The Schooldays of Jesus Read online

  ‘Javier is a first-rate violinist,’ says Arroyo. ‘First-rate.’

  Moreno shrugs. ‘Perhaps, but an amateur nevertheless. As I said, the two of us ran a business, but then Juan Sebastián began to have doubts about it, so, to cut a long story short, we closed down. He created his Academy of Dance while I went my own way. But we remain in contact. We have our disagreements, but broadly speaking we see the world in the same way. If we didn’t, how would we have been able to work together all those years?’

  It comes back to him. ‘Ah, you must be the señor Moreno who gave the lecture on land surveying! We saw the advertisement, David and I.’

  ‘Land surveying?’ says Moreno.

  ‘Topographical measurement.’

  ‘Man the Measure of All Things,’ says Moreno. ‘That is the title of the talk I will be giving tonight. It will not be about land surveying at all. It will be about Metros and his intellectual legacy. I thought that was clear.’

  ‘My apologies. The confusion is mine. We are looking forward to hearing you. But Man the Measurer was definitely the title under which the lecture was advertised—I know because I distributed the leaflets myself, that is my business. Who is Metros?’

  Moreno is about to reply, but a couple who have impatiently been waiting their turn break in. ‘Maestro, we are so excited that you are back! In Estrella we feel so cut off from the true life of the mind! Will this be your only appearance?’

  He drifts away.

  ‘Why did señor Arroyo call you a philosopher?’ asks the boy.

  ‘It was a joke. Surely you know señor Arroyo’s manner by now. It is because I am not a philosopher that he calls me a philosopher. Have something to eat. It is going to be a long evening. After the reception there is still señor Moreno’s lecture. You will enjoy it. It will be like a story-reading. Señor Moreno will stand on a platform and tell us about a man named Metros, whom I have never heard of but who is evidently important.’

  The refreshments promised in the invitation turn out to be a big pot of tea, warm rather than hot, and some plates of hard little biscuits. The boy bites into one of them, pulls a face, spits it up. ‘It’s horrible!’ he says. He, Simón, quietly cleans up the mess.

  ‘There is too much ginger in the biscuits.’ It is Mercedes, who has appeared noiselessly at their side. Of the cane there is no sign; she seems to move quite easily. ‘But don’t tell Alyosha. You don’t want to hurt him. He and the boys were baking all afternoon. So you are the famous David! The boys tell me you are a good dancer.’

  ‘I can dance all the numbers.’

  ‘So I hear. Is there any other kind of dancing you do besides number-dancing? Can you do human dancing?’

  ‘What is human dancing?’

  ‘You are a human being, aren’t you? Can you do any of the dances that human beings do, such as dancing for joy or dancing breast to breast with someone you are fond of?’

  ‘Ana Magdalena didn’t teach us that.’

  ‘Would you like me to teach you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, until you learn to do what human beings do you can’t be a full human being. What else don’t you do? Do you have friends you play with?’

  ‘I play football.’

  ‘You play sports, but do you ever just play? Joaquín says you never talk to the other children at school, you just give orders and tell them what to do. Is that true?’

  The boy is silent.

  ‘Well, it is certainly not easy conducting a human conversation with you, young David. I think I will look for someone else to talk to.’ Teacup in hand, she drifts off.

  ‘Why don’t you go and say hello to the animals?’ he suggests to David. ‘Take Alyosha’s biscuits along. Maybe the rabbits will eat them.’

  He makes his way back to the circle around Moreno.

  ‘About Metros the man we know nothing,’ Moreno is saying, ‘and not much more about his philosophy, since he left no written record. Nevertheless, he looms large over the modern world. That, at least, is my opinion.

  ‘According to one strand of legend, Metros said there is nothing in the universe that cannot be measured. According to another strand, he said that there can be no absolute measurement—that measurement is always relative to the measurer. Philosophers are still arguing about whether the two claims are compatible.’

  ‘And which do you believe?’ asks Valentina.

  ‘I straddle the gap, as I will try to explain in tonight’s talk. After which my friend Juan Sebastián will have a chance to respond. We have set up the evening as a debate—we thought that would make it more lively. Juan Sebastián has in the past been critical of my interest in Metros. He is critical of metra in general, of the idea that everything in the universe can be measured.’

  ‘That everything in the universe should be measured,’ says Arroyo. ‘There is a difference.’

  ‘That everything in the universe should be measured—thank you for correcting me. That is why my friend decided to quit clock-making. What is a clock, after all, but a mechanism for imposing a metron on the flux of time?’

  ‘A metron?’ says Valentina. ‘What is that?’

  ‘The metron is named after Metros. Any unit of measurement qualifies as a metron: a gram, for example, or a metre, or a minute. Without metra the natural sciences would not be possible. Take the case of astronomy. We say that astronomy concerns itself with the stars, but that is not strictly true. In fact it concerns itself with the metra of the stars: their mass, their distance from each other, and so forth. We can’t put the stars themselves into mathematical equations, but we can perform mathematical operations on their metra and thereby uncover the laws of the universe.’

  David has reappeared at his side, tugging at his arm. ‘Come and see, Simón!’ he whispers.

  ‘The mathematical laws of the universe,’ says Arroyo.

  ‘The mathematical laws,’ says Moreno.

  For a man so unappealing in his exterior, Moreno speaks with remarkable self-assurance.

  ‘How fascinating,’ says Valentina.

  ‘Come and see, Simón!’ the boy whispers again.

  ‘In a minute,’ he whispers back.

  ‘Fascinating indeed,’ echoes Consuelo. ‘But it is getting late. We should be making our way to the Institute. A quick question, señor Arroyo: When will you be reopening the Academy?’

  ‘The date is not yet settled,’ says Arroyo. ‘What I can tell you is that, until we find a teacher of dance, the Academy will be solely an academy of music.’

  ‘I thought señora Mercedes was going to be the new dance teacher.’

  ‘Alas, no, Mercedes has duties in Novilla that she cannot escape. She visited Estrella to see her nephews, my sons, not to do any teaching. We have yet to appoint a teacher of dance.’

  ‘You have yet to appoint a teacher of dance,’ says Consuelo. ‘I know nothing about this Dmitri person beyond what I read in the newspaper, but—excuse me for saying so—I hope that in future you will be more careful about the staff you appoint.’

  ‘Dmitri was not employed by the Academy,’ says he, Simón. ‘He worked as an attendant in the museum downstairs. It is the museum that should be more careful about the staff it appoints.’

  ‘A homicidal maniac in this very building,’ says Consuelo. ‘The thought makes me shiver.’

  ‘He was indeed a homicidal maniac. He was also personable. The children of the Academy loved him.’ He is standing up not for Dmitri but for Arroyo, the man who was so wrapped up in his music that he allowed his wife to drift into a fatal entanglement with an underling. ‘Children are innocent. Being innocent means taking things at face value. It means opening your heart to someone who smiles at you and calls you his fine little man and dishes out sweets.’

  David speaks. ‘Dmitri says he couldn’t help himself. He says passion made him kill Ana Magdalena.’

  There is a moment of frozen silence. With a frown Moreno examines the strange boy.

  ‘Passion is no defence,�
� says Consuelo. ‘We all feel passion at one time or another, but we don’t go killing people because of it.’

  ‘Dmitri has gone away to the salt mines,’ says David. ‘He is going to dig up lots of salt to make up for killing Ana Magdalena.’

  ‘Well, we will make sure we don’t use any of Dmitri’s salt on the farm, won’t we?’ She glances sternly at her two sisters. ‘How much salt is a human life worth? Perhaps you could ask that of your Metra man.’

  ‘Metros,’ says Moreno.

  ‘I beg your pardon: Metros. Simón, can we give you a lift?’

  ‘Thank you, but no—I have my bicycle here.’

  As the gathering disperses, David takes him by the hand and leads him down a dark stairway to the little enclosed garden behind the museum. A light rain is falling. By moonlight the boy unlatches a gate and on hands and knees crawls into a hutch. There is an explosion of squawking among the hens. He emerges with a struggling creature in his arms: a lamb.

  ‘Look, it’s Jeremiah! He used to be so big that I couldn’t lift him, but Alyosha forgot to give him milk to drink and now he has grown small!’

  He strokes the lamb. It tries to suck his finger. ‘No one in this world grows small, David. If he has turned small, it is not because Alyosha hasn’t been feeding him, it is because he is not the real Jeremiah. He is a new Jeremiah who has taken the place of the old Jeremiah because the old Jeremiah has grown up and turned into a sheep. People find young Jeremiahs endearing, but not old Jeremiahs. No one wants to cuddle old Jeremiahs. That is their misfortune.’

  ‘Where is the old Jeremiah? Can I see him?’

  ‘The old Jeremiah is back in the meadows with the other sheep. One day when we have time we can go and search for him. But right now we have a lecture to attend.’

  Out on Calle Hugo it has begun to rain more heavily. As he and the boy hesitate in the doorway there is a hoarse whisper: ‘Simón!’ A figure wrapped in a cloak or blanket looms before them, a hand beckons. Dmitri! The boy dashes forward and clasps him around the thighs.

  ‘What on earth are you doing here, Dmitri?’ he, Simón, demands.

  ‘Ssh!’ says Dmitri; and, in an exaggerated whisper: ‘Is there somewhere we can go?’

  ‘We are not going anywhere,’ he says, not lowering his voice. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Without replying Dmitri grasps his arm and propels him across the empty street—he is astonished at the man’s strength—into the doorway of the tobacconist’s.

  ‘Did you escape, Dmitri?’ says the boy. He is excited; his eyes sparkle in the moonlight.

  ‘Yes, I escaped,’ says Dmitri. ‘I had unfinished business, I had to escape, I had no choice.’

  ‘And are they searching for you with bloodhounds?’

  ‘This weather is no good for bloodhounds,’ says Dmitri. ‘Too wet for their noses. The bloodhounds are back in their kennels, waiting for the rain to stop.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ says he, Simón. ‘What do you want with us?’

  ‘We need to talk, Simón. You were always a decent fellow, I always felt I could talk to you. Can we go to your place? You have no idea what it is like, having no home, nowhere to lay one’s head. Do you recognize the coat? It’s the one you gave me. It made quite an impression on me, the gift of your coat. When I was universally excoriated, for what I did, you gave me a coat and a bed to sleep in. That’s something only a genuinely decent fellow would do.’

  ‘I gave it to you to be rid of you. Now let go of us. We are in a hurry.’

  ‘No!’ says the boy. ‘Tell us about the salt mines, Dmitri. Do they really whip you in the salt mines?’

  ‘There is a lot I could say about the salt mines,’ says Dmitri, ‘but it will have to wait. There is something more pressing on my mind, namely repentance. I need your help, Simón. I never repented, you know. Now I want to repent.’

  ‘I thought that was why we have salt mines: as a place of penitence. What are you doing here when you should be there?’

  ‘It’s not as simple as that, Simón. I can explain it all, but it will take time. Do we have to huddle here in the cold and the wet?’

  ‘I could not care less if you are cold and wet. David and I have an appointment to keep. The last time I saw you you said you were off to the salt mines to surrender yourself for punishment. Did you ever go to the salt mines, or was that another lie?’

  ‘When I left you, Simón, I fully intended to go to the salt mines. That was what my heart told me. Accept your punishment like a man, said my heart. But other factors supervened. Supervened: nice word. Other factors made themselves felt. Therefore no. I have not actually been to the salt mines, not yet. I’m sorry, David. I let you down. I told you I was going but I didn’t go.

  ‘The truth is, I’ve been brooding, Simón. This has been a dark time for me, brooding on my fate. It was quite a shock to discover that I didn’t have it in me after all to accept what was due to me, namely a spell in the salt mines. Quite a shock. My manhood was involved. If I had been a man, a real man, I would have gone, no doubt about that. But I wasn’t a man, I discovered. I was less than a man. I was a coward. That was the fact I had to face. A murderer and on top of that a coward. Can you blame me for feeling upset?’

  He, Simón, has had enough. ‘Come, David,’ he says. And to Dmitri: ‘Be warned, I am going to telephone the police.’

  He half expects the boy to protest. But no: with a backward glance at Dmitri the boy follows him.

  ‘The pot calling the kettle black,’ Dmitri calls out after them. ‘I saw the way you looked at Ana Magdalena, Simón! You lusted after her too, only you were not man enough for her!’

  In the middle of the rain-beaten street, exhausted, he turns to face Dmitri’s tirade.

  ‘Go on! Call your precious police! And you, David: I expected better of you, I really did. I thought you were a stout little soldier. But no, it turns out you are under their thumb—that cold bitch Inés and this man of paper. They have mothered you and fathered you until there is nothing left of you but a shadow. Go! Do your worst!’

  As if gathering strength from their silence, Dmitri emerges from the shelter of the doorway and, holding the coat on high above his head like a sail, strides across the street back to the Academy.

  ‘What is he going to do, Simón?’ whispers the boy. ‘Is he going to kill señor Arroyo?’

  ‘I have no idea. The man is mad. Fortunately there is no one at home, they have all gone to the Institute.’

  CHAPTER 22

  THOUGH HE pedals as hard as he can, they arrive late for the lecture. Making as little noise as possible, he and the boy sit down in their wet clothes in the back row.

  ‘A shadowy figure, Metros,’ Moreno is saying. ‘And like his comrade Prometheus, bringer of fire, perhaps only a figure of legend. Nevertheless, the arrival of Metros marks a turning point in human history: the moment when we collectively gave up the old way of apprehending the world, the unthinking, animal way, when we abandoned as futile the quest to know things in themselves, and began instead to see the world through its metra. By concentrating our gaze upon fluctuations in the metra we enabled ourselves to discover new laws, laws that even the heavenly bodies have to obey.

  ‘Similarly on earth, where in the spirit of the new metric science we measured mankind and, finding that all men are equal, concluded that men should fall equally under the law. No more slaves, no more kings, no more exceptions.

  ‘Was Metros the measurer a bad man? Were he and his heirs guilty of abolishing reality and putting a simulacrum in its place, as some critics claim? Would we be better off if Metros had never been born? As we look around us at this splendid Institute, designed by architects and built by engineers schooled in the metra of statics and dynamics, that position seems hard to maintain.

  ‘Thank you for your attention.’

  The applause from the audience, which nearly fills the theatre, is long and loud. Moreno shuffles his notes together and descends the dais. Arroyo takes the
microphone. ‘Thank you, Javier, for that fascinating and masterly overview of Metros and his legacy, an overview which you offer to us, appropriately, on the eve of the decennial census, that orgy of measurement.

  ‘With your consent, I will briefly respond. After my response, the floor will be open to debate.’

  He gives a signal. The two Arroyo boys rise from their seats in the front row, strip off their outer clothes, and, wearing singlets and shorts and golden slippers, join their father on the stage.

  ‘The city of Estrella knows me as a musician and as director of the Academy of Dance, an academy where no distinction is made between dance and music. Why not? Because, we believe, music and dance together, music-dance, is its own way of apprehending the universe, the human way but also the animal way, the way that prevailed before the coming of Metros.

  ‘As we in the Academy do not distinguish between music and dance, so we do not distinguish between mind and body. The teachings of Metros constituted a new, mental science, and the knowledge they brought into being was a new, mental knowledge. The older mode of apprehension comes from body and mind moving together, body-mind, to the rhythm of music-dance. In that dance old memories come to the surface, archaic memories, knowledge we lost when we voyaged here across the oceans.

  ‘We may title ourselves an Academy, but we are not an academy of greybeards. Instead our members are children, in whom those archaic memories, memories of a prior existence, are far from extinguished. That is why I have asked these two young men, my sons Joaquín and Damián, students of the Academy, to join me on the stage.

  ‘The teachings of Metros are based on number, but Metros did not invent number. The numbers existed before Metros was born, before humankind came into being. Metros merely used them, subjecting them to his system. My late wife used to call numbers in the hands of Metros ant numbers, copulating endlessly, dividing and multiplying endlessly. Through dance she returned her students to the true numbers, which are eternal and indivisible and uncountable.