Much Ado About Latin

When I was 20 I decided I wanted to learn a lot of foreign languages. Naturally, I took up this desire with the one being who could do something about it. “God, I want to speak loads of different languages and to a really good level,” I told him. “It’s jolly hard to learn even one foreign language in the north of New Zealand, because we’re so isolated, but I’m sure there must be something you could do about it.”

“Learn Latin,” said God. It wasn’t really the response I was looking for. Latin is dead and I wanted to speak to people who were, well, alive. I pointed this out to him. He repeated himself. I obeyed him.

It wasn’t until several years later that the wisdom of this instruction really showed its worth. Latin is the root of all the romance languages and a heavy influence on many other European languages. I still haven’t conquered the goal of learning a second, live language, but every now and then I catch myself understanding a sentence in Spanish or reading something in French with an ease that astonishes me. If I ever do study a romance language, I doubt it’ll put up much resistance.

But in the early days, learning Latin in provincial Whangarei was hard. I couldn’t track down a text book. I couldn’t get a teacher. I combed through the second hand book store in hopes of finding a Latin grammar and was disappointed. The girl in the new book shop simply looked at me like I’d sprouted a third nostril when I approached her with my problem. So I went back to God. I figured that since this was really his fault, he’d have an answer waiting. I wasn’t wrong.

“Get up to the catholic church,” said God. “There’s someone there to help you with your Latin.”

I’d never been into a catholic church in my life. It seemed like a strange instruction, but then, things involving God had a way of getting strange very fast. I put on my hat and marched out the front door. Mum was sitting in the sun, drinking tea.

“Where are you off too, Ruth?” she asked.

“The catholic church,” I said. “God says that there’s someone there to help me with my Latin.”

“Oh that’s good,” said Mum. “Have fun.”

The church was a short distance from our home. When I arrived, no one was in sight. I let myself in cautiously. The interior was dim with just a little light oozing in through a stained glass window. I sat down in a pew at the back of the church and waited for the ‘someone to help me with Latin’ to turn up. After a while a man and a woman, both wearing a vaguely official air came in. They seemed to be having a conversation about getting the window cleaned. Then they saw me and the man mumbled something and slipped out. The woman came over. “Can I help you with something?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m not a catholic but I’ve had an experience that’s driven me to the catholic church.”

“Oh,” said the woman.

“Yes, I’m learning Latin and it’s jolly hard to track down any learning materiel in Whangarei and I was praying about it this morning and God said, ‘get up to the catholic church, there’s someone there to help you with your Latin.’”

“Well,” said the woman doubtfully, “you do realise that we stopped doing mass in Latin forty years ago?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” I said, apologetically. “All I know is that God said to me, ‘get up to the catholic church because there’s someone there to help you with your Latin.”

“I’m sorry,” said the woman kindly. “But you must be mistaken. We don’t use Latin anymore and we have no books left in Latin. And we haven’t for forty years.” She glanced hopefully towards the door.

I didn’t take the hint.“I don’t know what the ‘help’ is going to look like. It may be books or it may be someone who can tutor me. I don’t know. But I do know that God said, ‘get up to the catholic church because there is someone there to help you with your Latin.”

“I suppose we could look in the church library,” said the woman patiently. I followed her across a small gravel path from the church to a small building. She opened the door and I found myself in a room walled from floor to ceiling with books. “Don’t get excited,” she warned. “I run the library and I know for a fact that we have no Latin books in here.” Again, she glanced gently towards the door. Again, I ignored her. She sighed and began to patiently and slowly check every shelf for Latin books. I trailed along behind her trustingly.

At at the end of each shelf she would turn and say, kindly but firmly, “there isn’t any Latin here.” “It might not be a book,” I told her cheerfully. “It may be someone who can teach me. Whatever it is may not even turn up today, but that’s alright because I live close by and I can come back again and again until it does.” This information did not seem to thrill her. We reached the end of the library. “Now you see up there a dusty brown box,” said the woman with an almost supernatural display of tolerance. “That is the last place I have not looked. I will get a stepladder and I will look into that box for you and there will be no Latin in there and then you can go home.”

“Alright,” I said obligingly. “I don’t mind. I’ll leave you my phone number, shall I?” The woman shot me a look that was not quite as holy as her previous expressions. She climbed up onto the ladder and began to rummage in the box. “I wish you well my dear, but we simply have no La--,” she stopped mid-word and her eyes bulged. “Good grief, this box is full of LATIN!” She staggered off the stepladder and the box hit the table top with a thud. “All of it, LATIN! How did that get in there? I run this library, I know we don’t have any LATIN.”

“Oh goody,” I said. “How perfectly magnificent! I say, could I sit in here for a bit and copy down some words?”

“Yes, yes of course you can,” said the woman. She looked rather dazed.

“What about a pencil and a piece of paper?” I asked gently. I glanced towards the door. She took the hint. “Yes, I’ll just go to the office and get you some,” she said.

I watched her as she sped down the path towards the office. Then I sat down in the chair. The room was warm and brightly lit. It had a pleasant aroma of old books. I had a stack of Latin books at my left arm and soon that patient, kind lady would return with a sharpened pencil and some paper. It was turning out to be a very nice day. God was so right. There HAD been someone at the catholic church to help me with my Latin. And the only reason she couldn’t see the miracle at once was because she was the miracle herself!

Writing and artwork ©. Photograph courteous of pixabay.