The Language Barrier

deux. écoutez!

deux.

|| écoutez! ||

“Estelle! I’m home!” called Evelyn as she removed her keys from the lock of their shared room. The petit girl was sitting on the carpet with an array of paper and craft materials around her, scrapbooking. She jumped up with surprising agility before grabbing Evelyn’s shoulders and kissing both of her cheeks.

            “How was it?” she asked, breathlessly. As a second year student, her classes didn’t start until Wednesday. The two girls sat and chatted for a while, alternating in French and English, as was their custom.

            “Honoré… oui. I had a class with him last year. Very… rude.” said Estelle, who proceeded to tell Evelyn of all the incidences in which the said man had gotten drunk and done some rather rash things in Vieux Montreal. He was also known as the campus Casanova, which Evelyn confirmed. He’d flirted with the girls in her English class the entire hour, though she didn’t mention how frustrated it had made her.

            “I think I may hate him.” said Evelyn.

            “Non, fille. There is much more than you see.”

†††

            “I am. You are. He or she is. We are. You all are. They are.” recited Evelyn. Honoré, seated so close that their thighs almost touched, merely picked at his fingernails. Professeur Desjardins sent a harsh look his way and for the eighth time that day, Evelyn leaned to whisper in his ear.

            “You’ve got to start paying attention!” she hissed. He looked at her, one eyebrow raised.

            “I say, fille, je ne comprends pas ce que vous dites!” Of course he didn’t understand her, which was exactly why she was urging him to listen in the first place.

            “Écoutez!” she commanded. It would be just as easy for him to conjugate the same verb in English, but he refused. She sighed unhappily.

†††

            Life in a [nearly] foreign country was steadily improving for Evelyn. She sorted out all her classes and her French vocabulary doubled. She found out where the cheap restaurants and bistros were, and had French movie marathons with Estelle every weekend. However, three weeks later, teaching Honoré English was still just as frustrating. The professeur suggested the two begin having weekly study sessions in the library.

            The setting didn’t seem to be Honoré’s ideal meeting, however. His arms remained crossed over his chest for the entire half hour, and he kept glancing around the room no matter how hard she tried to catch his attention.

            She asked if he’d like to go sightseeing with her, and he agreed, winking. He must have thought that the outing was a date, though why he would accept it if he thought so…

Her plan was to spend the whole day communicating in a combination of French and English, as she and Estelle did. It was a sneaky way to get past his defenses and she had no problems feigning romantic interest if it would make her English class just a tiny bit easier.

She met him at the Metro station, and together they navigated its busy underground streets. They rode in silence, and no one was asked to kiss an uncle as had occurred the last time they’d taken the train together.

They stopped at Place-d’Armes. She took his hand as not to get separated by the early morning crowd, and he looked surprised at the gesture.

The sign overhead said ‘SORTIE’ in large red letters. Evelyn pointed to it, leaning in close to whisper to him.

“Exit.” He nodded and repeated, “Exit.”

His accent was delightful.