by Eric Dupont
“Honestly, Gabriel, if they had to fire every gay teacher in the province of Ontario, there’d be nobody left to teach French, drama, or music! Please don’t quote me on that . . .”
She pronounced my name the English way, as in Peter Gabriel. She chortled at her joke. Then she wanted to know if I was the son of Madeleine Lamontagne, Queen of the Eggs.
“You know, the breakfast restaurants . . . Mado’s.” She pronounced it “Maydo’s.”
For the first time in my life, I lied about it. And so I began my life as a phys ed teacher at the oh-so Holy Canadian Martyrs Catholic Secondary School. Compared to Brébeuf College in Montreal—named in honor of a Holy Canadian martyr though it may be—the school in Toronto was more like a convent. Prayers and the national anthem over the PA system every morning. The national anthem, to be like the Americans; the prayers to remind us we were in a Catholic school.
On my first morning at Holy Canadian Martyrs, I didn’t have any classes. I was in the gym untangling the volleyball nets when O Canada came on over the intercom at half past eight on the dot. I went out into the hallway to see what was going on. There I found a handful of teachers and students standing stock still, as though petrified. Innocently, I walked over to the secretary’s office, unaware that I was committing the unthinkable. “Stand still for the national anthem!” a teacher I didn’t know barked at me. It was Mrs. Robinson, a crotchety old Irishwoman, who promptly filed a complaint with Mrs. Delvecchio. “The man’s a separatist! He was walking around during O Canada!” This earned me a dressing-down from the principal. How could I have known? It was all so obsequious!
Nonetheless, this incident was enough to focus the entire school’s attention on me. A separatist terrorist from Quebec had taken over from Lemon the Queer! What a kerfuffle! I went back to my gym. But the PA system wasn’t done yet: the national anthem was followed by a heartfelt Lord’s Prayer, read by the English teacher, then by a Hail Mary, delivered in French with charming conviction and emotion by an immersion student with a syrupy voice. Her accent was terribly sexy, somewhere between English and Italian. When she got to “le fruit de vos entrailles,” I knew she was different. Confirmation of that would arrive soon enough.
The students at Holy Canadian Martyrs had to wear a uniform. The boys wore charcoal-grey pants and a white shirt with a claret-and-grey tie they left at home or in their locker more often than not. Their way of rebelling. Much of our interaction boiled down to reminding them to tuck their shirts in and do up their ties. The girls, meanwhile, wore long-sleeved white blouses in winter and short-sleeved ones from the first day of May. They were allowed to wear pants, but most wore the school’s claret-and-charcoal tartan skirt. In their case, the challenge consisted of stopping them shortening their skirts, which school rules maintained had to be at least knee length. Keeping their hems as close as possible to their patellas amounted to a somewhat Sisyphean task. Some turned the hems of the skirts up, fastening them with a safety pin, ready to be released at the first sign of a teacher or the principal. But there were always exceptions to the rule . . . Most skirts didn’t come tumbling back down when it was me or the young math teacher—an absolute moron by the name of Zbornak—who came into view.
After the national anthem incident, I went back to the gym to get ready for my classes that afternoon. Hardly any students had signed up, and most of those were boys. Past Grade 9, I should point out, phys ed was optional at Holy Canadian Martyrs. I think Mr. Lemon had found himself a nice cushy job! One glance at his notes was enough to convince me that he didn’t exactly overexert himself when it came to coming up with ideas for his classes. He was more the type who would string up a volleyball net in September and take it down again before Christmas. Then it was basketball from January to May. In the summer, he’d take the kids outside to play baseball. No surprise the students had no interest in sport. It also fell to the phys ed teacher to teach the students, both boys and girls, about a healthy diet, lifestyles in keeping with sound mental health, drugs and alcohol, safe driving—above all, the dangers of drunk driving—and, last but not least, sex ed. In Toronto, that was all up to the phys ed teacher. Judging by Lemon’s empty binders, it had been a long time since the board of governors had shown any interest in evaluating the teachers . . . As far as I could tell, there were plenty more valid reasons to let him go than his homosexuality, but who was I to pass judgment on Mrs. Delvecchio’s decisions? Instead, I set about putting a whole program together from scratch.
What I didn’t know, and what a student named Melikah told me later —what a gossip!—was that my arrival had caused quite a stir at the school. None of the girls had ever taken phys ed past Grade 9. Sitting in the cafeteria, one of them had wondered out loud if they shouldn’t check out the new phys ed teacher, that it might make a change from Mrs. Robinson’s drama class—the same Mrs. Robinson from Northern Ireland who had caught me blatantly ignoring my patriotic duty that morning.
Since she’d wanted to be the first to spread the news, young Melikah—she must have been sixteen or so—went off on a scouting mission for the others. It was quite normal for students at Holy Canadian Martyrs to look a teacher over before deciding on a class. Usually, a report from the older students was enough for the new girls to make up their minds. “Don’t take drama whatever you do. Robinson’s lost it ever since her husband left her.” Or “Grade 13 French is Mr. Loser.” His name wasn’t Loser, but Moser, a Swiss German who came to Canada in 1967 and was still teaching, as he had in 1967, French authors like Nathalie Sarraute whom he considered the height of modernity. They nicknamed him “Sleeping Pill.” Melikah had tiptoed up to the gym door and opened it as quietly as she could. I’d taken off my sweater, thinking there was no one around. So there I was, standing there in nothing but an undershirt and a pair of jeans, unpicking the knots in the volleyball net that had been flung into a corner. Despite the unflattering fluorescent lighting, I must have seemed very different to her other teachers. I’d been working out a lot the summer before I left Montreal and my biceps were like a couple of cantaloupes. Even I was beginning to think it might be a bit much. Melikah held her breath behind the door. She must have watched me for a minute or two, then I heard the door close, without knowing who had opened it in the first place. Quick footsteps echoed along the hallway.
Melikah sprinted back to the cafeteria to report everything she’d just seen to her classmates. By the sound of things, it was a demigod she described—or so she told me later, it’s not just me being vain—and so the twenty girls immediately raced to the secretary’s office to sign up for my phys ed class. Two of them—Kayla and Candice—stopped by the gym on the way to have a look for themselves. They were bolder than Melikah and marched right in, claiming to be looking for someone or something, then, feigning surprise at seeing me there, they giggled—I love the sound of sixteen-year-old girls giggling—and apologized, chirping all the while on their way out. Their little detour had caused them to fall behind the other girls, who had dashed toward the secretary’s office like lionesses pursuing a herd of antelope.
The secretary was behind the counter. She was a homely old spinster who was always in a foul mood. Her ears stuck out and she’d been unkindly nicknamed “Zira” from Planet of the Apes—which is what everyone called the secretary’s office. Twenty girls were crammed in there now, along with a few boys who’d been alerted by the ruckus. All were clamoring to sign up for the optional phys ed class, which was to begin that same afternoon. They were eager for the man Melikah had described to teach them all about shameful diseases, lost virginities, drinking, soft drugs, and God knows whatever else might feed their sixteen-year-old aspirations. They jostled and elbowed each other out of the way. A girl by the name of Anderson suggested the girls line up in alphabetical order. Another named Ziegler told her where she could shove that idea. Zira the secretary did her best to restore order amid the chaos, reminding the students of the school’s zero tolerance policy on foul language. She grumbled as she rummag
ed through the class lists she’d put together over the summer and that she’d now have to change.
“So you all want to take phys ed? Now that’s a first! There won’t be room for everyone!” she protested, glaring at the undisciplined rabble.
She handed out the forms the twenty-six girls and two boys would need to change classes as they huddled around the counter. The forms were filled out in record time and in absolute silence, the girls writing on each other’s backs, sharing pens, one holding back her bangs with her right hand to see what her left hand was writing. The forms were passed along to Zira, who stamped her feet and raised her voice in an attempt to calm the overexcited schoolgirls. The two boys who had filled out the form slunk off as though they had just committed an obscene, unmentionable act.
“Single file!” Zira barked. She was beside herself now and flung the pile of forms over their heads. The girls suddenly realized they were in trouble. The ape-like secretary made it clear that she would be accepting no forms until the girls had formed an orderly line, something of a feat in itself given the cramped surroundings. A swaying, Soviet-style line formed almost organically, as though the ability to quickly form a line was something that came naturally to any student at Holy Canadian Martyrs. One by one the girls smiled and set down their forms in front of the secretary as she counted them aloud. Candice was the last girl but one to put down her form. The secretary gave Kayla a pitiful look.
“Twenty-five!” she announced a touch theatrically. “No room for you, Kayla!”
Kayla shook her head in disbelief. How could there be no room left for her? Who did they think they were? They would just have to make room! She brought her fist down on the secretary’s counter to drive her point home. The other girls looked on helplessly at the sad spectacle of a teenage girl being cruelly alienated from her peers by an arbitrary bureaucratic slight. Kayla was beside herself. If there was room for twenty-five, there must be room for twenty-six. But Zira wouldn’t be moved and simply shook her head with a smirk, revelling in her power. To be honest, Michel, I think she hated every last one of those girls. Kayla couldn’t stand the thought of that frustrated hag of a woman preventing her from signing up for my class, and she lost it.
“I want to take gym with Mr. Lamontagne!” she shrieked, by now quite hysterical.
The shouting roused the principal, Mrs. Delvecchio, who was dozing at her desk. Whatever was going on in the secretary’s office? First, she’d had to spend part of the morning calming poor Mrs. Robinson, who’d been thrown into a panic at the thought of having a bloodthirsty separatist as a colleague. Then she’d had to deal with a couple of dissatisfied parents, and now it sounded very much as though the raised voices coming from the secretary’s office were again about me! Apparently it was just as Mrs. Delvecchio suddenly appeared on the scene that Kayla really lost her temper.
“Let me sign up for gym class or I’ll fucking kill you, ape woman!”
Honestly, dear brother, I should never have taken off my shirt while I was getting the gym ready. I was perhaps partly to blame.
The incident tore through the school like a nuclear bomb. Little Kayla Evangelista had been a model student until I showed up, regularly collecting awards and honors since her first year of elementary school. But now her reputation was permanently tarnished. They didn’t let her off lightly: a three-day suspension, a formal written apology to Zira and banned from going to the secretary’s office unless summoned by the principal herself. Zira had squeezed this final concession from her union, having threatened to sue Kayla’s parents if she didn’t get her way.
Naturally I heard the story more than once, first from Melikah, then Mrs. Delvecchio, and then the girls in my afternoon class. So this was the atmosphere in which I began my career at Holy Canadian Martyrs Catholic Secondary School in the fall of 1994. Little did I know I was just about to meet the weirdest girl in the world.
But my S-Bahn is reaching the end of its route. I’ll try to write tomorrow.
Gabriel
* * *
Erkner–Spandau
May 8, 1999
Dear Michel,
I haven’t written in three days now; I feel a little guilty. The neighbor from downstairs put in another appearance. Something suddenly occurred to me: her name’s Magdalena Berg, which is more or less the German equivalent of Madeleine Lamontagne. Don’t you find that strange? Especially since the Lamontagnes of Rivière-du-Loup are of German extraction. Their name was Frenchified in the eighteenth century, or so Suzuki told me. But Berg is such a common name in Germany, almost as common as Schmit, Schmidt, and Schmitt! Anyway, the old lady knocked on my door again last night. I was reading a book I’d swiped from Delphine, a French student in my Goethe class. She’d been eyeing me discreetly right from the start of class in January. By the end of the month, I was back at her place. The people she lives with in Kreuzberg were in the other room so we had to be quiet. It was strange: the couple, both in their fifties, were having a real shouting match. About money, I think. There they were insulting each other in German while we did just the opposite. “Du Dreckstück!” and he’d come back with “Du unverschämte Kuh!” One slapped the other, then we heard a piece of furniture toppling over. We made sure to come during the crying fit. When Delphine slipped out to go to the bathroom, I took my chance and swiped The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving. I hadn’t read it. Last night I got to the part where the plane carrying the mother and the little brother Egg is crashing into the Atlantic. “No! No! No!” I thought. “It can’t be! He’s not going to kill her off now! Not her! Not now!” And then the neighbor knocked on the door. She was wearing a psychedelic-print cotton dress (very German Democratic Republic), the type of design you’d see on wallpaper in the 1970s. Brown, orange, and yellow circles . . . It looked as though she’d dressed up before coming to knock at my door. She was holding another thread, green this time, and a needle she wanted me to thread for her.
“I can’t see the hole! It’s too small!”
While I lent a hand, she took a deep breath.
“Would you have a glass of Riesling with me tomorrow evening? Around eight? At my place.”
Since I had no plans and had already admitted to my fondness for Riesling, I agreed. And so tonight I’m having a glass of German Riesling at Magdalena Berg’s. She seemed pleased when I accepted her invitation. She told me she’d be able to tell me about Potsdam and the former GDR. My downstairs neighbors have already told me a little about her. She never married and has lived in our block since the 1970s. She worked for the GDR’s national monuments commission. Since the wall came down, she’s been collecting a small state pension. Her neighbors don’t seem to like her very much. “She has a foul temper,” Germana on the seventh floor told me one day. Hilde, who lives on the third, has fallen out with her altogether. Mind you, Hilde, back in the days of the GDR, was a party member and responsible for reporting on the goings-on of everyone who lived here. I don’t think she turned anyone over, but you get the impression the others hold a grudge against her; there are still a few old scores to settle. Magdalena Berg will tell me all about it this evening, I suppose.
You wouldn’t believe just how big this city is. There aren’t that many people, but it just goes on and on. It would take you more than a day to walk from one end to the other. The wonderful S-Bahn sure comes in handy. Before I came here, I used to wonder if you could still see a clear dividing line between East and West, even in 1999. Of course you can. The wall has come down, but you only have to look out the S-Bahn window to see if you’re in what used to be East Berlin. The people are still very different too. I’ve met girls who sometimes try to cover up the fact that they’re from the East. Twice I’ve met a girl who claimed to be from West Berlin and it turned out not to be true. But there’s one way to find out the truth: you just have to undress them. East Germans our age always have a scar on their arm left by a vaccination—polio, I think. Back home in Canada, and in West Germany, only people Suzuki’s age have one.
They must have stopped doing it shortly before we were born. It’s as if a whole people has been scarred by communism. I don’t even understand why they don’t want to admit they’re from the East. Deutsch ist Deutsch, if you ask me!
As the train makes its way to Warschauer Straße, I remember there were hardly any Germans at Holy Canadian Martyrs. Since it was a Catholic school, the children were mostly Italian and Polish immigrants, or of Irish descent. An altogether Roman mix. My class lists must have resembled the list of names gathering dust somewhere in the Vatican cellars: Pantalone, di Franco, Kubica, Murray . . . Quite the synod! On the first day of school, right after the incident that seriously jeopardized young Kayla’s chances of leaving one day with a high school diploma, Zira the secretary came to see me during lunch.
“Your classes are full!”
She gave me the lists and I looked them over carefully to give me an idea of what lay in store. Students began streaming into the gym well before the start of class. Most of them girls who had signed up that morning. A few of the boys asked if I was on steroids and if I could get some for them. It’s all about hard work, I told them. They wanted to know if we’d be working out, if they’d have pecs like mine by June. They were funny.
A few seconds before the bell rang, a girl came in by herself. The other girls giggled when she walked in, and no wonder. She might have been wearing a school uniform like everyone else, but she looked totally out of place. She was short and plump and wore thick black glasses. Two godawful braids framed her face, which was more of a baby face than the other girls’. I thought for a second she might be wearing a different skirt to the others, but then I realized she was the only one not to have turned hers up. I asked her what her name was.
“Stella Thanatopoulos, sir,” she said, staring at the floor.
“Saint Stella!” some comedian chimed in.
I’d recognized Stella’s voice right away. That morning, just after the national anthem and the Our Father, she was the girl who’d said the Hail Mary in French to welcome the new teacher from Quebec. She lived alone with her mother, who’d sent her to Catholic school since she hadn’t been able to get her into an Orthodox one. Stella sang at mass on the first Friday of every month. The girls who’d signed up for class that morning had raced home for their sports gear, lending clothes to the girls who lived too far away. The students went off to the locker rooms to get changed. All except Stella, that is, who just sat there looking sheepish on the bench. Later I found out that Stella’s mother had made her sign up for phys ed before I was even hired.
