Foreign Affairs

Sitting in the last lecture of the day, my attention wanders. The lecturer- a one-year gap-fill from France- has given up all pretence of teaching- she reminds me of an unknown comedienne who’s been shoved in the slot none of the well-established acts deigned to take, barely bothering to address the unresponsive audience. As my neighbour writes ‘I WANT CAKE’ on my sheet and I politely oblige with a large ink gateau, it occurs to me that languages have become so large a part of my life, they’re practically people.

German and I go waaayyyy back. It was love at first lesson- even before then, I knew we were destined to be. My grandfather had had the same deep, unfounded love for him until leaving him widowed. On the open day, forced to choose between two strangers, I chose him. By the end of the alphabet song, I was majorly crushing on him. The first time I felt a little guttural ‘r’ nestle in my throat, low and small, as if it needed protection, I was in love. Sharp-lipped ‘qu’s became my Quelle of inexplicable joy. We started high school together, went through all the tears and tantrums of teenage girls, played with tape recorders and textbooks, and came out at the end enamoured afresh and with a deeper knowledge of each other. He didn’t even get jealous or become distant when I picked up French the next year, and forced them into an uneasy partnership, a linguistic ménage-à-trois. He understood that my lifetime’s passion was sole devotion to him. Every new thing I discovered about him seemed like magic, so quintessentially German. It’s the kind of relationship where we glance at each other and grin sheepishly at some ill-concealed happy memory when someone comments upon how well we get on together.

The only minor fallout we’ve ever had was back in Sixth Form, when the teacher suddenly announced we were to learn cases. I stared at the tables and the bottom dropped out of my world. For once, I didn’t know more than my classmates. I didn’t understand. I went home with burning resentment in my stomach, quivering with tears. He was keeping secrets from me, and after I’d worked for him and trusted him for so long. I felt like I’d been betrayed.

But my teachers, seeing how good we’d been to each other all these years, didn’t let me give up on him that easily. They plied me with worksheets and explanations until finally the veil was drawn back from my eyes, and I was able to raise my head and love German all the more for his stubborn complexity.

Though I had learned his quirks and idioms, fallen head-over-heels, it was time to think long-term, and seriously. I told him yes, I wanted forever. I began university and digested grammar, a basis on which to build, to become stable, slowly, turning starchy pages, yet I never felt full and dull. This was because I was given, almost gift-wrapped and ribboned, translation assignments. In these I fly. It is like writing for a childminder a list of bedtimes and favourite juices, and, at the bottom, telephone numbers to call as a last resort. All easy, barely-thinking, definitely accurate sorts of things. I know him inside out, I know exactly how to make him formal or jocular, where he likes his verbs placed, can even tackle his pernickety subjunctive. In grammar, I am guided by instinct, remember things he has said, songs he has sung, stock phrases I call upon to bend conjugations to my will. Sometimes, as though teasing me, he lets me doubt for a second- what ending will Mitarbeiter take?- before the clarity sweeps through my mind, a sweet flood of surety. In summer I will be able to take a long holiday with him, teaching in a school in Berlin- ten months where, for the most part, it will be just us. He is my past, present and future, the grand amour of my linguistic life.

My rapport with French, however, has been far more problematic. At fourteen I was an innocent, knew nothing of her wilful ways. She was flighty, abused and everyone had had her, but that didn’t stop me leaping at my chance to have a turn.
When the initial awkwardness- much snorting and tongue-rolling and muddling up of sur and sous- was over, I found I did like her, not just because of how pretty she looked on paper. She was good and sweet and liked to roll around my mouth, just so. She was dainty and two years of her completion, along with her stoic counterpart German, brought me material benefits- fifty pounds, a certificate and an enormous dictionary. I never tricked myself into thinking she loved me, though, merely that she wanted me. And I wanted to fully possess her.

When I reached Sixth Form and the teachers were lolling around with their feet up on the table, clearly losing interest in a class in which only one student was attempting to take her further, French grew angry. I had felt her distancing herself from me, in truth, for years, every time I pronounced a silent syllable or forgot a verb ending. She pouted her scarlet lips, kicked her fishnetted legs pettishly in her sulky corner as I lost control of her, under my inky fingertips, in my frowning mouth. She wailed that if I wasn’t going to pay more attention to her, she would leave.

“I don’t know why I bother with you,” I said, exasperated.
“Moi non plus!”

I was torn. I had to choose my degree, but I didn’t know if I could bear another four years of her contrary ways- always more exceptions than rules. In moments of madness I thought I would abandon the two of them, French and German, and run back into the waiting embrace of Mother English, bury my head in her familiar skirts. Yet I had invested so much time and effort in Demoiselle French. Surely, I reasoned, it would be cutting off my nose to spite my face if I let her go, just like that, when times got hard. I coaxed her back with dips into Victor Hugo and Paul Verlaine, opened up the idea of a PACS. Grudgingly, she tugged down the hem of her skirt and came back to me.

It does hurt when I hear her with my friends sometimes; relaxed, not stilted like me, speedy, graceful. I think she appreciated my loyalty, though, somewhere in her fickle little heart. Some of my assignments with her are distinctly average, but the odd one glows with an unexpected ray of hope.

Imagine my shock when, settled into an extracurricular Russian class and thinking I would just look, not touch, Russia thunderbolted into my life, all slick accent and sex and sunglasses. He was masterful, cunning, dashing. He excited me as much as German had back in those dizzy, getting-to-know-you days. Yet I’d never had a partner who was so demanding before. He wouldn’t leave mind or my mouth. I chanted his sounds like a mantra, drew his alphabet like a devotee of some alien cult. To look at his symbols was to know you were dealing with something of a higher order. Oddly enough, once I had committed them to heart he opened up to me entirely, chiselled face close to mine, eyebrows raised- not at all the man of ice he seemed. He works with me, not against me; he believes in solidarity. And oh, I desire him, all of him- want to be pressed up against the sweating walls of a nightclub, vodka in my hand, and read my red flame reflected in his glacial gaze.

I can’t complain. I’m not exactly famed for my fidelity; rather for linguistic promiscuity. I have made little forays into other languages, little sly advances, flirtatious glances, peeps in the shower, for Czech, Dutch, Latin, Mandarin. I broke my heart over a summer romance with Finnish and still remember my playdates with cheery, plump, lilting Welsh when we were both knee-high to a grasshopper.

Chin pillowed on my hand, I come out of my reverie. The class has come to an end. With relief I stumble to my feet and just have time to catch French’s coquettish wink at me before I close my book. What a little flirt.