Читать книгу Travels in an Old Tongue: Touring the World Speaking Welsh - Pamela Petro - Страница 37

Rhiannon and Ed both have hangovers, and I empathize (the word Norway still makes my brain throb). In the middle of my shower this morning, just after I’d shampooed my hair, the water ran to a trickle, then vanished altogether. Marguerite had to wake Ed, who uncomplainingly performed some voodoo with the kitchen door and made it flow again.

After breakfast we leave them with reluctance to catch the hour-long train to Amsterdam. It’s bliss to have left most of our stuff back in Paris; for this ten-day trip we’ve borrowed two small bags of Nina’s which are a cinch to hoist after our wretched backpacks. We’d been too clever by half in getting bags that convert into standard, hand-held suitcases. They were supposed to be a cagey merger of form and function, but lacking a frame they ride low on our torsos, converting us into the image of tall box turtles on holiday, and swing from side to side if we walk too fast. The swinging action has a dire effect on one’s panties, which tend to roll up in a tight little ball under the buttocks.

No packs today, no Welsh. The Dutch, bless them, speak English. All the Dutch: the Asians and blacks as well as the big blond people. Unlike Norway, it’s a pleasure in Holland to have our expectations assaulted and thwarted by the diversity of the population. The day is warm and our shoulders don’t ache, and in this city where you can get a rush from ready pot as easily as from Vermeer’s lapis lazuli blues and deep golds – probably for the same price, since the Rijksmuseum costs a fortune – we choose to sit on the edge of a canal and lick icecream as tourists line up to visit Anne Frank’s house.

Geoff has offered to put us up for the night. He lives in Lelylaan, which is pronounced Lay-lee-lan and sounds to me like a suitable home for Winken, Blinken and Nod. That it’s really a nondescript suburb of Amsterdam doesn’t change my opinion. Besides, Geoff, in short white shorts, legs splayed over the side of his chair, head framed in the crook of a high intensity lamp that gives a luminescent sheen to his cropped hair, has the off-beat appeal of a high-strung, hospitable elf.

‘What can I get you? There’s some food. A sandwich? Beer? Wine? Hashish? Maybe a cuppa tea?’ At the barbecue he and I both clung to Welsh, no matter how halting our tongues; tonight neither of us makes so much as an attempt.

I choose wine and he sweetly brings me a glass and my own bottle. He seems disappointed that Marguerite – who projects a frail quality when she’s tired – wants nothing more than water, and appeals to her throughout the evening to let him in some way provide for her. I sense a crush in the making.

Geoff translates from Dutch to English for a living but has taken up Welsh as a hobby. He recently spent two weeks at Nant Gwrtheyrn, a famous language school on the Lleyn Peninsula in North Wales, and has a firmer grip on structure and vocabulary than I do, though there’s a nervous tic in his cadence. He puts on a tape he made off Radio Cymru of news broadcasts and Welsh rock music, and for a long time there’s a sequence of synthesized wails and human screams. Coupled with the white walls and high intensity wattage, it makes for compelling evidence that we’ve slipped into an innocuous version of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.