Albert Thelen - The Island of Second Sight

While describing his armoire, the Captain was overcome with emotion, and we couldn’t help but be moved in turn by every one of his feelings and little delights: exquisite marquetry, hardware of forged metal, an antique lock with a secret mechanism, according to Martersteig’s informants the work of the Nürnberg master-craftsman Hans Ehemann; a warped drawer, one slightly damaged hinge. Vigoleis could take care of that with one blow of a hammer in the anarchist’s workshop. What unrecognized genius would ever refuse to type out the ± 500 pages of his Monkey Army for the price of this masterpiece of a cassone ? After just a few weeks, he explained, the item would pass from the Martersteig estate to that of Vigoleis; and, come to think of it, the raised-intarsia family monogram with its “V” as predicate of nobility could henceforth be construed symbolically as a quaint form of parody of the new owner’s initial “V” (pronounced as “F,” to be sure). The Captain closed his melancholy encomium by stating that he was unfortunately unable to produce the heirloom right here before us, but that I should not have the slightest reservations concerning the agreement. Would we care to visit him in Deyá to become convinced of the chest’s value? But now Madame must not look so worried — we would of course be his guests, and as for transportation, he could make the following specific recommendation: by rail as far as Sóller, then over the mountain—“Just a short hike, Vigoleis, I make it easily, even in my lame condition”—down into the next valley, past his enemy’s house, and—

Before he could transform this business trip into a pleasure jaunt, I interrupted him, and surely not without a show of deep emotion on my part:

“Herr Hauptmann, I am at the moment unable to envision the consequences of your practical romantic offer. Thank you very much for the invitation. Even sight unseen, I would have accepted the Martersteig chest as payment, but perhaps I can set you at ease by telling you that we never buy a pig in a poke. So I say, off to Deyá!”

Beatrice replied — not spontaneously, not at all jokingly, but with emotion, as always when the talk came around to travel plans, and missing the correct pitch by a half-tone, and thus making her question sound midway between a request for calm and a reproach: “And the money for the train fare?”

As always, it was a matter of money! No sooner has the soul started ascending like a lark into the twittering blue, than it reaches the end of its song and plunges back to the fields of common potatoes. If the Dear Lord had created only one fewer species of animal and, as compensation, permitted humankind to produce its own hard cash without resorting to counterfeit, things would go much better from day to day here on earth. But no, He had to go and make insects and vermin in untold millions that defy all attempts at categorization: the bedbug, the common flea, the man-eating flea, beetles with gigantic pincers that no scientists know what to do with — much less the beetles themselves, not to mention millipedes that could easily reach their destination with 30 fewer feet.

And now Vigoleis doesn’t know how we can scrape up train fare. Human history has yet to come up with answers to certain questions, for the simple reason that humans are too shy to ask them. The ostrich is the only animal in Creation that has not mistaken its true reason for existing. It provides human beings with a useful symbol. As for this train fare, here in the presence of an officer of the air force we stand ashamed at lacking an organ that would get us two third-class tickets Palma-Sóller. Every spider is capable of spinning a thread on which it can descend at will, whereas an aviator crash-lands with fatal consequences for his sanity. A caterpillar rolls itself up when it gets tired of its own ugliness, and then soars away with enhanced value as a butterfly, whereas I — but I mustn’t go on with such thoughts; they will cause a darkening of my mood, and besides, this is not the place to pick a bone with the Creator. As a layman in such disputes, I know I would soon lose the argument, and what is more, we would lose sight of the commode on which whole generations of Martersteigs had their diapers changed, in which their crown jewels were stored along with any number of billets doux stemming from domestic dalliances, and finally the Monkey Army. Now, however, this piece of furniture has taken on prime significance for our heroes, probably even greater significance than that hotel-room wardrobe a few chapters ago.

Beatrice did some mental addition. Like a good Hausfrau she conjured up in her mind’s eye our provisions hanging on the ropes in our cell, and then pronounced the result: In three weeks we could save up enough for the fare. Her tone of voice revealed to me that she had actually squirreled away more than that, and sure enough, she was including a glass of lemonade for each of us at the railroad station restaurant.

Beatrice had no intention of slapping a donkey’s behind at the Manse to make him extrude pieces of gold. For purely aesthetic reasons, she would never stoop to such a thing. She was thinking exclusively in terms of frugality. For each and every cubic centimeter of that commode, we would have to go without certain items of nourishment, pull our belts one hole tighter — to the very last hole of all. Then, and only then, would we get to see the ancestral chest face to face. For the moment, we could have the pleasure of living in hopeful expectation. We had, of course, already divided up the bearskin before Bruin was slain: Beatrice would get all the drawers for her underclothes — this I generously allowed her, while claiming for myself only the secret drawer. “You are aware, chérie , how urgently I am in need of a tabernacle for my poems. It’s so painful for me to see my most sacred feelings hanging there on the clothesline like a shirt. And anyway, with underthings one usually expects a certain amount of decorum — just think of brassieres and other suspensory articles that any lady, who is truly a lady, hangs up only in a darkened chamber. I suppose I could write my reflective verses with some kind of invisible ink, but that Martersteigian heirloom seems just the right thing for my purposes. First-hand inspection will reveal whether it will be necessary to bore a few air holes in the drawer to prevent moisture and mold from accumulating during storage. We can ask Adeleide whether she’ll let us stand the piece out in the corridor. But what it all boils down to is this: this bartering deal is going to force us to look for some other living quarters. If we could only open up our folding cot somewhere else, we could consider this chest of drawers as an example of divine intervention.”

Emmerich had already got wind of our proposed junket to Deyá for chest-inspection. Deyá, he told us, was a damp, highly romantic burg, three stars in Baedeker and special praise for the cemetery. We mustn’t forget to look up a famous Japanese painter named “Three Little Clouds” who was a friend of Martersteig’s. Sóller: marvelous, glorious! The superlatives in the tourist guidebooks, Emmerich told us, couldn’t begin to describe the valley and its tiny harbor, an exquisite study in white, blue, and olive-green. And anyway, we had now lived on the island long enough to start exploring its inland attractions. We should be quick to load the armoire on the return bus; at the last minute our pilot could be overcome with regret about parting with it, obsessed as he was with keeping personal junk, such as his Pour le Mérite , his Iron Cross First Class, and similar crash-landing decorations. Every time he came to the bookshop, he blabbered on about Germany, the German forest, the German spirit, and German furniture. This from a Cologne native who couldn’t survive without potato pancakes.