June 24, 2012
Geneva, without walls
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
WHEN I WAS a boy, which was a long time ago, my teacher asked everyone in class to write about an imaginary journey. It was, by definition, to be to somewhere we had never been. Which for me wasn't difficult because, in those days before cycling, I had been nowhere except wherever in southern England we went for our annual two weeks by the sea.
I forget why I chose to write about Geneva but I remember embarking on a thrilling (to me) account of sneaking off to see Lake Geneva and its huge fountain. I described it in great detail, including a lot about having to find a hole in the fence that surrounded it.
The teacher liked the story but wondered why I imagined Lake Geneva, or Lac Leman as I now know it´s called, was fenced off. I replied that everything I ever wanted to see had always been fenced off, so I couldn't see why Lake Geneva should be different. I loved seeing steam locomotives but the sheds in which they were stored were behind fences. I remember being taken to see the incomplete hulks of Britain´s last flying boats, the order cancelled as a victim of changing times, and they too had been behind a fence and we´d had to find somewhere we could peep through.
Well, more than 50 years have passed and I have finally made it to Geneva. It´s a pleasant enough place although the only remarkable aspects are the lake and that fountain. And I can report that not only are they not fenced off but there are signs pointing to them from everywhere.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
When we got back to the camp-ground, I met a woman who couldn't stand the English and another who dreamed of still being a ballerina. It didn't seem too bad a tally for a single day.
The Anglophobe wasn't as dreadful as she suggested. She said she had British lineage because her family came originally from the Channel Islands. I didn't like to point out that the islands aren't part of Britain, so far as I know, any more than they belong to the European Union. They are protectorates, although much good that did them when the second world war broke out because the British abandoned them to the Germans.
Anyway, this shy, grey-haired woman who said everything as though it were an apology, said she went off the English "because it was an anglaise who stole her first husband. "I always say now that I hate the British, but really you know, it´s not true. I just hate HER!"
The ballerina was a tiny woman, as ballerinas tend to be, with the body mass of a butterfly and the same grace of movement even at 70. She was Dutch, with a Dutch name, but living in Switzerland had persuaded her to make life simple and call herself Louise.
"I come from Amsterdam," she said as though it were something shameful. Indeed, in Holland, Amsterdammers are seen with the same jaundiced eye as the French view Parisians. "I wanted to work [dance] at the Châtelet in Paris, which was new then and very exciting for a young girl."
And there she danced, and danced so well that she became a soloist and travelled the world with the best companies. "I was never a prima donna but, yes, I danced alone on stage and my name was on billboards and so on."
She met a man who brought her to live in Switzerland. And now she´s alone and she looks back on a life as full as she could make it but which is now largely over.
"I stopped dancing after many years and then I gave lessons until I was 65. That was when I had to stop because of a hip operation."
"And you miss it?"
"I do. I miss it terribly," she said. "I miss it until I ache."
She promised to come over later to wish us bon voyage: And she did, moving through space without an atom of air displaced in the process. She was still every gram the solo ballerina.
A remarkable woman.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 2 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |