Spanish Lesson

With an hour to kill, I slid my ample gringo butt onto the low stone wall. The stone was polished smooth by thousands of butts before mine. There were benches too. People sat on them alone or in pairs, and on the walls. Massive trees cast a thick shade. Flocks of parrots shrieked ovhead from time to time.

I was at the southwest corner of Parque Central, San Jose, Costa Rica. If there had been any doubt, the life-sized bronze statue of a guy sweeping up a pile of bronze litter confirmed I was not in New York. A broad cathedral spans the whole block on the east side of the plaza. Midday sunlight exploded off its flat white façade lighting the shade of my corner without heating it.

The ground rose from my wall toward the church. The rise began with three broad steps a few feet in front of me. At the top of those steps a man was preaching in a strong baritone.

He was short and dark, almost swarthy, with a square jaw and white, straight teeth. He dressed plainly in clean, colorless clothes. From under a thatch of glossy hair his black eyes scanned the crowd for lost souls. He proclaimed the glory of Jesu Christo.

He held a small black Bible in his left hand. A battered blue metal toolbox was on the ground at his feet. As he spoke he paced a few steps away from it and back, chopping the air with his right arm. His voice carried clearly over the noise of the traffic. To my untrained ear he spoke wonderful Spanish.

The Spanish language is still largely incomprehensible to me, though I strive daily to learn it. Here I had stumbled on a chance for a live Spanish lesson. Right away I could pick out a few words. He spoke as I so often ask locals to speak to me — slowly and distinctly, as if to an imbecile.

The preacher spoke Spanish the way I do in my dreams — like Antonio Banderas coaxing a dark-eyed beauty out of her lacy shift or Richardo Montalban admiring “reech Corrreenthian leyther” in his native language.

His r’s rolled deliciously, not with the exaggerated flutter of the soccer announcers, but with the warm roundness of good red wine in a big glass. He pronounced d’s with that smooth, mysterious not-quite-a-lisp that makes words sound like the speaker is smiling.

As the sound of his voice washed over me, so did the force of his words. He was riveting. He spoke with passion and power. He was smooth and articulate. He switched seamlessly from the Bible to his own words. The people sitting scattered around him rarely looked at him, as though pretending not to listen. But they were sitting there for the same reason I was, to hear the preacher.

He spoke with a hypnotic rhythm, repeating simple verbs and nouns. I began to pick out phrases as they came around again and again like the refrain in a hymn. I understood just enough to recognize the timeless themes. Amor…Love. Muerte…Death. Vida…Life. Pecado…Sin. The multisyllabic Spanish softened and romanticized the hard, short Anglo-Saxon — sins became wonderfully trivial pecados, easily forgiven and forgotten. You can count on mercy from a romance language.

As he talked he paced away from his toolbox and back. The box's two parallel handles looked like they could open to expose tiers of trays like those of a fishing box. Blue paint was chipped and worn. The centers of the handles were bare metal. They shone dull silver in the shade.

I wondered what tackle a preacher would carry. I had visions of blessed lures, specially painted for trolling in this concrete lake of unsaved souls. I imagined battered spoons and plugs handed down from Christ’s first dozen fishers. Mystical tackle passed from them to the Roman soldiers who a thousand years ago slowly turned Latin into Spanish. Spiritual tools passed finally to this preacher who now cast a glittering net of melodious Latinate words, seining for sinners in San Jose.

His voice spread out in a sacred chum slick behind the salvation's skiff. I imagined a golden stringer in the bottom of the box ready to bind saved souls together until it was time to take them home.

I decided to go before he opened the box. A little salvation is good for everyone, but I’m not ready to be pulled from the school of sinners just yet. His Spanish alone had drawn me up behind the boat. I feared the Holy Gaff.

Our eyes met as I rose to leave. He had come to his refrain with perfect timing. “Se llama Jesu Christo,” he said, loud and strong, as if I hadn't noticed his topic. "His name is Jesu Christo."

I wandered off trying to sound like him, carefully repeating Spanish words of hope and redemption.