Luis
As far as intensive language classes go, my courses here in Buenos Aires were pretty standard. We met for three hours a day, five days a week, learned the minutiae of the subjunctive, and had the occasional excursion. It was exactly what I needed. I got placed into a level four (out of six), which was awesome, giving me the chance to advance quicker. The class was made up predominantly of Americans, with some Europeans and Chinese thrown into the mix. And although I broke some new ground with my Spanish, the most memorable part of the experience by far was a guy named Luis.
Luis, whose real name we never learned, was from Hong Kong. Like many Chinese students at the school, Luis assumed a western name to help others refer to things he’d say during conversations. The only problem was that Luis never spoke. When called upon by the teacher, he would just smile and shake his head—every time, no variation, the same exact way. As English speakers, we have a tremendous advantage over those from China when learning Spanish, I know this, but Luis didn’t even pretend to try. When we formed groups, it was a hazardous roll of the dice for those who cared: whoever got stuck with him was busy talking to a statue for ten minutes. Nobody wanted to work with him.
But this isn’t why Luis is blog-worthy.
As the course started to come to a close, we learned that an oral exam was required for the successful completion of level four. It was to last ten minutes and would take the form of a speech concerning a ‘social problem’ of our choosing. This meant that after a month of malingering, Luis—if he even came to the test—would have to speak in Spanish, uninterrupted, for ten minutes. It had all the mounting tension you’d come to expect from some 80’s movie, where a marginalized, misunderstood character rises above all odds in the end to flummox all the nay-sayers (read: Bill and Ted; Daniel-san; Willow; innumerable others.) I wanted this to happen. I wanted the class to burst into applause, tinker tape everywhere, metal ballads abound. I wanted to like Luis.
His chosen topic was how homosexuality is a social disease and that its sufferers should perish. We were flabbergasted. He had been writing this speech while others we giving theirs, frantically flipping through his dictionary for the right words. When it came time for him to go, there was a hush of curiosity. Some of us never heard him speak before. When he began, we weren’t entirely sure what he was saying because he mumbled. So we shut off the air-conditioner and readied ourselves, our heads down, concentrating. We heard the peppering of opinion here and there, but it was still unclear what he was really talking about. Like his namesake, Luis was still an encrypted discourse for us.
But then little by little we found the signposts, polysyllabic billboards like homosexualidad and enfermidad, and one by one our heads began to bob up in shock. Javier, our teacher, interrupted Luis for fear his speech was being grossly misunderstood, but Luis confirmed it wasn’t. Here was a guy who didn’t utter more than a few words the whole month, and now this. Luis wasn’t winning anyone over.
The Americans gave him the hardest time, leafing through their pocket-sized dictionaries, just as he did, but now with added purpose. Someone, without a dictionary, chimed in. Do you know anybody who is gay? What if I were gay? Would you think I’m sick? Luis responded with the same robotic arguments, reading them from his notes. Four weeks of learning the subjunctive prepared us for this moment. You could say that, grammatically, it was a subjunctive bloodbath: we were inundating Luis with our opinions, our derisive judgments—everything our level four Spanish had to offer. If his speech weren’t for real, it would have been the perfect test. (And if it had been a hoax, and Luis—a fluent speaker of Spanish—was in cahoots with the language school, then that’s quite a pedagogical approach.) It provoked us to use all the linguistic tools at our disposal, to make ourselves clear, to expose and challenge such intolerance. But Luis was unmoved, if not confused by our protest. And in the end there was no enlightenment—just a heavy, humid silence. So after some diplomatic remarks from Javier, it was over, and the class ended.
But now for the most awkward part: It being the last day and all, we parted ways with Javier the Argentine way: with a kiss on the cheek. For those of you who don’t know, in Argentina it’s universally accepted and customary for men to kiss other men when saying goodbye. So we were all lined up, kissing Javier, thanking him, wishing him the best, and then, at the end of the line, came Luis. Not knowing what to do, Javier forwent the beso with a nervous chuckle, and shook Luis’ hand instead. Pretending not to watch, I think we were all hoping for that kiss.
Luis, whose real name we never learned, was from Hong Kong. Like many Chinese students at the school, Luis assumed a western name to help others refer to things he’d say during conversations. The only problem was that Luis never spoke. When called upon by the teacher, he would just smile and shake his head—every time, no variation, the same exact way. As English speakers, we have a tremendous advantage over those from China when learning Spanish, I know this, but Luis didn’t even pretend to try. When we formed groups, it was a hazardous roll of the dice for those who cared: whoever got stuck with him was busy talking to a statue for ten minutes. Nobody wanted to work with him.
But this isn’t why Luis is blog-worthy.
As the course started to come to a close, we learned that an oral exam was required for the successful completion of level four. It was to last ten minutes and would take the form of a speech concerning a ‘social problem’ of our choosing. This meant that after a month of malingering, Luis—if he even came to the test—would have to speak in Spanish, uninterrupted, for ten minutes. It had all the mounting tension you’d come to expect from some 80’s movie, where a marginalized, misunderstood character rises above all odds in the end to flummox all the nay-sayers (read: Bill and Ted; Daniel-san; Willow; innumerable others.) I wanted this to happen. I wanted the class to burst into applause, tinker tape everywhere, metal ballads abound. I wanted to like Luis.
His chosen topic was how homosexuality is a social disease and that its sufferers should perish. We were flabbergasted. He had been writing this speech while others we giving theirs, frantically flipping through his dictionary for the right words. When it came time for him to go, there was a hush of curiosity. Some of us never heard him speak before. When he began, we weren’t entirely sure what he was saying because he mumbled. So we shut off the air-conditioner and readied ourselves, our heads down, concentrating. We heard the peppering of opinion here and there, but it was still unclear what he was really talking about. Like his namesake, Luis was still an encrypted discourse for us.
But then little by little we found the signposts, polysyllabic billboards like homosexualidad and enfermidad, and one by one our heads began to bob up in shock. Javier, our teacher, interrupted Luis for fear his speech was being grossly misunderstood, but Luis confirmed it wasn’t. Here was a guy who didn’t utter more than a few words the whole month, and now this. Luis wasn’t winning anyone over.
The Americans gave him the hardest time, leafing through their pocket-sized dictionaries, just as he did, but now with added purpose. Someone, without a dictionary, chimed in. Do you know anybody who is gay? What if I were gay? Would you think I’m sick? Luis responded with the same robotic arguments, reading them from his notes. Four weeks of learning the subjunctive prepared us for this moment. You could say that, grammatically, it was a subjunctive bloodbath: we were inundating Luis with our opinions, our derisive judgments—everything our level four Spanish had to offer. If his speech weren’t for real, it would have been the perfect test. (And if it had been a hoax, and Luis—a fluent speaker of Spanish—was in cahoots with the language school, then that’s quite a pedagogical approach.) It provoked us to use all the linguistic tools at our disposal, to make ourselves clear, to expose and challenge such intolerance. But Luis was unmoved, if not confused by our protest. And in the end there was no enlightenment—just a heavy, humid silence. So after some diplomatic remarks from Javier, it was over, and the class ended.
But now for the most awkward part: It being the last day and all, we parted ways with Javier the Argentine way: with a kiss on the cheek. For those of you who don’t know, in Argentina it’s universally accepted and customary for men to kiss other men when saying goodbye. So we were all lined up, kissing Javier, thanking him, wishing him the best, and then, at the end of the line, came Luis. Not knowing what to do, Javier forwent the beso with a nervous chuckle, and shook Luis’ hand instead. Pretending not to watch, I think we were all hoping for that kiss.
posted by This is borrowed time at 8:15 PM
1 Comments:
Great story!
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