Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

On this day we did not finish our climb to the cathedral, nor did we go to the ocean, or visit the bookshop where I was in the habit of flipping through newspapers, and where Beatrice took over for the owner like a born salesgirl. Our everyday routine was thoroughly disrupted. Even the vegetarian touch was spoiled by an invitation from Madame Gerstenberg to a sausage snack in her room. For the thousandth time in her life Beatrice packed luggage; you would have to witness her technique first-hand in order to appreciate it in all its intelligence and meticulousness. Word had got around that the Indian woman and her Teutonic chieftain were moving out, destination unknown. At eight o’clock everything was ready for departure. Luckily, crates of books from Germany, Holland, and Switzerland hadn’t yet arrived. We had sent them to our first island address at a moment when we had reason to think we would be staying on at least a year in Palma, or if it wasn’t to be on Mallorca, then on the Spanish mainland. I had no desire to return to Germany. I had left my homeland without shedding a single tear. Whatever German heritage I still carried around with me, except for the language, found its place in a few boxes of books. A few years were to pass before I could take to heart Heine’s words, “When I think of Germany in the night, I find I cannot sleep aright.” At the moment I was being robbed of sleep by other demons. For me, the present was still mightier than the past.

Antonio arrived with startling punctuality, smiling, smoking, polite, generous. He brought along a quaint and colorful Little Helper, laconic in the language of his broader nationality, but vociferous in the island dialect. Antonio had found us a shelter, out there at that certain friend’s place outside the city on the road to Valldemosa. While the almocrebe carried our luggage to the inner courtyard where the animals were tethered, we said goodbye to a few people we had got to like. Madame Gerstenberg became emotional; you could see it in her glistening eyes. She had prophetic vision not only concerning world politics and her son Friedrich — our departure toward an uncertain future didn’t please her at all. “No, dear friends, I have evil premonitions!” Her voice shook. Beatrice had told Madame her exotic mother’s life story, including the inevitable shipwreck on the reefs of the ck — dt clan. She now saw in our exodus from the anarchistic Palace of Peace, behind mules that carried our belongings — not exactly in night and fog, but still suspicious in all its accompanying circumstances—, our doleful actress friend saw in this event a sequel to the Swiss curse once issued by that petty, hyper-religious underworld that doesn’t shrink from employing God Himself for the work of the Devil. Friedrich, who knew every detail about our getting bounced out of the God-fearing hooker’s house, stated the opinion that after leaving this other place, things were actually looking up for us.

“Children, I’m so sorry for you!” cried Madame Gerstenberg when Antonio gave us the sign to start walking behind the pack animals. “When I see your miserable lot, I can almost forget my own. Vigoleis, what would your mother say if she could see you moving out like this?”

“My mother would not believe her eyes, even if she were standing next to us here on the stairs! My mother’s son walking behind jackasses, out into the dreary night! No, she would think it’s a phantom vision, a nightmare, a horrible joke. Fortunately, a mother’s eyes are blind, for otherwise many a mother’s eyes would close from grief long before their time.”

“Just don’t get sentimental!” said Friedrich, who feared that an emotional scene like this could jeopardize his own departure at half past ten. “These two are lucky. They have no idea yet what’s ahead for them. In my own case, groping around in the dark was over long ago.”

Adele Gerstenberg asked us to come back to her whenever we were hungry. Yes, she had a way of hitting the nail on the head. Of the two of them, though, Friedrich had the sharper mind for matters of daily living. Accordingly, he suggested to his Mama that we should arrange a particular day of every week when she could provide us with fodder, for otherwise we just wouldn’t come. Since she wanted to read us her play anyway, he told us, this would provide a literary excuse for our sausage picnics. “So let’s say you should drop by next…”

Madame Gerstenberg a writer too? Here at her very door, as we stood on her threshold, and as a farewell greeting, we were given this astounding revelation. All of a sudden the objectionable little word “too” took on special meaning. Our thespian-dramatist looked at us with disappointment, as if we had caught her doing something naughty. She murmured an apology, not on account of her writing, but because she had kept it a secret. Now this awful Friedrich, she added, he was always so gabby, an enfant terrible , it was enough to give his poor mother constant stage fright. And anyway, for the writing of her historical drama about Elizabeth and Essex, she was drawing heavily on her long experience on the stage, and besides, her writing didn’t disturb anybody, she did it at night, by candlelight and with a pen…a tragic figure. I was amazed to find such an attitude in this highly intelligent and talented woman. It was most definitely unnecessary for her to imitate some pianist and compose a display piece for her own artistic dexterity. After all, her career was over. I recalled what Brentano had written in his “Story of Honest Caspar and Fair Annie” about writers and their secretiveness: they should admit their calling to all the world. What nonsense: poetry considered as a kind of monstrous goose liver, which of course presupposes a freakish, sick goose! This was emphatically not the case with the dramatist Gerstenberg, “for you see, Madame, art has significance as an illness only if it manifests itself in individual cases. If there were ever an epidemic of it, we would all have to flee. The individual case and quarantine…”

Vigoleis was unable to develop his topic further. Antonio was getting impatient and urged us to get going. Herr von Martersteig, who happened to be in the city, had joined us without saying a word, his crooked spine attempting to maintain the ramrod pose that was just as unconvincing as the pension awarded him by the Reich government that had made him a cripple. Count, countess, and count-in-law were also on hand, and even the cadre of low-wage servants stood by at attention. We took leave of each and all with dignified, restrained camaraderie. Our farewells were unsullied by any thought of offering tips. Our blue-blooded bomb-thrower offered me his studio for practicing my construction hobby. Doña Inés assured us that her home was ours too. And Josefa, who in the rush had forgotten to hide her pipe in her bosom, reminded us that we were all in the hands of the Triune God. Beppo was on his chain, so we didn’t have to fear any surprises from his palm tree. And the cockatoo chattered away in his usual winning way, since one couldn’t put a chain on his tongue. Dear Lorico, with his interminable squawking about porra and puta —how could we have guessed that he was uttering prophecies, and not making snide remarks about our past experiences on the Street of Solitude?

Our exchequer had shrunk to the above-named amount, one quite easy to remember: one silver duro, a coin that can be easily forged by any halfway clever Spanish counterfeiter. The one we owned, minted in such-and-such a year, was genuine enough. If it had been fake, I would be careful not to mention that here, so as not to add poor taste to our poor fortune.

I am trying not to flavor my chronicle with “local color” by tossing in an excess of Spanish vocabulary. The use of such exotic spices would be a cheap way of hispanizing my narrative. A reader who lacks command of the language will get nothing out of such condiments; on the contrary, the recipe could irritate him, just as I am irritated by authors who write dialect. Someone who, on the other hand, is familiar with the country, its inhabitants, and the language they speak, will already know how a given event will have happened in its original setting. I am of course in no position to judge whether I will be successful at recounting Vigoleis’ adventures from memory, in a way that will strike my reader as sufficiently Spanish in taste. I trust, though, that the reader will forgive me for using the little word almocrebe —for one thing, because the context clearly shows that it designates a donkey-driver, for another and more importantly, because the word derives from the Arabic, where it means “mule-driver.” almokerí : I delight in this word all the more because I don’t know any Arabic. I’m using it now as a talisman to put myself back in the fairy-tale mood I was in as we set out on our journey behind crossbreed quadrupeds. By the way, only two of the four animals carried loads; our worldly possessions, packed in large baskets made of coarsely woven palm fronds, hung from each saddle almost to the ground. The lead jackass bore the more enormous burden, followed at regular intervals by the others, each attached to the one in front by a rope. This procession automatically puts me in mind of the Arabian fantasy world. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves could serve as an analogy since we, too, were heading toward a robbers’ den.