“Translating a Person”
By Alejandro Zambra, edited by James Yeh, originally published in The Believer (2019)
Illustration by Sanja Bošković
The gringo was twelve years old, like nearly all of us, and his name was Michael González or John Pérez or something like that: a common English first name and a last name that was equally common in Spanish. He had grown up in Chicago with Chilean parents, so his Spanish was almost the same as ours and his English sounded like the movies. Fascinated, we’d ask him to speak English for us at recess, and the gringo was shy but also happy and patient, so he’d play along. Like a magician revealing his simplest tricks, he’d ramble on in a hushed voice about any old subject, and he even answered our questions, which were all basic: How do you say pico? (dick); How do you say zorra? (pussy); How do you say culiar? (fuck).
One day, after a group presentation, the English teacher decided that Michael’s (or John’s) pronunciation was deficient, and she gave him a five out of seven. It took us a minute to realize the teacher didn’t even know the gringo was a gringo. She was a thirtysomething woman with a chubby face and a cheerful demeanor, her eyebrows smeared with blue eye shadow, always just about to smile or smoke. We loved her; she was nice, much warmer and more approachable than most of our teachers. That afternoon several of us tried to explain her mistake. She wanted proof, but the gringo was feeling especially timid, hiding away behind his notebooks. Finally, when the silence was becoming unbearable, he stood up and launched into a surprisingly loquacious soliloquy, much louder and faster than he tended to speak at recess, his face bright red, as if speaking English were something to be ashamed of, and there was also something desperate in his incomprehensible—to us—torrent of words. He spoke for about five minutes, and I didn’t understand anything except for the word Chile, which made an appearance every so often. “I didn’t know you were a gringo” was all the teacher said, in an effort to hide her humiliation.
The episode now strikes me as essentially comic, but at the time it seemed tragic and we tried to file it away immediately, because the teacher’s sudden seriousness represented a threat. We preferred her—needed her—to be happy: it was much more important that she return our love than that we learn English.
Continue reading at The Believer.
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