Claudine at School

by Colette

  Nothing would stop us: we dashed forward, brutally shoving away the small, milling silhouettes; no one paid the least attention to us.

  Holding the stolen candle as straight as I could, I read and divined, guided by the initials in alphabetical order: ‘Anaïs, Belhomme, Claudine, Jaubert, Lanthenay.’ All of us! All! What joy! And now came the verifying of the number of marks. The minimum of marks required was 45; the total was written beside the names, the detailed marks between two brackets. Mademoiselle Sergent, in ecstasy, transcribed in her notebook: ‘Anaïs 65, Claudine 68 – what did the Jauberts get? 63 and 64, Luce 49, Marie Belhomme 44½. What? 44½? But you’ve not qualified then? Whatever’s this you’re telling me?’

  ‘No, Mademoiselle,’ said Luce, who had just gone up to verify. ‘It’s 44¾ … she’s qualified with a quarter of a mark short … by a special favour of those gentlemen.’

  Poor Marie, quite out of breath from the terrible fright she had just had, gave a long sigh of relief. It was decent of those chaps to have overlooked her quarter of a mark but I was afraid she would make a mess of the Oral. Anaïs, once her first joy was over, charitably held up a light for the new arrivals, while spattering them with melted wax, horrid girl!

  Mademoiselle could not calm us, not even by dousing us with the cold water of this sinister prediction: ‘You’re not at the end of your troubles yet. I should like to see your faces tomorrow night after the Oral.’

  With difficulty she got us back to the hotel, skipping about and singing in the moonlight.

  And later on, when the Headmistress was in bed and asleep, we got out of our beds and danced, Anaïs, Luce, Marie and I (not the Jauberts, of course). We danced wildly, our hair flying, holding out our brief chemises as if for a minuet.

  Then, at a fancied noise from the direction of the room where Mademoiselle reposed, the dancers of this unseemly quadrille fled with suppressed giggles and a rustling of bare feet.

  *

  The next morning, waking up too early, I ran in to scare the life out of the Anaïs–Luce couple which was sleeping in an absorbed, conscientious way. I tickled Luce’s nose with my hair; she sneezed before she opened her eyes and her dismay woke Anaïs who grumbled and sat up, cursing me. I exclaimed, with immense seriousness: ‘But don’t you know what time it is? Seven o’clock, my dear, and the Oral’s at half past.’ I let them hurl themselves out of bed and put on their stockings and I waited till they’d buttoned up their boots before telling them it was only six, that I’d seen it wrong. This didn’t annoy them as much as I’d hoped.

  At a quarter to seven, Mademoiselle hustled us, hurried us over our chocolate, insisted on our casting a glance through our history summaries while we ate our slices of bread and butter and finally pushed us out into the sunlit street, completely dazed. Luce was armed with her pencilled cuffs, Marie with her tube of rolled-up paper, Anaïs with her miniature atlas. They clung to these little life-saving planks even more than yesterday for today they had to talk; talk to their Lordships whom they did not know; talk in front of thirty pairs of malicious little ears. Anaïs was the only one who looked cheerful; she did not know the meaning of intimidation.

  In the dilapidated courtyard, there were far fewer candidates today; so many had fallen by the wayside between the written exam and the oral! (That was good; when they admit a lot to the written, they turn down a lot for the oral.) Nearly all of them looked pale, yawned nervously and complained, like Marie Belhomme, of a tight feeling in their stomachs … that disturbing stage-fright!

  The door opened to admit the black-garbed men: we followed them silently to the room upstairs, stripped today of all its chairs. In each of the four corners, behind black tables (or rather, tables that had once been black) an examiner seated himself, solemn, almost lugubrious. While we were taking in this stage-setting, feeling both curious and fearful, as we stood massed in the doorway, embarrassed by the vast space we had to cross, Mademoiselle gave us a push: ‘Go on! Go on, for goodness’ sake! Are you going to take root here?’ Our group advanced more boldly, in a bunch: old Sallé, gnarled and shrivelled, stared at us without seeing us, he was so incredibly short-sighted; Roubaud was playing with his watch-chain, his eyes abstracted; the elderly Lerouge was waiting patiently and consulting the list of names; and, in the embrasure of a window, a fat lady, Mademoiselle Michelet, was enthroned, with sol-fa charts in front of her. I nearly forgot another one, the bad-tempered Lacroix, who was grumbling and furiously shrugging his shoulders as he turned over the pages of his books and seemed to be having a fierce argument with himself; the girls, terrified, were telling each other he must be ‘an absolute beast’! He was the one who made up his mind to growl out a name: ‘Mademoiselle Aubert!’

  The said Aubet, an overgrown girl, limp and stooping, started like a horse, squinted and promptly became stupid. In her desire to do the right thing, she bounded forward, shouting in trumpet-like tones, and with a strong peasant accent: ‘But here I be, Surr!’ We all burst out laughing and that laugh we hadn’t thought of repressing raised our spirits and cheered us up.

  That bulldog of a Lacroix had frowned when the unfortunate girl had bellowed her ‘But here I be!’ of distress and had replied: ‘Who’s denying it?’ As a result, she was in a pitiable state.

  ‘Mademoiselle Vigoureux!’ called Roubaud. He was taking the alphabet by the tail. A plump little thing hurried forward; she wore the white hat, wreathed in daisies, of the Villeneuve school.

  ‘Mademoiselle Mariblom!’ barked old Sallé, who thought he was taking the middle of the alphabet and was reading it all wrong. Marie Belhomme advanced, crimson, and seated herself on the chair opposite old Sallé; he stared at her and asked her if she knew what the Iliad was. Luce, just behind me, sighed: ‘At least, she’s begun – the great thing is to begin!’

  The unoccupied competitors, of whom I was one, dispersed shyly, scattered themselves about the room and went to listen to their colleagues sitting on the stool of repentance. I myself went off to the examination of the Aubert girl to give myself a little entertainment. At the moment I approached, old Lacroix was asking her: ‘So you don’t know who married Philip the Handsome?’

  Her eyes were starting out of her head and her face was red and glistening with sweat; her mittens revealed fingers like sausages: ‘He married … no, he didn’t marry … Surr, Surr,’ she cried all of a sudden, ‘I’ve forgotten. Everything!’ She was trembling; big tears rolled down her cheeks. Lacroix looked at her, vicious as the plague. ‘You’ve forgotten everything? With what remains, you get a nice zero.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she stammered. ‘But it doesn’t matter, I’d rather go off back home, I don’t care …’

  They took her away, hiccuping with great sobs. Through the window, I heard her outside, telling her mortified teacher: ‘Honest I’d rather look after Dad’s cows, so I would. An’ I’ll never come back here, I won’t. An’ I’ll take the two o’clock train, so I will.’

  In the classroom, her schoolmates were discussing the ‘regrettable incident’, grave and disapproving. ‘My dear, can you imagine her being so idiotic! My dear, if they’d asked me a question as easy as that, I’d have been only too pleased, my dear!’

  ‘Mademoiselle Claudine!’

  It was old Lerouge who was asking for me! Ugh! Arithmetic … Luckily he looked like a kindly Papa … I saw at once that he wouldn’t do me any harm.

  ‘Let’s see, my child, now could you tell me something about right-angled triangles?’

  ‘Yes, Sir, though, actually, I don’t much care for them.’

  ‘Now, now! You make them out worse than they are. Let’s see, construct me a right-angled triangle on this blackboard, and then you’ll give it its dimensions and then you’ll talk to me nicely about the square on the hypotenuse …’

  One would have to be pretty determined, to get oneself ploughed by a man like that! So I was as meek as a lamb with a pink ribbon round its neck and I said everything I knew. Actually, it didn’t take long.

/>   ‘But you’re getting along splendidly. Tell me, as well, how one recognizes that a number is divisible by 9, and I’ll let you off any more.’

  I rattled off: ‘sum of the digits … necessary condition … adequate condition.’

  ‘You can go, my child, that’s enough.’

  I stood up with a sigh of relief and found Luce behind me. She said: ‘You’re lucky, I’m so glad you were.’ She said it charmingly: for the first time, I stroked her neck without laughing at her. Goodness! It was me again! One hadn’t time to breathe!

  It was the porcupine, Lacroix; things were getting hot! I installed myself; he looked at me over the top of his eyeglasses and said: ‘Ha! What was the War of the Two Roses?’ After the names of the leaders of the two factions, I stopped dead.

  ‘And then? And then? And then?’

  He irritated me. I burst out:

  ‘And then, they fought like ragamuffins for a long time, but that hasn’t stuck in my memory.’

  He stared at me, amazed. I’d get something thrown at my head in a moment!

  ‘Is that how you learn history, my good girl?’

  ‘Pure chauvinism, Sir. I’m only interested in the history of France.’

  Incredible luck: he laughed!

  ‘I’d rather deal with impertinent girls than stupefied ones. Tell me about Louis XV (1742).’

  ‘All right. That was the period when Madame de la Tournelle was exercising a deplorable influence over him …’

  ‘Good heavens! You’re not being asked about that!’

  ‘Excuse me, Sir, it’s not my own invention, it’s the simple truth … the best historians …’

  ‘What d’you mean? the best historians …’

  ‘Yes, Sir, I read it in Michelet – with full details!’

  ‘Michelet! but this is madness! Michelet, get this into your head, wrote a historical novel in twenty volumes and he dared to call that the History of France! And you come here and talk to me of Michelet!’

  He was excited, he banged on the table, but I stood up to him. The young candidates round us stood transfixed, not believing their ears; Mademoiselle Sergent had approached, gasping, ready to intervene … When she heard me declare:

  ‘Anyway, Michelet’s less boring than Duruy! …’

  She flung herself against the table and protested in anguish:

  ‘Sir, I implore you forgive … this child has lost her head: she will withdraw at once …’

  He interrupted her, mopped his brow and panted:

  ‘Let her alone, Mademoiselle, there’s no harm done. I hold to my own opinions, but I’m all in favour of others holding to theirs. This young person has false ideas and bad reading-habits, but she is not lacking in personality – one sees so many dull ones! – Only you, my peruser of Michelet, try and tell me how you would go, by boat, from Amiens to Marseilles or I’ll chuck you a 2 that will give you a painful surprise!’

  ‘Leaving Amiens by embarking on the Somme, I go up … etc., etc., … canals … etc., and I arrive at Marseilles only after a period varying between six months and two years.’

  ‘That isn’t your business. Mountain-system of Russia, and step lively.’

  Alas, I cannot say that I shine outstandingly in the knowledge of the mountain-system of Russia, but I got through it more or less except for some gaps which seemed regrettable to the examiner.

  ‘And the Balkans … you’re cutting them out, then?’

  The man spat out his words like a fire-cracker.

  ‘Certainly not, Sir, I was keeping them as a final titbit.’

  ‘That’s all right. Be off with you.’

  People drew back rather indignantly to let me through. Those dear little pets!

  I relaxed; no one had summoned me, so I listened with horror to Marie Belhomme who was answering Roubaud that ‘to prepare sulphuric acid, you pour water on lime and then that begins to boil; then you collect the gas in a balloon-flask’. She wore the expression that always meant enormous howlers and boundless stupidities; her huge, long, narrow hands gripped the table; her eyes, like those of a brainless bird, rolled and glittered; she poured out monstrous ineptitudes with extreme volubility. There was nothing to be done; even if one had whispered in her ear, she wouldn’t have heard! Anaïs was listening to her too and enjoying herself with all her kindly soul. I asked her:

  ‘What have you got through, already?’

  ‘Singing, history, joggraphy.’

  ‘Nasty old Lacroix?’

  ‘Yes. What a swine! But he asked me easy ones, Thirty Years’ War, the Treaties … I say, Marie’s off the rails!’

  ‘Off the rails seems to me putting it mildly.’

  Little Luce, excited and astounded, came up to us:

  ‘I’ve passed joggraphy, and history, I answered well … Oh, I am bucked!’

  ‘Hullo, twirp! I’m going to have a drink at the pump, I can’t hold out any longer. Anyone comin’ too?’

  Not one of them was; either they weren’t thirsty or they were afraid of missing a summons. Downstairs, in a kind of parlour, I found the Aubert girl, her cheeks still blotched with red from her recent despair and her eyes swollen. She was writing to her family, at a little table, calm now and pleased to be going back to the farm. I said to her:

  ‘Look here, didn’t you want to know anything just now?’

  She raised her calf’s eyes.

  ‘Makes me frightened, all that do, and gets me in ever such a state, it do. Mother sent me to boarding-school, father he didn’t want it, he said I’d do best looking after the house like my sisters, and doing the washing and digging the garden. Mother, she didn’t want it – it was her as they listened to. They made me ill, trying to make me learn – and you see how I come over today. I said as it would happen! Now they’ll have to believe me!’

  And she went on tranquilly writing her letter.

  Upstairs, in the classroom it was hot enough to kill one. The girls, nearly all red and shiny (lucky I haven’t any tendency to redness!), were scared and tense, straining their ears to hear their names called and obsessed with the idea of not making stupid answers. Wouldn’t it soon be twelve o’clock so that we could go?

  Anaïs returned from physics and chemistry; she wasn’t red, how could she be red? I believe that, even in a boiling cauldron, she would remain yellow and cold.

  ‘Well, everything all right?’

  ‘Thank goodness, I’ve finished. You know Roubaud’s taking English into the bargain: he made me read sentences and translate; I don’t know why he squirmed when I read in English … isn’t he idiotic?’

  It was the pronunciation! Bother! It was pretty obvious now that Mademoiselle Aimée Lanthenay, who gave the lessons, did not speak English with excessive purity. And, as a result, any moment now that imbecile of a Professor was going to make fun of me because I didn’t pronounce better! Still another delightful episode! I was enraged to think that idiot was going to laugh at me.

  Midday at last. Their Lordships rose and we proceeded to the usual shindy of our departure. Lacroix, his hair bristling and his eyes starting out of his head, announced that the merry little party would begin again at 2.30. Mademoiselle sorted us out with difficulty from the swirling tide of chattering young things and took us off to the restaurant. She was still stiff with me on account of my ‘odious’ conduct with old Lacroix; but I didn’t care! The heat weighed down on me; I was tired and mute …

  Oh, the woods, the dear woods of Montigny! At that very hour, how well I knew how they hummed! The wasps and flies that tippled in the flowers of the limes and the elders made the whole forest vibrate like an organ; and the birds did not sing, for, at midday, they perched upright on the branches, seeking the shade, preening their feathers and peering into the undergrowth with bright, shifting eyes. I would be lying at the edge of the Fir Plantation from which I could see the whole town down there below me with the warm wind in my face, half dead with well-being and laziness.

  … Luce saw me far away, completely
in another world, and tugged my sleeve, giving me her most fetching smile. Mademoiselle was reading the papers; my classmates were exchanging sleepy scraps of conversation. I complained and Luce protested gently:

  ‘And you never talk to me any more, either! All day we’re passing exams, in the evening we go to bed and at meals you’re in such a bad temper that I don’t know when to find you any more!’

  ‘Perfectly simple! Don’t look for me!’

  ‘Oh, that’s not a bit nice of you! You don’t even notice all my patience in waiting for you, the way I put up with your always pushing me away …’

  The gawky Anaïs laughed like a door that needed oiling and the little thing stopped, highly intimidated. All the same it is true that she has unshakeable patience. And to think that so much constancy won’t avail her in the least; sad! sad!

  Anaïs was pursuing an idea of her own: she had not forgotten Marie Belhomme’s incoherent answers and, amiable bitch, she kindly asked the poor wretch who was sitting dazed and motionless:

  ‘What question did they ask you in physics and chemistry?’

  ‘It’s of no importance,’ growled Mademoiselle crossly. ‘Whatever they asked her, she’ll have given nonsensical answers.’

  ‘I can’t remember now,’ said poor, flummoxed Marie. ‘Sulphuric acid, I think …’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘Oh, luckily I knew a bit, Mademoiselle; I said that you poured water on lime and that the bubbles of gas that form were sulphuric acid …’

  ‘You said that?’ articulated Mademoiselle, gritting her teeth as if she were longing to bite …

  Anaïs gnawed her nails with delight. Marie, thunderstruck, did not utter another word and the Headmistress, rigid and red in the face, marched us off, walking very fast. We trotted behind her like little dogs, practically hanging our tongues out under the sun that beat down on us.