The Schooldays of Jesus Read online

‘I am a musician, ill at ease with argumentation, as perhaps you can hear. To allow you to see how the world was before the arrival of Metros I will fall silent while Joaquín and Damián perform a pair of dances for us: the dance of Two and the dance of Three. Thereafter they will perform the more difficult dance of Five.’

  He gives a signal. Simultaneously, in counterpoint, one on either side of the stage, the boys commence the dances of Two and Three. As they dance, the agitation stirred up in his, Simón’s, breast by the confrontation with Dmitri dies down; he is able to relax and take pleasure in their easy, fluent movements. Though Arroyo’s philosophy of dance is as obscure to him as ever, he begins to see, in the dimmest of ways, why the one dance is appropriate to Two and the other to Three, and so to glimpse, in the dimmest of ways, what Arroyo means by dancing the numbers, calling the numbers down.

  The dancers conclude at the same moment, on the same beat, in mid-stage. For a moment they pause; then, taking their cue from their father, who now accompanies them on the flute, they embark together on the dance of Five.

  He can see at once why Arroyo called Five difficult: difficult for the dancers, but difficult too for the spectators. With Two and Three he could feel some force within his body—the tide of his blood or whatever he wants to call it—move in accord with the boys limbs. With Five there is no such feeling. There is some pattern to the dance—that he can faintly apprehend—but his body is too stupid, too stolid to find it and follow it.

  He glances at David beside him. David is frowning; his lips move wordlessly.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ he whispers. ‘Are they not doing it right?’

  The boy tosses his head impatiently.

  The dance of Five comes to an end. Side by side, the Arroyo boys face the audience. There is a polite if mystified ripple of applause. At this moment David leaps from his seat and runs down the aisle. Startled, he, Simón, gets to his feet and follows, but is too late to prevent him from clambering onto the stage.

  ‘What is it, young man?’ asks Arroyo with a frown.

  ‘It is my turn,’ says the boy. ‘I want to dance Seven.’

  ‘Not now. Not here. This is not a concert. Go and sit down.’

  Amid murmuring from the audience he, Simón, mounts the stage. ‘Come, David, you are upsetting everyone.’

  Peremptorily the boy shakes him off. ‘It is my turn!’

  ‘Very well,’ says Arroyo. ‘Dance Seven. When you have finished I expect you to go and sit quietly again. Do you agree?’

  Without a word the boy slips off his shoes. Joaquín and Damián make way; in silence he begins his dance. Arroyo watches, eyes narrowed in concentration, then raises the flute to his lips. The melody he plays is right and just and true; yet even he, Simón, can hear that it is the dancer who leads and the master who follows. From some buried memory the words pillar of grace emerge, surprising him, for the image he holds to, from the football field, is of the boy as a compact bundle of energy. But now, on the stage of the Institute, Ana Magdalena’s legacy reveals itself. As if the earth has lost its downward power, the boy seems to shed all bodily weight, to become pure light. The logic of the dance eludes him entirely, yet he knows that what is unfolding before him is extraordinary; and from the hush that falls in the auditorium he guesses that the people of Estrella find it extraordinary too.

  The numbers are integral and sexless, said Ana Magdalena; their ways of loving and conjugating are beyond our comprehension. Because of that, they can be called down only by sexless beings. Well, the being who dances before them is neither child nor man, boy nor girl; he would even say neither body nor spirit. Eyes shut, mouth open, rapt, David floats through the steps with such fluid grace that time stands still. Too caught up even to breathe, he, Simón, whispers to himself: Remember this! If ever in the future you are tempted to doubt him, remember this!

  The dance of Seven ends as abruptly as it began. The flute falls silent. With chest heaving slightly, the boy faces Arroyo. ‘Do you want me to dance Eleven?’

  ‘Not now,’ says Arroyo abstractedly.

  From the back of the hall a call reverberates through the auditorium. The call itself is indistinct—Bravo? Slavo?—but the voice is familiar: Dmitri’s. His heart sinks. Will the man never cease to haunt him?

  Arroyo bestirs himself. ‘It is time to return to the subject of our lecture, Metros and his legacy,’ he announces. ‘Are there questions you would like to address to señor Moreno?’

  An elderly gentleman stands up. ‘If the antics of the children are over, maestro, I have two questions. First, señor Moreno, you said that, as heirs of Metros, we have measured ourselves and found we are all equal. Being equal, you say, it follows that we should be equal in the eyes of the law. No longer should anyone be above the law. No more kings, no more super-men, no more exceptional beings. But—I come to my first question—is it really a good thing that the rule of law should allow no exceptions? If the law is applied without exception, what place is left for mercy?’

  Moreno steps forward and mounts the dais. ‘An excellent question, a profound question,’ he replies. ‘Should there not be room for mercy under the law? The answer our lawgivers have given is, yes, there should indeed be room for mercy, or—to speak in more concrete terms—for remission of sentence, but only when such is merited. The offender owes a debt to society. Forgiveness of his debt must be earned by a labour of contrition. Thus the sovereignty of measure is preserved: the substance of the offender’s contrition shall, so to speak, be weighed, and an equivalent weight be deducted from his sentence. You had a second question.’

  The speaker glances around. ‘I will be brief. You have said nothing about money. Yet as a universal measure of value, money is surely the principal legacy of Metros. Where would we be without money?’

  Before Moreno can reply, Dmitri, bareheaded, wearing his, Simón’s, coat, plunges down the aisle and in a single movement mounts the stage, bellowing all the time, ‘That’s enough, that’s enough, that’s enough!

  ‘Juan Sebastián,’ he shouts—he needs no microphone—‘I am here to beg your forgiveness.’ He turns to the audience. ‘Yes, I beg this man’s forgiveness. I know you are occupied with other matters, important matters, but I am Dmitri, Dmitri the outcast, and Dmitri has no shame, he is beyond shame as he is beyond many other things.’ He turns back to Arroyo. ‘I must tell you, Juan Sebastián,’ he continues without pause, as if his speech has been long rehearsed, ‘I have been through dark times of late. I have even thought of doing away with myself. Why? Because I have grown to realize—and it has been a bitter realisation—that never will I be free until the burden of guilt is lifted from my shoulders.’

  If Arroyo is disconcerted, he gives no sign of it. With shoulders squared he confronts Dmitri.

  ‘Where shall I turn for relief?’ demands Dmitri. ‘To the law? You heard what the man said about the law. The law takes no reckoning of the state of a man’s soul. All it does is make up an equation, fit a sentence to a crime. Take the case of Ana Magdalena, your wife, whose life was cut off just like that. What gives some stranger, some man who never laid eyes on her, the right to put on a scarlet robe and say, A lifetime in the lockup, that’s what her life is worth? Or Twenty-five years in the salt mines? It makes no sense! Some crimes are not measurable! They are off the scale!

  ‘And what would it achieve anyway, twenty-five years in the salt mines? An outward torment, that’s all. Does the outward torment cancel the inner torment, like a plus and a minus? No. The inner torment rages on.’

  Without warning he sinks to his knees before Arroyo.

  ‘I am guilty, Juan Sebastián. You know it and I know it. I have never pretended otherwise. I am guilty and in great need of your forgiveness. Only when I have your forgiveness will I be healed. Lay your hand on my head. Say, Dmitri, you did me a terrible wrong, but I forgive you. Say it.’

  Arroyo is silent, his features frozen in disgust.

  ‘What I did was bad, Juan Sebastián. I don’t
deny it and don’t want it to be forgotten. Let it always be remembered that Dmitri did a bad thing, a terrible thing. But surely that doesn’t mean I should be damned and cast into the outer darkness. Surely I can have a little grace extended to me. Surely someone can say, Dmitri? I remember Dmitri. He did a bad thing but at heart he wasn’t a bad fellow, old Dmitri. That will be enough for me—that one drop of saving water. Not to absolve me, just to recognize me as man, to say, He is still ours, he is still one of us.’

  There is a minor commotion at the back of the auditorium. Two uniformed police officers march purposefully down the aisle toward the stage.

  With his arms above his head Dmitri rises to his feet. ‘So this is how you answer me,’ he cries out. ‘Take him away and lock him up, this troublesome spirit. Who is responsible for this? Who called the police? Where are you skulking, Simón? Show your face! After all I have been through, do you think a prison cell frightens me? There is nothing you can do that is equal to what I do to myself. Do I look to you like a happy man? No, I don’t. I look like a man sunk in the depths of misery, because that is where I am, night and day. It is only you, Juan Sebastián, who can draw me up from the deep well of my misery, because you are the one I wronged.’

  The police officers have halted at the foot of the stage. They are young, mere boys, and in the glare of the lights suddenly unsure of themselves.

  ‘I wronged you, Juan Sebastián, I wronged you profoundly. Why did I do it? I have no idea. Not only do I have no idea why I did it, I cannot believe I did it. That is the truth, the naked truth. I swear to it. It’s incomprehensible—incomprehensible from the outside and incomprehensible from the inside too. If the facts were not staring me in the face, I would be tempted to agree with the judge—you remember the judge at the trial?—of course not, you weren’t there—I would be tempted to say, It wasn’t I who did it, it was someone else. But of course that isn’t true. It is not as if I am a schizophrenic or a hebephrenic or any of the other things they say I could be. I am not divorced from reality. My feet are on the ground and have always been. No: it was me. It was me. A mystery yet not a mystery. A mystery that it is not a mystery. How did it come to be I who did the deed—I of all people? Can you help me answer that question, Juan Sebastián? Can anyone help me?’

  Of course the man is a fake through and through. Of course his remorse is confected, part of a scheme to save himself from the salt mines. Nevertheless, when he, Simón, tries to imagine how this man, who every day visited the kiosk on the square to fill his pockets with lollipops for the children, could have closed his hands around Ana Magdalena’s alabaster throat and crushed the life out of her, his imagination fails him. It fails or it quails. What the man did may not be a true mystery but it is a mystery nonetheless.

  From the back of the stage the boy’s voice rings out. ‘Why don’t you ask me? You ask everyone else but you never ask me!’

  ‘Quite right,’ says Dmitri. ‘My fault, I should have asked you too. Tell me, my pretty young dancer, what shall I do with myself?’

  Gathering their resolve, the two young police officers make to ascend the stage. Brusquely Arroyo waves them back.

  ‘No!’ the boy shouts. ‘You have got to really ask me!’

  ‘All right,’ says Dmitri, ‘I’ll really ask you.’ He kneels down again, clasps his hands, composes his face. ‘David, please tell me—no, it’s no good, I can’t do it. You are too young, my boy. You have to be a grown-up to understand love and death and things like that.’

  ‘You are always saying it, Simón is always saying it—You don’t understand, you are too young. I can understand! Ask me, Dmitri! Ask me!’

  Dmitri repeats the rigmarole of unfolding and folding his hands, closing his eyes, letting his face go blank.

  ‘Dmitri, ask me!’ Now the boy is positively screaming.

  There is a stir among the audience. People are getting up and leaving. He catches the eye of Mercedes sitting in the front row. She raises a hand in a gesture he cannot read. The three sisters, beside her, are stony-faced.

  He, Simón, signals to the police officers. ‘That’s enough, Dmitri, enough of a show. Time for you to go.’

  While one officer holds Dmitri still, the other handcuffs him.

  ‘So,’ says Dmitri in his normal voice. ‘Back to the madhouse. Back to my lonely cell. Why don’t you tell your youngster, Simón, what is going on at the back of your mind? Your father or uncle or whatever he calls himself is too delicate to tell you, young David, but in secret he hopes I am going to cut my throat, let my blood flow down the drains. Then they can hold an inquest and conclude that the tragedy occurred while the balance of the deceased’s mind was disturbed and that will be the end of Dmitri. Shut the file on him. Well, let me tell you, I am not going to do away with myself. I am going to go on living, and I am going to go on plaguing you, Juan Sebastián, until you relent.’ Laboriously he tries to prostrate himself again, holding his handcuffed hands above his head. ‘Forgive me, Juan Sebastián, forgive me!’

  ‘Take him away,’ says he, Simón.

  ‘No!’ cries the boy. His face is flushed, he is breathing fast. He raises a hand, points dramatically. ‘You must bring her back, Dmitri! Bring her back!’

  Dmitri struggles into a sitting position, rubs his bristly chin. ‘Bring whom back, young David?’

  ‘You know! You must bring Ana Magdalena back!’

  Dmitri sighs. ‘I wish I could, young fellow, I wish I could. Believe me, if Ana Magdalena were suddenly to appear before us I would bow down and wash her feet with tears of joy. But she won’t come back. She is gone. She belongs to the past, and the past is forever behind us. That’s a law of nature. Even the stars can’t swim against the flow of time.’

  Through all of Dmitri’s speech the boy has continued to hold his hand on high, as if only thus can the force of his command be sustained; but it is clear to him, Simón, and perhaps to Dmitri too, that he is wavering. Tears are brimming in his eyes.

  ‘Time to go,’ says Dmitri. He allows the police officers to help him to his feet. ‘Back to the doctors. Why did you do it, Dmitri? Why? Why? Why? But maybe there is no why. Maybe it’s like asking why is a chicken a chicken, or why is there a universe instead of a great big hole in the sky. Things are as they are. Don’t cry, my boy. Be patient, wait for the next life, and you will see Ana Magdalena again. Hold on to that thought.’

  ‘I’m not crying,’ says the boy.

  ‘Yes, you are. There is nothing wrong with a good cry. It clears out the system.’

  CHAPTER 23

  THE DAY of the census has dawned, the day too of the show at Modas Modernas. The boy wakes up listless, surly, without appetite. Might he be ill? He, Simón, feels his brow, but it is cool.

  ‘Did you see Seven last night?’ the boy demands.

  ‘Of course. I couldn’t keep my eyes off you. You danced beautifully. Everyone thought so.’

  ‘But did you see Seven?’

  ‘Do you mean the number Seven? No. I don’t see numbers. It’s a failing on my part. I see only what is before my eyes. You know that.’

  ‘What are we going to do today?’

  ‘After all the excitement last night, I think we should have a quiet day. I would suggest we take a peek at Inés’s fashion show, but I don’t think gentlemen will be welcome. We can go and fetch Bolívar, if you like, and take him for a walk, as long as we are off the streets by six. Because of the curfew.’

  He expects a string of Why? questions, but the boy shows no interest in the census or the curfew. Where is Dmitri now?: another question that does not come. Have they seen the last of Dmitri? Can the forgetting of Dmitri commence? He prays that it is so.

  As it turns out, it is near midnight when the census officers come knocking at the door. He picks up the boy, half asleep, whimpering, wrapped in a blanket, and stows him bodily in the cupboard. ‘Not a sound,’ he whispers. ‘It is important. Not a sound.’

  The census-takers, a young couple, apologize for
their lateness. ‘This is not a part of the city we are familiar with,’ says the woman. ‘Such a maze of crooked streets and alleys!’ He offers them tea, but they are in a hurry. ‘We still have a long list of addresses to cover,’ she says. ‘We will be up all night.’

  The census business takes no time at all. He has already filled out the form. Number of persons in family: ‘ONE’, he has written. Marital status: ‘SINGLE’.

  When they are gone he liberates the boy from confinement and returns him to bed, fast asleep.

  In the morning they stroll over to see Inés. She and Diego are sitting down to breakfast; she is as bright and cheerful as he has ever seen her, prattling on and on about the show, which—everyone agrees—was a great success. The ladies of Estrella flocked to see the new spring fashions. The low necklines, the high waists, the simple reliance on black and white, have won general approval. Pre-sales have exceeded all expectations.

  The boy listens with glazed eyes.

  ‘Drink your milk,’ Inés tells him. ‘Milk gives you strong bones.’

  ‘Simón locked me in the wardrobe,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t breathe.’

  ‘It was only while the census-takers were there,’ he says. ‘A nice young couple, very polite. David was as quiet as a mouse. All they saw was a lonely old bachelor roused from his slumbers. It was over in five minutes. No one dies of asphyxiation in five minutes.’

  ‘It was the same here,’ says Inés. ‘In and out in five minutes. No questions.’

  ‘So David remains invisible,’ says he, Simón. ‘Congratulations, David. You have escaped again.’

  ‘Until the next census,’ says Diego.

  ‘Until the next census,’ he, Simón, agrees.

  ‘With so many millions of souls to count,’ says Diego, ‘what does it matter if they miss one?’

  ‘What does it matter indeed,’ echoes he, Simón.

  ‘Am I really invisible?’ asks the boy.

  ‘You don’t have a name, you don’t have a number. That is enough to make you invisible. But don’t worry, we can see you. Any ordinary person with eyes in his head can see you.’