Madame

by Antoni Libera

  And so we come, finally, to the story of Goethe and Schubert: not quite like the others, but equally significant.

  This time it is Goethe who is the object of fascination. Schubert falls in love with his poetry. He reads it, he recites it, he is overwhelmed with admiration. And one passage in Faust affects him so strongly that he is moved to tears. Which passage is it? Of course: it is Margaret’s monologue, spoken as she sits at her loom. Those unforgettable first four lines:

  My peace is gone

  And my heart is sore;

  My soul is heavy,

  There’s no calm any more.

  They resound in Schubert’s head, they obsess him. He cannot sleep. Finally he understands that he will get no rest until he sets them to music. And thus is born the most famous of his songs, Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel. It is the beginning of a new chapter – a new era! – in musical history. Gretchen is followed by one masterpiece after another; all in all, Schubert sets about sixty of Goethe’s poems to music.

  Need one add when Schubert was born? Could this passionate lover of the inspired verses of a Virgo have been anything other than an Aquarius? The thirty-first of January was the date he came into the world.

  This last example is perhaps the most significant of the three. It is a kind of archetype.

  When Goethe, greatest of the Virgos, wrote that extraordinary poem, the song of a virgin in love, he was giving expression to his deepest self, to what he was because of the stars. I am Margaret, he might well have said (anticipating Flaubert, who many years later was to say the same of his Madame Bovary). For indeed, is this a woman’s experience of love? Does a woman in love lose her mind, give way to madness, long for death? Of course not. A woman who loves is calm and controlled, for love is her realm and her natural state. A woman in love knows perfectly well what she wants, and she strides boldly towards her goal. She wants to conceive and give birth; she wants life, not death.

  But the male element, when pierced by Love’s arrows, behaves just like Goethe’s Margaret. Let us listen to his lament:

  My thoughts spin round,

  My poor head aches;

  My poor mind reels

  Till I think it will break.

  His face alone

  From my window I seek;

  It’s him alone

  I run to greet.

  O to embrace him,

  To clasp him at last!

  To touch and enfold him

  And hold him fast!

  And kiss him till

  I’ve no more breath,

  And kissing brings

  A blissful death.

  And what does the Watercarrier do, moved by the desperate cry of the wounded Virgin? What does a mature woman (in the person of Franz Schubert) do when she hears the lament of a young man (the eternally young Goethe)? She goes towards him; she stretches out her hand to him. She swallows her ambition and pride, forgets her fear of humiliation and speaks to him. She lends him her voice: she composes music and transforms words into song. She turns the savage cry into sweet melody.

  For song brings harmony and reconciliation. It is through song that opposites are united and dissonances resolved; it is through song that the ultimate synthesis is reached, and the spirit reconciled with the flesh.

  In the song of Virgo and Aquarius, the Stellar Victoria is realised.

  I long for that victory with my Aquarius!

  It was well after midnight when I put down my pen. I had written almost twenty pages. Feeling strangely dazed, I closed my notebook and went to bed.

  The next day I paid another visit to the university, this time to the departmental library, to find a French translation of the passages I had quoted from Faust and look up a few words and phrases I wasn’t sure of in Larousse, Robert and various other dictionaries. This done, I made the appropriate corrections and then read the essay through from the beginning, marking all the liaisons with a pencil and underlining the words to stress when reading it out loud.

  As soon as I got home, I took advantage of my parents’ absence to have a sort of dress rehearsal: I read the whole thing out loud. And while up to that point I’d been rather pleased with it, I now began to have serious misgivings. It wasn’t that I read badly; I stumbled over the occasional word, but not so often, and this could easily be corrected with practice. The problem lay elsewhere: the thing was just too long. I couldn’t possibly hope to get through it all in one lesson. Knowing Madame, I could be sure she would stop me after the first few minutes, whether or not I had made any mistakes. If she didn’t find anything wrong with it, she might let me read on for about six paragraphs, say, before cutting me off with that soulless ‘bien’ and entering the mark in her book; and if my art d’écrire turned out to be less than sound, she would interrupt with constant corrections, thus distracting from the content, and finally say that was fine, I needn’t go on, and tell me to sit down. And then there was her suspicion of people who volunteered; that, too, had to be taken into account.

  Leaving all that aside, and assuming that by some miracle Madame let me read on to the end, uninterrupted, I still had serious reservations. The rest of the class was bound to realise that something was up: over half an hour! Twenty pages instead of the usual three or four! An essay of that length couldn’t fail to arouse suspicion. And the content! All those fantastic stories, connected loosely at best with the subject; all that suspect erudition; all those transparent allusions and obvious hidden meanings – ‘young man’, ‘mature woman’, ‘virginity’, ‘initiation’; even an outsider would smell something fishy, and it certainly wouldn’t take the class long to figure out where the author was headed and what his true purpose was. Even the ones at the bottom of the class in French and the ones who never paid attention would rouse themselves from their lethargy and prick up their ears, intrigued by this reading that went on and on. And they’d probably wake up just when I got to the second half, where the layer of hints and allusions was thickest.

  It was absurd to imagine that anyone would interpret this extravagant linguistic performance as an effort to improve my marks in French. Nor would it be dismissed as some bizarre flight of fancy, a laboured whim meant to dazzle the teacher and earn the gratitude of the class for taking up most of the lesson. It would be taken solely as proof that despite my ostentatious displays of indifference I, too, was in thrall to Madame; that I, too, like dozens of others, was utterly, helplessly smitten.

  ‘It’s not just Ashes under the desk any longer,’ they’d say. ‘Now he’s volunteering to read! Look at him, fawning on her, insinuating himself into her good graces, stooping to anything for a bit of attention!’

  Awakened to this prospect, imagining the sniggers and jeers, I relinquished all thoughts of volunteering to read. Now I wouldn’t read even if I was called. I would simply refuse, explaining enigmatically that I had allowed myself to get carried away and wouldn’t like to take up the class’s precious time with my scribblings, but, of course, she could see my essay any time she liked, here it was, voilà, regardez mon cahier, j’ai écrit presque vingt pages – I’ve written almost twenty pages; but if for some reason she didn’t want my notebook, if it was too heavy, for instance, then – and here an entirely new idea came to me – then she could have a copy, a clean copy that I’d made, on just a few pages of foolscap.

  Yes, that wasn’t a bad idea at all: copying it out so that I could hand the copy to Madame if need be. Suddenly it seemed the best solution; none of the others was quite so satisfactory. I abandoned my attempts to perfect my recitation, took up my pen and carefully copied the whole thing onto several sheets of cross-ruled writing paper.

  But on the day of the lesson new doubts assailed me. Even if everything goes as planned, I reflected as I left the house that morning, going over it all for the hundredth time, even if I give her the copy and manage to make it look casual, almost as an afterthought, is this a good move? What will it achieve? I’ll only be revealing myself, exposing my position. It’s far too ea
rly for that – it’s the last thing I need. It’s a gambit that might cost me a great deal.

  By the time I got to school the thought of any ploys with the copy could not have been further from my mind, and when the lesson began I was praying I wouldn’t be called.

  Per Aspera ad Astra

  Madame was in a remarkably good mood that day. She was cheerful and relaxed, and more talkative than usual; she spoke more freely, less formally. During the conversation period she strolled about among the desks, which she rarely did, stopping here and there to strike up a conversation. At one point she even permitted herself a little joke: when someone was describing how, during a terribly hot summer in the country, he’d cooled off with a plunge into a clay-pit, she observed with a smile, ‘On peut dire que tu as joui de la vie comme un loup dans un puits: one might say you had as much fun as a wolf in a well.’ Her interlocutor seemed to have missed some of the implications of this remark, for he appeared enchanted with it, agreeing happily and vigorously nodding his head.

  ‘And how did your essay about the stars go?’ she asked finally, proceeding to the next stage of the lesson. ‘All done? Would someone like to read theirs?’

  This was unheard of. Never before had she asked for volunteers. The class was stunned, and Madame continued in a teasing tone: ‘Quoi donc? Il n’y a personne? No one wants a good mark? What’s the matter with you today?’

  I felt my pulse quicken. Perhaps I should volunteer after all? In the circumstances . . . She did ask for volunteers, and no one seems very eager . . . No, definitely not. It’s out of the question.

  ‘Bon, alors, since there don’t seem to be any volunteers, I’ll have to pick on someone. Mademoiselle Swat, then, please.’

  The plump, tapir-like Adrienne Swat heaved herself to her feet and launched, crimson-faced, into her essay. It wasn’t exactly thrilling. Indeed, it didn’t even meet the criteria for a composition; it was more of a collection of sentences strung together, like a definition, or something out of a children’s book:

  ‘Quand il n’y a pas de nuages, nous voyons le ciel, le soleil et la lune . . . Le ciel est bleu ou bleu pâle . . . Les étoiles sont loin . . . des millions de kilomètres d’ici.’ And so on in the same vein. Luckily it didn’t last long.

  Madame did not interrupt the reading at any point, but she was displeased, and said so. ‘Je ne peux pas dire that I’m dazzled by your originality. Frankly, I expected more of you. It’s a pity. Not very satisfactory. However. It’s worth a C – at most.’ She entered the mark carefully in her book. ‘All right. Who’s next?’ She ran a manicured finger down the list of names. The nail was a polished, pale pearl. ‘Qui va me stimuler . . . qui va m’exciter? I’d like to get something out of this too . . . some pleasure . . . plaisir . . . from the fact that I’ve finally managed to teach you something.’

  I don’t know about the others, but on me the effect of these words was electrifying. This was what I had meant, that day in the park when I’d sat on the bench in the afternoon sun and thought out my plan, by a game in which words acquired a plurality of meanings. Her words were meant quite innocently, spoken in good faith and intended at face value. But to me they sounded different – as if spoken in a different key. Only one element of the game was lacking: the initiative had not been mine. The words her lips had pronounced had been prompted by the circumstances – circumstances in which my role had been passive; she had not spoken them to me, or not only to me. Their value was thus diminished. Was there anything I could do to obtain more?

  ‘Bon, alors,’ the manicured finger halted at a name near the bottom of the list; ‘what does Mademoiselle Wanko have to offer us?’

  Agnes Wanko, the daughter of a wing-commander in the air force for whom every official memorial day or anniversary was an opportunity to descend upon the school and lecture us about the defence of Poland or reminisce about the war, was the class swot, with all the characteristics typical of the breed. Respectful, ingratiating, her hand eternally raised (fingers straight, head up), she sat in the front row and kept well away from anyone and anything that could conceivably be viewed with disapproval. She could not be said to dazzle with her looks, nor was she distinguished by any eagerness to be helpful to others. She was always one of the first to arrive, spent her breaks in exemplary fashion, strolling in the corridor, always ate her sandwiches in the canteen the way you were supposed to and not, like most of the others, wherever she happened to be (even in the lavatories), and after school invariably went straight home. In short, she was a model of good behaviour; she might have been a robot instead of a human being. No loitering about, no insubordination, and, of course, no question of ever playing truant. As for clothes, boys and other amusements of that kind, she seemed to have no need of them. She cared only about her results: everything else – including Madame – was a matter of complete indifference to her. She was, of course, assiduous in her efforts to get good marks, but she pursued this goal with none of the slavish idolatry some of the others displayed.

  Madame’s picking on her now seemed to me – especially since for once, and despite the appeal for volunteers, Agnes had not raised her hand – to be an act of warning from an angry goddess whom someone had neglected to propitiate. She was demanding a sacrifice. I can see, she seemed to be saying, that you don’t worship me, and I am not pleased. But don’t imagine you can get away without offering me homage. The fact that I usually ignore your raised hand does not mean that you may cease to raise it. It is your duty to raise it, since you deny me love.

  The diligent Agnes Wanko rose, picked up her notebook and read out, with excessive care over her accent, the title of her essay: ‘De Copernic à Gagarin.’

  Titters and stifled guffaws came from somewhere in the back of the classroom. Madame glared repressively at those dark, forgotten regions and said politely, ‘Bon, alors, on t’écoute.’

  Agnes Wanko’s essay had as its epigraph Per aspera ad astra, and consisted of selected examples of man’s progress in his struggle to free himself from the earth’s restraints and soar ever higher into the celestial regions. It began with Copernicus, went on to the Montgolfier brothers and their balloon flight, and proceeded, by way of Lomonosov and his many discoveries (most prominently the helicopter in which he was alleged to have flown over the mountains of the Caucasus with a certain Georgian, who went on to live for another hundred years and tell the tale), to the final and longest part, namely the countless extraordinary achievements of Soviet aviation, the greatest of them being, of course, Yuri Gagarin’s triumphant space flight.

  Listening to this, one could be in no doubt as to who had suggested the essay and provided the material for it: Wing-Commander Wanko’s little talks left an indelible mark on the memory. The work now being read out was characterised by the same way of thinking, the same arrangement and the same emphasis. First came the ritual bow in the direction of Polish scientific achievement (the patriotic touch); next, given the language in which the essay was written, a polite gesture of acknowledgment towards the French (the international touch); these tributes made, the balance was immediately restored with an impressive example from the inexhaustible treasury of Great Russian Science (the political touch); finally, there was a paean of praise for the technical and scientific achievements of our Brother the Soviet Union, Motherland of the Proletariat and Land of Progress (the faithful ally touch). The choice of material, its use and its arrangement were all exemplary.

  However, before Agnes had waded through to the end, an incident occurred that disturbed her grave and reverential recital. Its instigator and protagonist was none other than the infernal Roz Goltz, that irrepressible enfant terrible who let nothing and no one stand in his way. At the very beginning of her essay, in the part about Copernicus, Agnes was quoting the following popular couplet about our greatest scientist:

  He moved the Earth, he stopped the Sun,

  Of Polish soil he was the son.

  (which in her translation, although it lacked both rhyme and rh
ythm, sounded even more pompous:

  Il a arrêté le Soleil, il a remué la Terre.

  Il tirait son origine de la nation polonaise.)

  when Roz Goltz suddenly burst out, in Polish, ‘Polonaise? What does she mean, polonaise?! He was a German, not a Pole! And he wrote in Latin.’

  ‘Calme-toi!’ Madame intervened, but Roz paid no attention.

  ‘His mother’s maiden name was Watzenrode – that’s not a Polish name. And he studied in Italy – in Bologna, Ferrara and Padua.’

  ‘So what?’ retorted one of the romantics, traditional enemies of the insufferably objective Roz. ‘He was born in Torun, and he worked and died in Frombork.’

  ‘Those were crusader settlements,’ Roz interrupted immediately, ‘built by the Germans. You can still tell, even today.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about Polish history!’ shouted the ‘romantics’.

  ‘Silence, et tout de suite!’ commanded Madame, stepping in firmly between the opposing sides. ‘What’s the matter with you? You can discuss it later, at the end of the essay. And in French, not in Polish!’

  ‘Je préfère en polonais,’ Roz replied, undaunted. Whenever he let himself be drawn into a skirmish of this kind, he would get excited, lose his temper, and dig his heels in. ‘Of Polish soil he was the son!’ he jeered, mimicking Agnes Wanko’s pompous tone. ‘What’s that supposed to mean, anyway? That if he hadn’t been Polish he wouldn’t have been what he was, or what? Or that his scientific genius is a source of rightful pride for the whole nation? Either way it’s an incredibly stupid statement. You have to be out of your mind to think that belonging to a particular nation can be the cause of an astronomical discovery. And all this pride just because a countryman of yours did something interesting and became famous for it is an admission that you yourself are a worthless moron, and with an inferiority complex to boot. One’s just as bad as the other. If Poland had produced thousands of scientists like Copernicus instead of just poor old him, and other countries just one or none at all, then it would be different. But even then all I’d say is that statistically there were more great discoverers born in Poland than elsewhere.’