Читать книгу My Seven Lives - Enhanced Edition - Chiquita Iracema Neven du Mont - Страница 4

First Life

My Birth

Just to confuse my readers from the start: My father was English, born in Germany, he lived in England. He was Catholic. My mother's father was Belgian, but he was born in Paris, where he preferred to live. He was a devout Catholic. His wife, my grandmother Mimi, was American from Albany, the capital of New York State. A Protestant, she lived in France. My paternal grandmother was German, but she lived in England and was a devout Catholic.

My Mother, 1920

After getting married in Paris in 1920, my parents, Mark and Manon (her first name was actually Madeleine) Neven du Mont went to South America, where my father had a writing assignment for the Dumont Publishing House in Cologne. In early September, they stopped off in Brazil, believing my birth to be imminent. I did not arrive on schedule, so they travelled on to Buenos Aires and settled in the Pension Belgrano.

Pension Belgrano, 1921

And that's where I made my appearance! My mother was ill-equipped for a newborn. She had neither a cradle nor anything else one needs for a baby. When she came back from hospital, my first bed was in a drawer from the chest in the bedroom! With that sort of start, no wonder my life was hardly ever conventional!

My mother and I, 1921

On October 15th, I was baptised in the Catholic Church of Belgrano, Buenos Aires, with two godparents: Leonilda Orfelia Echeverria, a Catholic, and Hermann Helms, a Protestant. The very next day, I was taken on a trip to Tigre, about which my father wrote:

"Pussken has already developed a taste for travel."

Even though my parents had wanted a boy, my father was still prepared for a girl. Long before his marriage he had seen an engraving on a stone wall in Porto Ronco, Lake Maggiore, of a girl with a halo, called `Chiquita', and had wanted this name for his daughter ever since.

My father and I, 1921

In fact, Chiquita means nothing more than `little girl' and is hardly a name at all, which makes my Brazilian, (Guarani) first name so much more interesting: Iracema! If one asks a Brazilian what it means, he will smile and say: Iracema means 'the beautiful girl' or `girl with honey lips'. Today my name and baptism are something of a puzzle. Baptised in a Catholic church with a Protestant godfather and a Catholic godmother, I was given two very non-Catholic names instead of being named after a saint, a fact which later horrified many members of my family.

Day of my baptism, 15.10. 1921

"On January 25th, 1922, Pussken drank her very first fruit juice - a mixture of apple, grapefruit, mandarin, banana, and orange. She began with two teaspoons, but soon managed twelve. On February 12th, she took her first meal of vegetable juice and mashed potatoes, followed by her usual fruit juice. And then I gave her some milk. But the milk didn't agree with her and she got sick.

This is the story of our first baby, baptized `Iracema Chiquita' and called `Pussken'. She was born in Buenos Aires, on the spring day of 10th September, four weeks after her father's 29th birthday - a lucky date. We had hoped for a boy, but she was a girl. We were disappointed at first, but our disappointment soon gave way to joy."

These lines are taken from a small note book that my parents began after I was born. In this book, my mother carefully noted the statistics of my weight and growth during my babyhood, while my father described the first events of my young life.

My mother and I, 1921

In November 1921, my parents returned to Europe on the `Ludendorff', a ship flying the German flag. "Pussken really enjoyed the trip, despite a heavy storm. She didn't get seasick, flirted with the captain, who called her "his baby" and ordered the steward to whistle and sing for her! She got a certificate for her very first equatorial crossing, which she verified with her finger print in the log book!" my father noted proudly, while my mother weighed and measured me and wrote down the results every day.

During the crossing, she would often look at me sceptically, for I was apparently the ugliest baby she had ever seen - so she told me later - and couldn't shake the feeling that something about me wasn't quite right. So as soon as the ship docked in Hamburg, she had me examined by a specialist and paid fifty Marks to get the confirmation that not only everything was alright, but that I was, in fact, an "excellent baby".

My Mother's Family

In early 1922, my mother took me to the South of France to present me to my American great-grandmother, ninety-seven years old, as well as to my grandmother `Mimi'. My mother told me to call my grandmother "Granny": "Chiquita, say Granny," she insisted. But I kept saying "Mimi". Ever since, all grandmothers in our family are called `Mimi' - myself included.

My grandmother lived in the Palais de Mounega, a former monastery high above Nice, in Gairaut. I remember as a child being impressed by her healthy diet. In those days, it was hardly fashionable to eat so much fresh fruit and vegetables, and I didn't understand it. Now, I eat the same way myself.

My mother, 1921

I was a very adventurous child, always looking for new discoveries and I spent a lot of time exploring the grounds. I remember running among the olive trees where I had found a dark cave with an underground spring hidden deep inside - it was magical! When it rained, I was confined indoors and wandered through the big house, which seemed huge to me at the time, with its beautiful old frescoes on the walls. This property, once owned by monks, was later used as an Italian hunting lodge before my grandmother bought it. There is a small church in Gairaut with a cemetery where my grandparents Mathilde and François Rom are buried. My brother Marco was baptised in this church and given Gairaut as his middle name.

Palais de Mounega, Gairaut, 1922

At my grandmother's house I was fascinated by the view of Nice by night, with it's twinkling lights. For a short time during the Second World War the Palais de Mounega was taken over by the French Resistance, until the German army finally took possession of it and demolished much of the furniture. They chopped the legs off the chairs, if the height didn't suit them! I can imagine the effect that it must have had on my grandmother. After the war, she sold the big house and had a smaller house built on the grounds. It was called `La Chiquita' and she lived there until her death.

My grandmother, great- grandmother, mother and I, 1922

My grandparents parted at some point and went their separate ways, as divorce was not an option in those days. My grandfather moved back to La Chiquita before he died, and my grandparents are both buried in Gairaut. During my stays at my grandmother Mimi's, I visited my American great-grandmother Rebecca Haine, nee van Alstyne, in Nice. She lived to the ripe old age of ninety-seven. She came from a family of highly respected judges and mayors of Albany, capital of the State of New York. My other great-grandmother, grandpa François Rom's mother, was said to have been a great animal lover.

Path to the cave in the olive grove, 1922

During the First World War, while the Germans were attacking Antwerp, she delayed leaving Belgium to join her family, who had fled to England, so as not to leave her beloved dogs. They already had quarantine in England in those days, which meant that pets had to be kept isolated for six months until it could be determined that they were free of rabies. This represented a great problem for my great-grandmother - and - the poor dogs! Only after the buildings on both sides of her house had been damaged, did she take refuge in the cellar with her four-legged friends. Before she finally left, with tears in her eyes, she put poison in her dog's favourite food and called them one by one. The poor woman then left alone to join the rest of the family in England.

My mother, brother Marco, my great-grandmother, my grandfather and I in France, 1926

From England the whole family moved to Los Angeles. Grandpa with his wife my grandmother Mimi and their daughter, my mother. François Rom enjoyed a life in which war had no place. He was a banker, owned a racing stable, was a world champion fencer, golfer, and bridge player. He was a close friend of the King of Belgium. After the First World War, Grandpa returned to Europe with his family. He sometimes visited us children when we were living with our mother in Garmisch, but only for a few days at a time. I never understood why he did not stay longer, but nowadays, I do the same myself.

In 1939 before the Second World War started, my grandfather Francois Rom went to Lisbon to see how things would develop. When he realised that another war was inevitable, he sailed to New York, where he stayed in the Hotel Pierre until the war ended. Grandpa had tried to persuade my mother to leave Germany - even threatened to cut off her allowance, but unfortunately she decided to stay in Bavaria with her Austrian husband, my stepfather, and us three children. Grandpa Rom financed irrigation systems in Spain, on the Guadalquivir River, among others, and sponsored various projects in Egypt. My mother told me about having spent several winters in Egypt with her parents, living in tents in the desert. I was astonished to hear it, until I found a photo album from those times and saw that, what I had thought were make-shift accommodations, were actually more like palaces, with Persian carpets and valuable furniture. Needless to say, there were many servants to ensure their comfort. When I was living in Munich in the 1950s, I got such a bad case of bronchitis one winter that my mother was worried and decided to take me to Egypt for a change of climate. She was obviously concerned for my welfare and thought she could happily spend the money her father still had in Cairo. The money was blocked! I managed to retrieve some of it years later. In Cairo my mother insisted that I could not go anywhere unescorted and arranged for the son of my grandparents' former Dragoman (or major domo) to look after me. One day he asked if he could take me to visit a village, of which his father was the sheikh. She agreed, and he and I rode there through the desert on horseback. It was a beautiful experience that I will never forget.

Postcard from my mother in England to her father in Egypt, asking permission to ride her favourite horse, 1909

"Dear Sky, The white thing below is a camel, the white thing above is your Mummy. Good that the camel didn't get up during the photo, or I would have fallen off. Write to me. On Sunday, I'm going to the Red Sea. Ask Erni to show it to you in the World Atlas. Lots of kisses, Mummy."