An Oberland Châlet

by Edith Elmer Wood

There may have been other local rules of procedure equally sacred that I never did find out, and so unwittingly offended against to the end. I do not believe the Schweizer would be forgiving toward shortcomings of this sort. He is beautifully confident that the Herr Gott approves of Swiss ways and dislikes foreigners, and this gives him a virtuous rigidity in resisting innovations. There may have been some such all-unconscious sin on my part to account for the strange behavior of the Herr Secundärlehrer at the end of the season. But we won’t worry about that till the time comes.

The way we got our milk is worth describing. The cattle went up to the high pastures a few days after our arrival. They went by our house, and all day long we heard the tinkle of the cow-bells, the tramping of their patient feet, and the pushing and rubbing of their heavy swaying bodies, and the air was full of their breath as though we were in a dairy-yard. All the cattle in the valley go up about the middle of June (as soon as the snow is off the ground) and come down the latter part of September. The pasture lands are owned by the commune, and each burgher of the valley has the right to keep a certain number of cows there. There is a head-man in charge of each commune’s cattle, who, with a corps of assistants, lives up on the heights all summer. Their chief occupation is cheese-making. They are allowed such milk and cheese as they need for themselves during the summer (which, with coarse black bread, practically forms the whole of their diet), and at the end of the season receive a share of the cheese made in lieu of wages, the rest going per capita to the cattle-owners. Meat and eggs are scarce and dear, and this cheese forms the staple of the valley’s food through the winter.

In the more distant pastures, all the milk not drunk by the cattle men is made into cheese, but from these Alps near Grindelwald a certain amount of fresh milk is sold, being brought down six or eight miles each morning strapped to the back of a man, in a cylinder of white unpainted wood that must hold from ten to fifteen gallons.

Do not imagine that we learned all this at once. It represents the wisdom of the summer, gathered and pieced together, bit by bit. All we knew just then was that more cows than we had ever seen in our lives were going past, and it was a good thing that they were not nervous animals, or their bells would surely drive them crazy. Most of them were small affairs hung around the neck from a narrow leather collar. But sometimes the collar was as much as four inches wide and the bell a great jangling piece of metal seven or eight inches long and about the same width. It must have been a real burden for the cow to carry and the stiff collar a severe infliction. We never did learn the philosophy of these vagaries in cow adornment.

The Herr Secundärlehrer told us, on inquiry, during those first days, that the Alpine milk was the best to be had, although it cost more, and that perhaps he could secure it for us during the summer (it was a favor, you understand) if we would say definitely what amount we would take. It could neither be increased nor decreased afterwards and it must be paid for all together at the end of the season. “But I prefer paying my bills each month,” I said. “Can’t be done,” he replied. It was very mysterious, but we let it go at that, and the milk was delicious.

Later, after the young men and the Mother had joined us, I found we needed more milk. I lay in wait for the man who brought the milk, after the cook had tried her hand on him in vain, and asked him if there was not some way by which we could get an extra liter or so per day. He was one of the stupid variety and his “Nein” was like the speech of a stone statue (if stone statues spoke), without a flicker of expression. Wouldn’t it be possible if we paid a higher price for it? Nein. Wasn’t there a head-man who would have the authority to sell me more if I went to see him? Nein. I think he regarded me as the Scarlet Woman referred to in the Scriptures and felt that his soul would be endangered by further parley. So he walked off without any nonsense in the way of apology or farewell.

The only milk then to be bought was what came up from Interlaken, and even that we could not buy direct, since the man who sold it did not go on his rounds so far as our house. The baker took in a liter for us and we sent for it in the afternoon, and it was often sour and always pale and watery.

The admixture of water was not entirely unknown in our Alpine milk, for Frater one day came upon a milk-bearer cheerfully filling up his vessel from a mountain brook. Perhaps he had stumbled and spilt some, or perhaps he had been thirsty and drunk some, and of course he had a precise and definite quantity to deliver. I will not believe he had sold any on the side. It would not be in character. And I do not believe it could have happened often, or the milk would not have been so good.

For the benefit of intending housekeepers in the Oberland, I would say that marketing, when one has learned the ropes, is an easy matter, if the family is blessed with good appetites and is contented with simple fare and small variety. In meat there was always veal and pork to be had, beef and mutton only occasionally. When we wanted poultry we had to send to Interlaken for it, and the price was appalling, thirteen francs for a pair of small chickens hardly enough for a meal. Nearly everybody owned a few chickens, but they would not sell them, and eggs were often hard to get. As for fresh vegetables and fruit, we were wholly dependent on a rascally Italian who kept a fruit shop for tourists near the station and charged tourist prices for inferior articles. The only time he ever gave us good value was toward the end of the season when Antonio happened to address him in Italian, and he and his wife glowed all over and heaped up the grapes in the bag. But that did not prevent them from palming off a collection of absolutely rotten pears on my poor unsuspecting cook the next day! No fruit is grown in the valley except a few late apples on the road down to Interlaken, and the little wild strawberries that come up for themselves in June, no vegetables except cabbages and carrots and the like, which each family toilfully raises for its own use and cannot be induced to sell. The Frau Secundärlehrer had some lettuce which she generously invited us to help ourselves to as long as it lasted, but she would not sell it. One hardly realizes that it is summer, for one has to depend so much on canned things. One learns to eat a lot of the local cheese, which is always good. And I must not forget the honey. It is the invariable accompaniment of the Swiss breakfast, which consists for the rest of rolls and butter, coffee and milk. When the bees have gathered their honey from the wild flowers on the Alpine meadows, the flavor is complexly delicious. One soon learns to despise the insipid lowland product.

I must not forget the salt, nor the long morning spent in hunting for that useful staple. I ordered it the first day from our basement grocery. It didn’t come, and I repeated the order. I was told the Frau had none. I supposed she was just out of it and asked Belle Soeur, who was going into the village, to get some at any grocer’s. She went dutifully to every grocer in the village and grew more and more puzzled at being everywhere told they didn’t keep it. She knew the Swiss used the condiment, for she had been eating it. She inquired and was told to go to the post-office. This sounded so perfectly foolish that she paid no attention to it and inquired elsewhere. She received the same answer. After she had been told three times to go the post-office, she went there, feeling distinctly idiotic as she asked the old man behind the stamp window if he sold salt. To her astonishment, the reply was affirmative. Salt, it appears, is a government monopoly in Switzerland, and, in Grindelwald at least, the postmaster had the exclusive right to sell it. In time it became perfectly natural to say, “Give me five postage stamps and a kilo of salt,” but it required practice.