Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Quiet, don’t ask. I want to go on being mysterious. This idea has to ripen in me like a potato seed — when it hits daylight it will suddenly turn green. I’ll start writing, Beatrice, while you recline exhausted in body and spirit on that cot for wayward youth. It’ll be a letter to the single person who holds the little sparrow of our life in his hands, and he simply won’t let it fall from the roof. I’m going to write to Vic — or rather, to put it in the arcane and cryptic form of his little country’s titular barème : to His Excellency the Most Worthy, Highest-Born, Most Erudite Sir Victor Emmanuel van Vriesland, Esquire, Friend of the Fair Sex and Connoisseur of Fine Literature — the first writer of world renown whom Vigoleis ever sinned against before he went over, or is going over, or is about to go over, to self-pollution. For you see, Beatrice, it’s all a question of transition, of transcendence, if you prefer to hear such exalted terms from your own transcendent but not at all immanent Vigoleis. I’m going to write to Vic and apply a whole lot of pressure on him, which I’ll ask him to reapply to the very pretty lady he’s closed the film contract with, and probably some other kind of contract as well. Who besides Vriesland is capable of sculpting on the weaker sex the kind of concave relief that only the ancient Egyptians were the masters of? Over the years the carvings can get clogged up, and you have to use a rasp to clean them out. In his inimitable charming way he will make an impression on this girl and free up the money. It’ll be here next week, I swear it! Today is Thursday, by nine o’clock my letter will be on its way to Barcelona. I’m going to take it directly to the harbor so it doesn’t sit around in Palma for weeks more on our friend Don Fernando’s desk. He’s a meticulous worker, and that usually means lots of delays. Next Tuesday it’ll be in Amsterdam. By Wednesday Vic will have paid the postage due, and he’ll read it on Thursday when he wakes up from the hangover he’ll have from his scrounging maneuver. Any objections, ma chère ?

None. During the course of this optimistic conversation with the pessimistic Beatrice, which found me bubbling over with self-denial, I took the typewriter out of the box that the rats had gnawed at but not succeeded in ripping open. I put it on the bidetto , rolled in a sheet of paper, typed out the date “Torre del Reloj, Thursday…,” and then came the salutation. Did I write “Dear Mr. van Vriesland,” or “Dear Victor E. van Vriesland,” or just “Dear Vic”? I can’t recall which degree of human and literary cordiality author and translator had reached at this point in their relationship.

The little machine rattled and banged, the platen with its dried-out rubber roller zipped back and forth, line followed line, and the result was a lengthy epistle. Sometimes misery loves prolixity. Inspiration usually arrives from above; materialistic thinking imagines the creation of the universe, the revelation of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, the divine enthusiasm of poets, and hitting the jackpot as resulting from an emanation from on high, a kind of bathroom shower with tiny jets whose faucet human beings have no control over, for otherwise there would be no miracle. Here in the Sundial Tower, in this grubby flophouse and eternal trampoline, inspiration reached Vigoleis from below, from the bathroom appliance he was typing at and on. You might say that he was the recipient of subterranean effusions, tellurian impulses that a dowser could detect if he ever found his way into our cell of happiness.

Vigoleis typed away on top of the bidet. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that every word he wrote took shape under the aegis of a particular legendary animal, the horse. Bidetto means literally “little horse” “little nag,” or “pony.” One thinks immediately of the winged Pegasus, the symbol of poets the world over, the stallion that created the Hippokrene Spring on Mount Helikon with a stroke of his hoof. Right here and now, our poetizing hero was digging his spurs in the loins of his Dutch colleague, urging him to gallop forth valiantly. And behold! The fabled fountain of Berlin Film Inc. will start to flow!

For a few hours the hallowed halls resounded to the rhythmic rappings of mechanically activated revelation, without discord of any kind. Beatrice does not snore in her sleep. All the other cells were still empty. My orchestration of our bitter misery thus escaped profanation by the raucous cacophony that can arise among journeying men when they, too, run out of bread and whip out their switchblades to defend their right to the last available crust. For we must not deceive ourselves about the journeyman clientele under this celestial canopy. Not a few of the establishment’s patrons will have dastardly deeds on their record, committed while on their travels under, as the poet says, the benevolent eye of God. It’s all a matter of the distance between the Creator and His creature. The only disturbance was the black shadows scurrying along the top of the cell partition. From day to day the rats were getting more insolent.

Tapping a final period into the machine, Vigoleis felt his inspiration suddenly expire. The emanations stalled out completely; from below there now came forth from the mythological bathroom appliance only a faintly putrid stench. And from above, silence descended upon the young man who was daring to enter the lists with fate itself.

On this third day of alimentary fasting — already preceded by a period of moral abstinence — Vigoleis’ girl slept the sleep of total exhaustion.

The hygienic pony had done its duty well. For the first time ever, and without bucking, it had tolerated an intellectual burden on its back.

At around 7 pm I went to the harbor. I left a note explaining my departure and its urgent rationale, for otherwise Beatrice might have might have gone into shock thinking that I had taken off to do myself in all alone. March in step, but bite the dust separately — is that Vigoleis’ motto?

A vigorous walker with a length of pace like my own should take 35 to 40 minutes to get from the Clock Tower to the mailbox of the Transmediterránea Steamship Company. A more casual loping gait would require about ¾ of an hour. This hike, out and back, took me more than three hours. The letter-carrier took a long rest at the dock, then he started for home with a spring in his step, like a happy convalescent. His thoughts probably oscillated between heaven and earth; today I can easily imagine what at the time I could imagine only vaguely.

Having arrived at the olfactory barricade of the slaughterhouse, I had to break through another kind of obstruction, one that had to be overcome without holding my nose. The highway in the vicinity of the Tower was now guarded by armed men. On closer approach I saw that they had formed a cordon around the Tower premises. Searchlights were scouring the area; beams of light hit me, and just as suddenly let me disappear again. So I wasn’t their target. A few mounted men galloped away — was this perhaps a night-time military maneuver? Had they selected Arsenio’s handsomely situated fortress as the scene of their strategic exercises? And what does “handsome” mean in this context? But I have no comprehension of martial whims, and maybe it was the local firefighters responding to a false alarm. But then I heard a shout of “Alto!”

“You musn’t go any farther, get back, please!” I heard myself addressed in friendly, calm, and clear tones. Mainland Spaniards are capable of this type of command; a German armed guard could never come close to it. When a German guard gives an order, he turns as steely as his rifle. The man giving me an order here was no Mallorquin.

I cobbled together my Spanish vocabulary and explained to the carabinero that I unfortunately could not leave the area, that it was imperative for me to enter the premises — yes, the “Torre del Reloj,” for that was where I lived with my wife. I used the word “wife” as a diplomatic gesture to designate a private relationship that was none of his business in any case; if this had been a German guard I would have uttered some long bureaucratic phrase.