“Are the masses standing assembled down there?” I was about to ask, but before we heard any “Huzzahs!” or “Long lives!” the sovereign ruler closed the shutters, and our silent vigil could continue. I’m told that people sit around like this in the waiting rooms of maternity wards. Well then, let’s wait for the event that, if our luck continues, is bound to be another miscarriage. “Shall I make some coffee? Where’s your kitchen?” Beatrice didn’t want to stay idle, but her offer was refused.
“Coffee is on its way. I ordered it from across the way at the club. Our kitchen is over there.” Zwingli pointed his thumb at a narrow door in one corner. “But she’s going to want to use it right away. I mean, it’s still so goddam early!”
Meanwhile it was nine o’clock, quite early indeed in a country where evening begins at midnight and where most people, like the pigs, sleep well into the daylight hours.
Although the two siblings had much to say to each other, they had not yet had a private discussion. Were they inhibited by my presence? Hardly, for over the years I had become just as much a part of their extended family as my reader is doing at this very moment. Even so, I didn’t quite fit this melting-pot of a family — though I don’t mean to imply that my role was supposed to be that of a simple metal lid. No, for the proper fit I had to be ground to size like an engine valve: a dash of emery powder, a few drops of oil, and the rest is taken care of by rotary motion.
“No mail from Basel?”
Beatrice began talking about their mother.
I stood up and walked across the room. In the background was a third door I hadn’t noticed before. It was partially hidden by one of the palm stands, and wasn’t easily recognizable as a door because its surface blended in with the whitewashed walls. I thought it would probably lead to that special place one could enter without asking. So I opened it and disappeared without ado into even more intense darkness. Brother and sister, their tongues finally unstuck, had started a conversation. Beatrice was using French, and that meant that matters were serious. Zwingli took refuge in Spanish. That’s all I heard, and then I closed the door behind me and stole away as if not wanting to disturb lovers in a tête-à-tête that could make or break their affair. Inwardly surrounded by a murkiness seldom pierced by a ray of light, from childhood on I have been a successful if rather timid groper in the dark. Now this compensatory talent once again came into its own. The wall along which I was fingering my way was rough to the touch, and was probably whitewashed also. I felt a doorframe, then a door that was slightly ajar, inviting me inside. It seemed the natural exit from a narrow corridor that led, or so I believed, to a larger room. The door was of the type with a hinged fold down the center, and when I put my shoulder to the outer panel it stuck a bit, shook, and rattled. As I entered the new premises the gloom became even more impenetrable. Out of habit I felt the wall for a light switch. There was none.
When one of the senses fails, another will take over the job. I was sightless, and so I began using my nose. How wise of Mother Nature to arrange things this way! And what now entered my nostrils — Vigoleis, that’s something familiar! When you were a boy it intoxicated you, and now — just sniff it! It is the fragrance of natural body vapors, veiled by dried petals of rose and violet to minimize their deleterious effects on clothing. Vigoleis, no matter how vigorously you whiff and scent and snort, what you are smelling is none other than the sweat of a woman’s armpits, and she is right near you, and that urge you are beginning to feel, I understand it only too well, at such an early hour and in such a strange place, what can this possibly lead to, and now, led by the nose one step farther into the darkness, oh Lord, he’s standing next to the bed!
Once as a boy, befuddled by a licentious tumult of his senses, he secretly pursued a housemaid, and while following the scent, was discovered by his mother. Mothers don’t approve of such things, and when it comes to housemaids and fleshly impulses, they have ineradicable prejudices. But instead of thrashing him as he had expected, this protectress of filial chastity placed certain obstacles in the path of further premature sexual encounters. This brought on feelings of estrangement that Vigoleis bore with him until long after he had outgrown his steamy knickers.
Vigoleis groped along some more, and there — it felt like warm calfskin, something moist and soft. It was naked flesh, and it rose warmly, nay hotly, to his touch. His breathing stopped. Then the flesh twitched, Vigoleis withdrew his hand, but the flesh remained in his hand as if by magnetism. And then a naked arm threw itself around his neck, and then a word met his ears that he couldn’t understand. It sounded as bright as silver, and caused the intruder to shiver. He was overcome. He fled.
Amid stumblings and bumpings I found my way back to the room where Beatrice was talking heart-to-heart with her brother. Zwingli had tears in his eyes. They had shifted into Schwyzerdütsch, the language of their childhood.
“Zwingli, what’s going on here? Who are you holding captive back there in the little room?”
“Captive? Quelle drôle d’idée! That’s her kid!”
Down below, the doorknocker rapped twice. We heard footsteps on the stair. There was a knock at the apartment door, and Zwingli opened. A man stepped in, identifiable by his uniform as a waiter. He was of medium height, well-groomed, with a handsome face and pleasant manners. His jacket was a blinding white dotted with gold buttons. He brought coffee, which he poured from a copper espresso pitcher, and warm pastry — the famous ensaimadas, an island specialty, a local product which the Mallorcans are almost prouder of than of their greatest son, the poet, mystic, philosopher, and martyr to his own so-called Lullian Art, Ramón Llull. I would soon fall in love with both — the delectable pastry and the ars magna of Raimundus.
Antonio — the name of this waiter who was later to become our rescuer — was on intimate terms with Don Helvecio who, after introducing us, clapped him several times rapidly on the shoulder as if summoning up his own courage. Antonio spoke some broken French, so I was able to join the conversation for a while until they all lapsed back into Spanish. I was in the minority.
The wheel on Zwingli’s mill was once again in motion, the sluice gates were open and things began to revolve. His nostrils flared, he snorted like a horse, his right hand spread out like a fan. The nail on his pinky was set for further action. Whether it was the coffee or Antonio’s superior presence, the depression seemed to have left him — and the rest of us too. The air was suddenly clear again. Even the solitary fly had come in for a landing and was slurping up a spartan breakfast consisting of a tiny grain of sugar. Peace and harmony reigned supreme. Why, when such tranquility is possible on a small scale, cannot the nations of the world achieve it in the large?
There we sat, enjoying the repast, though still rumpled from our nocturnal voyage. But who cared? I no longer thought of taking a bath at the Príncipe, and Beatrice too had probably forgotten that we were supposed to be standing — or with somewhat better luck sitting — at a deathbed. Was she happy to have found her brother, if indeed in a ruined state, then at least not breathing his last? Dirt can be washed away, and one can raise up the inner man to new ideals over which death has no dominion. Would we be leaving by the next ship, or perhaps staying on for just a few days? Let’s find out what the two of them are thinking.