‘Not demanding – suggesting. As the natural conclusion.’
‘Do you realise what it would mean if I yielded to your pressure?’
‘I’m not pressuring you, I’m merely making an observation.’ My mother’s rhetoric had its uses.
‘If I agreed to it, then.’
‘It would mean a good sale: three books in one go.’
‘Not at all. On the contrary. It would mean I’d be giving you one book – the German one – for free.’
‘A commendable deed on your part.’
‘Why commendable?’
‘Have you seen what’s inside?’ I lowered my voice. ‘A swastika! Would you want to make a profit on something like that?’ I shuddered with horror and indignation. ‘And that’s not all! Look at this,’ I hissed, opening the book at the flyleaf. ‘Garnisonsbibliothek! A military library! Do you realise what that means?’
He gave me a smile of resignation and shook his head. ‘All right, all right.’ He closed the book and placed it on top of the memoirs. ‘You’ve missed your vocation. You should be in a cabaret.’
‘Actually, I am sometimes,’ I said coyly.
‘Shall I wrap them?’ He was amused.
‘No, thank you, you needn’t bother.’
He pushed the little pile over to me and put the banknotes away in the till.
I put my spoils in my satchel, said goodbye politely and left the bookshop.
Queen’s Gambit
The rest of that day and the next were spent reading. I finished Victory, skimmed through the French version, acquainted myself with Joanna Schopenhauer’s memoirs and learnt to decipher Gothic script. I also started a new notebook. But instead of furnishing it with the usual identifying signs (name, class, subject), I wrote on the cover only the enigmatic title ‘Cahier des citations’ and copied into it various passages and phrases from the books I’d been reading.
The first to go in were three stanzas from the Rhine hymn: the one Constant had quoted, ‘But now, from within / The mountains’ hidden depths . . .’; the one that began, ‘It was the voice of the noblest of rivers . . .’; and the one with the sentence I had seen in the dedication, which began, ‘A mystery is the pure of source . . .’ I carefully underlined the lines ‘C.’ had quoted, and next to them wrote out Constant’s translation (‘For as you were born, so will you remain . . .’), too.
On the following pages (of recycled paper, as a notice on the cover informed me) I copied out extracts from the memoirs, mainly from chapter thirty-nine, which was devoted to the journey back from England. Among them were the following:
Moreover, I had set out, quite unconsciously [this underlining was also mine], in a state in which women ought not to travel unless they are obliged to do so by the most urgent necessity . . .
My fluency in the language and the ease with which I adapted to the local customs and ways made me a welcome guest.
For a long time I was thought to be much older than I was. [I had altered this sentence in what one might call a fairly fundamental way: the author had in fact written that she had been thought younger than she was.]
And I constantly sighed to myself: Ah, quel chien de pays! [This, too, I had altered, although only slightly: she had merely written ‘again’, not ‘constantly’.]
After that came a series of passages from Victoire. These were the most numerous, partly because of the language, since of my three books – collected, after all, with rather singular criteria in mind – this was the only one in French, but mostly because of the content, although my interest in it was not quite the same as Constant’s. For him the main interest lay in the character of Heyst: Heyst was Max, and in Heyst he sought the explanation for Max’s responses, for his impulse to rebel, and later for his mortal struggle with the evil of the world. For me, on the other hand, the most important and, in a way, most familiar character in the book was Alma – or Lena, as Heyst came to call her: the young English musician, beautiful, proud and brave, quite alone, thrown back on her own resources, ensnared by the owners of the band and struggling to escape the yoke of slavery. I felt that her plight was in many ways similar to Madame’s. And then, of course, there was that title: that one word printed on the cover, standing alone, without the feminine article. It read like a name – the name of the book’s protagonist, like Lord Jim or Phaedra. To me it seemed a sign that the whole novel was about a character called Victory.
And indeed, might not sentences such as these – ‘And I am here, with no one to care if I make a hole in the water the next chance I get or not . . . There’s nothing so lonely in the world as a girl who has got to look after herself’ – have issued from Madame’s lips at some stage in her past, in a moment of desperation, perhaps in the course of a conversation with Constant? Or that time she came to him asking for help (for that one special favour), might she not have said, ‘You do something! You are a gentleman. It wasn’t I who spoke to you first, was it? I didn’t begin, did I? It was you who came along and spoke to me . . .’? And might he then not have replied, like Heyst, ‘I am not rich enough to buy you out, even if it were to be done,’ and added, after a moment, ‘It will be all right’?
The book was full of things that could be taken as applying, in one way or another, to Madame’s life. Another passage, near the end of my selection, contained the following words, spoken by Heyst: ‘I only know that he who forms a tie is lost. The germ of corruption has entered into his soul.’
The final chords of my peculiar anthology sounded like a postscript added by the scribe: I heard my own voice coming through them. They were, of course, Heyst’s famous words: ‘. . . can I do anything? What would you wish me to do? Pray command me’ (‘Je suis à vos ordres’).
In the course of this labour – reading, choosing the quotations and weaving them into a net of my own singular design – I was hindered by an uncomfortable awareness that I was sinking to the level of the Ashes worshippers. It made no difference what the book was and whether its heroine was the passionate Helena de With or the musician Lena. The effect, or rather the intention, was the same: to imagine you were experiencing something modelled on the story. Pretending that a character in the book was someone you knew, you seized on phrases that sounded suggestive or ambiguous and then fetishised them and excited yourself by imagining them uttered in a different context. Take, for instance, the following sentence I copied out: ‘But you do it most charmingly – in a perfectly fascinating way’, which in Victory referred to Lena’s charming smile; taken out of context, it could be made to refer to whatever one liked. Wasn’t it exactly the same sort of thing as that exhortation in Ashes which everyone had underlined, ‘Well, take off your clothes!’?
Yes and no. For while the practice may have been similar, the fetishised objects were very different. It was hard to believe that the two books had been written at almost the same time by men of the same generation (the author of Ashes was only seven years younger than Conrad) and nationality. One was fascinating and immensely readable: its plot was intriguing, its prose simple and elegant, its characters convincingly drawn; and it posed the philosophical problem of the human attitude to evil. The other was either tedious and turgid or, in the romantic bits, sentimental and grotesque – mostly all four at once. In short, it was kitsch, and you cringed as you waded through its pomposities and laboured prose.
Could Roz Goltz have been right when he said that if Conrad hadn’t gone to England and changed his language, he would have written like ‘that precious little wonder of ours, Zeromski’?
* * *
On the day of the next French lesson, I came to school equipped with my new ‘aids’: Victoire, my Cahier des citations, and Joanna Schopenhauer’s memoirs. But before deciding to put them to use I checked the register to see whether I had been put down as absent the last time. I hadn’t. Odd. Attendance had certainly been taken, for others who had been absent (from the first period) did have an ‘ab’ in the fourth space next to their names, clearly in Madame’s writ
ing. Then why didn’t I? Had some kind soul covered up for me and somehow managed to explain away my absence? Or had Madame filled in the sheet after the lesson, mechanically, guided only by the entries that were already there? The latter was more likely; if it had been the former, someone would certainly have told me about it. In any event, whatever the reasons, I made my decision.
Before the class began, just before she walked in, I took out my ‘aids’ and put them next to me on the edge of the bench (Victoire on top and the Cahier on the bottom). During the first quarter of an hour (questions and conversation) I sat motionless, without taking my eyes off her, and thought about how all the things I had found out about her accorded with my own impressions – with the person I knew. I was no longer afraid. Perfectly calm and certain of my position, I waited for her first move.
But she made no move. She paid attention to the others and none at all to me. This was not unprecedented behaviour on her part. She had resorted to it several times in the past, and since the confiscation of my notebook it had become almost the rule.
I launched my offensive – Operation Queen’s Gambit. I picked up Victoire, took the Cahier des citations from the bottom of the pile and put it on top, opened the novel on the page with the words ‘Pray command me’, and ostentatiously set about pretending to read. I slid down on the bench, sprawling comfortably, stretched out my legs, crossed at the ankles, and propped up the book on the edge of the desk so that the red title was visible from the teacher’s table at the front of the room.
I’m waiting, I’m all ears, I thought to myself, mentally parodying one of her favourite provocative little sayings. Will you take my offering? This cream-coloured piece is quite unprotected, entirely exposed. Those two pawns over there, on the edge of the bench, can also be taken with impunity. Well? Do you accept? I must remind you that time is on my side. I’ve used up far less than you. The time on your clock has almost run out. You’d better hurry up!
This telepathic bluster provoked no reaction whatsoever, which was perhaps to be expected, but my ostentatious behaviour was equally ineffectual. Madame not only failed to initiate any of the proceedings so dear to the eternally lurking Viper (invasion, confiscation, pillory, record of iniquities committed entered in the register) but did nothing to call me to order. She couldn’t have failed to notice that I was boycotting her lesson; of that I was certain. I had made myself conspicuous enough. Besides, I had occasion to observe, when I periodically glanced up from the book to check her reactions, that she knew perfectly well what I was doing. Yet she said nothing. No hint of remonstrance showed on her face; she appeared determined to ignore me. If you think you can provoke me this way, her eyes seemed to be saying as they wandered in my vicinity, you are deeply mistaken. After all, I don’t care whether you learn this language or not, or what kind of mark you get. If you think you already know it all and have nothing to gain from participating in this class, fine – that’s your choice. It’s no concern of mine. On the contrary, it makes my life easier: one thing less to worry about.
Yes: she might well think that way; it would be just like her. She knew that my French was much better than the others’, indeed that it went far beyond school level; to this she was completely indifferent. When she had first discovered that I spoke more or less fluently and with a good accent, she hadn’t commented on it – hadn’t said, for instance, ‘Mais tu parles bien! Tiens, tiens! Where did you learn to speak like that?’ – but had passed over it in silence. Later, when I began to indulge in conspicuous displays of my fluency, forever interrupting with some remark and flashing my good accent around, she seemed to cool off even more.
But she can’t be entirely indifferent to everything I do, I thought, looking down at my book, it’s just not possible. Here I am, reading a book that has as its title the word that is her name, a word, moreover, which has already been mentioned in a significant context – in the message woven into my essay. Could she have failed to notice? Could it all be still not provocative enough?
In order to exclude this possibility I went a step further. I laid the memoirs on the bench (open at the page where I had underlined Ah, quel chien de pays!); in front of me I placed the Cahier des citations (open to the last of my selected quotations, with the phrase ‘Je suis à vos ordres’); finally, I put the open novel vertically on the right-hand corner of the desk, its cover to the front of the room, so that the title was visible. Thus entrenched, shielded by Victoire and dug in behind the memoirs, I huddled low over the ‘Cahier’ and set about pretending to make notes.
This manoeuvre, too, failed to provoke a reaction from the opposition: she disregarded it as she had disregarded the others. Not only did she not retaliate by shooting, she didn’t even send out a reconnaissance squad to determine the extent of my resources and nature of my weapons. As she passed me on her way to the door at the end of the class she deliberately, ostentatiously looked the other way. The more you try to draw attention to yourself, she seemed to be saying, the less attention I shall pay to you. Tu ne m’intéresses pas!
I refused to admit defeat. Patience, young man, patience! said Freddy’s voice in my head. A siege takes nerve and endurance. We’ll take this citadel yet; if we can’t shoot our way in, we’ll starve the enemy out. I resolved, therefore, to stick with it. From then on, at every French lesson I went through the same routine: I’d spread my three baiting aids around me on the bench and pretend to be absorbed in my work, waiting tensely for the longed-for attack.
For several days nothing happened. She continued to behave as if I weren’t there. I began to lose hope. Still I persevered. And this turned out, quite soon, to be the right tactic after all.
One day at the end of the lesson, when I had been particularly assiduous in my ‘note-taking’, she told the boy on classroom duty to collect everyone’s notebooks, since she wanted, she claimed, ‘to get an idea de quoi ils ont l’air before handing out our final marks at the end of term’. My head spun. It had worked after all! She had taken the bait, hadn’t been able to resist! She wanted to get an idea, did she? How interesting. I meekly handed over my Cahier des citations, after furnishing it with my initials.
During break, and over the next few days, I tried by various methods to discover whether she had ordered a similar inspection in her other classes. No one had ever come across this particular form of ‘pressure’. ‘She took away your notebooks?’ people asked incredulously. ‘To go over them? And it’s going to affect the results for the term? Adieu, then, “suffisant”! Bonjour, “insuffisant”!’
But the bells in my own head were pealing in triumph, not alarm. For the evidence clearly indicated that the inspection had as it sole purpose to settle accounts with me.
Future events neither contradicted my suspicions nor confirmed them. The Cahier des citations was returned to me as it had been collected: by the duty boy. It bore no marks or annotations of any kind – it might not have been examined at all. This conspicuous absence of any indications that it had been scrutinised or even read might of course be construed as significant in itself; it was, after all, a reaction of a sort. But it could be so construed only on the supposition that it was unique, and this was not the case: the absence of comments or marks was general. Everyone’s notebook came back in pristine condition Nor was there any verbal summing-up of the results of the inspection. She just took them and then gave them back, without a word – as if the whole procedure had been merely an exercise in the enforcement of discipline, or a whim whose purpose was best known to herself.
The one clear, unquestionable act of retaliation on her part did not come until later, when I discovered that I was the only person in the whole school, not just in the class, to get an A for the term.
The Knight’s Way, the Courtier’s Way and the Scientific Way
What did it mean?
Was it supposed to show that Madame knew how advanced I was in French and was prepared, despite my far from exemplary behaviour, indeed my frank impertinence, to give credit
where credit was due? Utopian surmise, about as plausible as the heartwarming but trite story of the undisciplined young genius and the patient, devoted teacher. Experience taught a different lesson: that one’s marks depended not just on one’s competence but also, in large measure, on one’s ‘attitude’ – in other words, on good behaviour. You could soar above everyone else and still not get an A; if you were late, or didn’t pay attention, or seemed too cocksure, or failed to be organised enough in your note-taking, the coveted mark was lowered or withdrawn. This case contradicted experience. That had to mean something. But what?
The only answer that came to mind was that it was a trick, a deceitful ploy intended to disarm me. My advancement was nothing but an attempt at a manoeuvre known in the language of politics as ‘kicking someone upstairs’. In other words, she wanted to defang me; she was promoting me to be rid of me. I hope he enjoys it, she must have been thinking, I hope he’s satisfied with his triumph. So long as he stops pestering me. Here’s your A, and now leave me alone! That’s what this meant. You’ve got what you wanted; now for God’s sake go!
How was I to react? And what were my options?
There seemed to be three. The first and simplest was to admit defeat. To say to myself, Well, it didn’t work. Too bad. That’s how it goes. You can’t force these things, and it’s self-defeating to try. They either work or they don’t. If this is her way of showing that she can see through my manoeuvres and refuses to play the game, or, at best, of giving me fair warning that I musn’t count on anything, well, I’ll just have to respect and accept that.
This was the chivalrous way; the way of submission, the way of the gallant medieval knight. The response of Schiller’s knight Toggenburg.
The opposite of submission was refusal. This was the second way: to refuse to submit at any price and, instead, to attack. To launch a resolute, vigorous and undisguised offensive. Perhaps in something like the following style: I throw off all scruples and restraints, I cast away all sense of shame. I walk up to her, fearlessly, unhesitatingly – right after class would be best – and ask her straight out to what I owe the honour of such a high mark. To my charm? My eloquence, perhaps? The Cahier des citations? Or was it, after all, mainly my essay about the stars? I admit I put considerable effort into that confession. But it was worth it. No, I don’t mean my mark; I mean the results, the high standard of work. Since I haven’t heard any criticism from her, I conclude that it was high, which, of course, pleases me greatly. But then, what’s grammar, after all! We have language in order to communicate, to share our thoughts. So I’m wondering what she thought of what I wrote. Does she share my views about astrology? Would she agree that people born under certain signs were meant for each other? And she herself . . . yes, what sign is she? Oh, please, surely she won’t refuse to answer this time? It’s a perfectly innocuous question. Well, all right, if for some reason she’d rather not, I won’t insist. ‘But whatever it is . . . vous êtes . . . ma victoire.’ – ‘Victoire?’ – ‘Mais oui: my victory over myself.’
Madame Page 25
