The Schooldays of Jesus Read online

  The music comes to a close. The two dancers attain their end points and return to their static poses. Dmitri hauls the left curtain closed, then the right. There is ragged applause from the audience, in which he joins. Inés too is clapping.

  Ana Magdalena comes forward again. There is a radiance to her which—he is quite prepared to believe—has been drawn out by the dance, or the music, or the dance and music together; indeed, he feels a certain radiance in himself.

  ‘What you have just seen are the Number Three and the Number Two, danced by two of our senior students. To close this evening’s performance our junior students will perform the ant dance I earlier referred to.’

  Dmitri draws the curtains open. Before them, arrayed in a column, are eight children, girls and boys, wearing singlets and shorts and green caps with waving antennae to denote their ant nature. David is at the head of the column.

  Señor Arroyo, at the organ, plays a march, emphasizing its mechanical rhythm. Taking big steps rightward and leftward, backward and forward, the ants re-form themselves from a column of eight into a matrix of four rows in two columns. They hold their positions for four measures, marching on the spot; then they re-form themselves into a new matrix of two rows in four columns. They hold that position, marching; then they transform themselves into a single row, eight long. They hold their positions, marching; then suddenly they break ranks and, as the music abandons its staccato rhythm and becomes simply one massive, inharmonious chord after another, flit across the stage with their arms held out like wings, nearly bumping into one another (and in one case actually bumping together and falling to the floor in a paroxysm of giggles). Then the steady rhythm of the march reasserts itself. Swiftly the ants reassemble in their original column of eight.

  Dmitri draws the curtains closed and stands there beaming. The assembly claps loudly. The music does not stop. Dmitri whisks open the curtains to reveal the insects still marching in column. Redoubled applause.

  ‘What do you think of it?’ he says to Inés.

  ‘What do I think? I think: As long as he is happy, that is all that matters.’

  ‘I agree. But what did you think of the speech? What did you think—’

  David interrupts, rushing up to them flushed and excited, still wearing the floppy antennae. ‘Did you see me?’ he demands.

  ‘Of course we saw you,’ says Inés. ‘You made us feel very proud. You were the leader of the ants.’

  ‘I was the leader, but the ants aren’t good, they just march. Next time Ana Magdalena says I can dance a proper dance. But I have to do lots of practice.’

  ‘That’s good. When is next time?’

  ‘The next concert. Can I have some cake?’

  ‘As much as you like. No need to ask. The cake is for all of us.’

  He looks around, searching for señor Arroyo. He is curious to meet the man, to find out whether he too believes in a higher realm where the numbers dwell, or whether he just plays the organ and leaves the transcendental stuff to his wife. But señor Arroyo is nowhere to be seen: the scattering of men in the room are clearly parents like himself.

  Inés is in conversation with one of the mothers. She beckons him over. ‘Simón, this is señora Hernández. Her son was also an ant. Señora, this is my friend Simón.’

  Amigo: friend. Not a word Inés has used before. Is that what he is, what he has become?

  ‘Isabella,’ says señora Hernández. ‘Please call me Isabella.’

  ‘Inés,’ says Inés.

  ‘I was complimenting Inés on your son. He is a very confident performer, isn’t he.’

  ‘He is a very confident child,’ says he, Simón. ‘He has always been like that. As you can imagine, it is not easy to teach him.’

  Isabella gives him a puzzled look.

  ‘He is confident but his confidence is not always well founded,’ he continues, beginning to flounder. ‘He believes he has powers he does not really have. He is still very young.’

  ‘David taught himself to read,’ says Inés. ‘He can read Don Quixote.’

  ‘In a condensed version, for children,’ he says, ‘but yes, it is true, he taught himself to read, without any help.’

  ‘They are not keen on reading here at the Academy,’ says Isabella. ‘They say reading can come later. While they are young it is just dance, music and dance. Still, she is persuasive, isn’t she, Ana Magdalena. Speaks very well. Didn’t you think so?’

  ‘What of the higher realm from which the numbers descend to us, the holy number Two and the holy number Three—did you understand that bit?’ he says.

  A little boy who must be Isabella’s son sidles up, his lips ringed with chocolate. She finds a tissue and wipes his mouth, to which he submits patiently. ‘Let us take off these funny ears and give them back to Ana Magdalena,’ she says. ‘You can’t come home looking like an insect.’

  The evening is over. Ana Magdalena stands at the door bidding goodbye to the parents. He shakes her cool hand. ‘Please convey my thanks to señor Arroyo,’ he says. ‘I am sorry we didn’t have a chance to meet him. He is a fine musician.’

  Ana Magdalena nods. For an instant the blue eyes fix on his. She sees straight through me, he thinks with a jolt. Sees through me and doesn’t like me.

  It hurts him. It is not something he is used to, being disliked, and being disliked moreover on no grounds. But perhaps it is not a personal dislike. Perhaps the woman dislikes the fathers of all her students, as rivals to her authority. Or perhaps she simply dislikes men, all save the invisible Arroyo.

  Well, if she dislikes him he dislikes her too. It surprises him: he does not often take a dislike to a woman, particularly a beautiful woman. And this woman is beautiful, no doubt about that, with the kind of beauty that stands up to the closest scrutiny: perfect features, perfect skin, perfect figure, perfect bearing. She is beautiful yet she repels him. She may be married, but he associates her nevertheless with the moon and its cold light, with a cruel, persecutory chastity. Is it wise to be giving their boy—any boy, indeed any girl—into her hands? What if at the end of the year the child emerges from her grasp as cold and persecutory as herself? For that is his judgment on her—on her religion of the stars and her geometric aesthetic of the dance. Bloodless, sexless, lifeless.

  The boy has fallen asleep on the back seat of the car, his stomach full of cake and lemonade. Nevertheless, he is wary of speaking his thoughts to Inés: even in deepest sleep the child seems to hear what is going on around him. So he holds his tongue until the child is safely tucked away in bed.

  ‘Inés, are you sure we have done the right thing?’ he says. ‘Should we not look around for a school that is a little less… extreme?’

  Inés says nothing.

  ‘I couldn’t make sense of that lecture of the señora’s,’ he presses on. ‘What I did understand I found a bit crazy. She isn’t a teacher, she is a preacher. She and her husband have made up a religion and now they are hunting for converts. David is too young, too impressionable to be exposed to that kind of thing.’

  Inés speaks. ‘When I was a teacher we had señor C the postman who whistles and el G the cat who purrs and el T the train who hoots. Each letter had its own personality and its own sound. We made up words by putting letters together one after another. That is how you teach small children to read and write.’

  ‘You were a teacher?’

  ‘We used to run classes at La Residencia for the children of the domestics.’

  ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘Each letter of the alphabet had a personality. Now she is giving the numbers personalities too, Ana Magdalena. Uno, dos, tres. Making them come alive. That is how you teach small children. It’s not religion. I’m going to bed. Good night.’

  Five of the pupils at the Academy are boarders, the rest are day students. The boarders stay with the Arroyos because they come from districts of the province too far-flung to commute from. These five, together with the young usher and Señor Arroyo’s two sons,
are given proper sit-down lunches, which Ana Magdalena prepares. The day students bring their own lunches. Each evening Inés packs David’s lunchbox for the next day and puts it in the refrigerator: sandwiches, an apple or a banana, plus a little treat, a chocolate or a biscuit.

  One evening, as she is preparing his lunchbox, David speaks: ‘Some girls at school won’t eat meat. They say it is cruel. Is it cruel, Inés?’

  ‘If you don’t eat meat you won’t get strong. You won’t grow.’

  ‘But is it cruel?’

  ‘No, it is not cruel. Animals don’t feel anything when they are slaughtered. They don’t have feelings in the way that we do.’

  ‘I asked señor Arroyo if it is cruel and he said animals can’t do syllogisms so it isn’t cruel. What does syllogisms mean?’

  Inés is nonplussed. He, Simón, intervenes. ‘What he means, I think, is that animals don’t think logically, as we do. They can’t make logical inferences. They don’t understand that they are being packed off to the butcher even when all the evidence points that way, so they aren’t frightened.’

  ‘But does it hurt?’

  ‘Being slaughtered? No, not if the butcher is skilful. Just as it doesn’t hurt when you go to the doctor, if the doctor is skilful.’

  ‘So it is not cruel, is it.’

  ‘No, it is not particularly cruel. A big, strong ox hardly feels it. To the ox it is like a pinprick. And then there is no more feeling at all.’

  ‘But why do they have to die?’

  ‘Why? Because they are like us. We are mortal, so are they, and mortal beings have to die. That was what señor Arroyo had in mind when he made his joke about syllogisms.’

  The boy shakes his head impatiently. ‘Why do they have to die to give us their meat?’

  ‘Because that is what happens when you cut an animal up: it dies. If you cut off a lizard’s tail he will grow a new tail. But an ox is not like a lizard. If you cut off an ox’s tail he won’t grow a new one. If you cut off his leg he will bleed to death. David, I don’t want you to brood about these things. Oxen are good creatures. They wish us well. In their own language they say: If young David needs to eat my flesh so that he can grow strong and healthy, then I willingly give it to him. Isn’t that so, Inés?’

  Inés nods.

  ‘Then why don’t we eat people?’

  ‘Because it is disgusting,’ says Inés. ‘That’s why.’

  CHAPTER 8

  SINCE INÉS has never in the past shown an interest in fashion, he does not expect her to stay long at Modas Modernas. But he is wrong. She revels in her success as saleslady, particularly with the older clientele, who appreciate her patience with them. Discarding the wardrobe she brought with her from Novilla, she herself begins to wear newer fashions bought at a discount or borrowed from the shop.

  With Claudia, the owner, a woman of her age, she strikes up a quick friendship. They lunch at a café around the corner, or buy sandwiches and eat them in the stock room, where Claudia unburdens herself about her son, who has fallen into bad company and is on the verge of dropping out of school; also, in less specific terms, about her errant husband. Whether Inés unburdens herself in turn Inés does not say—at least not to him, Simón.

  In preparation for the new season Claudia goes on a buying expedition to Novilla, leaving Inés in charge of the shop. Her sudden promotion arouses the ire of the cashier, Innocentia, who has been with Modas Modernas since its birth. It is a relief to all when Claudia returns.

  He, Simón, listens nightly to Inés’s stories of the ups and downs of fashion, of troublesome or over-fastidious customers, of the unwished-for rivalry with Innocentia. About such meagre adventures as befall him on his delivery rounds Inés remains incurious.

  On the next of her trips to Novilla Claudia invites Inés to accompany her. Inés asks him, Simón, what he thinks. Should she go? What if she is recognized and taken in by the police? He scoffs at her fears. On the scale of heinousness, he says, the crime of aiding and abetting a minor in the practice of truancy surely figures near the bottom. David’s file will by now have been buried under mountains of other files; and even if it has not, the police surely have better things to do than comb the streets for delinquent parents.

  So Inés accepts Claudia’s invitation. Together they catch the overnight train to Novilla and spend the day in a distributor’s warehouse in the industrial quarter of the city making their selection. During a break Inés telephones La Residencia and speaks to her brother Diego. Without preliminaries Diego demands the car back (he calls it his car). Inés refuses, but offers to pay him half its value if he will let her take it over. He asks for two thirds; but she digs in her heels and he capitulates.

  She asks to speak to her other brother, Stefano. Stefano is no longer at La Residencia, Diego informs her. He has gone to live in the city with his girlfriend, who is expecting a baby.

  With Inés away or preoccupied with goings-on at Modas Modernas, it falls to him, Simón, to attend to David’s needs. Besides accompanying him to the Academy in the mornings and fetching him home in the afternoons, he takes on the task of preparing his meals. His own command of the art of cooking is rudimentary, but fortunately the boy is so hungry these days that he eats whatever is put before him. He gobbles down huge helpings of mashed potato with green peas; he looks forward eagerly to roast chicken at the weekends.

  He is growing fast. He will never be tall, but his limbs are well knit and his energy is boundless. After school he rushes off to join in football games with other boys from the apartment block. Though he is the youngest, his determination and his toughness win him the respect of older, bigger boys. His style of running—shoulders hunched, head lowered, elbows tucked into his sides—may be eccentric, but he is quick on his feet, hard to knock over.

  At the beginning he, Simón, used to keep Bolívar on a leash while the boy was playing, for fear the dog might race onto the field and attack anyone who threatened his young master. But Bolívar has soon come to learn that running around after a ball is just a game, a human game. Now he is content to sit quietly on the sidelines, indifferent to the football, enjoying the mild warmth of the sun and the rich medley of smells in the air.

  According to Inés, Bolívar is seven years old, but he, Simón, wonders whether the dog is not older. Certainly he is in the latter phase of his life, the phase of decline. He has begun to put on weight; though he is an intact male, he seems to have lost interest in bitches. He has become less approachable too. Other dogs are wary of him. He has only to lift his head and give a muted growl to send them slinking off.

  He, Simón, is the sole spectator of the scrappy afternoon football games, games in which the action is continually interrupted by arguments among the players. One day a deputation of older boys approaches him to ask if he will referee. He declines: ‘I’m too old and unfit,’ he says. This is not entirely true; but in retrospect he is glad he refused and suspects David is glad too.

  He wonders who the boys from the apartment block think he is: David’s father? His grandfather? An uncle? What story has David told them? That the man who watches their games shares a home with him and his mother, though he sleeps alone? Is David proud of him or ashamed of him or both proud and ashamed; or is a six-year-old, soon to be seven, too young to have ambivalent feelings?

  At least the boys respect the dog. The first day he arrived with the dog they gathered in a circle around him. ‘His name is Bolívar,’ David announced. ‘He is an Alsatian. He won’t bite you.’ Bolívar the Alsatian gazed calmly into the distance, allowing the boys to revere him.

  In the apartment he, Simón, behaves more like a lodger than an equal member of the family. He takes care to keep his room neat and tidy at all times. He does not leave his toiletries in the bathroom, or his coat on the rack by the front door. How Inés explains his role in her life to Claudia and the wider world he does not know. She has certainly never referred to him, in his hearing, as her husband; if she prefers to present him as a gentleman
boarder, he is happy to play along.

  Inés is a difficult woman. Nonetheless, he finds in himself a growing admiration for her, and a growing affection too. Who would have thought she would put La Residencia behind her, and the easy life she lived there, and devote herself with such single-mindedness to the fortunes of this wilful child!

  ‘Are we a family, you and Inés and I?’ asks the boy.

  ‘Of course we are a family,’ he duly replies. ‘Families take many forms. We are one of the forms a family can take.’

  ‘But do we have to be a family?’

  He has made a resolution not to give in to irritation, to take the boy’s questions seriously even when they are merely idle.

  ‘If we wanted, we could be less of a family. I could move out and find lodgings of my own and see you only now and again. Or Inés could fall in love and get married and take you to live with her new husband. But those are roads neither of us wants to follow.’

  ‘Bolívar doesn’t have a family.’

  ‘We are Bolívar’s family. We look after Bolívar and Bolívar looks after us. But no, you are right, Bolívar does not have a family, a dog family. He used to have a family when he was little, but then he grew up and found he didn’t need a family any longer. Bolívar prefers to live by himself and meet other dogs in the street, casually. You may make a similar decision when you grow up: to live by yourself without a family. But while you are still young you need us to look after you. So we are your family: Inés and Bolívar and I.’

  If we wanted, we could be less of a family. Two days after this conversation the boy announces, out of the blue, that he wants to become a boarder at the Academy.

  He, Simón, tries to discourage him. ‘Why would you want to move to the Academy when you have such a nice life here?’ he says. ‘Inés will miss you terribly. I will miss you.’

  ‘Inés won’t miss me. Inés never recognized me.’

  ‘Of course she did.’

  ‘She says she didn’t.’

  ‘Inés loves you. She holds you in her heart.’