Issue 2:2 | Non-Fiction | Nan Watkins

Dinner with Joyce

Nan Watkins

“Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience. . .”

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

I have come to this Swiss city for the first time, not for its famous financial center, not for the luxury shopping on the Bahnhofstrasse, but for James Joyce. Here, in Zurich, in this neutral country, Joyce found safe haven from the encroaching dangers of the Second World War and here, by chance, he is buried. I have come to honor my favorite modern writer, the man whose torrent of words on paper so shocked his compatriots that they would not print his masterwork in their country during his lifetime. But I’m removed from all that. Joyce’s words simply make me rejoice!

One of the benefits of traveling alone is having the freedom to make all decisions myself, without needing to compromise with companions about how to proceed. Today, despite the heavy November rain, I feel like walking rather than hiring a taxi from the train station to my hotel. Adjusting the wool hat I bought in Munich to protect me from the worst of the rain--I don’t travel with umbrellas anymore--I cross the tram tracks and the bridge over the Limmat River, which originates in Lake Zurich and flows through the center of town. The rain is falling in sheets, and I’m just able to make out the ducks and swans moving about in the water below. The clouds are much too dense for me to see the Alps beyond.

I find my small, family-run hotel easily, and my first test is to figure out how to open the door. There’s no handle in sight, and I’m unable to push the glass door open. Then I notice a button to the right of the entrance, and when I push it, the door folds open, accordion-style, just long enough for me to slip inside.

I am pleased to learn that the reservation I made on the Internet, a first for me, is in good order. I am given two keys, each of which--like the entrance door--requires figuring out. I feel like the young girl in the fairy tale who must solve a riddle to advance to the next room. I climb the stairs, at each floor pushing a power-saving light switch that stays lit just long enough for me to walk through. I finally reach my room and unlock the door to find an inviting bed with a pristine white linen cover over a fluffy Federbett (goose down comforter). My window overlooks the back street, and I can hear a man singing and women talking in the rain.

I want to make the most of my time here, so I collect my thoughts and, checking to see that my city map is close at hand, I set out in the pouring rain to buy two red roses to put on the grave of Joyce and his wife, Nora. With my flowers carefully wrapped, I walk back through the rain to the nearest tram stop and take shelter under the small roof on the platform.

Unlike my student days in Munich years ago, there is no conductor to take fares and give tickets and directions on the tram. I find the automat, which people are stoking with Swiss francs, but even after studying the listed fares, I can’t figure out what to do. So, in German, I ask an elderly woman where the zoo is. I once read that Joyce’s wife had commented after his funeral that she thought he would like the cemetery because it was near the zoo, where he could hear his beloved lions roar.

“You must realize that this is not a good day to visit the zoo,” the woman replies in the Zurich German dialect, her voice raised so that I can hear her above the heavy rain. I explain that I am really looking for the Fluntern Cemetery, and she nods understandingly when she sees the flowers. She patiently tells me I need to go to the end of Line 6, and with some juggling to get the right change to pay the fare, I purchase my round-trip ticket to the zoo.

With a feeling of relief, even comfort, I sit back in the warm, dry tram car, which slowly makes its way around the curves and up the hill. I see the buildings of the University of Zurich and ride through the quiet middle-class neighborhood of tree-lined streets where James and Nora Joyce once lived. I enjoy the smooth, gliding ride and listen to the rasping sound of the wheels making difficult turns in the track.

When we reach the end of the line at the top of the hill, I see the entrance to the zoo across the street and figuring the cemetery must be close by, I head for an area of tall trees on the left. I walk through the iron entrance gate of Friedhof Fluntern and notice signs saying that all flowers must be handed in at the administration building. I hesitate. I have not come these thousands of miles to honor Joyce by giving my roses to a cemetery administrator, so I walk on. I have no idea where Joyce’s grave is in this huge place and am reluctant to ask because of my contraband roses. I am amazed at how beautiful the grounds are--they feel more like a park than a cemetery. I walk up the gentle slope that crosses avenue after avenue of neatly tended graves bordered by little hedges and tastefully planted bushes. I decide I will find the gravesite myself if I have to walk until dark.

I meander a long while over gravel pathways. At last I reach a cross-path at the top of the hill and a very small wooden sign that says Joyce and Canetti Graves. My heart leaps. A few more turns and I walk the last steps over glistening wet flagstones to a grassy plot. The grave is covered by a large rectangle of polished black marble, lying flat upon the ground, surrounded by a miniature trimmed boxwood hedge. Four names, outlined in white, are carved into the black stone: James Joyce and Nora Barnacle Joyce, and the names of their son and daughter-in-law. A family headed by the man whose masterpiece, Ulysses, changed the course of creative writing in our time, and next to him his wife, his helpmeet, who mastered the practical necessities of life so that her husband could write.

What captivates me is the setting of the grave, with the near life-size statue of Joyce sitting on a bench, walking stick at rest, head cocked slightly to the side, observing the scene through his bronze spectacles. I am relieved to find Joyce’s final resting place utterly peaceful, for in his artist’s unsettled life of exile he was constantly uprooted. Above the grave, tall hemlocks sway gracefully in the wind and white birches stand guard on the hill. I unwrap my two roses, stash the paper in my bag and lay the red flowers on the black stone. Offerings. To James Joyce for the unflagging spirit that kept him writing, and to Nora for her devotion and enduring love.

I stay here, ignoring the cold and the wet. The last time I visited my mother’s grave, it was a rainy day, just like this. The gray marble of her small stone marker, nestled below the gravestone of her parents, was also adorned with wet leaves. I wonder what elixir of love kept James and Nora together through the thick and thin of life, whereas not only my parents, but my husband and I divorced.

“May we ever and ever be very divinely in love” were words I found in a letter my father had written to my mother in the 1930s, before their marriage. A short time later my mother replied, “My last day of teaching tomorrow. I have fewer regrets than I expected. It’s just one more proof of my love for you, dear heart, that I can renounce so lightly what has been life itself for me for almost ten years.” Despite that loving start, thirty years later my parents’ marriage split asunder, and now they lie alone in separate graves.

I listen for the lions’ roar in the zoo across the way, but all I hear is rain falling through the trees. I walk farther down the flagstone path to discover the grave of Elias Canetti, Nobel laureate, another creative writer, another exile. His grave is a rough slab of white marble with his signature carved into the stone; golden birch leaves from the trees above are its only decoration.

I am glad these two sorcerers of words, Joyce and Canetti, share this ancient Swiss hilltop in their eternal rest. I imagine their spirits in witty conversation in the dark nights on this quiet knoll, the same way I think of my mother conversing happily with her Welsh relatives on the hillside above the old coalmine in Pennsylvania. It is a comfort for our earthly minds to believe we can still communicate in death with our beloved, through the spirit.

* * *

It is six o’clock in the evening and I have just awoken from a deep sleep. It takes a moment for me to get my bearings under the warm down comforter, but I realize quickly that if I want to eat dinner at the famous Kronenhalle restaurant without a reservation, I had better get going.

With great determination, I set out into the Zurich night. The rain is falling more heavily than ever as I walk along the river, whose waves sparkle with the reflections of city lights. The wind is blowing so hard I have to hold on to my hat. On the way to the restaurant I pass the Café Odéon, which had been a gathering place for artists and exiles like Joyce and Lenin, and I wonder if they ever met each other there. By now I have memorized the central portion of the Zurich map, and I know I have to walk all the way down to the Quai Bridge at the head of Lake Zurich, and at that intersection I will find the restaurant.

One miserably cold and wet January night in 1941, Joyce was feeling ill and depressed, and he decided he wanted to leave his apartment and have dinner at the Kronenhalle. Nora tried her best to dissuade him from going out into the wintry night, but Joyce prevailed. The two ordered a taxi and rode through the blustery dark to the Kronenhalle, where they climbed the flight of stairs to this most hospitable of Swiss restaurants. After enjoying a splendid meal, the Joyces returned home. In the middle of the night Joyce awoke in great pain and was taken to the hospital, where he died, a short time later, of a perforated ulcer. The meal at the Kronenhalle was Joyce’s last.

I climb the same flight of stairs the Joyces mounted some fifty years before. Inside the dark wooden double doors, I am greeted with a concerned and questioning look from the maître d’. It’s just as well I can’t see myself, because I am soaking wet from the rain. The maître d’ inquires if I have a reservation, and in my best German I explain that I am visiting in town and hope very much that he has a free table for me. After a brief consultation with his charts, he beckons me forward and cordially leads me to a waiter standing by a cloakroom, ready to take my dripping coat and hat. I remove my steamed glasses and, after wiping them on my new Swiss linen handkerchief, I replace them to see tall, paneled walls filled profusely with paintings by Picasso, Chagall, Braque and many other twentieth-century artists. The dining room is humming softly with voices in conversation. My waiter, whom I take to be Swiss Italian, shows me to a table with a white linen cloth set impeccably for one. The thought crosses my mind that perhaps he knew all along that I was coming.

Now I know why James Joyce loved this place. He had been a friend of the owner, Frau Zumsteg, who hosted artists living in Zurich from 1921 until her death in 1985. She was an art collector and made her restaurant a gathering place for creative people from all parts of Europe. The maître d’ is her son.

The waiter exhibits all the traits of first-class European service. He brings the menu, which features a reproduction of a 1972 painting Chagall dedicated to Frau Zumsteg. He carefully takes my order for the house specialty, Kalbfleisch Geschnezeltes nach Kronenhaller Art, then asks what wine I would like. I choose a quarter liter of Beaujolais and sit back to enjoy the ambience of this handsome place. The white roll arrives as crusty as it can be; the butter is sweet Swiss butter. The waiter brings a bottle of Swiss mineral water and pours the wine from a small glass pitcher with a mark delineating exactly a quarter of a liter. I raise the delicate goblet to my lips and drink. Just to the left of my table is a Chagall painting: in a snowy night, a grandfather clock is chasing a group of children through a village street while the moon hovers in the blue-black sky.

The art of dining alone is underrated. Without the need to converse with a companion, the single diner can be attentive to the fine food and surroundings and can allow her mind to wander where it will. The pumpkin soup--the perfect texture and temperature--warms my heart. The tender veal in a tasty cream sauce with succulent pan-fried potatoes, Swiss style, brings back intimate memories of wintry evenings: of green velvet curtains; of a grand piano; of watching, from a second-floor window at twilight, an old Viennese woman sweep snow from the pavement with a broom of twigs.

I look at the paintings on the walls and eavesdrop on the conversations of the couples around me. I imagine James and Nora Joyce sitting at one of the tables, enjoying a meal like mine. Joyce would take a bottle of wine with his dinner and lean his head a bit to the side to listen to the talk around him. Nora would look fetching, the neckline of her dark dress low enough to reveal her smooth Irish skin. They would talk little to each other, not needing words for understanding, just a close and familiar silence. They would stay as long as they could in the warmth of the restaurant, before heading back out into the cold.

I think of the role of the artist in society, of how the artist stands outside the mainstream, exiled as recorder of human experience, critic of human behavior, town crier, visionary. James Joyce was all of these. His masterpiece, Ulysses, is the story of a journey, a day in the life of a man in Dublin, but told with such richness, such texture of memory, tradition, experience, forethought, that it is the modern counterpart of The Odyssey, the Greek epic told thousands of years ago by Homer. No matter when, no matter where, each of us is on a journey, day by day, year by year, whether we are conscious of it or not. The artist’s journey is purposeful; the artist may not be a tidy citizen, but the artist knows why he or she is here: to tell a story, to awaken our minds and hearts to the bigger story of the universe beyond. I admire the artist, who with heightened ability of expression is able to articulate the pain and joy of the human journey through writing, painting, sculpture or music.

I finish my dinner of veal and potatoes, and just as I put down my fork, the waiter, who has been watching me attentively from a distance, brings a second serving, identical to the first. He smiles sweetly as he removes the empty plate and sets the full plate before me. I still have a good glass of wine left. I decide if I take my time, I can eat the second serving as well as the first. So I do. And the grandfather clock keeps chasing the children through the dark and snowy street, and the moon continues to light the way.