[Vala] Accessing "base" property of Gtk.Style

["Federico Pelloni" <federico pelloni gmail com>]

Hello everyone!

I just started learning Vala, trying to write a small utility with Gtk.

I'm trying to set the background color of a Gtk.EventBox, to the
default "base" color as specified by the choosen gtk theme, reading it
from the window's style.
I'm doing this:

Gtk.EventBox container = new Gtk.EventBox();
Gtk.Style style = this.get_style();
container.modify_bg(Gtk.StateType.NORMAL, style.base[(int)
Gtk.StateType.NORMAL]);

But valac hangs with this error:

/home/fredp/Progetti/ejecter-vala/src/ui.vala:63.57-63.60: error:
syntax error, unexpected base

I guess "base" is a reserved word (gedit highlights it).
How can I workaround this?

Thank you

P.s.: do multiline strings (as in Python) exist in Vala?