Story by Bernard Marcoux (BBO: Fluff)

When you arrive in Spain, you quickly learn that some Spanish words are pronounced differently than in French or Italian. For example, aqua in Italian becomes agua in Spanish; aperto in Italian becomes abierto in Spanish. The Italian "p" becomes "b" in Spanish, and "q" becomes "g".

You barely have time to familiarize yourself with these changes when you arrive in Portugal, and you discover that the Portuguese have flipped some letters so thoroughly that, after four or five days in Spain and Portugal, my wife concluded—with all the delicate nuances of opinion she's known for—that the Spanish and Portuguese were "all mixed up in their alphabet."

In Portuguese, "please" becomes faz favor. To say thank you? Well, it depends. A man says obrigado, and a woman says obrigada. Just another language anecdote: in Germany, my wife had decided that Auf Wiedersehen sounded like Azibederzen. So, in Portugal, remembering some of her German and struggling to pronounce obrigada, she simply blended the two languages and created Azibrigada. This word, offered while presenting a major credit card, was understood by everyone. Easy, this Portuguese language, I tell you.

My wife is a Taurus (see her circumspect opinion about the Spanish and Portuguese languages), and I am a Pisces. At bridge, she is still a bull, and I am a fish. How can a fish fall in love with a bull? It’s a long story. Let’s just say I want to send a signal to my bull—but I don’t want her to charge like… well, a raging bull. I want to send information, not an order. I just want to tell her: "I have a card in that suit. You don’t have to switch immediately—just take this information into account in your overall plan (?!?) and play accordingly."

The fish knows that if he gives too strong a signal to his beloved bull, she’ll see red, scratch the ground with her front right hoof, and switch suits on the spot. So what can we do to avoid exciting the bull? Can we teach a bull to be thoughtful? Can we expect a touch of finesse from this passionate quadruped? Can we show her not to charge blindly when she sees a signal? The fish—elegant, refined, subtle (that’s me, I remind you)—will try his best to send a signal that, while clear, doesn’t make the bull agitated.

Say, for example, I want to tell my bull that I have a card in spades. My spades are: A9542. With upside-down signals, I should play the smallest spade, the 2—a very forceful signal. As soon as it hits the table, it’ll light up my bull’s eyes. She’ll leap onto the first spade she sees and slam it down. So instead of the smallest spade, I play the 4. It’s still a signal, but more subtle, less intense. Here, my bull pauses, looks, and begins to think (!). Have you ever seen a bull think? Maybe it’s the refraction (remember, I’m a fish—I see everything distorted through water), but I see her, eyes crossed from the effort of concentration, trying to breathe calmly, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Usually, after a minute or two, my bull uncrosses her eyes, uncrosses her elegant legs (!), flips three or four cards, and, misinterpreting my subtle signal, makes the wrong return. The opponents make their contract… and my bull comes after me anyway.

Have you ever seen a bull chase a fish? I tell you—it makes big, big, big splashes everywhere.

How is it, then, that the bull and the fish still play together?

Far from all the brouhaha, while the bull causes tidal waves and floods the entire table, the fish, swimming calmly at the bottom of the pond, has been asking himself that very same question for the past 35 years. But he still finds his bull… utterly irresistible.

Azibrigado!

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