My eyes soon adjusted to the soft twilight that filled the room like the glow from the clerestory in a basilica. In this room there was much for the twilight to fill, for it was as good as empty. Because it probably wasn’t intended as a room for sitting in, it contained just a very few items of furniture. I have mentioned that it was a “vestibule,” though one might even contest this designation. There was a bench whose seat and back were made of loosely woven wicker or straw, a few chairs, a table with sideboard that resembled not so much a bonafide table as a South Sea Island catamaran, and two oversized wooden pedestals supporting artificial palms. That was all. These imitation plants, it must be said, produced more subtropical ambience than the decidedly fake-looking real palms to be seen in the conservatory of Amsterdam’s Hotel Krasnopolsky. With phony decorations it always comes down to what purpose they are meant to serve. I know certain people who right now are living out their waxen character so determinedly that no waxworks would ever dare to display the originals on a pedestal. The walls of this room in Palma also had a few paintings, but they were less effective as imitations. Not only did their tropical fruit fail to invite the viewer to take a bite. Even a mind untutored in art history could spot their insipid colors as indicative of cheap commercial reproductions. Suspended from the ceiling was a candelabra that looked like a ham in a butcher shop, especially as it was covered with a cloth sack.
One single fly buzzed around this mummified chandelier. It was evidently a degenerate specimen, for by rights it ought to have shunned the darkness, darted through a crack in the shutters, and joined the legions of its relatives that at this time of day were invading the meat stands over at the city market. Zwingli broke the silence by getting up and stretching. He gave a loud yawn, took off his jacket, and made himself comfortable. After all, he no longer had to treat us to the welcoming ceremonies at some princely hotel. And what about the ceremonies here in the Street of Solitude? To describe these I shall, for a moment, have to tell some history.
In the summer of the year 1601, Archduke Albrecht of Austria, the Spanish viceroy in the Netherlands, took up the siege of the city of Ostende. Isabella, who as daughter of Philip II of Spain had presented the Netherlands to her consort Albrecht as a dowry, vowed never to change her chemise until the city had surrendered to the Spanish army. Albrecht’s incentive to bring the siege to a rapid and victorious end was therefore very great, but the princess had underestimated the power of the Ostenders to hold out. The siege ended on the 20th of September, 1604 A.D., with a Spanish victory. Princess Isabella had thus worn her blouse for more than three years, offering proof of her patriotism and moral rectitude. There were solemn fanfares as she publicly dipped her blouse in a washtub. It turned the suds an inky color that today bears her name: a brownish-whitish-yellow tint like café-au-lait, known as “isabella.”
Surely no one will doubt the truth of this traditional account, insofar as the precise coloration is concerned. I myself regard the background circumstances also as authentic. Who might ever have profited from inventing such a story? Or perhaps “legend corrects history,” as Pascoaes says. I can only agree with him.
Historical authenticity on the one hand, with its dry and rarefied scholarly mission, or on the other hand, legend as leaven for poetic truth: both impulses have combined most effectively here to help describe — but my reader will have guessed what I was getting at — Zwingli’s shirt. It was of “isabella” shade from top to bottom, save for blackish areas on collar and underarms. Had Zwingli, too, taken a vow? Had he pledged himself to someone in eternal grubbiness? Was he besieging something or someone, or was he perhaps himself under a state of siege? The subsequent course of events will provide historical answers to all these questions.
Earlier, as we were driving to this domicile where “she” was reported to be so superb in bed, Zwingli had waxed progressively more subdued and fainthearted. This fact, together with the fruitless reach of his hand into his bottomless pants pocket, had led me to conclude that the uneducated “individual” who was as yet unnamed, or whose identity was being anxiously circumscribed like the One and Only God of Hebrew Scripture — that this person must be a powerful force indeed. And here inside the apartment I received further confirmation of this conjecture. Zwingli’s shirt, plus the kitsch hanging on the walls — whoever could put up with such menaces must be in possession of superhuman strength.
I might have gone down to defeat at the sight of Princess Isabella’s chemise, but I am invulnerable to kitsch. More than that, I love kitsch wherever it is appropriate, which is to say, wherever it fulfills the purpose it is without doubt intended to serve. The important thing, of course, is to understand what that purpose is. The fact that we as yet don’t know what its overall objective is, need not deter us from our research. Why, even today, we still have no idea why the common flea, the crabgrass of the fields, or mankind itself stands in the midst of Creation. Were we ever to find out, then at that very hour everything would lose its poetic or religious meaning. I regard myself as so immune to kitsch that I would even permit Paulus Potter’s Bull to hang in my study with no danger to my soul. I have just cited an enormously famous work, one that I consider a classic example of the genre.
The longer Zwingli remained silent, all the louder did those reproductions on the walls speak to me.
“Nothing to eat around here?”
This question, posed by Beatrice although it had been bothering me for quite some time too, put some life back in my brother-in-law. Fruit in a picture frame is lovely to look at, but it remains nature morte and in the long run cannot satisfy even the birds that occasionally peck at well-painted grapes. In reply Zwingli put both hands in his pants pockets and pulled them outward in the manner of a circus clown. So I made my second dive for loose pesetas and dribbled a handful on the table.
“Is this what you’re looking for? Go ahead, help yourself!” Money rules the world right down to the tiniest corner of our planet, right here to the darkest Street of Solitude. Money can get you anything. Kings and popes have groveled in the dust before it. All that matters is the purchasing power we assign to those thirty pieces of silver. If the scribes and high priests had taken back the blood money, Judas Iscariot would never have strung himself up in a fig tree.
I have seldom observed the power of silver as on that morning when it breathed new life into the ebbing Zwingli. It was clear that with my transfusion of cash, I wasn’t mistaken in the blood type. Zwingli took the pesetas and stepped over to the window. As he opened the shutters, light, air, dust, and noise flooded the room. He let out a sharp whistle, shouted a few words down to the street, and threw the money down after. This performance impressed me, even though it was taking place at my expense. That’s how the powerful of this world act at great moments in history: they show themselves on balconies and toss gold to the rabble.