Christ, I was bored.
And then the phone rang. I looked at it. It could only be Dave.
It wasn’t. It was my mum, and she was close to tears.
That afternoon, one of our family had died. Not someone I’d been particularly close to – the fact that I had to strain to remember if we’d ever actually met pointed to that – but someone whose presence had always been felt. My great-uncle. A farmer by the name of Gallus Breitenmoser.
He’d passed away that afternoon, in his sleep, in his bed, on his farm, in his village, in his clogs, which he’d popped.
I’m not certain about that last bit. I suppose I added it for some kind of vague comic effect, but the truth is, it wasn’t that kind of day any more. My mum’s voice cracked with emotion on the other end of the line. I hadn’t known Gallus too well – I’d grown up in Britain, after all – but the sound of my mum’s voice, as flat and down as ever I’d heard it, was enough to trigger a real sadness in me. It was a day I’d remember for that. But it was also a day I’d come to remember as one that would affect my life in a thousand different ways.
Ways that would confuse me, bewilder me, make me happy, sad and proud. Ways that I still can’t fully comprehend or appreciate. Ways that changed my world.
Yep. This day, this dull and boring day . . . this is the day it all began . . .
Gallus Breitenmoser (1912–2002)
CHAPTER 2
6. It came to pass that Daniel entered the land of the Swittish, wherein were gathered a multitude of his elders and kinsmen.
7. And they lifted up their voice with instruments of musick, with cymbals, psalteries, and with harps.
8. And it was a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day.
‘SO, DANIEL,’ SAID my auntie. ‘What are you doing with yourself these days?’
I thought long and hard about how to answer her. Probably too long and hard, because she wandered off and started talking to someone else.
I was in the small Swiss town of Mosnang, an hour and a half out of Zurich, and it was ten minutes after Gallus Breitenmoser’s funeral. In those ten minutes I had been asked by nearly every member of my family what it was I was up to, and struggled each time to answer them adequately. In the old days, I’d been able to just mutter something under my breath, and so long as they’d heard the letters ‘B’, ‘B’ and ‘C’, all was well with the world. Now, though, I didn’t really know what I was doing with myself. I’d lost my sense of purpose. My sense of direction in life.
I broke away from the crowd and wandered around Mosnang for a while – an achingly Swiss town, with vast wooden houses, dozens of green slatted shutters and elaborately painted facades, scattered across daisy-covered hills, and surrounded by happy cows and goats. The kind of town you’d have drawn when you were a kid, and had only the slightest grasp of basic town planning. Past the houses and cows, the mountains in the background make every view from every angle a timeless picture postcard in itself. Nothing ever changed too much here. This could have been any year, any era. I stood and stared for a while. It was just past noon and the sun was shining, the air was warm, and an insect was trying to mate with my face.
I decided I shouldn’t worry too much about what I was doing with my life. I mean, look at this place. It was beautiful. Sure, I’d had to lose a great-uncle to see it, but that’s what life is all about: give and take.
Gallus had been lucky to see this kind of thing every day of his life, smoking his pipe as he sat on the hillsides. I’m sure he hadn’t worried about where he was going or what he was doing. He was, by all accounts, a deeply happy man. Content with his lot. Satisfied. I knew I needed to be more like Gallus. Just slightly less farm-based, and, crucially, considerably more alive.
I decided I’d buy a pipe. Maybe that was what was missing from my life.
I made it back to the church in time to meet my family for lunch. We sat on a long table, on the lawn outside the local tavern, on wooden benches that creaked with every burst of laughter. There were fourteen of us in all; not a bad turnout for the old fella, though many of us, I suspected, may have seen the funeral as a handy excuse for a family get-together.
I was placed between my grandma and one of my great-aunts.
‘So, Daniel,’ said my great-aunt, who despite pushing 90 took up English lessons only two years ago. ‘What do you do now with you?’
I thought long and hard about how to answer her, hoping that she too would lose interest and maybe start eating her baguette, or something, but she wasn’t budging. Great-aunts rarely do. That’s why you can never get a seat at an old people’s home.
‘Oh, you know, keeping myself busy with this and that,’ I said. ‘But I’m really enjoying it.’
This seemed to satisfy her, and she tucked into her baguette.
‘And how is Hanne?’ asked my grandma.
‘She’s great,’ I said.
And she was. Hanne and I had been going out for over three years. We’d met at university, and discovered an uncanny amount of things in common. She was two years below me, for example, and the first night she invited me back to her university room I was somewhat surprised to find that it was the same room I had occupied two years earlier. We chose to interpret that l-in-800 chance as fate, and had been together ever since. It was a happy relationship. I was prepared to forgive her slight Norwegian quirks, she was prepared to forgive my entire personality.
The family ate, and laughed, and reminisced. My uncle Rico got his guitar out and sang a song. My cousins clapped along. Everyone – apart from me – told stories about Gallus; Gallus the ladies’ man, Gallus the adventurer, Gallus the clown . . . and I was fascinated by what I heard. Fascinated by one thing in particular. The one thing people kept mentioning, but not elaborating on. Much of the talk was in Swiss German, a language I only barely understand, so that may have been part of the problem, but what I picked up sounded rather interesting. It seems Gallus hadn’t always been the happy and satisfied man I’d thought he was. And at one point I was sure I’d heard the German word for ‘commune’ thrown in, followed by intense laughter. I tried to ask questions, tried to get a word in, but they were laughing too hard, the conversation was moving too quickly, and soon everyone was talking about different, unrelated things.
‘Grandma,’ I whispered. ‘What was all that about Gallus and communes?’
Grandma laughed.
‘Nothing, nothing. We were just remembering. Just a silly idea of his . . .’
‘Of whose?’
‘Of Gallus. Just a silly idea. He could be a silly man. Silly.’
I wanted to know more but it was time for coffee, and my grandma stood up to pour. Whenever I was a kid and with the family, they’d all opt for coffee after a meal, while I would still be drinking my Coke. My grandma would, absolutely without exception, mistake my Coke for coffee and proceed to top it up with milk. For years I thought that was how you were supposed to drink it, despite the tears and retching.
Later in the afternoon, we visited Gallus’s somewhat dilapidated farmhouse to take one last look around. Most of his possessions had been packed away and stored by now, a dark and dour process my grandma had taken care of, but there remained a few odds and ends. We were ordered to take a souvenir each. I felt guilty. I’d hardly known the man. I elected to leave the others to pick something that would genuinely mean something to them, and I took a walk around the garden for a while.
‘Daniel!’ called my grandma. It was time to take something.
What was left was spread around the old wooden dining table Gallus had made himself back in the 60s, from wood he’d collected in the forest near the house. It was scratched and marked from years of use, battered from being at the centre of family gatherings since the day it was made. I looked at the few things that were scattered across it, and picked up a pipe, and some letters.
I popped the pipe into my mouth to try it on for size.
‘Yes!’ said my grandma. ‘It looks good!’
/> ‘Maybe I’ll give it to Hanne.’
‘Yes!’ said my grandma, again. To be honest, I don’t think she’d understood me there. But we were alone now, and her full attention was mine. So I asked her again.
‘Grandma, what kind of silly idea?’
‘Idea?’
‘Gallus. What kind of silly idea did Gallus have?’
‘Ah . . .’ she chuckled. ‘Long time ago.’
‘What do you talk about?’ asked one my cousins, suddenly there.
‘Lara, what’s all this about Gallus and communes?’ I asked.
‘You don’t know this?’ she said, in disbelief.
And then she proceeded to tell me.
* * *
I arrived back at Heathrow to be surprised by Hanne.
‘I thought I’d come and collect you. You’ve been to a funeral, after all. And also, I wanted to see if you’d brought me a present.’
‘Here you go,’ I said, pulling out the first thing I found in my pocket.
Hanne looked at it. ‘You have brought me a pipe,’ she said, matter-of-factly.
‘I thought it would suit you,’ I said. ‘You know I’ve always fancied girls who smoke pipes.’
We hugged and found the Heathrow Express together. I’d only been gone three days, but I’d missed her, and was pleased to be back in her company. We headed into London, where we had a drink and then found a restaurant in Chinatown.
What my cousin Lara had told me was still on my mind, though.
‘If I said the word “commune” to you,’ I said as Hanne dropped her chopsticks for the fourth time, ‘what would you think?’
‘“Commune”? Like, hippies and stuff. Or mad people, like cults,’ she said. ‘Why? Are you going to live on a commune?’
‘Not me. Gallus. Well, not now he isn’t. But once.’
‘Your great-uncle? Really?’
Yes. Really. It appears that in the 40s, in the months after he’d spent his days lying on the ground with his friends on the Swiss borders, rifles aimed towards Austria and the Nazis, Gallus had become disillusioned with the small-town way of life. He’d made a few petty enemies in the town – a town of only 1000 or so – thanks to his big opinions and his big ideas. Those who ran the town looked upon him as a bit of a loose cannon, a bit of a troublemaker. Gallus wasn’t happy there. But he didn’t want to move to Zurich or one of the other big cities . . . they were too zinvoll for him. And then, one day in June, he decided he’d had enough.
‘So he decided to start a commune?’ said Hanne, surprised. ‘What a nutter!’
I didn’t think he was a nutter. I thought he was a visionary. I had an amazing new-found respect for the great-uncle I’d never really known. And anyway, it wasn’t really a ‘commune’, in the strictest sense of the word, was it? He’d simply wanted to live alongside likeminded people. He had some land through various family connections, and decided he could start a large-scale farm, provided enough people joined him in the venture.
‘How many people did he want?’ said Hanne, smiling.
‘One hundred or so,’ I said. ‘Which is actually very ambitious. I mean, he had a lot of land, but there were only 1000 people in the whole town in the first place.’
‘One hundred,’ said Hanne, shaking her head. ‘How many did he get?’
‘Well . . . three,’ I said.
Hanne laughed. There was no need for that. I’m sure badgering people to join you in starting something new like that can’t be all that easy. All credit to him for trying.
‘He wanted one hundred and he got three,’ Hanne giggled. ‘That’s not exactly a community – that’s more of a houseshare!’
Hanne was starting to annoy me now.
‘Well, I think it was very brave of him. And I’m sad that he gave up.’
I was. Genuinely. That spark of passion could have gone so far. But Gallus, demoralised by a lack of interest, and, I suspect, somewhat bullied by his wife, had given up about a week after having the idea. Ten years later he sold the land. With the money he made he gave up the shop he’d been running and bought the farm he lived on until he died.
And that was that. He’d been mocked in the town, and even now, sixty years later, my grandma couldn’t talk about Gallus’s efforts to get people to join him without having a little granny-chuckle.
‘I’m glad you don’t take after him,’ said Hanne, finishing her wine.
I wasn’t glad. Gallus had found precisely the kind of direction in life I wished I had. He’d made a decision, and he’d followed through. Not for long, but for a bit, and that was more than I was doing. I was sad that he hadn’t gone all the way with his idea. I was sad that he hadn’t found his hundred people. I couldn’t help but feel he’d given up too early, that he’d caved in under whatever pressures he was under, that he should have given it another week, at least.
‘How do you mean you’re glad I don’t take after him?’ I said.
‘Well . . . you’re more sensible. Apart from ditching your job and sitting at home all day, at least. You wouldn’t do what he did.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘Well, because for one thing, you don’t have a farm.’
‘I’ve got my own flat,’ I said, slightly too defensively.
‘And you’d invite one hundred people to live there with you, would you?’
‘Well . . . no. But I don’t think that’s the important thing. I think Gallus wanted to link with people. He wanted to connect with people who thought like he did, rather than with the other people in the town.’
‘No, Gallus wanted to live on a big farm with all his pals and probably do ritual sacrifices and make everyone wear orange.’
‘It wasn’t a cult. He wasn’t starting a cult.’
Hanne was winding me up and she was enjoying it. ‘I think he was. I think your great-uncle Gallus wanted to be a cult leader.’
‘It wasn’t a cult. It was . . . a collective.’
‘Of three people.’
‘Plus Gallus.’
Hanne laughed.
And then I realised how ludicrous our conversation was, and I laughed too.
* * *
But the next day, when Hanne had left my flat bright and early for work, I lay in bed thinking about Gallus. How must he have felt when he only got three people to say they’d believe in his idea? In him? Was he embarrassed? Humiliated? Had he taken it in good faith? Had he only done it to prove a point? To let the other people in the town know how strongly he felt? Or had he genuinely wanted to make a go of it?
A hundred people. I started to think about it. If I had a farm, who’d come and live on it with me? Not just say they would, but actually do it? Well . . . no one, clearly. My friends live largely in rented accommodation, where they have central heating and their own rooms, and don’t have to worry about mucking out cowsheds or strangling chickens. They wouldn’t join me. No one would. I shouldn’t feel too downhearted about it; no one joins anything any more, apart from the gym, and even then that’s only for show. If you’re me.
I got up and jumped into the shower. Well, I got up, walked to the bathroom, and then jumped into the shower. I don’t want you thinking I’ve got a shower within leaping distance of my bed, or that I sleep on the toilet. That’d be crazy. But Gallus continued to dominate my thoughts. It was stupid, and it was silly, but I still felt sorry for him. I felt guilty that Hanne had laughed at him, guilty that his actions had still caused such amusement at his own funeral, guilty that no one had wanted to join him.
What if I could make that up to him? What if I could get him his hundred people? The world’s a different place now. People are more open-minded. And there are more than 1000 of them. It was a stupid idea, and I put it out of my mind immediately.
And then it popped back in.
Who’d join me? And why? Hanne had been right last night – I don’t even have a farm for them all to live on. But what if I’d been right, too? What if it wasn’t about living on a farm? What if it
was just about connecting with people? What if it was about faith in the unknown? What if was about getting people to trust in something they had no idea about?
I was now standing in the shower staring at the ceiling. I hadn’t even really noticed that I was beginning to run out of hot water. Because I was lost in the possibilities.
What was I really saying here? Was I saying that I could get people to join me for no apparent reason? That I could get one hundred people to agree to let me lead them to a better way of life, without telling them what that better way of life was – without even knowing myself what that better way of life was? And, furthermore, get them to take me seriously while I was doing it?
No. Surely not.
I got out of the shower, dried myself, brushed my teeth. I wandered into the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea, and tried to forget about it.
Anyway, how would I know they were serious, these so-called ‘joinees’? Anyone can say yes. I’d need some indication that they were serious. They’d need to prove themselves to me somehow.
And this is where I genuinely should have stopped thinking about it. I should, at this point, have drunk my tea, switched my PlayStation on, and got on with reviewing some new videogame or other. But I didn’t. Somewhere inside me, some of Gallus’s genes were swimming about, asking odd questions, causing some mischief. This is certainly the excuse I use when I try and explain what I did next that morning.
I got a piece of paper. I wrote on it. I phoned the London small ads newspaper Loot, and I read it out.
Three days later my small ad was printed.
JOIN ME
Send one passport-sized photo to . . .
Join Me. Two words that summed up perfectly what I wanted people to do. Join Me. Not to live on a farm in a village in Switzerland with me. Not to all dress in orange and learn chants and bang a bongo and kidnap and brainwash our family members with me. Not to do anything with me, really.
Join Me Page 2