Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

I told him that we took a room outside of town, in a house called the “Torre del Reloj.”

This news almost snapped off our confederated relative’s classy fingernail. What, in the “Clock Tower?!” He would never in this world have thought of looking for us out there. Beatrice in that place? He took his head in his hands and stared at his sister. As for myself, he was probably thinking that I was right at home in such a location, that I had finally found the cozy study I was hoping for. “It’s the most notorious place on the whole island! A flesh factory! Smugglers’ den! Flophouse! Headquarters for counterfeiters! Everybody and anybody who shuns the light of day, even if they go about their business at high noon, finds his way under the Giant’s roof. Out there you’re going to have to be on the qui vive . You’re going to get in trouble with the police. For years now the police have suspected Arsenio of masterminding the opium traffic in the Balearics. I’m going to tell Don Darío about this. The two of them are old buddies, there’s a murder case involved, and the banker Juan March, you know, the billionaire. It’s big-time, all of it, with vendettas like on Corsica. And the sex traffic? I’ve been through it. When the corridas are on and the all the troops come down here from the mainland, it’s party time out there. The boxes get filled with picadores and chulos , the whole herd of swordsmen overflows the Clock Tower. We often reserve beds out there for our guests. Ever heard of the Buttlar Gang? Pietism and libertinage combined. But that was nothing compared to the Torre out there with its cabins and the luxury suite for the rich toreros. You should ask Adeleide to show it to you sometime. Cost thousands. Unique on the island!”

Zwingli laughed so hard he began shaking. “‘Torre del Reloj’! But wait, isn’t there a corrida tomorrow?”

So that was the explanation for our Creation Night: the bullfighting troupe had disembarked the day before. Tomorrow the candles would get lit at the Madonna’s altar in the bullring. Ave María Purissima.

The hotel guests had left the rotunda. We sat alone together, just a tiny bit strengthened. Oh, to stretch out now and sleep in a real bed!

But we decided to leave, like two dogs after a scolding.

“How’s things with your exchequer? Probably not too good. Let’s see”—Zwingli reached into his pocket and jingled some metal. “Here’s some change to tide you over, for the tram and such. Later we’ll take care of your other debts. What a shame back then, Bice, you with your scruples and all. But you’ll be staying on the island for a while yet. We should see each other more often. Let me organize it. I’ve got plans for you. I’ll come out to your Tower sometime soon. Vigo will get to learn a thing or two — I mean for his books. Last year a photographer crawled up onto the roofbeams to get a bird’s-eye view the night before the bullfight. He expected to become a millionaire, but the picadores spotted him and beat him half to death. I’ll be sure to come out, Arsenio has some great wines, and Adeleide is famous for her octopus cooked in ink, mon cher Vigo !”

“And ink is what it’s all about, mon cher Zwingli , especially when things are turning black all around you.”

“So long!”

“ Ciao! ”

“ Tschüss !”

We straggled back to the city without exchanging a word. There seemed to be no longer any connection between us, not even our mutual silence, otherwise so eloquent in itself. We had become enemies; each of us had reached out with a wicked hand, as it were, to prevent the other from doing the deed, and each was now ashamed of the other. Suicide à deux requires a perfect homousia . In novels, it can easily take place on a single page. For ours we were planning a whole chapter, and as yet nothing had come of it. We would have to start over. When we arrived on the Plaza de la Liberdad, we had just enough time to get to the post office and inquire whether any money or letters had arrived. The clerk in his blue smock didn’t know me, and so everything had to happen in neat alphabetical fashion. There was nothing in poste restante . I thought to ask whether he had looked really carefully. You can do that in Spain, whereas in Germany I would never have dared. The man in the smock didn’t even get angry, and as for feeling insulted — not the gratings of a Martersteigian cheese. He smiled politely. “I see. You think that we can’t read because in this office we are the illiterate heirs to the clerical monarchy? All foreigners think that way, and they’re all wrong. But please, if you wish to look for yourself—“ He pushed a whole bundle of mail across to me and went back to his crossword puzzle, which still had plenty to be filled in.

After some rummaging I found a letter from Stuttgart, from the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt. This had to be the money transfer. “Well now, I see you’ve fished something out after all?” I showed him my passport. The man said “All very well,” and then he started beaming. Just a moment, he said. All the Saints, he went on, must have sent me to him, Would I be so kind as to take the trouble to examine another pile of mail, one that had been sitting there for years? No one knew quite what to do with it, perhaps…? “Perhaps,” I said and fingered through the mound of missives, picking out this and that addressed to us, old stuff, long-overdue correspondence. I took it.

The clerk was about to load more and more mail on me, including some packets under heavy seal, stuff that he wished to be rid of. But I refused to be bribed. “Some other time, perhaps. God willing.”

“God willing! But please, just one moment!” He pointed to his crossword. “Famous German writer, with double-V?”

“Wigoleis.”

“You? Well I’ll…!”

“Incognito. So many admirers, you understand.”

He didn’t really understand. With “Jacob Wassermann” he would have made better progress. He shook my hand warmly.

Beatrice sat beneath the palms of the Café Triangulum and listened to the saga of the wealth that had fallen into Vigoleis’ lap overnight. It was a check for a few hundred pesetas, the fruits of his somewhat less than Wassermannian success with the pen, his pygmy efforts at creative writing, the cold-cash proof of his existence as a writer. It had arrived a few weeks late by a quirk of devious fate, the same cabalistic powers that at the very last moment kept us from the final temptation of all, and issued a command to Zwingli to cross our path on the way to the cliff. All of this had taken place without the customary extra insurance premium, starting in the bordello with the Supreme Judicial Court assigned to our case, à chandelle éteinte , in a procedure that very closely resembled medieval legal protocol. And when the final candle went out, Beatrice broke down completely. Not a single star appeared in the heavens. In a purely external way, all of this can be explained differently, more simply, without any evocation of a Higher Purpose. The bifurcation of my private personality extends into the realm of bureaucratic documentation. At the time in question, my passport certified only the baptismal half of my existence. In its pages, no trace of Vigoleis was to be found. So it was no fault of the bureaucrats.

Herr Emmerich readily lent us fifty pesetas. I was about to show him the check when he laughed. With him we could charge anything; we looked more honest than most people who came to Mallorca. Why, he would be willing to lend us a hundred. Whoever was willing to go into debt to a free spirit like himself, he said, would never get into financial trouble.

We bought some easily digestible food, a simple soup, the kind quickly brought to heat for hospital patients. A candle, and a box of Oropax for Beatrice, to assure her peace and quiet during a night that we would soon be spending again in the confines of the “Tower,” and not in the arms of some undersea octopus. We strode — but no, I mustn’t go on talking about “striding”—we hailed a taxi. By coincidence it was the same one in which, in the previous chapter, Vigoleis began boasting to his Beatrice. “Where to?”