Language Lesson

 Language lesson.  

One thing I didn’t write about our stay in Kristovia,* I guess because it didn’t go anywhere, was the language lessons that our hotel clerk Tural arranged for us. We only went to the first.

     The woman that met us at the front door of her square little house was dressed like a fortune-teller, long, flowing flowered skirt, bright yellow blouse buttoned to her neck, three or four costume-jewelry necklaces of different lengths sprawling against it, and her hair tied up in a lime-green kerchief. But she didn’t look at all mysterious. She looked familiar. As if I’d met her briefly thirty years before. We’d spent an evening drinking Saki, smoking cigarettes and talking about Sartre. Not that either of us had read anything but Nausea and No Exit. Still, we had ideas about what existentialism ought to mean - some of them we agreed on, some of them we didn’t.

     But we couldn’t have met. She was Canadian from near Ottawa. She had never lived anywhere else, and I had never been there.

      Not long after that non-existent meeting, though, she met her husband (also “Tural”). He was from Pompeijo; he had a job prospect there. They moved, they married, and they had been in that city ever since.

     “Flora,” she said, when she met us at the door, extending her hand. “Roz,” Roz said. “Ted,” I said, both of us taking her hand. She invited us through the house into the kitchen. She offered us coffee [khavay]*. We would just get to know each other this “lesson,” to see how we got along. Still, she would also teach us a few words and phrases: “cream” [krem], “sugar” [shekhar]; “hello” [zahlahm], “thank you” [chock-teckshur], and “good-bye” [zhoshbeshtlick]. Also: “What is this?”- pointing [Boo-nuddeer?], so we could learn other words as we went along.

     “Boo-nuddeer?” Roz asked, pointing at the clock. “Zaaht,” Flora said.

She asked us what brought us here. “A tramp steamer,” Roz said. “Guhmee,” Flora said, “ship.” And the two laughed.

     The back door opened, and in came the girl I had been thinking I remembered from thirty years ago. It was Zayna from the restaurant, maybe thirty hours ago, who’d let Nemet do all the talking to us.

     “Hi,” she said. “We meet again.” Her English was perfect. She sounded like she’d lived all her life in Ottawa.

The Thursday Special from Pompeijo, Kristovia arrives in our town.
(Intermediate stop at Union Station, Washington, D.C.)

Yet, it was Nemet that called now. He and Zayna were in D.C. [day-ssay]. They could come to see us? - it wasn’t far? “The ffōn ssay sso.” “And wass a train. It comig Tursday?”

     The call came Sunday afternoon. So now, I was trying to get Dr. Feight to explain to me how I could get a phone call from someone that didn’t exist outside of a story I had made up, or that my addled brain had concocted for me. “This is not like the letters I get from Moira,” I was saying. “This isn’t even a real place,” I said.

     Dr. Feight didn’t say anything, until the pause lasted what must have been at least two minutes. Then, “Go on,” he said.

03.26.19

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  * See beginning here.
 ** The pronunciations are according to what I heard. I have no idea how any of the words should be spelled.