Читать книгу Heimat - Liv Hambrett - Страница 6

There I was, standing in line at the grocery store, a couple of months after I arrived in Münster, wondering what was missing. Clutching my own items, I watched the cashier swiping a woman’s bread and cheese at breakneck speed, the latter fielding each item and slipping it into a plastic bag she had brought with her, before whipping out her card, barking, 'mit Karte bezahlen', signing for everything and striding out. The whole process was over in almost the precise time it took the person behind me to unload their Apfelschorle and some sort of packaged, mildly offensive Wurst onto the conveyor belt. It was only when the man in front of me stepped up to repeat the process, that I suddenly realised what was missing. Noise. Save for the beep beep of the cashier's computer and the general background hubbub that tends to pervade supermarkets, everything was quiet. After the quick 'Hallo!', customer and cashier fell silent until payment, which was transacted with minimal words. We were in a speedy, efficient, well-oiled system, designed for maximum rapidity and minimal much else. Talking, it appeared, was too time consuming.

I continued, in my early weeks in Münster, to find vacuums of silence in which I was accustomed to finding or engaging in idle chatter (even if my German, at that point, didn't stretch to idle chatter). On the occasion of making accidental eye contact with someone on the street, then smiling at them in passing, I would receive in return a blank or vaguely sceptical face, the latter in particular from elderly women who seemed to think I was going to mug them because I had made eye contact. While strolling down the street with a friend one day, I flashed a woman who happened to be coming out of the bank at the same time we were walking past it, a smile. My friend looked at me. 'Do you even know that woman?' Bus drivers didn't engage on any level, shop assistants said 'hallo!' and then pretended you weren't there and public exchanges seemed to last for approximately 30 seconds and ten words. It began to become quite clear that the Germans, or at least, the Münsteranians, weren't entirely fussed on engaging with strangers on any level. My own experience thus far being limited to Jägermeister-infused student parties, the same ones that introduced me to who would become my flatmate when I moved to Germany, I was utterly confused as to what was happening. Was there something on my face?

Yet another silent, speed-of-light shopping experience, drove me to raising the issue with my flatmate, an early mentor on all things German. Sitting on our tiny kitchen bench, I casually mentioned I noticed no one said anything when at the grocery checkout. She looked at me as if I had said 'I have noticed Germans enjoy beer, tell me about that' and through a cloud of smoke from her afternoon cigarette said, ‘of course no one talks, we want to get out of there. Talking takes time and no one wants to stand around in supermarket for longer than they have to.'

Logical, straightforward and honest. Quite like the Germans themselves. While the Australian greeting – to all and sundry – of 'hihowzitgoing', is designed to engage, demands a response that surpasses simple acknowledgement, the German greeting – a nod of the head, a crisp 'hallo!' or ‘Servus’ or ‘Moin!’- is designed to do the exact opposite. Each party is able to acknowledge but not required or expected to do much else. Germans, it would appear, are as linguistically thrifty as they are economically.

Some weeks later, I was strolling wistfully around the fragrance level of a department store, gazing at tiny bottles of elixir I had not a penny for. An alarmingly tanned sales assistant beamed at me and knocked me for six by saying hello and asking if he could help me. I stuttered through my 'Tut mir leid, mein Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut' (ie wholly non-existent) and he waved that away with a toothy grin and addressed me in an accent more American than the Americans. We got to talking and I raised my surprise at his willingness to engage in conversation beyond 'hallo!', indeed his skills in a type of conversation the Germans seemed to eschew. In a cloud of Christian Dior, he shared his theory with me; the language of German simply isn't built for small talk. Indeed, there is no term for ‘small talk’. It isn't a thing. It only becomes a thing when they learn about it and how to do it in an English course and the very notion about being forced to practice talking about nothing – shooting the breeze, talking about nothing in particular, partaking in extensive commentary about the weather – makes them sigh at the sheer waste of it all. You see, the Germans are extremely economical. They don't waste money, they don't waste plastic and they certainly don't waste words. Their efficiency as a general society seeps into their manners of communication. Small talk, idle, meaningless chit chat about the weather, sports, celebrities, films and coffee with strangers, five-minute-friends or your classmate, is for the over-the-top, chatty Cathy English speakers who seem to need constant social affirmation. Who cannot survive extended conversational silences without going bright red and clearing their throats or fake-sneezing at intervals for the pure purpose of creating some sort of sound. Germans, conversely, seem to be very comfortable with silence. It doesn't seem to bother them, whereas it makes me extremely uncomfortable and apt to track our descent into a quagmire of social awkwardness with rising panic.

In my classrooms, the process of dismantling the German instinct to get straight to the point, and instead developing skills that allow them to dance around a topic for a while, is one full of potholes and scoffs. The words 'small' and 'talk' used consecutively and in a tone not to be argued with, garner knowing groans and cries of 'why must we talk about nothing?' Ah but, my sweet Germans, small talk is an art. It is a skill, it is, when done right, social interaction at its most sublime. It is a stage for wit, for a conversational dance. It is a test of ability – can you make a seemingly inconsequential conversation last as long as you need it to? Fill time or space or silence or lubricate a social interaction, then swiftly exit or indeed plunge into more serious territory, when the time comes. Can you detect that microscopic sift that indicates the time has come to exit or plunge? But, the Germans cry, it is dishonest. Why pretend you are interested in someone when you really aren't? Surely it is rude to ask questions about someone's life/child/job/weekend when you are not appropriately treasuring the information you elicit? No, Germs, no. Small talk isn't about being socially dishonest, it is about being socially polite. And therein lies the rub, indeed the heart of the difference between the Germans and English speakers; the more indirect you are in English, the politer you are. In Germany, it is precisely the opposite.

Which brings us neatly to the English speciality, the Indirect Question. In my early days in Münster, I would confound my flatmate with questions embedded in needlessly lengthy sentences. 'Would you mind putting the kettle on?' Or 'could you do me a favour and open the window?' Or 'do you know if you'll be able to come to the pub tomorrow?' She would give me a strange look but ultimately put the kettle on or open the window or eventually tell me she would meet me at the pub at 9. Some weeks into our cohabiting, my sweet flatmate confessed to often losing the question in the sandwich of words I so often placed it within. She asked me, as we enjoyed a few wines in our kitchen, why, when I wanted something so simple, I had to ask for it in such a complex way. I thought about this for a while and said, 'because I can't just ask you for something, that would be rude.'

She blinked. 'No it wouldn't be, if you want something, you just need to ask.'