A moment from Corsica
Preserved here before I forget the whole dialogue, all of which has been translated into English.
“You’re going to the Reserve–” I started to ask one of the three men hanging around the dock in Porto. I had planned on finishing my sentence with of Scandola and the village of Girolata today at 9:30?, but one of them saved me the trouble.
“Absolutely.”
“Get in,” volunteered another.
“Well, I’m waiting for my boyfriend, he–”
“Oh, you’re waiting for your boyfriend? Well, then you can’t come.” He grinned.
I laughed but it was mostly because how the hell else was I supposed to respond? The three men were silent for a moment while I anxiously looked up the street for Joe. He was at the other end of Porto, which is a small town, but a long one, stretching almost two kilometers from the sea to the top of the nearby hill. He wasn’t with me because neither of us had any cash and the cash machine was a long way off. We were short on time, so I had gone down to the harbor to find the boat and make sure we could get on it, a task which possibly included begging them to wait a few minutes for Joe to arrive.
The men on the dock, too cheerful and chatty to let me worry in peace, picked up our conversation again. ”English?”
“No, American.”
“American, yeah!” said one. I’m sorry for the lack of distinguishing description of these guys, but I was squinting into the sun and they were all sort of scruffy and lanky and cheerful and friendly while still being just the tiniest bit lecherous. Anyway, back to the conversation: ”Las Vegas!”
“Yeah, I want to go to Las Vegas,” said another of the men. This is a familiar sentiment, because my students talk about Las Vegas fairly often. They don’t seem to be able to differentiate it from Los Angeles, or have any idea where it is or that its most famous attractions are forbidden to high school students, but boy do they want to go.
“Where do they have the guns and the cowboys?” He mimicked pulling a pistol out of a holster at his hip. ”Texas?”
“Yes, Texas.” I thought about adding something here, about my family maybe, or how Texas is really beautiful in some parts, but I didn’t. A lot of the students and teachers at my school have asked me about guns in America with a mixture of curiosity and horror, and I didn’t really feel like tackling that topic with strangers. I’m a quiet person in French. (Maybe you think I’m quiet in English, too, but believe me, you ain’t seen [heard] nothing yet.)
“I want to go to Texas!”
All three men nodded and laughed. I shouldn’t have been surprised, having seen the piles of shotgun shells collected in the roadside ditches around Porto. Hunting is clearly popular in Corsica. I suppose guns must be, too.
After this revelation, I smiled at the men and briefly turned around to look for Joe. When I turned back a second later, the next question contained a French word I had never heard. Ee-la-ree. Ilari?
Half a second later, on hearing the word Obama, it dawned on me.
Oh. Hillary. Lots of people at school have asked me questions about the US elections, but very few seem to know who John McCain is. My students think it’s a only contest between Clinton and Obama, and they love Obama. McCain is the name of a brand of frozen French fries here, so my students always giggle if I mention him.
“I’m going to vote for Obama,” I said. The question had actually been “Who’s going to win?” but the answer to that is a much less interesting “I don’t know.”
“Good,” said my Las Vegas- and Texas-loving dock friends. ”That will bring change.”
It’s not just the mainland Europeans. I have an English friend who didn’t realize that McCain was running. He was completely under the impression that it was Clinton vs Obama.
after seeing a picture, my students think that McCain is my grandfather.