I’m Not an English Gentleman

“What would an English gentleman do if his wife were away for six weeks? Would he try to catch a lady?” asked Herr Ehrlichmann, just as I was leaving.

“An English gentleman catches fish, not ladies,” I answered, surprised at my own wit.

“Very good,” he said. “See you next week, and don’t be late again!” Then he closed the door behind me.

In the three months I had been Herr Ehrlichmann’s private English tutor, he surprised me numerous times.

The day he came to my apartment in a run down working class district of West Berlin to discuss the lessons was a disaster.

It was mid-February, and I had just got home before he arrived; so the place was freezing. There was a powerful knock on the door. I opened it to find an elegant elderly gentleman standing there.

“Ehrlichmann,” he said. “Walter Ehrlichmann. And you are, if I am not knocking on the wrong door, Sebastian Jones.”

“Yes, that’s me,” I said. “Please come in.”

He entered cautiously and, though he raised his eyebrows as he looked around, he said nothing. I quickly removed a pair of underpants from the only chair in the room and offered him the seat at my desk.

He looked around slowly, taking in the chaos. “Excuse me,” he said, “have been illegally visited by a burglar? You may correct me if I am wrong.”

“Well,” I stuttered, “I had a party last week and I haven’t had time to clean up yet.”

“Then may I suggest that we conduct our interview somewhere warmer, and a little cleaner, perhaps? There’s a coffee shop on the corner. It looks, as we say in German, Gemütlich!”

The coffee shop was warm, and the coffee and apple strudel comforting.

“What is your experience?” he asked me.

I was just about to lie to him when something stopped me. “I haven’t done much teaching,” I said.

“What have you been doing then?” he questioned me further.

“I’m a musician. But music doesn’t pay the bills, so I’ve decided to change directions.”

“Very admirable,” he said. “I like a man who is not afraid to change. I have also decided to change directions. I can pay twenty marks for one hour a week. Nine o’clock precisely on Mondays. Is that agreeable?”

Twenty marks was more than twice the going rate. For a moment I was speechless. “Your offer is very good,” I almost squeaked.

“Then I will see you Monday morning,” he said. “Here is my address and telephone number.” He paid the bill and said, “By the way, whose brassiere was that at the foot of the bed? You’re not a transvestite, are you?”

“No, somebody must have forgotten it.” I assured him.

“Somebody? You don’t know who by any chance, do you?”

“No,” I replied.

“Interesting!” he said. “Anyway, it’s not my business. See you on Monday.”

I didn’t know what to make of him. He had travelled halfway across the city in sub-zero temperatures and he hadn’t mentioned English teaching. When I admitted that I was under qualified, he hired me on the spot. But I didn’t care. He was my first pupil.

The following Monday I got up early and, after locating Herr Ehrlichmann’s apartment building, went to a pub for breakfast.

I worked my way through two boiled eggs, an assortment of sausages, hams, cheeses, four fresh rolls and a fruit yogurt, and a pot of strong black coffee. I was ready to embark on my new career.

At three minutes to nine. I rang the doorbell and waited. Nothing happened. Two minutes later I rang again. Still nothing happened. My heart sank. I began to feel that I had made a mistake. I turned to walk away when the door opened.
“It’s just turned nine o’clock,” said Herr Ehrlichmann. “Please come in.”

He was wearing tweeds and a cravat, and he looked as if he had just stepped out of an advertisement in Country Life.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” he said, “the lesson has already begun. Come in

He guided me along a broad corridor that had Hogarth prints on one wall and French impressionists on the other. His study contained a huge antique desk with matching chair, a wall-to-wall bookcase and a cabinet—and there was an exercise bicycle in front of the French windows.

He asked me to sit on a sofa in front of an ornate coffee table; then he went to the cabinet and brought out a large notebook, a file, a dictionary and a textbook. He put them on the table, walked over to the door and opened it. In marched a charming middle-aged lady carrying a covered tray, which she put on the table in front of me.

“My better half,” he said, “That’s what you English say, is it not?”

“Yes,” I replied.

He picked up his notebook and ticked off the idiom he had written down. “Good!” he smiled, “I heard that this morning on the BBC.”

I was impressed. His wife offered her hand and greeted me warmly in perfect English.

“Run along, dear, our lesson has begun,” he said playfully. “See you at ten o’clock.”

She removed the lid from the tray. There was a large plate with a generous helping of bacon, eggs, mushrooms, baked beans, pork sausages, grilled tomatoes, black pudding, and fried bread. There was also a toast rack with four slices of toast, along with a small butter dish and a jar of marmalade. And, of course, there was a tea pot.
“An English breakfast,” she said. “Please enjoy it.” Then she left the room.

I didn’t know what to say. I was a full as a gun, but didn’t want to offend them; so I decided to wade through it, no matter what the cost to my waistline.

“Go ahead,” said Herr Ehrlichmann. “I will ask you questions and you tell me if I am correct or not. If I am incorrect, you will tell me the correct usage; then I will practise. I am especially concerned with correct idiomatic usage.”

“I see you like your beans,” he said, as I scooped a forkful into my mouth. “According to your excellent comedian, Benny Hill, they are good for the heart. How am I doing? Have I made a mistake yet?”

I shook my head as I tried to swallow a piece of sausage.

He continued, “Last night I was elbow bending with my acquaintances in a pub that serves Irish beer. Guinness, it is called. On my way home, I vacillated on the Kurfürstendam and was arrested.”

I had just put a grilled tomato into my mouth. It almost came down my nose as I struggled to stifle my laughter. Herr Ehrlichmann looked at me curiously and repeated the sentences.

My cheeks puffed up like a trumpet player’s and my shoulders shook, but I might have managed to control myself if he had not spoken again.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is the breakfast disagreeable?” I shook my head, but my ears were popping. All of a sudden I exploded. The tomato shot out of my mouth, flew across the table like a missile, and splattered on his chest.

Herr Ehrlichmann jumped up and looked at the tomato as if it were a bullet hole. He stood there, open mouthed, arms held up in shock, with a tomato sliding down his shirt. I lost control and burst out laughing. Through the tears that were welling up in my eyes I saw the door open and his wife come in. She began to wipe the tomato off his shirt.

I made an effort to help with the shirt cleaning, but Herr Ehrlichmann backed away, the look of horror still in his eyes. Then his wife started laughing. He looked down at the stain on his shirt and pointed to the sofa.

“Sit down,” he said, “and please finish eating before I sit opposite you again.”

In an attempt at contrition, I offered to buy him a new shirt or at least pay for the cleaning, but he shook his head

“It was only a tomato. If you had been eating sausage at that moment, I would have been injured, perhaps. I have never in my life been shot with a tomato. Is this a constituent of English humour? ”

I started to apologize again.

“It’s not an apology I want,” he said. “I want an explanation. What was wrong with my idiom?”

“It was the verb ‘vacillate’, I said. “I have never heard it used in that context before.”

“But in the dictionary it clearly stated the meaning as to stagger or sway from side to side.”

Exactly one week later I made my second visit. This time, however, I waited until exactly nine o’clock before I rang the bell. The door opened immediately and I was ushered in. The lesson went without any problems. I received my English breakfast, exactly the same as the week before—even the tomatoes were there.

As I started to eat, Herr Ehrlichmann read his first sentence. “I ride my exercise bicycle every morning to obviate middle-age spread.

I raised my eyebrows and he noticed this.

“Is my sentence incorrect?” he asked me.

“No, not exactly,” I said, not having a clue what ‘obviate’ meant. “It’s just that it would sound more natural, more idiomatically correct, if you used the word ‘prevent’ instead of ‘obviate’.”

“Excellent!” he said. “Let me try again. I ride my exercise bicycle every morning to prevent middle-age spread.”

“Perfect,” I said as I popped a tomato into my mouth and swallowed it without spitting it out.
Over the next few months I started putting on weight and, at the same time, developing quite an English vocabulary, all thanks to Herr Ehrlichmann.

One day I arrived and found him in a panic. He opened the door wearing an apron and rushed off into the kitchen, leaving me standing in the hall. I could smell something burning.

“Come in here,” he called out. “It’s after nine, the lesson has already begun.”

He was trying to scrape an egg off the bottom of a frying pan. When he succeeded, he tossed it on top of what looked like a piece of charcoal. “I hope you like crispy bacon,” he said. This is the first time I’ve ever cooked an English breakfast; so if you don’t like it, just leave it.”

He explained that his wife had gone to look after her mother, who was seriously ill; so he was left to fend for himself.

Some weeks later, just as I was leaving, he asked my advice on an English gentleman’s response to his wife’s prolonged absence. I thought it just another of his bizarre questions. But I was truly shocked one week later when I arrived for the lesson nursing a colossal hangover.

I had been busking in the city centre the previous evening, when I met a girl and spent the night at her place. At seven-thirty, she woke me up and told me to leave. I couldn’t go home to change; so I arrived at Herr Ehrlichmann’s apartment carrying my guitar and dressed like a clown, complete with the long shoes.

As usual, the door opened immediately. But it was not Herr Ehrlichmann who got the shock—it was me.

He was standing there wearing only tartan boxer shorts and his hair was dripping wet. He handed me twenty marks and said, “No lesson today, I have a visitor. See you next week.”

I staggered home to sleep off my hangover and returned one week later.

“Why were you wearing those strange clothes last week?” asked Herr Ehrlichmann, as he led me into his study.

I felt that I was the one who deserved an explanation, so I said, “Why did you answer the door in your underwear?”

He winked, smiled and said, “I’m not an English gentleman.”