli had insisted on this arrangement. He himself was dressed accordingly, his magic nail exquisitely filed and polished, just as shiny as the mirrors, which had no difficulty deciding who was the fairest of them all. He had sent invitations, written in his own hand, to personages of high standing in the community, including the military governor, the civilian governor, the alcalde , the consular representatives of the more important countries (the less important ones would come on their own), and prominent foreign residents, of whom there were always hundreds milling about the island. Back then it was de rigeur to have spent time on Mallorca if one wished to make any kind of impression in the grander European salons. Finally, he sent off printed invitations by the thousands to God and the whole world.