Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Slowly and with dignified pace, like the mourners at our own burial, we entered the city, passed through its streets and headed for the harbor with the intention of leaping into the sea from the farthest end of the pier, where the lighthouse stands surrounded by a raised promenade. First I would help Beatrice, who isn’t good at climbing and doesn’t much like heights, to clamber over the iron railing, and then I would follow. I, too, am not very good at gymnastics, but a railing like this one wouldn’t be any problem. This was, incidentally, a wordless agreement between us, as we figured out in retrospect — one of the many that can illustrate how two people who are devoted to each other in body and soul can, at just the right moment, do just the wrong thing.

As we arrived at the first boat dock, we noticed something that forced us to change our plan. Amid orange peels and sardine cans, bunches of straw, street refuse, and a pool of oil glistening in all the colors of the rainbow, we saw the swollen cadaver of a cat jutting out of the water, and sitting on top of this, a rat eating a hole in its improvised raft. I pointed at this symbol of transience, and was about to start quoting Trakl when Beatrice pulled me away from this view of a form of putrefaction that, to one kind of tooth at least, offered delicate morsels. “…in sweet, stale, rotten flesh / their snouts toil in silence.” She was thinking: That’s just what would have happened with us — or rather, pardon , that’s just what is going to happen with us. So we’d better find a rat-free shoreline. “Come on, let’s go out to Porto Pí!”

Porto Pí? But of course. That’s where a cliff juts out over the sea. We once stood there just like the tourists we decidedly no longer were. The Golden Isle had since become a Devil’s Isle, and now it was to become for us the Isle of the Dead. Onward, to Porto Pí.

Did I remember Porto Pí, Beatrice asked. You bet Vigoleis remembered that cliff above the sea! He had stood up there in the days before Pilar turned into a raging bedstead fury. She had stood next to him, the intoxicating one next to the intoxicated, and she touched his arm and pointed to something in the distance, causing Vigoleis to think impulsively of Life and the Ocean and Swimming and all such things that leap to mind when things have come along so far that the two of you can stand and stare together at some distant point. He, of course, did not recognize this spot as suicidal topography, ideal or otherwise. But if Beatrice now wanted to go out there, the overhanging cliff could very well serve as a diving board, though not a very springy one. Still, once in a lifetime one can manage even that. I followed her.

It must have taken us three hours to trudge along the bay to Santa Catalina, the working-class suburb of Palma, then through the village El Terreno with its high-class villas owned by foreigners, then onward and onward on the road to Andraitx and the cliff. At a turn in the path we finally spotted it. Far below us lay the tiny harbor. The sea sparkled with a silvery luster. The cliff rose majestically ahead of us. Just a half-hour more and we would be standing at our diving board ready for the launch.

But “standing” is not the appropriate word after such a strenuous on-the-double march. Once we arrived at the edge of the precipice we would have to rest for a while and take stock of things before taking a dive out of our misery. At the time, there were no such things on Mallorca as catapults for suicidal individuals; the Tourist Office was holding these back until there was official approval of the new gambling casino. This meant that we would have to take recourse to the launching trick used by the bats. Nature knows how to give a helpful shove to the have-nots of this world: we would just let ourselves drop, because afterwards we wouldn’t need to scramble back up the promontory.

As soon as we caught sight of our fateful cliff, there also came into our view a certain building, a large palace with a free-standing tower resembling a campanile, covered by what looked like a gigantic parasol. It was the Hotel “Príncipe Alfonso.” Is it any wonder that we slowed down our pace? We began scenting like wild game, but what kind of danger were we facing? So we proceeded on our way. We had made a decisive break with Zwingli, so what further concern was he to us? We strode onward. Neither of us had thought about the “Príncipe” when we started out on our journey toward death. But — why should we bother at all about that hotel, and anyway…

It never rains but it pours. For our part, we had already compiled an entire anthology of misfortunes; porra and puta had descended upon us with a vengeance, we had come face to face with syphilis. So we had no reason to be surprised that the man who was the cause of this final journey of ours was standing in the doorway of his building at the precise moment when we, with our oft-proven somnambulistic timing, chose to pass by — or rather to sneak by, if our linguistic purists are willing to accept the word “sneak” as a description of forward motion with heads held high. For we refused, damn it all to tarnation, to lower our heads on this final trek, and thus we forged ahead step by deliberate step without so much as glancing at that relative with these eyes of ours that were on the verge of becoming sightless for good.

“ Olá ! Hey! You two! Bice, Vigo, what are you doing here? Out hiking in this heat? You’re going to get sunstroke!”

Zwingli had more to say. In fact, he gave a whole speech. But having begun with American slang, the remainder of his warning palaver got submerged in Swiss gutterals. We had already crossed the barrier into the realm of real danger, and were deaf to any shouted warnings. Other voices were calling to us, and we were following them.

But then there was a dashing of hasty footsteps behind us, and we felt as if we were being accosted in public. Zwingli caught up with us, grabbed each of us by the arm, split us apart, and it was no help at all that Beatrice kept saying “Stop it, please!” or “Just go away!” or whatever one says under such circumstances — I don’t remember her exact words. Nor do I recall the Urtext of Zwingli’s attempt to drag information out of us. What were we doing out here? Had we or had we not come this way with the intention of seeking him out? I felt acutely embarrassed by this washing of the family laundry on a public thoroughfare — perhaps not so rare a spectacle in Spain, but decidedly infra dig for the likes of us Northerners. I hate scenes of any kind; I am much too decadent for robust yelling and gesticulating. Let the two of them go off into the bushes somewhere to deal with their family dirt. But these scrubby pines, one every ten meters or so along the roadway, were public property. Be that as it may, my dear Vigoleis, mustn’t you now admit that when your final journey was so unpleasantly interrupted, you were concerned more about yourself than about Zwingli’s sister?

Zwingli’s behavior makes this question a moot one. He made short work of the two stubborn would-be suicides. He quickly turned both of us around abruptly and whisked us off to his hotel, at first meeting with vigorous resistance, then less and less, until finally there was none at all. He dominated us with his well-fed physical strength and his iron will-power, trained in the school of Pelmanism, and in the end we just caved in. Such is the origin of any and all moral aberration. Viewing the situation in retrospect, I have concluded that anyone contemplating suicide ought first to enjoy a hearty breakfast, if possible with champagne. And one should give consideration to the digestive system, so as to obviate any necessity of emergency measures on this score. Only then might one proceed toward the inevitable. For otherwise — and exactly this happened in our case — some free-roaming brother or other can easily bring your best-laid plans to nought. You will go as limp as a virgin after stammering prayerfully for the third time, “Oh, please don’t stop!” She means, of course, her own courage against her adversary, but her adversary thinks she means him, and straightaway the deed is done.