Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Beatrice ran to the kitchen and filled a large bowl with water, egging on the faucet with shouts of “Faster!” and “ Allons donc !” Though a very impulsive woman, when plotting revenge Beatrice takes her sweet time — a genetic legacy hailing from the days when the sun god banished her ancestors to an island on Lake Titicaca. “Get with it! Allons donc !”—but the water wouldn’t come any faster. I have mentioned that this was a hot day, and at this hour the rooftop reservoir was almost empty. Beatrice’s Indian imperturbability cost me a few more lumps and scratches, for compared to the ferocity of the women’s attack, I put up hardly any defense. But then the bowl, with its contents of smothering water, came flying at this brace of bawds.

Mother and child let go of their victim, spat as if on cue in the direction the decisive missile had come from, caressed each other with words of endearment, and disappeared into the General’s room. Pilar’s albornoz had once again been pushed aside, revealing large portions of her bosom. The sight had no effect on me, a creature of flesh. How strange are the workings of a man’s heart!

Pilar had now been dishonored a second time. Vigoleis, beware!

It was a long time before I was sufficiently mended to go out on the street for a breath of air. Meanwhile Beatrice hunted for Zwingli, and actually found him. He was lying on the bed in a state of double defeat: conquered on the one hand by the emanations of love, on the other by the scourge of hatred. As he explained in a barely audible whisper to his sister, Pilar had disarmed him when he ran to the girl’s rescue. “Get out of here!” he said. “If she finds you here, she’ll stab you to death! She’s out of her mind today, worse than any day when she’s come back from confession. Out, out! Use !”

Pilar went to confession often and with pleasure, but afterwards she was always disagreeable. For the truth is, her confessor was in the habit of tickling her too.

We brothers-in-law had not been heroes on this afternoon. One of us because he couldn’t, the other because he wouldn’t, and we shall leave open the question of whether this second one could have if he had wanted to. I have never “performed” this particular episode. I have concealed it; it is not in my repertoire of heroic ballads, and for a simple reason, too. My reader will recall that in the third chapter I blew my own horn with puffed cheeks, calling myself a raconteur with mimic talents that are a match for any occasion. Very well then, let’s put this storyteller to the test. Make him perform his own self right here and now, eye to eye and tooth to tooth with the hyenas. Have him act out a little bloodletting, let him display the stigmata of shame, the witch-inflicted wounds of whorish calamity. Ask him to show how, with his one good eye, he keeps a lookout for his Beatrice, who must soon arrive to splash him out of his misery. But speaking of eyes: maybe he could re-enact the good one convincingly enough. But not even a shot of the worst brand of garbageman’s schnapps could ever get him to portray the other one, the protuberating one, replete with the proper Picassoesque a-perspectivity rendered by a blow to his cheekbone at the hands of the woman of his sleepless nights. All that earlier talk of mimic talent was empty boasting, pure ostentation, and purposeful distraction. For this rascal knows full well that his art has definite limits. Incidentally, it ought to puzzle no one that these two ravishing Spaniards showed such vehemence in bringing down their island guests. It wasn’t the first time that Spain had emerged victorious over Inca blood, which in this case, in highly helveticized dilution, leaped into the breach or lay gasping on the pilarière . We can just ignore our dreamer from Germany; he can take care of his own disposition. That is, after all, the tragedy of his nation: it always hands itself the means to its own defeat.

“Just to muck our way through,” I said to Beatrice as we left the battle scene, where blood and water had streamed forth as at Waterloo, “is unaesthetic. And besides, it’s senseless. We must view everything from the lofty perspective of our minds.”

“What else? That’s why I decided to chuck water, darling. Water is the only thing. It always works with cats, and it worked with those two meows up there. One dousing, and it was all over for them!”

I remained silent in order not to clip my guardian angel’s wings in mid-flight. Who knows when I might need her again. To be sure, the water bath had done its duty with the she-goat and her kid. But it was also clear to me who had actually done a job on whom, up there in the apartment.

“Come on, let’s go to the cathedral and enjoy the ocean view. Tomorrow Zwingli will have gobbled enough at the trough so that we can make further plans in peace and quiet. We can’t stay in this omelet barracks. Go to bed with the swine, and you’ll stink all the time.”

It was touching to behold this unity of ours, in our desire to abandon the swinish domicile to which we had been lured by a telegram from an expiring man. My feelings for the bitch, a term that I place here sans quotation marks because not even a full dozen would do justice to the degree of her depravity — my feelings for this morsel of carrion had simply vanished. Mother and daughter had torn them from my breast together with my shirt. Or perhaps I should say that they had simply ripped them off my torso, for they had never been situated root and branch deep within my bosom. It was never more than a kind of band-aid eroticism: give it a yank, a few hairs will stick to the strip, and you won’t even say “Ouch!” And your skin will soon heal up.

Thus ended Vigoleis’ love for the first Spanish woman to cross his path, a dagger inside her garter. He had been found unworthy to die at her hand, this mournful hero.

The space in front of the cathedral was a campsite for the loitering army of beggars crippled and healthy, infirm and imbecilic, the gatekeepers of all of God’s houses in southern lands, people who are as picturesque as they are repulsive. No costume expert in the world could ever design a wardrobe of misery such as the one sported by these partners in penury. Spain is crawling with these characters; they constitute a special guild, or more precisely, a professional class of their own. They call down the blessings of heaven upon anyone who makes a donation, but whoever resists their threadbare entreaties with a regretful Perdone hermano , “Forgive me, brother,” is regaled with curses and revilement. But since heaven and hell are in criss-cross cahoots with these social barnacles, it makes no difference whether one makes a contribution or not — or at least one would think so. In reality most strangers fork over their copper obolus, not out of superstition, but merely to get rid of this plague as speedily as possible.

One member of this reeking league of cadgers had star status in Palma. It was almost as important to experience him as it was to view the cathedral itself, in whose eternal aura of light he collected his alms. He spoke “all languages,” which in Spain means German, English, and French, but he also knew Italian. In addition, local legend ascribed to him a command of the classical idioms and Hebrew. It later became apparent that legend had no need to improve on history, for in fact this hunchback could have invoked curses and blessings on his victims in these latter tongues as well. This hunchback: an enormous hump protruded from the tatters of his cloak, camouflaged with rags of various colors. To look at him evoked loathing and disgust. A greenish liquid oozed from his eyes, his hair and beard were lousy, and he stank from every pore in his body and his filthy raiment.