Читать книгу Travels in an Old Tongue: Touring the World Speaking Welsh - Pamela Petro - Страница 24

Early evening, hiding in my room with my face buried in Liv’s quilted bedspread. I’m trying to coax my voluntary muscles into coming to terms with all the booze I’ve consumed, when Rosemary’s lyrical voice ring-sings down the hall (in Welsh you canu, or sing, musical instruments, among which Rosemary’s voice must surely be counted). ‘PAM-eL-A! Can I get you a gin and tonic?’

At this point I’d rather be exposed to radioactive plutonium.

‘Dim diolch,’ I manage, ‘No thank you,’ wondering how on earth I’m going to get through the wine and cheese party. I did cope earlier with slipping out to buy some goat cheese at a local shop. Rosemary’s neighbourhood has the rolling lawns, the scattered, unregimented houses, the semi-rural feel of parts of northern New Jersey, where I grew up. If it weren’t for the architecture – long-profiled, wooden homes that look like the heathen cousins of Lutheran churches – I could forget I’m in Europe.

The convenience store is run by Pakistanis. Liv says that they’re the largest minority group in Norway, and are subject to much prejudice. According to Lynn, Pakistanis sound a lot like Welshmen speaking English: both have the same regular bumps in their words, the same cantering accent. Someone explained this by claiming that a high percentage of the Royal Welch Fusiliers were sent to India in the nineteenth century, but I don’t believe it.

A woman in a sari greeted me and I asked in English for the sweet goat cheese. Since she spoke only Pakistani she went to fetch her husband, who arrived and addressed me, naturally, in Norwegian. Okay, what the hell. I asked again for goat cheese, this time in Welsh. He tried English, but I’d got the devil in me, and besides, if I closed my eyes I could just persuade myself he came from Cardiganshire.

‘Esgusodwch fi, ond dw i’n chwilio am caws afr. Oes gaws afr dych chi? Dych chi’n siarad Cymraeg? Nag ydych? Dyma dreuni.’

However this sounds to you is how it must’ve sounded to the shop owners. I’m repentant now, but then I was on a roll. This was the most Welsh I’d spoken in three days.

Finally, amid a chorus line of hand and foot signals, and a stream of rollicking Welsh from me, we found the cheese. There were six different kinds. I took the red package just for the heck of it, walked directly into the counter, then bid them both a bewildering pnawn da, a phob hwyl.