by Fleur Jaeggy
Frédérique was likewise asleep while I took my walks. The crows flew low over the steep grassy slopes, hideous, boastful, cruel. I had compared them to our adolescence as they searched for a place in the earth round the school to sink their claws into. In half an hour I was already high above, filling my lungs with the cold air. The universe seemed mute. I didn’t want Frédérique, nor thought about her. She read at night, perhaps she had only just fallen asleep. In the morning she was a bit stiff, shadows under her eyes. Up on the hill I was in a state you might describe as ‘ill-happiness’. A state that required solitude, a state of exhilaration and quiet selfishness, a cheerful vendetta. I had the impression that this exhilaration was an initiation, that the sickness in the happiness was due to a magical novitiate, a rite. Then it went wrong. I didn’t feel anything particular any more. Every landscape constructed its own niche and shut itself away there.
I hurried back down, I was back in my room again, the German girl still hadn’t opened the window, her dreams, however light and pretty, staled the air, and perhaps the dashing young men who invited her to dance, taking her votive hands in theirs, were breathing it too. She had barely finished dressing herself with those hands, her blouse was still unbuttoned, she didn’t want to go to class, said the sleepy, sincere expression on her face.
She was one of those girls who should have had a different life. She was conscientious, full of good will, the same good will her parents had had, though they were more hard-working. Her smile, fragile, idiotic and affectionate, suggested vulnerability in the face of scholastic duties. She liked to feel herself coddled by the cosy air of the bedroom, she was sensual in a docile way, it was an effort for her to learn a couple of verses off by heart, and sometimes even to understand them. She had established once and for all that the girl she shared her room with was interested in the German expressionists, who as a result were becoming a disaster: to please that girl she gave her books and postcards. She was one of those people who never forget a concept once they have grasped it. When she got something into her head, a little late perhaps, she couldn’t help but repeat it.
There was also a protracted childishness about her, not the monstrous, poetic kind of childishness, but something sham and lazy. She was slow getting up; when I got back from my morning forays her bed was still warm. The girl she had chosen as a friend was the same: a Bavarian girl, daughter of a managing director, an only child. They would meet after lessons, around five o’clock. At six my German room-mate was already back in our room. Sometimes her eyes wandered across the ceiling. She got a letter which said that a cousin of hers was dying. It took him a few weeks to die and she got a lot of letters. During those weeks the German girl seemed to wake up from her torpor. She imagined his death throes, and in the meantime she tied the letters in a pink ribbon; she tied the knot again, she had pulled it too tight; she threw the envelopes away, then got them back again, smoothed them out, added them to the letters, pulled the ribbon tight, tied the knot again with a bow. She didn’t keep them in the baroque German box, but on her bedside table where she kept the photographs of her parents and a few sweets. In the drawer was a Bible, school property. Finally an envelope with black edging arrived. It wasn’t handed out at mealtimes, as was usually the case. Instead the headmistress gave it to her personally. She sat at her table, looked at it, opened it, read it, put it back in its envelope and turned to look at me. Her gestures had a rhythm to them, it was as though someone had suspended time. She opened the pack, undid the pink ribbon, slipped in the black-edged envelope with the others and tied knot and bow again with angelic pedantry. It was snowing in Teufen, snowing in the Appenzell. Life at the Bausler Institut was quiet. Outside, the sound of shovels. The little black girl coughed, the young boarder, daughter of an African head of state received with all honours by the Bausler Institut. The other pupils felt those honours were excessive. We were all lined up as if we each of us had a sentry box beside us, standing to attention to receive the President, the wife of the President and the little girl. Frau Hofstetter was as excited as a farmyard animal. We wondered if perhaps this was out of submissiveness to an African state, or if such a welcome would be extended to presidents in general. It is almost admirable that in the Swiss Confederation the name of the President passes unobserved and likewise his charming person. There had been a President of the Confederation in our family, but he would have refused such honours. His gravestone is very modest. Lenin, who had been a guest, was known as a hothead in the Confederation. There were no hotheads in the boarding school at Teufen. There was peace in the Appenzell and likewise in the houses of the families of the boarders, in the furnishings and in the mirrors. The girls were fortunate, if one can consider this good fortune. Some spiteful older people curse instead of answering the greetings of the girls on their walks. ‘Grüss Gott‚’ the German girls said. But they don’t want God, those old people. They don’t want good wishes, they suspect they are being insulted. The girls went down into the village, rounding the bend in the path where like a curse the word Töchterinstitut was written on a low wall. And the nordic light, harmful and crazed, dwells on the wall. In a window the lace curtains twitch, eyes find themselves trapped there, as if it were the horizon. The headmistress respected each of us and our families. She keeps guard. Someone is suffering from Weltschmerz. And is mocked.
From then on the little black girl coughed. She had learnt to speak German. Frau Hofstetter, the headmistress, read Max und Moritz to her: that’s how you amuse children in the Appenzell. Frau Hofstetter takes care of the girl; to protect her throat she does up the top button of her blue coat with its dark velvet collar and cuffs. The little girl has grown sad. Frau Hofstetter doesn’t know what to do to distract her. Perhaps she should have warned the President. ‘Dear and Honoured President, Your Daughter is bored with everything.’ The boredom of children is pure desperation. Generally, they say, children amuse themselves with next to nothing, and one wonders what that next to nothing might be. Or they amuse themselves with nothing at all. And what was that nothing at all that no longer amused the little black girl? ‘The hanged men go ding dong,’ says the refrain of an old American song. The little girl didn’t sing, or talk to herself. Sometimes she skipped in the yard, lifting a thin knee, or she ran around in a circle. We all have to bear and atone for the games that were not our own. A bit of a sleepwalker, she let her spirit rove. Shortly before Christmas, amidst the candles, they asked her to sing Stille Nacht. Frau Hofstetter pushed her into the middle of the room. The French teacher was sitting at the piano with her squat, masculine hands. The little girl turned her old woman’s eyes to our tables; she looked like the last of her race, the candlelight streaked her pupils. She sang in a thin voice, a voice that came from a body that wasn’t her own, disinterred. Frau Hofstetter clapped vigorously and kissed her forehead. Mein Kind, mein Kind, she whispered and caressed her hair, her thin pigtails, her shoulders, her narrow little body and flared skirt. She counted the fingers of her hand as if she were a doll. The girl let herself be caressed like a corpse.
‘The black girl’s really talented,’ my room-mate says, ‘she’s so musical.’ She has never heard people sing like that in Germany. She’s generous with her compliments, my room-mate. How gracefully she could exaggerate. Was she really sure the girl had sung so well? She sounded out of tune to us. ‘Out of tune?’ she said. And she repeated the phrase, brooding. Stubbornly she shook her head; no, she wasn’t out of tune. But … But in the middle of the refrain she had coughed. ‘What do you think‚’ she asked. ‘Might she be ill?’ ‘She could have TB.’ ‘What? You think she could be ill?’ As she spoke, her enthusiasm for the black girl’s musical talent waned.
My room-mate is worried now. Chest problems are infectious. In Germany they’ve got rid of TB. She had heard someone say so. I asked her if someone in her family, one of her grandparents, had died of TB. Nein, nein, everybody in her family had died of old age. Niemand war krank. No one ill. She had forgotten the envelope wi
th the black edging, but she must have felt that that death wasn’t part of the rule. The rule was that members of her family left the world because they had reached the natural conclusion of their lives. Her father and mother would grow old, very old, and then the inevitable. My room-mate was healthy enough herself, she ate lots of cakes, she gobbled up everything at table, she never had a cold. She got between the sheets and assumed her nightly pose and it was only natural that her Gute Nacht would be followed by the morning’s Guten Tag: a regular succession of segments which fit together. But now the black girl’s illness had sneaked into her head, while her musical talent had slipped out.
She said that blacks have musical talent and can tap dance very well; she had learnt to tap dance too and she liked it. She did a few steps, heavy, but technically right. They could dance a duet. Maybe for the show at the end of the school year. Boarding schools always celebrate the end of the school year. In her head she set about organising the show, in the school yard. She assigned parts, she even gave me a part, I was to be a gipsy, Du bist eine Zigeunerin, her face was glowing. And with an inspired expression she said she could do Klopstock too; do a tap dance and something from Klopstock, her, the German girl, and her parents would come, everybody’s parents had to come. She assigned places to the audience. Frédérique, your friend, she said, could play for the finale. A little gavotte, or the funeral march. I listened. Yes of course I listened to the German girl. Every people has its talent, every people has its bloody karma, every boarder has her tap dance, and she had hers too; she wouldn’t let up with her ferocious glee, her determination and greedy gaiety. Soon she would be crying. Chary tears in her eyes. Her legs bent. She sat down, overcome by her own mirth.
Frau Hofstetter’s husband, a weak character, wouldn’t have dared to caress the girl. His wife, who was the headmistress and a strong character, could take a fancy to one boarder, detest another. In his laziness Herr Hofstetter thought they were all equal, all charming; after a year they showed faint signs of getting older. He came a poor second to his wife’s little crushes, his wife’s chaste crushes. They were both chaste, if by chaste we mean a worthy indifference to sex, or a lack of appetite. Frau Hofstetter had a propensity or two, as she had shown her husband during the first months of their marriage, thirty years ago. His wife hadn’t been so big then, she’d been slim almost, much taller than him, with a ladylike gutsiness that won her respect. Her chin was prominent, her jaws wide, her eyes small and a little evil. She was always tidy and well meaning. Her bearing gave off that unmistakable aura of the teacher by profession and vocation, the iron-handed lay teacher.
They didn’t have a long engagement. She had decided to marry him and in bed she was brisk. Her husband divided mankind into two: the weak and the strong. A boarding school is a strong institution, since in a sense it is founded on blackmail. Likewise his marriage. He needed that big woman whose bosom filled out when she breathed and who showed her husband the same indulgent severity she showed to the girls. His office was a small corner room, the bursar’s office. Business was good. But sometimes he felt ill at ease in that entirely female world. He would find himself talking to the tennis, gymnastics and geography master, a dry man with precocious wrinkles and a tight mouth, as though biting into the last mouthful of youth left to him. Withered before his time.
Sometimes the two men went into the village together, the master walking with a sporty elastic step, the fake youthfulness he was cultivating, chest pushed out in a fine curve. Even his thighs gave the impression of a handsome young man from a distance, a pretty rare sight in that village inhabited by the old. From close up you could make out his skull. The two went to the café together, but they had nothing to say to each other. Maybe they felt they were damned or forgotten, or maybe they liked being there, rejects from the rest of the world. All you need is a fleeting thought flying up in the air that becomes your own; but if you don’t grasp it you feel even more alone than before. Those girls had their whole lives in front of them, and Frau Hofstetter’s husband knew they dreamed of having a good time. He had nothing in front of him now. Every year there were new girls who dreamed of all the fantastic things that life would give them, that his wife promised them. The future was theirs. He sensed this like a thorn in his side. Sometimes he had thought of taking revenge on their dreams. He knew how to go about it. On the other hand, he had grown fond of the little black girl. He felt there was some affinity between them. He was stirred in his bursar’s office when he saw her alone in the yard or the garden, raising her knees and skipping joylessly. The girl stops and looks imperiously at the ground, digging.
A new arrival always arouses a certain amount of curiosity. The girl came towards the end of January. We spoke to each other by chance. Actually we didn’t speak at all: we burst out laughing. She was a bit like Gilda. Her red hair was magnificent, a prey, it looked photographed. When she came into the Speisesaal there was a sudden silence. Knives and forks remained suspended in the air. Sailors would have whistled. Frédérique waited for me for our afternoon walk. I arrived late. Tu as vu la nouvelle? I had, I had indeed.
Immediately we changed the subject. Maybe to Baudelaire. He had had a creole woman. The redhead looked a bit creole too. That evening over dinner we joked as if we were old friends. The other girls round us stopped talking and followed our chatter, all eyes and ears. There was a Spanish girl next to me who ate mostly yoghurt for her waistline. ‘Come up to my room,’ said Micheline, that was what the new girl was called. She embraced me, she gave me a kiss, the way she might have kissed her horse. I went to her room and she told me most of her life story, as if it were a cornet de bal.
I explained that I’d have to go because I slept in the other house. Which house? For the younger girls. She burst out laughing. You, one of the younger girls! But that’s outrageous. She said it as though on stage in front of an audience. I hurried out and went past Frédérique’s room, I didn’t dare go in. It was too late. At quarter past nine everybody had to be in their own room. I went to sleep in an excellent mood. My room-mate, who had finished brushing out her hair said: ‘Sehr elegant, rassig, die Neue.’ Elegant wasn’t the right word perhaps. Though a beauty like that doesn’t need to be elegant. It was Frédérique was elegant.
Micheline was infatuated by her beauty, she carried it round with her like a tropical bird. Frédérique was more beautiful than Micheline, but she never exulted over it. Micheline, who was less refined, couldn’t help but offer her beauty, simply and spontaneously, to everybody, exulting. She was an extrovert, that was the first trait that attracted me. And her cheerfulness. She immediately showed me all her clothes. It was as if the sun shone out of her cupboards. When she embraced me, and I let her, I felt her strong healthy body against mine, like a wet nurse. Everything was soft and young and athletic. She embraced me the way she would have embraced a crowd. Without sin or vice. A real companionly embrace I might almost say, even though the term has lost its old sense. She was a comrade. Not like Frédérique and me, who didn’t dare so much as to touch each other, or kiss each other. Horror. Perhaps because troubled by our desire, troubled because it didn’t fit in with the images we had formed of each other.
On a number of occasions I did feel the impulse to caress her, but her stiffness turned me away. Micheline’s little eyes had an amazed, vacuous, calm expression. When she got angry they became even smaller, as if the irises had dried up. It was the whole impression that made her beautiful. I got into the habit of seeing her in my free time. Most of what we said to each other was nonsense; there wasn’t much it was worth talking seriously about. But you could laugh about anything. She didn’t study, she didn’t care about anything. She was going to give a huge ball with her daddy. She didn’t care about her mother, perhaps she was dead. You forget the dead. There was just Daddy. She would invite me to her ball. I would be her best friend. Hadn’t we already been best friends for a while? Depuis toujours. We would write to each other.
She invited me to stay in
her villa as long as I wanted, Daddy would like me. And Daddy would flirt with me. He flirted with all her schoolfriends. Did my daddy flirt with my friends? My daddy has never met a friend of mine. Was I jealous perhaps, did I stop him seeing them? What was my daddy’s villa like? My daddy lived in a hotel. So I didn’t have a house. Yes, I did, but not with Daddy. Her daddy was young and when they went out together she made herself up so she would look like his girlfriend. I thought of my daddy, of the innumerable hotels of our holidays, winter and summer, and that old man with his white hair and ice-clear, sad eyes. Which would gradually become my eyes.
And Micheline talked, she made plans for the future, always the same plans. What mattered was that there should be movement, confusion, applause and Daddy. I neglected Frédérique, I hardly ever went to our meetings. When Micheline put her hand on my shoulders in front of everybody and Frédérique saw, I felt ashamed. I felt ill at ease. I was at ease when I was in Micheline’s room, or alone with her, but I didn’t want Frédérique to see me. And Frédérique saw me, I sensed her sad gaze directed at me, a reproach almost. I had fun with Micheline, even if her cheerfulness and her daddy were boring me, but you can enjoy a fatuous cheerfulness despite the boredom, a funereal fervour.
