Now I was truly frightened. In my opinion Zwingli’s brotherly heart, though at times a trifle expansive, was as true as freshly mined gold. Yet at the moment, the outer casing thereof lacked that certain degree of cleanliness that might prompt Beatrice to take it to her own. She abhors dirt; she avoids it wherever and whenever possible. Would she now allow her brother…?
But before any sibling contact could occur we heard a voice: “Don Helvecio!”
Zwingli, appearing to respond to this name, dropped the arms he had raised for the embrace and turned toward a man now approaching him. He was wearing blue denim trousers, a motley waistband, and an even louder ascot tie. The two of them had a brief conference, and of course I couldn’t understand a word.
Don Helvecio? Did I hear this right? Was that the name used for my brother-in-law? Suddenly the thought occurred to me that I was once again the victim of some satanic mystification. With a quick glance in my direction, Beatrice, too, let it be known that something was amiss here. Was her sudden reticence an instinctual reaction against this usurper of brotherly attention? Here is an explanation, based on later experience: on this island everybody without exception gave Zwingli the sobriquet “Swiss,” a generic term used popularly in Germany for cowherds and in Vatican City for doormen and bodyguards. That is the origin of the appellative “Helvecio,” to which was added the “Don,” commonly used for persons of higher social standing. The name “Zwingli” can be pronounced only with difficulty by those of the Spanish tongue. Permit me to add here the anticipatory remark that I myself was later referred to, though of course not personally addressed as, the alemán católico, the “Catholic German.” This was a doubly erroneous title. For if by católico people meant “universal,” then I fit the description neither spatially nor temporally. As for the other meaning, the capitalized one, “Papist”…that I swear I have never been.
Once again Zwingli lifted the little finger of his right hand as he gave instructions. And now I saw, at the extreme end of the digit in question, the instrument of his power over the elves on this island. It was the nail, a good seven-eighths of an inch long, with the black underside polish indicative of ill-grooming, and bent upward ever so slightly at the end. A piece of scrimshaw of this kind, protected from breakage at night by a silver thimble, guards its owner against all forms of menial work. By the same token it qualifies its possessor for a high standard of idleness, Thus it is a mark of class, and as such not to be scoffed at. Even so, Zwingli’s nail was less manicured than I have ever seen on any bum.
It was astonishing to observe the effects of a little horn like this whenever fingers with worn-down nails came in its vicinity. Here at quayside, hands quickly got busy loading our bags in an automobile that immediately drove away with a roar and a cloud of smelly exhaust. Again Zwingli held his nail aloft, commanding a gigantic Hispano-Suiza to drive up. A man in yellow coveralls opened the door. The chauffeur, dressed in white livery and white cap, did not so much as glance at us. Doubtless he noticed that we were the last passengers to disembark, and so we were now his distinguished customers, with time and money to spare. He knew the score. We got in.
“Just look at you!” Beatrice felt forced to say when reunited with Zwingli — Beatrice, who seldom criticizes anyone at all, knowing that most people are hardly worthy of such notice or such well-meant remarks. She must love her brother very much — either that, or he actually looked more fearsome than I have been able to describe. How did he look? Well, let’s put this brother-in-law of mine under good, close, unprejudiced scrutiny.
When I first caught sight of him near the end of Chapter I, I took recourse to the euphemism “filthy chap” to describe his appearance. And Beatrice, far from greeting him with a kiss or even with a jubilant cry of “I’m glad to see you’re alive!”—Beatrice, in a reflex action, had told him he looked wasted. Now, no matter how I might try to begin a closer analysis of his appearance, I feel constrained to state: from head to toe, or in reverse direction from the soles of his feet to the tips of his pitch-black tresses (which hadn’t seen a barber’s shears for months), Zwingli was all that this embarrassing little word says and connotes: he was filthy, he was a wreck, he had gone utterly and totally to the dogs and all the other lower species, visibly and probably inwardly as well. But for the moment, let us observe only the external Zwingli. Just how seriously the inner Zwingli was affected by degenerative processes — that will become sufficiently clear in the course of my narrative.
A quirk of the blood, measurable not by standards of individual countries, but from continent to continent, had also given Zwingli’s physiognomy a distinctiveness that cannot easily be assigned to any specific racial or geographic origin. Viewed from the point of view of ethnography, his was a kind of Latin passepartout countenance, one that could stamp him as an Italian in Italy, as a Spaniard in Spain, but by no means as a Federated Swiss in his homeland canton. Possessing a well-nigh phenomenal talent for adapting mentally to the ways of the country he was living in at any given time, he was capable of such amazing feats of mimicry as to make him on Spanish soil into a thoroughly genuine Spaniard — so much so that it became necessary to check his true nationality by looking at his passport. Accordingly, the “bitch” always considered him as a “passage-paid” Swiss, a Swiss on paper only. Like a Spaniard’s, his beard had a bluish shimmer when unshaven — and unshaven he had been for several days, leading us to believe that he intended to let his whiskers grow like an aborigine or, as we would say nowadays, like an existentialist, which amounts to the same thing. At fault in this regard was presumably the strumpet, the “bitch.” And how do we know? Maybe she wanted something more on her Helvecio to tug on above the sheets as well. Why not? A woman’s sense of play is mysterious. A man’s is even stranger, especially if he comes under the spell of a hellcat like this one, who isn’t satisfied with a single ball of yarn.
I mentioned above that Zwingli held a leading managerial position at a large hotel on the island, the Príncipe Alfonso, an establishment that, following the deposition of the XIIIth monarch bearing that name, now called itself, by dint of a little democratic ruse, the “Principal Alfonso.” Inspired by the centuries-old liberal traditions of his homeland, Zwingli himself had come up with this gimmick. A high position in hotel management — it’s obvious what that entails: shiny black pumps and black textiles, pinstripe trousers, a swallowtail or buttockless jacket, a shirt with starched front and starched cuffs (minus the little curly doodads worn by ancient schoolteachers who still pull their shirts on over their head). Cravat: a discreet grey modulating into silver, with little black dots, pure silk if possible (purchased at Grieder’s Silks in Zurich, of course). Thus caparisoned, and assuming that certain other minimum qualifications have been met, our hôtelier stands greeting his guests with a smile, ready to serve the haut monde from all over the world. His courteous bows mustn’t reach so low as to appear servile; for mere physical tasks, rank-and-file minions exist in abundance. As a symbol of social peerage he wears a carnation in his buttonhole. With true experts in this field, not even the touchy question of tipping can cause the blossom to wilt.