“Let’s say he’d made the sentence even longer—‘Just try to move and I kill you now.” Then he’d try to squeeze all of the first four words into the same time as ’move.“ It would be ”just-try-to-move and I kill-you-now.“ Only Americans use that kind of rhythm, and no matter how well you learn the phonemes—the sounds—of a foreign language, you never get the rhythms exactly right. For example, a Frenchman would use a nice, steady beat throughout the whole sentence. He’d say ‘Just-try, to-move, and-I-kill, you-now.” A German—“
“What’s my accent?” Lau said suddenly. “Do I speak General American?” The challenge was implicit but clear: Do you have the nerve to say I don’t?
“No, you don’t. There are Chinese overtones. Your individual syllables are a little more separate and even, and naturally there’s a little more emphasis on tone, a little less on stress.”
Gideon expected him to be angry; instead, he simply looked even more skeptical.
“Look,” said Gideon, “I’m an anthropologist. This is the sort of thing I study.” The last and least effective argument of the frustrated teacher, he thought. . “I thought anthropologists studied primitive cultures.”
“We do, but linguistics is part of culture. And we study culture in general, not just primitive ones.”
Lau thought it over. Suddenly banging on the table with his hand so that Gideon jumped, he said, “I don’t buy it! You’re practically telling me language is inherited, not learned. That’s ridiculous!” His hands chopped the air.
Gideon was becoming a little irritated. “First, that isn’t what I’m telling you,” he said. “Second, it certainly seems to me you
“I’m not trying to get you to say anything. Don’t get touchy.” Suddenly he was very much a policeman, issuing a steely, unmistakable warning. Gideon’s irritation was replaced by a stab of concern. He very nearly asked if he were in some sort of trouble, but held his tongue.
Lau glared at him a moment longer. Then his eyes crinkled, and the mild, affable Hawaiian returned. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m touchy too. We’ve both been up most of the night on this, haven’t we? And my guess is it’s been a little tougher on you than on me.” Again the friendly smile. Gideon returned it, but now he was wary.
Lau went on. “I’ve read the report, but there’s one thing I’m not very clear about.” He held his cup in both hands, seemingly absorbed in its contents. “Would you mind going over how you got away from them after they pulled the knife?”
“All right. I just stamped on the one guy’s foot—”
Lau looked puzzled. “I understood you scraped down his shin with your heel and
“Well, yes, I did, sure, but I didn’t think it was important enough—”
“Okay, I just want to make sure I have it straight. Go ahead.”
“Then I sort of swung around—my hands were still behind my head—and I lucked out and hit him in the neck…”
Gideon stopped. Lau was smiling cheerfully at him. “Okay,” said Gideon, “what now? I’m getting the feeling you know something I don’t.”
Still grinning, the policeman unbuttoned the flap on the pocket of his denim shirt and took out a small notebook. “This is from the tape the MPs made of your story. Verbatim. ”Then I pivoted around. I drove my left elbow into his larynx. I caught him on the thyroid cartilage, at the apex of the laryngeal prominence.“ Uh, as a simple policeman, can I assume you’re referring to the Adam’s apple?”
Gideon, on guard, nodded. Lau continued. “That’s pretty technical language, isn’t it? Or don’t tell me you’re an anatomist, too?”
“Yes, I’m an anatomist, too,” said Gideon, showing more heat than he intended. “My primary field is physical anthropology— that’s skulls and bones—” he permitted himself a condescending smile at Lau, who returned it with evident good humor—“and you have to know anatomy for that.”
Lau nodded. “I see. Well, what I was wondering… that’s a pretty fortunate piece of ‘lucking out’—I mean accidentally connecting with the Adam’s apple—excuse me, the laryngeal prominence—” he consulted his notebook—“of the thyroid cartilage of the larynx. That’s a pretty vulnerable spot. You didn’t happen to know, I suppose, that an elbow smash there is a standard defensive maneuver against someone who’s got you from behind?” Again he had his coffee cup in both hands and was swirling the dregs and carefully examining them.
“No, I damn well didn’t know,” Gideon said. “What the hell are you trying to imply? I’m telling you I had a lucky—”
“And the business of scraping down the shin with the heel. Very impressive. About the most painful thing you can do to a man without really injuring him. Always effective.” He drained the coffee. “Didn’t know about that either?”
“Well, to tell the truth—” Lau looked sharply up at him from under his eyebrows, and Gideon continued—“to tell the truth, I read about that in a self-defense book when I was a kid, but I never tried it before.”
For a second Lau looked angry. Then his eyes crinkled again, and he laughed with a babylike spontaneity that made it impossible for Gideon not to join him.
“It’s the truth, honest,” Gideon said through his laughter. Lau kept on laughing. Gideon suddenly remembered something. “Hey, wait a minute. That guy, the one I said was an American…
Reluctantly, the policeman sobered. “Yes, what about him?”
“Well, he was American all right, but he’s spent a lot of time in Europe; in Germany, I think. I just realized it. What was it he said? ”So, now we find out.“ No, it was, ”So, now we see.“ That’s not American syntax. And he said it the
Lau was unimpressed. “I’m not sure I buy that. But please,”— he held up a hand as Gideon began to speak—“I don’t think I can handle another linguistics lecture. Doc, are you going to be in Heidelberg a while?”
