All such characters become flesh of my flesh. They are true, real, and believable. My talent for mimicry is equal to any imaginable subject. Even if I start out with a bald head — which in reality I don’t yet have — and eschew the makeup-artist’s rigamarole, I can conjure the image of a society dame’s towering coiffure. I do it with my fingers or something — I’m not really sure how. I can even do landscape. In my writings, this particular element of narration gets treated rather gingerly if at all (my reader will surely have noticed by now which world I am most at home in). But when I tell stories aloud, the physical surroundings around my characters take tangible shape, and it is here, as the effect of my own sorcery, that I begin to take notice of those surroundings myself. Just how do I do it? I don’t know. It all simply gushes forth like water from a rock touched by a staff. Good raconteurs have always had an air of magic and mystery about them. And we all know that the origins of poetry are to be found in the ancient creation of myth.
To offer a concrete illustration of what I am trying to say: whenever I tell the story of our arrival on the island — and if the wine is good, if the chocolate is bittersweet (from the firm of Lindt, if I’m lucky), all this served up by a comely hand, and if the legs I see opposite me are of alluring shape — then the moment soon comes when with a single motion of my hand I consign Beatrice, Zwingli, and my friend Vigoleis to mute roles as observers of the ongoing drama. As if watching a cinematic closeup, my listeners now concentrate intently on my every move. I arise from my chair and push it back with my knees. My audience, sensing that I need space, spreads apart to allow me to move to the far side of the room. It is never necessary for me to leave the room entirely to produce the desired effect. I have an uncanny ability to stand against a wall and induce the impression that I am nowhere to be seen. When the moment arrives, all eyes are surprised to see me appear, as if I were stepping forth from behind stage scenery, or emerging from the wall itself, just as our double steps out of a mirror to greet us.
Not long ago I had occasion to perform this scene by candlelight in the private quarters of my friend, the writer Talhoff. As before, I vanished from being into nothingness, and suddenly burst forth from nothingness into the quintessence of the woman I was portraying. As soon as the episode was over, my silent but extremely attentive listener could not restrain himself from crying out, “How does the sonofabitch do it!” Well now, the sonofabitch was already working on a second bottle of Orvieto from the private castle winery of the Marchesi Antinori. No wonder that my transincarnation had come off unusually well. Even without the aid of such an exquisite vintage, I am capable of appearing to everyone’s astonishment through that imaginary door. I am ready at any time to match my talent with that of, for example, Christine Brahe at Urnekloster in Rilke’s Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.
With a single word I indicate that all three of us have heard a noise behind that door, and that Vigoleis has taken his heart in both of his hands. Then I raise my right arm to form an obtuse angle. My lower arm is bent slightly forward, my hand with its raised palm and closed fingers hovers in the balance. Everyone sees a delicate, white hand, the one I am portraying, a hand that by pure coincidence resembles my own in beauty and proportionment — which only heightens the illusion, of course. Then I start walking, or rather striding, with my head raised — a beautiful woman’s head, so beautiful in fact that nobody reading these words will ever believe that my unsightly noggin could ever approximate its loveliness. This exquisite head then moves forward to the gentle rhythm of my steps and my extended hand carrying its imaginary vessel. My left hand holds up the hem of my robe, a brightly flowered albornoz. With each step of my right foot I offer my onlookers the glimpse of an immaculate alabaster limb underneath. The delicate pitter-patter you hear is the sound of my little golden slippers, not much larger than those worn by any fairy-tale princess you might think of. By hunching up my left shoulder and taking a deep breath I force my chest forward. No matter what I happen to be wearing — my housecoat, a colorful Portuguese peasant jersey, or a custom-tailored suit — the effect is just the same every time. A single suggestive word, and my audience observes the illusion of something that will, of course, remain decently concealed, but which surges forward beneath the play of cloth folds. One single additional motion, and these breasts would be as palpable as those of Simonetta Vespucci in the painting by the Florentine master Antonio del Pollaiuolo. Yet my reader must not forget that we are in Spain, where women reveal their bodily charms only sparingly. With every second step just a tiny bit of leg — no more than that.
Just one more glimpse of whiteness, and I have reached the far end of our hallway. While making a careful balancing motion so as not to spill the contents of this red-and-gold-painted receptacle, I open a whitewashed door. Suddenly the ravishing vision has disappeared, and with her the chamber pot in her delicate, royal hand.
The person referred to on preceding pages between unkind quotation marks as “bitch” or “uneducated individual,” the one we have blasphemously circumscribed (or perhaps circumvented) in analogy to the unnamed deity of the Old Covenant — this person has now made her entrance into Vigoleis’ applied recollections in a manner more stately than could possibly be imagined. Again Vigoleis took a deep breath, but this time it was not, as at the close of Chapter I, to fill his lungs with the air that wafted across the island. This time he inhaled a woman’s aroma, which beguiled the room he was sitting in. Then with both hands he took his heart, which was up in his throat and choking him, and pressed it back down into his chest.
The child’s flesh, which had clung to his hand in the dark — if such a thing can happen with young flesh, then what must the fully mature flesh of the mother be capable of?
If I hadn’t been sitting down, it certainly would have been my turn to collapse onto a piece of luggage. Beatrice was staring ahead, and her eyes seemed not to focus on anything at all. But my dear bamboozled Zwingli — where have you gone all of a sudden?
Our good friend, the male concubine, had fled the scene entirely.
IV
The sun appeared to be sweltering in the glare of its own light as, at the apex of midday, we stepped out on our street, which at this moment was living up to its official name. It was deserted, save for a few errant dogs and cats that were performing the service of public sanitation. Growling and hissing, they slunk into entryways and tugged out to the street the contents of garbage cans, cardboard boxes, and crushed paper bags. As we approached, they scattered. When the Calle de la Soledad emptied out on a square surrounded by decrepit buildings, we suddenly noticed, in the expanse of white dust, a crowd of teenage boys and a few ragged kids standing around a lanky young girl. She was dancing, egged on by wild shouts and the wheezy music of a squeezebox, flinging her naked arms upward amid a clattering of castanets. It was a colorful scene. I was just about to join the throng of young onlookers when there was a piercing scream, whereupon these other disturbers of the noontime peace also scattered to the four winds. The square was thus vacated for the passage of our little group à quatre.