“You’re from Germany? Then surely you know my friend Lyonel Feininger? He’s been living in Germany for a while now,” one painter had asked her almost the first time she had joined a group at one of the café tables. The whole group seemed to stop their chatter and await her answer. As chance would have it, Marie knew the name from Alois Sawatzky’s weekly gatherings. She knew that he was a painter, that he had been born in America to a German family, and she even knew his themes.
“Where Cézanne found his lifelong inspiration in Mont Sainte-Victoire, your friend has found his in the village of Gelmeroda,” she declared. “He paints the village church over and over again, as though he’s looking obsessively for some deeper meaning hidden there. And although the Cubist elements in his paintings certainly prevail, I do believe that he’s a Romantic at heart.” Or so some of Sawatzky’s guests had said, at least.
That had raised a few eyebrows and won her recognition. She had passed the test! She, a glassblower from Germany, could now join the circle of the select few. The next moment they switched the topic of conversation and began to discuss subjective perception. All of them agreed that “a man truly has to want to see!”
Whenever Marie was out and about with Pandora and Sherlain, they were surrounded by a cast of colorful characters who listened devotedly as the poet recited her works in her smoky voice, or who thundered out their own lines of verse. There was a crazy German everyone called Kristi, who claimed to be a count but who dressed as though he had raided a theatrical costume department. A fiery-eyed Communist, he was never to be seen without a glass of red wine in his hand and was always ready to share a bottle with anyone who sat down at his table. Marie always liked listening to his stories, even though he smelled more than somewhat. Once he mentioned scornfully that his blue-blooded family had tried its best to cure him of alcoholism. They had even sent him to a mountain called Monte Verità in Switzerland, he said, so that he could kick the bottle in a salatorium there.
“A salad what?” Marie asked. But Kristi had already moved on to the story of how he had won his crossing to America in a bet. So now here he was!
Pandora had been sitting at the table as well, and later she explained what the remark meant. “There’s a sort of sanatorium in Switzerland, above Ascona, in the hills above Lake Maggiore. It’s run by a collective of artists and freethinkers. I think they chose the name Mount Truth for the hill where they built their settlement because they hoped that Mother Nature would grant them some great revelation there. Apparently it’s entirely vegetarian as well, no meat allowed.”
Marie giggled. “So that’s why he called it a salatorium! I can imagine Kristi having a hard time of it there!”
Pandora nodded. “You hear a lot of stories about Monte Verità. Apparently the artists’ chosen lifestyle takes a certain amount of getting used to. Some seem to thrive on it—but not Kristi!”
“I wouldn’t grumble about having to do without meat. When I was a child we were so poor we couldn’t afford meat,” Marie said.
“I don’t think that’s the most important aspect. It’s more about the . . . How shall I put it? The atmosphere of the place. A friend of mine, Lukas Grauberg, went there last year. He was suffering from some sort of psychosis, hearing voices, that sort of thing . . .”
Pandora waved a hand as though hearing voices were quite normal.
“Lukas wrote to me at New Year’s and was in raptures about Monte Verità and the people who live there. He told me that he’d begun writing a book about his visions and that he’d finally met people who understood him—as if we didn’t!” she said indignantly. “Well, anyway, Lukas is feeling better, and if we are to believe him, it’s all because of that magical place. He wrote me that the sun and the mountain air heal most of the complaints people have when they arrive at the mountain. And then at the end of the letter he was good enough to tell me that he wasn’t coming back and that I should give away all his possessions to our friends here. Apparently he and some woman named Susanna were building their own wooden cabin in the colony, and he didn’t want to clutter up his new life with memories of the old. A wooden cabin, can you imagine!” Pandora reached for the wine bottle that was doing the rounds and poured another glass for herself, then offered to do the same for Marie, who waved the bottle away, lost in thought.
A place where the sun shone and where everybody could do—or not do—whatever they chose? With a view of Lake Maggiore? She found the notion very tempting. She asked why the artists had chosen to build a sanatorium, and Pandora replied that it was just the means to an end.