David Hill: We can spot a bargain, but bargaining is beyond us

New Zealanders generally know a bargain when they see it. But I suggest that they don't know bargaining when they see it.

I mean bargaining as in the gentle process of price negotiation between vendor and buyer; a process carried out with grace and style, the result of which satisfies both parties.

The only times New Zealanders seem to bargain over prices are at garage sales, or when buying a home or car. When we try to bargain in other areas, we generally display all the grace and style of a front-end loader. I can bear embarrassed witness to the fact.

It happened in a market, in an Australian city I won't name. We reached the market via a ferry that started from the Opera House and went under the Harbour Bridge.

What was this Australian market selling? Grapes, $2 a kilo. T-shirts inscribed Aussies Do It Down Under. CDs of Wallaby Slim's Wollongong Billabong Singalong. Grapes ("specials"), $1.50 a kilo. Grapes (seconds), $1 a kilo.

I didn't buy anything at first, although I was tempted by a wall clock in the form of a silver bell, where the hours were marked by artificial flowers, blossoms made of sequins twined about the quarter-hours, and the second hand jerked around with a yellow plastic butterfly on the end.

Then I noticed Antinous Antiques. I noticed it because of its hand-painted sign offering "bargianes".

Antinous himself was present to explain the bargianes. He stood there, radiating bonhomie, joie de vivre, jeu d'esprit and other foreign things. On his stall was a pen.

I coveted that pen. It was small, neat and old. It had a chased metal shaft and an obsolete but operative nib. I could see that pen on my desk at home. Just having it there would put me in the write mood.

I picked it up. It felt as good as it looked. It was priced at $16 - so reasonable that all my Kiwi traveller's mistrust started oozing upwards.

"Ah. The pen, sir," beamed Antinous. "From the estate of an elderly bookworm."

That phrase alone was worth the price. But I did what New Zealand tourists so often do in the face of unsolicited generosity. I grew mean and suspicious.

"Sixteen dollars?" I asked, turning the pen over. The first vowel of my first word marked me as a non-Australian.

"For you, sir, just $14." Antinous radiated some more. "A keepsake."

"I'll have to think about it," I muttered. Think about it? Nonsense. Pen, proprietor and provenance made up a package worth far more than $14.

"I would be unhappy to see you lack this pen, sir." Antinous spread his hands. "An expression of shared appreciation. Twelve dollars."

Shared appreciation, a keepsake, and a story to go with it. All for just $12. Plus a chance to be as courtly and civilised as Antinous himself. He was still beaming at me. I knew he was doing himself down for the sheer pleasure and grace of good bargaining.

I believe that anyone from almost any other society would have reacted in the same mood. But all my clumsiness rose to the surface in a two-word gob.

"Eight dollars."

The beam congealed on Antinous's face. His brow darkened. His teeth clenched, his nostrils flared, and his lips set. He held the pen up in front of me, and slowly, deliberately, he snapped it in half. He threw the halves on the ground beside me, and turned his back.

Shame filled me. I'd had the chance to take part in something stagey and stylish, and I'd smeared the experience.

Another would-be Kiwi bargain hunter slunk away as if he were the object of the hunt.

* Garth George returns next week.