Tale of the Fishwife

Because my bank in the U.S. cares deeply about my financial security, they recently took it upon themselves to cancel my VISA debit card. As one does in such circumstances, I called to thank them. After they asked me numerous penetrating personal questions to determine if I really was who I said I was, they explained that my spending patterns over the December holidays were erratic and that my peace of mind is their first priority. A few years ago, I might have adopted a savage, “How dare you, sir?” attitude. But now I’m an expat living in a country where I can hardly speak the language, so instead, after I’d been assured that a new card was in the mail, it went down something like this:

“Where y’all located?” I asked my customer service representative.

“We’re in the Atlanta area, sir,” the man said in a smooth southern drawl.

“Damn,” I said. “We sure did like Atlanta when we visited a few years ago.”

“Yes, sir, it’s a very nice place to live.”

“What’s the weather like in Atlanta just now?” I asked. “It’s not too cold here in Germany where I’m calling from, but the clouds are fierce. It’s probably why people drink so much booze in these Northern European places. All the darkness gets depressing.”

“The winters here are mild, sir.”

“I guess so. So what do you make of the Braves chances this year? Think they’ll turn things around?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir,” he replied. “I don’t follow baseball.”

“Oh,” I said. “What’s your favorite restaurant in Atla…”

“Sir,” he interrupted me, “can I do anything else for you?”

“No. No, you’ve been very helpful. I guess I should let you get back to work.”

“Thank you, sir. You be sure to call us if we can help you with any of your banking needs.”

I hung up the telephone, and turned to my wife who was lounging on the bed in her favorite negligee, looking at the pictures in a recent issue of Gala magazine.

“What the hell was that?” she asked.

“What?” I shot back. “What?!”

“That? That!” she said pointing at the phone.

Was I really chatting up the bank man?

“It felt good,” I said. “You know, talking American.”

***

When we first arrived in Berlin, I was desperate to integrate into the culture. So, while my wife worked, I spent 3 months in an intensive German course. My classmates were an ever-changing cast of characters made up of international players who fell into three different categories. My favorite group of learners were the earnest young men and women who desperately wanted to bone up on German while in the classroom, and desperately wanted to bone Germans when outside of it (va-va-voom). Then there were the youngsters who needed to learn the language so that they could eavesdrop on their new German spouses as their Ehemann or Ehefrau animatedly spoke to their German in-laws in German. Finally, there were the Americans.

The way I acted, you might’ve thought that I believed that just by standing in the vicinity of my compatriots I would end up catching scabies or worse. Having an overzealous Marine as a classmate didn’t help, of course. He would ask the teacher things like “How do you say ‘kill’ auf Deutsch?” and later, as he progressed, he seemingly knew a thousand different ways of saying, “I hope I go to Iraq and not Afghanistan. Afghanistan is langweilig.” I spent a lot of the time cringing behind my textbook. I even heard Private Peachfuzz tell a group of Eastern European students during a break that he couldn’t wait to finally kill a man so that he could know what it feels like. I was beginning to reach the end of my tether, and after a few weeks of this, a student from South Korea took me aside for a confidential chat.

“Are Americans more like you,” she asked me in her best English, “or him?”

“They’re more like you,” I told her.

She nodded her head indicating that she understood what I meant. I couldn’t wait to be finished with my class.

***

For that first year, I hated being a spokesperson for our country. I avoided questions about America as much as possible, and more than that, I avoided Americans, especially if I heard them speaking on the streets. But that doesn’t mean I completely ignored them. After Prenzlauerberg, Checkpoint Charlie is the area of town most populated with American tourists, and often, as I barreled up Freidrichstr. on my pink mountain bike, I would slow down and look forward to the stretch near the checkpoint so that I could ring my bell and holler at a chubby family from Tulsa or Salt Lake—”Achtung! Was ist los mit euch?!”—as they stood in the middle of the avenue taking photographs of the nice German man dressed in an American military uniform. Then I would giggle all the way to Unter den Linden as I imagined the family later discussing, over some nice mayonaissey Subway sandwiches, how every German they’d met, excepting for the man on the pink bike, was super duper nice.

Yes, I had grown cocky, jaded, and even, some might say, mean.

***

Flash forward to this past weekend.

I went to a very nice party up in Prenzlauer Berg that was attended by expats from all over the world, including several from the U.S. (Perhaps you were there?) The Times says that there are 13,000 Americans living here in Berlin, and at least a dozen of us were at that party sucking down bottles of Beck’s like it was a rare brew we might never taste again. I confess that I was a bit into my cups by the time the evening was over, but I can’t blame the booze for doing something I had never done in Germany. Nope, I didn’t seek out the Americans because I was drunk, I sought them out because I needed to speak American the way only Americans speak American. Desperately. For the first time since I arrived here, I truly didn’t feel like doing the slow talk (you know what I mean) or pronouncing every word with crystal clarity to make myself understood. I spoke in glorious idioms and dropped colloquial expressions with grace and aplomb. My mouth turned into a friggin’ slang machine. For a few hours I rarely used the phrases “in other words…” or “what I mean to say is….” And I wasn’t forced to lie to very nice people by saying, “No, I think your English is very good.” Oh, man, was I ever enjoying myself.

I grabbed another beer, and I approached an interesting looking bald man who was chatting to my wife.

“I teach German,” I heard him say, and then I grimaced as I heard my wife tell him that we’ve been trying to learn the language. Oh, no! I immediately began to plan my escape. Then, at once, the man switched into his native tongue. And then my wife answered him in German. I waited for a pause so that I could politely excuse myself and find another American to rap with, but on and on they went.

Suddenly, he was amidst a tirade explaining that it was the responsibility of German citizens to help foreigners learn the language. The language is the fabric of our society, he kept saying, and if you and other foreigners are ever going to fit in completely, you will have to learn our language. “The only way that will happen is if we stop being egotists who try to practice our English whenever afforded the opportunity. We must,” he said, “speak German with you, so that you can learn to speak German with us.” Wow, I told him, I’ve never heard it put that way before.

I was beginning to like this guy. The main reason that my German speaking skills have diminished since I took that initial 3 month course is that I can hardly find anyone to speak the language with me. Of course, I’m always the one who’s blamed. “You mus’ make zhe people already to speak only German whiz you!” many a German has told me in earnest. Maybe it’s true. But maybe my new bald friend is also right when he says that if my German friends refuse to speak German with me, maybe they’re not such good friends. Just as I was about to agree with him, and sadly, once I finally began to feel comfortable enough to speak to him in German, we were all called into another room.

“Excuse me,” he said in English as he stepped away with the crowd.

Before my wife and I joined the rest, I turned to her and whispered, “I understood every word.”

“Me too,” she said and smiled.

When we got into the living room, two of the party’s attendees—opera singers—were introducing an aria they were about to spontaneously perform. As they began to sing, even the tattooed and pierced hipsters among us grew quiet. Their voices were strong and beautiful, and they sang with such a passion like I’ve never seen. I saw one woman rubbing her arms as though they were covered with goose pimples. A man with a very trendy hairstyle had watery eyes. When it was over we all broke out in cheers because we really felt it, and not because we felt like we had to in order to be polite.

What did they sing about, you ask?

I haven’t a clue. It was in Italian, and I didn’t understand a word.