The snow, which had fallen abundantly throughout the winter, still covered the mountain tips. White icy patches also persisted in the narrow valleys. April 2004 was a long, cold month that unrolled slowly in a succession of nights wrapped in woollen blankets. And then, just as the spring flowers started coming into bloom, a cold backlash placated the vibrant scent of the Sweetness jonquils and the deep colours of the Bellona tulips and the Violet Pearl hyacinths. In Fischentahl, where Karl lived, the snow still covered the fields that surrounded the old people’s home. The drawn-out winter seemed a reflection of the old man’s own season. At the end of my journey through the Alps to see him, even the southern region from where I cam from had turned cold. The sky became dense with cloud that dimmed the natural light and brought back a chill in the air. Meanwhile, the old man’s condition worsened; during the time of his illness the snow began falling throughout the land – a highly unusual event in spring. Trees with blossoming branches turned white again. And then, Karl died and an incessant rain started. The rain fell persistently for ten days, from morning to sundown and throughout the frosty nights. The rain began on the day he drew his last breath and poured down relentlessly until his body was retuned to the earth. During these days, the ceaseless downpours caused much damage; entire cities were inundated in northern Italy and the central regions. On the day of the funeral, I stood beside his grave cloaked in black and holding a black umbrella up against the wet sky. Pale mud splattered across my black boots. Dahlias and anemones, a blaze of orange and yellow blooms warmed the eye. In the gloomy afternoon, the funeral wreaths and floral tributes that were arranged beside the grave glistened against the pewter sky.
He was 94 years old and would have turned 95 in August. He died on the same day that my beloved grandmother, Marie, passed 19 years earlier.
In 1999, Karl celebrated his 90th birthday. It was the first family gathering in several decades. My half-sister Diane who lives in the States, one of my brothers and two of my aunts were absent. Aunt Margrit was unwell so her husband Kurt, Karl’s oldest son, came alone, and aunt Anneliese was going through a divorce with Karl’s youngest son, Herbert. Karl’s daughter, Silvia who in 1981 migrated to Australia with her husband and three children, was there with her second husband, Dieter. So there we were, Karl, his three offspring, and four of his grandchildren. Herbert’s Anic and Ian, and two of Silvia’s kids, John and me. I sat across from Karl and my brother sat beside me. John had finally made it back to Switzerland; it was a dream he’d cultivated after spending his teenage years on Queensland’s Sunshine coast and later working as a chef for a mining corporation in a lonely outpost in the South Australian desert. During lunch, he confided that just before leaving a casual job in Broome he’d fallen for a dark-haired girl who collected angels. My brother Andrew was absent because he and his wife, Wendy, were expecting their first child and unable to make the journey from Australia at that time.
It was a clear, sunny afternoon and the restaurant overlooking the Schnebelhorn offered a lofty view that stretched for miles across the Toggenburg and the Alpstein. Karl sat at the centre of his family, evidently, proud as punch. When I first saw him, he appeared a little smaller and a little frailer than I last remembered, but his skin was smooth and a glow emanated from the man. He ate his food with relish and raised his glass of wine in cheer before the family circle. I looked at Anic, a sixteen year old with olive skin who wore an undersized tee shirt and pouted. Her brother, Ian, five years her junior, sat beside her and dug tunnels through his mashed potatoes. The thought crossed my mind that this might be the last time we’d all be together – our family gatherings were so few and far between – the next time might be on a sad occasion. And then a question crossed my mind; what did I know about my last surviving grandparent, this man whose 90-year life span we were celebrating? When I was a girl I spent the summers with my grandparents, Karl and Marili, on Lake Zürich. Karl was the postmaster in Feldbach a small village the name of which means literally, field-stream. The times spent with my grandparents in Feldbach are the fondest memories of my childhood. There, in the emerald waters of Lake Zürich, I learned to swim.
Karl Sprenger came into the world on 13 August 1909 in Herisau, in Appenzell, one of Switzerland’s primitive cantons. The reason Appenzell is a primitive canton is because it’s one of Switzerland’s original founding cantons. Still today Appenzell retains a proud heritage based on traditions that are no longer practiced in other parts of the country. Traditions such as the Mummer’ pagan New Year celebration on January 13, the Alpfahrt a yearly herd procession into the Alps, voting by hand-count, and a local form of wordless yodel. Karl was born into a humble family. Karl’s father grew up in an orphanage in Fischingen, which is why my Swiss passport states Fischingen as my place of origin. The surname Sprenger means ‘he who blows up’ suggesting someone who works with explosives. Karl’s’ father worked in a textile factory; he had trouble with his eyesight and after a botched operation, was left short-sighted all his life. He married but his first wife died leaving him with a child, Käte, Karl’s only sibling and older half-sister. Karl’s mother was 39 years old when he was born. Both his parent’s died by the time he reached age 15. Subsequently Karl went to live with a family in Winterthur where in 1926, he completed an apprenticeship as a mechanic in the Lockifabrik (locomotive factory). Karl said that it was thanks to his adoptive family that he was able to learn a trade.
During those years as an apprentice mechanic he noticed the posties picking up and delivering parcels at the Winterthur train station. He thought to himself that this would be a fine job, working for the Swiss post. One day, after he saw an advertisement for a job with the Swiss postal services, he sent in a letter of application. A short time later, he was asked to sit for the he admission exam in Zürich. He began studying in preparation of the test. Karl had an uncanny aptitude for geography but realizing that history was a weak point, he started cramming. Finally, the day of the exam came. He travelled to the city and passed the test. To his surprise, the position he was offered was not in Winterthur but at the Bahnhofpost in Zürich, the central mail distribution centre in Switzerland. So in 1928 young Karl began picking up, transporting and delivering parcels with the use of a yellow cart, from inbound trains to outbound trains along the busy platforms of Zürich’s main train station. In the confusion he had to make sure that all the letters and parcels got on the right trains. Later, he transferred to the Sihlpost where sorting parcels was less hectic and delivered the mail all around Zürich. He said that he had to remember over two thousand streets and addresses and therefore, he came to know the city very well.
When he first arrived in Zürich, Karl shared a flat with another young man. But this arrangement didn’t work out very well because his flatmate worked nightshifts. Then, with the help of the local church he managed to find a room with a God-fearing family and started boarding with them. During these years, WWII broke out. Karl was drafted in the army and sent to work as a mechanic on the airfields in canton Vaud. The war years were spent alternating army duty with his work at the Zürich post office, interchanging the service with civilian life. In this phase of his life, Karl met Marie Maurer (Marili), a young saleswoman who worked in Zürich’s exclusive shopping district, the Bahnhofstrasse. A true city girl, Marili came from a working class family. She had two older siblings, her brother Anton and her sister Elsie. Her father delivered coal and her mother took cleaning jobs in upper class Zurigese family homes. After spending some time in Frieburg to perfect her French, Marili began a sales apprenticeship and then worked at the famed toy store, Franz Karl Weber in the Bahnhofstrasse. Karl and Marili met during the summer, through the Protestant Church group. He recalls that even after all those months he spent in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, Marili was still much better at speaking French that he was. They were married in 1936, she was 22 years old and he was 27. Marili kept her job at Franz Karl Weber until the birth of the first child, Kurt, in 1939. In 1941 her second child, Silvia, was born followed by Herbert in 1949.
All up, Karl spent 21 years in Zürich, working as a postie until 1949. When he first arrived in Zürich Karl didn’t like the city much. “All those narrow streets and tall buildings and no sunshine,” he said. He longed for the open sky and the rolling meadows of the county side. So when an opportunity arose, he applied for the position of postmaster in a farming community in Steg. With his shining references, he had no trouble landing the job. The little village was nestled amongst the hills, 30 kilometres inland from the shores of Lake Zürich. From what I was able to gather through family mythology, the years spent in Steg were the Sprenger’s family’s happiest. Karl said that he was lucky that Marili, a born and bread city dweller, liked the country so the time in Steg was a happy one. Their children grew up in a rural community, leading an innocent and carefree existence; the family’s rhythms in perfect harmony with the seasons of the land.
Karl was able to borrow money and to buy the house that was attached to the post office. Eventually, he paid off the loan. Then one day, a man came and said that the road in front of their house had to be widened and that the building would have to be torn down and the post office relocated. So they build a new post office, covering the extra costs by building two flats instead of one and renting the spare one to the builder’s in-laws. But my Marili clashed with the snooty German woman that moved in upstairs.
In 1959 a new opportunity arose, for a position in Feldbach. It was Marili who mentioned it first. “Wouldn’t it be nice to live by the lake?” She said. Due to the priviledged position, this was a very sought after position. Karl applied but wasn’t really confident about getting the post. It so happened that the person whom the position had been offered to, refused on account of the rooms in the house being too small for his furniture. “Do you have a wall-unit?” The head office asked Karl over the phone and since he didn’t, the family moved into the house without any problems. The yellow two-story building, which rose above the crest of a little hill overlooking Feldbach’s only intersection, was both a private home and a post office. Surrounding the house was a huge garden in which crab apples, a cherry tree, a plum tree and rows of berries grew. There was even a vegetable garden and next to the double garage, an old chook-pen that Herbert appropriated as his cubby house.
By the time they moved to Feldbach Karl and Marili’s two oldest children were already grown and had left home. Kurt finished his studies and began working in Zürich. Silvia completed an apprenticeship and spent a year in Lausanne, perfecting her French. At the start of the 60s she took a job as an au pair in Toronto, in order to learn English. During that time she met Joseph Edward Hermes Salvatore Zarb, a Maltese businessman. Joe was married to an Austrian woman, Ingemar, with whom he had a young daughter, Diane, my older half-sister. Sometime during 1961 Silvia and Joe fled Canada together and returned to Switzerland. They crossed the Atlantic on the Leonardo Da Vinci, taking the two year-old Diane with them. While my parents tried to get jobs and a roof over their heads, Karl and Marili took care of Diane. Only a few years later, after I was born, it would be my turn to spend time there with my grandparents. I remember Karl, then in his early 50s, already bald and with the trademark potbelly; he always smiled, exposing the gap between his two front teeth. As a child, I followed his postmaster’s chores with great fascination. The way he carried out his work with dedicated precision indicated to my childhood perception that my grandfather was a man of great responsibility and skill. To my delight he would sometimes let me stamp the envelopes, but recommended that I was to take great care so that the seal wouldn’t smudge and the date was legible. Another job that was assigned to me was sorting all the coins so that they could be wrapped by denomination and stored in the safe. Before long I became the post office’s mascot, the young postmen would play with me, sometimes plunging me into one of the canvas bags filled with mail.
Karl was a postmaster and a family man, but he was also a keen gardener. Much of the fresh fruit and vegetables that ended up in Marili’s kitchen were harvested thanks to Karl’s aptitude for farming. The garden thrived, and with each season it delivered a surplus of produce that was pickled and preserved with Marili’s expertise. And so jars of home made jams, relishes and pickles stocked the basement shelves. According to the time of year fresh apple pies, spinach omelettes, zucchini, green beans with bacon casseroles, or berries and cream where on the menu.
I remember Karl as a man whose sense of duty was dictated by a sort of in-born Swiss precision. In all those years as a postmaster, I don’t believe he once opened or closed the post office to the public, a minute too early or a minute too late. As far back as I’m able to remember he had his breakfast at 6 a.m., lunch at noon and dinner at 7 p.m. every day of his life. Even as a child I couldn’t but admire this kind of consistency. And even after he’d been a pensioner for many years, he stuck to this schedule. Whenever I wanted to visit him and have lunch with him, I would have to embark on the four-hour journey early enough to be there at 12 o’clock sharp. There was no use arguing about it, on the topic of lunch he was immovable, he wouldn’t budge by 30 minutes. It did not matter to him that in order to be there on time I had to rise at the crack of dawn to make the earliest train. Visiting Karl involved a long journey across the Alps including the 17 kilometre-long tunnel beneath the Gotthard pass, one of the longest in the world. It was a journey into a different linguistical zone, through Switzerland’s heartland of snowy peaks, icy lakes and cows grazing in rolling meadows, a landscape of Gothic church steeples, farm houses, woodpiles and apple trees. The trip involved two train changes. First the Intercity from Milan to Zürich, past the Lake of the Four Cantons until Arth-Goldau. From there, the Voralberg Express to Rapperswil through the Sattle (saddle); the train still whistles when it passes a railway crossing! The last stretch was a 20-minute ride on the regional train to Fischenthal.
During one of my visits, Karl bragged that he’d been in the old people’s home the longest, implying that he’d outlived all the other guests who’d moved in at the same time as he. After Marili died, Karl went to live a short time with his son Kurt and his wife Margrit, in Buch am Irchel. But the arrangement didn’t work out too well. Karl liked his peace and quiet and had a low tolerance for Kurt and Margrit’s 16 cats, which dominated the household. On the other hand, Margrit a talented cook, became frustrated with Karl’s fussyness about food. “I like my soup,” he’d say. For some time he tried living alone, he even followed a Migros cooking course for seniors. But soon enogh became tired with the shopping and cleaning. Eventually he decided to find himself a place where he’d be looked after and could grow old in comfort. He selected the Altersheim Geeren, in Fischenthal, wich is a village away from Steg where the Sprenger’s had lived so happily. Karl still had friends there and knew the people living in the home.
He pointed at an old lady in a wheel chair. “When she arrived a couple of months ago, she could still walk,” he said. “But since being here she’s deteriorated quite rapidly, look at her now!” He told me that once one of the senior residents ends up in hospital, “That’s it. They never come back!” Although he was a healthy old man, I couldn’t help but notice that at every visit he seemed smaller, thinner, paler. But then he would start talking and telling stories and his grey features would fill with vitality once more. His ivory teeth would be revealed by a smile and the myopic eyes, which had shrunk to small opaque buttons under the weight of his collapsing eyelids, still twinkled. Whenever Karl expected one of my visits, I would see him from the train, standing by the window in his room, holding the curtain aside and looking at the train rushing past the old people’s home. While I walked from the train station, he would get his Basque and walking stick out of the wardrobe and walk downstairs to wait for me at the entrance of the building. Several hours later, on my way back home, I’d see him standing by his window once more, trying to catch a last glimpse of me and waiving – though the train moved much too swiftly for his old eyes. Those moments always filled me with immense tenderness.
At the time of my last visit, Karl had already begun his final journey. This time he was not standing at the front of the building wearing his Basque and waiting for me as usual. I found him instead, lying on the bed in his room. The old man was paler than ever and for the first time, I sensed he was very frail. Death was like a shadow hanging over him, encroaching, waiting for the right time to come. After about half an hour Karl decided to get up and move to the couch. Surprisingly he was more nimble than one might have expected. In his wobbly fashion he managed to ambulate the few steps that separated the couch from the bed. Meanwhile, I talked very loudly until he remembered to insert his hearing aid. I offered him chocolates, he got up to find his dentures. I was overcome by a mixture of tenderness and dread at the sight of this man whose skin was as papery as a moth’s wings. But even then, as I witnessed the coming loose of his physical being, there was an eternal essence about him that radiated proportionally to the degree with which he begun to fade on a physical level.
I remember my grandfather standing in the kitchen with a dishcloth in his hand. At the end of each meal while my grandmother washed the dishes, Karl always dried the pots and pans, the plates and cutlery and glassware, putting everything back in its place. That was his share of the housework. It was a moment of domestic intimacy between my grandparents that infused me with a sense of security and pleasure. When Karl retired, as a present, Marili bought him a rocking chair. Karl had a special gift for being able to recite poetry by heart. Even in his later years, he was able to recall poems he’d learned as a young lad. He also loved to read and was great at crossword puzzles, which he eventually had to decipher with the use of a magnifying glass. He often sat on the couch resting his crossed arms on his big belly. As he lived a long and healthy life, I once asked him what his secret was. “To lead a happy and contented existence,” he said.
In the modest chapel in Buch am Irchel, beside the cemetery where my grandmother was buried, the preacher retold Karl’s life and in many ways you could say that his long life was uneventful. The preacher focussed on his second trip to Australia, in 1994. His first trip to Australia had taken place in 1984, when my grandmother was still living. During their visit, Marili celebrated her 70th birthday. Two years later, she died of cancer. But the second trip, the preacher said, was Karl’s big life adventure. He undertook the long journey to visit his daughter Silvia and his grand kids all on his own, at the ripe old age of 85 years.
There are moments in life when we feel alive with every molecule in our body, and we feel connected to the entire world around us. Every blade of grass, every bird in the sky is connected to us. It’s as if our heart is about to burst from all this emotion and our body vibrates with the life force within us and around us, in a kind of cosmic rhythm. I think Karl was a simple man, and by that I don’t mean shallow or plain. I mean he was uncomplicated and straight-forward. This way of his, of going through life seemingly effortlessly, has served him well. There is an element of purity and wisdom in his easy manner. It is a quality that in my own, troubled and complicated life, I aspire to. I try to find my way back, onto that path of being undemanding and trouble-free. But maybe, with his pasing, that golden era has come to an end.
This is how I like to remember Karl: lying beside the swimming pool on my mother’s property in Twin Hill in Queensland, wearing a pair of board shorts and a Sunshine Coast tee shirt. A knotted handkerchief protecting his bald head from the sunshine and the generous curve of his belly blotting out the view of the Glasshouse Mountains.
