How Do You Say "Unfaithful" in French?
Monday, May 08, 2006
I srudied abroad for a semester in college. The benefits of this-and the amazing people I met and things I learned-could fill an entire blog in and of itself (and I wish blogging had been around at that time). There were some really moving things that happened, some absolutely hilarious moments, and some downright scary experiences. One particular conversation has stuck with me for some reason; I've hesitated to write about it because there isn't really a point or a punchline. But so much in life doesn't have either, so why hold back?
Oh, and, ps, this is a really long post.
I was traveling with Sarah, one of my best friends, and a random girl who had been on her program named Kat, for two weeks before we all headed back to the US for the summer and our senior years of college. Kat was from Texas and that's about all I know about her. She was very nice, but she traveled with us because it was convenient for her, and we never really connected as a threesome. I feel bad about that--not that it was my doing, but it must have been a little strange to be with two girls who were good friends with a long history as you traveled around, seeing something new (and often amazing) every day. But for the most part, it worked out. We met in Nice to start the travels; then Kat wanted to go to Florence, which Sarah and I had already seen and felt we shouldn't go back to. So we separated--Sarah and I hopped a train to Lake Como instead--and planned to meet in Venice before heading off to Budapest.
When Sarah and I arrived in Venice, we spent some time looking for Kat. I recall stopping at several internet cafes so I suspect we were just communicating via email. Somehow we found her (we were slightly annoyed, as whatever plan we had set hadn't worked and we'd blown an afternoon trying to find her while she sightsaw around Venice) and went to the train station--we had all locked our stuff in the lockers there for the day, and had about 15 minutes to grab it and hop the only direct train to Budapest. Sarah and I got our packs and turned expectantly to Kat, who was staring open-mouthed at her empty locker.
Kat hadn't properly locked the locker, and someone had made off with her entire pack: all her clothes, shoes, extra money, mementos, everything. It was devastating, and also supremely annoying. I felt terrible for her and also couldn't stop wondering how she'd messed up a very easy lock that had directions written in fifteen languages with pictoral explanations alongside each step. (This explains part of why the threesome didn't work.) We went to the station's police office and filed a report, but I held out little hope for any resolution. I'd been pickpocketed in Paris; I knew that 99% of the time it was a completely lost cause. There was little violence to worry about when I was there, but man, you could go broke being pickpocketed in some way, even if you were vigilant and street smart.
None of us spoke Italian and though the officer on duty spoke a bit of English, the lack of either party's fluency in either tongue let to a lot of yelling-Kat subscribed to the idea that if you just SAID SOMETHING LOUDER THEY WOULD UNDERSTAND EVEN IF THEY DIDN'T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE. I understood her frustration, but was mortified by her reaction. Sarah and I eventually stopped trying to help and just sat there agape, feeling bad for her and guilty that we were trying to figure out how many days this would shave off of our planned travels. Could we still do Budapest, Krakow, and Munich? Was it worth scrapping Budapest and maybe stopping in Vienna since we had to switch trains there anyway in our travels? Would we make full use of our Eurorail passes if we switched it up?
Self-centered, much? We both still feel a little bad about that.
Anyway, I still don't understand how this happened, and all I can think is that someone was watching over Kat. She must have had a whole big barrel of good karma and luck stashed somewhere, because apparently a station worker had realized that Kat's locker wasn't secure and had taken her pack to the baggage check area, where we got it and found everything intact. All I have to say is: luuuucky.
By this point we had missed the train, and had to take an overnight train to Vienna, switch stations, and catch a connection to Budapest. We had two hours to kill, but weren't about to put our bags back in the lockers. So we put together a picnic and settled on a bench near the station awaiting our train.
While we were waiting, a train conductor came over to us. He was Italian and middle-aged, and he seemed really agitated. He kept saying, "parlate italiano?" over and over. We didn't really respond-I knew he was asking us if we spoke Italian but my strategy in these situations was to just ignore them so they would go away, a strategy that had worked like a charm on the metro and whatnot. He started to yell, and so I looked up at him and said "no" in hopes of ending this right then. Then he looked back at me and said, "francese?" and held my eye contact, and for some reason I couldn't lie to him.
I speak conversational French but am in no way fluent. He started telling me in heavily Italian-accented, semi-broken French about how he had found a letter to his wife in their mailbox and he wanted me to translate it from English into French for him so that he knew what it said. I was taken aback and didn't really know what to do, and in my indecision I started reading it.
It's funny how language works. I spent so much of my time in France describing the words I was looking for. I can get around-order food, ask directions, inquire about tours and movie times and train schedules, and do it all with a good enough accent to be taken for a Swede. But when it comes to actual conversation, I never have the full vocabulary I need, and I wound up saying things like "angry, but with passion, and feeling inadequate, and sad about being inadequate, and mad that someone else is not inadequate, and wishing you were not inadequate" and someone would say "oui, la jalousie!" and voila! I knew how to say jealousy. (That's a bad example, because I have no idea how to say inadequate in French, and have known how to say jealousy since I was 13, and that's a terrible decription of jealousy to boot, but you get the picture).
This extended to my little translation exercise that day in Venice. The writing on the card was passionate and straightforward, but I didn't know how to faithfully translate it into French. Some of it was easy-I think it started with something like "My love, I am here in the United States and I miss you so much every moment." Okay, that I can handle, no problem. Then it got tricky. "If we were here together, we could love the way we were meant to, freely" and "I know our hearts are true and this love is real-come be with me, share the future we are meant to have and let us build our dreams together as we have always wanted." OK. Hm. That passage presented a myriad of problems--"build our dreams"? "Share the future"? These are phrases that I couldn't translate exactly, especially given my limited skills regarding French, not to mention the fact that they involved complicated tenses and conjugations (and those are not my strong suit, I pretty much speak French entirely in the present). I had to stretch a twelve-line postcard into a 15 minute explanation of the feelings behind the postcard, which had to be excruciating for the conductor because I barely made it through.
When I finished, he was silent for a beat, and then he started to talk to me. He was in love with his wife. She had been in trouble-I didn't quite catch what type or how-and he had taken her and her daughter in. They were his family now. He had done everything for them. He had given them a home and money. They were happy, or so he thought. He was alternately angry and devastated. I think he knew the guy-I got the sense this wasn't a surprise and he said something about how he thought this was finished now-and he kept walking away and then coming back to tell me another aspect of it all. It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. I just remember being transfixed, watching this complete and total stranger unload all of this onto me, a girl over 20 years his junior, in his second language. It was surreal. He finally stopped talking and I handed him the card before he walked away.
Kat and Sarah sat there while I explained the situation (they spoke Spanish), and I believe Kat's response was something like, "that's insane. Wait, aren't you sooooo glad I got my bag back?"
I always wonder what happened to him and his wife and stepdaughter. Did they work things out? Did she leave him? If she didn't, are they happy now? Is she quietly sad-does she feel like she owes it to him to stay, and that's why she does? Or did she go to New York to be with her lover? And if so, is she still here?
Anyway, a word of advice-if you're going to cheat on your husband with a man from another country, do not think your lover can just send you a postcard in a language your husband doesn't speak, because your husband will think it's suspect and will totally take that card and find a young tourist from the country of your beloved, and you will be busted.
Oh, and, ps, this is a really long post.
I was traveling with Sarah, one of my best friends, and a random girl who had been on her program named Kat, for two weeks before we all headed back to the US for the summer and our senior years of college. Kat was from Texas and that's about all I know about her. She was very nice, but she traveled with us because it was convenient for her, and we never really connected as a threesome. I feel bad about that--not that it was my doing, but it must have been a little strange to be with two girls who were good friends with a long history as you traveled around, seeing something new (and often amazing) every day. But for the most part, it worked out. We met in Nice to start the travels; then Kat wanted to go to Florence, which Sarah and I had already seen and felt we shouldn't go back to. So we separated--Sarah and I hopped a train to Lake Como instead--and planned to meet in Venice before heading off to Budapest.
When Sarah and I arrived in Venice, we spent some time looking for Kat. I recall stopping at several internet cafes so I suspect we were just communicating via email. Somehow we found her (we were slightly annoyed, as whatever plan we had set hadn't worked and we'd blown an afternoon trying to find her while she sightsaw around Venice) and went to the train station--we had all locked our stuff in the lockers there for the day, and had about 15 minutes to grab it and hop the only direct train to Budapest. Sarah and I got our packs and turned expectantly to Kat, who was staring open-mouthed at her empty locker.
Kat hadn't properly locked the locker, and someone had made off with her entire pack: all her clothes, shoes, extra money, mementos, everything. It was devastating, and also supremely annoying. I felt terrible for her and also couldn't stop wondering how she'd messed up a very easy lock that had directions written in fifteen languages with pictoral explanations alongside each step. (This explains part of why the threesome didn't work.) We went to the station's police office and filed a report, but I held out little hope for any resolution. I'd been pickpocketed in Paris; I knew that 99% of the time it was a completely lost cause. There was little violence to worry about when I was there, but man, you could go broke being pickpocketed in some way, even if you were vigilant and street smart.
None of us spoke Italian and though the officer on duty spoke a bit of English, the lack of either party's fluency in either tongue let to a lot of yelling-Kat subscribed to the idea that if you just SAID SOMETHING LOUDER THEY WOULD UNDERSTAND EVEN IF THEY DIDN'T SPEAK THE LANGUAGE. I understood her frustration, but was mortified by her reaction. Sarah and I eventually stopped trying to help and just sat there agape, feeling bad for her and guilty that we were trying to figure out how many days this would shave off of our planned travels. Could we still do Budapest, Krakow, and Munich? Was it worth scrapping Budapest and maybe stopping in Vienna since we had to switch trains there anyway in our travels? Would we make full use of our Eurorail passes if we switched it up?
Self-centered, much? We both still feel a little bad about that.
Anyway, I still don't understand how this happened, and all I can think is that someone was watching over Kat. She must have had a whole big barrel of good karma and luck stashed somewhere, because apparently a station worker had realized that Kat's locker wasn't secure and had taken her pack to the baggage check area, where we got it and found everything intact. All I have to say is: luuuucky.
By this point we had missed the train, and had to take an overnight train to Vienna, switch stations, and catch a connection to Budapest. We had two hours to kill, but weren't about to put our bags back in the lockers. So we put together a picnic and settled on a bench near the station awaiting our train.
While we were waiting, a train conductor came over to us. He was Italian and middle-aged, and he seemed really agitated. He kept saying, "parlate italiano?" over and over. We didn't really respond-I knew he was asking us if we spoke Italian but my strategy in these situations was to just ignore them so they would go away, a strategy that had worked like a charm on the metro and whatnot. He started to yell, and so I looked up at him and said "no" in hopes of ending this right then. Then he looked back at me and said, "francese?" and held my eye contact, and for some reason I couldn't lie to him.
I speak conversational French but am in no way fluent. He started telling me in heavily Italian-accented, semi-broken French about how he had found a letter to his wife in their mailbox and he wanted me to translate it from English into French for him so that he knew what it said. I was taken aback and didn't really know what to do, and in my indecision I started reading it.
It's funny how language works. I spent so much of my time in France describing the words I was looking for. I can get around-order food, ask directions, inquire about tours and movie times and train schedules, and do it all with a good enough accent to be taken for a Swede. But when it comes to actual conversation, I never have the full vocabulary I need, and I wound up saying things like "angry, but with passion, and feeling inadequate, and sad about being inadequate, and mad that someone else is not inadequate, and wishing you were not inadequate" and someone would say "oui, la jalousie!" and voila! I knew how to say jealousy. (That's a bad example, because I have no idea how to say inadequate in French, and have known how to say jealousy since I was 13, and that's a terrible decription of jealousy to boot, but you get the picture).
This extended to my little translation exercise that day in Venice. The writing on the card was passionate and straightforward, but I didn't know how to faithfully translate it into French. Some of it was easy-I think it started with something like "My love, I am here in the United States and I miss you so much every moment." Okay, that I can handle, no problem. Then it got tricky. "If we were here together, we could love the way we were meant to, freely" and "I know our hearts are true and this love is real-come be with me, share the future we are meant to have and let us build our dreams together as we have always wanted." OK. Hm. That passage presented a myriad of problems--"build our dreams"? "Share the future"? These are phrases that I couldn't translate exactly, especially given my limited skills regarding French, not to mention the fact that they involved complicated tenses and conjugations (and those are not my strong suit, I pretty much speak French entirely in the present). I had to stretch a twelve-line postcard into a 15 minute explanation of the feelings behind the postcard, which had to be excruciating for the conductor because I barely made it through.
When I finished, he was silent for a beat, and then he started to talk to me. He was in love with his wife. She had been in trouble-I didn't quite catch what type or how-and he had taken her and her daughter in. They were his family now. He had done everything for them. He had given them a home and money. They were happy, or so he thought. He was alternately angry and devastated. I think he knew the guy-I got the sense this wasn't a surprise and he said something about how he thought this was finished now-and he kept walking away and then coming back to tell me another aspect of it all. It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life. I just remember being transfixed, watching this complete and total stranger unload all of this onto me, a girl over 20 years his junior, in his second language. It was surreal. He finally stopped talking and I handed him the card before he walked away.
Kat and Sarah sat there while I explained the situation (they spoke Spanish), and I believe Kat's response was something like, "that's insane. Wait, aren't you sooooo glad I got my bag back?"
I always wonder what happened to him and his wife and stepdaughter. Did they work things out? Did she leave him? If she didn't, are they happy now? Is she quietly sad-does she feel like she owes it to him to stay, and that's why she does? Or did she go to New York to be with her lover? And if so, is she still here?
Anyway, a word of advice-if you're going to cheat on your husband with a man from another country, do not think your lover can just send you a postcard in a language your husband doesn't speak, because your husband will think it's suspect and will totally take that card and find a young tourist from the country of your beloved, and you will be busted.
