GLIMPSES of how Canada worked: a writer's memoir.

12, which you can read or not, about my Fribourg year

After struggling to decide whether to publish an executive summary of my year in Fribourg, Switzerland, or to skip it, or to compile a list of one-liners from letters I sent home, or...! September 1958 through August 1959 reveals 'how Canada worked' only in the sense that many things were unlike anything I had experienced in Canada. It was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure for me, probably a never-ever one for you, and I hope your curiosity leads you to read about it. If, however, you aren't interested, you need only wait until I get back to the memoir in Chapter 13.

AS THE DE HABICHTS' PAYING GUEST I had a large bed-sitting room sparsely furnishedwith a desk, a comfortable armchair and good reading lamps I rarely had time to use. A single Murphy bed folded down in one corner beside a wash basin; at one side were towel racks and a couple of shelves for toiletries. By day they were all hidden behind a thin printed cotton ceiling-to-floor curtain. I kept things tidy; a maid cleaned.

My 55 francs covered breakfasts of fruits or jam, bread and cheese, chicory "coffee", and evening main meals with the family. I could store lunch things in the kitchen and cook when I wanted to. Only once during my 11 months did Charlotte ask me to eat supper out, because Vittorino Veronese, director-general of UNESCO, was coming for a confidential meeting with Mietek and other international titles. Otherwise, I was involved in the de Habichts' lives as if I were family.

Their building was the last of several forming a crooked finger that pointed down a very steep hill between the cobble-stoned rue des Alpes with mainly pedestrian traffic, and the paved two-lane Route des Alpes used by countless cars all day. The ground floor apartment was occupied by the building's owner, an ancient widow whom Charlotte called "La Vecchia". The de Habichts' place was above it on "la premiere etage" in European terms. And above that was an unlit, unheated, unlocked attic where items such as my steamer trunk were stored.

Charlotte said the place was probably about 300 years old. One of the first things I learned from her was that my habit of asking for precise data (the year of construction, a distance, population, a dollar figure) was "so American". Couldn't I see that 26, Rue des Alpes was very old? The street door was so warped that it couldn't be latched properly (which never bothered anyone). Its sill and wide granite stairs leading up to our place were deeply worn. What more proof of age did I need?

One entered the de Habicht apartment through a heavy, wide wooden door which fit well enough to be lockable. On both sides it had carved scrolls, birds, garlands and ribbons but details were lost under many coats of battleship grey paint. The door was off centre in the apartment's floor plan so that a stranger looking in saw only a settee with cushions straight ahead.

When that apartment was new it must have been one of the prize units in Fribourg.  

The floor plan was a long rectangle with a wide terrazzo-floored hallway as its spine. If you did enter, turned left and walked straight ahead, you reached the kitchen, a large pantry, and a boiler with a few pipes leading from it. The maid's one-bedroom with a three-piece ensuite was there somewhere; I remember she had a window but the kitchen did not. Anyone who came to deliver or repair things saw nothing of the family's private spaces.

If, however, you turned right just past the settee, into the main hall, you saw at the far end the door of a full bathroom I shared with the family, between the bedroom of young Isabelle and Gabrielle on the right, the Route des Alpes side, and mine on the left.

My room had two high, wide casement windows above the building's front door. Outer windows were almost a yard (1m) from interior ones. (All but one or two of the small panes of glass were so crazed that they must have been originals, although the putty was in good condition.) I sometimes put cushions on the waist-high sill between the windows and sat watching people walk by or stop to gossip at the public tap.