Guess what?  --disable-unicode proofing.

This is a strange test.
diff --git a/Lib/test/test_getargs.py b/Lib/test/test_getargs.py
index ed6e4ee..ff0d36c 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_getargs.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_getargs.py
@@ -14,8 +14,11 @@
 # XXX If the encoding succeeds using the current default encoding,
 # this test will fail because it does not test the right part of the
 # PyArg_ParseTuple() implementation.
+from test_support import have_unicode
 import marshal
-try:
-    marshal.loads(u"\222")
-except UnicodeError:
-    pass
+
+if have_unicode:
+    try:
+        marshal.loads(unicode(r"\222", 'unicode-escape'))
+    except UnicodeError:
+        pass