Veruda is one of the many small islands off the shore of Istria and Dalmatia, which on one side emerges gently out of the sea, rises gradually up to about 150 or 200 feet, and ends abruptly on the other side in a steep cliff. In an hour one could walk around it. The sea had eaten deep into its shoreline, forming many little bays as big as a large room. One part of the island, about fifty acres, was covered with dense pine groves. The rest was fields and pastures. Franciscan Fathers had once owned this beautiful spot. On the highest point of the island the ruins of the church and the convent were still standing. The monks had planted a garden with medicinal herbs. Long after the Fathers had been driven away by Napoleon, the herbs had spread all over the land, and during the hot summer days and nights they exhaled the most wonderful fragrance, which one could smell for miles and miles out at sea: thyme and lavender, dill and sage, mint and sweet geranium and rosemary, and many more which we couldn’t name. The old walls were overgrown with honey-suckle, wild roses, oleander, and laurel. A walk through this little paradise in the full moonlight was unearthly beautiful.
Georg had known Veruda since his boyhood days. He had been born in Zara, half-way down the Dalmatian coast, into the family of an Austrian Navy officer. They had lived a while in Trieste and, until 1918, in Pola. He also knew Signor Pauletta, who had owned a hardware store in Pola before the war. Afterwards he had acquired Veruda and retired there. He had fixed himself a couple of rooms in the old monastery, and there he lived now, as his island’s only inhabitant, very contentedly on fish he caught and vegetables and fruit he planted, needing next to no money. Very rarely he went “downtown,” which meant Pola. He had invited us to come and camp on Veruda, and now—here we were.
Right at this moment our host came down from his stony hermitage to greet his guests. His eyes grew bigger and bigger when he saw that fancy display of what modern people, according to the book, need when they want to go “back to nature” and lead a “simple life” in the country, feeling, of course, like aborigines. Signor Pauletta, who owned a couple of pots and pans, a Sunday suit, and fishing tackle, was deeply impressed.
“Varra, varra!” he repeated many times clucking his tongue. (This means “What do you know about that!”)
Our little tent city was erected on the east side of the island, where it slopes gently down to the water, but every day we went up to the cliffs, watching the surf or the big ships out at sea, heading for the Mediterranean, or watching Signor Pauletta fishing. We slept in naval hammocks under the pine trees, and after the first couple of unquiet nights, when you had to pick yourself up from under your hammock several times, it became a most restful way of sleeping. The strong scent of the pines, the quiet murmur of the waves, the moonlight coming down through the branches, the gentle swinging of the hammocks—oh, it was heavenly!
At first, everybody was radiantly happy. Georg, who was the supreme commander, assigned the duties, such as cooking, getting the fresh water from the cistern up yonder, watching the baby, washing dishes. There was a bi-weekly exchange, the two families taking turns. The first thing every morning was a quick swim. Then we met for morning prayer and breakfast. After that little groups formed for fishing or swimming, paddling, sailing, or just strolling around. After a few days we noticed that our children were scattered all over the place, having a wonderful time with the boats, while Peter’s children were mostly ashore. Upon investigation I learned that the Handbook advised not leaving land if: (a) the wind comes from the land, (b) cumulo-nimbus clouds are forming on the horizon, (c) during the past three days there has been a storm, (d) sure signs indicate a storm to come within the next twenty-four hours, (e) the temperature is higher than eighty degrees, (f) you feel the slightest indigestion, (g) or headache, (h) or general tiredness. Cousin Peter, therefore, could be seen every morning after breakfast, licking his right forefinger, according to the book, holding it up, and finding sadly that the wind was coming from the land, which it did every morning, changing every night to wind from the sea, all during the summer on this coast, book or no book. To the passionate pleading of his children he only shook his head sadly.
Georg and I had a council of war. It was finally agreed that I was to take care of Peter every morning after breakfast until Georg had successfully sent off all the children. When the last one was cleared off the island, I would be informed by a signal on his boatswain’s whistle.
The next morning I watched Peter to see what he was going to do after breakfast, and soon discovered that he was going to have his morning shave in peace and quiet. Laden with two sizeable leather cases, several towels and smaller boxes, he descended into one of those little bays, of which there were eight or ten next to each other. I changed into my bathing suit and made myself at home in the cove next to him, watching him from behind a stone. It was awful, but what could I do? It was my order of the day to prevent Peter from licking his finger before the whistle had blown. I didn’t even know yet, myself, how I would do it. For the time being, I was perfectly enraptured by what I saw: Lovingly Peter spread the different towels over flat stones. Then he opened the first leather case and took out a brush, a piece of soap, several little flasks, a razor strop, and many other little items, the identity of which was unclear to me but which, of that I was sure, were in the book. Then he opened the second leather case, which obviously contained washing and bathing utensils, soap for salt water, talcum powder, etc. All this was arranged in rectangular lines, like soldiers on a drill field. Then Peter stepped back and, after an approving glance, nodded. It was good. But it became more breath-taking than that. Sitting down on a low stone, Peter took that leather strop and a razor and, sticking his big toe through the middle ring of the strop, holding the other end in his left hand, sharpened the razor, counting aloud: “…twelve, thirteen, fourteen…” Merely by listening I was informed that the book suggested, at least on Wednesdays, twenty strokes. I was spellbound, and almost forgot my duty to my fellow men. When he started to produce lather in a lovely pink bowl, my conscience awoke.
For heaven’s sake, I must not let him shave, and, “Peter!” I wailed, rising behind my stone, “Peter!” not knowing yet what else to say.
He gave me the clue. “What bothers you, Cousin Maria?”
“You know, I don’t like this cove. Would you mind, Peter, changing with me?”
And now, shameful me, I sat down on a stone, watching him completely pack and unpack for the next ten minutes, going through all the procedure patiently once more, considering coldheartedly that I would have to chase him into still another cove if I didn’t hear…But there it was, the “all clear” signal, and Peter had his uninterrupted shave and I, a good swim.
This had to be repeated for the next few days until Peter was convinced that none of Cousin Georg’s arrangements for the children had proved fatal.
It was a wonderful summer, full of adventure and the healthiest out-of-door living we could wish. The two families were closely knit together; friendships formed among the children which were to last a life-time.
The last evening came. We had stretched the vacation, and it was high time to go home if the children were to be in time for school. This was now definitely the last evening. With the kind of tender sadness that always comes before a farewell, we sat around the campfire. A waning moon shed a greenish light, which only stressed the doleful atmosphere. In the evening the children had asked me to tell ghost stories—“true ones.” So I had invented “true ghost stories” of monks wandering around the island not finding rest for their souls because…Of a hollow voice which could be heard on moonless nights, moaning and groaning, which belonged to the Emperor Napoleon, who had persecuted this monastery, and would have to groan until somebody rebuilt it and gave it back to the Franciscans…Of…and soon I had to accompany my young audience to their respective hammocks. Now we grownups were sitting around the fire alone. After we had talked about the rich beauty of these summer months, Peter, once more filling the glasses from the last bottle, said all of a sudd
en:
“You know, it just comes to me that after the first few days I didn’t even open a book again. By the way, Laura, have you seen that old Handbook of Camping anywhere? I mislaid it right at the beginning.”
And this was perhaps the greatest praise which was ever pronounced upon Veruda, that hidden pearl of the sea.
IX An Operation, a Turtle, and a Long Distance Call
IT WAS a beautiful day in May. Rosmarie was two years old. It was Ascension Day, a holiday, and the whole family was in church. Rosmarie had stayed home with me, and I had called Frau Vogl that it was time for her to come again, perhaps one of the next days. And then it happened, and it happened so fast that I hardly had time to inform Frau Vogl she had better hurry. While the church bells were ringing, little Eleonore hastened into this world. That somehow stuck with her. She still seems to be in a hurry.
On the evening of her baptism—she was named after her Godmother, Tante Lorlein—Georg said to me thoughtfully:
“I don’t know whether this has anything to do with our getting girls all the time, but ever since the first child, I wanted to name one Barbara. You know, for some mysterious reason Saint Barbara is the patron Saint of the Navy. The first child, however, was a boy, Rupert. The next one had to be named after her mother, the third one after her Godmother, and so on; and Saint Barbara seems to send girl after girl until I keep my promise.”
“And why didn’t you tell me that in the first place?” I asked reproachfully.
When Eleonore was a little over a year old, we were making summer plans again, and went back to Veruda. That joyous living in bathing suits, which made you feel so amphibious, came this time to a sudden end for me.
On one of our hikes, when I was newly married, we had stayed overnight with a farmer whose children were sick in bed with scarlet fever, which, unfortunately, he told us only the next morning, when it was too late. Sure enough, a few weeks later, when the incubation period was not quite over, Martina and Johanna woke up one morning with high fever, sore throats and red tongues. I withdrew with the little ones into the guest wing, and there we lived in seclusion. When they were out of danger and up and around for the first time, it got me. It wasn’t a bad case, though, and everything was under control. Weeks after I had returned to human society and still couldn’t get rid of a rather annoying back-ache, I asked a doctor about it, and the result of this consultation was the discovery that the scarlet fever had infected my kidneys. “But don’t worry; just keep on a strict diet: no meat, no salt, no eggs, no milk, no fat.”
Little did I know that this was to be my program for the next twenty years. Off and on I tried “not to worry; just keep on a strict diet: no meat, etc.” But if one doesn’t have a character like Abraham Lincoln or Joan of Arc, a diet simply disintegrates into eating exactly what you want to eat, but with a bad conscience.
During our weeks in Veruda I felt the pain most disagreeably on our boat rides, especially in rough weather when we got drenching wet. So one day I again went to a doctor. He grew quite serious and talked about kidney stones and a necessary operation. Upon my return home I went to Vienna.
Maria came with me. Since the very earliest times when she had been a convalescent and I her teacher, we had grown especially fond of each other.
That first week in Vienna was lots of fun. During the day I was in a private clinic for the necessary tests to be made in order to find out definitely what was wrong with the kidney. In the evening we went to the opera or the theatre. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, and I almost forgot what I was in Vienna for, until the doctor informed me that the tests showed it was kidney stones, and an operation was unavoidable. That put an end to our gay visits at the Staatsoper and the Burgtheater. Maria sent a telegram to her father, and he flew up on the day of the operation. The operation proved worth while: nineteen stones were removed, and so much gravel and sand that the wound had to be kept open in order to drain during several weeks.
I had never had much talent for being sick or keeping quiet, and after the first few miserable days, I found it extremely difficult to lie on my back motionless.
“Could you think of some kind of animal which I could have right here in bed with me?” I asked Georg.
He rushed off and came back with three tiny little baby chicks. I was simply thrilled, called them Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar in honor of the Three Holy Kings, and during the long hours when no visitors were allowed, I had the nicest company. Contentedly they rested on my chest, were perfectly tame, and made those little squeaks baby chicks make all over the world. Unfortunately, they did not remain little yellow cotton balls, but grew, and after a week the diaper situation of my baby chicks became extremely difficult. I could see it by the expression on the face of patient Sister Agrosia, my nurse. Sister Agrosia was a saintly nun with only one fault: In her childlike innocence she believed every word I said, however silly my stories might be. She had stirred up in me the urge to find out to what depths her trustfulness would go, which made my stories sillier each day, and still I hadn’t reached the limit of her credulity.
When it was evident that Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar had to be taken to greener pastures, Georg went to a pet shop and came back radiant.
“Look what I got you!” and he put a little turtle on my bed. At this very moment Sister Agrosia came into the room.
“Oh,” she said, “what is that?” looking curiously at something she had never seen before in her life.
Truthfully I answered: “That is a turtle, Sister.”
“A turtle, what is a turtle?” she wanted to know.
That was bad. All my evil instincts were at work.
“A turtle is an animal which feeds on the toes of newborn babies,” I said, looking straight into her eyes.
This she can’t believe, I thought to myself. But I was mistaken.
“Oh, oh!” Sister said, and looked with horror at that little brown lump on my blanket. “But we’ll have to be very careful and keep the door shut.”
I had been given the only vacant room in the whole house, which happened to be next to the maternity ward, babies being born constantly all around me.
Cruelly I answered: “That won’t help any, Sister, because a turtle can make itself flat like a sheet of paper, crawl under the door and blow itself up outside again.”
Sadly I must confess that I was not a bit ashamed of myself at that moment, nor was I next morning when I heard from eyewitnesses that Sister Agrosia had been seen sitting on a chair outside my door with a stick in her hand while the little turtle slept peacefully on my chest.
During the next days I did my best to break the spell. I assured Sister Agrosia that I had been mistaken. This was not the wild type of turtle, but a tame one, living on turtle feed. She wanted to know whether it was a “he” or a “she.” Now Georg had forgotten to ask this important question when he bought it. We didn’t know and couldn’t imagine. So I called it Glöckerl, which means “Little Bell,” a neuter name, and soon we were good friends all around. I asked Sister Agrosia for a spool of thread, and with a piece of adhesive tape I pasted the end of the thread on Little Bell’s shell. Then it was allowed to go grazing all over the room. When I wanted it back, all I had to do was start winding up the spool, and reluctantly it came gliding along the parquet backwards and was hoisted up on the bed, looking mournful as only turtles can. When I finally left the hospital, Little Bell stayed behind with Sister Agrosia.
At Pentecost I was still fast in bed.
“Sister, I would like to go to confession tomorrow,” I said.
Kind Sister Agrosia went out to find a priest at the next parish church. Soon she was back, excited, jubilant, triumphant:
“They have a new priest in the parish, and the pastor said he will send him. I haven’t talked to him, but I know you will like him very much. Oh, he is so beautiful! He has a face like an angel!”
And the dear old sister, her cheeks flushed, her eyes turned to heaven, looked a little like a holy card
herself. I must admit with grief that the great expectation of the next morning was divided between the receiving of the sacraments and the curiosity to see “Father Angel-Face,” which grew stronger every minute.
At seven o’clock the door opened, and at one glance I could verify it: Sister had been right. Father looked like the statue of Saint Aloysius come to life. But now it was time for me to concentrate on my sins. Father got a chair and sat down at my bedside; and after he had pronounced the Latin blessing, I confessed my sins, including all the mischief with poor Sister Agrosia. When I was all through, Father looked up and said only two words:
“Nem értem,” which means, “I don’t understand.”
Father was Hungarian!
For a split second we looked at each other in desperation, and then we had a hard time not to laugh. Father commenced questioning me in Latin: “Have you done this or have you done that?” and I, wanting to answer, “I have,” or “I have not,” just said: “Habeo—Non habeo” which was definitely not correct Latin, but accepted by God in His representative.
Soon afterwards my husband came to get me out of this swanky private clinic. The summer months we again spent in Veruda, and in September we came back to Salzburg, glad to be home again.
We had hardly walked into the house when my husband was called to the telephone, long distance from Zell am See. The distance is only about sixty miles, but it was long distance, and we were in Austria, where a long distance call or a telegram are used only in utter emergencies, usually death. And so you hurry to the ’phone with shaking knees, take the receiver with trembling hands, and reach for the nearest chair. Still now, after ten years in America, it fills me with awe to see how differently long distance calls are handled here. Back home such a call was the great event of a day. If, once or twice a year, you had to make one, you announced it solemnly to the operator the first thing in the morning, lived in exalted expectation from then until late in the afternoon, when your call would be announced. Here, sitting in New York, people casually pick up the receiver, and as casually, say: “Toronto,” or “Hollywood,” and before one can catch one’s breath, the other party is on the line. It takes less than a minute. The greatest thrill, however, is yet to come. The person talking to Toronto or Hollywood does not, as I had expected, talk at the rate of three hundred words a minute, all in one breath, looking concentratedly at one point on the wall—oh no! In the most comfortable, easy-chair manner he leans back and starts chatting about the weather in New York. “And what are you having in Toronto or Hollywood? Rain? Oh, isn’t that too bad. It’s a gorgeous day here. By the way, what I wanted to say is…” Then, only, comes the business; I am exhausted. This is still for me the symbol of the higher standard of living, so much so that I am sinfully addicted to long distance calls myself.
The Story of the Trapp Family Singers Page 10
