Awakening of Miss Prim

by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

  “You’re very kind,” she stammered.

  “I’m simply being honest.”

  The maid came back into the room with a tray and, while the old lady took her first sip of coffee, she set about lighting the fire and drawing the curtains to shut out the dull, gray outdoors.

  “Do you like autumn?” the lady asked, out of the blue.

  “I find it romantic,” replied Miss Prim, then blushed, this time at the thought that the woman might misinterpret her words. “I mean Romantic in the sense of the artistic movement, not the emotion, of course.”

  Appearing to ignore this last comment, the mother of the Man in the Wing Chair offered Miss Prim a steaming cup of coffee.

  “I detest it. I’ve always thought T. S. Eliot was quite wrong. April is not the cruelest month, it’s November, without a doubt. April is a wonderful month, full of sun, light, and wisteria in flower. Do you know Italy?”

  Somewhat bewildered by the twists and turns in the conversation, the librarian replied that she did indeed know Italy.

  “Do you mean you’ve lived there?”

  Miss Prim clarified that she had not lived there.

  “Then you should. Right now, before it’s too late.”

  “I don’t think it would be possible at the moment,” the librarian replied, worried that this sudden recommendation concealed a wish to dispense with her services.

  The visitor’s laughter, jolly and tinkling, broke the silence.

  “When you get to my age you’ll realize that anything’s possible. Look at my son. A few years ago a brilliant academic career lay ahead of him. He was a charming, intelligent man with a dazzling future. And what remains of it? Here he is, buried in this tiny village, holed up in his father’s family’s house, looking after four children and traipsing to an old monastery every morning before breakfast. Believe me when I tell you anything’s possible.”

  “But he seems very happy here,” Miss Prim ventured.

  “He is, he definitely is. That’s the most annoying thing about it. And I have to admit that he’s done a great job. You can’t imagine what it was like here only a few years ago.”

  The librarian, who had by now put the distressing image of the volumes of Herodotus lying on the desk quite out of her mind, made herself comfortable in the armchair, looking forward to hearing some things that would satisfy her endless curiosity about the village and her employer.

  “What gave him the idea of setting up this community? Few people would undertake such a daunting enterprise.”

  The old lady put down her cup, leaned her head back, and half closed her eyes, as if trying to remember.

  “If only I knew. Actually I don’t think it was down to one single factor. Obviously it had something to do with meeting the old Benedictine monk. I expect you’ve heard about him already.”

  Miss Prim settled deeper into the armchair and drank some more of her coffee.

  “As I recall, he’d just finished giving a series of lectures,” the old lady continued, “and he took a break to attend a university seminar in Kansas. He found something there, don’t ask me what. That summer he traveled to Egypt, then to Simonos Petras on Mount Athos, and he also spent time at the Benedictine abbey in Le Barroux. On his return he said he’d decided to live at the abbey here in San Ireneo for a few months. Imagine: he, who hadn’t stepped inside a church in twenty years, in a monastery of traditionalist Benedictine monks. I thought he wouldn’t be able to stand it, but a year later he asked if he could open up the house again and, as far as I can tell, that’s how this whole thing started. But you shouldn’t be surprised. Life is surprising.”

  The librarian thought for a moment before asking: “But what about the children? Aren’t you worried about his influence on them?”

  “Worried?” exclaimed the old lady, taken aback. “My dear Miss Prim, my grandchildren are the only children I know who can recite Dante, Virgil, and Racine; read classical texts in the original languages; and recognize most of the great pieces of classical music from a few chords. Not only am I not worried, I’m actually proud, frankly proud. It’s one of the few things I truly approve of in this hermit’s retreat my son has chosen and which, I won’t lie to you, I detest profoundly.”

  “I wasn’t referring to culture, but to religion. Aren’t you concerned that they might be too religious, as it were? Too precociously religious? You know what I mean.”

  The woman regarded the librarian incredulously before giving a happy laugh.

  “My dear, I see you know very little about the house you live in,” she said, eyes shining with mirth.

  Miss Prim peered at her, confused.

  “What do you mean?”

  The lady smiled.

  “I mean that it wasn’t my son who instilled his beliefs in the children. He had already taken a step or two when he took charge of them after my daughter’s death. He’d discovered the depths of Christian thought and culture and he was delighting in the beauty of worship. But he hadn’t taken the final step. He was still, so to speak, on the threshold. Don’t you understand? It wasn’t him; it was them. It was the children, the children themselves who guided him to where he is today.”

  The arrival of the Man in the Wing Chair’s mother marked a turning point in Miss Prim’s life. From the day of their first meeting, the librarian found that her social life was considerably enriched. The old lady immediately adopted her as an inseparable companion. Soon she considered it perfectly natural to take Miss Prim with her to all the social engagements that filled her diary.

  “Today we must go and drop in on poor Miss Mott,” she said as they walked to the village one afternoon. “You don’t know her, of course—she’s our schoolteacher. I was a member of the selection panel, several years ago now, and I feel a certain responsibility, so I visit her whenever I’m in San Ireneo. This is the place. Obviously in spring it’s much prettier than it is now, but isn’t it charming?”

  Miss Prim admitted that she had never seen a school like it. Standing in the center of the village right on the main square, Eugenia Mott’s schoolhouse was encircled by a wooden fence literally sagging beneath the weight of numerous rosebushes whose luxuriance had now been checked by the onset of autumn. A pair of huge plane trees flanked the entrance. On a sign above the lintel hung an ancient Latin motto that proudly exhorted the young pupils: Sapere aude.

  It was five o’clock in the afternoon. The children had finished their classes some time ago, and Miss Mott was busy polishing the old brass plaque which the school kept as a reminder of past glories. She was a woman of around sixty, with a plump figure and friendly smile. Her cheeks flushed and hands covered in metal polish, she greeted the two visitors solicitously and bustled them inside. Did Miss Prim like the school, she asked as she led the two ladies into the large schoolroom? How very kind! She couldn’t take the credit, of course, the school had been there for many years. But now that Miss Prim mentioned it, she had to confess that everyone asked how she managed to grow such perfect roses in a garden full of boisterous children. Naturally, she had a little trick, a teacher couldn’t manage in life without one. Hers consisted in allocating a rosebush to each child at the beginning of the school year. This small distinction made them feel proud and important, and helped them to develop a sense of responsibility. She only hadthe children for three years; she taught them little more than reading and writing, a smattering of geometry, some arithmetic, and maybe even the rudiments of rhetoric.

  While Miss Mott’s chatter filled the classroom, battering the librarian’s sensibilities, the mother of the Man in the Wing Chair kept quiet. Apparently absorbed in her thoughts, she walked slowly around the room before coming to a stop in front of an old wooden coat rack filled with the children’s paint-spattered overalls. Then she turned and directed her beautiful, worldly wise gaze at the teacher.

  “Are you happy here, Eugenia?”

  Caught off guard, Miss Mott blushed and had to clear her throat before replying.

  “
What a funny question! Yes, I would say so. Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  The mother of the Man in the Wing Chair sat down at one of the desks and peered at something carved into the wood.

  “I’d say that it wasn’t my question that was funny but your answer. Why shouldn’t you be? I could give you many reasons. First, because happiness is not the natural state of human beings. Or perhaps because teaching so many children for all these years would exhaust anyone. Or even,” the lady lowered her voice almost imperceptibly, “because he hasn’t returned, after all.”

  The librarian suddenly felt uncomfortable. Her employer’s mother’s remark seemed to refer to some disappointment in love. Miss Prim disapproved of both heartbreak and its consequences. She disliked what it did to people, didn’t enjoy seeing the havoc it wreaked, and didn’t appreciate witnessing its victories. For this reason, before Eugenia could reply, she hastily announced that she would like to go out and take a stroll among the laurels and chrysanthemums in the gardens.

  “How delicate you are, Prudencia! Don’t worry, it’s an old story and I don’t mind people knowing it now. Actually I’ve learned to live with it and be reasonably happy. No, my husband hasn’t returned. He definitely hasn’t returned. But I’m no longer waiting for him. I couldn’t live my life like that.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” snapped the old lady. “There’s something sinister about the idea of waiting. I have never waited for anybody. My son, however, considers it a virtue.”

  “He considers waiting to be a virtue?” asked Miss Prim with interest. “In what sense?”

  “Oh, he means something else,” exclaimed Eugenia sadly. “Nothing as silly and sentimental as the love of an abandoned woman.”

  “I don’t know if he means something else or not, but what I do know is that you havedone the right thing in ceasing to wait around,” said the mother of the Man in the Wing Chair severely. “And now, tell me, Eugenia, do you know Italy?”

  The librarian jumped at this. The woman, one couldn’t help noticing, seemed obsessed with having people know Italy. Miss Prim had nothing against Italy, a wonderful country in every way, but why the insistence? To her, there was something almost impolite about continually urging everyone to travel halfway across Europe.

  “As I said to Prudencia the day I met her, in my view a woman’s education cannot be complete unless she has lived for a time in Italy. There’s a certain lack of polish to the minds of women who haven’t had that experience. It’s vital to the development of the female intellect.”

  “Only female? What about men?” asked the librarian.

  The old lady looked at her with a sardonic expression.

  “Men? Men can take care of themselves. We’ve got enough to be getting on with, don’t you think? You’re very young and inexperienced, Prudencia, but let me tell you something: the day that most dinner parties in mixed company stop splitting into two camps—one male, where they discuss politics and economics, the other female, where gossip and chitchat dominate—is the day when we’ll have the authority to pronounce on men’s education. What I’m going to say now will undoubtedly shock you, but I will say it anyway: most women have no conversation. And the worst thing is, it’s not because they’re incapable of it, it’s because they don’t bother trying.”

  The librarian exchanged a glance of resigned understanding with Miss Mott, who quickly changed the subject, saying that, in her opinion, the Ancient Greek and Roman classics were the cornerstone of any education, male or female.

  “Would you mind if I asked you something about your son? Where did he complete his studies?” asked Miss Prim.

  “I like to think that my son educated himself. Of course, we gave him all the tools, first-rate tools: wonderful schools, excellent teachers. But it’s to his credit that he made use of them as he did.”

  “He’s a brilliant man,” said Miss Mott.

  “He’s a brilliant man who’s wasted his talent,” declared the old lady bitterly as she stood up to leave. Miss Mott saw the two women to the garden gate and said good-bye with a smile.

  The old lady and the librarian walked for some time, side by side, each deep in thought. Though Miss Prim was keen to ask more about her employer’s education, she didn’t dare draw her companion from her silence. It was the latter who resumed the conversation. She explained that Eugenia Mott’s husband had left her one morning without a word, three months before she moved to San Ireneo. Then she asked Miss Prim what she thought of the teacher.

  “She seems like a good, simple woman, though not excessively bright. I’m surprised you selected her. I thought education was highly prized in San Ireneo.”

  “You mean, you find her average?”

  Prudencia looked at the old lady in dismay. How could such an elegant woman refer to others with so little tact or respect? However much she pondered, she could not understand it. She couldn’t get used to the coldness of the older woman’s remarks, her abrupt frankness, her habit of speaking, looking, and even listening with an air of incontrovertible authority.

  “What I mean is that I was expecting someone . . . less simple. Is she well qualified, academically?” she asked, treading carefully.

  “Absolutely not, she’s an ordinary teacher. Extremely ordinary.”

  “But the education in the classics that the children here receive . . . not everyone is qualified to teach it.”

  The old lady turned to her with a weary shrug.

  “My dear Miss Prim, do you still not understand how things work here? Eugenia Mott is a simple, extremely simple teacher because what San Ireneo wants for its children is exactly that: a teacher without intellectual aspirations.”

  “Forgive me for pressing you on this,” said Prudencia, puzzled, “but I can’t understand how a place where children perform Antigone in Greek could want a schoolteacher with no intellectual aspirations.”

  For the second time the old lady stopped and stared at her companion gravely.

  “Because, in actual fact, they don’t need anyone to teach the children anything. Because it’s they who educate their children themselves, who teach them to recite poems by Ariosto before they can read; explain Euclidian geometry using the Elements as a textbook; play them a fragment of a Palestrina motet for them to guess which one it is. It’s they, my dear, who regularly cross half of Europe to sit their children before Fra Angelico’s Noli Me Tangere, show them the high altar of St. John Lateran, bring them face-to-face with the capital of the Temple of Aphrodite.”

  “So why do they want a teacher at all?”

  “To safeguard all that work, to preserve and protect it. In other words, to ensure it doesn’t get spoiled. Does that shock you? If they hired a teacher bursting with theories on education, sociology, child psychology, and all those other modern sciences, they’d be letting the fox into the henhouse. Look at it this way: if you were convinced that the world had forgotten how to think and teach, if you believed it had discarded the beauty of art and literature, if you thought it had crushed the power of the truth, would you let that world educate your children?”

  “Now I understand why your son didn’t want someone with a degree for a librarian,” sighed Miss Prim.

  The lady smiled at her sweetly.

  “Ah, but he hired you, didn’t he? He must have seen something special in you, isn’t that so? Tell me, what do you think it was?”

  Miss Prim said she didn’t know, though she suspected that it had something to do with the misunderstanding that had occurred on the day of her arrival at the house.

  “Don’t delude yourself,” insisted the old lady. “My son isn’t sentimental. Believe me when I say he must really have seen something interesting in you.”

  And with her usual sharp tone, she added: “I wonder what it was?”

  2

  In the past ten days, Miss Prim had exchanged no more than a few words with the Man in the Wing Chair. Busy with the children, lessons, visits to the abbey, and his mother’s company,
he had been an elusive presence. As she nibbled on a piece of toast at breakfast, the librarian told herself she didn’t need his company. And it was true. A woman like her, who enjoyed robust mental health and glorious independence, was perfectly capable of keeping herself amused without the need to chat. Nevertheless, she had to admit that she did slightly miss the masculine humor that enlivened the work of cataloguing the endless rows of books.

  That afternoon, Miss Prim received a note from Herminia Treaumont inviting her to join the San Ireneo Christmas committee. She read the note silently as she finished her coffee. Since she didn’t have a lot of work to complete that day, she decided to fetch her hat and coat and attend the meeting at the village tearoom.

  It was cold out, and the librarian hurried down the garden path toward the wrought-iron gate.

  “Are you going to the village, Prudencia? I can give you a lift if you like.”

  The Man in the Wing Chair was already at the wheel of his car. Miss Prim hesitated, but a glance at the low gray sky prompted her to accept.

  “Thank you,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat. “I think it’s going to start snowing any minute.”

  He smiled pleasantly but didn’t reply.

  “Would you like me to turn up the heating?” he asked.

  The librarian assured him that the temperature inside the car was perfect.

  “Tell me, if I’m not being nosy, what are you doing going to the village on such a cold afternoon?”

  “I’m meeting Herminia Treaumont and the other residents to discuss the Christmas festivities.”

  “I see you’ve fitted in fully with our small community. So, have you forgiven them?”

  Miss Prim, who had taken special care to prevent news of the contretemps at the Feminist League from reaching her employer, blushed.

  “I didn’t realize you knew so much about my adventures in San Ireneo. I suppose it was your friend, Mr. Delàs, who told you.”