PART
II
The first time Doppo coughed in an agitated way, and
then actually stopped, bringing us to a grinding halt on a Swiss road, turned
out actually to be a red letter day for me.
I can’t remember whether someone told me what to do, or if I just worked
it out myself, but I applied what I subsequently came to call My Carburetor
Trick: I took the carburetor apart, blew on each part, put it together again,
and presto --- we were off again!
Imagine, a guy like me, a self-admitted mechanical stumblebum, an engine
no-hoper, actually bringing a stalled engine back to life. Is it any wonder I
fell in love with little Doppo?
As we headed
into the more mountainous areas of the continent, such as Switzerland, those
rain-free days of our tandem cycling tour through France two years before were
certainly far from being repeated. At
Interlaken, a small Swiss town that seems to be a sort of pathway to many of Switzerland’s
prize locations, we were stuck in our tent for a couple of days by heavy rain. When
the rain cleared we packed up our stuff, got back on to Doppo, and headed directly
east into the mountains, where the Susten Pass, at 7,400 feet would be a test
that we had no doubt Doppo would pass with flying colours. About 50 kilometres
along the way we ran into a sign which said the Susten Pass was closed by a
heavy snowfall. We looked at the sign, shrugged, and kept on, beginning a tough
climb that we managed to sustain at a speed of about 10 kilometres an hour. Not
to worry: Doppo would get us there!
Eventually we
ran into some snow, but it wasn’t yet lying on the road, so we kept on,
illustrating the old saw that hope springs eternal in the human breast. It became damnably cold, we were in the clouds
by this time, but we plodded on, until we were travelling on a snow-covered road
that was looking ominous, the snow getting thicker and thicker. Two German
motor-cyclists, coming down, waved us to a stop, told us the pass was
absolutely impassable, and we had best head on down again. So, reluctantly, we
turned around, went speeding down to the bottom, where we had an expensive but warming
cup of chocolate in an hotel café, and there we changed our plans entirely.
Instead of heading for Italy, why not go back to France, head for Lyons to see
our friend Jo Jarru, and then enter Italy by way of the French and Italian
rivieras? There’s a joyful sense of freedom that comes from having no fixed
plans, being able to change destinations at the flick of a finger, as it were.
We didn’t for a moment regret having labored up the mountain as far as we could
go, and then come quickly down: it was an exhilarating emotional experience,
and one that would last us all our lives, our story of failing to conquer the
Swiss Alps. Who knows, maybe it would be worth telling half a century later?
When we made
it back to Berne, we tried again for our Yugoslav visas. That same dark-haired
beauty who had warned us of the problem regretted the visas had not arrived, but
agreed to take our passports to the secretary to see if we could qualify for
tourist visas. “I don’t think so,” she
said, “but I’ll try.” She came back down the stairs in a few minutes, shaking
her head. “At first he said yes, but when he saw journalist in your passport,
he said no.” She said she could send a
telegram to Belgrade, but she wouldn’t advise it, it would take too long. I asked her if she knew our friend Olivera,
but she said she wasn’t Yugoslav, she was Swiss. I said that surprised me, and she ran her
hand over her curly hair and said, “I could be anything,” and as I left I
thought how right she was, she might even have been French. So, now we knew we
were definitely not going to Yugoslavia, but I had been enjoying myself so much
just tooling around that I wasn’t really sorry.
In the
afternoon we went into a magnificent exhibition of the artist Raoul Dufy, the
first time we had seen his work with its wonderful colours, and sense of
humour. Afterwards we climbed a hill giving us a view of the smallish city,
surrounded by open fields and green patches, that somehow or other seemed
effortlessly to be the centre of everything. Sitting there, I thought it would
be great to live on the continent, and I made a resolve to go away, learn
French, German and Spanish, and then return properly equipped to understand
what was going on here. (A resolve I have never managed to carry out.) I noted,
“This is us in romantic mood, which we nearly always are.”
The drive
from Berne to Geneva took us through Lausanne and along the shore of Lac Leman,
all 155 kilometres in heavy rain. We arrived cold and wet, and climbed into our
sleeping bags at 5.15 pm in an effort to
get warm. On the way Doppo stopped, so I tried my Carburetor Trick again,
cleared out a lot of sediment, and off we went, with me feeling almost like a
professional mechanic.
We were
fascinated by Geneva, a beautiful middle-size, middle-class city with no
particular national characteristics, yet somehow giving off this effortless
sense of being at the centre of everything.
While we were there the Geneva conference that was designed to settle
the Korean war and the first Indo-Chinese war, was in session between the
United States, the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, France and
Great Britain, a conference at which relations were so strained that US
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused to shake hands with, or say a
word to, the Prime Minister of China, Zhou en Lai. I noted in my diary that
Geneva seemed not to be too impressed by the epoch-making conference in its
midst, in which attitude the city was correct, because neither of the issues
dealt with were in any way solved, and one of them is still bothering the world
today (as I noted in my Chronicle No. 21, published on Jan 18.)
Just as we
had been soaked coming to Geneva, so were we as we left. We had to climb a
considerable mountain road that took us to heights that seemed almost totally
obscured by cloud, mist, and rain, one of those dreary downpours that looked
like it would go on forever. We stopped under a big rock to catch our breath: Shirley
was crying from the cold, and I was shivering so that I doubted I would be able
to drive the scooter if we resumed. But resume we had to do, hoping that
eventually we would emerge from this rain, which eventually did let up. We
stopped to warm up with a restaurant meal, but when we emerged the blue flecks
of sky had given way to a huge black cloud. We hoped to outrun it, but no
chance. Thunder, lightning and finally huge hail stones as big as marbles assailed
us, so we went into a roadside farm shed for shelter, where we waited for 15
minutes before setting out again.
Eventually we
got settled in a Lyons camp ground, and went in search of Jo’s address, that we
found without too much difficulty. He was just going out as we arrived, but
changed his plans on the spot and invited us up to meet his family, who were
already leaning out the window and calling remarks to him back and forth. They had
lived for twenty-six years in an old apartment house in a working class area, where
they had brought up a family of four boys and a girl (all married except Jo). The brother-in-law was there while his wife
was in the country with their children, and two younger brothers. Jarru pere
arrived, a heavy old man who seemed not to move up and down at all when he
walked, giving the impression of shuffling along through life at a steady pace,
as if he were completely the master of his fate. Jo’s mother was quite a small
woman with a darkish skin and an impressive air of impassivity. Everyone made jokes about Jo’s English and
his having been in Britain, but I could tell they were all immensely proud of
it, quite an experience for a working-class boy. Jarru pere wanted to know where
was New Zealand, so I showed him on a map. Wine was produced and biscuits, and
many jokes were made about how I ought not to drink too much because I had to
drive back home.
Then, having
accepted an invitation to lunch the next day, we went off with Jo, who took us
to look at the lights along the Rhone. We ate peanuts and as we walked back, Jo
said, “This is my district. What do you think of my district?” I knew then he
would never leave France, even if his prospects might be better elsewhere. He came with us on his motorized bicycle, to
steer us on our route home.
The next morning on the way into town Doppo stopped
again. Carburetor Trick works again. We went to Place Bellecoeur in the middle
of the city, where a monument to the Maquis had been erected on the exact spot
where the Germans had executed four hostages. We bought a tall pot flower for
madame and arrived there at 11.45. His brother was there, his brother-in-law
soon arrived, every arrival marked by handshakes and kissing all around. Jo
arrived, then Jarru pere with his air of authority and serenity. Then Jo’s youngest brother with his wife and baby, and his
wife’s twin sister. The baby had been taken to the quiet
countryside, but had shouted so much it had to be brought home, where it immediately
settled into its peaceful routine, among all the noise of non-stop chatter. The
meal began when bread was cut in the middle of the table, each person had a
plate, and then boiled eggs and tomato
and lettuce in an olive oil salad were served from a central plate.
After a time madame got up, gathered the bread and put
it in a basket amid loud cries of family derision. The plates were wiped clean with
bread, and then came beans cooked in olive oil with lemon juice squeezed over
them. After that we were given sausage and beautifully cooked mushrooms. After
the plates were again cleaned, came a big helping of delicious cheese, followed
by strawberries. Then, black coffee and a drop of spirits. I caused great laughter by wanting to go to
sleep, but when the baby arrived with its attractive young mother, I said I had
fourteen nephews. But none yourself, asked Jarru pere.? What are you doing in
that tent? I said “C’est
impossible,”
and there was more great laughter. I said to Jo, Quelle brouhaha,”using my favorite word learned at high school. And had
to repeat it for the benefit of the family. The brother and brother-in-law went
off to work. The meal had lasted for an hour and a half of solid eating. Handshakes
and kisses all around as they left. We said au revoir, by this time feeling
almost like members of the family. Jo
took us to the corner, and we turned to wave at the family who were leaning out
waving us goodbye.
Just an ordinary French, working-class lunch? I don't
know, but it was certainly a remarkable occasion in our young lives, and we
were, and even now looking back over so many years, I remain, deeply moved by
it.
* * * *
To make a long story short, in the following six weeks
or so, Doppo manfully carried us along the Mediterranean Riviera as far as Rome,
across to Florence, and to Assisi, where we slipped and fell off while
negotiating as 90 degree angled turn on a steep muddy road up to the camping
ground; to Venice and its Lido (we ran out of gas a mile or two short through a
miscalculation), and so up through the Italian alps into Austria and into
Germany (Garmish-Partenkirchen sticks in the memory, because there we had our
first experience of a German cream cake after a tough and cold ride over some
mountains); and then across the fabled German autobahns, on one of which we
again slipped on some mud that had been brought on to the road from a field by
a farm vehicle, and so home. Only two mishaps, and those minor; an ideal, in
fact beyond ideal, means of holidaying. Just as we had managed to see the
finest actors in England for almost nothing, so we now saw the greatest
achievements of Renaissance art and architecture, the world’s greatest
galleries, for next to nothing. And we
finished with a residual admiration for the ingenuity of Italian engineering
that had had the foresight to provide a means of locomotion to the millions of
people impoverished by the brutal war they had just come through, leaving just
a tiny space for me and my wife to slip through and take advantage of the
imperishable wonder of the Italian scooter.
* * *
Doppo cost us
135 pounds, and we sold him for 50 pounds before we got on to the emigrant ship
to Canada, in the month of September 1954.
Though the
Lambretta has disappeared from the roads, the scooter as a species is as much
alive today as it ever was: my recent experience in Dubrovnik, Croatia has
shown me that the town is always jammed
with scooters, the greater number of them of Japanese make, but many still
bearing the name Piaggio, the manufacturer of the Vespa, and many Vespas are
still in action, still sold under that name.
.
