Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

The ceremony of mutual introductions was splendid. Our impression of this procedure’s grandiose courtoisie , its transmundane sublimity, was heightened by the fact that no names were mentioned — just as at a meeting of kings, where everyone knows exactly how the crown fits. Antonio was no longer a hotel waiter, he was an ambassador at a foreign court. We were not vagabonds with a damaged valise, down to our very last fiver: just behold our cortege! Only titled guests would arrive in such panoply with steeds and knights; the dust on our garments and boots gives testimony to our long journey. Beatrice’s sedan chair? A minor accident on the highway — what matter? “Now you are here, welcome to my abode. Heya , my good people, get on with it!” The warrior claps his hands, and the broad area where we are standing — half riding arena, half castle approach — is instantly filled with people of all ages and sexes. The crowd of welcomers begins with an infant in the arms of its dwarflike nurse. It includes tittering, awkward teenagers, rises to the more sedate adults, and culminates with the exalted, awe-inspiring, yet also pathetic figure of a white-haired matriarch. She approaches us, accompanied by yapping dogs, with the aid of a brightly polished, high-backed chair that she’s using as a crutch. Twice she gives us a toothless “ Bona-nit ,” the Mallorcan dialect form of “Good evening.” Then the aged woman sits down on her improvised crutch, thus forming the natural center of this biblical tableau. Let us give her, again temporarily, the matriarchal name by which she actually was called: Na’ Maguelida, the hundred-year-old. We foreign emissaries bow down before her.

The lord of the tribe was named Arsenio. I might have expected him to bear the title “Don” in keeping with Spanish custom for men of his standing. But he wasn’t a count, either; he was just a Mallorcan. Arsenio dominated by his behavior and gestures: a few waves of the hand, and everyone quickly obeyed. Zwingli with his Magic Horn would go pale with envy. In action here at the settlement, he was even more impressive than his torso and limbs might already cause a passive observer to think possible. He looked down on my puny five-foot-ten dimensions from the height of his shoe length. His shoulders were made for putting under heavy pieces of furniture. In a railway switchyard in India he could substitute for a working elephant; in a circus he could assemble singlehanded the iron cages for the menagerie. I could add any number of similar comparisons, but what it all comes down to is this: Arsenio was a giant. And he laughed like a giant. In response to some remark by Antonio he shook with mirth in a way that made us shrink back just a little. But he was at the same time a gentle giant; he meant well for us. He was overcome with pleasure — you could read that in the enormous expanse of his face. Each wrinkle of laughter was a special welcome greeting, “ hahahahaha, o, o, o, o !” and then he extended his hand toward me, fraternally, jovially. I gave him mine. His monstrous paw closed. We looked each other in the eye, man to man, and when the pressure abated, something bloodless fell downward and swung feebly at my pants seam. But I didn’t cry out! Nor did I cry out when, a few years later, my hand entered a similarly vise-like claw, that belonging to the philosopher Hermann Keyserling. You endure such things every time they happen, and every time you are amazed that you’ve survived without a plaster cast. I’m forced to admit, though, that I prefer such virile handclasps to the limp extremities some people extend to us, amorphous appendages that feel like some obscene object we aren’t prepared to touch.

Beatrice was spared the vise. Our warrior-receptionist bowed down before her, which is to say, he inscribed an arc with his torso, downward and then up again. His right arm made a gesture of homage and hospitality; to make the courtly scene complete, we had to imagine that it held a hat bearing shimmering feathers. What a character for a cowboy movie! In America this guy could make a million, but he’s probably not interested in playing a villain. He’s content to live here on his estate amid his thriving populace, sans mustang and sans flecks of blood on vest and chaps. I estimated his age at about fifty.

Compared to this Anakite, the lady of the house must be called small. She was rotund, with a pretty face and the soft features one often sees in heavy-set mothers. She wore earrings made of precious gold. She parted her raven-black hair neatly in the middle; it shone like freshly poured asphalt. Like the matriarch she spoke only in the island dialect. Surrounding her were a number of girls — some gorgeous, some ugly — of various ages. All of them were giggling behind raised hands and skirt-hems, just like the adolescents back home. They whispered things to each other about us, whereupon Arsenio thundered at them to desist on the spot. His voice was so persuasive that even some of the dogs fled with their tails between their legs. “Get away now! Enough of this staring! Off to the hall! Go get some wine, sheep cheese, donkey curds, olives, butifarras , grapes, and paté for Madame! Right, Antonio? That’s what our guests deserve, arriving here this evening after such a busy day. From Germany and Switzerland, you say? My, my, a goodly portion of the world is assembled here at the tables of our golden island!”

Arsenio, like two of his older sons, spoke in marvelous Castilian, though at times they lapsed into Mallorcan, especially now that our almocrebe had joined us for a drink. The wine was good, an island vintage. What am I saying? It was the house product of our movie villain, who bottled several hundred liters annually. Beatrice took part in the conversation in my stead. The talk was about trivial matters, but the Spaniards got excited nonetheless. Arsenio wanted to know what the “outside world” thought of the end of the monarchy. We couldn’t tell him, because we had been too busy coping with our own decline and fall. No offense, and once again they talked about the weather. I was still unable to participate in any diplomatic pseudo-conversations, for my tongue would not obey, no matter how eagerly I might have wanted to contribute my profound thoughts about weather prognoses and the incompetence of every last forecaster, despite all their isobars and isobronts. The most I could add was a single speech-fragment that I tossed into the conversation, one that emerged as I let my thoughts hover around our own private weather forecast. In that realm the wind was still blowing from the direction of Armageddon — it was blowing the wrong way, Arsenio would say, and I would have to agree with him. To this very day, the wind refuses to blow as it should. The ravens are still squatting at the roadside, and the vultures are still circling in the air above.

This house, the proud landlord began in explanation, was known to everyone as the “Torre del Reloj,” the Clock Tower, named after an iron rod cemented at an angle into a wall and overgrown with grapevines. A century before, this rod had been the indicator of a sundial; as a child, the matriarch had read the passing hours on the tower wall. He, Arsenio, couldn’t recall the rusty metal pointer’s horological function. Earlier the settlement was called “Ca’n Costals,” but the true original name, the Giant told us, had dropped out of memory generations ago. As the place gradually deteriorated, local lore preserved the quainter designation — oddly enough, for if the sun had continued to tell the hours on the wall, no one would have thought to substitute “Clock Tower” for “Ca’n Costals.” People, he said, often ignore what is right in front of their eyes. But whether it was “Ca’n Costals” or “Torre del Reloj,” he assured us that the house, in accordance with the ancient Spanish tradition of hospitality, was now our house too.