Do they really have porches in America? They really do have porches. You can sit on the front porch - the front portion of the porch - and watch the world go by, or you can sit at the back for some privacy. Americans don't go in for gardening, we notice: the back garden - brown grass, uncut - simply runs out unfenced onto the road behind. It's exactly the same as the front garden.
But the Americans are tremendously neighbourly, we notice that. Didn't our hosts' neighbour bake a tart for us, their visitors? She brought it over, and we ate it with our Bourbon. She greeted us, and we her. What part of England are you from?, she asked, and we told her. We told her we were heading to the Smokies with our hosts - a long drive, by our standards - and she said it would be a great trip. Have a great trip, she said.
That wouldn't happen in England, we agree, that neighbourliness. The Americans, in general, are a friendly people. They're articulate: they're able to talk, and they talk at length, interestingly, being free with their opinions. There's nothing guarded about them, from our perspective. They give of themselves.
Hadn't we found, in nearly any situation in public, that we were drawn into conversation by the Americans around us, whoever they were? Perhaps it was our accents. Perhaps our bearing. More likely, it was because we had Sal with us, who inspires conversation. People talk to Sal, have you noticed that?, says W. No one would talk to us if it wasn't for Sal.
Americans have the pioneer spirit, we've noticed. They move about a great deal. We were told, on several occasions by our interlocutors, of marriages and divorces, of moving around. They move from here to there just like that. From state to state ... they're used to vast distances. They're used to travel, to uprooting themselves, they're not like us. The Americans are a pioneer people, we decide.
Haven't we always liked - basically liked - Americans? Haven't we always found them tremendously fresh, unprejudiced? They make us feel old and crabbed. Old, and from Old Europe. Americans will talk about anything, anything. They don't distinguish between the private and the public, not really. They keep nothing from you. The things we've heard on our American travels! To us, from Old Europe, it is sheer generosity. To think, these people are willing to share so much with us, with strangers. But probably they talk this way all the time.
For us - for me especially, says W. - talking is a great effort. I'm stuck mostly in mute indifference, W. says. It's only when I'm drunk that I speak, says W., and then almost entirely nonsensically. We're a reserved people, we English. We need to be drunk to talk, except for W., who has real manners, but then he's part Canadian. Especially me. I speak in great incoherent gales when I'm drunk. I talk rubbish, sheer rubbish. I bluster. I talk smut. And then I turn, W. says, I always turn. I become maudlin, and then vicious. I'm like Blanche Dubois, W. says.
Of course, I'm English through and through, W. says. I have all the sins of the English, which is odd, because my parents were emigrants. He'd expect more from me, W. says, given that my parents were emigrants. He, of course, has his relationship to Canada, that's what saved him. His part-Canadian soul. His Canadian citizenship. He nearly had a Canadian adolescence. Imagine! Imagine what would have become of him! As it is, he had a part Canadian boyhood. He knows something of the Yukon. He carries something of the Yukon in his soul.
And here we are in America. Here we are, ambassadors for our home country. The English abroad! What a thought!, W. says. To be English, and abroad! We call the Americans 'sir' and 'madam'. We heard it was very important to be polite over here. The Americans, despite their apparent informality, are keen on formality, on formal relations. They're not like Australians. That's why I have to be especially careful, W. says. Let Sal do the talking, W. says. She calls everyone 'sir' and 'madam'. She has charm, W. says. Wit. We lack charm - well, W. has some charm, he says, and we lack wit, although W. has more than me.
Luckily, we have Sal on our side. What would we do if it wasn't for her? Who would look after our tickets? Who would see us safely on the Greyhound? She's our eyes, says W. And our ears. And our sense. We're idiots in America, W. says, and we think back to Herzog's film. He's the elderly neighbour, whatever his name was - Scheitzer, I remind him, oh yes, Schiezer, W. says - and I'm Stroszek himself, I'm Bruno S. Without Sal, he'd be arrested and I'd shoot myself on a chairlift. Without Sal, says W., the chicken wouldn't stop.
We're lost in America! Here we are, in the deep south, pretty much, and thoroughly lost! What are we doing here? What led us here? Some terrible mistake, we agree. Some lapse in the logic of the universe. Is that really the Mississippi? It really is the Mississippi, wide and brown. Why is it so brown?, I ask W. It's full of mud, W. says. Water and mud.
On the banks of the river, Sal takes photos of us for W.'s facebook page. He rides me like a horse. I ride him like a horse. Sal rides both of us, like two horses. Stop arsing about you two, she says, though she finds it all very funny. And behind us, the great brown Mississippi, rolling improbably along.
America's so big!, we agree. It's overwhelming, really, when you think about. How far is it to the coast? A thousand miles? Two thousand miles? Some great, improbable distance, we're agreed. Some distance of which we cannot conceive. There's so much space here. America's so exposed. We think of the terrible signs we saw on the Greyhound bus of a passing hurricane. Houses torn up, trees destroyed and flung about. I took pictures. I'd never seen anything like it. America's in danger, we're agreed. It's too big! It's too vast!
We never like to be too far from the sea, W. especially. Doesn't he always demand, when he visits me, to be taken to the sea? Doesn't he always take me directly to the sea, whenever I visit him? I'll meet you at the sea, he tells me, when I text him from the airport. And I have to go straight there, straight to the sea to meet him. And in the middle of America, when the sea's so far away? What then? What to do?
Our hosts drive us around Nashville. They show us the sights. But we know, like us, it doesn't satisfy them. We know they're waiting for us to break, for us to say: but this terrible, so they can say, yes, it is terrible; yes, it's a living death. Because that's what it is: pure terror; and that's what it is, a living death. How will they survive here? How will we, for that matter, survive here?
The zoning of the city. Here, hospitals, dozens of them, one block after another. There, car dealerships, dozens of them. It's zoned, it's all zoned. You have to take your car to get from one zone to another. You have to take your car to get anywhere, or do anything. And we can't even drive, W. and I! We can't drive, and Sal can't drive, though she's said she's going to learn to drive, when we go back to England. She can't drive, we can't drive, which means we're utterly dependent on our hosts, our poor hosts, who detest driving. They've been forced into driving, they tell us, which is terrible.
They're Canadians, they say. They don't drive. They walk, they tell us. They cycle through the wilderness, they say. They paddle canoes. They're not made for this driving existence. For a few months, they tried to manage without a car in Nashville. They cycled everywhere, for miles and miles. They cycled right out of the city. They cycled from far flung government building to government building, while they were becoming American citizens. They cycled out to their favourite Mexican restaurant and their favourite Vietnamese restaurant, but in the end, it was too much. They have a car now, something they never thought they would own - something they thought they would never have to own. They own a car - it's too much for them, as Canadians.
Canadians, if they really have to drive, car pool. They drive in groups. They hire cars together. No doubt they sing as they drive. No doubt their voices ring out on the Canadian highways, the great, wide, continent-spanning Canadian highways, in harmony, in sweet unison. But they are fundamentally non-drivers, say our Canadian hosts. As are we, W. and I, Sal as well - we're fundamentally non-drivers, we have that in common.
The sad thing is, Nashville used to have a train station, our hosts tell us. They even drive us past it, the station, which has been converted into some kind of retail space. Imagine it, W. says, a city without a railway station. He's appalled. He's horrified. His voice trembles and shakes. A city without a railway station! It's enough to send you insane.
W. had great visions of travelling by train in America. Of travelling through the great expanse of America, dreaming of the coast - the east coast, the west coast, it didn't matter - dreaming of the coast, the American coast, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific, which one didn't concern him. The bus is a poor substitute, we agree.
I, in my turn, had visions of a fifties style Greyhound bus, a silver beast, a great gleaming insect, very sleek and streamlined. A fifties style bus, slicing through the air ... The reality is disappointing. The reality destroys us. The most mediocre of buses, on the most erratic of schedules ...
There's not much open to the non-driver in America, we agree. It's not a country for the non-driver, who is not so much as yet unskilled in driving, which is to say, unable to drive, as unable to think of driving and unable to conceive of driving. Unable to think or conceive of driving, and of the whole world of driving. What can driving possibly mean to us? How can we understand the mind of a driver? But our hosts, nevertheless, are driving. Our hosts - our friends - have been forced into driving, and all across the state, to the Smokies. It's madness!
We're not made for this life, none of us. We confirm it for our hosts: America's not for them. Granted, we are not Canadians as they are - though W. is part Canadian, and has Canadian citizenship - but we understand their plight. We're in favour of Americans - we like Americans - but their country baffles us, and more than that, destroys us. Little by little, we're being destroyed. We need to get back! We need to go home!