‘You’ve found it?!’ I cried.
‘Mais qui, mieux que le Rhin,’ she continued in reply, ‘naquit pour être libre? Yes, it is rather good, isn’t it,’ she observed approvingly. ‘Where is there another so happily born to be free? How did you come across it?’
I made a deprecating grimace, intended to imply that I was endowed with remarkable intuition. I also decided the time had come to launch my offensive.
‘In fact,’ I said, adopting a serious expression, ‘it was because of a woman . . . a pianist . . . a rather extraordinary person that Providence sent my way. She taught me music and piano. And she had a rare and enchanting eloquence of expression. I could listen to her forever. (My own way of talking, which I think has struck you and has even, I notice, evoked a rather sardonic smile of long-suffering indulgence, is undoubtedly a remote . . . lame echo of the graceful, fascinating artificiality of her speech.) She adored literature, especially German poetry, and she often read me parts of poems to emphasise something she wanted to convey. And the Rhine hymn had a special place in her golden treasury of verse. She knew it by heart – all of it, in its entirety; she would recite it like a prayer . . .’
The smile spreading across the face of the silver Marianne was now a smile worthy only of the author of the Discourse on Method.
‘It’s partly as a tribute to her,’ I continued, ‘that I want to quote from that poem, but I also believe it has a magical power that will bring me victory.’
I took up the book of essays that lay on the baize in front of Marianne, found the excerpt on the page to which it was open and read it aloud (the version I give here is a translation from the French):
For as you are born, so will you remain;
Whatever the constraints
And the education,
Nothing is stronger
Than the moment of birth,
And the first ray of light that touches the newborn.
I raised my eyes and looked at Marianne with an expression intended to convey mingled wonder and gratitude. She, meanwhile, had seated herself on the right edge of the desk and lit a Gitane.
‘So is that supposed to refer to you,’ she asked, inhaling deeply and expelling the smoke through her nose, ‘or your extraordinary piano teacher?’ The ghost of a smile lingered at the corners of her lips.
‘Both,’ I replied pleasantly, ‘but in different ways.’
‘Well, there you are,’ she said with finality, ‘you’ve got what you came for.’ But although her tone seemed to indicate the discussion was at an end, she made no move to rise. She continued to observe me with a playful, faintly questioning smile. Are you sure that’s really all? it seemed to be asking.
‘Thank you so much,’ I said firmly, as if I, too, wished to wrap things up. ‘I’ll go and copy it out now.’ I turned quickly and crossed over to the reading room.
I sat there somewhat longer than was necessary to copy out eleven lines of text. This was partly because, having discovered that the footnotes contained other excerpts of the poem in French translation, I copied them out as well, but I was also glad of the chance to rest a little after my latest bit of playacting. Moreover, tactically it was a good idea to wait a while before going on with the game, which would shortly enter its last, decisive stage. So it was about half an hour later that I returned to the chessboard.
‘Thank you once again,’ I said quietly, but instead of putting the book down on the desk or anywhere else, I continued to hold it in my outstretched hand.
‘Put it there,’ she said, indicating a little table next to the desk and once again interrupting her labours at the huge Remington typewriter. ‘And it was no trouble, really. That’s what we’re here for, after all.’
‘We?’
‘This institution. The Centre. That’s our job.’
I decided there was no point in delaying. ‘Actually, since you mention it, there’s something else I’d like to ask, if I may.’
‘Go ahead. Ask and ye shall receive.’
‘Well, is it true that the Centre is helping to set up schools with French as the language of instruction?’
She looked surprised. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it. Who told you that?’
Pulling down my visor, I rushed to the attack. ‘I couldn’t really say where I heard it. These things get around. That’s why I’m asking.’ I tried to sound as casual as possible. ‘I even heard that one such school is already in existence in Warsaw. Apparently the headmistress is a Frenchwoman; at least, she’s supposed to be connected with the Centre.’
A glint of amusement twinkled in the eyes of the silver Marianne. She knows her, I thought, it’s obvious! What will she say?
‘Did you happen to hear her name, by any chance?’ she asked, deadpan.
‘Unfortunately not.’ I spread my arms in a gesture of helpless ignorance and remained in that position, waiting for her next move.
‘Well,’ she said presently, ‘I’m afraid I can’t confirm it.’
‘I’m sorry – what, exactly, can’t you confirm?’
‘To tell the truth, none of it. The Centre isn’t setting up these schools, it doesn’t have anything to do with it, and the headmistress in question – if I’m thinking of the same person – certainly isn’t French.’
‘I take it, then, that some bells are ringing, but not in the same church.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it sounds as if there might be a grain of truth in what I’ve been hearing.’
‘I expect the project you’ve been hearing about is the Ministry of Education’s. It’s something they worked out in the context of an agreement between Poland and France about joint educational projects – co-operation, and so forth. But the French side of that is being looked after by the Service Culturel –’
‘The Service Culturel?’ I broke in.
‘The cultural division of the French Embassy.’
So we’ve come as far as that, have we? A wave of heat went through me, and my heart began to thump. ‘And France appointed a school head who isn’t French?’ I affected astonishment. ‘At least, they agreed to the appointment?’
‘Don’t you know where we are?’ she said impatiently.
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’
‘So are you, though,’ she conceded. ‘There were difficulties.’
‘They couldn’t come to an understanding, I suppose.’
‘Despite everything agreed on during the talks, the Ministry of Education wouldn’t hear of a French head. So the French side declared that in that case, if the head was to be Polish, at least they reserved for themselves the right to choose who it would be. The Ministry accepted this but in practice did its best to be obstructive. They found something wrong with every candidate who was proposed.’
‘But they did accept . . . this woman . . . in the end?’
‘Don’t you believe it! Not at all.’
‘How was she appointed?’
‘The French dug in their heels. They decided that their prestige was being undermined, and they made it a condition: either she was appointed or the whole agreement was off and the project would be shelved.’ She paused and added, with a derisive smile, ‘The Poles agreed immediately.’
I remembered what Freddy had told me about ‘exchanges abroad’, the procurement of invitations and ‘trade in human livestock’.
‘There must be something in it for them,’ I said in the tones of an expert.
‘For whom?’
‘For the Ministry of Education.’
‘I doubt it,’ she replied sceptically. ‘It’s more like a kind of tribute they have to pay: like serfs to the landed gentry. These agreements are imposed in the name of international co-operation, and they have to follow up.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me.’
‘Well, what on earth do you think they want? Do you imagine anyone here cares about learning foreign languages? Especially French – that symbol of the culture of landed gentry and “b
ourgeois intelligentsia”, that “relic of a past now consigned to the rubbish-heap of history”? They only want the material profits that can be squeezed out of this kind of deal; that’s why they make concessions on education. Which don’t usually come to much, in any case.’
‘You mean they’re doing it –?’
‘Yes!’ she broke in, ‘they’re doing it for show. Believe me, nothing will come of it.’
‘But something already has, surely.’
‘What?’ She raised her eyebrows and stared at me.
‘Well, this school . . . this headmistress, at least.’
‘That’s a trial thing, an experiment they call it. In a year, or perhaps two or three, they’ll say it was a nonstarter, and that’ll be that.’
‘Yes, but in a year, or two, or three, it probably won’t matter to me. It interests me now – in connection with my plans, with which you are acquainted. I’d like to know if there’s any way I could get in touch with the school in question . . . or rather, with the headmistress . . . since I gather you know her?’
‘How do you gather that?’
‘You asked me whether I knew her name, which clearly implied you were thinking of someone in particular. Is that not a logically sufficient basis for my supposition?’
‘You have a Cartesian mind!’ she smiled, laughing at me.
‘You said it,’ I replied, returning her smile.
‘So what is it, exactly, that you expect me to do? Give you her address?’ (I have that already, thank you.) ‘Her phone number?’ (And that as well; I got that first.) ‘Her number at home, perhaps? Or just at school?’
‘No, no! Let’s not exaggerate!’ I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I wouldn’t dream of pestering someone I don’t know like that – especially besieging them at home!’
‘Well, then?’
‘I was thinking of something else. The Centre is a kind of forum: from what I’ve heard, you have film showings, lectures and literary discussions that draw the cream of Warsaw’s Romance language scholars and a wide circle of local Francophiles as well. I imagine that the head of a French-language school, even if it is only at the trial stage, must be part of all that – of the life of the Centre – a person in such a position couldn’t not be. So if that’s the case, and assuming, of course, that admission to these symposia is open to everyone, I might come to some of them and look for an opportunity to meet him and talk to him there.’
‘Meet whom? Now I’m lost.’
‘The head of this school, of course!’
‘It’s not a he, it’s a she.’
‘A head is a head. “He” in this case is an unmarked term. A function has no sex.’
‘But a person does.’
‘Surely that’s irrelevant?’ I snapped, perhaps too impatiently.
‘Not always, mon ami – not always,’ she replied with a mysterious smile, making a little moue with her lips and gazing at me wide-eyed.
I was unable to prevent a blush from spreading over my face.
‘So you think, do you,’ she continued, having achieved her aim, ‘that you’d like to participate in the symposia at the Centre.’ She picked up a stray paper-clip from the floor and threw it into the magnetic crater of the oval paper-clip dish. ‘There’s nothing to prevent you. Admission is open. Tu es le bienvenu. But I’m very much afraid you’ll be disappointed. You overestimate the Centre; your ideas about our activities are highly exaggerated. It’s true that we screen French films and organise lectures and discussions with French academics, but you don’t know what kind of films or what kind of discussions and what sort of people come to them! I’ll tell you: the films are third-rate, years old; they’re screened in a room on the third floor of the Geography Building; the film quality is dreadful. The lectures are aimed at a narrow group of specialists. The audience consists of a few students – not many – and a few lecturers.
‘Why should this be, you ask? Why does the reality fail to live up to the appearance – the grand-sounding name Centre de Civilisation?’ She shrugged. ‘No funding.’ She raised a finger. ‘And no permission for anything else. Nevertheless,’ she continued, ‘you’re quite right in supposing that there are events that draw le beau monde – the cream of French-speaking, “European” Warsaw society – including the . . . head you’re so eager to meet. But getting yourself admitted to those isn’t so easy. You have to be in with the right crowd or you have to be invited. And sending or giving out invitations is the prerogative of the Service Culturel.
‘Have you any other questions?’ She picked up a Bic (one of the rounded kind) and began to play with it idly, clicking the mechanism repeatedly, in and out, watching the tip extrude and retract.
‘Certainly,’ I replied. ‘And I’m sure you know what they are.’
She stopped her clicking and gave me a keen, penetrating glance. Then she reached for a thin black plastic box with an array of buttons on top. Each button had a letter, or several letters, underneath it. She pressed the first one (marked A), and the smooth part of the cover snapped open and sprang erect to reveal a card with a set of preprinted spaces into which telephone numbers had been written by hand. She picked up the phone and dialled six numbers. After a moment her deep alto burst into a chatter of throaty rs.
C’est elle, de la part du Centre, oui, oui, de la rue Obozna. She’s ringing about the following matter: there’s a young man here with her, gentil et résolu, sophisticated, well read, with decent French, and he’d very much like some direct contact with the living language and Western culture. Can she put him down on the list of permanent guests of the Service Culturel? . . . In principle not really? . . . Limited space? . . . Controls? . . . Still, perhaps an exception could be made? Personally she thinks he deserves it. He’s a young man with a future . . . D’accord, then? . . . Send him round? . . . She’d send him round at once. Merci.
She put down the phone and turned to me.
‘You heard,’ she said. ‘And I trust you understood. You’re to take the 117 bus, which stops in the Aleje Jerozolimskie, right in front of the Party headquarters. It’ll take you across the river into the Saska Kepa district. You get off at Alliance Square, opposite the Sawa Cinema, and from there you walk down Victors’ Street until you come to a narrow little cross street called Zakopianska. You walk down it until you come to number eighteen, which is the French Embassy, and you go in. If anyone stops you and asks what your business is, you’re to give them my name (Zamoyska) and say you have an appointment with Mademoiselle Legris. She’s the person who will see you and put your name on the list; she may even give you an invitation there and then – I know that any day now an exhibition of some much talked-about Picasso drawings is opening. Mademoiselle Legris will certainly want to talk to you, get to know you a bit, so please don’t disappoint me. In any case it’s in your own interests, as I’m sure you realise. Good luck. Au revoir, jeune homme.’
The Discovery of America
And the young man set off . . .
Whenever the swift pace of life relented a little and gave me some respite from my various roles, one of those brief intermissions – between the acts, as it were – when I had no part to play, I used to imagine myself as a character in a narrative, as if everything that happened to me and around me were part of a story told in the third person and in the past tense. Now, as the number 117 bus moved off from the stop in front of the Party headquarters, I instinctively fell back into this pattern.
Since the bus wasn’t crowded, indeed was almost empty, he didn’t go astern to stand in his usual position by the rear door, but instead took a seat by the window, on the starboard side. Outside, beyond the thick safety glass and its layer of old grime, a procession of depressing sights unrolled backwards before his eyes: massive museum buildings – the National Museum and the Polish Arms Museum; cheerless grey tenement blocks along the viaduct; the wide swathe of river, with its murky, sluggish water. On the bridge he realised suddenly that he was travelling east.
&n
bsp; And yet, he thought, amused, I’m going to an island of the West. Like Columbus, only in the opposite direction. I wonder what I’ll discover?
At the Washington Roundabout some people got on: a very old woman and an elderly gentleman with a package. They were followed by two middle-aged men who jumped on at the last minute and, instead of punching their tickets like everyone else and sitting down (there were still plenty of free seats), took up nonchalant poses by the ticket-punching machines, one at the front, the other at the rear, and gazed stonily out of the windows.
Ticket inspectors, he thought. And although he had no reason to be afraid, for a valid monthly pass for all forms and routes of urban transport snuggled safely in his anorak pocket (despite himself he patted the place nervously to make sure it was still there), he tensed and his heartbeat quickened.
What are you so afraid of? he said to himself. You have nothing to worry about. And supposing you did, what would happen that would be so terrible? All right, so you’d have to pay a fine? But you wouldn’t have to pay on the spot; you could ask for a form that lets you pay in two weeks, and then put it off for years – that’s what most people do. What else? The shame. What’s there to be ashamed of? Defrauding the state, since it’s a state-owned company? But what does ‘state-owned’ mean? Isn’t it tantamount to saying it’s yours? And if it’s yours, how can you defraud it? It would be like defrauding yourself. Besides, is the party with which you have entered into a contract (assuming it to be a separate entity and not identical with you), namely the Urban Transport Authority, pure as the driven snow? Does it honour all its obligations? And do we have the same rights regarding it as it has regarding us? How about our right to inspect it, for example? Does it keep to its schedules? What are the conditions of travel it provides – especially in rush hour? Are its drivers polite? Why shouldn’t we be able to exact fines from it when it fails to meet its promises? Fines for its chronic unpunctuality, for instance, and for the constant interruptions in service, or damages for every time our health has suffered as a result of being crushed by the crowd or caught in the doors. But can we? Of course not – it doesn’t pay us a penny, doesn’t even feel guilty. It’s only we who have to pay. Then what’s the problem? Where’s the foul crime, the hideous offence? Inequality before the law relieves us of the obligation to stick to the rules of fair play: isn’t that what the history books and most of our schoolbooks teach us? The struggle against the exploiter is a noble and progressive one. Breaking the laws of bloodsuckers is a virtuous act, not a sin. In a world of violence and oppression it’s permissible to seek justice in any way one can . . .
Madame Page 27
