Chalet in the Sky

by Albert Robida

  Koufra was about to get up, respectfully, but Gustave tugged at his jacket.

  The phonograph coughed, as if it were clearing its voice.

  “Young people,” it proclaimed, “now that you are resuming your studies, the Minister of Public Education will perform his duty, offering you official encouragement and reminding you of the importance…immense fields of science…preparatory work…brilliant careers…”

  In spite of the Minister’s fine voice, Koufra could only grasp these fragments of sentences, for the conversations of his neighbors was continuing mutedly, and Gustave undertook to furnish him with explanations.

  “Yes, my dear chap, at Chambourcy, as at all the other schools in France at this moment, we have the ministerial speech…”

  “And to alternate with regular and fecund studies, also count on the government, which has prepared for you, over the school year, a program of distractions as broad and attractive as possible… And now, to work, young people!”

  The peroration was greeted with an ah! of satisfaction; glasses of champagne were raised in the Minister’s honor, and the inaugural lunch concluded as noisily as it had begun.

  During the half-hour break before work began, Gustave showed his friend around the school.

  “We need to go up to the top floor quickly, my boy! Five minutes with me, and you’ll know the classrooms, the lecture theatres, the laboratories, the large cinema, the sports halls, the famous pupils, our champions, our teachers…very chic, the teachers!”

  “Papa told me that—the best teachers…”

  “Certainly. Muscle and brain! Educational sport, very important at Chambourcy. So, as you’ll see, for boxing, we have the foremost pupil of the famous…”

  “No, what about the other teachers?”

  “You’ll see—all very chic, I tell you, the teachers!”

  He took a list of courses from his pocket. They were, indeed, all celebrity university graduates, whose renown had reached as far as the Congo. Monsieur Koufra senior had quoted them to his son with pride.

  Having gone over the entire school and rapidly met all of Gustave’s friends, Alfred Koufra waited, a trifle intimidated, for the first class. He sat between Gustave and his friend Bouloche, the hope of the school for the long jump.

  All the pupils were holding their pencils and pens at the ready. And the teacher? He had not arrived. On the chair in front of the blackboard, Monsieur Virgile Radoux was arranging papers, on which irregular lines of handwriting could be distinguished.

  “Sonnets and ballads!” Gustave whispered in Koufra’s ear. “After the lesson, I’ll ask him for the favor of a few morsels…”

  “But where’s the professor?”

  “Here he is!”

  Virgile Radoux had just flicked the switch of a phonograph. At first, the preliminary murmurs of a distant voice were heard, but it soon took on an impressive gravity. It was the professor. At the same time, he appeared beside the blackboard—or, rather, his cinematographic image trembled, then came into focus, on the screen of a telephonoscope behind the phonograph. It was a sufficiently imposing physiognomy: a man with a vast bald forehead and a beautiful black beard, whose authoritarian gaze surveyed the pupils ranged before him.

  Although that gaze seemed to settle particularly on him, Koufra no longer felt as intimidated. After some initial hesitation, his pen-holder moved quite regularly, and by the time the lesson was well under way, he was covering the pages of his notebook briskly. He had made a good beginning at the school! To think that he had been so fearful of his first days, the annoyances and difficulties! But now, everything had fallen into place admirably!

  Beside him, Gustave yawned occasionally. Koufra noticed that he was not taking notes. Behind a little notebook that he was holding up, he was operating a bizarre little machine, totally unknown in the backward college of Villeneuve-sur-Oubangui. What was it? He would find out after the lesson.

  When the professor had finished, the Headmaster—or, rather, his image—passed through the rooms by telephonoscope to say a few words to the pupils; then, before further study, they had two hours of recreation in optional courses: various kinds of sports; gymnastics, fencing, etc.

  “What were you doing with your machine, then?” Koufra asked, as soon as they had left the lecture-hall.

  “I was experimenting with a method of my own for lectures. Taking notes by hand is very old-fashioned—I might even say infantile and barbaric. My method constitutes an immense progress, and it seems to me to be working very well. I’m simply recording the course on phono disks.”

  “Oh!” said Koufra.

  “It’s done automatically; I have the complete course instead of mere lecture notes, like you—and, moreover, time to reflect and think. I might even absent myself, if the form-master has no objection. Can you see the advantages?”

  Koufra expressed his admiration with expressive nods of the head.

  “Yes,” said Gustave, negligently, “it’s not a stroke of genius—it’s quite simple, but it was necessary to think of it! Personally, my boy, I don’t rest content with what I find hardly functional—all the material and paraphernalia of civilization. I immediately think about improving it…I’m a man of progress! And now, let’s rest the intellect—a session on the parallel bars, perhaps? A little football?”

  Gustave, who was filling out and very fit, observed the inferiority of his companion on the sports field sadly. What, no stronger than that? No good at all at fencing, barely passable in gymnastics, worse than mediocre at football, no good at the high jump or the long jump…what about swimming and yachting?”

  “Not too bad at swimming,” said Alfred Koufra.

  The siren, which has replaced the antiquated bell in modern schools, recalled them to the study halls. The pupils went back in, leaping over bushes and jostling one another somewhat in the grounds.

  They set to work, in that first study period, with only moderate enthusiasm, the good times of the vacation still being so close. Books and various items of apparatus were spread out on the tables; then the tap-tap of typewriters began quietly in one corner of the room, and slowly spread to make itself heard everywhere. All the machines were tapping away except Koufra’s.

  The latter, with his head in his hands, was trying to concentrate in order to read over his notes. His mind was still elsewhere; everything in this vast school was too new to him; he felt that he needed to catch his breath. Eventually, his machine was at work like the others; Koufra was very zealous, and he intended to distinguish himself, for the honor of the Oubangui. Gustave was working too, though grumbling somewhat.

  When their assigned work was finished, the tap-tap dwindled away. Koufra’s machine was the last to fall silent.

  Gustave said oof and got to his feet. “What are we doing this evening?” he asked a friend.

  “Tennis before dinner,” the latter replied. “How’s that?”

  “Certainly! And after dinner?”

  “Nothing organized yet—a little concert via the telephonoscope?”

  “The weather’s too good! After dinner, I propose a stroll along the Seine to inaugurate our nautical circle…agreed? Koufra—to the tennis court! Do you have a favorite racket?”

  “No, I haven’t brought…I didn’t know…”

  “One can forget one’s books, old chap—there are always books around—but a racket! A racket that feels good in the hand! Anyway, I’ll lend you one of mine…”

  Does the tennis professor give his lectures over the telephonoscope too?” asked Koufra.

  “No, it’s Madame Luco, 20 years of success in all competitions! Be careful—don’t be too much of a duffer; she gets angry. Beware of nasty reports! Let’s go to tennis, and this evening, I promise you an idyllic time on the Seine; you’ll see that I’m no oarsman, although I’ll fearlessly take on any fifth- or sixth-former with a sail!”

  IV. A Cinematic lecture by the great historian Trubert.

  Gustave Turbille could take on anyone in
a sailing boat or a rowing-boat; even so, he caused his friend Koufra to take a bath, four meters from the bank, on the return journey—and he knew how to swim! They only had the inconvenience of getting back in a hurry to put on dry clothes. But had their suitcases arrived? Yes! They were there; all was well. All things considered, the dip brought the first day of school to a pleasant conclusion.

  In the room that he shared with his friend, Koufra went to sleep immediately, while Gustave was still giving him interesting details of life at school and the professors, and explaining his personal ideas regarding the authentic modernization of the University and desirable progressive changes.

  The next day, 3A had a Latin class in the morning and history in the afternoon.

  Koufra was able to observe a certain lack of enthusiasm in the Latin class; no one around him was talking about anything but the imminent history lecture; people were recalling the lectures of previous terms, discussing them so keenly that Koufra lost the thread of an author who was not that difficult. The history course must be very well-constructed, and the professor particularly remarkable, to arouse such interest in advance.

  “Who is this history professor?” asked Koufra, as soon as he had emerged from his Latin translation.

  “It’s Trubert!”

  “Trubert, the great historian?”

  “The very same. I told you that Chambourcy was a first-rate school, and you shall see for yourself!”

  At 2 p.m., when the siren whistled for history, the third form left the sports field without being asked, abandoning an exciting game of football. The history lesson was for the entire school; all the classes were gathered there. The venue was vast: an immense amphitheater in front of a large elevated stage, with the professor’s chair in the middle, along with the telephonoscope screen.

  “Why,” said Koufra, “one might think…”

  “The school’s great cinema, naturally,” Gustave replied. “The space is necessary for important events to unfold in their full amplitude, with mass-movements in their historical frame, great characteristic scenes, the reconstitutions of civilizations, with the individuals of the first rank around whom the centuries evolved… I’m talking like the school brochure, my boy, in order that you’ll understand that history can’t be taught in any other way. Pay attention—the lecture’s about to begin!”

  An electric bell had just sounded. The hubbub on the benches immediately ceased. All of the pupils leaned forward, their eyes attentive. A man appeared on the telephonoscope screen.

  Koufra recognized the earnest face and long white hair of the famous historian Trubert. It really was the great man. “It’s him,” he whispered to Gustave. “I thought he’d been dead for at least five years?”

  “What does that matter?” said Gustave, impatiently.

  Koufra leafed rapidly through a book, read two lines of a footnote, and went on: “Yes, yes…it was nine years ago that…”

  “As if that slight detail could prevent him giving his lecture…a lecture previously recorded on the phonograph. Shh! Shut up. He’ll still be giving his lecture in 100 years’ time, without any trouble, in the same voice…unless he’s been outmoded and superseded by some other great man…”

  The great historian Trubert spoke. An explanatory prologue. History aggregated and condensed, so to speak, in large characteristic tableaux, initially displaying the nature of civilizations and the life of peoples, summarizing in broad terms the march of events, their consequences and repercussions, modifications, progress and decadence.

  “He talks the way you did just now,” said Koufra.

  “Yes, he anticipated my ideas,” Gustave replied.

  The great historian fell silent. The cinema lit up; a great city appeared: monuments, colonnades, triumphant arches, temples, statues, hills laden with white buildings amid majestic trees, aqueducts extending into the distance.

  “Imperial Rome!” said Trubert.

  The scene came to life. It was the Forum, with its circulating crowd: plebeians, merchants, slaves, patricians, senators passing in litters, soldiers, citizens of distant provinces, foreign ambassadors going to the imperial palace—all the types and faces of the Roman world.

  Trubert explained.

  The cinema flickered momentarily. The Forum disappeared; in its place, a severe semicircular hall appeared: the senate. Men in togas came in gravely and sat down on the benches: the senators. Then there was the palace of the Caesars; an ambassadorial reception; tributes from the kings of vanquished peoples…

  There was whispering on the school benches. Nero was about to appear, A celebrated actor was expected in the great role. He was welcomed by discreet applause running from bench to bench.

  “He’s good as Nero, eh?” said Gustave. “Last year we had a first rate Julius Caesar—Chose, of the Comédie Française; very good! And Cleopatra too, the famous tragedienne of the Cinema Mondial. You don’t know her?”

  “Not yet,” said Koufra, sadly. “It’s always in the cinema, then—the history course?”

  “How can you expect it to be done otherwise? In old books, it’s dead history, whereas in the cinema, we live it. We don’t have to learn it; it unfolds before our eyes, and we remember it effortlessly, since we’ve almost lived it. Once, in Papa’s time, how much time was wasted engraving the sequence of events, the great periods, the dates and all that confused mess in one’s head? With today’s method, it’s merely a matter of opening one’s eyes tranquilly; it enters and classifies itself of its own accord; how much time is gained thus for other pursuits! Shh! Here’s the circus now, a scene I’ve been waiting for!”

  The great circus, with its tiers heaped with spectators, the imperial box, the Vestals, the patricians, the people, the petty merchants selling refreshments, and the gladiators filing out, raising their weapons to Caesar. A few combats. Various episodes…

  There was more subdued applause when the great Trubert stopped talking.

  “Obviously, it’s hard to organize, a course like this,” Gustave explained, “and the Public Education budget recognizes the fact. The scenery, the equipment, the costumes, the machinery…how expensive it all is! And the principal roles, and all the direction! It’s a considerable initial layout for the for the ministry, but it will get it back over time; our public education films have been adopted by many foreign countries, and—a great economy—this is happening in all the schools in France, with the great historian Trubert…”

  But Trubert had just faded out on the telephonoscope screen; today’s lesson was over. What, already?

  In the racket that ensued, the students were uttering admiring exclamations or discussing particular aspects of the lecture. They recalled the previous year’s lecture; some plumped for Julius Caesar, superbly evoked by the tragedian Chose, others for today’s Nero, so well-depicted in all his monstrous horror.

  “I’m looking forward to the next lecture,” Gustave declared,” on the decadence and fall of Rome—the invasions the barbarians, when Alaric will appear, or something like that. I have the program in my schoolbag—you’ll see…”

  In the study-period they were still talking, to the detriment of the assigned work to be done. The typewriters clacked at a moderate rate. The form-master, Virgile Radoux, whose preferences were interrogated, grew impatient.

  “Come on, come on—it’s a history assignment that’s demanded of you, not theater criticism. I once represented Nero in a sonnet…no, I won’t read it to you today…later… Work! Work!”

  “So, Monsieur,” Koufra put in, timidly, “that lecture is already some years old?”

  “Trubert’s lecture, undoubtedly, but the film is very recent—two years of work in the staging…”

  “Pardon me, but what about the other lectures by phono? The other professors? Those in physics and chemistry, French, Greek, English…all celebrities also, all of them as…”

  “Alas, some of them quit the world some time ago, but they continue to profess…they persist! They remain at the University,
my friend, and without wanting to criticize the superior authorities, I find that deplorable in some respects, for it inhibits progress considerably! One remains a form-master, in spite of all the degrees and diplomas one accumulates—it’s deplorable! The chair of French Literature belongs to a famous critic of 40 years ago; I can scarcely hope… I console myself with poetry, but times are hard for poor poets!”

  Koufra returned to his desk, pensively.

  Many other astonishments awaited him.

  V. The Phonographic loudspeaker is unwell.

  The weather is fine. Gustave and a number of other pupils are both content and furious. It is vacation weather. Does it not stand to reason that the vacation should be resumed? But the pitiless University does not see it that way. Gustave foments agitation, primarily desirous of bringing the government and the ministry down a peg.

  The Sun is shining as if it were August; Chambourcy becomes an open air school in truth. All the classes are held in the grounds.

  On both sides of the main drive, arbors are established, framed with lindens or hedges trimmed, according to the regulations, by the students—fortunately with the help of a few gardeners. There are grassy banks; on the shady side, a few long trestle-tables are set up, with benches; in addition, the pupils have permission to bring deck-chairs and beach-loungers. There are even sybarites in the sixth-form who sway back and forth in rocking-chairs while listening to the professors.

  In the filtered sunlight, in the open air refreshed by the breath of breezes passing through hedges and flowering bushes, one can work more agreeably, much better and more fruitfully than in the enclosed school-rooms.

  Gustave invites Koufra to admire 3A’s arbor, which is one of the most agreeable: a good situation, soft grass, a good view over the grounds. It is very comfortable there, lying on the grass.

  In the shelter of a thick clump of bushes, beneath a tall pine tree, Monsieur Virgile Radoux has his little table and his armchair; he is happy, and privately repeats the verses of Virgil, his distant forefather and fellow Apollonian. Moreover, smoking is permitted; while quietly supervising his class, he is able to follow the little plume of blue smoke rising into the sky, bearing away his thoughts.