Madame

by Antoni Libera

  Yet the compromise turned out to be beneficial, for the Custine novella speeded up the appearance of my first book. (This in itself, of course, was instructive: an excellent lesson in the do-it-yourself method of degradation.) As I neared the end of my fourth year at university I had a volume of stories to my credit. It bore the old-fashioned title Romantic Journeys.

  And that was when the Flausch affair erupted.

  Dr Ignatius Flausch was head of the departmental section that dealt with methods of language teaching. Academically the section was poor and the people who taught the subject mediocre, but for reasons of politics or ideology it was considered important. In a socialist state (‘by definition in every way superior to bourgeois states’), university departments of Romance languages (or any other ‘Western’ languages, for that matter) existed principally in order to train ‘language personnel’, not to produce scholars in literature and the humanities. The latter were considered marginal: after all, what use were they? What were they for? What we needed were people with a knowledge of foreign languages who could be useful in the diplomatic service and in foreign trade, or who could give courses and lectures and teach in schools.

  For this reason Dr Flausch, along with his subordinates, however incompetent he was at the task assigned to him (the teaching section had the lowest reputation), was able to throw his weight around the department and interfere in everything.

  He was no longer a young man (Freddy called him a ‘prewar mediocrity’), and his personality was reminiscent of the Eunuch, the Tapeworm and the Viper. In other words, he was irritable and neurotic, suffered from an inferiority complex and at every turn demanded tributes and expressions of respect for his high position.

  To his chagrin, his lectures, excruciatingly boring and a complete waste of time, were not obligatory but merely ‘recommended’. In spite of this, everyone meekly went to them, for word had gone round that Flausch mercilessly revenged himself on absentees by withholding credit for the course. At the beginning I, too, succumbed to the mass psychosis and took my seat in the lecture room. After a while, however, my capacity for boredom and boundless idiocy had been surpassed, and I could endure no more. Trusting to the letter of the law (which clearly said: ‘not obligatory’) and to my own strong position (I had a high average in the main subjects), and believing, furthermore, that all I needed to do to pass the orals was read the good doctor’s magnum opus (a thin booklet entitled A Short Course in Methods of Teaching French), I stopped attending.

  At the orals I stood before the severe visage of the Great Methodist for the first time. I was fairly confident. I had familiarised myself with his ‘fundamental work’, a mishmash of the obvious and the ridiculous; I could have reeled off whole passages by heart, it was so simple-minded. And I had already passed (with flying colours) the final exams in all the other subjects, which strengthened my position. In addition, I was in the midst of my first literary triumphs, which I would have thought indicated well enough my interests and ambitions for the future.

  I was wrong. The local lore proved true. The price of failing to bestow upon the good doctor the respectful attentions he considered his due was indeed as high as all the tales claimed.

  He questioned me at length, intensely, maliciously, on subjects that were not covered in the syllabus. At the end he pronounced ceremoniously that I was unfortunately not yet ready to teach a foreign-language course, certainly not in a school. I assured him, half-joking, that I was not shattered by the news, for I entertained no plans of doing so. This innocent reply clearly provoked him. He smiled acidly and said with insincere concern, ‘You never know’: I might be convinced now that I could become God Almighty and conquer the world, but I might end up as an ordinary schoolteacher. And it was he, Dr Flausch, who bore the responsibility for how well I fulfilled this honourable but difficult role. It was hereby his duty to declare that I would fulfil it exceedingly ill.

  This was too much. The soul of the artist in me rebelled. Here I was, the darling of the department, fresh from my literary début – the affront to my pride was too great. I rose, said I would survive the blow somehow, and wished him luck with students more adept than I.

  Of course a monstrous row erupted. Flausch demanded a disciplinary hearing and refused even to consider the possibility of my being allowed to retake the exam. I was locked in a head-on conflict – just like the affair with the Viper years ago.

  My God, I thought; will my schooldays never come to an end?!

  Frankly I’m not sure how it would have ended had it not been for Freddy, who at some point leapt into the fray and helped me disentangle myself. He summoned me for a talk and advised me in the strongest terms to go through the obligatory period of teaching practice, even though I hadn’t been given credit for the pedagogy course, and try to make a good impression on the senior teachers. He would see to the rest: have a ‘suitable talk’ with Dolowy – Dr Dolowy, our honourable chairman – and persuade him to let me have someone other than Dr Flausch as my examiner in this wretched subject, ‘given the regrettable misunderstandings that have accidentally arisen’.

  This plan was my only salvation. But what did it mean in practice? It meant that in September, instead of enjoying a peaceful holiday, as in recent years, I’d have to go back to school; and that there was hard work ahead. I’d have to put my nose to the grindstone if I wanted a favourable evaluation of my pedagogical skills. I rebelled at these prospects. The thought of poring over textbooks, drawing up lesson plans and learning how to teach grammar and pronunciation was nightmarish.

  I started to look for ways of avoiding this reef. How could I chalk up credit for classroom experience and get good marks without too much effort – just for my pretty face, as it were? Then it struck me: my old school! Do it there. It was the obvious way. Walk in with a smile and play the prodigal son returning to the bosom of his old family; a clever performance would win me the favour and sympathy of my old teachers. As for the language teachers (doubtless complete mediocrities), I could dazzle them with my accent, my erudition and my memory. I could twist them all around my little finger and walk off with an A.

  I submitted the necessary forms, and at the beginning of September again found myself in the place where almost half my life had been spent, and where I had last set foot five years ago: back at school, within the old, familiar walls.

  * * *

  As I set off on the first day I felt a little like Jozio, the hero of Gombrowicz’s novel Ferdydurke, abducted at a mature age by Professor Pimko and forcibly installed in the temple of Immaturity. For it did feel like something out of a bad dream. Here I was, a twenty-three-year-old Spirit, soon to be Master of Arts, an Artist, Author of a Published Book hailed by the critics as a ‘brilliant début’ – back at school! In principle as a trainee teacher but still, in a way, as a pupil. At any rate a degraded creature, thrown back into a world of immaturity and childishness, embodied both by the ‘ancients’ (the teachers) and by the ‘young’ (the pupils).

  ‘I’ll be squashed,’ I thought, in Jozio’s words at the beginning of the book, ‘humiliated and crumpled and crushed.’ Reduced once more to a blushing, shamefaced child.

  In the event, things turned out incomparably better than I’d expected. My old teachers received me with ordinary, respectful politeness, even some affection; there were no embarrassing remarks or patronising jokes. The new ones, particularly the French teachers, who were supposed to be doing the evaluating, seemed quite sensible, and appeared to treat my training period purely as a formality. And the pupils, especially the older ones, weren’t all that trying: not insubordinate, insolent or difficult. If anything, they were overly bland: polite and submissive, without verve, initiative or humour. There was no fire there, no imagination, no spark. Finally, the classroom training itself was far less taxing than I had feared. It consisted mostly in my being present at lessons and taking notes on how they were run and the material they covered. I only had to teach four lessons myself – at four differe
nt levels – and that wasn’t until the very end, after a month of passive observation.

  Boredom, rather than any threat or insult to my new maturity and dignity as an ‘artist’, was my main complaint. And this was probably why, sitting there in the last row, as I had sat five years before, listening to the lessons, I found myself going back in time. Old thoughts, old dreams came floating back; old passions were rekindled. And at some point, insidiously, without my being aware that it was happening, Madame revived in me: her mystery and her magic, her beauty and her power, and that obscure longing she inspired.

  The memory of her pulled me deeper and deeper; it drew me like a drug. After school I would wander listlessly about Zeromski Park in the golden autumn sunlight, and my heart was again painfully alive. Where was she? What was she doing? What would it be like if we met now? If she were still teaching?

  I would come home gloomy and restless, take out the postcard with the view of Mont Blanc, stand it up on my desk and in front of it, as before an altar, place my three relics: the copy of Fin de partie, the ‘Hommage à Mozart’ fountain pen, and a folded handkerchief with a label that said ‘Made in France’. The scent of Chanel had long evaporated; only a few blackened spots of blood remained.

  I don’t even have a photograph of her, I thought sentimentally. Who was she? Who is she? I’ll never know. Can one ever know such a thing about someone?

  Then I had an inspiration. It was a sort of twist on Schopenhauer’s idea that by treating oneself as a thing-in-itself one can come to know from the inside what is unknowable objectively, from the outside.

  I can possess her, I thought; I can penetrate her mind. I can become her, and by becoming her know her at last. It would be a sort of embodiment.

  Again, as so many times in the past, I set about preparing for lessons. My preparations, however, had little to do with accepted methods of teaching. I was writing a script and learning a role.

  At last the time came for me to make my entrance on the stage of the classroom. I assumed my role; and I acted as I had never acted before. It was a brilliant performance. The passive, silent observer, the unremarkable student, was suddenly transformed into a star – a magician. A stream of pearly, perfect French issued from my lips; Polish was forbidden; the lesson whizzed along at a dizzying pace. Everything was presto. Conversation period, exercises, tests – not a moment’s pause, not a moment’s silence. If someone didn’t know the answer, or made a mistake, or started stammering, I would cut him off and finish for him. I was like conductor and orchestra rolled into one, or like a virtuoso soloist who plays on regardless when the rest of the ensemble can’t keep up or has lost the place. I deluged them with anecdotes, quoted passages of verse and plays (including Racine, naturally) from memory, dazzled them with my acting, my erudition, my wit. When they floundered or relapsed into dumb unresponsiveness, I knew how to prick them with just the right amount of biting irony. I held them spellbound. I was Prospero: a vision from another world – a ‘world apart’.

  And there was a message in the part I had created. I was saying to them, Look – you see? This is what a lesson should be; this is what teaching, and learning, can be like. This is what life can be like! Your life: you, too, can soar; you, too, can be like this! Of course, not all of you. Not everyone succeeds. But you have to try; you have to persist, make the effort to seek happiness. How? Very simply: by learning foreign languages; by mastering the art of speech, the art of using words. If you know how to speak – to speak intelligently, fluently and well – your poor, grey world will be illuminated. At least, it will become a little more colourful. Because it’s from language that everything flows; it’s on language that everything depends. Because, as the Scriptures say, in the beginning was the Word.

  Thirty-odd pairs of eyes gazed at me with awe and devotion, as if I were a divinely inspired prophet. And sometimes, here and there, there was longing in their gaze – an obscure, blissfully painful longing. And sadness, because I would soon leave, and their holiday would come to an end. I was like a rarely seen comet that had passed the earth and was receding into the depths of the universe, perhaps never to be seen again.

  I had succeeded: I had become Madame. I knew what it was like to be her; I felt her – through myself. I understood who she was and how, perhaps, she had seen me.

  In the staff room, surrounded by my old, embittered teachers (the Tapeworm and the Viper among them), the French teachers were full of praise. ‘Such talent! It’s a gift! You’re a born pedagogue! You should be teaching! Join us!’

  I would smile sadly, as if to say, I’d like to, but I’m afraid I can’t; I have other plans, different ambitions, which call me. My place is elsewhere.

  Then they would say, ‘Oh, it’s such a pity. Really, it is. You might be missing your true vocation.’

  But the most extraordinary scene, at once funny and touching, took place on my last day – when, having finished my last lesson (with a final-year class) and duly received, from one of the French teachers, an enthusiastic evaluation of my performance, I was on my way out, bidding farewell to the school for the last time.

  Those were the Days!

  At the gate a member of my ‘audience’ was waiting for me – a boy in his final year, from the class I had just finished teaching. He was a thin, frail-looking boy with a pleasant face and dark, sad eyes. I’d been aware of him from my first class. He stood out not just because of his looks and his proficiency in French, but also because of his behaviour: he was clearly studying me with great attention and constantly tried to catch my eye. His answers, and especially his fluency in reading aloud, earned him an A – the only A that I awarded. So I smiled inwardly when I saw him approach, thinking he simply wanted to thank me and flatter me a little, as pupils sometimes will.

  I was wrong; that wasn’t what he wanted at all.

  ‘Are you . . .?’ he began hesitantly, pronouncing my name.

  Somewhat surprised, I admitted my identity.

  ‘Could we talk?’ he asked, looking serious.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied.

  ‘No, not here; not in school,’ he said, grimacing with distaste. ‘This is no place to talk.’

  ‘Well, where, then? What do you suggest?’ I shrugged.

  ‘How about a walk? In the park.’

  ‘Zeromski Park?’ I asked, smiling again, but openly this time.

  ‘It’s quiet there. It’s a pleasant place to talk. We could sit on a bench.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  We left the building. For a while we walked along in silence. Finally he spoke. ‘I’ve read it,’ he said.

  So that’s what this is about, I thought, with some irony. Literature. Poetry, perhaps. He wants to be a writer. Maybe he’s already written something and wants my opinion.

  But here again I was wrong.

  ‘I’ve read it,’ he repeated, more loudly this time. ‘Your book. I liked it. Particularly those Two Scenes from the Life of Schopenhauer. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s something else.’ He looked at the ground as he walked, his head bent.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ He was beginning to intrigue me.

  ‘You went to this school, didn’t you?’ He gave me an oblique glance.

  I nodded. ‘Yes, I did. Did they tell you that?’

  He smiled enigmatically. ‘The Modern Jazz Quartet, is that right?’ he asked, and the mysterious expression on his face dissolved into a dreamy look.

  ‘What do you mean, is that right?’ I asked, feigning incomprehension.

  ‘Well, there was a group called that, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Yes, that’s true. What about it?’

  ‘Didn’t you . . . play the piano . . . and sing . . . like Ray Charles?’

  I couldn’t believe it. It had actually happened! A legend had been born: a classic example of the school myth. I had finally done it – I had become the hero of a myth!

  And the thin, sad boy went on, a fever shining in h
is eyes: ‘You had a jazz club down in the workshop – the woodworking room . . . you used to play there in the evenings, wreathed in clouds of cigarette smoke . . . and a few times a year you had jam sessions . . . they say you even had university students who came down there . . . Isn’t that how it was? Please tell me!’

  I looked at him with friendly condescension. ‘What a dreamer you are! That’s how it was supposed to be, yes; but it’s not at all how it was. There was no club, and there weren’t any jam sessions; we rehearsed in the gym, after school, in a nauseating fug of sweat and the stench of unwashed feet. There were clouds of cigarette smoke, that’s true, but alas, only in the lavatories. We did play Ray Charles’s “Hit the Road Jack” – once. And we played well. But it was our swan song: the next day the school authorities swooped down and officially dissolved our ensemble, and my irreverent behaviour earned me a D in discipline.’

  He listened to this utterly absorbed, as if I were revealing some fascinating secret, and when I had finished he muttered, half to himself, ‘Yes, yes . . .’

  For some moments we walked in silence again.

  ‘And what about the Shakespeare Theatre?’ he asked suddenly, in a low voice. ‘You’re not going to tell me that didn’t exist either?’

  ‘The Shakespeare Theatre?’ I snorted. ‘What Shakespeare Theatre?’

  ‘The one you directed,’ he explained, unperturbed. ‘You got the first prize for your production of As You Like It – you’re surely not going to deny that! There’s a framed certificate hanging on the wall of the auditorium to prove it.’

  ‘It doesn’t say that it’s for As You Like It.’

  ‘Oh, all right then, it says that it’s for All the World’s a Stage, if you prefer. That’s a line from As You Like It. All right? Do you admit that, at least?’