Guess what? --disable-unicode proofing.

This is a strange test.

Lib/test/test_getargs.py

@@ -14,8 +14,11 @@ single case that failed between 2.1 and 2.2a2.
 # 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:
+
+if have_unicode:
+    try:
+        marshal.loads(unicode(r"\222", 'unicode-escape'))
+    except UnicodeError:
         pass