where Raoul Villain – most notable of them all – spent his last years.
In July 1914, Villain succeeded in concealing himself in the French Chambre des Députés, and there shot dead the Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, who opposed France’s entry into the First World War. This action was committed by Villain in the sincere belief that he was a reincarnation of Joan of Arc, charged with the mission of protecting France from the shame of a craven retreat. He spent a few years in a lunatic asylum, after which he was quietly released and smuggled out of the country by his relatives, who sent him to San Vicente on the north-east corner of the island. Here he lived quietly enough until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, when he was killed by the anarchists.
San Vicente is about eight miles up the coast from Santa Eulalia, and as it was said to be in surroundings of extraordinary beauty, I decided one day to make a trip there. When Villain’s influential kinsmen had picked out San Vicente as being, so far as Europe went, the end of the world, they were undoubtedly well-informed. The hardiest of our taxistas excused himself from taking me in his 1923 Chevrolet, so I hired a bicycle – as usual, devoid of brakes – which I hauled most of the way through a landscape of infernal grandeur. Peasant women robed like witches passed with a slow gliding motion over fields that were stained as if with sacrificial blood. Ancient isolated fig trees hummed and moaned mysteriously with invisible doves sheltering in their deep pools of foliage. The stumps of watch-towers stood up everywhere half strangled with blue convolvulus, and the air was sickly with the odour of locust beans. This was a scene that had not changed since Gimnesia, the Island of the Naked, was written about in Periplus – except that in the matter of clothing the people had gone from one extreme to the other.
I lost my way several times and was redirected by signs and gestures by the aged women who were permitted to appear at the doors of their houses, from one of whom I received a bowl of goat’s milk. San Vicente proved to be a sandy cove, deep-set among mouldering cliffs, with aderelict house, a farm, a fonda, and a shop. The beach, which was deserted, had been carefully arranged with antique wooden windlasses and a frame like a miniature gallows, from which huge, semi-transparent fillets of fish hung drying against a violet sea. The quality and distribution of these objects in this hard, clear light, had clothed them in a kind of vitreous surrealism. This may have been the chief Carthaginian port in Ibiza. About a mile inland lies the cave temple of the goddess Tanit, called Es Cuyerám, which is only partially excavated, and from which in the course of amateurish investigations great archaeological treasures have been recovered, and most of them smuggled out of the country.
The derelict house had been built by Villain, but never finished. The walls were painted with faded fleurs-de-lis, and there were black holes where doors and windows had been. The first inhabitant of San Vicente I ran into had known the exile well, and luckily for me he spoke Castilian Spanish. Villain, he said, had been much liked by the village people, among whom he had developed a kind of gentle patriarchal authority. He had been a bit funny in the top storey, my informant said, screwing his forefinger against his temple in a familiar Spanish gesture – but then, clever people like that often were. The villagers, it seemed, had shown no desire to argue when Villain propounded his doctrine of reincarnation, and had listened with interest and respect while he described episodes from his previous existence, and told them what it felt like to be burned at the stake. When the anarchists landed there soon after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, they all ran away except Villain, who, in his grand role, and carrying the standard of Joan of Arc, went down to the beach to meet –
In July 1914, Villain succeeded in concealing himself in the French Chambre des Députés, and there shot dead the Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, who opposed France’s entry into the First World War. This action was committed by Villain in the sincere belief that he was a reincarnation of Joan of Arc, charged with the mission of protecting France from the shame of a craven retreat. He spent a few years in a lunatic asylum, after which he was quietly released and smuggled out of the country by his relatives, who sent him to San Vicente on the north-east corner of the island. Here he lived quietly enough until the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, when he was killed by the anarchists.
San Vicente is about eight miles up the coast from Santa Eulalia, and as it was said to be in surroundings of extraordinary beauty, I decided one day to make a trip there. When Villain’s influential kinsmen had picked out San Vicente as being, so far as Europe went, the end of the world, they were undoubtedly well-informed. The hardiest of our taxistas excused himself from taking me in his 1923 Chevrolet, so I hired a bicycle – as usual, devoid of brakes – which I hauled most of the way through a landscape of infernal grandeur. Peasant women robed like witches passed with a slow gliding motion over fields that were stained as if with sacrificial blood. Ancient isolated fig trees hummed and moaned mysteriously with invisible doves sheltering in their deep pools of foliage. The stumps of watch-towers stood up everywhere half strangled with blue convolvulus, and the air was sickly with the odour of locust beans. This was a scene that had not changed since Gimnesia, the Island of the Naked, was written about in Periplus – except that in the matter of clothing the people had gone from one extreme to the other.
I lost my way several times and was redirected by signs and gestures by the aged women who were permitted to appear at the doors of their houses, from one of whom I received a bowl of goat’s milk. San Vicente proved to be a sandy cove, deep-set among mouldering cliffs, with aderelict house, a farm, a fonda, and a shop. The beach, which was deserted, had been carefully arranged with antique wooden windlasses and a frame like a miniature gallows, from which huge, semi-transparent fillets of fish hung drying against a violet sea. The quality and distribution of these objects in this hard, clear light, had clothed them in a kind of vitreous surrealism. This may have been the chief Carthaginian port in Ibiza. About a mile inland lies the cave temple of the goddess Tanit, called Es Cuyerám, which is only partially excavated, and from which in the course of amateurish investigations great archaeological treasures have been recovered, and most of them smuggled out of the country.
The derelict house had been built by Villain, but never finished. The walls were painted with faded fleurs-de-lis, and there were black holes where doors and windows had been. The first inhabitant of San Vicente I ran into had known the exile well, and luckily for me he spoke Castilian Spanish. Villain, he said, had been much liked by the village people, among whom he had developed a kind of gentle patriarchal authority. He had been a bit funny in the top storey, my informant said, screwing his forefinger against his temple in a familiar Spanish gesture – but then, clever people like that often were. The villagers, it seemed, had shown no desire to argue when Villain propounded his doctrine of reincarnation, and had listened with interest and respect while he described episodes from his previous existence, and told them what it felt like to be burned at the stake. When the anarchists landed there soon after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, they all ran away except Villain, who, in his grand role, and carrying the standard of Joan of Arc, went down to the beach to meet –
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