Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Her audience drove her on, olé, olé! But she needed no special encouragement to let out all the spunk and snappiness that the General had passed on to her, or the Valencian fire that was her mother’s legacy. Her improvised performance reached its climax when a young man pushed his way through the onlookers, took off his jacket and placed it on the ground in front of the dancing imp. He caught her in mid-twist, and like an infatuated dove began dancing in a circle with his dovelet. The audience applauded thunderously, for they had long since forgotten why they had come here. The boy was Pedro, who back then had the ambition to become what he has since indeed turned out to be, a painter known far beyond his native island. We shall meet up with him again often in these pages.

María del Pilar, who wanted to deny this celebration to a child who longed for her father and for art, was treated by Zwingli to ice cream and love in their hermetically sealed love-nest. Amid moans and sighs and repeated invocations of the Virgin Mary, her spirits finally revived, though in a body that by now was black and blue all over, no different from that of her Samaritan partner. In active lovemaking, as in the art of forging steel, the tempering coloration can determine the quality of the product.

At seven o’clock Julietta collapsed in mid-pirouette, and Pedro had to carry her over to the men’s club. A doctor quickly put her back on her feet. Attempts to resuscitate the Bar Valencia, on the other hand, were without success; the enterprise never survived the erotic crisis of its whilom founders. It died in labor, not unlike the Asra tribe of Northern Africa, of whom Heine once sang that they die while making love.

Using Swiss francs, Beatrice later had a simple cross placed at this second gravesite with this pious caption: All debts are now forgiven.

Having arrived at this chapter, my reader already knows more than we did at that night-time hour when we took leave of Anton Emmerich with Tschüss ! and Ciao ! And I was once again ahead of Beatrice in this lubricious chronicle by a few pages. These were pages that even the dirty-minded fugitive from Cologne considered too risqué to spread out in front of Beatrice. She noticed that her presence was tying his tongue, and so she absented herself for a while. Mr. Emmerich confessed to me straightaway that he was unsure how far her nerves could be stretched. But then he started right in again.

These days Beatrice was letting herself be seen in public with that woman friend, arm in arm. In certain male circles a rumor had arisen that the city’s commerce in pleasure had undergone an augmentation; a newcomer of indeterminable yet indubitable pedigree had been observed on several occasions in Pilar’s company. No one was quite sure whether the novice was freelancing or, on the other hand, adding yet another exotic fragrance to the bouquet offered by the Casa Marguerita. Perhaps she had decided to reconnoiter the hotels first. People were making conjectures, and he, Emmerich, had learned that certain rich blimps had hired scouts to find out more about this female stranger. It was surmised that she hailed from Switzerland, where the laws of the Confederation permitted only indoor prostitution, but still, one had certain notions concerning Swiss women. And besides, this bird looked expensive…

“Are they talking prices?” Vigoleis could not resist inquiring.

With a snicker, Emmerich mentioned sums that the Mallorquin gentry would be prepared to place on the night table for my unsuspecting consort. Pretty chintzy, to use a favorite expression of those women whose market value was often haggled over shamelessly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world — which, in fact, it was. If Vigoleis had been forced to cough up cold cash for his Chosen One, he would have slapped down considerably more than these islanders, the ones who sat around on their sacks of money and on their club porches. And yet, if truth be told, he could never have matched even what those fatsoes were offering, not even with the discount that he could claim as a private household consumer — never in his life! As for the fact that he was not forced to enter such commerce, this had to do with a certain passage in the Epistle to the Corinthians, where Paul waxes as lyrical as a troubadour. And yet this selfsame Vigoleis, instead of being grateful for having a woman who commanded such a price with strangers — and an even higher fee according to his own reckoning — this same Vigoleis had turned his eyes to that other female, the bitch-in-quotation-marks. In spirit he had already committed adultery — if we can regard as a marriage the bond that tied him to his aforementioned consort.

Adultery, committed already in spirit? Truly in spirit? I wonder whether the Church (I’m mentioning this out of respect for Pilar), having set forth in its canonical regulations concerning marriage the neatest and most meticulous differentiations between spirit and matter, would grant Vigoleis absolution for a spiritual transgression against matrimonial fidelity when, one fine day, he found himself alone in the house with the lusty siren, and then proceeded to do what he didn’t end up doing at all. For what did he do by not doing it? That would fascinate me, too, as his sometime double. For as far as I know, when it comes to women, he is as shy as Monsieur Henri-Frédéric Amiel himself.

Judging from what little we already know about Pilar, but also from the abundance of information to be found between our lines, it was probably this woman who had her mind set on action, who couldn’t wait until her new victim was maneuvered in flagrantem . I can, of course, be mistaken, and where are mistakes more to be expected than in the labyrinths of the heart? What is more, if the paths inside this maze are slippery, a man is bound to end up flat on his kisser.

Everything would indicate that the events involving Vigoleis and Pilar occurred in a manner very similar to the biblical story of Joseph, who, contrary to God’s wishes, declined to sleep with his master’s wife. I make this allusion solely with regard to the outer circumstances. Vigoleis’ inward thoughts are as yet unexplored territory; and anyway, our biblical interpreter of dreams, purchased by Egyptians for twenty silver shekels, has never allowed anyone to look very deeply into his soul, not even his voluble biographer, Thomas Mann. His master’s wife is said to have done her utmost to cause the foreigner to yield to her concupiscence. Thus at her words, “Come, lie with me!” we are allowed to peer into the very bottom of her heart. I assume that Pilar made a similar entreaty to Vigoleis, taking him by the scruff of the neck, as it were, and pulling him down on the pallet of her Eternal Spring. Whereupon this fellow with the two souls (alas!) in one breast will have departed in haste, leaving his cloak in her hands. I wouldn’t put it past him.

“It wasn’t at all…”—at this point Vigoleis begins to speak in person, to prevent any further spinning out of legends at the site of the evil deed. It wasn’t at all the way you think it was. I’ll grant you that I am a master of the botched opportunity, whether it be with women or with books written by someone else. It’s also true that I’ve made a big mistake in the century to be born in, and in the blueprint of my second sight. But that woman Pilar, who had already had God knows how many gentlemen beneath her little golden slippers — she was not going to escape me. On the afternoon in question all signs were propitious for my ambitions, my animal curiosity, my comparative scientific bent, and my literary thirst for material from the world of genuine human experience — which my imagination has a habit of playing tricks on in any case. All that is clear. What remains foggy is how I found my way into her bedroom. Between the vestibule and the scene of my sinful conquest stood the dark hallway. And that is where we met, for I had awaited just the moment when we would bump into each other’s arms. Her mouth was pressed to mine — what’s the big deal? The hall was narrow, and then my hand rested on her breast; the cool fabric of her albornoz parted; surely the wearer of this garment helped out a little, and as my hand came to rest on her nakedness I began to see stars before my eyes — in the darkness an altogether natural phenomenon, just as the entire sequence of events I am narrating here had nothing whatsoever to do with supernatural forces. Besides, all that was happening was as unoriginal as Nature itself, which, as we all know, must repeat itself over and again in order to remain immortal. I began to sense more and more urgently the wish that the remainder of her clothing might descend as well, and in a trice we were in her room, jostling against her bedstead. The word “magnificent” flashed through my mind, “you are magnificent on your extended récamier .” Perhaps not the entire world, but certainly Vigoleis will henceforth borrow your name and call the pallet of love a pilarière . Just let me get to work. First, all these buttons. It’s taking an eternity! You foxy woman, you’ve sewn them on just millimeters apart! Underneath her peignoir she was — well now, what was she? She was the goddess I had been yearning for, right down to her stockings, which were held in place by violet ruffles.