But when I went to pay the bill I
found an official had been keeping tabs on us, and that all baths
taken had been charged up at the rate of sixty cents apiece. I
had provided my own soap too! For that matter the traveler provides
his own soap everywhere in Europe, outside of England. In some
parts soap is regarded as an edible and in some as a vice common
to foreigners; but everywhere except in the northern countries it
is a curio.
So in Vienna they made us furnish our own soap and then charged
us more for a bath than they did for a meal. Still, by their
standards, I dare say they were right. A meal is a necessity, but
a bath is an exotic luxury; and, since they have no extensive
tariff laws in Austria, it is but fair that the foreigner should
pay the tax. I know I paid mine, one way or another.
Speaking of bathing reminds me of washing; and speaking of washing
reminds me of an adventure I had in Vienna in connection with a
white waistcoat - or, as we would call it down where I was raised,
a dress vest. This vest had become soiled through travel and wear
across Europe. At Vienna I intrusted it to the laundry along with
certain other garments. When the bundle came back my vest was
among the missing.
The maid did not seem to be able to comprehend the brand of German
I use in casual conversation; so, through an interpreter, I explained
to her that I was shy one white vest. For two days she brought
all sorts of vests and submitted them to me on approval - thin ones
and thick ones; old ones and new ones; slick ones and woolly ones;
fringed ones and frayed ones. I think the woman had a private
vest mine somewhere, and went and tapped a fresh vein on my account
every few minutes; but it never was the right vest she brought me.
Finally I told her in my best German, meantime accompanying myself
with appropriate yet graceful gestures, that she need not concern
herself further with the affair; she could just let the matter
drop and I would interview the manager and put in a claim for the
value of the lost garment. She looked at me dazedly a moment
while I repeated the injunction more painstakingly than before;
and, at that, understanding seemed to break down the barriers of
her reason and she said, "Ja! Ja!" Then she nodded emphatically
several times, smiled and hurried away and in twenty minutes was
back, bringing with her a begging friar of some monastic order or
other.
I would take it as a personal favor if some student of the various
Teutonic tongues and jargons would inform me whether there is any
word in Viennese for white vest that sounds like Catholic priest!
However, we prayed together - that brown brother and I. I do not
know what he prayed for, but I prayed for my vest.
I never got it though. I doubt whether my prayer ever reached
heaven - it had such a long way to go. It is farther from Vienna
to heaven than from any other place in the world, I guess - unless
it is Paris. That vest is still wandering about the damp-filled
corridors of that hotel, mooing in a plaintive manner for its mate
- which is myself. It will never find a suitable adopted parent.
It was especially coopered to my form by an expert clothing
contractor, and it will not fit anyone else. No; it will wander
on and on, the starchy bulge of its bosom dimly phosphorescent in
the gloaming, its white pearl buttons glimmering spectrally; and
after a while the hotel will get the reputation of being haunted
by the ghost of a flour barrel, and will have a bad name and lose
custom. I hope so anyway. It looks to be my one chance of getting
even with the owner for penalizing me in the matter of baths.
From Vienna we went southward into the Tyrolese Alps. It was a
wonderful ride - that ride through the Semmering and on down to
Northern Italy. Our absurdly short little locomotive, drawing our
absurdly long train, went boring in and out of a wrinkly shoulder-seam
of the Tyrols like a stubby needle going through a tuck. I think
in thirty miles we threaded thirty tunnels; after that I was
practically asphyxiated and lost count.
If I ever take that journey again I shall wear a smoke helmet and
be comfortable. But always between tunnels there were views to
be seen that would have revived one of the Seven Sleepers. Now,
on the great-granddaddy-longlegs of all the spidery trestles that
ever were built, we would go roaring across a mighty gorge, its
sides clothed with perpendicular gardens and vineyards, and with
little gray towns clustering under the ledges on its sheer walls
like mud-daubers' nests beneath an eave. Now, perched on a ridgy
outcrop of rock like a single tooth in a snaggled reptilian jaw,
would be a deserted tower, making a fellow think of the good old
feudal days when the robber barons robbed the traveler instead of
as at present, when the job is so completely attended to by the
pirates who weigh and register baggage in these parts.
Then - whish, roar, eclipse, darkness and sulphureted hydrogen! - we
would dive into another tunnel and out again - gasping - on a
breathtaking panorama of mountains. Some of them would be standing
up against the sky like the jagged top of a half-finished cutout
puzzle, and some would be buried so deeply in clouds that only their
peaked blue noses showed sharp above the featherbed mattresses of
mist in which they were snuggled, as befitted mountains of Teutonic
extraction.
