The change is both subtle and substantial. I used to order a cortado, a café con leche, these common words in the bar world, and the young waitress wanted to understand me. She felt it was her duty and that not understanding me was a defect that needed to be fixed. She was right. Not understanding me was a defect that needed to be fixed. Some waiter, perhaps the owner of the establishment, might have had a sour face, or perhaps he would repeat sarcastically: "Well, let's go with the 'tayat', it's a real pain.With the proliferation of bars run by Chinese people, the opposite effect occurred. The owners' children, behind the bar, answered in perfect Catalan, a product of concrete immersion. The smile of someone waiting for the eccentric, the crazy woman to finish her act. Then she said, with wide eyes, as if I were asking her if she knew quantum physics: "Let's see!"Like the teacher in front of the child with bad handwriting."A coffee alone?"His partner, also looking at me with a sad face ("Why are you making it difficult?" she thinks), says: "He didn't say that, man.". As if I weren't there.
Sometimes they are perplexed. Sometimes they laugh with commiseration. They must hear the same words many times each morning, and it is more difficult and harder not to know them than to know them. To not know them you have to make an effort. If tomorrow, let's say, I ask him, I ask him, I ask him, he will have to understand me. Unless, of course, these open bones that I make help him inadvertently and I have to say, like every day, in this bar in the city where I work and drink coffee: "What does it say?"
