Madame

by Antoni Libera

  At this the romantics sniggered loudly, Agnes Wanko continued to stand placidly where she had stood, and Madame, for the first time, seemed to be at a loss.

  ‘There’s nothing funny about it!’ said Roz, offended. ‘And since you’re so cheerful, I’ll tell you something else. The reason the Poles are so sensitive about their achievements as a nation is that they’re insecure. If they were as good as they want to appear, their history would be quite different, for one thing; and for another, they wouldn’t go on and on about all their great achievements. Do the Italians go on about Leonardo, or the English about how terribly English Newton is? But in this country you hear that kind of thing all the time. And that’s also because the nationality of most of its greatest figures tends to be a bit hazy – a bit of a sore point. Chopin, for instance: he was half French. So was Gallus Anonimus, the first Polish historian. Even the author of the first dictionary of the Polish language, Samuel Linde, was German. And the only writer of Polish origin who ever made it, and is read all over the world, unfortunately didn’t write in Polish. I mean Conrad, of course. And thank God for that! Because if he’d written in Polish, he would probably have written like that precious little wonder of yours, Zeromski. Well, isn’t that right?’

  ‘You talk as if you weren’t Polish yourself,’ one of the romantics said.

  ‘He’s not,’ muttered another: ‘Goltz isn’t a Polish n—’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Madame cried. ‘I will not listen to this any longer! You’re to stop it right now!’

  But Roz could never let anyone else have the last word. ‘Whether or not I’m Polish remains to be seen. If I ever amount to anything, and especially if I become famous, then I’ll turn out to be more Polish than any of you. I’ll be treated like a king! And you’ll all go around boasting that you went to school with me. Unfortunately that’s how it works. And that’s how it’ll always work here. The best people either aren’t really Polish or get the hell out.’

  Then something extraordinary happened: Madame strode energetically up to Roz and said, in Polish, ‘One more word out of you and you’ll be sent out of this classroom.’ A deathly hush fell. ‘Stand up when I’m talking to you!’

  Roz got to his feet, visibly subdued.

  ‘You’re to come to my office after school, at two o’clock. And now I’m warning you: if I hear one more interruption, if you disrupt my lesson one more time, you’ll regret it. No one ever wins with me. Remember that.’

  She returned to the blackboard, and Roz meekly subsided onto his bench.

  ‘Continue, s’il te plaît,’ she said to the bloodless Agnes Wanko, still standing there patiently, unmoved, notebook in hand. She spoke quite calmly, as if nothing untoward had occurred. And that inhuman creature, like a machine that had been switched back on, resumed her recital.

  The silence in the classroom was absolute. Agnes’s voice seemed to come in waves, breaking the stillness like ripples on the surface of a pond. For the first time, something had shaken the imperturbable Madame. Roz had succeeded in upsetting her balance, even if only for a moment, and putting her on the defensive; he had even made her speak Polish rather than French. And he had profited from it, too: summoned to her office, to see her alone, after school! Who had not dreamed of such a thing! What would they not stoop to for the glimmer of a hope of such punishment! People looked at Roz with mingled envy and admiration. How lucky could you get! The cunning little fox! In summoning him for a ‘talk’, she had acknowledged him as an equal – a partner.

  But there was another, perhaps more important aspect to the incident with Roz. It was Madame’s counter-attack – the way she had quelled the revolt, and that spectacular finale – that had stunned the class into silence. Just when it seemed that she was helpless, that unleashed forces of anarchy had spread beyond her control and would turn on her at any moment, she, like some dominatrix of wild and dangerous beasts, had with one crack of the whip brought them to heel; one word, one gesture from her had been enough to restore order. In that fraction of a second she was like a proud lioness who with one swipe of her paw dashes to the ground the insolent upstart who has dared to oppose her, or has merely drawn too much attention to himself. She shone. Her dark eyes threw out sparks. Her slim, delicate figure glowed with a radiance that dazzled. It was beautiful and terrible. You wanted to die from it. And then that final warning: ‘No one ever wins with me!’ It was like a challenge – a call to arms.

  Artemis. An Amazon. Brunhilde.

  I admit that I, too, was impressed. I was even tempted to pick up the glove she had thrown down. And so I began once more to consider how I might attract her attention and gain her respect, even if it was a respect born of anger. I had long abandoned any idea of reading my essay aloud, and after Roz’s performance it seemed like pure madness. I had come to doubt the soundness of my aim in writing it, and I now perceived another danger, far greater than that of casting off my disguise and exposing my true face. Roz – the infernal Roz! For even if Madame indulged me and let me read, and even if the class was too sleepy or too bored by my interminable prose to recognise it for the ‘love song’ it was, I hadn’t a hope of getting past the clear-headed, all-knowing, ever-vigilant Roz. Insensible to jokes, unappreciative of farce, ever the guardian of common sense and scientific truth, he was sure to kick up a row and set upon me – for the myth about Virgo and Aquarius, for the invented Monos, and for all the other nonsense. As soon as he heard the first of my outrageous fabrications he’d interrupt me in mid-sentence as he had interrupted Agnes, and start jeering. ‘What’s the idiot talking about? It’s a load of utter rubbish! Either he’s really out of his mind or he’s taking the mickey!’ I imagined his mocking voice and a cold wave of terror went through me.

  Just as the final judge at the AST festival had not been S. or the other participants but the ‘rabble’ at the back of the hall, so here, in this classroom, Roz Goltz was my distorting mirror. If I hoped for victory here, if I wanted to conquer the heart of the Iron Lady, my strategy had to take account of his presence. He was the dragon guarding the castle gates; he was the three-headed Cerberus I had to get past.

  Did Madame really not see that Roz was a potential ally? Or perhaps she saw it perfectly well – perhaps that was why his punishment had not been harsher. After all, any other teacher (notably the Tapeworm) would have made him pay much more dearly. He’d have been sent out the door to cool his heels in the corridor and reflect on his two new Fs (one for the subject and one for discipline), and the next day at least one of his parents would have had to appear at school with him. He would have ended up with a D in discipline for the whole term, and on top of that he’d have been treated to a public reprimand at Saturday assembly. For his offence had been of a particularly horrendous kind. The fact that he had disrupted the lesson was trivial. His crime lay not in his actions but in his words – not in the fact that he’d stirred things up but in how he had done it, and why. If he had confined himself to making fun of Agnes, sneering at her incapacity for independent thought and insinuating that her father was her coauthor, it might have been within the bounds of the tolerable. But no – he had dared to poke fun at Polish national pride! He had disparaged Polish achievements and denigrated Polish history; he had tried to deprive Poland of her greatest progeny. Copernicus not a Pole! Heavens, what an outrage! Chopin a Frenchman on his father’s side! Intolerable. And then that last remark of his, about how the best people either weren’t really Polish or left the country!

  And yet, in spite of this, the headmistress had not tailored the punishment to the crime. She had merely made Roz settle down and had told him to come to her office after classes. Why? What did she intend to say to him? What further punishment, what tongue-lashing did she have in store? Or perhaps there wasn’t to be a tongue-lashing at all; perhaps she only wanted to instruct him in the execution of his duties? Warn him against making an unnecessary fuss? Wasn’t that how you treated your most loyal subordinates? You hauled them over the coals in publ
ic, dragged them through the mud, but in private, with just the two of you, you said well done and patted them on the head, with maybe just a small reminder that they shouldn’t overdo it.

  Whatever the truth of the matter, this strange and colourful incident suggested a strategy I hadn’t so far considered: namely, to ally myself with Roz, discreetly, against Agnes Wanko. In this way I would endear myself to him (which might come in handy) while showing Madame I wasn’t afraid of her anger (which would gain me her respect).

  I forced myself to pay attention and listen to the rest of Agnes Wanko’s essay. When she finished, Madame turned to the class and, as if taking her side, remarked wryly that since reactions to the essay had been so vehement, ‘breaking all the accepted rules of debate’, she was sure there were still many who were eager to have their say, and she’d be very interested to discover whether any of us were capable of rational remarks, or if all we could do was shout and jeer and sow anarchy. Furthermore, she was eager to see if anyone could manage to give us the benefit of their wisdom in a foreign language, on even the most elementary level, not in some kind of pidgin. Voilà! She was waiting. She was all ears. Let them show her what they could do.

  This scathing speech, which, of course, assumed that no one would volunteer, gave me my opening. As soon as Madame had finished, and had been received with the predictable eloquent silence, I raised my hand and declared that I did indeed have something to say, and was capable of getting it across in the language of the lesson.

  ‘Ah, notre poète,’ Madame observed with a sarcastic smile. ‘Excellent. By all means, go ahead. What do you have to tell us that’s so interesting? Do give us the benefit of your observations.’

  ‘Why “poète”?’ I asked coldly, assuming an offended air.

  ‘Et qui divaguait, tout récemment, about rhymes?’ she shot back instantly. ‘Who spoke of rhymes and pointed out that I wasn’t hearing them? “Question”, “conversation”, “can’t you hear it?” Well, didn’t you?’

  So the shot had gone home! And now she was throwing it back at me! Excellent! I hadn’t missed! Now if I could just keep it up!

  ‘Ah bon, c’est ça,’ I sighed, as if it were only with the greatest difficulty that I recalled my words and was amazed she should have taken them amiss. Oh, so that’s what you mean! Goodness, is that all? It’s scarcely worth discussing.

  ‘Ce ne sont pas des traits of the poetic soul?’ she asked, still teasing.

  ‘Perhaps they are poetic traits,’ I replied, ‘although I don’t think they’re sufficient for poetry. In any case,’ I added, as a good phrase occurred to me, ‘si je vous ai blessée, pardonnezle-moi, c’était sans intention.’

  ‘Blessée?’ The suggestion that I had hurt her could not be allowed to pass. ‘Tu voulais dire “offensée”.’

  ‘Est-ce qu’une offense n’est pas une blessure? When we offend, do we not also hurt?’

  ‘Mais finis-en avec ces subtilités,’ she said impatiently. ‘Enough of your hairsplitting. Get on with whatever it is you want to say.’

  ‘I’d like to put a question to the writer of the essay.’

  ‘Very well, put it, s’il te plaît, as long as it’s relevant.’ She didn’t let up for a moment.

  ‘Je ferai de mon mieux,’ I replied, coldly polite. I would indeed do my best. I turned to Agnes Wanko. ‘What do you take to be the meaning of the Latin phrase you used as the motto for your essay?’

  ‘D’accord, ça peut aller,’ Madame conceded, and to Agnes she said, ‘Please explain it to him.’

  ‘Par les aspirations . . . par les espérances aux étoiles,’ Agnes recited smoothly, getting up from her seat.

  ‘Bon,’ Madame acknowledged the answer in her usual way and turned back to me. ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘Oui, ça confirme bien,’ I replied, ‘that my suspicions were right.’ And I made as if to sit down.

  ‘Attend!’ She gestured at me to remain where I was. ‘What do you mean? What suspicions?’

  ‘Only that she doesn’t know what it means. Aspera in Latin doesn’t mean “aspirations”, let alone “hopes”. It means . . . it means . . .’ Here I got stuck, for suddenly I couldn’t remember the French for ‘thorn’.

  ‘Mais quoi?’ she asked, with an elaborate courtesy which failed to conceal her amusement and left me uncertain whether she honestly didn’t know what it meant or was, as I’d thought, only pretending.

  ‘Umm . . .’ I couldn’t seem to emerge from the hole in my memory. ‘Alors . . . ce qui nous blesse parfois. Something sharp that hurts.’

  ‘Tu veux dire “offense”, peut-être?’ she suggested helpfully.

  ‘Why all the sarcasm?’ I shot back. ‘Les roses en ont . . . les roses . . . quand elles sont mûres et belles . . .’

  ‘Ah, “les épines”,’ she said, and the corners of her mouth twitched in a mocking smile.

  ‘That’s it! Exactly. I wanted to say “stings”, but I knew that wasn’t quite it. Thorns.’

  ‘Well, what’s your answer, Agnes?’ asked Madame, turning back to the pale Miss Wanko.

  ‘Oh, je ne sais pas encore,’ Agnes replied coolly, paying no attention to me. ‘I’ll have to look it up in the dictionary.’

  ‘Ce n’est pas nécessaire,’ I observed, reminding her of my existence. ‘Even a child knows what aspera means. And anyway,’ I added, still on a wave of inspiration, ‘you can ask Madame, she’ll tell you. Surely you trust her . . .’

  Now, let’s see what you have to say to that, I thought, pleased with myself, and looked straight into Madame’s dark eyes. You can’t possibly wriggle out of this one.

  But she did – although not with the happiest of results. ‘D’accord,’ she said, with a hint of the conditional in her voice, ‘let’s assume you’re right, and aspera means “thorns” and not “aspirations”. What relevance does that have to this essay?’

  This was a rash move: she had exposed herself badly. I rushed to the attack.

  ‘Oh, tout à fait essentielle,’ I replied, indignant. ‘If aspera means thorns, then we’re talking about difficulties – obstacles, setbacks. But is there anything about them in this essay?’ I asked, pausing dramatically. ‘Nothing at all! Not a word! On the contrary: from her examples you’d think it was just one long string of successes.’

  I perceived out of the corner of my eye that Roz was silently applauding me under his desk. Encouraged, I gave him a discreet nod of acknowledgement (without, however, looking in his direction), signifying that his action had been noticed and appreciated, and continued: ‘Quand j’ai entendu cette phrase, I expected at least some mention of the opposition to Copernicus, and then maybe something about a plane crash, or at least about Icarus – who is, after all, the symbol of the dangers that await those who would conquer the skies. You’d think he’d naturally spring to mind. But what am I saying? If she doesn’t know what aspera means, how can I expect her to have heard of Icarus?!’

  This was too strong. Carried away by my own rhetoric, I had overdone it. But the results weren’t bad. Agnes Wanko, purple with rage, shrieked in her squeaky voice, ‘For your information, I know perfectly well who Icarus was! I know more about it than you do! I got first prize in the mythology competition.’

  I arranged my features into an expression of shocked astonishment and said to Madame, ‘Mais elle parle polonais! C’est inadmissible!’

  This was too much. Agnes burst into tears, and Madame snapped, ‘C’est moi qui décide de ce qui est admissible ou non! Please don’t lecture me.’

  ‘That wasn’t my intention,’ I began, backing off, for I saw that I’d gone too far. But it was too late.

  ‘Assez!’ she cut in. ‘Enough! I’ve had quite enough of your little games. And I’m very curious to see what you’ve come up with yourself, since you’re so clever. Let’s see if there’s any substance behind your eloquence. Perhaps we’ll find there’s nothing there?’

  Merde! I thought. (By now even my mental curses came out in French.) What a mess! Now w
hat?

  I glanced at the clock on the wall. Another ten minutes until the bell. Perfect – all was well. As long as I read slowly, I wouldn’t get beyond the fourth or fifth page, which was where the thing really began.

  ‘As you wish, Madame,’ I said politely, and began to read.

  She stopped me almost as soon as I’d begun. ‘Le titre! What is the title of your oeuvre? Even a child,’ she added, in vicious mimicry, ‘knows that you have to start with the title.’

  I was floored. I had no title: I simply hadn’t thought about it. Better not admit it now. There wasn’t much time for reflection. I cast an offhand glance at the page in front of me and announced, as if I were reading it out, ‘L’astrologie: Magie ou Science?’ And then, certain there wouldn’t be time for me to read the thing even halfway through, let alone to the end, I gave way to a sudden temptation and added, after a pause, the intriguing subtitle, ‘Le mystère du 27 janvier’.

  I looked up at Madame. Her face was inscrutable.

  ‘Well, go on! Lis, vas-y, on t’écoute.’ She seated herself sideways at her desk and propped her head on her hands.

  I began again.

  I read clearly and audibly, taking care over my accent and aiming for a cool, neutral tone. I was modest and matter-offact, entirely concentrated on my reading: not once did I raise my eyes from the page to check the reaction of the audience. The only thing that might have spoilt the coolness of my presentation was the occasional furtive glance at my watch, which I had managed at the last minute to twist over to the back of my wrist, but this was so discreet that it couldn’t have been visible: with my notebook open in my hand, the face of the watch was right there in front of me.