Keeper Of The Mountains (7 page)

Family members and friends recall that Elizabeth appeared to be cool and stoical about this loss. They described her as a model of the stiff upper lip – even though she was inwardly devastated by the premature death of her brother. John's wife remarried and had more children, but young Michael didn't adjust easily to this new arrangement and his adolescence was troubled. Elizabeth kept tabs on him through her correspondence with her mother and worried about his future.

Years later, Michael was touched and surprised to learn she had been an advocate for him in his adolescence, that she had understood what he was going through, even from a distance. She had never told her nephew about her early and ongoing concerns about his troubled childhood and youth. Nor did she tell him how pleased she was when he later appeared to be settling down to a good education. Her pride, like her earlier concerns, went unspoken.

Back at
Fortune
, Elizabeth's routine continued with research for the magazine's writers. She worked hard, but made time for a few friends,
too. Eleanor Schwartz, who sat next to her at work, was one of them. She remembers Elizabeth as somewhat shy and “terribly smart,” not very feminine and lacking a “sizzling social life.” Years later, Eleanor moved into Elizabeth's apartment when she left for Kathmandu. Elizabeth also admired and befriended her boss, Mary Johnston, who was an avid traveller like herself. Fred still came around to pursue her – still with no results.

In 1951 her cousin, Lee Kneerim, an aspiring actress, moved in with her. Elizabeth knew Lee had a dream to meet the great actress Judith Anderson, so she decided to do something about it. First, she bought a copy of Robinson Jeffers's translation of
Medea
, a play in which Judith Anderson was starring. Then she tracked down the elusive Anderson, asked her to sign the play, and gave it to Lee for her birthday, along with a ticket for a very good seat for the next performance. This act of kindness meant a great deal to Lee, and the signed play remains one of her most prized possessions years later. She describes Elizabeth as a “typical Vermonter” – somewhat taciturn – but remembers that when Elizabeth gave her that thoughtful gift, “her face revealed warmth and love.”

One day a rather famous friend of her grandmother came to visit. Irma Rombauer, author of
The Joy of Cooking
, was affectionately called “Cousin Irma” by Elizabeth's cousin Lee. Elizabeth had never shown any interest in cooking, so was unaware of Cousin Irma's connection to the well-known cookbook. Elizabeth could boil an egg and make toast, but there wasn't much else in her repertoire. While Irma was in New York, however, she called Elizabeth, resulting in an invitation to dinner. Her mother was aghast – “Elizabeth is going to cook for Irma!” During dinner, Elizabeth asked Irma what brought her to New York, and found out, to her discomfort, that she was in town to do book signings for the famous cookbook. Her mother called the next day to ask, “What did you serve?” Elizabeth replied, “Oh, just a regular dinner.” Her mother pressed, “Yes, but what was it?” “I had lamb patties with bacon around them, fresh peas and peaches and cream cheese salad.” Her mother was horrified, but Cousin Irma later sent Elizabeth a signed copy of
The Joy of Cooking
, inscribed with a note thanking her for the simple meal. Of course, she didn't know it was the only meal Elizabeth knew how to cook.

Over the next eight years, Elizabeth travelled extensively, keeping a
tight budget at home in order to go ever farther afield as her interests widened and her confidence grew. She almost always travelled alone. Travelling through Germany and Austria in the summer of 1949, she began to understand just what the ravages of war look like. Her curiosity led her to visit the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's retreat on top of a mountain in Obersalzberg, as well as the crematory at Dachau.

She gambled in Monte Carlo and lost 1000 francs – representing a sum of three dollars at the time. Next, she caught the
Simplon-Orient Express
to Trieste, Italy, before venturing into more challenging terrain – Yugoslavia – with journalist accreditation letters in hand. She was delighted to discover that her train compartment companion was a
Time
researcher friend from New York who was on assignment in Yugoslavia. Her name was Judy Friedberg.

The meeting with Judy was fortuitous, as they continued to travel together throughout Yugoslavia and beyond. The Ministry of Information had arranged a number of interviews for Elizabeth; between interviews, she and her friend met up with interesting foreign correspondents stationed in Belgrade. Gathering information for a
Fortune
story was more difficult than Elizabeth imagined. Things moved slowly in Belgrade. It was common to have appointments cancelled or postponed with little or no notice, and it was hard to find the right person to answer a particular question. She did manage interviews with the deputy minister on law, a member of the Central Committee of Trade Unions and an executive of the Women's Anti-Fascist Front.

Travelling through Macedonia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and along the Dalmatian coast, she witnessed, for the first time, isolated and primitive villages. She saw scenery that was wild, barren and dramatic. She had her first exposure to the Islamic religion and interviewed people who had never before been interviewed by a foreigner. Upon returning to Belgrade, she was thrilled by an invitation to a gala reception celebrating Yugoslavia's national holiday, where she was introduced to Marshal Tito. She delighted in writing her mother that he was “courtly” and had chatted with her on a number of topics. She knew
Fortune
would be pleased with the results. She was proud to have learned how to navigate the challenges of Yugoslavia, from the high society of government officialdom to the rough conditions of the countryside.

I
n 1951 Elizabeth travelled to Berlin, where she had arranged letters of introduction to various intriguing and influential residents. They entertained her at cocktail parties and showed her around the city in fine style. But there wasn't much to see. Berlin was so badly destroyed during the war that she concluded the most interesting places were where important buildings had once stood.

She went on to Helsinki, Finland, where she connected with the foreign ministry's press section and arranged to tour factories and conduct interviews with people involved in Finland's reparations payment program. She discovered a dramatic story of a country that was surmounting its postwar problems and launching a revival. At the moment, consumer goods were still scarce and expensive, but when war reparations payments to Russia ended the following year, it was generally thought that Finland would move into the world market with confidence. Perhaps her best interview yet was with a part-time correspondent for the Associated Press, who was the woman commonly known to be the prime minister's mistress. Elizabeth noted: “She must have good inside sources.”

She went to Rovaniemi, the principal town of Finnish Lapland, near the Arctic Circle, where it was –24°C at night and dark by 3:00 every afternoon. She was there to see the Sámi (then called Lapps) and reindeer and, more important, to see the reconstruction efforts after the Germans torched Lapland in 1944. When she asked to see some of the country north of Rovaniemi, the local police chief responded by sending her to the Swedish border in a police car accompanied by two Finnish policemen – officially, they were on a smuggling patrol. She enjoyed three entertaining days travelling through rolling terrain blanketed in pine, birch and snow. The colours were magnificent – mauves and purples with a sky of blue and pink – which was due, she thought, to the low angle of the sun. They didn't find any smugglers, but she doubts they were seriously looking.

She also experienced her first sauna and wasn't overly impressed with this Saturday-night tradition. But she was amused to learn that when the Finns began rebuilding their towns after the war, the saunas went up first. In answer to her mother's persistent questions about Finland, Elizabeth's responses were peculiar: “The Lapps are some kind of mysterious people with an unknown ancestry, but they don't have much resemblance to an Eskimo, and I believe their cultural
level is supposed to be a bit higher – at least they all belong to the Lutheran Church.”

In 1953 Elizabeth headed to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, her first time on African soil. As usual, she contacted the local public-affairs officer at the U.S. Consulate, who went out of his way to ensure she saw everything of note. In addition to touring the city of Tunis and nearby Carthage, she travelled for a couple of days with some visiting Americans to Kairouan, a Muslim holy city 150 kilometres from Tunis. After spending so much time in Europe, where the land had been inhabited and worked for centuries, she found it fascinating to travel through a landscape that was majestic in its emptiness. Wandering through the labyrinthine Casbah in Constantine, Algeria, she found it dark, dirty and mysterious – alluring, but also a primitive and difficult place to live.

In the middle of one all-night journey, she was obliged to change trains at a remote station in Algeria. As there were very few people around, she struck up a conversation with a man who then pummelled her with questions in French about the famous Rosenberg spy case – a laborious discussion to have at 1:00 a.m. On another train journey, from Marrakesh to Casablanca, a French expatriate sat down next to her and proposed marriage. She declined, but he persisted. “Why not? Do you not find me handsome?”

Throughout Morocco, she was struck by the number of men who seemed to have nothing to do, and by the notable absence of women in public places. The exception appeared to be when there was heavy work to be done; here she saw heavily veiled women carrying weighty loads. Extreme poverty was evident everywhere. It was hard for her to accept, and disturbing to behold, that people here lived in conditions only slightly better than their animals.

She continued her annual travels for the next three years, spending more and more time in the Middle East. On one of these trips, she fell in love with a Sudanese man named Mamoun El Amin in Khartoum. He was a tall, very dark, Muslim Arab. They met on a Nile steamer travelling upriver from Aswan to a town named Wadi Halfa, now at the bottom of Lake Nasser. They spent many hours together on the steamer deck, watching the palm trees glide by, talking, discovering each other.

At the time, Sudan was officially the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, ruled
jointly by Britain and Egypt. It had a British-trained, British-style civil service, and Mamoun was a senior administrator in Khartoum. He fascinated her. He was a study in contrasts – exotic, mysterious and educated, with a proper English accent. They spent hours in the cool of the evening sipping whisky on the veranda of her hotel and talking about his work and her travels. It was a short, intense romance. After she left Khartoum for Kenya (British East Africa, as it was then known), she never saw Mamoun again, although their correspondence reveals a deep emotional connection. Decades later, they exchanged letters again, trying to reconnect their lives. His began with “My dear Eliza.” Handling the faded letters, she admits he was one of the few men she ever considered marrying.

After working for 11 years at
Fortune
, Elizabeth, at age thirty-four, was a little bored. By 1956 it was clear she wouldn't advance any higher than a researcher, even though her work was appreciated and admired. Unsure what to do next with her life, and with no strong emotional ties, she decided the best thing was to get out of New York and really see the world. She took her profit-sharing funds from Time Inc.,
Fortune
's publisher, and set off for as long as the money would hold out. It was the beginning of a new life for Elizabeth Hawley, but one for which she was well prepared.

And so in 1957 she embarked on an around-the-world journey, master of her own schedule, seeing what she wanted, going where she wished and when it suited her – no more assignments and deadlines as she had known them in New York. In order to be assured of meeting interesting people along the way, she collected numerous letters of introduction before departing. For the next two years she explored: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1957; the Middle East, Turkey, Israel, Iran and a number of Arab countries in 1958; and South and Southeast Asia, including Nepal and Japan, and finally back to the United States in 1959.

She travelled with panache. In each new city, she would stroll into the office of the Time Inc. correspondent as though she were of a different stature – a higher one. She assumed a certain “presence” to pull it off time and time again. As a clever, curious woman travelling alone, she stood out and she met fascinating people wherever she went.

She launched her journey on the
SS
Statendam
, leaving New York on April 16. Using Paris as her initial base of operations, she caught
a train for Warsaw, a lengthy journey that revealed a countryside and architecture in transition as she moved from the Western traditions of France and Germany into Czechoslovakia and Poland. Throughout her travels, trains were her preferred mode of transport in order to see and absorb the country at a civilized pace. Arriving in Warsaw, she was delighted to run into Judy Friedberg, her former travelling companion from Yugoslavia. Working on articles for American magazines, Judy already knew the lay of the land, so she introduced Elizabeth to several American, British and German journalists.

Elizabeth's first impression of Warsaw was one of shock – so much destruction, so many gaping empty spaces in the centre of the city where buildings once stood. But rebuilding had begun, and she walked the entire city, exploring the churches, the Palace of Culture and the old section that had been rebuilt in its original baroque style. The locals joked with her about the Palace of Culture – a gift from Stalin to Warsaw, and truly ugly. They told her that the best view in town was from the palace's 30th-floor observation deck – because it was the only place in the city where it couldn't be seen.