Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

After another hour Beatrice closed the cover on the keyboard and lit a cigarette — a familiar gesture of hers. She said she was gradually getting her fingers under control. But performance in public, even in front of a tiny private audience, was as yet out of the question. For such things she was still much too rusty; it would be better for her to start taking lessons again. Zwingli told her of a local musical priest, our later friend Mosén Juan María Tomás. The foreign colony on the island, he explained, was enchanted by the good reverend’s a capella choir.

Julietta was late. Instead of the hoped-for omelets, the two of them ate whatever they could find in the pantry — which wasn’t much in the summertime, because they had been forced to sell the icebox. In any case it wasn’t what both of them needed most. Pilar’s nostrils quivered. With Zwingli, what quivered was the hand that was re-sprouting the magic wand. Beatrice, too, was quivering, but this was a residual tremor from her musical acrobatics. Vigoleis was the only one who, on this forenoon, got the tremors in anticipation of what was about to happen. He suddenly developed the gift for second sight: boy oh boy, if Julietta doesn’t hurry back with the necessary provisions, things are going to get very hot in here. Pilar trembled more and more. Zwingli also lost control, and they began a violent verbal exchange that culminated with a saucer of red marmalade, called membrillo , getting aimed at Zwingli’s skull. Zwingli forgot to duck, and thus the confection ended up sticking to his face. Lucky enough for him, for it might well have been the ceramic side that struck him, in which case some blood would have been shed, and not just jam. For us, this was a signal that Pilar was declaring an end to the meal. We departed discreetly. Hasta luego! Ciao! Tschüss !

Spats are the worst thing that can happen inside four walls. It’s better to experience a stopped-up drain, a burst water pipe, or a smoky oven! Such things can be repaired. Spats are irreparable. We were just about to board a tram for Ca’s Català to enjoy some open-air peace at the shore, when we heard some commotion. A bunch of wild kids were after a girl, Julietta of course, who once again was raising dust on the square. She coursed back and forth with huge dancing leaps, swinging her straw shopping basket over her head. With a daring fling she suddenly tossed it over the heads of her half-pint audience into the dirt. I went up to Julietta with the intention of scolding her. As soon as she saw me, she leaped up and embraced me with such force that both of us almost tumbled into the dust. She called me “Don Vigo,” impressing the assembled urchins with her foreign acquaintance. I asked her why she hadn’t taken the groceries home. Her impudent answer was, “Whaddya mean?” Those snots over there had filched them from her — and she pointed to her swarm of fans, a horde that was capable of anything. She just didn’t dare to go back to Mom without the stuff. The two of them back home, she said, should go ahead without the usual tortilla. “Well of all the…,” I thought, and was sent into further shock. I gave her some money, told her to go shopping again for what the gang had stolen from her, not to forget the wine that the kids had swilled, and to get home just as fast as her legs would take her. With a rapacity that was quite out of character, she grabbed the money, brandished it in front of the kids who were watching her every move, and then heaved it among them. They scrambled like cats for the loot, a sight that Julietta seemed to enjoy and that held me breathless. Then the girl began dancing again. The dust clouded upwards to shroud the scene from my sight.

Beatrice had witnessed my defeat from a distance. We gave up the idea of a stroll at the seashore. We went slowly down to the harbor, where we saw the snazzy yacht belonging to a French billionaire specializing in smells — Coty, if my memory serves me right. What a gorgeous ship! Oh, wouldn’t it be grand to go aboard and set sail! We saw some people on deck, no doubt millionaires one and all. I was overcome with amazement and adventurous fantasies. Beatrice remained calm and sober. She had already had her experiences on oaken decks such as these. Once, for several months, she had accompanied millionaires from ex-royal families on board a gilded ark like this one, along and across the azure depths of the Adriatic. Never again, not even for twice the wage! She would prefer to drift along, rudderless on a naked raft, with her Vigoleis! Bolstered by this bright prospect, we returned home. It was a hot day, like all the days here. In the evening the wind subsided, and this meant that the night was going to be unbearable. Since the day we arrived, not a drop of rain had fallen. A remarkable experience for people who, back in Amsterdam, had often been confined to quarters by deluges.

Our expedition took several hours. Time enough, I thought as we ascended the three portal steps, for the domestic storm and its meteorologists to have come to rest. On the stairway we heard piercing shouts. Julietta was yelling. Pilar was yelling. No question about it: mother, the mature plant, was lowering the boom on her daughter, the sprouting seedling. I darted upwards three stairs at a time, flung open the vestibule door, and sprang to the aid of my darling protégée. “Stop! Not one more slap!”

Pilar had already done some bloody work on her child. Julietta lay on the floor, doubled over in pain. Golden slippers can, as we see here, be used in special ways to soften up an adversary. Pilar was fuming. She was out of control. She called upon every last saint of the Church, the immaculately conceived Mother of God, in a word the entire Heavenly Host, to grant their blessing as she inflicted her punishment. Julietta, rather less pious on her part, replied in similarly pragmatic fashion. She took recourse to the proven argot of the gutter, lending her mother the sobriquet puta —an enormously significant concept in Spain, one that can facilitate a comprehension of the country in its entirety. In the same breath the child expressed a desire for her own death. “Go ahead and kick me, you horrible mother! Just see what will happen to you if I die!” I was familiar with this kind of suicidal incitement to murder. As a child I had reacted similarly, although the circumstances were never quite so dramatic in our house. There, the eternal mother-offspring hostility centered on a ghastly carrot casserole that I refused to eat, claiming that I would croak if she were to force this mess of pottage down my throat like a goose — and I hoped passionately that I would suffocate on this bowl of glop, just to punish my mother. But she knew just how far one could go when dealing with a squealing captive piglet. Pilar and Julietta were going too far. It tore my heart to see this brat so cruelly mauled. I was a very inexperienced Vigoleis. Amid the ear-splitting clamor of battle, I overheard Beatrice’s warning shout, “For God’s sake, Vigo, stay out of it!” Like a warrior unaware of his own cowardice, I lunged at the rabid mother.

The Beatrices among my readers, those who are familiar with the world and its noblest product, the human being, know very well what awaited Vigoleis as he set out to drive a wedge between the feelings of mother and child. But for the benefit of the Vigoleises, one or the other of whom may be among my readers, I shall now reveal what happened to our esteemed brother.

Hardly had he touched Pilar’s desirable body, and with cries of “ Basta! basta !” pushed her up against the wall and away from her slavering daughter, when the child, whom an even less experienced referee would have considered down for the count, rose up and jumped me from behind. Whereupon the two of them joined forces and began beating me up: they scratched, kicked, shoved, and spat, and soon my hands and face were bloody. Pilar grabbed my shirt and ripped it in shreds down to my belt, and before I knew it Julietta had torn it completely off my body. I was already bleeding like a galley slave, when Beatrice came to my succor and intervened in this scene of violent retribution — but in her inscrutable fashion: she shouted a command to defend the redoubt just a while longer, for relief was on its way. So I held the fort with rapidly ebbing strength. One of my eyes was already blinded, while my other eye was seeing double. What it saw was that I would soon be a goner, unless…