by J. S. Margot
My heart sank. I couldn’t stand exemplary children. Never got along with them, could spot them a mile off: by their shoes, by the way they walked, the way they looked at you. I could measure their obedience just by the angle of their chins.
“Simon is our eldest,” Mr Schneider began. “He is now sixteen. He is most like—in terms of character I mean—his mother, my spouse. He is gentle and tough at the same time, vous comprenez? You will understand when you meet my spouse. A hard worker who prefers to be silent than to talk, that’s his way. But you should not underestimate him; both his heart and his tongue are well cut.” As if he were talking about a diamond. It made me smile.
“If Simon opens his mouth, juffrouw, it is not to talk, but because he has something to say, if you know what I mean. N’importe: you will not have much to do with him, he is studying maths and science. His subjects are too difficult and too specialized for you; you have a flair for languages, I understand, you have a different type of brain, n’est-ce pas, you can only help our Simon with French and Dutch, perhaps also with history and geography. Our elder son will himself indicate when he has need of you. But if he does, we want him to be able to count on you, n’est-ce pas.”
“Of course,” I said.
“Jakov is our second oldest,” he went on. “We had two boys, one after the other, and two girls. It could not have been better. First the sons. Then the daughters. We are blessed, my spouse and I. Jakov is thirteen, he will turn fourteen next month. He is the spitting image of me at that age: a scamp who is very popular with his schoolmates. Jakov has many friends, just like I did. He connects very easily with others. A sociable boy. We have to take care that he does not connect too quickly, also with girls, if you get my meaning. When I was young, I was content to wait. But my spouse and I married in the 1970s. Since then everything has changed, the world is moving too fast, and Jakov likes speed. He is very bright. He always wants to try out new things and he likes excitement. So he will push boundaries, challenge rules. I don’t know if Jakov will have need of you. He is wilful. Nevertheless, we would like you to test him regularly on his study materials. He needs to be taught discipline. You will have to be strict with him, but not too strict—you need to find the golden mean.”
I nodded, somewhat bored. I would rather see his sons, those exemplary boys, than listen to him singing their praises, but I didn’t dare say so.
“You have already met Elzira and Sara,” Mr Schneider continued.
I realized that I was nodding again.
“Elzira is our elder daughter; Sara—the little rascal—our younger. Elzira turned twelve in August. She’s just two years younger than Jakov. And I would never say this in their hearing, but Elzira is cleverer than her two brothers put together. It’s just that she can’t concentrate—she has fits of nerves, and that worries us.”
He paused briefly. A tall boy walked across the garden.
“At school they recommended that we have some psychological tests carried out, which we did. There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s just a bit different.”
Once again he paused.
“Most of your time will be spent with Elzira; our daughter lacks self-confidence, you know, like all teenage girls, of course. She’s very uncertain, and Simon and Jakov undermine what self-confidence she has, even though we tell our garçons they shouldn’t, n’est-ce pas. I can give you an example: Jakov refuses to play chess with Elzira, even though they are well matched. He doesn’t want to play with her because he knows she will knock over half the chess pieces…” He stared silently into space for at least half a minute. Those thirty seconds seemed very long.
“I will, in the strictest confidence, tell you that Elzira has dyspraxia. The diagnosis is official. I do not know if you are aware of that condition. Her handicap—although we never refer to her condition in that way when she is present—has nothing to do with her intelligence, n’est-ce pas. Her motor skills regularly go haywire, c’est tout. She loses dexterity and has difficulty with balance and coordination. She has a tremor, like people who suffer from Parkinson’s. Sometimes her hands shake, she can’t control her muscles, she often drops things and therefore can appear clumsy. One part of her brain doesn’t always communicate smoothly with the other, that’s how you have to imagine it, like a short circuit, but that clumsiness has nothing to do with her intelligence, n’est-ce pas, I say it again, I would like to say it all the time, there is nothing wrong with her intelligence.”
I’d sat up straighter, because Mr Schneider had started to talk faster and faster, and because he was saying “n’est-ce pas” more and more often.
“You know, of course, juffrouw, that to develop, a person must have self-confidence, motivation and ambition. Well, we are worried that our daughter, because of this so-called defect, will become withdrawn and fearful. She must not lag behind the other pupils in her class. That would not do her justice. We do not want her to suffer. We do not want her to become the subject of discussion. That is your main task: be patient with Elzira, enable her to excel.”
His eyes had become damp, and he coughed between sentences, but he did not slow down.
“And then last but not least: Sara, without an ‘h’. Sara is only eight. She is a champion gymnast, as agile as a snake. We do not know from whom she has inherited this bizarre and useless talent, not from me at any rate, and my spouse has many talents, but agility of body is not one of them. If it were left to Sara, sport would be her only occupation. That is of course out of the question for people like us. We do not wish to encourage her at all in that direction. Not even if she had the potential to be a world-class gymnast. We want her to train her brain. Now she is only eight. But soon she will be eighteen, you understand—I take it you understand me.”
“Yes,” I heard myself say.
“Just to make sure, I shall summarize what we expect from each other, juffrouw: we from you, our children from you, all of us from each other,” he continued. “We give our sons and daughters to you. And you give them attention. You help them with their schoolwork. You are their tutor. You follow their lesson timetable and stick to it. You ensure that they pass with flying colours, n’est-ce pas. And we recompense you for all your efforts. You keep a list on which you write the hours that you have worked, and you also describe, using mots clés, keywords, how you spent those hours with them, is that agreed? Can my spouse and I count on you?”
I was beginning to feel a bit dizzy. As I sat listening to Mr Schneider’s litany, I longed for some fresh air. The little room had grown stuffy. Through the window I could see an upper balcony, where a woman was shaking out a tea towel. It occurred to me that Mr Schneider had always said “my spouse” and never “my wife”.
I fidgeted in my chair. I was eager to meet the four children. To talk to Little and Large. And see those fantastic sons in person. I also wished that Mr Schneider would ask me some questions. It wasn’t for nothing that I’d rehearsed a series of answers to imaginary queries: do you think the pay is reasonable, what are your strengths and weaknesses, how good are your language skills, explain why you think you’re the right person for our children…
Mr Schneider began talking again. It was apparent from what he said that I’d already got the job, and could start immediately. His assumption that I was okay with this—without asking whether I wanted it—made me rebellious. I decided it was time to go home. Before I could get up, there was a knock at the door. A woman entered the room. Her hair was concealed under a chequered kerchief and she wore an apron round her plump middle. After putting two steaming cups of coffee and two wedges of cheesecake down in front of us she disappeared again without a word.
“Do you know the joke about Moshe, who’s dying, and who calls his business partner Abe to his side?” Mr Schneider asked. And he began to tell the story. About Moshe, who doesn’t want to die before asking Abe forgiveness for certain wrongdoings.
&nbs
p; “Do you remember when our first business went bust? That was my fault, Abe, and I’m sorry. I embezzled money and falsified the accounts.”
“I forgive you, Moshe,” Abe reassures him.
Moshe: “And that night when that car got totalled. That was me, Abe, I wasn’t wearing my glasses and I’d had too much to drink…”
“Let’s forget that,” says Abe.
“That time that 100,000 francs went missing from the safe: it was me who took the money, I had to pay off my son’s gambling debts.”
“Ach,” says Abe, “don’t worry about it, Moshe, I forgive you everything. Because, you know, I’m the one who put that arsenic in your coffee.”
After telling the joke, Mr Schneider cracked up laughing. Because he kept on looking at me expectantly, I pretended to laugh too.
“I will leave you now,” he said as abruptly as he had launched into the joke. He hadn’t touched his cheesecake.
He stood up, adjusted his yarmulke—attached to his curly crown with a hairpin—and put his jacket back on. Fresh underarm sweat stains marked his shirt.
“My spouse will come and speak with you in a moment. I wish you every success.”
I automatically stuck out a hand, which he shook heartily.
I could have kicked myself.
Five
Mrs Schneider, whose first name turned out to be Moriel, was younger than I am now. When she introduced herself to me she had just turned forty. Which made her exactly twice as old as me.
My grandmother had once explained to me—and working out she was right kept me quiet for a week—that you can only be twice someone else’s age for a single year of your life. Once past that date (in the best-case scenario) the years gradually creep towards each other. People move closer together as if, like trees, they’re collecting annual rings that make them stronger, plant them more firmly in the ground, make their crowns broader so that others can shelter under them better. The twenty years that separate a fifty-year-old from a seventy-year-old are nothing compared to the twenty-year gulf between a ten-year-old and a thirty-year-old.
Mrs Schneider was of average height and somewhere between fat and thin. Her appearance was chic, almost intimidatingly so. You could see she set high standards for herself and others. Her movements, her voice, her jewellery, her clothes—her entire presence—radiated distinction.
She wore a classic, dark-blue suit with a skirt that reached below the knee: discreet with a modern twist. Her hairstyle—shoulder-length and bouffant—reminded me of Pam Ewing’s in Dallas. When she moved, her skirt rustled.
She didn’t look motherly, more ladylike. Her skin, too, was pale, with a faint tinge of blue, the colour of her blouse.
Once again I held out a hand. Once again the gesture was returned. Once again I could have kicked myself: this reflex was more ingrained than I’d realized. Though maybe it was okay; perhaps women were allowed to touch each other and this rule only applied to the opposite sex.
“You are studying,” she said, sitting down on the chair that her husband had just been using, though not before first carefully smoothing down the back of her skirt.
“To become a translator.”
“Your exam results, you have them with, n’est-ce pas?”
“No… you didn’t ask me to bring them…”
“That you are a good student we cannot know, if you have not your results with you. Aaron says you speak French.”
I answered that my knowledge of French was passive, rather than active. “Dutch will always be my mother tongue. I only translate from French into Dutch, never the other way—I’d make a real mess of that!”
“Then the language you do not know.”
“Oh but I do. I understand the language, how it’s constructed. I read French literature. And I really like grammar,” I said. That wasn’t a fib. The more irregular the better.
“Our children you can help with their French home tasks.”
Mrs Schneider appraised me like an insurance agent assessing damage to a building. A gap here, a split there, two or three cracks that cannot be overlooked. She spoke all her sentences as if they were conclusions, without any upward intonation. Never a trace of a question. I wasn’t sure whether her manner of speaking was deliberate or due to her shaky command of Dutch. She clearly wasn’t a native speaker, though this hadn’t seemed so obvious during our phone conversation. Perhaps she didn’t know the rules about word order. Or perhaps, like many of the French-speaking bourgeoisie in Flanders, she just didn’t care. I was happy to teach her too.
“Of course I can help them with their homework.”
“You speak beautiful Dutch.”
“Thank you.”
“You have a beautiful name.”
“So do you.”
“Thank you. For my name, Moriel, I cannot take credit. I have my parents to thank for it.” She smiled tentatively. “Many people think I am called Murielle. But it is Moriel, with o and without double l and an e at the end.”
Now it was my turn to smile tentatively.
“On weekdays at five or five thirty you come, and stay until eight, at least. On Sunday mornings you come at ten and leave when our daughters you have helped. Our sons need you not help, on Sundays they go to Bible class. My husband, Aaron, or I, we pay you each week.”
She did call her husband by his first name. And just like her husband, she had decided, without bothering to check with me, that I would enter into their service.
“You have hobbies, n’est-ce pas.”
“Reading. Going to the cinema or the theatre. Travelling as often as possible to countries whose language I’m learning. Having friends round.”
“You have many hobbies, but none is to children connected.”
“I think children are great.”
“You have no experience with children.”
“I did a lot of babysitting when I was younger. I’d read the children stories. And then we’d act them out. Or we’d make up a sequel, or add another character to the story.”
“That you here need not do.”
“Babysit?”
“Make up stories. That we do not want you to do. School is not a game. And tutoring is not the same thing as babysitting. You are good at keeping silent?”
“Uh…”
“We do not want that you speak with the children about your personal life—about your world, I mean to say. The idea is you work with their learning materials.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Your life is your life and stays your life. You are seule, single?”
“I’m a student.”
“You are not married.”
“I live with my boyfriend.”
“Your parents approve.”
I nodded and had to bite my tongue so as not to blurt out that my parents had given up trying to interfere with my life and as a result approved of everything I did.
“Your parents, they are still together?”
“You mean, are they divorced? No.”
“With how many children are you at home?”
“Three.”
“All three healthy?”
“Yes, as far as I know.”
“Your husband works.”
“He’s looking for a job.”
“He has graduated, n’est-ce pas.”
“No, he did one year of law.”
“So he is younger than you…” Now her voice did go up at the end of the sentence, by a good few centimetres.
“No, he’s seven years older. My boyfriend’s a political refugee. He faced persecution in his country, so he fled. He might go back to university, study industrial engineering, he’s not sure yet. It depends on other factors and on his linguistic ability. Dutch isn’t an easy la
nguage to…”
I was at it again. The least suspicion that someone looked down on Nima and I’d get defensive, would stress that he was a political, not an economic refugee. As if I myself needed confirmation that someone who fled for political reasons was superior to someone who fled to escape poverty and a lack of prospects.
“Donc, he no longer studies law.”
“He could only study law in a language he spoke really well. That’s difficult here.”
“Your husband, he is from another country.”
“From Iran,” I said, all too familiar with the reactions this could trigger.
“Iraaaannn,” she repeated, ruminatively.
“Tehran,” I added.
“Your husband is Muslim, n’est-ce pas,” she said.
“He’s not my husband, he’s my boyfriend. And he’s not a practising Muslim,” I said. That, too, I had learnt since I’d been with Nima. That it could be helpful to say as soon as possible that although my boyfriend was a Muslim, he did not practise his religion actively: he did not pray three to five times a day, he did not observe Ramadan, and sharing his life with a non-Muslim didn’t bother him at all.
He was, in short, too left-wing to be religious. Just like the label of political refugee, that of “non-practising Muslim” was considered meritorious, a medal on his lapel, a passport in my circle of friends and acquaintances.
Sometimes, but not now, I lied that his parents were Zoroastrians. Some of Nima’s friends were Zoroastrians, and I knew a little bit about their faith, which was based not on the Bible or the Koran but the Avesta. Zoroastrianism usually met with a sympathetic response, especially if you explained that the term came from Zarathustra, meaning you could link the religion to Nietzsche, who in certain circles was revered more than any deity.
“You are a young and sensible woman. And your husband lives in the country of the ayatollahs…”
