Marta and I had been living in her home town of Salamanca, Spain for six months, and my Spanish was still very shaky, but I tried my best to make sense of what my father-in-law--mi suegro--Cipriano, was trying to tell me over the phone.
“Tu abuelo se murio,” he said in his gruff voice. “Your grandfather has died.” He told me that my brother Pete, who was planning to visit us the following month, had called to give us the sad news. An ice-hot jolt shot out from the center of my body to the fingertips and toes, which immediately gave way to a numbness originating in the chest that began to seep slowly out toward the extremities. I stood there a while in Charo’s hall, unmoving, staring down at the pale green and white speckles in the tiles of the floor, the phone gripped far too tightly in my hand, as if letting go would bring another death in the family. But even this incapacitating dread let go its grasp when a timid voice piped up inside my head and asked, “Which one?” Disjointed images of the previous year’s holidays came flashing up. Grandpa Hudson’s lung cancer had gone into remission, I thought. And he had looked great at Christmas. And Pop Williams was walking ten miles a day or something last I heard…
I don’t remember how the conversation ended. I only know it ended awkwardly, just like every conversation with my suegro. I hung up the phone, told Marta, and within minutes we were rushing downtown to call my parents from the international phone center. When my mom came on the line with a happy, playful tone—“Andrew, what a nice surprise! Hey, Dan, get on the other line. It’s the world traveler!”—I knew that something wasn’t quite right, but I had to clear things up.
“Mom, did Grandpa die?”
“What? Of course not,” she said. “Why on Earth are you calling to ask a question like that?”
“But Pete called, Mom. He talked to Marta’s dad. He said…”
Well now, what had he said exactly? This was the key to the mystery. My brother, who knew “dos coronas con limon” but little else, had entered into a tenuous dialogue via trans-Atlantic link with a man whose English was limited to a handful of words, like water, which in Spain means “toilet.”
Over the next few weeks Marta and I made a game out of guessing which Spanish words Pete must have strung together for Cipriano to think that my grandpa had passed away.
As we suspected, my brother was only calling to let us know when he was coming to visit. Since Marta and I had no phone, Pete knew he’d have to pass on his flight information to my Spanish-speaking in-laws, so—no worries—he had his trusty Berlitz English-Spanish pocket dictionary handy for the call.
Unable to construct a meaningful sentence, he must have said something like “Yo—ir—vuelo—Madrid,” which translates, “I—to go—flight—Madrid.” Now that may be choppy, but it is comprehensible. Unfortunately, however, my suegro wasn’t reading; he was listening, and what he heard must have sounded like his lengua madre, his mother tongue passing through a meat grinder.
But the question remained: How did Cipriano take this to mean that grandpa has passed away? To begin with, it only takes a single vowel to turn vuelo into abuelo, since ‘b’ and ‘v’ sound the same in Spanish. This miraculously transformed my brother’s “flight” into our “grandfather.” Then he must have mistaken Madrid (the city where Pete would arrive in Spain) for the verb morir, meaning “to die.”
Who could have guessed that my grandfather’s fate would one day dangle between the mispronunciation and misunderstanding of two simple words? Such are the dangers of bilingual word-play, and, considering the great story we now have to tell, such are the rewards.
* * * * * * *
In the endless struggle to improve my Spanish I’ve often had to overcome barriers, and each time it seems like the first scramble over las barreras, the first crossing over las fronteras the frontiers of language.
The first time I started counting uno, dos, tres was so long ago I don’t really remember. The first barrera I recall presented itself when I was seven or eight, when my parents signed me up for a summer school class in Spanish. After counting proudly desde uno hasta diez, I was shocked to find that los numeros en espanol didn’t stop there. I listened to my classmates go on beyond veinte while I grew red in the face, vowing to drop out and never speak a word of that preposterous language again.
I broke that promise to myself when I decided to give it a second chance in Chelita’s high school Spanish class. (The teacher went by the name Chelita to lend herself more of a latin flair, but it didn’t do much good. We all knew she was really Miss Stromwasser.) As Andres, I spent three years charlando el espanol con Chelita, but my friends and I wasted most of the time goofing off in class and making poor Chelita miserable.
If I had only known that one day I would travel overseas to fall in love with una Espanola, I might have taken my foreign language studies more seriously. Then again, maybe not. After all, Marta was already fluent in English when we met, so we could communicate en ingles sin problema. But oh, how I wanted to impress! Cupid’s arrows gave me the foolish courage to communicate in her lengua madre. Put on the spot, I could find nothing to talk about. Marta asked me gently, “Cuentame un cuento”—tell me a story. But all I could remember from three years of Chelita’s high school Spanish was the sad story of la pobre Marianela, que era muy fea y deforme. Poor Marianela was very ugly and deformed. I warned Marta, but she wanted to hear it anyway, so I did my best. Here’s a translation in English, without all the stuttering, sputtering, and errores gramaticales:
“Poor Marianela was a baby. Her parents left her on the bridge. A dog came. He was very curious. He pushed her over the bridge with his nose. It was an accident. Marianela fell. The river was dry. Poor Marianela. She fell down to the rocks and stones. She didn’t die. After she was very ugly and deformed. No one liked her. But she was still very nice. Poor Marianela. One day everything changed. Mario came to the village. He was a blind man. It wasn’t important that Marianela was ugly and deformed. She was very nice. That was important. Marianela thought Mario was nice, too. Then they lived together and had a happy life. The end.”
This was the most Spanish I’d ever spoken at one time. Marta coached me the whole time, but I was telling the story. It felt wonderful. After that, she would regularly slip in una expression aqui, una frase alla, and I was eager to use them. I learned to call her carino, and mi cielo, instead of “sweetie-pie” and “honey.”
* * * * * * * *
The next significant frontier-crossing was both linguistic and geographic: the moment we stepped onto the soil of mainland Spain—for Marta a homecoming she had been dreading, for me a first meeting of the in-laws—a dreadful enough prospect without the language barrier to compound things. I really do wish I could forget the excruciating car ride with Marta’s parents from the port city of Valencia to their condo in Oropesa, an hour’s drive up the east coast. Nothing could have prepared me for the non-stop staccato of Marta’s mother, mi suegra, who kept turning around from the front seat of the car, asking me questions, rapid fire, one after the other: “Bueno, Andrew, que te parece de Espana? Es precioso, no? Que has visto en Mallorca? Es una isla divina, no? Las playas, el agua, los pueblos. Tienes hambre? Tienes sed? Seguro que quieres comer algo, no? Pero que te pasa? Porque no contestas?” Marta had to translate nearly every word. Most questions either revealed a patriotic pride in the beauty of her native land, or a near obsessive concern about the ravenous hunger and thirst she imagined I possessed, regardless of how many times Marta told her I was fine, que no nececitaba nada ahora. Well, maybe just un poquito de agua para la boca seca—a little water for my mouth that seemed to be getting drier by the minute. Though Marta’s performance as simultaneous interpreter was awe-inspiring, I couldn’t help feeling helpless and stupid myself.
We spent two painful weeks in that apartment con los ojos de mis suegros following our every move, sus oidos scrutinizing our every word. I felt embarrassed and even rude to be speaking English, but what else could I do? There wasn’t a moment of privacy, except when we went to sleep.
There were moments of absolute panic, when I’d feel the sweat spreading under my arms, dripping down my back, beading on my face. I’d throw nervous glances over at Marta, who’d throw them right back. I had desperate thoughts that I was unable to express in words:
Please, Marta’s mother—Emilia, right? Amalia? My God, I can’t even remember your name right now! Could you please speak a little slower? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Do you think I’m as much of an idiot as I feel like right now?
Please, Cipriano, could you pronounce your words a little slower, a little clearer? What is it you’re asking me to do? I can’t understand your mumbling! Why do you keep staring at me with that frown? Let me out of here!
And this was only the beginning. So many times I’d stare back at my suegra and say “Que?” Oh, wonderful. How eloquent. You knew that word before you ever even took a Spanish class.
“Ay,” Emilia would say shaking her head compassionately, “no entiende nada, el pobre.” “The poor guy doesn’t understand a thing.” Well, I understood that much.
“Si, si, yo entiendo,” I’d manage, but not much more. Still, I’d try. I had to. There wasn’t a choice anymore. I’d have to learn to spit it out or choke on it.
As time went by my suegra, bless her heart, began to slow down when she spoke to me, and to simplify her language. I knew it was extra work, and appreciated her thoughtfulness. But my suegro? It was a lost cause from the start. Whether he was unwilling or unable I may never know, but Cipriano’s words always came out as a gravelly grumble, whether he was speaking to me or anyone else. On the day we left Spain, after having lived for ten months in Salamanca, I could still hardly understand him when he bid me adios and wished me un buen viaje.
Learning a second language by total immersion was a continuously nerve-racking, brain-tiring process. I was forced, time and time again, to kick my head gears into overdrive just to keep up with simple, everyday conversations, to sink my teeth into the meat of a particular message—on TV, on the radio, on the street, and especially around the table when we’d get together with Marta’s family and friends.
I remember long visits from aunts, uncles, cousins, and old school pals. Everyone, it seemed, would be talking at the same time. How they could speak and listen to multiple narratives at the same time in any language was mystifying to me. If I had had the appropriate meter, I suppose they all would have averaged about thirty words per second, keeping in mind that your average Spanish word throws in a few extra syllables just for fun. (Example: The little flying mammal we refer to as the single-syllable “bat” becomes the five-syllable mouthful “murcielago.” Well, in the midst of this linguistic maelstrom I’d sit jerking my eyes from one babbling mouth to the next, desperately trying to latch onto the train of thought, only to be interrupted by, “Bueno, y que crees, Andrew?” Someone, meaning to make me feel a part of the conversation, would ask, “Well, Andrew, what do you think?” All talking would stop and all eyes would turn to me, waiting.
If you’ve ever had one of those dreams where you find yourself in a crowded public place dressed only in your underwear, or less, then I’m sure you have a pretty good idea what it felt like in these situations. There’d be nowhere to hide, nothing to cover myself with, no one to turn to. So what would I say? “Pues, no lo se.” The cop out: “Well, I don’t know.” The pressure would be off for the moment, but I’d feel cowardly, unable to rise to the challenge.
Some days I prayed for a stop to the continuous stream of puro castellano. The language was a steady barrier between me and the world all around. I now sympathize with dogs when they get that strange, tortured look whenever human beings talk to them. I’m sure I would get that same look on my face when spoken to in Spanish: head slightly cocked to one side, eyes wide open—questioning, eager, but hopelessly lost.
Nevertheless, I stuck with it. I worked hard at it, and I believe it has paid off. I can now express myself fairly fluently in Spanish, and understand most of what I hear. But I still yearn for better word command, the power to speak with more color, more grace. Marta says, “Hablas muy bien, carino,” but she’s never has had the heart to add to my discouragement.
The best I can say is that it’s an ongoing struggle that demands untiring determination. Whenever I find myself lacking in spirit, I only need to look back over the battle-torn landscape I’ve crossed to get to where I am today. Considering the distance, and the difficulty, why should I still feel as though I were in no-man’s-land?
As I peer into the haze ahead, I realize there may not be any paradise of perfect fluency at the end of my journey, only future barreras to surmount y fronteras to cross—tiny, isolated skirmishes that simply come with the territory.
¡Adelante!
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