Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

My hobby, the creativity of decay! What a shame that my tongue was still tied, preventing me from entering a discussion on the topic with an unprejudiced mind, and adding a word or two about the sinfulness of God and the renewal of the universe. In any event, at the time I had nowhere near the command of the subject that I have today, after decades of work with the mystical writings of Pascoaes. Even now, it’s tempting to work out an imaginary conversation between Vigoleis, the later discoverer, exegete, and translator of the Portuguese savant, and Arsenio, the cocky part-time philosopher and man of the Spanish people. To do so would not run counter to usual methods of writing personal memoirs, as the selfsame Vigoleis would later observe when, as the personal secretary of a memorialist of world stature, he got a peek into a workshop where past events were not infrequently simply guessed at. Very instructive indeed; Vigoleis was continually amazed at what he saw. Details will come to the fore as soon as Count Harry Kessler gets his own chapter in my chronicle. For now I would prefer not to stray from the Manse, since Antonio deserves a little more attention as our savior. He interrupted the Giant politely — he would have to leave: night duty on the club terrace, where meanwhile even the most habitual of sleepers had awakened and would have to be kept alive until dawn and beyond with coffee, dominoes, and tales of womanizing.

And so he departed, leaving his two protégés in the care of Arsenio, who could put hordes of enemies to flight with a single fist. We had no more worries, he declared, and Bona-nit ladies, Bona-nit gentlemen. As imperceptibly as his lips pressed into a straight-line smile, he disappeared into the night.

But to what kind of devil’s kitchen had he brought us? From what I have recounted up to now, my reader will not have made much sense of the place: The “Clock Tower,” a community of considerable size, neither castle nor fortress nor even a normal house; a large number of people gathered in biblical solemnity around a matriarch and our solicitous host and benefactor Arsenio; an almocrebe whose pack animals have their home stables at the Manse. They serve us wine — by Bacchus, not at all a shabby vintage. And then we are offered coffee from the espresso containers so tediously familiar to us. Those are the details so far, plus the remark I let slip above that our caravan was headed for a nest of thieves, not to mention my even earlier statement that the Inca bird with the all-encompassing vocabulary was being prophetic. Where are we?

We rose and followed the lady of the house, who would show us to our room. Surely this would raise by an inch or two the veil of mystery that seemed to be woven around everything here and, for that matter, still seems to be draped over all of us on God’s earth. Antonio was unwilling to provide explanations. The responsibility was all his, he said; at the Tower we could rest easy at his expense. He asked only that we return sometime and knock at his basement door — no, no, no thanks necessary. With agile fingers he twirled yet another cigarette, we clapped each other on the shoulder: That’s how it was when Antonio vanished into the night.

Now the drawbridge can be hauled up. The campfire crumbles to ashes, and the only light comes from fireflies. And from the moon above. Will the moon remain true to my fable?

Good night. That wasn’t just a figure of speech, for the hour was far advanced. Not much longer and the ghosts could make their entrance at our bewitched Manse. But the clock tower was as mute as the matriarch, who had dozed off on her crutch. It was a directorial error of Antonio’s not to have twelve peals of an iron bell descend upon us now from on high. Instead, the air was filled with buzzing and fluttering sounds — huge stag beetles with pincer-shaped antlers were flying around above our heads. Fireflies lit up, faded out, then lit up again. Bats as big as pigeons swooped down out of the void, paused in mid-flight, and disappeared with a hoarse screech. All we lacked was the scent of jasmine, almonds, and oranges, to give us a romantic night under a starry Southern sky. But the asphyxiating stench in the air wasn’t coming from pretty beds of blossoms. The wind, still from the wrong direction, was blowing its memento mori from the abattoir, a penetrating reminder of the evanescence of the flesh, one that might have converted me then and there to a vegetarian life — if only the comestible so poetically named “cauliflower” didn’t stink just as horribly.

Walking behind our new hostess, we entered a colonnade and noticed how the moonlight beamed through its vine-covered ribs and arches. Soon we stepped out on an open area surrounded by various buildings. The moon had now fully risen, but still we were unable to tell what kind of structures they were — perhaps stables, sheds, or barns for storing grain. In the background we saw a particularly conspicuous building, one that we hadn’t noticed from the road because it was hidden partly by the tower and partly by the main house. Its gables were covered with grapevines that had grown out over the yard to attach themselves to trees and trellises. A wide stone staircase minus a handrail led to a kind of portal, whose architecture reminded me of the horseshoe-shaped gateways of Islam. There in the moonlight our hero and heroine took each other by the hand, as if expecting some nocturnal initiation ordeal. Were new dangers lurking ahead?

Just as the air above us was filled with swarms of winged creatures, the species that creep upon the ground were by no means absent either — thus providing full manifestation of the Lord’s fifth day of Creation. Long-tailed rats skittered to and fro, but not with the lightning speed I had observed in countries where people actually want rid of them. Here no one cursed Noah beyond the grave for obeying the Lord’s command and taking rats, too, aboard his ark. The beasts weren’t exactly well-liked, but they were tolerated; these simple island folk honored the Almighty’s sacred decree, though they weren’t averse to kicking one of the critters once in a while. But no, the hustle and bustle displayed by these repulsive rodents here on Arsenio’s open range must have had intraspecific reasons of an urgency unfathomable to outsiders like us. Perhaps their intention was to reproduce as numerously as possible, requiring that they run around day and night, offering full tits to their insatiable whelps while trying not to eat each other up in the process. I can never forget the old silver-haired witch rat who, in the declining years of her life as a rover and chewer, appeared to have found a peaceful hole somewhere in the hospitable Clock Tower. On that very first night she darted across our path, as if heaven had sent her to us with the divine injunction, “It is well that we are here. Let us make booths!” Later I spied her night after night on the same path near the open latrine, always moving with the same dignity and tail-dragging gravitas . At first glance it looked as though she might be part albino, for her coat was flecked with white. But when she came so close that Beatrice screamed and I could easily have counted the scales on her tail, I saw that she had reached an advanced and incurable stage of the dreaded mange. We stood right near her, and one kick would have sent her out of our way and off to the rattish Beyond, but she kept moving at just the same deliberate pace. In fact, our hostess did give her a poke with her foot, but only a gentle one. She shoved the old lady to one side and said that we would soon get accustomed to the comings and goings of the rat population. This old beast wouldn’t hurt anybody any more, she told us; even the dogs left her alone.

At Beatrice’s request I later sinned against this animal. One clandestine moonlit midnight I did the old lady in — it had to be. Once the deed was done, Beatrice shook my hand in silence. To this very day the poor soul has no idea what I used as a murder weapon. Were I to go into detail here, disgust would again well up in her after all these twenty years. At any rate, I can understand full well how bishops in the Middle Ages saw the necessity of controlling the pests by pronouncing maledictions on rats. Still, such a device for interfering with Creation isn’t exactly edifying.