Читать книгу The Risk of Returning, Second Edition - Shirley Nelson - Страница 12

At eight o’clock the next morning I sat in the courtyard of the school, surrounded by tubs of flowers and the civilized murmur of two dozen voices in assorted languages. The voices belonged to the other students, some of whom were already at work with tutors at tables set up in the sheltered periphery.

Carlos Méndez buzzed about. He had just made a little speech of welcome to all newcomers, explaining the immersion system of language study and emphasizing his “one personal request,” that Guatemalan politics and current affairs not be discussed here on “these neutral school grounds,” either in class work or personal conversations. Neutral between what and what, I wondered, but didn’t ask. No one did. He actually requested a show of hands in promise. I raised mine, not high, a palm up, as others did—everyone, I assumed.

I sat alone with a cup of coffee, waiting for my “very fine tutor” to arrive. The hiatus was welcome. The sun had not yet cut through the morning mist and a moist sweet warmth enveloped the courtyard. In a tree just a few yards from me, two tiny yellow birds flew from branch to branch. The guard who had admitted me yesterday was now gardening, turning the earth under rose bushes. A woman in Mayan clothing made fresh coffee in an urn.

So far I’d met two of the other students, a Peace Corps veteran with a long gray ponytail, back now to polish his Spanish for another project, and a nun from Belgium in a white habit, and one of the teachers, a young man from El Salvador I hoped would turn out to be my own tutor. But he was not. My tutor was delayed by a personal matter, Carlos Méndez told me, but she should be here any moment.

So I knew it would be a woman, and I was thrown off guard when a man entered the courtyard. Nothing else I saw in that first glance told me otherwise—height, shoulders, chinos, white long-sleeved shirt, a black baseball cap with the Yankees logo, and the stride of a lanky guy, a little lift at the top of each step. He was carrying a big multi-colored bag. I rose uncertainly as he approached me. “Buenos días,” I said.

“Señor Peterson?” The voice was light, clearly feminine.

I nodded.

“Me llamo Caterina. Yo soy su tutora.”

“Glad to meet you,” I said. I was startled by her height. If she was shorter than me, it was not by much. I surveyed the ground we stood on, to see if it was even. It was, and she was wearing sneakers.

“Six two,” she said, following my eyes. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” She extended her hand. It was thin, muscular. I released the grip quickly. If it were not for her height I’d have classified her as Guatemalan, or of some Latin American origin, dark eyes, black hair—tucked up into that cap, I saw now.

“Shall I call you señora?” I asked. She was wearing a wedding band.

“Oh. No. Solo Caterina.” Her lips worked, as if she was resisting a smile. “Don Teodoro?”

It took me a second. “No,” I answered. “Solo Ted, please.”

“Good. In that case, I’m Catherine.”

“North American,” I said, feeling a letdown.

“Catherine O’Brien, potato Irish from Milwaukee. I married a Guatemalan.” She paused, the little smile returning. “Disappointed? You wanted a chapín?”

“A what?”

“A nacional?”

“No. Makes no difference.”

“Actually, it’s unusual for this school to pair male and female anyway, but it seems I was the only available tutor.”

“I think I’m lucky to have one at all. Even a Yankee fan.”

“Oh, the hat. Actually, I’m not a fan, of anything. Shall we get down to business?” She pulled a notebook out of her bag.

“You’re the boss,” I said.

She nodded, as if there were no question. “Let’s talk English for a while. We’ll be immersed in Spanish soon enough. Here’s how things go. We’ll be working all day, five days, six hours a day, with a two hour noon break, and assignments to do in the evening. We’ll speak Spanish almost entirely and we expect you to speak Spanish in your residence, at meals, and as much as possible in all other outside contacts. Spanish TV, radio, newspapers. Does that seem manageable to you?”

“I’ll limp along,” I said. I was judging her age. She could be younger than she looked. Her face was narrow, bones prominent. A few threads of gray in her hair caught the light where they had escaped the cap. No make-up.

“We usually start with a diagnostic test,” she said. “But first I’d like your own estimate of where you stand, with the language, that is.”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, good, that’s something to build on.” She gave a short laugh. Her laugh, unlike the rest of her, was round and mellow, as if another person lived inside her for that purpose. “Your application doesn’t mention language courses, high school or college.”

“I took French and Latin. Not that I remember much.”

“Not Spanish?”

“No.”

“So, then, you’ve never studied Spanish and you have no proficiency.”

I didn’t answer, though she gave me several seconds, her eyes on my face. There was an intensity about her that put me on edge, a certain alertness that brought something to her eyes—not a spark, but a further darkening of the irises.

“What brings you here, to language school?” she asked then. “Do you mind telling me?”

Did everybody here ask personal questions? “Well, it’s not a passion for the language, if that’s what you mean,” I said.

“Well, as a matter of fact,” she answered dryly, “passion is the furthest thing from my mind. I just think it might help if I have some idea of what you’re hoping to get here. You can study Spanish anywhere, of course.”

“I have some family business to take care of,” I told her.

“All right. Is there any aspect of the language you think might be important, in doing this business?”

There was no way to even contemplate an answer to that.

“Look,” she said. “I don’t care a rat’s patooty about your personal business. All I want is to do the job right. If you can’t help me, that’s okay. We’ll blunder along.”

“I’m just a little surprised at the interrogation,” I said.

“Interrogation?” She paused. I thought she was going to laugh, but she only produced the reluctant smile. She had nice teeth. In my present mood, they were a little disquieting. “I think this is not your first trip south of the U.S. border,” she said.

So she knew. I answered. “I lived here once. As a kid.”

Her eyes darkened. “Your accent gave you away.”

“My accent?”

“How you said buenos días, how you pronounced Guatemala. Yankees work their heads off to get that just right. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’d rather it didn’t raise expectations.”

“You can trust me. If you’re relearning an early language, it makes a big difference. Were you born here?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, then you are actually a Guatemalan?”

“I’ve never thought of it that way.”

“You’re a U.S. citizen then, by choice at age eighteen.”

“Correct.”

“You haven’t been back?”

“No.”

“And how old were you when you left? May I ask?”

“Seven.”

“Seven years old.” She stared at me as if I were still a child, a naughty one. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “Unless you were hermetically sealed in some Yankee bubble-house for the first seven years of your life, you spoke Guatemalan Spanish—fluently, I expect.”

“As fluently as a seven-year-old might, I suppose.”

“Did you read it?”

“At an elementary level. A bit of grammar in school, as I recall.” With my mother as first classroom teacher, a stickler for grammar, but I didn’t say that. Ordered by the same mother to never speak the language again. I didn’t say that either. “The truth is, I haven’t used it in years and I can’t account for what I’ll remember,” I said. “Isn’t that what’s important?”

“Have you reviewed it at all?”

“Not really.”

“It should come back quickly.” She rattled off something in Spanish.

“You’ve lost me,” I told her.

“Old expression. ‘Those raised by lions will always know how to growl.’ I’ve been speaking Spanish for twenty years, and if I stopped, I’d get rusty pretty fast. But I’ll never forget English. My guess is you’ll find your Spanish right where you left it.”

“In the lion’s den? Then who is to say I won’t be eaten?” I thought that was rather funny, but she asked, “Is that why you’ve never been back?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “Well, why don’t you ask the questions for a while. You must have some.”

And you, Catherine O’Brien from Milwaukee, what brought you to this country? I didn’t ask. I didn’t really want to know. Three whole weeks in her presence, under her tutelage? “Exactly what are we going to do for six hours a day?” I asked.

“Does that seem like a long time to you?”

“Possibly an eternity.”

“I’ll try to surprise you.”

The diagnostic test took an hour. It was largely a matter of translation, to and from, without a dictionary. I performed as I expected. My original use of the language had been almost completely oral, to say nothing of childlike, and I found little relationship between that and what I saw now on paper.

“How was it?” Catherine asked, as I handed it back to her in the office.

“Well, I’m sure I didn’t ace it.”

She looked it over. “No. You’ve got a ways to go, all right.”

After lunch she said she wanted to test my ear. She would ask a series of questions and I would do my best to answer. This time I was free to use the dictionary.

I was exhausted in half an hour. It was like a grueling game of singles tennis, even though we were following the most basic dialogue. I dove into the dictionary, my glasses on and off. Hello, how are you? I’m fine, thank you. How do you like the weather? The weather is beautiful. What day is this? Monday. It’s Monday, lunes. What is today’s date? Date. Ah, give me a minute. August 5th. El cinco de agosto. There. What year? Year. Uh. Two minutes, please. —One thousand, mil. Nine hundred, novecientos. Eighty seven, ochenta y siete. There, good for me. She didn’t seem impressed. More questions. “Hable más despacio, por favor,” I said. Slow down, please. She had offered me that sentence herself, in case I needed it, but it did no good. At last I threw up my hands in frustration. Look, she said, if she spoke any more slowly she would distort the pronunciation. Guatemalan Spanish was slow, anyway, archaic even. That was the Spanish of my childhood, wasn’t it, the language of my heart?

“Heart and mind” was the phrase she used, corazon y mente. She repeated those words, dragging them out teasingly. To my confusion, I found myself translating them to other sounds. Tammee. Na-beel. That’s how they echoed phonetically, in Mam, out of the cave of years.

“What section of the country did you live in?” Catherine asked.

“Las montañas,” I said.

“Mountains where?”

I shrugged, pretending ignorance. We were strolling in the courtyard by this time, as other teams were doing, the school turned peripatetic. It was almost four o’clock and the sky was beginning to cloud over. I turned to face her. “Listen!” I said, in English.

“Oye!” she corrected. “Español, por favor. Oye.”

“Listen!” I said again, in English. “We can make this easier. All I’m after is a functional level, just whatever I need for my —.” I discarded “purposes,” then “search,” then “research,” and landed on “agenda.” That sounded too stuffy, but Catherine said, “Good. That’s what we’ll do, just get you ready for your agenda.”

Did she hit that word a little too hard? Never mind, the day was over. I couldn’t have been more thankful. I ran back to my quarters through a gusty, purgative shower.