Language Barrier

     For our anniversary this year, John took me to a lovely restaurant in Antigua called Meson Panza Verde.  We had been in the city for a week of Spanish lessons at the Escuela San José el Viejo, living at the school and thoroughly enjoying all that Antigua had to offer.  The restaurant was right down the street and came highly recommended by just about everybody we talked to.

     We arrived a little earlier than our reservation and decided to take a seat in the bar to have a celebratory drink before dinner.  At first, we had the place to ourselves, but soon another couple came in and sat down nearby.  It was obvious that they were “gringos” like us so, as “gringos” will do, we struck up a conversation.  Serendipity once again invoked privilege and within a span of five minutes we learned that Gene and Judy Sadlier had come into Rio Dulce on a boat named Skylark a couple of years ago supposedly to stay for a short while.  Now, like us, having come under the spell of Guatemala, they decided to buy a home in Antigua and were living there totally immersed in the community. 

     We laughed about the similarities of our lives and how cruisers always seem to find each other.  Then John thought to explain that we were enrolled in school for Spanish lessons, that our daughter MK was coming to visit for a couple of weeks along with his cousin Taz, and we would be staying in Antigua for a time after we left the school.  

     “Would you happen to know anybody who rents apartments?  We are looking for a place to stay.  Hotels are pretty expensive by the night when you need at least two rooms and I understand that apartments might be more reasonable.”

     By this time, Judy had hopped up to greet the people they were meeting for dinner.  Gene suggested that we exchange phone numbers and we could talk about it in the morning.  They left the bar and we went to our table where we resumed the anniversary celebration with the consumption of a most scrumptious meal.

     For the sake of this story, it behooves me to stop a minute and provide a physical description of Gene and Judy.  They are both diminutive in stature, Judy being the shorter of the two.  Gene has pretty much a square build, with a broad face surrounded by snow white hair on top and a carefully sculpted goatee around his mouth and chin.  His eyes virtually dance when he talks.  He used to sell real estate and speaks with a gentle deliberateness, making sure you understand all of the details. 

     Judy is what I would lovingly call a “cap pistol.”  She wears her long, silver tresses pulled back in a pony tail, her bangs floating down over her forehead so that she can push them back occasionally for emphasis on some point she’s trying to make.  Her eyes (and personality altogether) are a little more fiery than Gene’s.  She used to be a stock broker with Payne-Webber and, in fact, was the first woman in that company to ever rise to manager of a region.  There will be no grass growing under her feet.

     They have had an interesting life together centered around sailing and chartering Skylark.  I don’t imagine there’s a cross word between them except when Judy inadvertently locks Gene out of the bedroom.  But, that’s another story.

     By our 10:30 break in classes the next morning, we experienced Judy’s efficiency firsthand.  She had called to say 1) she knew of an apartment that was available and 2) we were to come over to their house around 5:00 to go look at it and then stay for dinner.       We were hesitant to accept because we didn’t want to impose.  MK was to arrive that afternoon and we thought it might be a little much for all three of us to descend on them.  She was adamant.  “Nothing else will do, won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, just going to cook something up in the crockpot.  Gene will pick you up at 5:00.”

     MK came to the school about 2:30 that afternoon.  By the time we had sufficient hugs, helped her unpack and all took showers, it was time to go.  Gene met us at the front of the school and drove us the short distance down 5th Avenida Sur to the road that led to Can?ada de Antigua, the development where they lived.  We turned onto a cobblestone entrance and pulled up in front of their new beautiful salmon-colored two storied home.  The neighborhood consisted of several completed houses of like design with a few vacant lots scattered here and there. 

     Judy met us at the door.  After introducing MK (whom Judy embraced and adopted on the spot), she led us across the street to the home of one of her neighbors, a woman named Breez.  The apartment was a flat off the courtyard of her house.  Breez’s mother met us and showed us where to go.  There were actually two apartments, one above the other.  The one available for us was upstairs.  We opened the door and walked up the stairs into a living space with three bedrooms, three baths, a kitchen and den.  A glass door led out onto the roof where there was a patio with a view looking straight up to Volcan de Agua.

      It was absolutely perfect.  Even with Taz coming, everybody would have their own room and bath …… all for the staggering sum of $200 for the week, including a “whistleblower,” the security guard who patrolled the neighborhood at night blowing his whistle to ward off evildoers!  We could hardly pay fast enough.  Once the deal was sealed, we headed back to Gene and Judy’s for a delightful meal and relaxing evening.         

     On the following Sunday, we moved our things from the school over to the apartment.  We went into Antigua to provision at the open-air Mayan market and the more modern grocery story. We crammed in lots of sightseeing around the city and on Monday took a day-long road trip to Panajachel on Lake Atitlan.  By that night, we were pretty pooped.  It was certainly nice to have such a comfortable place to come home to, especially in such a nice neighborhood.

     Early Tuesday morning, around 6:00 o’clock, there was a loud bang from the outside.  We were all soundly asleep and it took a few minutes for John and me to realize that the noise was actually a knock coming from our door.  He stumbled out of the bed, wearing yellow striped waist-tie pajama bottoms and a maroon tee-shirt with a picture on the back of a sailboat in the moonlight.  His silver hair was tousled every which away with his bangs rising to a point off his forehead like a poor Elvis Presley imitation.  As he tottered down the stairs to the door, I got out of bed and went into the kitchen where I could look down and see what was going on.

     It was the whistleblower.  He proceeded to rattle off several rapid-fire sentences of Spanish. John’s back was to me.  I could see his shoulders slump as he struggled to make out even one word of what the guy was saying.  Surely, after an entire week of language school, he could find some way to understand. 

    “No comprendo,” he blurted out.  There was a pause.

     The guardian repeated a few words.  I caught “dueno” among them and went to our English/Spanish dictionary to look it up.  It means “owner.”

      “No se,” John continued.  “No intendo nada.”  Another pause.

      “Gracias.”  He shut the door, the words in his instant recall Spanish vocabulary being used up.

     As he was climbing the steps back into the flat, I told him I thought the guardian was asking if we owned the old beat up Volkswagen bus that was parked outside on the street.

     “I finally figured that out,” he responded.  With a huge yawn, he said, “Let’s go back to sleep.” 

     The whole episode hadn’t taken but five minutes.  We crawled back in bed. 

     Ten minutes later, both of us having just dozed off, someone again pounded on the door.   Like being in the movie Ground Hog Day, we got up again, John heading downstairs and me to the kitchen.  He opened the door.

     At first he didn’t see anybody.  Then, he looked down to find a young boy standing there.

     “Basura,” the little fellow said.

     “No comprendo.”  The Spanish rolodex started turning again in John’s head.

     “Baa..Sur….Ah,” the boy’s voice raised a notch, thinking maybe John hadn’t heard him.

     “No se.  No intendo nada.”  John’s tone became more imploring.

     “BAAAH…SUUUR….AAAH!!”  He screamed at John, thinking that yelling might assist with the comprehension.

     After a few seconds of staring at each other, the little boy shrugged his shoulders and left.  John shut the door.

     As he came back up the steps, MK called out from her room, “He’s asking if you have any trash.  Basura means trash.  Most of the domestics in D.C. are Latino and we always have to put a note saying ‘basura’ by the things we want thrown out.” 

     AHA!  This gave me reason to jump into action.  We had a big bag of trash out on the patio.  I ran outside to get it and handed it to John.  He scurried down the stairs and opened the door hoping to catch the little boy still close by but he was nowhere in sight.  With that, John bolted out the door in his pajamas and tee-shirt at 6:20 in the morning hobbling down the cobblestone street of this high class neighborhood in his bare feet holding the bag of trash over his head yelling “Basura, basura!!!”  He continued until he came to the corner where to his right was the whistleblower talking to a friend.  They saw him and started laughing.  To his left was the garbage truck with several men and the little boy hanging off the sides. They started laughing.

     If the truth be known, we were all laughing back at the flat.  After depositing the damnable bag of “basura” in the truck, John limped his way back home, hopping every now and then to keep from stubbing his toes on the rocky street. 

     There’s one thing for sure.  Where weeklong, high priced, individually tutored Spanish lessons might have failed, one little Guatemalan boy knocking on the door at 6:15 in the morning asking for “basura” had surely succeeded in indelibly teaching all of us the word for “trash!”