"Ooh, you are lucky. You've got a good cooker here," said Elsje to the room in general, over dinner one night. Everyone smiled and nodded.
Because Elsje spoke beautiful English, more flawlessly grammatical than that of most native speakers, I did not for one minute think she meant anything other than a stove. I thought it was a little odd that she should be so enthusiastic about a mere appliance, but since I spent much of my time struggling with the sensibilities of the Dutch, I figured it was just one of those things. Like eating fish and cheese for breakfast and never needing your bread toasted.
Much later, I realized belatedly that Elsje had been complimenting my cooking. It had been my turn to make dinner and I'd produced an indifferent lasagna, but the standard of cooking in our small artists' community wasn't high -- everyone else was more interested in spending time on their art than wasting it preparing food -- and Elsje had been impressed by my efforts. The Dutch are some of the best non-native speakers of English I know, but the perfectly logical 'cooker' for 'cook' trips up a lot of them. It tripped me up, too.
"My brother lives in a mansion," my friend Naoko told me my second week in Tokyo. I was immediately impressed. Space is at a premium all over Japan, but especially in Tokyo. I had only been in a few people's apartments, but I'd been shocked at how tiny and cramped they were. I knew that Naoko's brother had a good job, but I'd had no idea he lived in a mansion. The day Naoko took me to visit him, I had an even bigger shock. A mansion in Japan -- and in other Asian countries, I am told -- is not the spacious, well-appointed stately home westerners envision, but a slightly better-than-average apartment, generally insulated, ugly, and with a ferroconcrete foundation. People are nonetheless very proud to live in mansions and bristle if you make a mistake and call them apaato, or apartments. An apaato is the poor cousin of the mansion.
"Have you had your tea yet?" my husband asked me one evening, way back before he was my husband. I had gone to visit him after work and was somewhat taken aback by this question -- as though tea was such an important drink that if I hadn't had a cup, I ought to rectify matters. I told him I had not, and to my surprise he began to clatter about with pots and pans. I kept him company as he cooked what I thought was to be his dinner: an omelette, salad, and toast. But to my amazement, he slid it onto a plate and placed it in front of me.
"What's this for?"
"It's for you, silly."
"But I've eaten!"
"You just said you hadn't!"
It took us quite some time to get it sorted out. I'd worked for a British company for almost six months, but that was the first time I realized that tea wasn't just a beverage, but a proper meal.
Three years later, he and I were sitting in my in-laws' house in the Midlands, watching a man from Birmingham install a burglar alarm. The man was telling us all about his trip to America, how he and his wife had decided to go to Disneyworld instead of having car pits installed, how glad he was they'd had the holiday to the States instead. As I listened, I tried to visualize the car pits. Could they be subterranean garages of some sort? Space was at a premium in England, I knew, and though I'd never seen any car pits (that I knew about), perhaps they were a feature I would become more familiar with in time. I was on the verge of asking about them, but held my tongue; I had some trouble understanding the man's strong accent and decided to ask my husband later instead. Thank God.
"What are car pits?" I asked my husband later. "Are they under the house? Can you put gardens over them?"
He stared at me in bewilderment. "What?"
"The guy was telling us about car pits," I reminded him. "How he and his wife went to Disneyworld instead of getting them installed--"
"Carpets!" my husband hissed. "He was talking about carpets!"
Now I've come full circle. Last week, I was chatting with a group of women who were talking about a man they knew, up in Edinburgh. "He lives in a mansion," one of the women said, in hushed tones. Immediately I pictured a squat, ferroconcrete building with a rusting laundry rail on every floor. I could see housewives out beating the futons they were airing; I could smell the fish broiling and rice cooking and picture the fluffy slippers you would be given to change into when visiting.
I was halfway home before I figured it out.
