Are there any awesome legends in the M- M- …?
After only a few more attempts Alice gave up trying to get her mouth around the umlaut. Instead she flooded the rest of the valley’s name with wine.
Münstertal or Val Müstair in Romansh, I said in two of the four national languages of my country, or –
Monstertal, Daniel said. Or maybe Val Musky Air.
The three of us had settled into the second-floor study of my home in the Monstertal for a nightcap. Alice was having a Gnädig Herre Wy, which is Swiss-German for “Gentlemen’s Wine,” a palatable Pinot Noir popular in the region, and Daniel, temporarily teetotaling, was sipping the pristine spring water of the valley. I was treating myself to a Cent erbs, a herbal schnapps so local you could actually see the distillery from where I was sitting. Its lime-washed façade was generously tattooed with flower garlands, valiant ibices and two-tailed mermaids.
We’d spent a pleasant touristy day in the old fortified town of Glurns in nearby Italy, and stopped at the Benedictine convent of St. John in Müstair with just enough time for a “quick swoop” (as Alice put it) of the modest gift shop. Her only booty was the pale-faced head of a monk carved in pine; alas, when it comes to gift shops, Switzerland doesn’t live up to American standards. She was ecstatic about the monk as a paperweight though; indeed, he looked good on my desk now. His polished head, a second moon, shed a timid light on my computer. We’d ended our afternoon with Martinis at the bar of the Casa Capol in Sta. Maria; Alice and I grew pleasantly inebriated while Daniel grew increasingly fidgety, as alert as a ferret. It wouldn’t be easy to find a way for Alice and I to be alone.
The window of my study is a “soul window”; in olden times it would be opened only when somebody had died, so his or her soul could waft out of the house. Now the window let in a late evening breeze, dry air blowing down the mountain, sifting moonlight into my study. It grazed Alice’s shoulder and traveled across the oak surface of my desk, bathing the second small moon of the carved monk’s head, to point at me like an arrow. Daniel was sitting with his back to the fire, its flames performing a happily devilish dance on the stage of his hair.
The Val Müstair is an area fertile in legends, my dear friends, I said in my best ominous voice (I was well prepared, having just read some of Henry James’ ghost stories), my gaze wandering from Alice’s luminous face to Daniel’s vigilant one. Let’s see. There’s a legend about the woman whose appearance always precedes snow. There’s the legend of the rock that turns everyone who doesn’t kiss it into a petrified child. There’s the one of the herdsman swallowed up by the mountain, hut and all, because he declined food to a famished wanderer. The minute the poor fellow displayed his stinginess the sedimentary rock underneath his hut collapsed, the mountain opened up and devoured him and his hut. What’s there now is a beautiful small lake called Lago di Generosità.
from A Worrisome State of Bliss
After only a few more attempts Alice gave up trying to get her mouth around the umlaut. Instead she flooded the rest of the valley’s name with wine.
Münstertal or Val Müstair in Romansh, I said in two of the four national languages of my country, or –
Monstertal, Daniel said. Or maybe Val Musky Air.
The three of us had settled into the second-floor study of my home in the Monstertal for a nightcap. Alice was having a Gnädig Herre Wy, which is Swiss-German for “Gentlemen’s Wine,” a palatable Pinot Noir popular in the region, and Daniel, temporarily teetotaling, was sipping the pristine spring water of the valley. I was treating myself to a Cent erbs, a herbal schnapps so local you could actually see the distillery from where I was sitting. Its lime-washed façade was generously tattooed with flower garlands, valiant ibices and two-tailed mermaids.
We’d spent a pleasant touristy day in the old fortified town of Glurns in nearby Italy, and stopped at the Benedictine convent of St. John in Müstair with just enough time for a “quick swoop” (as Alice put it) of the modest gift shop. Her only booty was the pale-faced head of a monk carved in pine; alas, when it comes to gift shops, Switzerland doesn’t live up to American standards. She was ecstatic about the monk as a paperweight though; indeed, he looked good on my desk now. His polished head, a second moon, shed a timid light on my computer. We’d ended our afternoon with Martinis at the bar of the Casa Capol in Sta. Maria; Alice and I grew pleasantly inebriated while Daniel grew increasingly fidgety, as alert as a ferret. It wouldn’t be easy to find a way for Alice and I to be alone.
The window of my study is a “soul window”; in olden times it would be opened only when somebody had died, so his or her soul could waft out of the house. Now the window let in a late evening breeze, dry air blowing down the mountain, sifting moonlight into my study. It grazed Alice’s shoulder and traveled across the oak surface of my desk, bathing the second small moon of the carved monk’s head, to point at me like an arrow. Daniel was sitting with his back to the fire, its flames performing a happily devilish dance on the stage of his hair.
The Val Müstair is an area fertile in legends, my dear friends, I said in my best ominous voice (I was well prepared, having just read some of Henry James’ ghost stories), my gaze wandering from Alice’s luminous face to Daniel’s vigilant one. Let’s see. There’s a legend about the woman whose appearance always precedes snow. There’s the legend of the rock that turns everyone who doesn’t kiss it into a petrified child. There’s the one of the herdsman swallowed up by the mountain, hut and all, because he declined food to a famished wanderer. The minute the poor fellow displayed his stinginess the sedimentary rock underneath his hut collapsed, the mountain opened up and devoured him and his hut. What’s there now is a beautiful small lake called Lago di Generosità.
from A Worrisome State of Bliss