I feel as though I should say something, as the waiter whisks away the dessert plates. Dessert has finished, I say to myself, in Spanish: <ya se ha acabado el postre> Such a simple tug, and the program’s last dinner has ended; if I want to, for the first time in three months, I might say something in English. Nervous and clammy, I hastily excuse myself (perdona) and walk stiffly to the bathroom.
I make a small ritual of washing my hands, just to give myself time to really swallow the moment. “You’ve earned it,” I’m thinking. “Just let the rest go.” I’m almost surprised by the resistance I’m getting, as I walk through the motions of English in my head. For a long, long time, I put a viciously sharp end to any English thought, and the sensation feels forbidden, taboo, and something like cheating.
We depart by Metro, soon to meet up and head out one last time, on the famous Madrid party circuit. As the cars trundle mildly under the city, an entire car full of Americans is gushing English, vowels twanging off the steel walls and arching their backs under the long, fluorescent lights. Gische and I are talking about the trip we’ll be taking afterward, and sudden, almost-unwanted freedom of leaving Madrid. As is our custom, he speaks in English, I respond in Spanish; it is very comfortable this way. And then James says, in response to something I have said: “Yeah, it’s been a long night.” And as easily if I meant to do it all along, as if my mind knew before I did, the last little brick in a once-tall wall toppled over. “It’s been a long three months,” I respond, watching the last of a steely damping wall slide past the slowing railcar. I do not know if he sees the long shiver that runs across my back, or the hot rush of blood across my face. It is done. The Americans have arrived, and I pick up what is left of my papers and join them. We leave the station in a large, ungainly pack.
If you and I, friend and reader, have a moment sometime, we might talk about what the Madrid program taught us all. To be sure, each of the forty students left Madrid with a heavy helping of Spanish, of Iberian culture, and the chafing uncertainty of being alone in broad, foreign city for months. Many of us cried when we hugged our host-moms goodbye: for me, Maria Luisa Basail Larrañaga was everything; she taught me thousands of words, how to cook patatas bravas, and shared her family with an open heart. Leaving her was harder than leaving Stanford.
I will not return, I think, unchanged. One of the unfortunate side-effects of the language ban was the complete death of your social life (which sounds melodramatic, but is surprisingly true). For three months, I did not make jokes: you simply don’t have the tools to make them. No wordplay: you don’t have the vocabulary. No comebacks: you’re still not fast enough. And if you’re planning on going out tonight, and you aren’t packing English, you’re more of an involved bystander than a party-goer.
In the beginning it was difficult, but it isn’t any longer. I spent many more hours reading than talking; Atlas Shrugged, I Am Charlotte Simmons, Five Smooth Stones, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Freddy and Frederika, Ringworld, and many more besides. These authors were the only English I allowed myself, and I clung to them like a drowning man. Solitude became passable, even agreeable. The Spanish meal schedule was the norm; the family became everything; the language took life. It was exactly what I asked for, when I applied in March, now that I think back, exactly what enraptured me at the end of that long and indolent summer at Stanford. If I thought it would be a pleasure, then I was a fool.
As I write this, my plane to Rome leaves in three hours. I must close the lid and weigh my bags one last time, trying like a mad man to fit my life into twenty kilos. I can hear Señora opening the lock on the apartment door, which means that she’s come home from shopping to see me off safely. There is a word in Spanish for this feeling, of being special and cherished, but lonely and singular. It is word that wraps up these three months well, in three syllables.
The word is <único.>
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