Читать книгу Westward - Leo Schelbert - Страница 9

No sign of jet lag even though she landed in Zurich just a few hours ago. Rosa Schupbach-Lechner comes to Switzerland every year half a dozen times. She is past 80; yet the petite woman with grey-blond hair that comes down to the shoulders looks like 60. Her inquisitive blue eyes seem to ask: What else is there to experience?

The suitcases are not yet unpacked, yet the sprightly woman in a sporty pantsuit is already elegantly offering tea with cookies. “Years ago I came to visit my mother; today I come to meet old friends in Switzerland and relatives in Germany. I feel the need to cultivate my roots in Switzerland and Europe.”

This time Rosa Schupbach-Lechner plans to go even farther east to Singapore. “I want to build up my frequent flyer miles in order to keep my gold card from Miles & More,” she says playfully. As an economist, calculating comes easy for her, and with a roundtrip-ticket around half the world she will reach the required 100,000 miles without any problem.

There is even more on her program: Before flying back to New York she has dates in Germany. “In my mother’s hometown in the Black Forest I will give two talks about my life.”

The house of her grandparents is still standing; it’s where her mother with her twelve siblings grew up in very modest circumstances. Rosa has preserved lots of mementos of her parents, certificates, pictures that she fetches while narrating her life.

Her mother, Marie Ozeler, came to Switzerland as a maid in 1910. Her father, Florian Lechner, the son of a small gardener in Vienna, trained as a butcher’s assistant and later a head butcher making sausages, emigrated from Austria to Switzerland in 1911. He was ambitious. After years as apprentice and journeyman with different master butchers he dreamed of becoming independent in his new home country. In Zurich-Oerlikon a workers’ restaurant, the Dörfli, was up for rent. Yet he didn’t have a wife who could help. He told his colleagues, and one of them gave him a tip about an industrious waitress by the name of Marie who worked in the restaurant at the Klusplatz. She fell in love with the handsome go-getter with his bold dreams. “Mama married in a black dress and high, sturdy shoes. This was the custom for people from the lower income classes at that time. What would she have done later with a white dress and elegant shoes?”

On September 24, 1918, at 6 a.m., after the wedding night the Lechner’s small restaurant opened. “My mother had to wait with buying milk and bread until the first glasses of beer had gone over the counter. After the wedding father had not even a cent left. Thanks to his insistence that he had a full wallet, he had been given the first supply of beer on credit.”

Hans, their first child, was born exactly nine months later, on June 24, 1919. “At that time Mama had to pay 155 francs and 60 cents for her 13 days in the Frauenklinik, the women’s hospital. This was a vacation for her.” Usually they could not even think of taking any days off. For 7 years the young couple worked 17 hours a day in their restaurant, which did well; the workers from the nearby factories liked to stop at the place of the friendly Lechners.

By 1925 they had toiled and earned enough, and they got an offer to purchase the butcher store next door. “Now mother was in the store, father in the butchery.” Their hams and sausages were popular. “On Sundays father would usually go to the farmers in Rümlang or Wallisellen and buy cattle that the butcher helpers had to herd on foot to the small slaughterhouse behind the butcher store.” Father Lechner was a good businessman, had a wonderful way with people, and was lucky – with money too. Mother was the soul of the business. In 1926 the immigrants became Swiss citizens.

“Mother was tender and loving. And my big brother Hans worshiped me.” (around 1935)

In 1928, Rosa, the only girl, was born as a latecomer into this turbulent business household, nine years after her brother. “Father was very proud of me, Mother tender and loving. And my big brother Hans worshiped me. However, our parents did not have much time for us children. They worked day and night. ‘Now it’s enough!’ father said, sold the butcher store after eight years and retired at the age of 50. He decided dictatorially that we would move to Lucerne.” Rosa remembers her kindergarten, her first little friend. “She lived in the same house. I thought they were distinguished people. My friend smelled of perfume and powder. I would want this too, I thought, later in life. At the most my mother would buy lavender-water.” The Lechner children felt little of their parents’ prosperity. Their motto was “above all, not to spoil them, this is harmful.” Father Lechner was restless, felt compelled to set up something new and built a house with four apartments in Lucerne-Mayhof. Still, he found no rest.

“One day he surprised us without warning: ‘We are moving to the Ticino!’, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. My brother was not affected, since he was already doing an apprenticeship. I was in third grade, had many school friends and was abruptly uprooted. Yet I simply adapted and even found it adventurous.” Mother had no say in this, and in March 1938 moved, without complaining, all our belongings for the umpteenth time. “This time father rented a four-storey villa in a large park in Castagnola.” For Rosa everything was new again, including the language. “It was a wonderful time for me, ‘il mio paradiso, my own paradise’. On foot I went to the Swiss-German school in Lugano, swam in Lake Lugano and played for hours in the enchanting park. I did not know what boredom was. Dozens of animals were my playmates – geese, chickens and rabbits.” In 1939 oil became scarce. “We lived on only one level in the villa and burned wood in our furnace.” Father Lechner eventually abandoned the paradise, and the family moved into an apartment in Lugano Besso. “Even today I remember the loss of the park with sadness.”

The family’s situation continued to grow worse. “My father had not only had enough of living in the Ticino, but also of living with his family. He left us and rented a room in Zurich Niederdorf. Mother suffered silently and without complaining. One day – I was eleven – she put me on a train to Zurich. I was to bring father back home. Traveling alone was not unusual for me. I was not afraid. And father simply belonged to us.” He met the courageous girl at Zurich’s main station, showed her the city, and she got to know the various taverns in the Niederdorf. Rosa was able to convince him to return to the family. “I don’t know how I succeeded; somehow he himself came to his senses.”

But Lugano was to bore him again soon. He wanted to return to Zurich. For Rosa this meant to leave all that she had come to love, to be uprooted again, to go to a new school, find new friends.

“Mother – good-natured as she was – cooperated in everything. She was quite Victorian and religious, was eager to establish a good family life and valued order and etiquette. Pleated skirt, pink blouse – I was always nicely dressed. Pants, certainly not! Mother had my little dresses as well as all her clothes custom-made by a dress-maker.”

“I was always nicely dressed. Pants, certainly not!” (1943)

Secondary school (grades 7 and 8) was easy for Rosa. As was the custom for a girl from a good family, Rosa then spent a year in a school for good housekeeping led by protestant deaconesses in Vevey. “These simple women did impress me. I admired them. They were quite strict, but fair, and they treated all of us in the same manner. I liked the fact that they did not just preach their strict rules, but practiced them in their own lives.”

Rosa had ambitious plans for herself. “I wanted to get somewhere in life.” In 1945 she entered the Handels-Töchterschule, a commercial school for female students, in Zurich. “English was my favorite subject, and I learned easily.”

In 1948 Rosa graduated first in her class with a diploma from the Handelsschule and obtained a well-paid job at the Swiss Bank Corporation. “The transition from school to the six-day workweek was difficult for me. Sitting quietly for an entire day at the desk in the office tired me out. I found it confining.” The restlessness of her youth became noticeable. Now it was Rosa who wanted to break away, away from Switzerland in order to conquer the world.

“London was my dream. At age 20 and thanks to my good knowledge of English I obtained a position in the British branch office of the Swiss Bank Corporation. I liked London a lot. Its international character and the business of a metropolis fascinated me.” For an admission fee of two shillings Rosa and her Swiss friend Gina once in a while went to one of the dance halls. “One night as I was ready to leave, a man invited me to dance – he was good-looking and charming.” It was love at first sight with Mehdi Tajbaksh, an Iranian student of agronomy. The two were soon inseparable. And when he flew home to see his family during the semester break, she followed him. “These were two romantic and adventurous weeks in a different world. Mehdi’s home was a large farm on a high plateau in the Iranian mountains.” Back in London she began to study Farsi, and the two decided to make their home in Switzerland. “In England I earned a mere pittance, and my friend wanted to continue his studies at the Agricultural School Strickhof in Zurich. We married in 1952 in Zurich. My father did not attend our small wedding. A foreigner as son-in-law and one from the Middle East at that – this was unprecedented and unacceptable to him.”

“London was my dream.” (around 1950)

This marriage had dire consequences for Rosa. “From one day to the next I had to relinquish my Swiss citizenship. Suddenly I was a foreigner in my own country and experienced discrimination. The Swiss Bank Corporation forced me to quit and to work as a temp. For them I had become a risk, an element of uncertainty. I might have gotten pregnant!” The marriage lasted only three years. “He wanted to return to Iran; for me that was out of the question. I sensed that he was not reliable. Still, I do not regret having experienced this love.” In a matter-of-fact tone she says, “the divorce did cost 250 Swiss francs, a third of my monthly paycheck. I have never heard from him again.” In the same year Rosa’s father died. “I missed him very much, and realized that like a rock, he had always been in my life.” She moved back to her mother and took stock of her life. “With regard to love I had not been very successful, but I had a loving mother with whom I got along well and I had a job. Was this sufficient for the rest of my life? Actually, I had had enough of Switzerland. My negative experiences as a foreigner in my own country left a deep impression on me. I was naturalized again when the law changed, but my disappointment remained – until today.”

Rosa wanted to discover something new: Why not America? “At that time the immigration laws were not as strict as later. Due to the system of quotas I could apply for a Green Card.”

“Are you ready?” the official in the American Consulate asked. The Consulate’s answer to her application for immigration had come surprisingly fast. Too fast! She hadn’t expected an answer so soon. “No, I said at first, I can’t leave within two months. Mother was desperately unhappy. ‘Mommy, I will just go for four months’, I comforted her. And I really meant it.” Then everything went very quickly. Rosa gave notice, filled two suitcases with clothes, shoes and a few books and on November 12, 1959, flew to New York via Lisbon. In her purse she had 2,000 dollars, her Green Card and the address of a hotel in Manhattan. She thought, “I will use up my money and then we’ll see.”

New York – breathtaking and exciting. Rosa knew nothing and no one. But she was determined and without fear. “A hotel room on Times Square had been reserved. I didn’t know that Times Square at that time was so infamous. I didn’t like it there, and after a few days I moved into a boarding house owned by a man from Austria. But he had his eye on me and continued to bother me so that I had to move, this time to another place on West 72^nd Street. The room with a heater and a small kitchen felt like a small piece of home.”

Rosa Lechner then ran out of money. “I could return home, ask for money from home, or start working.” She did the latter and due to her Green Card obtained a position as secretary for a man who sold second-hand office machines. “The office was located on Broadway and 19^th Street. My boss exploited me, the naïve young girl from Switzerland. For lunch he gave me barely twenty minutes. I was thrifty and bought a hamburger for 50 cents and a coffee for 10 cents in a coffee shop. The shop belonged to two Polish men who had escaped from a concentration camp; they still had their numbers burnt into their arms. I think they felt sorry for me and sometimes gave me a piece of meat for my evening meal.”

When Rosa returned to her office after lunch, her typewriter was often already resold. “I lodged a complaint with the senior boss because he was always late with paying my weekly wages. He got mad and shouted ‘you don’t have to come to this country to teach us law!’“

Rosa didn’t last long there although she was making 90 dollars a week. But she stayed long enough to receive a pair of snow boots from her boss at Christmas. “I needed them urgently in order to survive the first snowstorm in New York.”

It was not only the New York winter that was hard for Rosa. “No one told me be careful, don’t do that, this is a bad area.” Since she was accustomed to a nomad’s life from her childhood, she rented one furnished room after another until she finally found a studio apartment on 46^th Street between 2^nd and 3^rd Avenue. “The first thing I bought was a sleeper sofa, and in a junk shop I got dishes and some old pans. Again, I was looking for work.”

When Rosa was hired as a secretary at the Caltex Petroleum Company in 1961, the job came with the condition that she must take courses in economics at a college. “This was not at all easy. When I applied at one of the colleges of the City University, I was told that I hadn’t even finished secondary school in Switzerland. The admissions officer cited a book that said that children in Switzerland didn’t go to school during the entire summer because they had to help with making hay! My grade reports didn’t convince her either. I was forced to write to the Department of Education in Washington which eventually confirmed that my schooling in Switzerland was equal to one fourth of the courses for a college degree; and this paved the way for me.”

Rosa wanted to stay in America. “The country took me in. No one said that because you are a woman, you can’t do this or that.

The decision to continue my academic education brought me significant personal and professional gains. Of course, I could have earned good money as a secretary. But I was fascinated by the academic world. It is also important that each person furthers his or her own personal and intellectual development. In Switzerland I would have had to take all the courses to pass the Matura [the final exam that garantuees students entrance to university studies] in order to be allowed to engage in academic studies.”

From 1961 to 1967 Rosa buckled down to work and studies without interruption. “From 9 to 5 I worked in the office, in the evening I was at school.” Her hard work paid off. In 1966 she earned a Bachelor of Science from Columbia University, in the same year she became an American citizen, and a year later she earned a Masters in Economics and a bit later a Masters in Education. “It was hard. I don’t know how I did it. How I envied the people who were able to go home at 5 p.m. while I was taking the subway to attend lectures. I am very ambitious and had the feeling that I could only advance if I earned an American degree.”

And what about her free time? “On Saturday evenings a friend invited me to a juicy steak for $4.95. And in the few weeks when I didn’t have courses or exams, I visited my mother in Switzerland.” From the beginning Rosa had the goal to get to know one new person every day. “Sometimes I succeeded. I was alone, but not lonely. You cannot expect that people approach you first. I always found my way.” And then her being alone suddenly was over.

“Edmund Schupbach was my coworker at Caltex, an accountant and very shy. I had noticed him for some time already, but he made no move until he invited me for dinner in January of 1967.” Again and again they went out together. “At first we kept it a secret in the office.” In April it was clear to Rosa – “he is the one.”

During the semester break at the end of 1967 they were married on the campus of Columbia University. “Ed Schupbach was a New Yorker and despite his name had no Swiss roots. He and I scraped together all our savings and bought an apartment for 34,000 dollars on 74^th Street between 5^th and Madison Avenue, not far from Central Park.”

After only six years of married life Ed died of a pancreatic illness. Rosa was 45, a widow, alone again. “I was forced to find a new direction for my life. Should I return to Switzerland? No, that was out of the question. At my age I would hardly have found a job. Mother would have been happy. Yet with work and a college education I had developed my life here, and America had become my home.” Rosa had not worked during her marriage, now she worked in various temp positions, then was for a time assistant to a retired economics professor from Princeton, and later was employed by a brokerage firm. “I wanted to be free, to be able to travel, to visit my mother as often as possible. In 1993 she peacefully died in her sleep at the age of 100. Fortunately I was with her when she died.”

Though Rosa went to many cultural events, she did not like the evenings she spent in her New York apartment. “This was not good for me; I felt empty and had to find something meaningful to do.”

On a Saturday morning she came by chance across a police van with a team that was recruiting volunteers for the auxiliary police in her neighborhood. “Working for the police, why not? I said to myself and filled out an application. A few days later I received a call from the police station of my district; was I still interested? Of course I was.”

Five months of education and training followed, a course in self-defense and then the exam at the New York Police Department. In the summer of 1980 Rosa Schupbach was accepted as an auxiliary police officer for her district, which is one of the most densely populated areas of the United States and has 250 regular police officers and 90 auxiliary officers.

“20% of the team are women. In the five boroughs of New York there are about 38,000 regular and 6,000 auxiliary police officers, both men and women. The auxiliary officers support the regular police force. We are not paid and are not allowed to patrol the streets after 11 p.m. without special permission because we do not carry firearms.” But they do have bulletproof vests. Rosa has her own bulletproof vest made to measure. “I wear the same uniform as all New York police officers but with a different emblem on the sleeve. We are equipped with walkie-talkies and are connected to Police Headquarters as well as to all the regular police patrols in the area.” For her defense she carries on her belt a wooden nightstick, which is 25 inches long and two inches thick. “Using it is allowed only if our own life is in danger, if we cannot flee, or if someone else is in serious danger.” In all the years Rosa has provided well over 5,000 unpaid hours of service as auxiliary police officer. She is not only the oldest, but also the most senior auxiliary officer in her police precinct. “I have never been afraid, just like my father. He was not afraid of anything or anybody. But I am never rash. I always keep my eyes open. I am a woman of a certain age; people don’t get too close to me. I walk right up to people. Once I am about a foot away from them, they begin to retreat so that there is no need to touch them. This is simply due to my determined manner. Anyone who physically attacks a police officer in New York will be arrested and goes to jail. I patrol the streets either on foot or in a police car, in summer and winter, in every kind of weather. Winter nights in New York are bitter cold! We are also in action at parades and street markets, we help with accidents, and block streets, for example when there is a fire.”

For Rosa, the New York marathon is the high point of the year in her police work. “I am usually stationed in one of the Red Cross tents where the runners come down from the bridge on 59^th Street. I also help as translator for Europeans who are having cramps, blisters on their feet or urgently need an aspirin or some words that will encourage them to persevere to the end.”

A day she’ll never forget is September 11, 2001. “Shortly after 9 a.m.. friends from Switzerland called to see if I was still alive. I had no idea what had happened! The shock came a few seconds later when I turned on the TV. A while later a colleague urged me not to go to our police station; he wanted to make sure that I would not be sent to Ground Zero. To be honest, I was grateful to him. A Swiss woman I knew perished in the tower. The mood in New York was similar to that when President Kennedy was assassinated, horrible.” Rosa’s voice is very low. “The stench of burned plastic and burned corpses and yellow dust lay over the entire city for weeks. For ten days I was on almost uninterrupted duty. Fortunately it was in my district and not in downtown Manhattan. We had to block the street where the Fire House, the Police Precinct, and a Jewish synagogue are located. The people were all on the streets – shocked, traumatized, they wanted to talk. I had to help protect the roadblocks, to calm people, often simply listen to them, to be there for them. I barely had time to go home and get some sleep. We all shared a common destiny; New York has changed since then. The thought that something similar could suddenly happen again is always present in the back of my mind, and will probably never go away. Airplanes or helicopters over the city cause my heart to beat faster every time. 9/11 has changed the life of all of us. But New Yorkers always know how to adapt and how to find the positive in life. I fit in here very well.”

Rosa is a dual citizen, but travels with her American passport. “The last time a customs officer in Zurich asked me, ‘what are you doing in Switzerland?’ – ‘I was born here’ was my quick answer in Swiss German!”

In her heart Rosa is still Swiss. “I love my mother tongue and I am also participating in Swiss elections and referenda. I see myself as a Swiss living abroad and am proud of that.” In the last 40 years she has moved only once, from the 5^th to the 16^th floor in the same building. She has a two-room apartment with a kitchen, a bathroom and a small balcony from which she can see the trees of Central Park and the high rise office towers of midtown Manhattan twenty blocks farther south. “It is a privilege to be able to live here. It was on the basis of this feeling that years ago I founded the ‘East 74^th Street Association’ for our street – which is less than a quarter mile long – and I am still serving as its president. Our 320 households have a clean street thanks to this association. With the dues that I collect we pay a man who sweeps the street and a gardener who takes care of the trees and the ivy beds around them. Private initiative is indispensable in America. Without it things don’t get done!”

Out of gratitude Rosa has also been involved for many years in the Presbyterian Church in her neighborhood. “If we want a church in America, we have to take care of it ourselves. I am grateful for my life and like to give something back. I feel that many things come back to me – in a positive way.”

Rosa is involved in the church in various functions and for some years has even participated in its homeless shelter program. “It does take a real effort to spend the night in the lower level of the church looking after up to twelve homeless men by myself. These men of different ages, who are sent to us by the city, are given a roof over their head, a clean bed and a light breakfast at 6 a.m.”

She says that she asks herself again and again why she is doing this. “But when I am returning to my apartment after such a night, I truly feel that I did something positive, and that I myself have a little piece of heaven on earth and am fortunate that I did not end up on the street.” Volunteer social service is simply part of life in the United States. “Every man and every woman does what is possible within their means.”

Rosa is appreciated for what she does and is needed. “At my age people in Switzerland have long been tossed on the scrap heap and pushed aside. In America no one tells me ‘you are too old and can go now’. Thank you, America!”

Now Rosa has to leave – Singapore is calling.