Madame

by Antoni Libera

  But I heard about her from time to time: she had been given permission to put through the reforms; she had received a visit from a delegation from France; she had embarked on negotiations with school authorities about replacing the teachers with French-speaking staff. Other, lesser titbits, to me much more important, also reached my ears. One of them in particular meant a great deal to me. The kindly Old Livy disclosed one day, in confidence, that if I was being allowed to graduate at all it was owing principally, if not exclusively, to the intervention of ‘our dear headmistress’, who had preferred to accept the resignation of the Viper rather than bow to the latter’s demands concerning my fate. Apparently there had been a real storm at the board meeting at which my case had come up. When ‘our principal’ cut short the discussion and imposed her decision, overruling the Viper, the latter got up and left the room, slamming the door behind her. Old Livy was quite relieved – not just for my sake but for his own as well, for he couldn’t bear the woman.

  It wasn’t until the final exams that I saw Madame again.

  Wearing a dark-blue blazer, a pleated green tartan skirt and low-heeled black shoes, she strolled slowly among the rows of desks where we were busy with our papers. From time to time, as the exam papers blackened with writing, she would stop and glance at someone’s work; occasionally she gave what seemed like a hint or even pointed out a mistake. But she never stopped at my desk, didn’t even come near it. I got the impression she was avoiding that whole row.

  She looked blooming: tanned and youthful. She had probably gone to the mountains somewhere for spring break . . . with the director, perhaps? My heart constricted again and I couldn’t concentrate. I took hold of myself. You’ve got to stop this, I thought. There’s no point in it. You’ll end up with a blank sheet and you’ll fail.

  I wrote my paper and passed. I even graduated with honours.

  But that isn’t important. What matters is what happened at the prom – on Midsummer’s Eve, the shortest night of the year.

  I went to it reluctantly and with no expectation of enjoying myself. Loud music and feverish dancing, accompanied by surreptitious sips of vodka or cheap wine, were not among my favourite forms of amusement. At best such events simply bored me; at worst I found them a trial. This evening announced itself as a bleaker prospect than usual, since relations with my classmates, at any rate those I had considered my friends, remained cool, and nothing augured their return to normal in the near future. I suspected I would spend the evening alone, not knowing what to do with myself, feeling foolish and out of place and rejected. Nevertheless I went – from inertia (because it was ‘the done thing’, because ‘everyone would be there’) but also, in some measure, from bloodymindedness. I had a masochistic urge to prove to myself that I was indeed as isolated and estranged as I thought, incapable of normal relations with people and doomed to solitude for the remainder of my days.

  As for Madame, I avoided thinking about her. I told myself it was over and done with, and tried not to wonder whether or not she would be there. At least, my decision to go had nothing to do with her.

  The thing was supposed to start quite late, at nine in the evening, and go on until dawn. The proceedings included a formal supper, with ‘licit’ alcohol (a glass of champagne and one of white wine), followed by a dance in the big auditorium, with a hired band (vocal and instrumental) called The Howling Panthers and liberal quantities of ‘illicit’ alcohol (vodka and ‘brand-X’ wine, smuggled in beforehand and stashed away in the cloakroom and lavatories).

  My predictions were soon confirmed. I was, and felt, left out. I wasn’t deliberately cold-shouldered: no one turned his back or went out of his way to avoid me, but most people were in couples or well-defined groups, and preoccupied with their own enjoyment – dancing, drinking and having an all-out, uninhibited ‘good time’. No one was in the mood for conversation or even for joking and clowning around. My fate was shared only by the ugly, boring girls and by that gloomy eccentric and know-all, the mathematical genius Roz Goltz.

  I wandered aimlessly around the rooms and corridors where the party throbbed, playing – for my own benefit as much as anyone else’s – the serious artist who ‘suffered for millions’ and was above the silly amusements of the common folk. All I lacked was a romantic costume to go with the part: a black coat or, better still, a black cape that I could fling over my shoulder in the style of Chateaubriand. But it would have made little difference, for almost no one paid me any attention, and those who did only gave me mocking or pitying looks that seemed to say, Won’t drink, won’t smoke, won’t dance and hasn’t got a girl. Pathetic!

  I started to think about leaving. And then I noticed Madame. She was sitting at a long table in the teachers’ room (the folding doors of which stood open, pulled all the way back), surrounded on both sides by members of the school board and the parents’ committee. The table, covered with a starched white cloth, was set for coffee and dessert, and also held a number of shiny silver jug-shaped Thermoses and bottles of vermouth. Madame had on a tight cream-coloured dress, low-cut and sleeveless; around her neck was a string of small pearls. She sat in the centre and seemed to be presiding; when I noticed her she was just in the act of making a toast to the future of the school and . . . a good summer holiday.

  I watched this scene from behind a bend in the corridor, unseen by the revellers at the table. She’s drinking to her departure! I thought. This is her farewell toast, although they don’t know it. This is the last supper!

  I elaborated this thought into an internal monologue in the appropriate style. Farewell, then, divine and cruel creature; why did I ever set eyes on you! Too radiant and beautiful not to kindle fire, too distant and proud to quench it. Why did you have to enter my life! If you hadn’t, if I had never beheld you, my fate would have been kinder: I’d surely be dancing with one of my peers, perhaps even with Lucy Rosenberg herself, at any rate with a girl of my own age, someone willing and eager, panting and red-cheeked and smelling of young sweat, and at the end of the dance I would no doubt manage to steal a juicy kiss. As it is, here I am, alone in the dark, suffering, a shadow of my former self, isolated, estranged . . . defeated. You’ve won. But what is that to you? Farewell, Ice Queen! Adieu, La belle Victoire!

  I moved off slowly down the deserted corridor and returned to the auditorium, to haunt the revels there with my air of gloomy estrangement. In one corner, as far away as possible from The Howling Panthers, sat Roz Goltz, alone, hunched over a book. Feeling a sudden camaraderie, I sat down next to him. ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘Islands of Physics,’ he replied, raising his head. ‘Quite educational,’ he added, in that strange way of his.

  ‘What is it? It doesn’t look like science.’

  ‘It’s not. It’s a collection of stories.’

  ‘Stories?’ I looked more closely at the book. ‘You, reading stories?’

  ‘What’s so amazing about that? If they’re true . . . I don’t limit myself to fiction. Especially not that Polish rubbish they made us read here.’

  ‘So what are these true stories about?’ I asked, nodding at the book.

  ‘Here, take it, see for yourself,’ he said, getting up. ‘I’m going to get something to drink.’

  It was a newly published book by two Polish authors: a collection of stories based on the lives of the great physicists of the past hundred years, interwoven with accounts of their discoveries. The first of them, called Miss Krüger of Hamburg, was about Einstein, and presented his theory of relativity and the concept of space-time against the background of his decision to leave Nazi Germany.

  It was well done. Abstract ideas about the constitution of the universe, its first laws and founding principles, were deftly embedded in a melancholy atmosphere of nostalgia and regret: sadness at leaving and parting, the anxiety of waiting for a piece of news on which much depended, bitterness and disappointment when at last it came and turned out to be bad. The cosmos against a background of human emotion: entropy, t
he flight of the stars; and here, on earth, another kind of flight – from a terrible, destructive madness.

  It was engaging, beautiful and sad; before I knew it, I had reached the end. I went on to the next.

  Suddenly the music died down and the deep voice of Carl Broda came over the screechy microphone. ‘Friends,’ he boomed, ‘midnight has just struck: the crowning moment – the summit – of the evening has arrived! This will be our last exam, our final test. Our teachers, stern mentors that they are, want to call us out and test us for the last time. But not to worry, no need to be nervous. This time they want to call us onto the dance-floor – to dance! Come on, everyone! Music!’

  ‘As long as it’s something slow!’ shouted the white-haired Livy.

  There was laughter.

  ‘Of course it’ll be slow!’ Carl Broda yelled back. ‘The Beatles – “Yesterday”!’

  There was a roar of approval and wild whoops of joy, and The Howling Panthers began strumming their guitars.

  ‘My God, what a zoo!’ muttered Roz beside me. I’d been so absorbed in the book I hadn’t noticed his return.

  ‘True,’ I agreed absently, and went back to Islands of Physics.

  ‘Look out: she’s coming your way,’ said Roz, in a strangely quiet voice.

  I looked up and froze. Yes, it was she – Madame. My head spun. It’s not possible, I thought; such things don’t happen in this world. But before I could embark on a discussion with the spirit of Thomas Mann, whose voice had once again sounded somewhere within me, there she was, standing before me.

  ‘What a pair of turtle-doves!’ she said, her eyes swivelling from me to Roz with a look of playful mockery. ‘All this one ever does is read!’ she went on, nodding at me. ‘But you won’t get away with it so easily! I’m taking away your friend,’ she announced to Roz, and then, seeing I hadn’t moved, put on a stern face and said imperiously, ‘Well, what are you waiting for? Will you refuse me this dance?’

  Half-conscious, moving in a daze, I rose and gave her my left hand (as Hippolytus had given his to Aricia). She put her cool right hand into mine, and her left on my right shoulder (which sloped slightly). Then I reached out with my right arm and, my heart pounding like a hammer, touched her waist.

  ‘Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away,’ the sweet treble of The Howling Panthers’ lead vocalist rang out à la Paul McCartney.

  We moved off. Our first steps weren’t a brilliant start. I was still dazed, and didn’t know where to look. Her face, her eyes and lips, were no more than ten centimetres in front of me; I was intoxicated by her scent (not Chanel No. 5 this time, but something equally good), and as if that were not enough, with the fingers of my right hand I could distinctly feel, under the thin fabric of her dress, the strap and fastening of her bra. A black-and-white scene from A Man and a Woman flashed through my mind: the scene of their first, apparently innocent touch: the conversation in the restaurant, the back of Anne’s chair and Jean-Louis’s hand coming to rest there and accidentally brushing against her.

  What kitsch! cried a voice inside me. You’re drowning in kitsch!

  ‘Pull yourself together!’ she whispered through her teeth, ‘and start leading! Everyone’s looking at us. Do you want to make a fool of yourself? And of me as well?’

  I grasped her more firmly, but my feet still stumbled.

  ‘Well, well, this is a fine thing!’ she went on, mocking. ‘My favourite, best pupil, the one who wrote those essays for me – he can write essays like that, but he can’t dance! And not just essays: he played the piano, he recited verse – he even performed on stage! He wasn’t timid then.’

  ‘Please, don’t joke about it.’

  ‘Joke? I’m not joking! I’m merely surprised. That my pupil, mon élève, my obedient subject’ – she was enjoying playing the queen – ‘should, deep in the dark night’ – here I froze in terror, fearing that she knew about my January act of Acteon-like audacity – ‘of the school year, beguile me with sweet words and then permit himself the extraordinary impertinence of reaching for my hand – more than my hand, my wrist! Was he not aware of the nature, the meaning of his gesture?’ She looked into my eyes. ‘And that this same pupil, a graduate, top of his year, a mature young man with a high-school diploma, now standing here under these bright lights, given unprecedented encouragement by me, should be so abashed and confused that I almost have to prop him up for fear that he might fall.’

  ‘I’m not in the least abashed or confused,’ I stammered, turning us around, ‘perhaps just a little –’

  ‘A little what?’ she asked, smiling. ‘You’re trembling all over, like a rabbit!’

  For a moment I felt a sort of helpless fury (‘Et tu, Brute?’). But I stifled my indignation and, grasping her more tightly and trying to move with a confident step, retaliated with her own words that day in the office. ‘You exaggerate. Highly,’ I said, and was about to go on when she broke in.

  ‘Well, that’s a bit better. Now if you could try to keep some sort of rhythm, too.’

  ‘We’ll get to that, too, don’t worry.’ I was beginning to relax. ‘I just wanted to say that if I seemed ill at ease at first, it was because I was a bit startled.’

  ‘Startled? Indeed! And what was it, pray, that startled you so much?’

  ‘How can you ask! Your choice of partner, of course. It’s been almost six months since we talked in your office, and in all that time you haven’t said a single word to me . . . you’ve ignored me, behaved as if I wasn’t there . . . and now, all of a sudden, you appear out of the blue and ask me to dance. You must admit it’s somewhat unexpected.’

  ‘I admit no such thing. Stop talking so much!’ Her tone was one of flirtatious reproof. ‘Listen to the music and dance!’

  ‘Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play,’ crooned the lead vocalist of The Howling Panthers.

  ‘Don’t you think this is kitschy?’ I asked, playing the hardened cynic.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, this sweet dancing of ours to these sweet words.’

  ‘You may be surprised to hear it, but I don’t know English. Besides . . . sometimes . . . kitsch can be quite pleasant. You shouldn’t reject it so scornfully. Without kitsch there’d be no great art. Without sin there is no life.’

  ‘And wouldn’t that be better?’

  ‘Oh, do stop it!’ she snapped. ‘Enough of these silly notions of yours! After this dance I’m leaving. My role is finished. My duties are done.’ She seemed to be speaking to herself. ‘Fini, c’est fini . . . c’est la fin. I’m going home. To rest.’

  ‘Oh I believe in yesterday,’ The Howling Panthers’ Paul McCartney finished up soulfully.

  ‘And now’ – Madame, too, was finishing – ‘if this know-all, this beloved pupil of mine would like to be a gentleman and see his teacher, his . . . maîtresse de français, home, then he should wait for her,’ she took her left hand from my right shoulder and glanced at her watch, ‘in a quarter of an hour – at twenty past midnight. Outside the main gate, by the kiosk.’

  I was stunned, and probably paled. At any rate I felt the blood drain from my face. She’s arranging a tryst with me just as she did with the director, I thought, with a flutter of panic. She must have noticed my consternation, for she added skittishly, ‘Unless, of course, he’s enjoying himself too much here and prefers the company of his friend. In that case he should say so. Then I’ll take a taxi.’

  ‘He’ll be there,’ I said.

  ‘That’s very nice of him.’ She gave a little curtsy and began to make her way to the door through the excited throng, which was now clapping and shouting.

  ‘More Beatles! More Beatles! More Beatles!’ chanted the Yankees, as the graduates of the so-called English stream were known.

  The Howling Panthers started to play ‘Ticket to Ride’.

  In a complete daze I stumbled back to my seat beside Roz.

  ‘Our headmistress likes you,’ he observed, with a suggestive smile.


  ‘Don’t exaggerate,’ I replied, but the effort of feigning indifference was enormous. ‘She’s just playing with me.’

  ‘Well, that’s not bad, either,’ he remarked. ‘Everyone was staring, did you realise?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Their eyes were popping out of their heads. Even that little bolshevik creep Kugler. Admittedly, there was plenty to stare at.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You make a nice couple.’ He smirked.

  ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Roz.’ I felt myself going red. ‘You’re incorrigible. I don’t know why you say these absurd things,’ I said firmly and, with an air of weariness at his insinuations, went out into the corridor.

  I stopped by a window and looked down at the dark, box-like shape that was the kiosk outside the gates.

  Why are you so nervous? said the voice in my head. You should be happy. Things like this don’t happen to many people. And there are some (I needn’t tell you who) who claim that they never happen to anyone. Anyway, isn’t this what you wanted? Didn’t you do everything in your power to bring it about? You said to her outright (more than said: you announced it in writing!): ‘Pray command me.’ And it happened: she has commanded. It’s your move. Face up to it.

  I ran down the back stairs and left the building, or rather, I sneaked away, skulking along the walls and slipping out of the grounds through a hole in the fence at the back of the schoolyard. Then, taking a roundabout route, I made my way back to the kiosk by the main gate.

  It was hot, but not oppressively so. There was a briskness in the air and the sky was clear, with a full moon. I looked up at the stars. There they were: Virgo, Aquarius and the North Star, in its place in Ursa Minor. For centuries they’ve kept their ancient places, and yet they’re in flight, I thought, remembering a sentence from Islands of Physics. Then I heard a familiar click of heels.