Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Instead of arresting me, the gendarme laughed. In fact, he laughed resoundingly, and I would have bet my own head that he was a high-ranking officer, although I couldn’t see his stars. He was still giggling when he called over another member of his squad to share the joke with him—“Hey, just think, this guy says he lives here with a woman — with his wife!” His colleague laughed out loud, too: “Oh sure! Who hasn’t lived in there with a woman?” But then, “Now please leave.”

It is not my habit to resist authority. I lack money for doing this, and therefore I lack the courage. What is more, I was very tired, and thus I could be excused many things. But before I acted in obedience to the command to depart, I had a brilliant idea: I named a name. Civil servants of all kinds are impressed by names, simply because they earn their bread by seeking to eliminate namelessness in the line of duty. I told them to apprise Don Arsenio of my presence; what I said was that they should contact him right away and tell him that Don Vigo, the German, the homme de lettres , was at the cordon outside, and that Arsenio should identify him.

Thank heavens, they finally understood me. Minutes later I was escorted under armed guard to the courtyard, where a turbulent act of the world stage was being performed. I don’t know who was playing what role, nor do I know who wrote the script. But it was clear that the Lord of the Manse was not a mere extra in this drama, to judge from the sweaty and jowl-shaking excitement and bossiness of his behavior (“Just you try…!”). My almocrebe was there, too, as well as a few men I had often seen ambling across the Tower courtyard — regular customers, I supposed, for Arsenio ran a café here where you could get things to eat and drink; you just clapped your hands, and the table set itself. And now they were all swearing up and down; nobody understood a word I was saying or what anybody else was saying — which swearing isn’t meant to accomplish anyway. When I appeared on the stage, Arsenio swung his hat. I didn’t catch the cue from the prompter. And then a captain of the guard came up to me.

This captain — maybe he had one more star, I’m not familiar with this brand of astronomy — greeted me politely, and in his address to me employed the French language. He was neatly combed and uniformed, ironed and polished, and I was unkempt and unshaven, and very, very tired. Oh you brigands, you who wield power, let me pass! What is the password? I want to go to bed. I’ve just sent a letter to Vic. The letter is already afloat, it’s proceeded ahead of you, you can call it predestination of the Lyon kind, everything is fitting together nicely like a worm gear. Why, if the bidet hadn’t served me as a burbling fount of artesian inspiration I would still be squatting in front of it with my machine, grasping for fitting words to open the eyes of my colleague — yes, you natty fellows, I happen to be a colleague of Monsieur Victoire de Vriesland, un homme de lettres, lui aussi .

What were these official gentlemen doing here anyway, in the calm of night? Everywhere and anywhere in the world, policemen are an embarrassment. The more innocent you are, the quicker you’ll get caught, for the true culprit knows how to pull his neck out of the sling. The sling will be pulled tight no matter what, but they never catch the real guy. But now, is it me they want to catch? Or maybe Beatrice? Or one of the ladies of the night, one of the thirty? But now there are only twenty-nine of them; we have, after all, requisitioned a bidetto for service in intellectual pursuits — we, your typical representatives of a bidet-less culture. That’s it! We are a bidet-less culture! That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to Beatrice. That’s the reason why we North People, we who get conceived to the accompaniment of the goose step and get born with trumpet fanfares, that’s why we are in such decline! A nation’s greatness…

Then the major said he had been told that I was a German, and that I had taken up lodgings with my Madame in the Clock Tower. Very well. But was this in fact the case — please understand, just a formality…? Could I provide identification? And, pardon , what was I doing at this place, since it didn’t seem as though it accepted permanent guests. Or did Señor Arsenio recently… ahem…? There was a long pause, the colonel looked over at the Giant but refrained from slapping his boot-top with his riding whip. He spoke French slowly, correctly, with no grammatical mistakes, although Beatrice probably would have counted up a dozen or more, and then added the ones I was making, and it would have been curtains for both of us. As it was, the officer and I understood each other perfectly. Of course I could prove my legitimacy; my passport was in our room — should I go get it? And if I may be permitted to inquire, what was this all about?

That was for the time being none of my business — such, in effect, was the reply, though it may have been more polite. There was a small complication. Allons . I climbed the open staircase with the sergeant in my tracks. Not one rat showed its face. They had all hidden away because the battalion had arrived with dogs in tow, and the gendarmes who weren’t standing guard were patrolling the fields with muskets at the ready. Revolution? But the King had long since been smoked out. Or was he trying to smuggle himself back in?

A carabinero was standing guard at our private chamber. He saluted his superior and gave his report. It sounded much like army headquarters, and my next thought, so close to the pilarière , was: the vice squad, as in Amsterdam on Nicolaas Beets Straat. Well then, if you want to know, we’re not really married. We’re living together in devout congress, and we’re at the end of our rope. Poor Beatrice, a mangy rat hanging from our partition wall would be better than this. The only redeeming feature of the scene was that the guard was seated on a chair.

And Beatrice was seated on our cot with her flowery peignoir , looking more exotically beautiful, more Indian than ever. Her right hand — Good Lord, how angry she must be! “What’s going on? Have you been sitting in front of the door all this time? Are they looking for somebody?”

“What’s going on? I was about to ask you the same thing. They’re turning the place upside down.”

My sense of security returned. My fatigue was gone. I should have crossed swords with the general, not chickened out as I did back in Münster when a fellow student, a member of a dueling fraternity, challenged me, and I answered him in the presence of other habitual duelers, that I was too cowardly for swordplay, and anyway not the dueling sort. My friends studying in the theology department were proud of me; they detected in this reply a proof of my enormous courage. But then I turned cowardly a second time, and didn’t even try to explain to them that I was really and truly a coward.

I handed our passports to the captain outside the door. First the document from the Weimar Republic and then the little booklet, showing official stamps from page one through to the end, issued by the Swiss Confederation. Oh, the lady has done some traveling, said the officer, and I immediately took shame at the paucity of stamps in my own passport. Everything was in order, many thanks, but could he just take a peek into our room, though he didn’t wish to disturb Madame, very sorry, he wasn’t going to ask any questions, we obviously didn’t belong here, “ c’est la vie ,” he was just doing his duty. He did it with a rapid, expert glance inside the cell, then he gave us a majestic salute. Surely he had the highest rank in his line of service, and without any doubt he was a man of the world. As such, and dressed in civilian clothes, he returned to the Clock Tower a few days later and made Beatrice a grand-style immoral proposition. Meanwhile the guard had gone to sleep on his chair. I let him snooze and closed the door noiselessly.