Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

I, too, consider suicide to be a religious variant of the Big Gamble in Paradise. I don’t mean the kind that happens when life threatens to choke you, when you leave fingerprints on the cash register, when there’s a bank failure, when your wife is sleeping with the chimney sweep (which leaves other kinds of prints), when you just can’t stand it any more and reach for the noose. All that has nothing at all to do with suicide, at least not with the dignified, metaphysical type of suicide I have in mind. Those are simply petty bourgeois traffic accidents of a sort that just don’t happen in the primeval forest. I’m fully aware that my position on this matter resembles that of a black native who feels superior to the whites, or of one of the “happy few,” one who feels more at home in the realm of metaphysics than in the range of experience open to everyone under the moon; who senses the redemptive emptiness that lies beyond this world and desires a foretaste of it, who immerses himself in it and, especially if he has fled from some Pilar, feels the need to stretch out his antennae toward some new form of Eternity; who can hold out for a day and a night, and again for another day and another night, in the awareness that there will once be an end to all this nonsense, with no promise whatsoever of a rebirth or continuation of existence, either in this world or the next. Someone who, by clinging to this metaphysics of nada , is just as unoriginal as the antipodes who fall to their knees with utter faith and confidence in the opposite persuasion — those heroes of the battlefield who trumpet forth fortissimo their own homeward march, if they haven’t died already. And they will have monuments erected to them. None of that is original. But what, after all, does “original” mean? Not even God was “original” when, after the Creation, he delivered up the whole thing to mankind, like some earthly artist in search of bread.

All this is an amplification of the philosophy of the sin of the Creation as developed by my mystical friend Pascoaes, whom at the time I — a novice and myself a flesh-and-blood candidate for suicide in the Clock Tower — had not yet discovered, despite my search through Iberian literature for new ideas, inducements, and stimuli for my notion of nada . But this is an exaggeration, for I actually left it to chance to meet up with the proper adversary. I came close; my Portuguese sage was already on the horizon, and it is one of the rewarding aspects of my Mediterranean guest appearance that I finally did encounter this Lusitanian poet who, without fear, lays siege to the ramparts of his God. The pathway into his presence would take us first to a place that we sorely missed in our Tower. Patience!

I do not disapprove of suicide, because its roots can be located in the big mistake of Creation itself. But was Beatrice thinking of this kind of metaphysically grounded death now, on the our third day of starvation? Did she wish to return to her Maker and then call back to me, “ Ciao , Vigo! There’s hot water everywhere here, and you can have a roof over your head!”—which I have my doubts about with regard to the Great Beyond. Be that as it may, what did she want? The word “annihilation” had been uttered. Our values were about to undergo a total revaluation — I was expecting something very final. To be sure, here in the cloister of the horizontal brothers, different standards prevailed. Our cell was proof in and of itself that nothing at all could be depended upon in these surroundings, least of all in the matter of nutrition. How gladly we would have crawled on our stomachs the entire length of the corridor if, at the other end, we had espied a slice of bread, preferably garnished with sobrasada or even a stone-hard butifarra . We were now ascetics, wetting our lips with stagnant water. No locusts fell to us from heaven, not to mention manna or wild honey (Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision hadn’t been written yet). If I were to succumb now, if the strength of my mind were to sink beneath that of my body, then we would have to do ourselves in, hand in hand. And we could arrange that in a romantic way. I had imagination; I enjoyed, albeit within a small circle of acquaintances, a certain reputation as an inventor, and moreover, we were avid readers — Beatrice had in fact read a great deal. Literature could offer us examples of how two people who are tired of living can take leave of this world — Romeo and Juliet come to mind. We know of their fate in the form of Luigi Da Porto’s novel, Shakespeare’s stagecraft, and Gottfried Keller’s dreamy, romantic version.

If I were to yield to my drive for annihilation, I would opt for the Swiss writer’s solution, even though Vigoleis and Beatrice were not separated by family hatred, which is always more intense when money is at stake. Something else, though, was separating them from their love, which did not come to an end with Pilar. What I have in mind is the fact that their tragedy, their Spanish auto , was no less worthy of attention, although up to the very moment I write this only a single writer of the most obscure reputation has taken it up as a subject. To be more precise, this writer is right now in the process of laying it all out. Will he conquer the stages of the world? That depends on whether the audiences approve of their method of dying. When the curtain falls, audiences prefer to see the boards heaped with corpses, blood everywhere, swords skewering the heroes’ armored breasts, daggers stuck in the enemy’s ribs up to the hilt, and the avenger’s cry of “How do you like that!”

That is why I said to Beatrice that I had no intention of interfering with her gloomy plans, that I was never a spoilsport except in regard to myself, “and do you know, chérie , if I were to approve, if we actually do it, won’t that mean that we are admitting defeat? That we are the slaves of our own desires? A marriage built on egotism is corrupt and will come apart. Is that what we want? Over a bit of hot water? In a house like this one, I hesitate to speak pro domo , and I could be easily misunderstood. And imagine if I were ever to write my memoirs — how should I handle this chapter of our life? Will I have to suppress it? Will I have to pretend that we never went to the dogs, or should I try to capitalize on this autobiographical detail in the manner of great writers such as St. Augustine? If you’re thinking that this is a melancholy idea, then you have to know that such is just the way I am by nature, with or without earthly ambushes by a Pilar or dilapidated youth hostels. It’s just that nobody notices. But let me make this clear: I refuse to let my sublime disgust with life be subsumed in your low-grade taedium vitae .

“Here’s another suggestion, a splendid one, one that comes from a remote corner of my being that hasn’t yet been smothered in darkness. Let’s not rush things and spoil the handiwork of Divine Providence, which on occasion has a hard enough time of it. Let’s be real men and give it an honest chance, one last chance, or maybe two last chances since there are two of us and One of them. That’s what you call fair play, sportif . Starting today we won’t boil our drinking water any more. No more killing of germs, no more prophylactic measures. Let’s make a beggarman’s contract with fate, the kind that used to be so popular, where you sign up for a process of honest competition. There’s a legal word for it, but I’ve forgotten what it is. All right, the first step will be the intestinal one. The second will be by way of Amsterdam, and for that I’ll need a sheet of paper, an envelope, and a postage stamp (which we don’t have). On second thought, I’ll send the letter without a return address so the addresse will have to pay the postage, which he’ll gladly do when he sees Clima ideal on the cancellation, considering that it rains all the time in Amsterdam. That’s the most reliable way to send a letter, because the post office always wants to get its money. And who do you think I’m going to let the post office press a fine from? One of your victims? Your erudite brother in Basel? My uncle on Cathedral Square in Münster? My dear loved ones in Süchteln on the Niers? Wrong! I’ll write to them on some other occasion, and make their eyes leap from their sockets.