in dumpling we trust

A dim sum diner, I know, but the sign makes me think of dumplings I've had in Austria, that comforting staple you can make with bread, potatoes, herbs, browned onion, smoked bacon, even plums and apricots. If it's round and it comes on a plate, it is probably a dumpling. 

You make bread dumplings by ripping old bread into little pieces. If the bread isn't old enough, let the pieces dry out. They have to soak up eggs, milk, a bit of oil to make a dough. Add parsley, nutmeg, whatever chopped herbs you have on hand. You shape balls about the size of a small orange. My Tirolean aunt shapes the whole mass into a single ball that she wraps in a tea towel, boils, and serves in slices. It's called a Tea Towel Dumpling. Serviettenknödel. Some dumplings have fillings. The German word for dumpling is Knödel, though different regions have their own pronunciations and pet names. Ditto across borders in Slovenia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, Poland, and maybe even wider afield. 

Did I ever tell you what happened when I wrote a short story about plum dumplings? I had a character, an old Austrian grandmother who still believed the anti-Semitic propaganda she'd learned as a young woman. I modelled her on my oma whom I only met a few times, but each was memorable. The best was probably in her late 80s when I introduced R. She didn't trust anyone who wasn't Austrian but I had been born and grown up in Canada, and presumably I hadn't been able to find an Austrian to hook up with. She stumped across to him, hand raised to measure the span of his forehead, which he gamely withstood. Her verdict? Gut! Have children with him. Another time she asked me with some disdain if I had ever met a Jew. I told her that I worked in a hospital that served the Jewish community. I had once had a boyfriend who was Jewish. I had friends who were Jewish. She screwed up her already considerably wrinkled face and asked how I could stand it. They smelled. This was astounding coming from a woman who held that you risked pneumonia if you took a bath--and so didn't.

In the early 2000s I decided to write a story in which a fictional Austrian oma came to Montreal, where she was charmed by her granddaughter's Polish Yiddish neighbour. They met when they were sitting outside, taking the sun on side-by-side, wrought-iron balconies. I knew they would be able to understand each other more or less because I can understand Polish Yiddish more or less. I wanted them to have a meal of dumplings. 

I had already written the story when it occurred to me to confirm that my Polish Yiddish gentlemen would be familiar with plum dumplings.

As it happened, there was a patient at the hospital who was Jewish and Polish. His wife frequently approached the desk to find out when he might be going for a test or to have me tell the nurse he needed pain medication. She was nice and I asked if she would mind a personal question. Did she know what plum dumplings were? I had my eyes on my hands as I described how they were made. A whole plum was wrapped in dough that was made from cottage cheese. The dumplings were simmered and then rolled in browned, buttered breadcrumbs. Only then I looked up. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She said this was the last meal her mother had made for them before they were taken to the concentration camp.

I was appalled that I had awoken a traumatic memory. I was freaked out because that was what happened in my story when the granddaughter makes plum dumplings to serve her oma and her Yiddish neighbour.  

I apologized but the woman told me she was glad I'd reminded her of how her mother used to make plum dumplings. She hadn't thought of it for a long time. She thanked me. 

So yes: In dumpling we trust.

travel notebooks

These are some of my travel notebooks, as described in this piece that was published in rob mclennan's ottawa poetry newsletter blog.
Indeed, I don't live in Ottawa and I don't write poetry, but I'm not the only hitchhiker on the site.
http://ottawapoetry.blogspot.ca/2016/03/on-writing-89-alice-zorn.html

a room with a view in Vienna

I’m having a beer in Vienna. Long windows and wood-panelled walls. Green tablecloths with tasselled lime-green runners. 

Three tables away an older woman is dictating—word for word, no notes—to a younger woman who is typing. (Do people still do this kind of work?) The older woman seems to be writing a memoir that has to do with the role she played in getting state funding for kindergartens. She had to prove the psychological and physical developmental benefits of early socialization. Lots of dry abstract language. 

Directly out the window is a cream-coloured building with decorative frieze work and wrought-iron balconies. At an angle I can see the Naschmarkt or market which is closed just now. When it’s open, you can buy herbs, fruits, honey, sausages, oysters... 

In 1977 I bought a second-hand top hat at the Naschmarkt for a man with flamboyant tastes. We’d already decided to split before I came to Europe, but at some point while away I felt nostalgic and decided to bring him a gift. It wasn't a collapsible top hat and I had to carry it in a separate bag on the plane.    

If my parents hadn’t left Austria and if I hadn’t been born in Canada, I think I would now be living in Vienna. The city fits me, I can feel it. The tempo, the people, the mood. I wouldn't need much, just one of those little windows at the top of a building where I could look out and write. 

It's not impossible that I would be a writer if I were living this other life in Austria. My grandfather Zorn wrote a novel. It was about his first love who wasn’t allowed to marry him because her mother had died and her father expected her to stay home and keep house for him. In protest she ran out into a snowstorm and froze in the snow. Or she and her father were on their way somewhere during a snowstorm and she got pneumonia and died. Or her father threw her out the door into a snowstorm when she insisted that she meant to marry my grandfather. 

I’ve heard different versions of what might have happened. The upshot was that she died. She either already had a newborn or she gave birth while she was dying. In the coffin photo she has a newborn at her side. My grandfather still had the coffin photo in his wallet when he died at 88. My grandmother buried it with him and said, Now he’s with her, I hope he’s happy. She knew he hadn't married her for love. He'd needed someone to keep house for him. Several women in my family had their fate decided over this matter of keeping house.

The two women are still working hard on the manuscript, though just now they’re having a mild disagreement over whether to use a period or a dash. Through the wall I can hear the schnitzel being pounded in the kitchen.  

On another note, the time changed last night. Spring forward, fall back. Daylight savings. This afternoon when we were walking I noticed that all the public clocks have already been changed. Even on stone church towers several centuries old. Who climbed up there? And when, at 2 am?

winter in Montreal / Alpine memories

Snow overnight followed by ice. Living here, you've got to love the four seasons. Otherwise this climate would depress you. I didn't get out till the afternoon and wouldn't have dared go out at all if a friend hadn't reminded me of spikes.
Somewhere in a closet I had spikes too--studded rubber thingies you wrestle over your boots. They're not pretty and every step grinds if you walk across a floor, but they keep you upright.  

The snow had a crust. The sidewalks were ice. The trees... poor trees. Sirens from one direction then another. People shovelling snow and trying to thump the ice off their car windows.

My Alpine forebears wore spikes to be able to scythe hay off steep mountain slopes. I've stayed in the old Zorn house that was built in the 1700s: timbered walls, built-in benches, a central stove for heating, barn attached--because animals give off heat and in the winter heat is more important than hygiene, which no one was thinking about back then.

The wood floors were pocked with holes my grandmother said had been made by the spikes her grandfather-in-law refused to take off when he walked into the house. Too much trouble.

Does he look like a man who gave a damn about floors?
I don't know when this picture was taken. He died in 1931. His mouth isn't sagged because he had a stroke. He had chronic Pipe-Mouth.  

bicycle trauma

The end of May, late morning, cloudless sky, fruit trees in bloom, the water in the canal deep blue. From somewhere a skunky whiff that reminded me of my brother pushing a wheelbarrow of sheep manure into the woods, and our mother being glad that he and his friends were doing something healthy and going hiking. Ever since then I've believed that dope grown with manure has a more pungent aroma.

R and I were cycling along the canal, heading toward the path that crossed to the river. He had slowed, and I was too close--really too close. Something was about to happen and I knew it was my fault, which didn't mean that I knew how or the right way to stop it.

As a footnote, let me say that I do not have a driver's license. Once upon a time I did, but I let it lapse for the good of humanity. I was the kind of driver who would have clipped a kid, who ran after a ball into the street, without even feeling the bump or seeing the flash of movement. Hey, at least I recognize that about myself. More people, who are currently in control of an engine-powered box of metal and glass, could stand to ask themselves whether they should be driving.
Some years ago I was informed that I'm no longer allowed to have a license. I had a small stroke that left me one-quarter blank in my field of vision. Imagine your face in a mirror. Divide the mirror into four equal parts. The top right square is blank. It's not blurred; it's not grey. It's just not there. You look into a mirror and don't see one eye and half your forehead and hair. Look out at the world and you don't know what you're not seeing. The deficiency is called quadrantanopia.

But I can't blame what happened on the bike this morning on my compromised eyesight. I was too close to R's bike and about to nick his back tire.
In hindsight, I realize it wouldn't have mattered to R. He's a seasoned cyclist. A few years ago he cycled from Montreal to Toronto. From May to October he cycles to where he works at the top of the mountain. It's a climb. We live at the lower end of the city. To get to where he works is a climb of over 200 m or 700 ft.
In Montreal we call this the mountain, though it isn't really one. My Austrian genes insist I make the point. After all, my father and his father were born in this house. Those are mountains--and even those aren't the high Alps.

But I live in Montreal now, and up on the mountain is where R works--in the cemetery. Have you ever noticed how societies before our heathen times gave the best real estate to the dead?
R's place of employment is the largest cemetery in Canada and the third largest in North America. You can get lost among the statuary, columbaria, gigantic trees, In Memoriams, gravestones, charnel houses, mausoleums, plinths... R's job has introduced me to a whole new branch of vocabulary.

And stories. Fights over estates, biker burials, family indifference, family tears, balding brothers still jostling for daddy's (dead) attention.
When we were cycling today, he told me about a man who came to the cemetery office because his girlfriend of decades had just been interred in her father's plot, and her father had informed the boyfriend he would not be buried there. The boyfriend might live another 50 yrs. He might meet a new girlfriend. Any number of eventualities might play themselves out.
However, at that moment, he wept with a full grieving heart at the prospect of his ashes not being allowed to rest with his girlfriend's in her father's plot.

But R hadn't told me that cemetery story yet. We were cycling and I saw I was just about to knock my tire against his, which is very bad manners when cycling. I should have braked, but I'm not yet used to my new bike which actually has working brakes.
On my last bike the brake pads kept sticking to the tires. When that happened, I had to bend forward, while cycling, to try to nudge them apart. Since I couldn't manage that with the back wheel, I never used my back brakes. That's probably dangerous, but danger only happens now and then compared to cycling with brake pads sticking all the time. One weighs the irritations and acts accordingly. Or at least I do.
And sure, yeah, I took my bike to be fixed. I spent $100 once and $50 another time. The brake pads still stuck. The bike was a lemon.

Perhaps I should add that I don't as a rule cycle in the street. I'm lucky to live very close to the bike path. I am more of a danger to myself than others.

From my old bike, dysfunctional as it was, I learned not to trust my brakes. Instead, I would coast, drag my feet, sort of hop to a stop. It looked klutzy but it worked.

Now I have a new bike with brakes that work, but my initial reactions haven't adapted yet. So instead of braking when my tire was about to bang into R's, I threw myself to the ground on my almost stopped but still-moving bike.

It could have been messy, but fortunately wasn't. I wasn't cycling fast, my hands and arms hit grass and I hardly scraped myself at all.
I was able to cycle home with only two bruises, one scraped knee, hardly wincing at all.

Do you see the blue velvet cover that discourages the vandal squirrels that inhabit our backyard from chewing my bicycle seat? It's an urn bag.

how not to steal a purse / easter eggs

I'm not giving lessons on purse-snatching do's and don'ts. Heck, I just lost a purse! But as an overview, simply observing...

Yesterday I was browsing through the kitchen aisles of a large thrift store. I'm not trying to hide the name. It used to be the Sally Ann, aka Salvation Army, on Notre Dame, which is what I still call it. I think it has a non-denominational name now, but I've never paid attention to what it is.

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and lots of people were in the store, shoving through hangers, stretching sweaters across their chests, picking up dusty cups, discussing the virtues of chipped veneer dressers. I want to make a tabletop greenhouse. I'll explain how and why in another post. I had just spent a hefty $40 at Canadian Tire for part of what I need, and was trying to find something to cover the table. R said he'd make me a glass or plexiglass box, but in the meantime I want to get started. I thought I might find some cheap cake covers at the Sally Ann.

A woman was walking through the store, shouting in a strident, potentially crazy voice. You know that register where you don't listen because it doesn't sound like the person is saying anything you want to hear or that will make sense. I wondered that the employees didn't ask her to stop.

She got closer to where I was looking through the larger dishes--her voice so loud and insistent--I couldn't help but hear. "I don't care about the money but there's important papers in that purse. Take the money. Give me back my purse. I need those papers. I know you're in here. You just took my purse. Give it back. Give it to the ladies at the cash. I need the papers in that purse. Take the money and get out but give me purse. I need the papers in that purse."

She wasn't crazy. She was demanding. She didn't need a megaphone. Her voice carried. I'll bet she has six kids--all grown up now--and they still hear her voice in their dreams. She was about sixty, maybe older. Her hair was dyed an orangey red to match her voice. She wore beige slacks and a cream sweater with a glittery design. High heels. She was out for an afternoon of leisurely shopping. Her coat was thrown over the handle of the shopping cart she was pushing. Presumably her purse had been next to her coat. She strutted up and down the aisles. She wasn't panicked. She was set on flushing the thief from between the winter coats or the curtains or wherever she imagined him hiding.

I'd found two cake covers and decided to look at the back of the store among the lamps and ancient computers. You never know what gets filed where in a thrift store.

I didn't find anything else and went to the cash to pay. She was at the front of the store, triumphant, with her purse in hand, talking on her cell phone. The cashiers were excited and talking amongst themselves. It seemed the man who'd stolen the purse had left the store then returned with it--maybe to try to steal another purse, maybe to return the purse from where he'd taken it? I gathered no one asked him. He walked back into the store with the purse he'd already stolen in plain view. One of the cashiers recognized it and gave the alarm. Some Sally Ann employees chased him into the street and got the purse back. I didn't see him anywhere, but they were saying they'd got him too.

Excitement at the thrift store. Plus I got two cake covers for $2.70.

 
And here are some Easter eggs. The two small marbled eggs have real gold leaf on them. That's Austrian handiwork, made by my cousin Sabine who unfortunately, far too young, passed away last year. I can't recall who gave me the flower egg. I used to have a completely gold-leafed goose egg (also from an Austrian relative--my aunt Franziska?) that was accidentally broken. The custom is to hang Easter eggs from window frames or chandeliers. That's how the golden goose egg got broken, so I don't do it anymore. R and I painted the other eggs.

life invades writing / zwetschgenknoedel

People wonder how much fiction writers copy from life and how much they fabricate. What about when life mimics what you've written? You're in the middle of working on a piece, you ask a few questions, do some research, keep your eyes open--and what's this? What you're writing about happens.
No way, you cry! I'm writing about this. It was my idea first. Let life get its own. Life has got more resources. Life can branch out anywhere. Life can be sloppy. No one will accuse life of an implausible scenario.
And yet it happens. For example... I'll use an example from a few years ago.
I wanted to write a story around a character modelled on my cantankerous, pious, trouble-causing, never-forget-a-grudge, wrinkled, stumpy-legged Alpine grandmother. My fictional oma (like my real-life oma) was a staunch anti-Semite. I decided to have her meet a Jewish man whom she never realizes is Jewish. She's lonely, spending  afternoons in her granddaughter's Montreal apartment, and lo, there's this elderly European gentleman sitting on his balcony.
How do they communicate? I decided that they could, in the same way that I don't speak Yiddish but can understand the gist by recognizing words that are similar to German.
In the story, the Canadian granddaughter invites her neighbour to supper. When she brings out the Austrian dish she's prepared, he stares and tears begin to roll down his cheeks. It's a dish his Polish mother used to make while his family was still together, before they were sent to Dachau.
The meal is plum dumplings--zwetschgenknoedel. Whole plums are enclosed in a cottage cheese dough, boiled, then rolled in browned, sweetened breadcrumbs.

I'd written the story but wasn't sure if my Polish Jewish character was likely to have known about this dish. I could have made him an Austrian Jew, but if he spoke German, then my fictional oma would have discovered he was Jewish. It was important that she could communicate with him just enough to fantasize  about this pleasant elderly gentleman with the courtly European manners.
As it happens, I work in a Jewish hospital. I decided to ask the wife of a Jewish patient who was Polish about zwetschgenknoedel. I didn't use the name, assuming that she wouldn't know it as such. I described how whole fresh plums were wrapped in dough. While I talked, I wasn't looking at her but at my hands with which I was trying to demonstrate the different steps of wrapping the plums, lowering them into boiling water, rolling them in crumbs so they were nicely coated. I was hoping to convince her that once upon a time she'd seen or heard of these delicious fruit dumplings.
She still hadn't answered me, so I peeked. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
What's wrong? I asked.
Her mother, who'd died in a concentration camp, used to make plum dumplings. She hadn't had them since. She'd forgotten all about them. I had just reminded her.
I felt badly because I hadn't wanted to make the woman cry. Though--as in my story--I marvelled that a beautiful memory could survive across the horror this woman (and the character in my story) must have experienced. That, for me, was the emotional truth of the story.
Still. It freaked me out when the woman began crying like the character in my story.