Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

One by one, the days leading up to the hotel opening fell from the calendar. We had not yet seen the new building, but a day before the celebration Don Felipe took us along to El Terreno to show us the palatial edifice; on this occasion he would give us our rooming assignment. We agreed to wait until after the ceremonies before moving in.

I can leave out the details of our tour through the enormous building. It still smelled of workmen, but in the prevailing heat it wasn’t necessary to provide for temporary rent-free tenants to help dry the masonry. Here and there workmen were busy sawing holes in the sandstone walls for windows — easily done to correct minor mistakes made by the architect. The rest was all finished, and we could stage the grand opening with a clear conscience. Whoever thinks that any opening ceremony is a fraud, has no proper sense of dynamics. Bunting, a bevy of costumed girls, top hats, a little verse intoned by an innocent child, a fluttering parade of dignitaries, and the laying of the keystone, the launching of the new ship, can take its impressive course. There will be speeches and toasts and choral singing, and afterwards the hammering and riveting and plastering will continue. Back in 1928 I had the opportunity, as a humble research scholar, to march behind Mayor Konrad Adenauer and other notables and attend the opening of the “Pressa” Exhibition in Cologne (30 million deficit). The event was still vividly present in my memory. I can testify that twenty-four hours before the sluice gates were opened, our hotel on Mallorca was farther along than the Cologne affair had been, even if you consider that Doña María’s shekels were by no means squandered as freely as those of the Rhenish Cathedral City’s fatcats.

We had little time to look around our room, which was commodious and bright. Beatrice wanted to press a few keys at the concert grand, but Don Felipe was nowhere in sight. It wasn’t until we were on our way back home that the light finally dawned. Beatrice suddenly stood still, as if struck by a beam from above that couldn’t be caught hold of while continuing in forward motion. In a frightened tone she asked me, “Did you get a good look at our room?”

“I just glanced in. A pretty nice room, not some garret like the one at Pilar’s, not to mention our dismal pigsty in the Tower. We’ve come a long way.”

“A long way? Did you notice any wardrobe?”

I conjured up my image of the room, measured it inch by inch, let my memory touch it up and down, and finally I had it all together: it did not contain a wardrobe, but something like a metal chest with little curtains in front. Surely the wardrobe was of the built-in type — just press a button and the clothes racks would come bouncing out. Drawers would pop out by themselves, and every time you opened or closed them you’d see the dust from little dead moths — in the Tower it was the bats who kept those little butterflies away from the love boxes…

“Don’t kid around! You’ll see, those people won’t give us a wardrobe!”

“Those people,” indeed. It wasn’t nice of Beatrice to talk this way. She was being very pessimistic. Why on earth should “those people” withhold a wardrobe from us, when they were investing millions in this enterprise? Millionaires, it is true, march over corpses — but over wardrobes…? This was my argument on behalf of grand-style capitalism.

“It’s precisely because they’ve put millions into the building that they are cheapskates when it comes to adding a box for clothes. You can’t teach me anything about millionaires!”

That was far from my intention. On the contrary, my intention was to plumb the depths of their psyche, or better yet, the depths of their cash register. A clothes chest as an instrument of power in the hands of a millionaire — Beatrice could recount certain experiences of her own in this regard. Inside the home of one of these types, she once was poisoned and, comically enough, a clothes closet played a major role in the adventure. That is where a strange man hid himself when not in the company of the lady of the house, the mistress who had hired Beatrice. So now, under the circumstances, I said that it was best to make inquiries, under the assumption that Beatrice was unwilling to play the role of hotel hostess without a wardrobe in our room, and I told her that I had given up the idea of being an erudite hotel flunky in a monkey suit. “When you come to think of it, chérie , we don’t need anything of the kind.”

“That’s what you’re saying now, but as soon as we get there and start negotiating with them, you’ll chicken out, leaving me in the soup all by myself. You’ll start feeling sorry for those poor folks, or else you’ll get all mystical, and I don’t know which is worse.”

Sorry? Well, anyone who feels sorry for himself can feel it for others, too. But “mysticism”? That hurt, and all I was able to say was, “Come on! We’re going to that hotel to have it all out with Don Felipe. If you prefer, you can wait outside. Don’t you worry, I am not going to go transcendental on account of a wooden box. You know what they can do with…?”

But before I could specify a destination for the wardrobe, we had already reached the Calle San Nicolás and stood at the door. Just a few seconds later, we were in the little man’s little office. During those few seconds I gave myself an inward yank. My spinal column was stiff, but not inelastic. I was prepared to enter single combat against a million pesetas.

Beatrice’s suspicions were confirmed in full. There was no wardrobe in the room, neither in the form of a piece of furniture nor in the form of a wall closet. Would we eventually get one? No, not in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, surely we could use the metal chest. Wood was expensive on the island…

Beatrice shot flames at me with her Indian eyes, and this spurred me on immensely. I most decidedly did not chicken out; the two of us, certain of victory, started tugging hard — but at the wrong end of the rope. My mysticism remained earthbound in an Iberian way, whereas Don Felipe’s heart remained as stony as that of the king in the famous ballad.

Then the little guy started getting edgy. Was he perhaps interpreting our behavior as an attempt at extortion? He got mean. The tiny golden pencil that up to now had tapped out the Morse code of his impatience on the desktop suddenly disappeared inside his fist, and his fist hammered down on the blotter. Caramba ! — this was the Devil himself who now was reading me the text. Then he arose, but since he was unable to stretch up to his full height, he looked rather comical as he approached me with his shoulders hunched forward and his head drawn down. What kind of a game was this? What was this insolence of ours supposed to mean, a veiled threat? On the eve of opening day? “Do you want money from me? Are you both crooks ( gentuza )?”

All indications were that Vigoleis was about to get his face punched in. Beatrice took the necessary emergency measures. She was familiar with Don Felipe’s irascible temperament; in addition, he represented his patroness’ millions, and so he was doubly dangerous. But there was no violence. The Spaniard discharged his fury by thundering, “ Me cago en Dios! ” In the presence of a woman this utterance was in fact worse than the act itself. He was wishing me dead.

Thus Vigoleis passed his first important test in the struggle for a human being’s right to a dust-free wardrobe, an object to which we can, without exaggeration, ascribe a symbolic value. He didn’t get a punch in the nose, nor did he get the wardrobe. Using his hors-d’oeuvre Spanish, and eschewing blasphemous actions like the one with which he had just been regaled, he let it be known to this Philip fellow that, under the prevailing circumstances, he must decline to place himself at the service of the hotel, and furthermore, even if Don Felipe were to reconsider, acknowledge his error, and come forth with the item of furniture in question, even then, there could be no question of cooperation in the enterprise. The conversation had opened up a gap; now there was an abyss between us, an unbridgeable one. What was more, Vigoleis knew he had the complete agreement of his Beatrice.