But the “bitch”—my reader will again notice that information gathered later is playing a role in my narrative — this particular individual had transformed the above manager type, certified the world over, into something like a cartoon by Berlin’s low-life favorite Heinrich Zille. She added certain touches of Käthe Kollwitz and certain bitter contours of the Galician master Castelão. She had made of Zwingli, one might say, a fellow who refuses to hide his personal opinions beneath a starched linen straitjacket, whose heart, now covered by a torn and wrinkled chemise, no longer beats in anticipation of serving his genteel clients. It was indeed questionable whether his heart pulsed for his own sake. In a word, she had created for him a decidedly unstarched private life. Right now, riding in the Hispano-Suiza, we were about to learn details. Must I really add information about the spots on his suit, his scuffed and ragged shoes, the shirt cuffs that hung limply at his wrists and whose color differed only barely from that of his grease-stained jacket sleeves? I do believe that we have said enough; Beatrice was all the more to be pitied.
Vicinity of the city. Gorgeous seaside location. Spacious park at south side. Five minutes to beach. Tram stop at entrance, etc. That’s what we read in the brochure describing the hotel where we soon could wash away, in our “double with bath,” the dirt of our voyage and perhaps also the moral contamination we underwent upon disembarking. Our personal fenders were damaged. Worse yet, we didn’t have any fenders. This matter would have urgent priority as soon as I found out where we were going and how things would turn out. When I have that comfy study to crawl into — how nice of Zwingli to think of me in that way. He’s actually a pretty swell guy — a little seedy, quite seedy in fact. Beatrice doesn’t like that. But she really ought to have been just a trace nicer to him, seeing that he wasn’t dead and all. That would have been a terrible turn of events indeed. Behind it all is a broad; I can’t wait to meet the “bitch.” Back in Cologne he had one like that. We students were goggle-eyed. After a while she went to bed with our friend the gravedigger. She was a necrophiliac, Zwingli told us laconically. She craved certain cadaverous attributes he wasn’t able to provide. Good riddance! If I were him, I would have got the terminal shivers. Not Zwingli. He packed his bags and headed for Brussels, where another affair started up. After that, he hightailed it to Rome, ostensibly to pursue archaeological interests. But his true interest was in digging up women, or at least it had been. Now he was here on this island, with a woman in quotation marks, and surely we weren’t prejudiced? The whole thing looked extremely risky.
Suddenly I was very tired. Beatrice, sitting next to me, was also very tired, and Zwingli, facing us on a fold-out seat, seemed likewise very tired. Here, in back, no one said anything. We couldn’t hear the lively conversation going on between chauffeur and palefrenier up front. The automobile dated from the days of class warfare; a glass partition separated servants from those being served. There was a speaking slot, but it was stuffed with a purple velvet cushion, making the separation near-total — feudal, one might say. In half an hour, I said to myself, we’ll be there and things will get democratic again. A pity, though, for I have certain aristocratic proclivities. I admit that I enjoyed that inside window just a bit, smutty though it was. Was this, Vigoleis, the first rung on the chicken-ladder of your new life?
It was eight o’clock, an hour when the sun has already spread its warm blanket over everything. Old Sol also poked his rays inside our automobile, which ought to have been inching along like the vehicle for the bereaved family in a funeral cortege. Our threefold mood was decidedly funereaclass="underline" black window curtains and a bit of black crepe, and we would be participating in a first-class interment — except, of course, for the missing corpse. Our corpse was alive, and so the Hispano-Suiza could go full out without showing any disrespect. We were driving at hair-raising speed. We saw next to nothing of all the fascinating Spanish sights whizzing past us right and left. Too bad — I’d like to have made note of this and that for letters to our friends. After three minutes — it can’t possibly have been any longer — it suddenly turned dark in our car. On both sides of us, house walls edged in dangerously close to our fenders. I started worrying about scratches and scrapes when we jerked to a halt. Beatrice and I lurched forward. We would have gone head-first through the medieval partition if our chariot hadn’t been a deluxe model with ample room inside for passenger safety. At any rate, this method of stopping seemed anything but luxurious. Maybe the hotel lacked an auto ramp to its front entrance. We would soon find out.
“Nous voilà!” said Zwingli as he rapped on the partition. He was probably stopping for an errand. Our door flew open.
Beatrice didn’t move. Thinking that the siblings should be settling everything between themselves, I resolved to be even more hesitant to initiate action than I normally am. So I, too, remained silent, leaning back in a concave section of upholstery that innumerable well-heeled hotel guests had pre-shaped for my traveling comfort. I love broken-in furniture. It welcomes the sitter with deep-seated hospitality.
Zwingli’s magic nail, brandished often as an open-sesame, wouldn’t work when it came to our hearts — as he himself realized. So to explain his “voilà” he added: “This is where she lives. We have a whole floor up there.” After a pause, he went on, “It’s just so goddam early! She’s still asleep,” and he scratched his head in confusion. This released a shower of dandruff. We could have covered an entire Christmas tree with the shiny flakes, and if we added a few candles, we might have had a pleasant family reunion after all. Ah, Beatrice, you poor sister of a brother you love so much!
A bunch of ragged kids squeezed together to form an honor guard as the gentleman and his lady emerged from the limousine to follow their host through the entry. So narrow was the street that the open door of our automobile stuck halfway into this gateway. The perfect way to arrive in rainy weather!
The vestibule, where our baggage was standing in a pile, was cleared of the gang of inquisitive twerps by a few kicks administered in decidedly unceremonious fashion by our host. Our motley porter sat next to the baggage pile rolling a cigarette with his left hand, an art Zwingli had also mastered: no more use of bodily appendages in the carrying on of life than is absolutely necessary. Now, however, neither this kind of dexterity nor his magic nail could lift him out of the funk that seemed to envelop him. He was no longer the sovereign Don Helvecio whose marvelous scepter made the Little Helpers dance down at the harbor. As we followed him up the stairs, he gradually got smaller and less imposing, until finally he disappeared altogether. He had simply taken a powder. To describe such events, the occult sciences speak of the phenomenon of dematerialization. It is reported to happen even less frequently than the appearance of ghosts. With the connivance of the appropriate visible agencies, you can conjure up invisible ones. But to make a man of flesh and blood simply vanish into thin air, a man I have been following up a flight of stairs, that is a very sublime form of sorcery, one that must involve the Devil himself. The Devil? Wasn’t it more reasonable to suspect the “bitch,” who, equipped with parapsychological powers, may have effected Zwingli’s abduction to Nada just as she had brought on his metamorphosis from elegant young swain to shabby, smelly harbor rat? And if this Zwingli was in actuality only Zwingli’s double, then we were dealing with a case of compound levitation — Something scientists like Driesch or Dessoir ought to look into.