by Nōnen Títi
“Well, don’t count on me staying next week either.”
The second week back three things happen. The first is that Mr Shriver responds to my mangled message. He walks to my table and without a word puts down a book with a note on it: If you are not going to be here, you may as well spend your mental presence inside a good alternative. The massive book in front of me is titled Shakespeare’s Collected Works.
I generally don’t read plays and I rarely read school-assigned books since every good book gets ruined when you have to nit-pick at all the details. Now that I’m legally allowed to just read and ignore class, I quickly get used to the style and time flies by. Not sure what to do, I return the book to his desk when I leave.
“You can borrow it if you want,” he says.
“Better only in class; it’d be too heavy.” This way I avoid having to grovel without sounding too ungrateful.
The second thing that happens is that thirteen people are sent home on Tuesday because of their defaced uniforms, but I’m not one of them. I spend every day reading my own books and no teacher makes more than the odd remark to which I tell them that they can always kick me out on account of my personality, though that could be considered discrimination.
The third thing is that on Wednesday I’m called to the office to find the school counsellor waiting for me.
“You missed your appointment last Friday,” she says.
“What appointment?”
She explains that I’m to see her once a week on Friday at fifth period as part of the contract I signed.
Shit, I shouldn’t have burned it. “I didn’t read that. What do you want?”
“I’m here to listen, Mariette. You can tell me the things that are bothering you and be assured that they will be kept confidential.”
“What good would that do? The things that are bothering me have to do with the injustice and deceptions used by governments and schools. Keeping it quiet will never solve these problems. They need to be shouted off the rooftops.”
“You’re clearly having difficulties with year ten. Did anything happen to cause that? Are your parents still together?”
“Did Mr Morality set you up to this?” I retort.
She blushes, says, “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” and then writes something down, before continuing in her sugar-sweet voice, “ I’m here for you on a one-to-one basis to help you adjust, Mariette.”
She suddenly wants to make me puke. “Why did you do that?” I ask her.
“Do what?”
“Why did you make that move with your hands? Are you suggesting I undress and is that why you have your hand under your skirt?”
She jumps up, bright red, opens a drawer and reaches in. I hear the click of a button.
“I’m not stupid you know,” I tell her. “And you had better leave me alone or I’ll get my grandfather in here and have him put in a complaint about physical harassment and it will be your word against mine and that of every student you see on a one-to-one basis. You have my word on that.”
I walk out of the office, furious, but also a little pleased that I came up with that idea. It’s illegal for an adult to be alone in a room with a minor – or if not illegal, then at least not advised, so they have their little tape recorders as proof in case a student makes accusations, but they have no video. That’ll be introduced soon, I’m sure, but for now she’ll back off.
This Friday I turn up at the start of PE only to hurt my leg on the way to the changing room. “I think you made me twist it,” I tell the teacher and insist that I wouldn’t have tripped if she hadn’t stuck out her leg. The suggestion is enough. She advises me to go home and have it looked at. No problem! So before the others even leave the milk bar, I’m already back home.
On Monday she asks about my leg and implies that I might have put it on. “Doesn’t being physically forced equal abuse?” I ask her.
“Nobody forced you.”
“The next injury may just be so serious it will need investigating. I’ll have plenty of witnesses to say it wasn’t an accident.”
That Friday, before I even reach the court, Miss PE tells me that I can sit on the side and don’t have to participate. That’s fine, but it doesn’t send me home and I’m not going to any appointment or assembly. “How about I leave now, but you mark me present?”
“I can’t do that, it would be lying. You can keep score,” she says.
Me keeping score starts a small argument between the teams since I haven’t got any interest in either watching the game or knowing its rules.
“You’re not even trying to be civil!” she shouts at me.
“Be careful; your voice might cause me to fall.”
“Okay what’s going on?” Mr Fokker asks; he must have been walking by when she totally lost her dignity.
She gives him an account of the last three weeks.
“Forcing dangerous physical situations can lead to serious injuries and liability,” I tell her.
“You see what I mean?” she whines.
“Mark her present from now on, but she’ll be in my class,” Mr Fokker says, surprising both of us. “From now on instead of being home on Fridays you can have double history, English, history, civics and history again.”
He must be aware of my schedule. I walk to his room with him, not sure of whether or not to thank him. I don’t care how much history I have as long as it’s not PE or assembly. He assigns me a seat in front of his desk. “Three periods should be enough to write me an essay about history in general,” he says, and throws his noteblock onto the table.
Moments later a whole group of year sevens comes in. Okay, now I do mind how much history I have, but since I can’t leave I block out the voices and the looks I can feel and I write him an essay – or rather, a story. It’s about a little lamb that’s born on a big farm, which is run by sheepdogs. As the lamb grows up, it starts asking why the fence has all these plaques with dog faces on it.
“Those are the faces of the forebears who were special and have been important to the farm,” Old Woolly tells him. “If you follow the fence back away from the house, you’ll find all the famous dogs are there. There’s Trixie, who wasn’t a very good sheepdog because she took the entire herd to a waterhole when the drought came and the farmer had a terrible time finding them back. He had her replaced of course, but he still put her face on the fence. Then there was Buster. He was the bravest dog ever. One day he attacked two foxes all by himself. Of course the farm lost ten sheep and his injuries killed him, but his face plate is the biggest on the fence. You see, Little Lamb, if you are good and behave like we do, one day you can help to defend the farm and become a hero too and when you die you’ll be famous forever.”
“What’s that bump in the meadow?” Little Lamb asks.
“That’s the graveyard. All your ancestors are there.”
“Do they have face plaques too?”
“No, they weren’t famous, except Baa Baa Black Sheep, who told the farmer he could lead his own herd and didn’t need dogs to tell him how to be a sheep. He ended up in the pen and after Christmas he disappeared altogether.”
“Mariette, the bell just went. It’s recess.”
“I’m not finished yet.”
“You can finish in period four.”
“Hang on.”
“So why do I need to learn to fight for our farm?” Little Lamb asks.
“Because the other farms raise dumb folk who will invade us if we let them and turn us all into sheep.”
I close my pen and hand the noteblock to Mr Fokker. “Done.”
Kathleen meets me outside and asks, “So did he make you write lines?”
“I wrote a lot of lines, but anything’s better than PE. Besides, I’m beginning to enjoy school.”
“Sure. Now you’ve really lost it.”
“No, I’ve discovered that being controversial on purpose actually requires more brain activity than doodling on paper to pass the time.”
“Until you get in trouble again,” Fred says.
“Yeah, but I’ve decided that it’s better to get in trouble for the right reasons than to follow the mob for the wrong ones. Sorry, Jerome, that’s not an attack on you. I just can’t do it.”
“Do the right reasons include making false accusations against people you don’t like?” he asks.
It takes me a moment to get what he’s on about – the wanted poster. I can feel my face speaking for me. “I didn’t do anything with that.” At the same time I berate myself for apologizing to him. He keeps looking at me. “I’ll delete it.” Damn. Who is he anyway to lecture me on right and wrong?
In English I finish with the Shakespeare book and return it to Mr Shriver.
“Now will you join the normal class routine?” he asks.
“Why? It isn’t like I need to collect points to fail year ten, do I?”
“You are clever enough to pass the exams, Mariette.”
“You forget this is a school. It isn’t about intelligence, it’s about obedience. Even if I get it all right they’d fail me.”
“Do you really believe there’s such malice among the teachers?” he asks.
“There is in the principal and most of you do what he says or you’d lose your job, right?”
He denies it but hands me another reading book; this one is at least the size of the first one and is titled World Mythology.
Before I’m back in my seat with the book he starts the class. “Why is it, do you think, that all the great literature of the world deals with only a few subjects?” he asks. “What is the subject that is on the mind of most every student in this school, or any other school for that matter? What’s on your mind today? Why do you come to school?”
“Boyfriends,” Charlotte answers, maybe meaning to joke.
“That’s right. Humanity is caught up in a game of attraction and repulsion, savage and forbidden, in which people are the playing pieces and the genes are the players. The object is survival – not of the individual, but of the genetic material. You see, genes, like people, are attracted to their opposite, but at the same time they have to be compatible, like blood groups.
“You can compare human society to a human person. Each community functions on different levels. The most superficial are the social rules, which you could call the mind of the people. Just as you can learn new things and change your mind, so the rules can change easily. These are moral and written laws, imposed more often than not, and they depend on definitions and very literal descriptions.
“Cultural beliefs control people’s hearts. They move them as a group. Supported by ritual and tradition, they’re also prone to change, but not quite as often. You could call culture a collective moral code. Its language is more diverse as well; symbolic and lyrical. It’s understood by the group without needing definitions, but it may be misunderstood by those who don’t share the culture, even if they speak the same language.
“Beyond that you get to the soul of human nature in which we are distinguishable as humans. Here lies a connection between individuals that does not rely on social or cultural boundaries. And though this trans-cultural level is shared by all humans, not all souls are the same. You might find a soul-mate among strangers whereas you can’t relate to those in your own locality. More often than not these connections are made without the need for language or explanations and regardless of the place or age one lives in. Some people simply feel and think the same way.
“At the core lies instinct, the part we share with most animals. Here communication functions at the level of chemical impulses and without reason. Here all basic emotions originate, despite our tendency to believe that they come from the heart. The very basic ones like love, hate, anger, loss and even envy aren’t limited to humanity. Here, also, reside attraction and repulsion.
“Now, attraction is a double-sided arrow. In almost all cases it goes both ways, though social stigma might prevent people from admitting it. That’s why attraction is sometimes covert and expressed as repulsion. People can’t help these attractions; like I said, the genes cause them and it can happen to anybody at any time in their life, but what people do with them has been the subject of almost all literature and drama in any society and in any form you can think of.
“There are three scenarios other than the one in which two socially unbound people fall in love and live happily ever after: The first is when two people act on their mutual attraction despite social or cultural boundaries. The winner of all tragedies is the lover-and-jealous-spouse relationship that ends in crimes of passion, war or divorce, not just in fiction but often in real life as well – like King Arthur and Guinevere.
“The runner-up is the other extreme; when the attraction is denied or forbidden. All connections are broken off and people end up with hurt, guilt, or they commit suicide, revenge acts or even desperate sex crimes. Shakespeare was a master of telling such stories.
“The one that’s seldom mentioned is the option of telling each other and those involved about the attraction and being aware of the game. Granted, it’s not the stuff that sells fiction, but a game it is; an exiting game that can enrich life and be enjoyed by everybody if it’s played intelligently. The problem is that most people can’t see this possibility because it involves looking at the larger picture; looking at life as a game rather than believing that the heart and the mind can control instincts. Your intellect exists to cope with this game of nature, so you won’t be played by it unawares, and so you can avoid tragedies not only on a personal basis but on a large scale as well.”
“So, if I feel attracted to a boy, can I assume he feels the same about me?” Charlotte asks.
“Yes, generally these feelings are mutual.”
This answer sets off a wave of whispers and meaningful gestures.
“What about repulsion, is that a double-sided arrow too?” Kathleen asks.
“In most cases, yes,” Mr Shriver answers.
“So, if I can’t stand the principal, for example, I can be pretty sure he feels the same about me?” Kathleen wants to know.
“I had hoped, in vain of course, that you wouldn’t resort to these kinds of remarks. Try to see the big picture,” Mr Shriver answers her.
When the bell goes I haven’t opened the mythology book yet. And it seems like there’s a conspiracy to hold lectures I can’t help but pay attention to.
“Do people learn from history?” Mr Fokker starts period four. “You’ve been told that western civilization is something we earned through the achievements of the ancient Greeks and which we’ve built on and improved since then. You’re told that they invented the assets of reason, logic, philosophy, art, science and democracy. But it isn’t that simple. Cave people already made paintings on their walls and they crafted tools. And from the moment they were able to people have been contemplating the meaning of their lives and making decisions by discussing them. Therefore philosophy was not ‘invented’ and neither were art, science or democracy. They were recognized; the words were invented, not the actions.
“Global civilization, like that of the Greeks, has come and gone before. One advanced and inter-continental culture existed at the onset of the last ice-age. Of this particular one we don’t know how it came to its end, though it might be fair to assume the climate had something to do with it as the only knowledge left of it re-emerged with the rise of the Mediterranean cultures around 5000 BCE. However, we do know from written histories that global societies and the mixing of cultures have a habit of dissolving into anarchy, and then war and totalitarianism.
“The multi-cultural and democratic Hellenistic world was a hub of cultures that all came together: artists, writers, poets, actors, historians, philosophers, scientists and politicians. They all gathered to exchange goods, ideas, beliefs and artistic skills. But not long after the Romans turned this easy-going mixture into a rigid empire ruled by soldiers Europe began its decline into the Dark Ages, reversing cultural and intellectual civilization to i
ts bare beginnings.
“A similar hub of life and artistry ruled that same Europe during the last decades of the nineteenth century, until the First World War put an end to it. The term ‘world war’ was a direct result of this globalization, which in turn had developed with the increase of technology, such as easier methods of travel and communication over long distances: the telephone, the car, trains and zeppelins. We saw psychology, anthroposophy, theories of evolution, women’s rights, communism and philosophical writings on cosmopolitan and futuristic topics. Paris, St Petersburg and Berlin were the centres of the good life, and yet they weren’t the last ones to succumb to more one-sided views like fascism despite their intellectual and sophisticated sharing of ideas. But only once economic decline plunged the people into poverty and unemployment could the masses be moved.
“Because that’s how social change comes about. It can come fast, as in a revolution or due to a disease or natural disaster, or it can happen slowly as technology and social circumstances change, but always as a response to what is. The first person to speak out is cast out, always. But that one outcast touches two people’s hearts and they also start to protest. They, too, become outcasts, but it sets the ball rolling. Then suddenly the masses catch on; maybe somebody makes money or becomes famous on the idea or an existing idol speaks out in its favour. Suddenly everybody believes this is the way it should be. The media and the bookshops fill with people who repeat what they’ve heard and soon they’re insulted if you suggest that they didn’t believe it just a little while ago. So public opinion changes; it changes all the time, one idea after another. Of course, most of the time they go overboard and the new views become just as much a doctrine, until a first protester stands up again – cycle complete.
