‘And what is your name, foot-boy?’
‘You may call me Sofia-Elisabete,’ said I with pride.
And that is how I met my first beau, a Swiss named Oskar Denzler. He told me he sorely missed his family and wished to return to Zürich, and so we shook hands and parted good friends – the best of friends. He strode up the steep Gemmi pass, sure-footed and confident. I strained my eyes to follow his ascent until he disappeared into the mist that clung to the face of the cliff and was gone for ever. I waited for the hot tears to fill my eyes, but for some reason, the tears never came. I stood there, as quiet and still as the alpine air, and then, finding myself lost and alone without my beau, I kicked some pebbles about.
Chapter Nine
The Three Curses
MY FIRST NEAR TRAGEDY, thinks I, on this long voyage to a moon world, was not when I nearly froze in the emerald waters of lake Zug, or when I nearly tumbled over a precipice in the Gemmi pass, or even when I nearly slipped into the wild torrent of the Saltina, although Doña Marisa, no doubt, would say I had been thrice cursed. You see, I believe ’twas when I nearly despaired of saving a friend from a life of poverty. And now that I think on it, I could persuade Doña Marisa to agree with me, at least on that point. In the stories Doña Marisa told me about her family, she, too, once suffered from poverty, and even though she somehow escaped a life of misery, she never forgot the desperation that comes from being poor. Doña Marisa, it turns out, possessed a compassionate heart, but only when she chose to lay claim to it. And so it is for us all.
With Denzler No. 2 acting as guide, we traversed the Canton of Valais – the ‘Land of Goitres,’ observed Señor Gonzalez, for many people here had goitres. Sometimes a goitre was the size of a cherry; other times, it grew as large as a peck loaf. ‘Qué horrible,’ whispered Doña Marisa, when a goitrous woman walked by us. Methinks the goitrous women took pride in their goitres. I heard one of them remark that Doña Marisa, being goitre-less, was goosenecked. It occurred to me then, as I felt my neck, that I was goosenecked, too.
The dusty road in the Valais led on for ever in my mind, and thus I became ever so restless, bouncing on the seat or swinging my legs or leaning out the open window, although all I could see were marshy meadows. Finally, I espied something interesting – three small children riding astride an ancient mule.
‘Holloah! Holloah!’ I hailed them, leaning out the window.
‘Siéntese!’ Señor Gonzalez quickly pulled me back inside the carriage, for I had nearly fallen out.
Doña Marisa covered her mouth, horror-struck.
‘She is safe,’ he reassured her.
‘She is cursed,’ declared she. ‘The witch has returned to harm my family.’
‘The witch?’ I gazed at her with curiosity.
‘Once upon a time, there lived an ugly witch, a bruxa, in the French empire,’ Doña Marisa began. ‘She had deep-set grey eyes, a pale complexion, a curved nose and black greasy hair that she cut square over her ears, the rest of it being gathered in a long pigtail. One day she flew with the north-east wind – vuuuu vuuuu – to Portugal where she aimed to do evil to its people.’
‘I can fly when I turn my mind to it,’ boasted I.
Pico laughed. ‘Liar.’
‘But I can,’ insisted I.
‘Vuuuu vuuuu,’ he teased me, and we began to elbow one another.
‘Basta!’ Señor Gonzalez’s sharp reprimand quieted us.
Doña Marisa sighed, and she continued her story. ‘The witch entered a caza de pasto, a public-house, in Lisbon where she requested a dish of bacalhau, a salted cod, but the proprietor, he being a prideful Gallego, refused to serve anyone French, while his two sons, Gaspar and Gustavo, mocked this dirty hag, this shabby creature. The witch gave them a penetrating stare, and though she stood a mere five feet high, her ire made her seem twice that height. A violent passion overtook her, and she railed against their ignorance, their abominable treatment of her. She cursed them three times in French, and when she had done, she flew with a south-west wind – hooom hooom – and return to Paris she did.’
‘Hooom hooom,’ Pico wiggled his fingers at me.
‘What is a curse?’ asked I, ignoring Pico.
‘A curse is summoning the supernatural powers to bring about harm to someone or something,’ explained Señor Gonzalez.
‘Doña Marisa, what happened next?’ With cruel glee, Pico wished to hear of doom and bloodshed, because he, just like the rest of us, sensed that something bad was about to happen.
‘Ere long Portugal prepared for an invasion by the French Army,’ recounted Doña Marisa. ‘Gaspar and Gustavo served in the Portuguese Army, but they perished in a fierce battle at Sobral. Heart-broken at the loss of his sons, the Gallego contracted a mysterious illness where he lay feverish in his bed, mumbling something about a witch. Jacinta, who suspected that a bruxa had cursed her husband, gathered a handful of réis that she had saved, and she hastened to a dilapidated palace where lived the Barão de Catanea, a famous curandeiro or healer from Brazil.’
I gasped. ‘Did the witch kill the sons and make their papai sick?’
‘That is what both the Gallego and his wife, Jacinta, believed,’ said Doña Marisa. ‘Jacinta pleaded with the Barão to remove the evil spirits from her home. He, having determined that the Gallego suffered from the evil eye, burnt herbs and chanted to get rid of these sinister spirits. He crushed a variety of medicinal roots and herbs, and he prescribed a strong tea be brewed with them. Jacinta did as she was told, but her husband, who refused to drink the tea, succumbed to his illness the next day. Thereafter, Jacinta sank into extreme poverty, and how she and her daughter and granddaughter were to survive, she knew not.’
‘The curse made everyone poor?’ asked I.
‘Sí,’ replied she in a quiet tone. ‘Tragically, half of my family disappeared for ever.’
‘But your papai beat you…’
‘Nevertheless, he was the only papai I had,’ returned she.
‘You still had me and your mamãe,’ I reminded her.
Doña Marisa bit her lip as she twirled the diamond ring on her finger, avoiding my stare of expectation.
‘Please tell me another story, minha Senhora.’
‘Perhaps, soon.’ Her countenance wan, her eyes half-closed, she muttered to herself something about the witch’s curse and my near tragedies at Zug and the Gemmi.
Oh, how I wished to ask her more about the curse and why the witch wanted to harm me. Was I cursed and really a ‘no good penny’ as Josefina would often remind me, and that’s why bad things happened to me? I gazed at Doña Marisa’s handsome features, wondering how she had become rich after being poor and why the witch hadn’t cursed her. But I dared not bother her with my questions about the curse and be cast off again; besides, I had promised God that I would help Doña Marisa and think of her before I thought of myself.
At the foot of the Simplon pass stood a picturesque town called Brieg. One can always tell when one has reached Brieg, I suppose, what with three turnips topsy-turvy in the sky and always there to greet you. These big brown turnips or spires, I learnt, sat atop towers that called themselves Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar and protected Stockalper Palace. I thought of my avô and his turret at the hunting lodge, wondering why he had not named it anything, although he did have a bugbear to protect it. It seemed an age ago since I had last seen my avô, and I recalled our sad parting in the old wood.
Doña Marisa praised the beauty of Brieg, for the Rhône and the Saltina wound through it, and the surrounding countryside boasted lush meadows, fruit trees, white cottages, woods and thickets. Señor Gonzalez agreed with his lady’s observations, remarking on the peacefulness and holiness of the town, that is, until the next day, when the blaring echoes of a shepherd’s alphorn sounded at break of dawn.
Señor Gonzalez, who had fallen from his bed in shock, fired off a volley of oaths in Spanish as the cows, sheep and goats were herded into the town square, their bleats and bells
creating a great noise. ‘Spiegel! Falth! Lusti!’ a shepherd called out to his beloved cows, one by one. In the evening, the herds returned amidst the cries of the shepherds. Then, in the morning, it began all over again with the blare of a shepherd’s alphorn, followed by a great noise of bleats and bells, ‘Spiegel! Falth! Lusti!’ and Señor Gonzalez’s never-ending oaths.
Here, in Brieg, we sat idle at the inn La Croix, waiting for favourable weather in the Simplon pass, while Señor Gonzalez and our guide arranged for horses to pull our two carriages. One morning I walked out with Doña Marisa and Pico to the ancient chapel of Saint Sebastian to pray for good weather, when we observed a young girl afflicted with a goitre. ‘Pobrecita,’ uttered Doña Marisa. Her hands trembling, Doña Marisa felt the gland at the centre of my neck to see if a goitre grew there. Having found nothing lumpy, she sighed with relief, as did I.
‘No traveller passing through ever suffers from goitreism or cretinism,’ remarked a young Swiss girl wearing a brown frock made of coarse cloth, a white apron and a Valais hat – a curiously shaped little straw hat trimmed with green ribbon.
‘Really and truly?’ asked I, still fearful I would become goitre’d.
‘Only people born in der Schweiz get it,’ she assured me and Doña Marisa.
Struck with awe by her big brown eyes and her nut-brown hair dressed neatly in two long braids, I imagined her a shiny new doll. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I am Emmerence Odet,’ said she, and with the lady’s permission, she would tell us her story.
Enchanted by this pretty girl, Doña Marisa accepted her offer.
‘I was born to two cloud-dwellers – a brave chamois-hunter and his equally brave wife,’ began the girl, proud of her heritage. ‘In the summer of my third year, we lived in an old chalet in the Bernese Alps near Sion. One misty day, while in pursuit of a wily chamois, my papi lost his footing on a precipice, and he fell five hundred feet.’
‘Ay, Dios mío.’ Doña Marisa pressed her fingers to her lips.
‘Such are the perils of chamois-hunting,’ remarked Emmerence with a resigned air. ‘My mami, who had heard his scream echoing in the mountains, clambered up a crag where she was struck by a falling rock. Five days later, the chamois-hunter Rochat found me hiding in the chalet, eating a raw potato. He took me to a convent in Sion.’
I tugged at Emmerence’s apron. ‘I lived in a convent where I slept on straw and ate watery soup.’
Emmerence expressed her surprise. ‘Here, we survive on potatoes, milk and cheese. Herr Pfarrer Haas brought me to the Ursuline convent in Brieg where the nuns have schooled me in French, high German, Italian and English, although we speak Swiss-German to one another most of the time. I am a polyglot, which is what Herr Pfarrer says, because I can speak several languages with ease. I am now ten years of age, and I wish to be an explorer someday like Marie Paradis, a servant girl who climbed Mont Blanc.’
Pico gazed in earnest at Emmerence. ‘But girls canna be explorers.’
‘I’m an explorer,’ declared I. ‘I’m going to a moon.’
‘Der mond? Oh, does not everyone wish to go to the moon?’ Emmerence clasped her hands over her heart. Hearing a nun call for her, the charming girl bid us farewell. ‘Uf widerluege.’
‘Pobrecita,’ lamented Doña Marisa. ‘What dreams she has. Alas, she will be poor and live in Brieg for ever.’
The following day Pico announced he was of a mind to pray again for favourable weather, and he half-dragged me with him to Saint Sebastian. ‘Hilfe! ‘Hilfe!’ a girl cried out for help. There, in Sebastian Square, two little boys pelted Emmerence with pebbles, taunting her with ‘kretin! kretin!’ Pico gave the miscreants a violent shove. ‘Away! Yer villains,’ thundered he. The rascals took to flight, for Pico stood much taller than them.
‘Grüezi mitenand,’ Emmerence greeted us, her dark brown eyes glistening with gratitude. ‘How glad am I to see you both.’
‘Grüezi. Why did they call you a cretin?’
She shrugged at me. ‘The nuns say I have an old soul, whereas the children think me odd.’
‘I dunna think yer odd.’ Pico blushed to his eyes.
‘Merci vielmal, Pico,’ said she, her cheeks glowing.
I gaped at the two of them turning colours. Then I recalled how my papai did the same when he fell in love with my mamãe in Scarborough and how he began to do strange things afterwards. Gah! With an inward groan, I lagged my companions as they took three turns in the cobble-stoned square, chatting about the North Sea and packet-boats and gipsies and hedgehogs.
Enough, I told myself, and squeezing myself in between them, I took ahold of my new friend’s hand. ‘Emmerence, do you wish to skip?’ She grinned at me and my childish impertinence. We skipped merrily along, jodeling ‘ho-u ho-u holli dulli hulli dulli ho-u-u-u’, and she taught me an old Swiss song about the coming of the spring. Of a sudden, Pico nudged me at the elbow. ‘Retreat!’ warned he, because, there, at the far end of the square, stood Señor Gonzalez, scribbling in his small journal-book. And so we bid our friend a hasty farewell.
‘Your freckles have turned red,’ observed I, as we scurried back to the inn.
Pico seized me by the lug. ‘Yer lug is turnin’ red.’
‘Yow!’ I rubbed my sore ear.
The next day, once the pouring rain had stopped, Pico and I took a ramble high up in the meadows when we heard Emmerence singing the old Swiss song, the one about the coming of spring, the melting snow, the blue sky and the return of the cuckoo. A first-rate jodeler she was, her jodels so clear, so bright, so sweet in the still mountain air.
Der Ustig wott cho,
Der Schnee zergeiht scho,
Der Himmel isch blaue,
Der Guger het g’schraue,
Der Maye syg cho,
A-ho alli ho alli ho-u ho-u ho ulli lui alli
ho-u ho-u holli dulli hulli dulli ho-u.
I jodeled in response to her, and she jodeled in return, and back and forth we went with our jodels until at last we found each other – she descending a steep mountain path. Pico turned gentleman, offering to carry her basket, it being filled with fresh eggs. He declared his wish to escort her back to town, his freckles turning bright red again. Ai de mim! I was surely in the midst of some romanticking going on, and so I linked arms with Emmerence, though, what good that did, when Pico still pestered us, sometimes overtaking us, other times flirting with her.
I gave up trying to separate those two. And lag them I did as we approached town. In the sulks, I shuffled over an old wooden bridge, its railings half-rotten with age. The recent rainfall had swollen the Saltina, and the roar of the wild torrent below made it difficult to think or even enjoy a good sulk. I kicked some pebbles into the raging river just because I could. And then I got the brilliant idea to kick the railing just because I could.
‘Gah!’ I slipped on a pile of manure, and I landed with a thud on my seat of honour. In an instant, I found myself sliding off the side of the bridge, my legs dangling over the frothing torrent. I grasped one of the rickety posts on the bridge and held on. I had no sooner pondered my terrifying predicament, than I felt myself dragged to safety by Emmerence, who had returned to look for me.
‘Emmerence, you saved me, and we broke the curse,’ rejoiced I, hugging my dear friend. ‘The witch shan’t ever get me now.’
‘A curse?’ Emmerence shot a confused glance at Pico, who had come running to join us on the bridge.
‘A witch tried three times to harm me – first at Zug, then in the Gemmi pass, and here on the bridge – and each time she failed.’ I gazed in earnest at my companions, but they thought I was crack-brained.
We sallied forth into town. I pledged to Emmerence that we would be the best of friends for ever and ever or at least a thousand years, seeing how I liked her hugeously, and that when I became a mamãe, I would name my first daughter Emmerence to honour her for saving me, and if I didn’t have a daughter – well, now, I would name a donkey after her. Pico, with his chee
ks aflamed, asked Emmerence to think on him whenever she chanced to see the sun and moon both hanging in the morning sky, and she shyly said she would. It was then that something strange occurred.
‘The ground is moving.’ I clung to Emmerence.
Emmerence patted my hand. ‘Die Schweiz has hundreds of small earthquakes every year.’
From the open window above us, we heard Doña Marisa shriek as the inn swayed, and she blamed the witch who wanted us gone from Switzerland, so gone we would be on the morrow. This piece of news unsettled the three of us children, for we had become great friends.
Emmerence handed an egg to Pico. ‘Farmer Müller claims his eggs will cure anything. Perhaps it will cure Doña Marisa’s fears?’
Pico shook his head, and he returned the precious egg to her. ‘Nothin’ will cure her fears.’
Emmerence gave us a sad smile. ‘I must return now to the convent. The good sisters await me and these magic eggs.’
‘Não, não, não.’ I clutched her apron, wishing her to stay with us.
‘B’hüt euch Gott! God bless you!’ cried she, her eyes bright and shiny. She choked on a sob or two, and in that miserable state, she scurried back to the convent, stopping once to turn round to wave at us and to give us a brave smile. When she disappeared, I covered my face with my hands to weep, while Pico turned strangely silent again.
That night I dreamt of Emmerence clambering up the Valais Alps, and when she tired, she rode a cloud in the shape of a mule that drifted by. Having reached the summit, she sat there alone, eating a sorry-looking shrivelled potato, and when she had done with her meagre dinner, she drank a handful of muddy snow water. Would she survive or perish as a cloud-dweller on her own? Alas, I would never know, what with Doña Marisa wishing to be quit of this country.
The weather now favourable, we set off for the Simplon pass. ’Twas an odd thing, though, that the shepherd didn’t blare his alphorn as he usually did every morning. A murmur of tinkling cow bells in the distance greeted us instead.
I, Sofia-Elisabete, Love Child of Colonel Fitzwilliam Page 12