The Schooldays of Jesus Read online

  Together they listen. A faint droning sound that tails off into silence. Then the doors of the Academy burst open and the children come clattering down the stairway, girls and boys, fair and dark. ‘Dmitri! Dmitri!’ they cry, and in a moment Dmitri is surrounded. He dips into his pockets and brings forth handfuls of sweets, which he tosses in the air. The children fall on them. ‘Dmitri!’

  Last to emerge, hand in hand with señora Arroyo, eyes cast down, unusually subdued, is David, wearing his gold slippers.

  ‘Goodbye, David,’ says señora Arroyo. ‘We will see you in the morning.’

  The boy does not respond. When they get to the car he climbs into the back seat. In a minute he is asleep, and does not wake until they reach the farm.

  Inés is waiting with sandwiches and cocoa. The boy eats and drinks. ‘How was your day?’ she asks at last. No reply. ‘Did you dance?’ He nods abstractedly. ‘Will you show us later how you danced?’

  Without answering the boy clambers onto his bunk and curls into a ball.

  ‘What is wrong?’ Inés whispers to him, Simón. ‘Did something happen?’

  He tries to reassure her. ‘He is a bit dazed, that is all. He has been among strangers all day.’

  After supper the boy is more forthcoming. ‘Ana Magdalena taught us the numbers,’ he tells them. ‘She showed us Two and Three and you were wrong, Simón, and señor Robles was wrong too, you were both wrong, the numbers are in the sky. That is where they live, with the stars. You have to call them before they will come down.’

  ‘Is that what señora Arroyo told you?’

  ‘Yes. She showed us how to call down Two and Three. You can’t call down One. One has to come by himself.’

  ‘Will you show us how you call down these numbers?’ says Inés.

  The boy shakes his head. ‘You have to dance. You have to have music.’

  ‘What if I switch on the radio?’ he, Simón, suggests. ‘Maybe there will be music to dance to.’

  ‘No. It has to be special music.’

  ‘And what else happened today?’

  ‘Ana Magdalena gave us biscuits and milk. And raisins.’

  ‘Dmitri told me you say a prayer at the end of the day. Who do you pray to?’

  ‘It’s not a prayer. Ana Magdalena makes the arc sound and we have to get in harmony with it.’

  ‘What is the arc?’

  ‘I don’t know, Ana Magdalena won’t let us see it, she says it is secret.’

  ‘Most mysterious. I’ll ask when next I see her. But it seems that you had a good day. And all because out of the goodness of their hearts señora Alma and señora Consuelo and señora Valentina took an interest in you. An Academy of Dance where you learn how to call down numbers from the stars! And where you get biscuits and milk from the hands of a pretty lady! How fortunate we are to have ended up here in Estrella! Don’t you agree? Don’t you feel lucky? Don’t you feel blessed?’

  The boy nods.

  ‘I certainly feel that way. I think we must be the luckiest family in the world. Now it is time to brush your teeth and go to bed and get a good night’s sleep so that in the morning you will be ready to dance again.’

  The days assume a new pattern. At six-thirty he wakes the boy and gives him breakfast. By seven they are in the car. There is little traffic on the roads; well before eight he drops him off at the Academy. Then he parks the car on the square and spends the next seven hours hunting desultorily for employment or inspecting apartments or—more often—simply sitting in a café reading the newspaper, until it is time to pick up the boy and bring him home.

  To his and Inés’s inquiries about his schooldays the boy responds briefly and reluctantly. Yes, he likes señor Arroyo. Yes, they are learning songs. No, they have not had reading lessons. No, they do not do sums. About the mysterious arc that señora Arroyo sounds at the end of the day he will say nothing.

  ‘Why are you always asking me what I did today?’ he says. ‘I don’t ask you what you did. Anyway, you don’t understand.’

  ‘What don’t we understand?’ says Inés.

  ‘You don’t understand anything.’

  After that they stop interrogating him. Let him tell his story in his own good time, they say to themselves.

  One evening he, Simón, unthinkingly blunders into the women’s dormitory. Inés, on her knees on the floor, looks up with displeasure. The boy, wearing only underpants and the golden dancing slippers, stops in mid-motion.

  ‘Go away, Simón!’ exclaims the boy. ‘You are not allowed to watch!’

  ‘Why? What is it that I shouldn’t watch?’

  ‘He is practising something complicated,’ says Inés. ‘He needs to concentrate. Go away. Close the door.’

  Surprised, puzzled, he retreats, then hovers at the door listening. There is nothing to hear.

  Later, when the boy is asleep, he questions Inés. ‘What was going on that was too private for me to see?’

  ‘He was practising his new steps.’

  ‘But what is secret about that?’

  ‘He thinks you won’t understand. He thinks you will make fun of him.’

  ‘Given that we send him to an academy of dance, why should I make fun of his dancing?’

  ‘He says you don’t understand the numbers. He says you are hostile. Hostile to the numbers.’

  She shows him a chart the boy has brought home: intersecting triangles, their apices marked with numerals. He can make no sense of it.

  ‘He says this is how they learn numbers,’ says Inés. ‘Through dance.’

  The next morning, on the way to the Academy, he brings up the subject. ‘Inés showed me your dance chart,’ he says. ‘What are the numbers for? Are they the positions of your feet?’

  ‘It’s the stars,’ says the boy. ‘It’s astrology. You close your eyes while you dance and you can see the stars in your head.’

  ‘What about counting the beats? Doesn’t señor Arroyo count the beats for you while you dance?’

  ‘No. You just dance. Dancing is the same as counting.’

  ‘So señor Arroyo just plays and you just dance. It doesn’t sound like any dance lesson I am familiar with. I am going to ask señor Arroyo whether I can sit in on one of his lessons.’

  ‘You can’t. You are not allowed. Señor Arroyo says no one is allowed.’

  ‘Then when will I ever see you dancing?’

  ‘You can see me now.’

  He glances at the boy. The boy is sitting still, his eyes closed, a slight smile on his lips.

  ‘That is not dancing. You can’t dance while you are sitting in a car.’

  ‘I can. Look. I am dancing again.’

  He shakes his head in bafflement. They arrive at the Academy. Out of the shadows of the doorway emerges Dmitri. He ruffles the boy’s neatly brushed hair. ‘Ready for the new day?’

  CHAPTER 7

  INÉS HAS never liked getting up early. However, after three weeks on the farm with little to do but chat to Roberta and await the child’s return, she rouses herself early enough one Monday morning to join them on their ride to the city. Her first destination is a hairdresser. Then, feeling more herself, she stops at a women’s outfitters and buys herself a new dress. Chatting to the cashier, she learns that they are looking for a saleslady. On an impulse she approaches the proprietor and is offered the position.

  The need to make the move from the farm to the city suddenly becomes urgent. Inés takes over the hunt for accommodation, and within days has found an apartment. The apartment itself is featureless, the neighbourhood dreary, but it is within walking distance of the city centre and has a park nearby where Bolívar can exercise.

  They pack up their belongings. For the last time he, Simón, wanders out into the fields. It is dusk, the magic hour. The birds chatter in the trees as they settle for the night. From far away comes the tinkle of sheep-bells. Are they right, he wonders, to leave this garden place that has been so good to them?

  They say their goodbyes. ‘We hope to
see you back for the harvest,’ says Roberta. ‘That’s a promise,’ says he, Simón. To señora Consuelo (señora Valentina is busy, señora Alma is struggling with her demons) he says: ‘I cannot tell you how thankful we are to you and your sisters for your great generosity,’ to which señora Consuelo replies: ‘It is nothing. In another life you will do the same for us. Goodbye, young David. We look forward to seeing your name in lights.’

  On the first night in their new home they have to sleep on the floor, since the furniture they ordered has not been delivered. In the morning they buy some basic kitchenware. They are running short of money.

  He, Simón, takes a job, paid by the hour, delivering advertising material to households. With the job comes a bicycle, a heavy, creaking machine with a large basket bolted above the front wheel. He is one of four delivery men (he rarely crosses paths with the other three); his assigned area is the north-east quadrant of the city. During school hours he winds through the streets of his quadrant stuffing pamphlets into letterboxes: piano lessons, cures for baldness, hedge trimming, electrical repairs (competitive rates). It is, to a degree, interesting work, good for the health and not unpleasant (though he has to push the bicycle up the steeper streets). It is a way of getting to know the city, also a way of meeting people, making new contacts. The sound of a rooster crowing leads him to the backyard of a man who keeps poultry; the man undertakes to supply him with a pullet each week, at a price of five reales, and for an additional real to slaughter and dress the bird too.

  But winter is upon them, and he dreads the rainy days. Though he is equipped with a capacious oilskin cape and a mariner’s oilskin hat, the rain nonetheless finds its way through. Cold and sodden, he is sometimes tempted to dump his pamphlets and return the bicycle to the depot. He is tempted, but he does not give in. Why not? He is not sure. Perhaps because he feels a certain obligation to the city that has offered them a new life, even though it is not clear to him how a city, which has no sensation, no feelings, can benefit from the distribution among its citizens of advertisements for twenty-four-piece cutlery sets in handsome presentation boxes at low low prices.

  He thinks of the Arroyos, husband and wife, to whose upkeep he is in small measure contributing by pedalling around in the rain. Though he has not yet had an opportunity to distribute advertisements for their Academy, what the couple offer—dancing to the stars as a substitute for learning one’s multiplication tables—is not different in nature from what is offered by the lotion that miraculously brings hair follicles back to life or the vibrating belt that miraculously dissolves body fat, molecule by molecule. Like Inés and himself, the Arroyos must have arrived in Estrella with nothing but the barest belongings; they too must have passed a night sleeping on newspapers or the equivalent; they too must have scraped a living together until their Academy got going. Maybe, like him, señor Arroyo had to spend a while stuffing pamphlets into letterboxes; maybe Ana Magdalena of the alabaster complexion had to go down on her knees and wash floors. A city crisscrossed by the paths of immigrants: if they did not all live in hope, if they did not each have their quantum of hopefulness to add to the great sum, where would Estrella be?

  David brings home a Notice to Parents. There is to be an open evening at the Academy. Señor and señora Arroyo will address the parents on the educational philosophy behind the Academy, students will give a performance, after which there will be light refreshments. Parents are encouraged to bring interested friends along. Proceedings will commence at seven.

  The audience, on the evening, is disappointingly thin, no more than twenty. Of the chairs that have been set out many remain empty. Taking their place in the front row, he and Inés can hear the young performers whispering and giggling behind the curtain drawn across the far end of the studio.

  Wearing a dark evening dress with a shawl over her bare shoulders, señora Arroyo emerges. For a long moment she stands in silence before them. Again he is struck by her poise, her calm beauty.

  She speaks. ‘Welcome, all of you, and thank you for coming out on a cold, wet evening. Tonight I am going to tell you a little about the Academy and what my husband and I hope to achieve for our students. For that it will be necessary to give you a brief outline of the philosophy behind the Academy. Those of you who are familiar with it, please bear with me.

  ‘As we know, from the day when we arrive in this life we put our former existence behind us. We forget it. But not entirely. Of our former existence certain remnants persist: not memories in the usual sense of the word but what we can call shadows of memories. Then, as we become habituated to our new life, even these shadows fade, until we have forgotten our origins entirely and accept that what our eyes see is the only life there is.

  ‘The child, however, the young child, still bears deep impresses of a former life, shadow recollections which he lacks words to express. He lacks words because, along with the world we have lost, we have lost a language fit to evoke it. All that is left of that primal language is a handful of words, what I call transcendental words, among which the names of the numbers, uno, dos, tres, are foremost.

  ‘Uno-dos-tres: is this just a chant we learn at school, the mindless chant we call counting; or is there a way of seeing through the chant to what lies behind and beyond it, namely the realm of the numbers themselves—the noble numbers and their auxiliaries, too many to count, as many as the stars, numbers born out of the unions of noble numbers? We, my husband and I and our helpers, believe there is such a way. Our Academy is dedicated to guiding the souls of our students toward that realm, to bringing them in accord with the great underlying movement of the universe, or, as we prefer to say, the dance of the universe.

  ‘To bring the numbers down from where they reside, to allow them to manifest themselves in our midst, to give them body, we rely on the dance. Yes, here in the Academy we dance, not in a graceless, carnal, or disorderly way, but body and soul together, so as to bring the numbers to life. As music enters us and moves us in dance, so the numbers cease to be mere ideas, mere phantoms, and become real. The music evokes its dance and the dance evokes its music: neither comes first. That is why we call ourselves an academy of music as much as an academy of dance.

  ‘If my words this evening seem obscure, dear parents, dear friends of the Academy, that only goes to show how feeble words are. Words are feeble—that is why we dance. In the dance we call the numbers down from where they live among the aloof stars. We surrender ourselves to them in dance, and while we dance, by their grace, they live among us.

  ‘Some of you—I can see from your looks—remain sceptical. What are these numbers she talks of that dwell among the stars? you murmur among yourselves. Do I not use numbers every day when I do business or buy groceries? Are numbers not our humble servants?

  ‘I reply: The numbers you have in mind, the numbers we use when we buy and sell, are not true numbers but simulacra. They are what I call ant numbers. Ants, as we know, have no memory. They are born out of the dust and die into the dust. Tonight, in the second part of the show, you will see our younger students playing the parts of ants, performing the ant operations that we call the lower arithmetic, the arithmetic we use in household accounts and so forth.’

  Ants. The lower arithmetic. He turns to Inés. ‘Can you make sense of this?’ he whispers. But Inés, lips compressed, eyes narrowed, watching Ana Magdalena intently, refuses to answer.

  Out of the corner of his eye, half hidden in the shadow of the doorway, he espies Dmitri. What interest can Dmitri have in the dance of numbers, Dmitri the bear? But of course it is the person of the speaker that interests him.

  ‘Ants are by nature law-abiding creatures,’ Ana Magdalena is saying. ‘The laws they obey are the laws of addition and subtraction. That is all they do, day in and day out, during every waking hour: carry out their mechanical, twofold law.

  ‘In our Academy we do not teach the law of the ant. I know that some of you are concerned about that fact—the fact that we do not teach your children to play
ant games, adding numbers to numbers and so forth. I hope you now understand why. We do not want to turn your children into ants.

  ‘Enough. Thank you for your attention. Please welcome our performers.’

  She gives a sign and steps aside. Dmitri, wearing his museum uniform, which for once is neatly buttoned, strides forward and hauls the curtains open, first the left curtain, then the right. At the same moment, from above, come the muted tones of a pipe organ.

  Onstage a single figure is revealed, a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, wearing golden slippers and a white toga that leaves one shoulder bare. Arms raised above his head, he gazes into the distance. While the organist, who can only be señor Arroyo, plays a set of flourishes, he maintains this pose. Then, in time to the music, he begins his dance. The dance consists in gliding from point to point on the stage, sometimes slowly, sometimes swiftly, coming to a near halt at each point but never actually halting. The pattern of the dance, the relation of each point to the next, is obscure; the movements of the boy are graceful but without variety. He, Simón, soon loses interest, closes his eyes, and concentrates on the music.

  The upper notes of the organ are tinny, the lower notes without resonance. But the music itself takes possession of him. Calm descends; he can feel something within him—his soul?—take up the rhythm of the music and move in time to it. He falls into a mild trance.

  The music grows more complex, then simple again. He opens his eyes. A second dancer has appeared onstage, so similar in looks to the first that he must be a younger brother. He too occupies himself in gliding from one invisible point to another. Now and then their two paths cross, but there never seems any danger that they will collide. No doubt they have rehearsed so often that they know each other’s moves by heart; yet there seems more to it than that, a logic that dictates their passage, a logic that he cannot quite grasp, though he feels on the edge of doing so.