Books: Alpine Stock

VIA MALA — John Knittel — Stokes ($2.50).

Because the Swiss for a long time have been professional neutrals, innkeepers, paid hosts to congresses of tourists, invalids and impotent statesmen, a literary tradition has sprung up that they are a race of small-minded, closefisted, petty burghers, slightly comic but mostly dull.” In Via Mala Swiss Author John Knittel goes a long way toward exploding this commercialized tradition, shows that the Swiss, like other people, are human, passionate, beleaguered by all the human vices and virtues. A humane melodrama. Via Mala is written on the socially dangerous and apparently un-Swiss-like theme that the law is an ass, and goes best in blinkers.

Jonas Lauretz, mountaineer sawmiller, was a hard man and not a good one. A notable blasphemer, drunkard, cuckolder and seducer, he was a byword in the district, but his neighbors did not know the half of it. He beat his wife, crippled his son, tried to rape his daughter, kept them all in terrified submission. Only his daughter Sylvelie, a flower-on-the-dunghill type, regarded him without loathing. She escaped some of the family horror by working as house-servant and model to a famed old painter, who in gratitude left her a small fortune when he died. Because Sylvelie was still under age her father was able to make off with the legacy. Sylvelie went to town to see what she could do about her rights. While she was gone drunken Jonas came home. This last straw was too much for his family; they set upon him, killed him. Sylvelie, horrified at the news, kept their secret but left home for ever.

In the town where she got work as a waitress she soon attracted the attention of Andi, a successful, aristocratic young judge. Andi was engaged to an heiress, but his heart was not in it. After protracted and pressing arguments, Sylvelie let Andi persuade her to marry him. For a while their happiness was idyllic. Then, by a stroke of legal accident, the papers in the three-year-old Lauretz case came into Andi’s hands for review. His lawyer’s nose immediately smelt a rat; he hounded his family-in-law until they finally confessed the crime. But Sylvelie, innocent accessory after the fact, was legally implicated in the murder. After terrific struggles of conscience Andi took a big chance, succeeded in getting the Lauretz case safely buried in the archives. Old Jonas’ ghost was laid at last and the Lauretz family took their first deep breath in years.

The Author. Most Swiss are at least bilingual; John Knittel’s tongue has more hinges than most. Born in Dahrwar, India, the son of Swiss missionaries, he spoke English from his childhood, lived in England, married an English girl, now writes in his mother-in-law tongue almost, but not quite, without accent. He makes his hero say “Look one here now,” has him “give gas” when he steps on the accelerator of his car. At times he sounds as if he were translating himself from the Gaelic (“There’s a grand uneasiness about, hank goodness”) but at his best he speaks simply from the Helvetian heart: “To be sincere is not at all as easy as some people think. It means constantly worrying your heart, and not only thinking with your )rain.” In London Author Knittel wrote two novels, produced several popular tragedies. An insatiable traveler, he wandered Europe and Africa, made great friends with Moroccan Patriot Abd-el-Krim. In Egypt he bought an oasis where he still spend’s most of his time, with his wife and three children.

Via Mala, already in its sixth edition in England, is being translated into German, Russian, Dutch, Swedish.