The Last Week of the Language Exchange

Ivy and Nils had been meeting every Tuesday evening for eight months, trading English for Norwegian over coffee that went cold while they talked. It had started as a language exchange app match, two strangers practicing sentences from a phrasebook. Somewhere between the third and fourth month, though, the conversations had stopped being about grammar at all.

Ivy dan Nils sudah bertemu setiap Selasa malam selama delapan bulan, bertukar bahasa Inggris dan Norwegia sambil minum kopi yang menjadi dingin saat mereka mengobrol. Semuanya bermula dari pasangan hasil aplikasi pertukaran bahasa, dua orang asing yang berlatih kalimat dari buku panduan percakapan. Namun, di antara bulan ketiga dan keempat, percakapan mereka sama sekali tak lagi membahas tata bahasa.

Neither of them had mentioned it. They had built an unspoken rule: talk about everything except what was happening between them, because naming it might make it too easy to lose.

Tak satu pun dari mereka pernah menyinggungnya. Mereka membuat aturan tak terucap: bicarakan apa saja kecuali apa yang sedang terjadi di antara mereka, karena menyebutnya mungkin membuatnya terlalu mudah hilang.

Then, on a Tuesday in early October, Nils arrived with news instead of homework. His visa was ending, and his company was transferring him back to Oslo in eleven days. He had known for three weeks and had been putting off telling her, hoping, he admitted, that the right moment would arrive on its own.

Lalu, pada suatu Selasa di awal Oktober, Nils datang membawa kabar, bukan pekerjaan rumah. Visanya akan berakhir, dan perusahaannya memindahkannya kembali ke Oslo sebelas hari lagi. Ia sudah tahu sejak tiga minggu lalu dan menunda memberitahunya, berharap, akunya, saat yang tepat akan datang dengan sendirinya.

"You should have told me sooner," Ivy said. She wasn't sure if she was angrier at him, or at herself for not asking why he had seemed distracted lately.

"Seharusnya kamu bilang lebih awal," kata Ivy. Ia tak yakin apakah ia lebih marah kepada Nils, atau kepada dirinya sendiri karena tak bertanya mengapa Nils tampak terganggu belakangan ini.

"I know," he said. "I kept thinking I'd find a way to bring it up that didn't sound like a big deal. It is a big deal, though, isn't it?"

"Aku tahu," katanya. "Aku terus berpikir akan menemukan cara membicarakannya yang tidak terdengar seperti masalah besar. Tapi ini memang masalah besar, kan?"

She didn't answer right away. If they had said something months earlier, they might have had more than eleven days to figure out what they wanted. Instead, they had spent eight months circling a conversation neither of them was brave enough to start.

Ivy tidak langsung menjawab. Kalau mereka sudah mengatakan sesuatu berbulan-bulan lalu, mungkin mereka punya lebih dari sebelas hari untuk memikirkan apa yang mereka inginkan. Sebaliknya, mereka menghabiskan delapan bulan berputar-putar di sekitar percakapan yang tak ada yang cukup berani memulainya.

"I don't know what this is supposed to become," Ivy finally said, "but I don't want to pretend it's nothing just because it's inconvenient."

"Aku tidak tahu ini seharusnya menjadi apa," akhirnya Ivy berkata, "tapi aku tidak mau pura-pura ini bukan apa-apa hanya karena tidak nyaman."

Nils reached across the table and, for the first time since they had met, took her hand instead of her cup. They didn't solve anything that night. They didn't promise long-distance calls or plane tickets they couldn't yet afford.

Nils mengulurkan tangan melewati meja dan, untuk pertama kalinya sejak mereka bertemu, menggenggam tangannya, bukan cangkirnya. Mereka tidak menyelesaikan apa pun malam itu. Mereka tidak berjanji akan menelepon jarak jauh atau membeli tiket pesawat yang belum sanggup mereka beli.

But they agreed, quietly, to stop rehearsing sentences in a language neither of them needed anymore, and to say, plainly, what they actually meant.

Tetapi mereka sepakat, dengan pelan, untuk berhenti melatih kalimat dalam bahasa yang tak lagi mereka perlukan, dan untuk mengatakan, dengan jelas, apa yang sebenarnya mereka maksud.