Swisscapade
That summer, two men set foot on the moon for the first time in the story of man. This happened during our Quebec interlude before we set foot on Swiss soil for the first time in the story of our union. As we had just been with my parents for two years and would be gone for the two coming years, we owed it to Danielle's parents to be by their side for a short time in July and August.
A neighbourly widow, who would be absent during those months, rented us her house near the Quéloz residence. Thus a degree of privacy could protect our young home from the inroads of parental reminiscence and preserve their home from the quirks of our outlandish undiscipline. Thus there would be the pleasure of reunion rather than that of separation.
One day when grandmaman was caring for Christine and we were on a car-ride in the countryside with Mr Quéloz, Danielle suddenly required a halt. She was feeling sick. She quickly got out and so did her breakfast.
"Aha", was Mr Quéloz 's reaction, and later that of Mrs Quéloz .
"Why 'aha'?", we asked.
"Danielle is expecting", they said.
We both laughed.
"Oh no", we said. "We will not be had twice in a row. Danielle's period is simply late once again. This explains her feeling sick."
But Danielle's breasts became sensitive. And Danielle was sleepy, even though she had by now rested from all the hullabaloo of visiting and moving from Manitoba. And she had been ravenous back there.
A friend gave us the name of a competent doctor. Maybe he was competent. For us, he'll always be the M.D., the Mad Doctor. Danielle wanted to know whether she was pregnant. He insisted that she should take a test to find out whether she had some sort of cancer. He seemed to be an overly enthusiastic cancer researcher of some kind, trying to do a survey. Danielle suggested that she might not be of much help to him as we were leaving for Switzerland in a very near future. This made him very cross.
"Well, what if you have cancer?", said he in an adult version of a childish "Na!"
He confirmed the pregnancy but refused to give any pertinent information as to Danielle's health. She dared suggest that she could use pregnancy vitamins considering the stress of moving.
"Just ask them of your Swiss doctor", was his last retort.
Never before nor since have we met such a nasty doctor. He was probably having a bad day.
Still, we rejoiced at the knowledge that Michel, leader of the celestial hosts, or Isabelle, Queen of Castile and Aragon, was now alive within Danielle. We would love to have a boy, to have the pair. But we loved having a child, Isabelle as much as Michel. And we felt that our friends and relatives rejoiced also.
During my stay in Quebec, I got pointers from my Laval professors on what to expect at Fribourg University.
One of them warned me: "They are good men over there, but..."
I was to learn that in the profession of philosophy (as in all intellectual arenas in general), approbation is always accompanied by a "but": a sign of the trade.
"But", he continued, "whereas they mainly study Thomas Aquinas in the light of his commentator John of St. Thomas, we, here, have gone beyond John of St. Thomas back to Aquinas himself, and beyond him to Aristotle."
I was confident. Had I not succeeded well in my Master's degree, two years ago? Had I not been rather popular as a teacher these last two years, while being the Philosopher? Had I not finally persuaded three students (Maurice, Gerry and Mouse) to make a career in philosophy through Laval University? Was I not luckily immersed in eternal wisdom? Difficulties might vary in degree, but not in kind.
Because of my status as a Quebec-government-aided student, we were given the chance to fly less expensively to Europe on an Air France flight especially chartered for Quebec students going overseas. The plane would leave Montreal's Dorval International Airport late on September 4 or early on September 5: midnight. We left Quebec City at five thirty that afternoon to be sure to be on time and rid all formalities before boarding. After waiting about at Dorval, we were told that the plane would leave one hour late. At that time of the night, one hour seemed half a day. Christine, now nearly eleven months old, bore it with greater ease than her parents who were nervous in her stead. A joke went around that an Air France plane had once been announced as actually on time at Dorval Airport. The ground crew had not shown up, believing this to be a practical joke played on them. But it had turned out to be true. At some later date, a friend of mine vehemently denounced this kind of joke as ill-founded and claimed he had always got good service from Air France. Whatever the case may be, that night joking against the company relieved tension.
We took off at one.
* * *
Switzerland: the pearl of Europe. It is a tiny country that contains within its borders the miniaturisation of the world's geographical wonders. Of course, Switzerland has its Alps, its glaciers, its peaks and its luscious valleys. But it also has its lakes, its tropical palm trees, its wheat fields and, incredible to my eyes, its prairies: the latter in the Morat region. Everywhere, an industrious people keeps it all in top shape and polished. Switzerland is a civilised wild country, the adventurous National Park of Europe where a tourist is not allowed to pick a mountain flower nor drop a waste paper elsewhere than in a wastebasket.
Switzerland is a great place, and we recommend it highly. For two years, we enjoyed seeing, from our balcony, the setting sun throw its red rays on the Fribourg nightsky with the tower of its cathedral blushing, then darkening into night. At the same time, far off on our left, the Moleson mountain would be disappearing. In the morning, when we woke, we could hear the cow-bells ringing on the hill a short way off our bedroom window. The fourteenth-century cathedral is in the upper part of town, above the old city: a fascinating detail for someone come from a land where a century-old house is declared an historical monument.
Switzerland is more than a country. It is its countrymen. They are absent to the tourist's eye, except as paid servants for his entertainment and ease. They are present for those who live in Switzerland. That is where there is great truth in the words of Chesterton by which the English feel smarter than the French as they correctly dress their soldiers in red coats and blue pants whereas the French have ridiculous soldiers dressed in blue coats and red pants. Here the conflicting cultures were not, for us, French and English but North American and Swiss. Even Danielle, who had been raised in the mystical belief of Swiss superiority, could not help but consider them mad just as they undoubtedly — and correctly — considered us bizarre.
Thus it seemed to us that the Swiss delight abnormally in working for work's sake. There was, for example, a worker with failing health who refused to retire at sixty instead of the usual sixty-five. He would not accept to live off the work of others. It is a notable fact that strikes are unknown in Switzerland, save the abhorred exception that confirms the rule. Also, in Switzerland, unemployment is counted in numbers rather than in percentage points, as these would not be noticeable. Admittedly, the employment figures are helped by the fact that Switzerland imports workers from neighbouring countries during periods of economic expansion and sends them home when things are tighter. When we saw a Swiss workman sweeping the streets and another one filling potholes on the highway with asphalt carried in a pull-cart, we understood that with such technologies neither was in danger of being laid-off.
It was at home that we got our first-hand taste of Swiss working habits. In our brand-new apartment building, the tenants could use the automatic washer and dryer only on a half-day every three weeks. That half-day was handicapped by the washing cycle used to make clothes whiter than white. It lasted one and a half hours. First there was a pre-wash, then a period of soaking and a rinse. Then the laundry was cooked(!), before going through another soaking and two more rinses. There was hardly time left to get through the rest of the laundry.
How did a woman get her laundry done, especially a mother with children in cloth diapers (and there were many about)? Quite simply by hand-washing in the kitchen or bathroom sink. Of course, the technological machines existed. But it was considered to be the normal thing to complement the heavy laundry (bed-sheets) with manual wash of the lighter things. When we thought we might buy a small automatic washing machine to fit into our apartment, we learned that this would be against regulations, because it would require plumbing. So, finally, in desperation, we found a small washing-machine that plugged into the wall, had a rotating platter and could wash three diapers at a time. It took Danielle at least a month to master doing a day's laundry in one day.
Then there were the floors. They were of beautiful golden wood. Wood that required weekly waxing, using one coat of wax in each room, and when dried, hand-polished with a cloth. A drop of water or baby's drible was sure to leave its mark on the floor letting visitors know that Mum was a careless housekeeper.
Another test of a woman's zeal was the counter by the kitchen sink. It was of a metallic texture that was stained by water. A slight splash or even a droplet — as when you washed your hands — the ugly stain was there for all to see. There was only one remedy: a complete wash with a powdered soap, a thorough rinse, and a rapid dry with a cloth, to be repeated with each new splash. Did the Swiss ignore the existence of materials that did not stain? Of course not, since the rest of the kitchen was made of them. When we complained to some Swiss women, we were looked upon as rather silly. It was normal for a woman to toil in this way and have her efforts rewarded with a sparkling kitchen. After all, did we expect that there should be no difference between a well-bred woman's kitchen with that of a lazy, good-for-nothing immigrant, probably an Italian? When we asked an architect why he designed kitchen-sink counters of such material, he was taken aback. He had never thought of using any other.
One couldn't expect the kitchen refrigerator-freezer to store any substantial amount of food. As any self-respecting European, we learned to do the grocery each morning for the day's food. Needless to say, the vegetables and bread were always fresh.
How about a lift or an elevator for a nine-story building with thirty-two flats? Yes, there was one. A small one which could hold four people in a tight squeeze. It only took one call at a time. If the lift had been previously called by someone on the eighth floor, it would ignore a call from the ninth before stopping at the eighth and carrying down the eighth-floor passengers. Nor would it stop to pick up someone from the seventh-floor on the way down. How could the system work? Through work. The Swiss considered it lazy to use the elevator when a fine staircase stood by. Luckily for us, because we were on the ninth-floor.
The Swiss appeared to us as a people who lived to work rather than working to live. Needless to add that the Swiss have a very low opinion of the lazier peoples who live nearby: the French, of course, but mainly the Italians. Yet, in Switzerland, the Germanic Swiss consider the French Swiss to be lazy, and I am told that the Germans consider the Swiss to be lazy. When I repeated this to an American visitor, he instantly formulated a universal proposition: Northern peoples work more and Southern people are lazier.
"Quite right," I answered. "That is no doubt this also applies to Americans and Canadians."
He had expected "Americans and Mexicans". He stammered something about exceptions.
Just as the Swiss are work-conscious, they are also money-conscious. Their Churches are taken care for by State money so that the collection platters receive metallic rather than paper money. This does not mean that they are not generous. There generosity is calculated rather than reckless.
As for taxes, they will never allow the State to take their taxes out of their pay-checks. A mature independent worker can raise his own tax money and pay the lump-sum once a year when his bill comes. There would be something too socialistic, communistic, or paternalistic in doing otherwise. At the same time, he gets the illusion that the interest carried by his tax-savings make him that much richer, notwithstanding the fact that the government taxes for what it needs and what it does not get in interest it simply taxes with its tax-bill. Things are made more complicated for the Swiss and he is that much happier.
Preoccupied by work and money, he is also preoccupied by health. The great originality of Swiss nutrition is no doubt its insistence on good health. Health foods became trendy some time later in North America. Healthy eating was a way of life in the Switzerland we got to know. The best compliment made to a hostess was not to praise the food as delicious, though it deserved this praise, but rather as healthy. As if, I would tend to think, one had expected to be poisoned and was pleased to find the contrary. I got so tired of the general insistence on health in so many Swiss conversations that I finally coined my answer, with appropriate charm: "You are quite right. But, somehow, it seems to me that to die in good health must be depressing. I feel I would rather die of sickness."
Once I was warned that my Pepsi has some poison in it. I said: "I know. I am exercising my antibodies."
I would add, if allowed, that Mithradates, King of Pontus, had gradually got his body used to increasing amounts or arsenic and other poisons in order to escape poisoning. He succeeded so well that, when he tried to escape capture from Roman victors by absorbing some poison, he failed.
Everyone has heard of Swiss neutrality. While the world went to war twice in this century, Switzerland remained a neutral independent state. Surrounded by spilling blood and guts, it was left unscathed.
"Why?", I asked a proud Swiss veteran who had shaken hands with the German officer at the Franco-Swiss border when the German war machine had come to a halt.
"Because," he said, "the Germans knew we were too strong."
I was amazed by the answer and pressed for more information.
"Yes," he added, "the Germans had calculated that it would have taken them one week to overrun our country."
There was method in the madness. The point was that taking Switzerland was simply not worth the military expenditure for the meagre profit there was in it. For the Swiss work hard to keep their neutrality — they are a people in arms. I remember a few times watching jet fighter planes having mock battles in the sky above Fribourg. Once as I was going to the University, a train rattled speedily by: on its flat-cars were tanks. On another occasion, we were riding the bus in Fribourg, and suddenly, we were in the midst of an armed company in battle dress. Each Swiss male citizen must take regular military training and keep his gun and cartridges at home. Within twenty-four hours, the whole country is ready for war, if need be. The national policy is designed to hold long enough for a superpower to come give a helping hand if war should break out against Switzerland. But it is still strange for a fellow whose country has fought two world wars and has himself never needed to carry a gun, to walk in the streets of eternal peace-time Fribourg and see, outside a restaurant, three army packs and automatic rifles without guard while their proprietors are out of sight inside. Who would steal those guns in a country where everyone has one? The price of peace? Maybe. But there is more to it. I can just imagine my homeland with every adult male armed with an automatic or a semi-automatic rifle. Somehow, I get the feeling that peace would be far away.
Switzerland is polished by work. The older Swiss will of course wail over the lack of energy of the younger generation. But it took Switzerland twenty years after France and America to mount a student riot, which was a quite modest one. And Switzerland is recognisable by its border train stations. They are well kept, shining and flowered. On the other side of the border, the ordinary run of the mill train station seems dilapidated in comparison.
Even the flying insects in Switzerland are civilised. Consequently, there are no window screens. The only mosquito I saw there, I killed during our first days in Fribourg. As for flies, spotting one was an event. In fact, our only noticeable winged visitors were wasps for just a short time every year. They flew around in the apartments and leisurely walked on the fruits and vegetables at outdoor grocery stands. People did not notice them or simply shooed them away. For Swiss wasps do not sting people. In general. I guess one that did would be presumed to be an immigrant wasp.
In so disciplined a country, courtesy is also a formal matter. The politeness is correct but the hospitality of the home is a matter of rare occasion. To arrive at the point of being invited into a home for lunch or supper is easily a matter of years, even when intercourse has become quite agreeable. Once received, the invitation necessarily becomes an event for the hosts and guests. The former will work strenuously and diligently in order to strike a healthy note in culinary distinction while the latter will bring over an exquisite bottle of wine or some foodstuff of quality. Even when this ice is broken, it may be expected that exchanged invitations will be formal and far between. Of course, friendship and kinship can become more generous and, once acquired, intimacy is highly prized by all concerned. Our ignorance of such formality unwittingly got us straight off to a life-long relationship with a young couple. She was a new student, as I was, when we met on the first day of class. After a brief chat, I suggested that she and her husband might come over for supper in the near future. This was ordinary procedure for us. But she was stupefied, honoured, puzzled and charmed. I had not realised that we had offered a Swiss gem that sparkled before their eyes as an unheard-of generosity: and they returned the favour.
This discursive description of the Swiss people with their blue coats and funny red pants could of course be overturned in a like caricature of our red coats and silly blue pants. The Swiss could point out our spontaneous and superficial first-name calling, our open-home policy towards people we might even dislike. They could recall how our fight for democracy in the last world war was preceded by a ridiculous pacifism that allowed Germany to catch us with our blue trousers down and boot us savagely before we could boast a costly and bitter victory. They could snicker at our need for government-sponsored programs to get us off our bums and our jogging because of our lazy elevator-style life. They could easily rib us about our unhealthy food habits that force us into unhealthy crash diets. They could laugh at our bronzed lawn-chair women. They could sneer at our strike-ridden economy and our spend-thrift borrowing habits that have put us into economic disarray because we believe in a God-given right to good living divorced from the need to earn it. Finally, they could shudder at our stinging wasps and our numerous mosquitoes and our distasteful flies which force us to put screens everywhere around the house.
I found that my father and mother-in-law were not especially mad. They were simply Swiss people living in our land. And we must have seemed quite berserk when we toiled in theirs. However, Swiss politeness prevented us from knowing this.
* * *
Our arrival in Switzerland was a double-smasher. Danielle's uncle, on her father's side, picked us up at Geneva's Cointrin airport and dropped us off at his empty apartment, and then went to free his wife, aunt Laurence, from keeping shop in their furniture store to come and greet us. During their absence, I answered a call from Mother Nature. As I dropped upon the seat, exhausted from a short two-hour sleep since the prior morning, the seat wobbled and broke. Disgusted, I left Danielle to face her relatives and went to sleep. A half-hour later, voices woke me up. Danielle was explaining my minor catastrophe to her aunt.
"It's all right," she answered reassuringly. "It was already broken. We should have changed it long ago."
It was changed, and the next day, when I renewed contact, zoing went the bolts, bolting away from the new seat. This time, I was politely explained that the seat had simply not been correctly put on. And, to bolster my failing pride, I was led to a second W.C. within the apartment, which resisted each and every visit I made thereafter.
My Charlie Chaplin entry into the family circle was dutifully unnoticed and the hospitality was correct, exquisite and generous. We stayed two days and were well cared for.
When we went to the grocery store to buy baby food for Christine, I had my first experience with Swiss currency. I was surprised to find that the bank notes varied in size according to their value. This made sense as it prevented distraction for regular customers and error for the blind. Of course, it made storing and shuffling money a harder matter. What struck me was the fact that the fifty centime coin was much smaller than the ten centime piece. Danielle told me that there nothing to this as our ten-cent piece is smaller than our five-cent one. I answered that she had not solved a problem: she had unearthed a second one. I finally reasoned that the explanation probably went back to the time people superstitiously believed money must have a metallic value as such to make the economy work. And the smaller piece must have been made of a rarer metal than the bigger piece.
From Geneva, we phoned Aunt Christiane in Bern, to find out how our apartment was coming along in Fribourg (a half-hour train or car ride from Bern). The concept of furnished apartments was unknown in Fribourg. Danielle's relatives had done a marvellous job in getting us fitted out. Danielle's aunt assured us that the adult bed-room furniture found for us by Danielle's god-mother (from La-Chaux-de-Fond) had arrived in the apartment Aunt Christiane had found for us. She had also bought us a bed for Christine, which was set in her room, and would lend us a picnic table with chairs till we got our own dining-room set. Naturally we were paying for our things. But all the trouble of finding the apartment and essentials had been lifted away from us.
Thus, on Sunday September 7, we entered our home-to-be for the next two years: the building was new and we were the first to occupy our apartment. It had a master bedroom, a child's bedroom, a small dining-room opening up on the large living-room and an interior kitchen kept fresh by a ceiling ventilator. At the end of the living-room was a balcony overlooking Fribourg and, on the other side of the apartment, the bedroom windows opened upon a countryside hill. As it was Sunday, Aunt Christiane had filled our refrigerator with food to last till the morrow.
We were in a far land, yet, because of Danielle's relatives, who could be counted on in times of need and in times of joy, we were at home. I was given the same spontaneous reception — albeit Swiss style — that Danielle had been given by my relatives in Manitoba. I would now learn to understand Danielle's irrational tendencies as she had learnt to understand mine.
Our balcony neighbours were a middle-aged couple who greeted us correctly, were charmed by our baby girl and bemused by our ineptitude in Swiss affairs. The lady helped Danielle around the Fribourg shops. The husband, who worked at the Fribourg P.T.T. (Post, Telephone and Telegraph company), managed to have a phone installed for us within the month instead of the usual many months. During our first day, when Danielle and I had to shop for our dining-room and living-room furniture, we even persuaded our friendly neighbours to keep a vigilant ear upon Christine's sleep. This was possible as the separation on our common balcony had not yet been installed. But we were too free-wheeling with them as we mistook correctness for eagerness; this we learnt the day they hurried the rental company to put up the balcony separation. They were legally, morally and psychologically in their right. We were the unruly strangers who had simply come through the balcony door. Also, we lacked a common ground in interest and experience to communicate beyond social platitudes and our child's giggles. Once the balcony separation was up, there remained a mutual respect and acquaintanceship. The lady gave Danielle Dr Nordman's name as that of a proper physician who specialised in gynaecology.
Dr Nordman, an elderly man, had been the first doctor to introduce the method of painless child-birth into Switzerland. In the beginning he had been opposed by some persons grounded in the misguided religious prejudice that natural birth was unholy because in the Book of Genesis women were condemned to the pangs of birth. The perversity of this method seemed also confirmed by the fact that it had come out of communist countries and thus appeared as a challenge to the integrity of divine Revelation. When the debate started making waves, Pope Pius XII had of course come forth strongly in favour of any means that could help a woman achieve painless birth. After all, God was the author of human intelligence and mercy. The evident benefits of the method had finally won out and Dr Nordman had triumphed. His method was the same one Danielle had found in the Pernoud book and had successfully used at Christine's birth.
Dr Nordman was a likeable old gentleman who greeted Danielle warmly. He suggested that she follow the pre-natal courses given at his hospital ward mainly by practised midwives. These women were a novelty for us. Yet they seemed to give an edge to Swiss gynaecology over our North American one. Midwives are the usual attendants upon a woman giving birth, and the doctor is called upon only when matters become medically complicated. As a well-prepared natural birth is generally a simple matter, the midwives have sufficient competence to give all the help mother and child require. The doctor thus tends only to sickness and not to health.
Dr Nordman's mid-wives were a group of jolly women, full of experience, feminine wit and tact, who greatly helped the expectant mothers acquire assurance and competence. Their courses gave energy to the ladies and carried them on.
There, Danielle met Ghislaine, a first-time mother-to-be, one year her younger. Their common adventure allowed a friendship into which the two husbands were brought because of their own common profession: teaching. Charles taught English in a Fribourg high school.
Each week, Charles and I would take an evening off to go to cinema while our wives chatted over the phone.
The Swiss telephone system partook of Swiss originality. Each local call was charged some measly ten centimes, the principle being that no one should be forced to pay for services used by other persons. If a particular person wished to use the phone "recklessly", that is often, then it was up to that person to pay for her misuse. There was of course a basic charge for the installation and rent of a phone. But each and every use was also computed. The same idea worked for the radio and television systems. One just did not go out to buy a radio or television and plug it in. That would suppose that the state-financed radio and television systems must be paid by all, whether used or not. No. Responsibility was on the individual level. When buying a radio or television, one had to register it with the state and was billed a special tax for its use.
As for cinemas, they also had a particular Swiss flavour. The admission charge varied according to the row in which you wished to be seated: nothing like the first come, first served system. There could be four different prices for the same movie. Well, that could have been a left-over from the theatre system. However, the point I never understood was that the higher priced seats were the ones in the last rows and prices cheapened till one got to the first rows. Indeed, it seemed to me that the middle-rows were the best to appreciate a movie. One got the impression that the Swiss were far-sighted. I gradually got Charles to purchase middle-price tickets for the best places, though it took some convincing.
Charles and Ghislaine became the first Swiss couple to ever allow us into their personal lives, far inside the realm of friendship.
Thanks to our two years of dating and our widely diverging cultural inheritances, Danielle and I had talked away most misunderstandings from our lives and managed, in general, to open up to each other whenever we felt a malaise groping about. We naively thought all couples operated this way, till Ghislaine and Charles humbly and confidentially proved us wrong. They were madly in love with each other but simply could not communicate. They both had expectations, and when these were not met there was a clash. Simple words could ignite dramas as they failed to spell out their meanings to each other. And so, as Charles and I walked to and from the cinema, he would tell me of his latest grievances. I would try to explain to him those his wife had told Danielle on the phone. During that time, Danielle would be getting new ones from Ghislaine and letting her know the ones her husband had told me the previous week. And we tried, husbands together and wives together, to get the truth out of these misunderstandings. Then Charles and Ghislaine would again try to live their mutual love and would spark another misunderstanding on another point.
The best illustration of this state of affairs is probably their bed-story. The Swiss generally have separate twin-beds side by side with a common head-board. It's a matter of habit, and it offers no obstacle to companionship as these beds are linked together. The one piece double-bed was then a novelty and Ghislaine told Charles how interesting it might be to buy a double-bed and use each of the twin beds for children. Charles did not react to the proposition but inwardly decided to make his wife happy and buy her the double-bed. While his wife and child were at Ghislaine's mother's, Charles ordered a brand-new double-bed and put one of the twin beds in their child's room. He kept the other for himself in the master bedroom. However, the double-bed came one day late and Ghislaine arrived home before it. She found there was only a single bed in their conjugal room. He wanted the double-bed to be a surprise, so he said nothing. She was surprised to have only a single bed for both of them, and said nothing. That night, they squeezed into the single bed and made do. The next morning, as Charles had gone to work, Ghislaine jumped to the phone and lamented despairingly to Danielle. She saw herself constrained to this single bed with her husband for the rest of her life. Danielle asked her whether she had asked Charles what this was all about. No, she hadn't. That day the double-bed arrived.
There is great truth in Chesterton's words: "If the Americans can be divorced for 'incompatibility of temper' I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible." Danielle and I were conscious of our difference and fought its difficulties with dialogue. Charles and Ghislaine found dialogue to be difficult, but they carried on with fidelity. Neither sought shallow consolations elsewhere. No life is a rose garden; luckily they still kept it a living garden and did not leave it to the weeds.
* * *
Fribourg was similar in many ways to St. Boniface. Its 38,000 inhabitants made it a small city as St. Boniface was. The city was divided by the Sarine river that I crossed to get to the commercial district, in the same way I crossed the Red river from St. Boniface to Winnipeg's commercial Portage avenue. Fribourg was a bilingual city, French and German — St. Boniface was French and English. Fribourg was a cathedral city with its archbishop and the historical bastion of Swiss Catholicism — St. Boniface for Western Canadian Catholicism. The local paper, though a daily in Fribourg and a weekly in Manitoba, was called La Liberté. Finally St. Boniface had its miniature college and Fribourg its miniature university (the latter, 4,000 students). The similarities were superficial, but they struck a pleasant home-town note. The facts that Fribourg was made of ups and downs, that I did not understand German, that I was a student rather than a teacher, still predominated.
As October began, so did classes. I met my sponsor, Father Paul Thomas, Dominican, and professor of Greek Philosophy, Natural Theology and Philosophy of Arts. I was interested in writing a thesis on Aquinas' political thought, but Father Thomas was not in charge of Ethics and Politics. So, we decided to bypass that problem by making a comparative study of the government of God and the government of man in Aquinas' writings. This way my thesis would be in Natural Theology (or Metaphysics) and Father Thomas could be my thesis director.
I suggested that I would go about this thesis in the same way I had done with Chesterton for my Master's degree. I would first of all gather Aquinas' pertinent texts on my subject, write a tentative plan of my thesis and then write it chapter by chapter. Father Thomas would judge, criticise and have me correct the plan and each chapter as I gave him the original typed copies and kept the carbon ones. Father Thomas agreed with this procedure.
Father Paul Thomas was a Frenchman from the North of France, and not a Swiss as I had presumed. He was incredibly French. That is he was French in an incredible manner, as he broke away from the cliché that French-speaking people around the world have of the people of France. English-speaking North-Americans seem to see France as the land of l'amour, of love. This probably comes from over-exposure to Maurice Chevalier and Brigitte Bardot, when America was first addicted to movies, and also to the Folies Berg res when the veterans cruised about Europe in the two WWs. But French-speaking Canadians and Quebeckers and Africans and non-French Europeans have ears and not only gawking eyes. For them, Gay Paree is nonsense. Their "prejudice" sees the citizens of France more like arrogant descendants of Descartes and Napoleon. With Descartes, each Frenchman has clear certitudes with which to smother anyone else's opinions, erecting his own judgement as divine wisdom. With Napoleon, each one takes the liberty to push everyone out of his way, spewing forth an abundance of non-repetitious insults. Of course, they are democratic and act the same among themselves as they do with outsiders. The French author Pierre Daninos once defined France as "a country divided into forty million persons". Now, this view of Frenchmen is of course an exaggeration, but many a French-speaking outsider has a number of anecdotes to back it up: such as the one of a French-speaking Manitoban who got lost in the Louvre. When he inquired of a guard how he could leave the Museum, he was answered: "By the door, sir, by the door."
However unjust such a reputation may be, Danielle had experienced its grip on Quebeckers. Whenever she met new people in Québec, during her fifteen years there, she felt their instant hostile reserve upon hearing her accent. There had been something of this in my first reaction to Danielle. She soon learned to slip into the conversation the fact that she was Swiss. Instantly, the Quebeckers would brighten up and become friendly. They simply did not like the "damn French". From tourists one hears: "Paris beautiful; if only there were no Parisians". Or, "visit Paris in July; the Parisians are gone on vacation". And I am told that the same reactionto the French can be found among Belgians and Swiss.
Well, by those standards, Father Thomas was not French. He spoke softly, persuasively, generously, respectfully, and listened in private conversation as much as he spoke. He even called supper "supper" and not "dinner", lunch "dinner" and not "breakfast", and breakfast "breakfast" and not "petit déjeuner" that is "little breakfast". And he disliked what he called Parisian culture which we had taken to be French culture. Unfortunately, the centralising ideology of the French Revolution has emasculated much of France's culture especially on the export level, favouring Parisian culture, which is that of a tense citizenry crowded into a Big City.
Father Paul Thomas repeatedly came over to our apartment for supper, played with our daughter, joked with us, and was an all around pleasant man. Before I entered into his class room, he had already warned me about the difference between his philosophy and that of Laval University in Québec: "At Laval," he said, "they are good men. But, whereas they mainly study Thomas Aquinas in the light of his commentator John of St. Thomas, we, here, have gone beyond John of St. Thomas back to Aquinas himself, and beyond him to Aristotle."
That rang a bell. I was surprised to find him speaking the same criticism of Laval as they of Fribourg. This gave me confidence that both sides had evolved in the same direction, which should help my understanding of Fribourg philosophy.
How wrong I was.
I sat at Father Thomas' courses on Plato and Aristotle, on Aquinas' philosophy, and on the main branches of philosophical knowledge I had got in Québec. I listened to many of the same texts already quoted and expounded back at Laval. Yet, day after day, week after week, month after month, I simply did not get the same picture. All the pieces of the puzzle were the same, but the picture was different. I felt as a deaf person listening to the radio or as one of the people at Babel when the Lord suddenly made them all speak different languages. I hear sounds but no meaning.
If I had chosen to work in another philosophy than that of Aquinas, I would have expected to grope through the Shadowland of unearthly conceptual constructs. I would have grasped at its contours with adequate scholarship and unravelled its misconceptions by the light of the Wisdom I had already accepted. Difficulties of comprehension would have been attributed to some obscurities in the philosophy of which I was making the autopsy. But I was now presumed to be working within my philosophy, attached to my chosen Masters of Wisdom and human insight. And everything was going blank.
For instance, Aristotle's Ethics. As I had been taught and as I had understood them, the Master's ideas were based on the idea of mastering the passions through virtue and living the higher life of rational ("speculative") knowledge. Not so, Father Thomas explained: Ethics are oriented towards friendship as the prime human goal. — Metaphysics, I had been told, were understandable only after many years of trudging in the study of the philosophy of Nature. Not so, said Father Thomas: one must immediately grasp the primary ideas of substance, action and power as metaphysical concepts, and he made us dive into the deep. — Plato's myths were just images to amuse and help the uneducated, I had understood. A man of thought rapidly discards them and plunges into Plato's dialectics and beyond. Oh no, said Father Paul Thomas: Plato's myths are the summit of his philosophical insight, the way beyond philosophy into a greater reality. — The universe was primarily guided by intellectual energy, had I thought. Not so: the universe was primarily guided by spiritual love.
My self assurance in the Eternal Wisdom of philosophy and my self confidence in my work were vacillating. I had to unlearn what I had learned, which was more devastating than trying to learn something difficult . And it was not simply a matter of scholarship but one of intellectual living and breathing. If only I did not care about meanings, like my worst students the years before. But I did, and still do.
I believe words carry ideas, and ideas represent the world we live in. And the world we live in gives us the blue-print of love, happiness and fulfilment, without which our sincerity can as well build exploitation instead of love, misery instead of happiness and solitude instead of fulfilment. My faith in life present and eternal was not philosophical. But my ideas must serve this faith. How was I to go about if my mind were not walking hand in hand with my heart?
All during this journey into intellectual dismay, I tried to find reassurance in my thesis. I went through Aquinas' texts with a view to comparing the governments of God and man within the lingering picture of the universe I had once claimed to be Eternal Wisdom. There was a divorce between the courses and the thesis, but I had no choice except to carry on.
* * *
My desk and library were in our bedroom. Nearby, there was enough distraction to weather away some of my anguish. As noted, the tasks of keeping the house in shape were abundant, and I worked at them with Danielle. We shared washing, waxing and shining the floors, shopping for groceries, serving meals and washing dishes, and caring for our daughter. The Swiss would undoubtedly say we quite often did it the lazy way. Instead of dividing our work and separating ourselves, we often did tasks together, boosting our morale: one or the other would wash or scrub while the other read aloud an Agatha Christie thriller. We must have read all the Christie mysteries. Those silly floors were forgotten as we wrestled to discover "whodunit". We occasionally got the impression that the author cheated as we had discovered various plausible solutions where Agatha's own seemed to be favoured only by the logic of coin tossing. Some were better stories because they honestly baffled us. The best were of course those we solved with our brilliant minds. I considred that Agatha's Ten Little Indians (originally Ten Little Niggers) was more of an adventure story than a "whodunit", because the was no way the solution could be induced from evidence till the end; but I had to revise this position some time later when Gerry the Musketeer solved the mystery en route.
When the book-dealer was out of Agatha Christies, we tried Exbrayat, who wrote detective stories of two kinds — comedies and dramas. He never mixed wit and tension as Agatha did, so he was voted second best.
There was an unfortunate vacuum in Fribourg that weighed heavily on us: no baby-sitters. We would have appreciated going out on occasion for a lovers' evening — simply to take a walk, eat out, or take in a movie. We once managed to persuade a twelve-year old neighbour to sit in for a while. But the novelty was too much for her family, and the permission was not granted again by her mother. We were not lacking in affection for our treasured Froggy, but we could well have used a little private intimacy in town to poke the fire which warmed the family hearth. But to do this, we should have had to leave our baby girl all alone while she slept. No North American parent with any decency would so disregard his fundamental responsibility in such a manner. And yet...
And yet — that was exactly the way in Fribourg, we found out. The parents would lock their child in for the evening and go out. Once asleep, a child is no longer in need of company. Why then have someone idly waiting to see that nothing happens? Furthermore, as the child grew older, he was simply expected to be reasonable in the home till his parents came back: going to sleep in night time or playing by himself during the day. This way of going about was considered normal by his adult guardians and thus by himself.
What of criminal negligence? Come now, what are the probabilities of a fire sweeping through the house or of a baby having a sudden stroke? There is much more chance of being overrun by a wildly careering car in the street when one steps outside. The Swiss knew this. But it ran smack counter to our protective conditioning. As we always nervously feared wasps flying around while the Swiss disregarded them, we couldn't bring ourselves to abandon a poor defenceless child at a time we were completely useless to it.
After some weeks of overwork — by our measure — and the effect of progressing pregnancy, Danielle would be in good spirits during the day but became depressed by bedtime. Things were fine, but her morale plunged. She would start sobbing for no reason whatsoever. I cared for her, stood (or lay) by her, talked smoothly to her, consoled her as best I could. Tenderness often was enough. On occasions, imagination had to be used. One time, we were in bed; Danielle seemed even-minded. Then she began jerking rhythmically as silent sobs brought tears to her eyes. I got up, went to my desk and worked there some time. Danielle was gradually distracted from her sadness by a growing generosity. Then I came back with a cardboard medal on which I had written: "PERFECT SPOUSE: 1st prize". I pinned it on her night-gown. She swooned with delight and slid afterwards into a sweet sleep.
Another evening, the deluge had once again begun. I warned Danielle: "If you keep this up, you will get a spanking."
Now, who in his right mind would take such a warning seriously? And Danielle was a sensible woman — in matters other than her depression. She took no heed and kept on crying. But that was precisely the point. She was sensible except for her senseless tears. When reason could not prevail, will had to intervene. It did. I turned Danielle around and my hand, firm and stern, went smack on her smacker. Once. Twice. Three times. The was an instant shock! Danielle was thoroughly insulted. Her tears stopped. She flushed in anger, looking defiantly at the brutish man who had dared strike her modesty. Then she suddenly realised that her anger had blown the clouds away. The moon was out and the stars twinkled. Reluctantly, she admitted my action had been correct. But she still felt that somehow there was some unhealthy male pride about. Which she forgave because of the success of the expediency. However, I never used that one on her again.
Dr Nordman came up with a more satisfying solution. He prescribed Danielle some fortifying pills which raised her spirits to her usual cheery level.
We also got help in another, unexpected, way. One day "Aunt Lili" came by. She was not really an "aunt": just Mrs Quéloz' best girlfriend. Danielle had regularly visited her with her parents on previous trips, and she had become "Aunt Lili". Aunt Lili took an instant liking to our family and we reciprocated. So, in a way, she adopted us as close relatives. From then on, she sent each month the required money to allow us to use paper rather than cloth diapers. Thus a good load of our daily laundry was taken off Danielle's back and simply deposited in the garbage pail after use. This generosity was God-sent.
* * *
My intellectual activities were bewildering; our care of the house was taxing. But our life was full to the brim with one great gratification. Of course, it was she: Christine. Seen through our eyes, Christine was the embodiment of perfection. She was beautiful, even-tempered, smiling, charming, downright adorable. And she was growing up, becoming stronger and abler. Our conviction that she was unique was confirmed by the praise and admiration that came from Danielle's aunts and uncles, who were at that age when greatest pleasure is derived from cuddling babies — and Danielle was the first of their children's generation to bring forth a child.
That Christine could be seductive did not weaken our requirements of her. On the contrary, this simply meant that we were in the right direction, becoming infallible through experience and proving it with the masterpiece we could revere.
October 12: Christine was now one year old. She was in her high-chair. After eating all of her main course, as she must, she was allowed for the first time to forgo the spoon in favour of her two tiny hands which grasped a piece of her chocolate birthday cake. She delighted in the eating and the mess. But that is what birthdays are for: exceptions. And Danielle and I cooed as she gobbled up every bit.
Christine could now crawl on all fours. The miracle of movement kept us in wonder. Then one day, Christine managed to get herself up by holding to the wall. Later, she started moving around the apartment by following the walls. Finally, she let go and, by God! she was walking. Everyone heard the news. We wrote to our parents in Québec and in Manitoba; we sent photographs; we raved even to those three out of our four loyal musketeers who were now at Laval University. Her godparents, Carlos and Maria-Martha, also got the word. The universe was swirling about a new sun: Christine Allaire walking about on her own.
As Christmas neared, we figured the most precious gift we could send to our parents was a (silent) film of our surroundings, ourselves and our tiny divinity. Patrick, the eldest son of aunt Christiane, dabbled in movie-making, so we asked him the favour of making the ten-minute film. He was all too happy to abide as we paid all expenses, and he had all the fun. During a whole afternoon, we shot the outside from the inside, the outside from the outside and the inside from the inside. And then we shot Christine, Christine, Christine: with her toys, in various dresses, with her father and her mother, taking her meal — everything. Two weeks later, the films had been developed, cut, titled whole and in parts, spliced together, shown (to our applause) and mailed for Christmas in Québec and New Year's in Manitoba.
Patrick said, half-humorously, something odd: "The title of the movie should have been 'Christine' rather than 'The Allaires in Switzerland'."
Slowly we thought this out. Wasn't it all the same? Switzerland was where we were and Christine was who we were. Yet! Love is looking together in the same direction. Christine had arrived in time to break the risk of our mutual admiration, of a dual egotism taking the place of a mutual selflessness. But now, were we not "in the same direction" building a monstrous new egotism? Were we not building Christine up as a divinity? Parental admiration was good: but did it not easily lead us towards making Christine self-centred? After all, a child first learns to look in the same direction as the adults about her. Where were we looking? At whom were we looking? Had not the time come to burst the bubble, to break the enchantment, to look ahead, all three of us, in the same direction? Was this not the meaning of loving Christine? She could only be herself, be perfect, grow into an admirable person, if she could be oriented towards the outside, in selflessness. She would be loveable inasmuch as she loved. Thank God the baby was coming.
