The girls at the Snail like foreign-sounding speech, yes they do. MLE likes Scots accents, Julie likes German.

Coincidentally, I can replicate a decent Scots accent (thanks to Dad) and I speak German (thanks to the White Oaks High School language curriculum).

Julie asked me to say something beautiful to her in German yesterday, and I choked. I had this sudden overwhelming flashback to Sam, reciting Rilke to me over dinner, from memory.

Ach, die Gärten bist du,
ach, ich sah sie mit solcher
Hoffnung. Ein offenes Fenster
im Landhaus–, und du tratest beinahe
mir nachdenklich heran. Gassen fand ich,-
du warst sie gerade gegangen,
und die Spiegel manchmal der Läden der Händler
waren noch schwindlich von dir und gaben erschrocken
mein zu plötzliches Bild. -Wer weiß, ob derselbe
Vogel nicht hinklang durch uns
gestern, einzeln, im Abend?
——————————–
You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced upon,-
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back
my too-sudden image. Who knows? perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening…