High life
Below par
Gstaad
Ihave come to the conclusion that the only way I can stay healthy is to be sick. Despite the contradiction, it is true. Take all last week, for example. No sooner had I begun to feel a cold coming on than I stop- ped smoking. When fever set in, I desisted from drinking. And when the doctor ordered me to stay in bed I completely forgot the weaker sex. The last negation isn't as easy as it sounds. Gstaad is full of lithe, flexible and malleable young things in stretch pants. But when one is lying in bed sick the last thing in the world one wants is someone to come in and share it.
So I committed no sins while flat on my back, except for reading four books. After the good one I wrote about in my last col- umn it was downhill all the way. The worst was by a Soviet apologist, one Harrison Salisbury, an American hack who thinks that the Soviet state is the best thing since antibiotics. Needless to say, his drivel drove my temperature up alarmingly, enough to cause me to lose my beloved professor Johanes Goulandris for ever. He read the Spectator of 9 January and even without his glasses he immediately spotted two egregious mistakes in the 'High life' col- umn: First, it was the Romans who killed Christ, not the Jews. Second, they didn't kill him on the day he was born but 33 years later. But the professor conceded that although he wouldn't teach me any longer, he would not cancel his subscription. 'You know how the English get when there's snow,' he said, 'otherwise they would have caught it.' Well, never mind. When Shelley was writing his poem 'Hellas', a friend of his by the name of Trewlaney talked him in- to going aboard a Greek caique at Leghorn, so that he might meet some Greeks in the flesh. Trewlaney later reported how they found a dirty little ship infested by a gipsy crew, 'shrieking, gesticulating, smoking, eating and gambling like savages, and cap- tained by a trader who was upset by the Greek war of independence, because it was bad for business. He was appalled to find not the faintest trace of the lofty and sublime spirit of Hellas — he was reminded only of hell.' So what did the professor ex- pect? Einstein? After all, I am Greek, and anti-Jewish propaganda has got to me.
Speaking of education and a little learn- ing, I ran into an American at the Palace bar who I presume majored neither in geography nor etymology. He was standing next to me and offered a drink to a tartish looking woman who looked like the type who — had she been British — would pro- bably be a Shirley Williams fan. After a snort or two the American — who was, like most Americans, loud enough to enable me
to hear without straining — proposed that she come up to his room and continue drinking 'in a cosier and more private at' mosphere'. 'I'd love to,' she answered, 'hut, I ought to warn you that I am a lesbian. `Oh, that's great,' he shot back, 'I've alwaY5 wanted to meet someone from Beirut.' That's the way it was all last week. The camel people had gone back to wherever they go when they're not in Gstaad, and In" nocents like the American had arrived 100k- ing for action and sport. What they got' however, was boredom, and, as everyone knows, boredom is the nemesis of life. BY the time a tourist decides which skis, boots, poles, bindings, anoraks and goggles he 0.1; she should buy, or which instructor Oil turn out to be the least objectionable, it 5 almost time to pack, pay and return borne. Long gone are the days when there were two wooden Austrian skis on the market, and two plastic American ones; three . mountains to choose and ten ski guides' four restaurants, and only one tea roorn. Gstaad is now big business but the poor lit: tle Greek boy has ways of getting around the unacceptable side of capitalism. I Rye next to the langlauf piste, ski with some Swiss friends who used to be on the na; tional team, eat in the tiny village ( Lauenen and am still allowed to get pissel', with the professor's son (who, incidentally is as ignorant as I am and is encouraged I)) his father to hang around with me so that he doesn't pick up an inferiority complex)' It's a good life, a healthy life, and I interrupting it only to go to Washington t° see if I can kick up a fuss about the 1101, Prime Minister of Greece, recently elected by those poor misguided descendants of the Ottoman Empire. I don't expect that anyone will listen to me, but if Bianca Jag- ger got an audience about Nicaragua, gillY shouldn't I be heard too.
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