Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

Now I was supposed to let the Savior melt on my swollen tongue — not to chew Him! The Host was not a lollipop. And whosoever eateth of this bread hath eternal life. On my way back home from this rehearsal where I had once again displayed my doltish, unheroic behavior, I dropped my cap in the mud, thus furnishing myself an explanation for shedding tears. My nice colored cap! My mother consoled me by letting me know that she had already bought me a new one, a silk sixth-form cap with a stiff wire in it. I told no one about getting whacked on the tongue. It was my secret. I was hoping that Sunday would make everything all right again. I would received Our Savior, and God wouldn’t let Himself be diverted from His Divine Purpose by some backwoods priest with stains on his cassock and dirty fingernails.

Whitsunday arrived. I knelt down. My cousin Karl poked me just as I was about to stick out my tongue. Lots of incense, a crowd of people in their Sunday best, the First Communion roasts were already simmering in a hundred casseroles, the organ roared forth, a girl recited some prayers, ushers shepherded the little chosen ones on this, their Wondrous Day. All of a sudden I felt the cool presence of Our Savior on my tongue. Did I tremble? No doubt about it. Was my mouth dry? Of course. And I of course had difficulty swallowing the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world. The sins of this young initiate were now erased, but I sensed no overwhelming illumination. Except for a bland taste of something like cardboard, I felt, to quote Martersteig, not the gratings of a green cheese. I had been deceived. Ex-communicated.

When Heaven fails, Earth can often provide abundant recompense. The giraffe has a long neck in order to pluck leaves from trees. Nature thinks of everything. My Divine Feast was a failure, but my Mom’s First Communion meal was of regal proportions. Providence had bestowed upon my father a certain relative, Aunt Hanna, a spinster renowned far beyond our town limits. She was famous as a gossip, one who could take minuscule domestic events and inflate them into epic sagas. Whenever she opened up what she called her “Berlin basket,” my ears rose stiff with lust. And she was a great cook. There was never a baptism without her baking something fine, never a wedding without her Sevastopol pudding. Her true specialty: First Communions! This muse of the spinning-wheel had long since got the hang of what God meant by venial sins. She knew what kind of reward was due on these special days, and in my case she provided it in the form of savory dishes, which to this day I can name but no longer afford. Life has gone on, I have had to take many more whacks on the tongue, but there has never again been a tired but happy Hanna Hemmersbach to take her seat at table and accept praise from the assembled guests. And I have never again received rewards for any of my defeats.

The Wondrous Day was also a day for getting presents. My relatives had arrived bearing gifts. My godfather, with his reddish chin-whiskers, his dress-coat, and his self-framed picture of the Sacred Heart (oval, red velvet, the rays in gold leaf), was already drunk by mid-afternoon when I was sent to attend the Service of Thanksgiving. If I had had a choice, I wouldn’t have gone. I owed no thanks to a duly ordained Friend of the Children like that old geezer.

It was Sunday. And I didn’t have to go to church. The forest is my cathedral, pantheists of all shades are wont to say. We, too, lay beneath a starry dome. Most of the faithful were still asleep. Their snoring chanted harshly throughout the Manse.

Beatrice asked me what I was thinking. I told her the story of the priest who was supposed to prepare my way on the Lord’s path, but who instead unloaded rubbish on it that I have never been able to push aside. I have often dreamed of this man, and now, in the Clock Tower, he appeared to me as a monster, half satyr and half shepherd of souls, dressed in a chasuble and chasing a virgin, wielding a huge key with slavering lust. I heard him shouting “Farther out! More! — Más !” with a drawn-out Spanish aaa . Spain is the land of devout eroticism. Nowadays I tend to doubt whether I would ever have come to an understanding of the great Iberian mystics if I had not undergone my novitiate in the Tower of Tarts.

The main house and all the outbuildings were silent when, after dozing off again briefly, we squinted in the sunlight. Was everybody gone? Was time standing still? Had the tower clock struck its final hour? We got up.

The old crone was all alone, asleep on a chair in the archway. Bullfight day is a holiday for young and old. At this hour in the Palma bull arena, Ortega, Lalanda, and Barrera were confronting the horns of the massive animals bred by the famous Miura. The champions who had exhibited their mettle on Adeleide’s mattresses were at this very moment displaying their courage and their más at the corrida , each according to his assigned role in the complex sport. Each of them could end up biting the dust, despite the candles burning in the little chapel on the Plaza de Toros, where the gladiators kneel before the Mother of God prior to entering the ring to the sound of trumpets and kettledrums. It was these three bullfighting stars that Zwingli was thinking of when he invited us to attend the national spectacle under the expert guidance of his friend Don Darío. Zwingli and his buddy were no doubt sitting right now amid the cheering hordes in the arena bleachers, cheering along with all the rest. Having snagged expensive seats on the shady side, they would be caught up in the frenzy of the bloody moment of truth that arrives in a whirlwind of silk. Hovering above it all, in merciless detachment, there would be the celestial vault and its sun, scorching the less affluent mob in the opposite semicircle of the stadium.

Our own Sunday passed by without incident. Whatever passions were unleashed during the following night in our warehouse of wantonness had no effect on us, and thus are lost to posterity. Our slumber was hermetic. Our keyhole, through which it might have been possible to watch and hear us dreaming, was stuffed with paper. And behold another newborn, chrysalid day, a day for emerging out of hairy, hungry ugliness with sprouting, shimmering wings to enter a new life — lasting a single day. On the third day we felt nimble again, and went to the city. The world had not changed. There was an odor coming from the matadero and clouds of dust in the air. We aimed our sharp prow toward the telegram from Mr. Victor Emmanuel van Vriesland. It hadn’t arrived. Emmerich got his money back, and then we went to visit Antonio at the gentleman’s club “La Veda,” which means something like “closed season,” and the gentlemen there were decidedly closed-off types.

Antonio advised Beatrice to place an ad for language instruction in the Ultima Hora . Sensing that things were urgent, he composed the irresistible text himself. Replies should best be sent poste restante ; nobody should find out where we had our lodgings. Arsenio and Adeleide were fine people, and the police wouldn’t bother us any more; he had told the commander of the carabineros the story of our disaster with the minx Pilar. The police would have to check out the Clock Tower every now and then, but no one would pester us again.

Another day, and no dispatch from Amsterdam. Instead, word from Danzas that our large luggage, especially crates of books, was now ready for passing customs in Palma de Mallorca. They found this out in Basel before the fellows at the Palma customs office got word of it. Fee: 1000 pesetas. Books are contraband in a country where literature is assessed by the kilogram — which, when you come to think of it, is not at all such an unartistic idea. I blessed myself: good heavens, will there never be an end to the fees and charges? Did we stay alive only to be plagued by life’s miserable appendage, financial worries? But Antonio knew just what to do. He had our luggage shifted temporarily to the duty-free warehouse.