The Schooldays of Jesus

  ‘That is not true. I do love you. I love you a great deal more than Dmitri does. Dmitri doesn’t know the meaning of love.’

  ‘Dmitri loves lots of people. He loves them because he has a big heart. He told me. Stop laughing, Diego! Why are you laughing?’

  Diego cannot stop laughing. ‘Did he really say that—that if you have a big heart you can love lots of people? Maybe he meant lots of girls.’

  Diego’s laughter fires the boy even further. His voice rises. ‘It’s true! Dmitri has a big heart and Simón has a tiny heart—that’s what Dmitri says. He says Simón has a tiny little heart like a bedbug, so he can’t love anybody. Simón, is it true that Dmitri did sexual intercourse to Ana Magdalena to make her die?’

  ‘I am not going to answer that question. It’s stupid. It’s ridiculous. You don’t know what sexual intercourse is.’

  ‘I do! Inés told me. She has done sexual intercourse lots of times and she hates it. She says it’s horrible.’

  ‘Be that as it may, I am not going to answer any more questions about Dmitri. I don’t want to hear his name again. I am finished with him.’

  ‘But why did he do sexual intercourse to her? Why won’t you tell me? Did he want to make her heart stop?’

  ‘That’s enough, David. Calm down.’ And to Diego: ‘You can see the child is upset. He has been having nightmares ever since… ever since the event. You should be helping him, not laughing at him.’

  ‘Tell me!’ the boy shouts. ‘Why won’t you tell me? Did he want to make a baby inside her? Did he want to make her heart stop? Can she have a baby even if her heart stops?’

  ‘No, she can’t. When the mother dies the child inside her dies too. That is the rule. But Ana Magdalena wasn’t going to have a baby.’

  ‘How do you know? You don’t know anything. Did Dmitri make her baby turn blue? Can we make her heart start again?’

  ‘Ana Magdalena was not going to have a baby and no, we can’t make her heart beat again because that is not the way the heart works. Once the heart stops, it stops forever.’

  ‘But when she has a new life her heart will beat again, won’t it?’

  ‘In a sense, yes. In the life to come Ana Magdalena will have a new heart. Not only will she have a new life and a new heart, she will remember nothing of this sorry mess. She won’t remember the Academy and she won’t remember Dmitri, which will be a blessing. She will be able to start afresh, just as you and I did, washed clean of the past, without bad memories to weigh her down.’

  ‘Did you forgive Dmitri, Simón?’

  ‘I am not the one whom Dmitri injured, so it is not for me to forgive him. It is Ana Magdalena’s forgiveness that he should be seeking. And señor Arroyo’s.’

  ‘I didn’t forgive him. He doesn’t want anyone to forgive him.’

  ‘That is just boasting on his part, perverse boasting. He wants us to think of him as a wild person who does things that normal people are afraid to do. David, I am sick and tired of talking about that man. As far as I am concerned he is dead and buried. Now I have to go off on my rounds. Next time you have bad dreams, remember that you have only to wave your arms and they will evaporate like smoke. Wave your arms and shout Begone! like Don Quixote. Give me a kiss. I will see you on Friday. Goodbye, Diego.’

  ‘I want to go to Dmitri! If Diego won’t take me I’ll go by myself!’

  ‘You can go, but they won’t let you in. The place where he is kept is not a normal hospital. It is a hospital for criminals, with walls around it, and guards with guard dogs.’

  ‘I’ll take Bolívar along. He will kill the guard dogs.’

  Diego holds open the door of the car. The boy gets in and sits with his arms folded, a pout on his face.

  ‘If you want my opinion,’ says Diego quietly, ‘he is out of control, this one. You and Inés should do something about it. Send him to school, to begin with.’

  He was wrong about the hospital, as it turns out, completely wrong. The psychiatric hospital he had pictured, the hospital in the remote countryside with the high walls and the guard dogs, does not exist. All that exists is the city hospital with its rather modest psychiatric wing—the same hospital where Dmitri used to work before he joined the museum staff. Among the orderlies there are some who remember him with affection from the old days. Ignoring the fact that he is a self-confessed murderer, they pamper him, bringing him snacks from the staff kitchen, keeping him supplied with cigarettes. He has a room to himself in the part of the wing marked Restricted Access, with a shower cubicle and a desk with a lamp.

  All of this—the snacks, the cigarettes, the shower cubicle—he learns about when, the day after Diego’s visit, he comes home from his bicycle rounds and finds the self-confessed murderer stretched out on the bed, asleep, while the boy sits cross-legged on the floor playing a game of cards. So surprised is he that he lets out a cry, to which the boy, raising a finger to his lips, whispers, ‘Ssh!’

  He strides over and gives Dmitri an angry shake. ‘You! What are you doing here?’

  Dmitri sits up. ‘Calm yourself, Simón,’ he says. ‘I’ll be gone shortly. I just want to be sure that…you know…Did you do as I told you?’

  He brushes the question aside. ‘David, how does this man come to be here?’

  Dmitri himself responds. ‘We came by bus, Simón, like normal people. Calm yourself. Young David came to visit me like the good friend he is. We had a chat. Then I put on an orderly’s uniform, as in the old days, and the youngster took me by the hand and we walked out, the pair of us, just like that. He’s my son, I said. What a sweet boy, they said. Of course the uniform helped. People trust a uniform—that’s one of the things you learn about life. We walked out of the hospital and came straight here. And when you and I have settled our business I will catch the bus back. No one will even notice I was gone.’

  ‘David, is it true? A hospital for the criminally insane, and they let this man walk out?’

  ‘He wanted bread,’ says the boy. ‘He said there was no bread for him in the hospital.’

  ‘That’s nonsense. He gets three meals a day there, with as much bread as he wants.’

  ‘He said there was no bread so I took him bread.’

  ‘Sit down, Simón,’ says Dmitri. ‘And will you do me a favour?’ He takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights one. ‘Don’t insult me, please, not in front of the boy. Don’t call me criminally insane. Because it is not true. A criminal perhaps, but not insane, not in the slightest.

  ‘Do you want to hear what the doctors say, the ones who were told to find out what is wrong with me? No? All right, I’ll skip the doctors. Let us talk about the Arroyos instead. I hear they had to close down the Academy. That’s a pity. I liked the Academy. I liked to be with the young ones, the little dancers, all so happy, so full of life. I wish I had gone to an academy like that when I was a child. Who knows, I might have turned out differently. Still, it’s no use crying over spilt milk, is it? What’s done is done.’

  Spilt milk. The phrase outrages him. ‘There have been a lot of people crying over the milk you spilled,’ he bursts out. ‘You have left some broken hearts behind you and a lot of anger.’

  ‘Which I can understand,’ says Dmitri, puffing leisurely on his cigarette. ‘You think I am not aware of the enormity of my crime, Simón? Why else do you think I volunteered for the salt mines? The salt mines are not for crybabies. You have to be a man to cope with the salt mines. If they would only give me my marching papers from the hospital I would be off to the salt mines tomorrow. Dmitri here, I would say to the mine captain, fit and well and reporting for duty! But they won’t let me out, the psychologists and the psychiatrists, the specialists in deviant this and deviant that. Tell me about your mother, they say. Did your mother love you? When you were a baby did she give you her breast? What was it like, sucking on her breast? What am I supposed to say? What do I remember of my mother and her breasts when I can barely remember yesterday? So I just say whatever comes into my head. It was like
sucking a lemon, I say. Or It was like pork, it was like sucking a pork rib. Because that’s how it works, psychiatry, isn’t it?—you say the first thing that comes into your head and then they go away and analyze it and come up with what is wrong with you.

  ‘They are all so interested in me, Simón! It amazes me. I’m not interested in me but they are. To me I’m just a common criminal, as common as weed. But to them I am something special. I have no conscience, or else I have too much conscience, they can’t decide which. If you have too much conscience, I want to tell them, your conscience eats you up and there is nothing left of you, like a spider eating a wasp or a wasp eating a spider, I can never remember which, nothing left but the shell. What do you think, young man? Do you know what conscience is?’

  The boy nods.

  ‘Of course you do! You understand old Dmitri better than anyone—better than all the psychologists in the world. What do you dream about? they say. Maybe you dream about falling down dark holes and being swallowed by dragons.—Yes, I say, yes, that’s exactly it! Whereas you never needed to ask me about my dreams. You took one look and understood me at once. I understand you and I don’t forgive you. I’ll never forget that. He is really special, Simón, this boy of yours. A special case. Wise beyond his years. You could learn from him.’

  ‘David is not a special case. There is no such thing as a special case. He is not a special case, nor are you. No one is taken in by the show of craziness you put on, Dmitri, not for one minute. I hope you do get sent to the salt mines. That will put an end to your nonsense.’

  ‘Well spoken, Simón, well spoken! I love you for it. I could kiss you, only you wouldn’t like that, you not being a kissing man. Whereas your son here has always been ready to give old Dmitri a kiss, haven’t you, my boy?’

  ‘Dmitri, why did you make Ana Magdalena’s heart stop?’ asks the boy.

  ‘Good question! That’s what the doctors want to know most of all. It excites them, the thought of it—pressing a beautiful woman so tight in your arms that you stop her heart—only they are too ashamed to ask. They don’t dare to ask straight out, like you, no, they have to come at it in a roundabout way, like snakes. Did your mother love you? What did it taste like, your mother’s milk? Or that stupid judge: Who are you? Are you yourself?

  ‘Why did I stop her heart? I’ll tell you. We were together, she and I, when suddenly a thought came into my head—popped into my head and wouldn’t leave me. I thought: Why not put your hands around her throat while she is, you know, in the throes of it, and give her a bit of a throttle? Show her who is master. Show her what love is really like.

  ‘Killing the one you love: that is something that old Simón here will never understand. But you understand, don’t you? You understand Dmitri. From the first moment you understood.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she marry you?’

  ‘Marry me? No. Why would a lady like Ana Magdalena marry someone like me? I’m dirt, my boy. Old Simón is right. I’m dirt, and my dirt rubs off on everyone I touch. That’s why I must go to the salt mines, where everyone is dirt, where I will be at home. No, Ana Magdalena spurned me. I loved her, I worshipped her, I would have done anything for her, but she would have nothing to do with me, you saw it, everyone could see it. So I gave her a big surprise and stopped her heart. Taught her a lesson. Gave her something to think about.’

  A silence falls. Then he, Simón, speaks. ‘You asked about your papers, the papers you wanted me to destroy.’

  ‘Yes. Why else would I take the trouble to leave my hospital home and come here? To find out about the papers, of course. Go on. Tell me. I trusted you and you broke that trust. Is that what you are going to say? Say it.’

  ‘I haven’t broken any trust. But I will say this. I have seen what was in the case, including you know what. Therefore I know that the story you tell me is not true. I won’t say any more. But I am not going to stand here meekly like a sheep and be lied to.’

  Dmitri turns to the boy. ‘Do you have anything to eat, my boy? Dmitri is feeling a bit peckish.’

  The boy jumps up, rummages in the cupboard, returns with a packet of biscuits.

  ‘Ginger snaps!’ says Dmitri. ‘Would you like a ginger snap, Simón? No? What about you, David?’

  The boy takes a biscuit from him and bites into it.

  ‘So it is public knowledge, is it?’ says Dmitri.

  ‘No, it is not public knowledge.’

  ‘But you are going to use it against me.’

  ‘Use what against you?’ asks the boy.

  ‘Never mind, my son. This is something between old Simón and me.’

  ‘It depends on what you mean by against. If you keep your promise and disappear into the salt mines for the rest of your life, then what we are referring to ceases to be of consequence, one way or the other.’

  ‘Don’t play logic games with me, Simón. You know and I know what against means. Why didn’t you do as you were told? Now look at the mess you are in.’

  ‘I? I am not the one in a mess, you are in a mess.’

  ‘No, Simón. Tomorrow or the next day or the one after that I will be free to go to the salt mines and pay my debt and clear my conscience, while you—you—will have to stay behind with this mess on your hands.’

  ‘What mess, Dmitri?’ asks the boy. ‘Why won’t you tell me?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what mess. Poor Dmitri! Did we really do him justice? Shouldn’t we have tried harder to save him, to turn him into a good citizen and a productive member of society? What must it be like for him, languishing in the salt mines while we live our easy lives in Estrella? Shouldn’t we have shown him a modicum of mercy? Shouldn’t we summon him back, saying, All is forgiven, Dmitri, you can have your old job back, and your uniform, and your pension, only you must say you are sorry, so that we can feel better inside? That’s the mess, my boy. Wallowing in excrement like a pig. Wallowing in your own shit. Why didn’t you just do what I told you, Simón, instead of getting sucked into this stupid charade of saving me from myself ? Send him to the doctors, tell them to screw off the old head and screw on a new one. And the pills they give you! It’s worse than the salt mines, being in the mad ward! Just getting through twenty-four hours is like wading through mud. Tick tock tick tock. I can’t wait to start living again.’

  He, Simón, has reached the end of his tether. ‘That’s enough, Dmitri. Please leave now. Leave at once, or I will call the police.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s goodbye, is it? And what about you, David? Are you going to say goodbye to Dmitri too? Goodbye—see you in the next life. Is that how it is going to be? I thought we had an understanding, you and I. Has old Simón been working on you, shaking your confidence in me? He’s a bad man, how can you love such a bad man? Who ever stopped loving a person because he was bad? I did my worst to Ana Magdalena, yet she never stopped loving me. She hated me, maybe, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t love me. Love and hate: you can’t have the one without the other. Like salt and pepper. Like black and white. That’s what people forget. She loved me and she hated me, like any normal person. Like Simón here. Do you think Simón loves you all the time? Of course he doesn’t. He loves you and he hates you, it’s all mixed up inside him, only he won’t tell you. No, he keeps it secret, pretends it’s all nice and placid inside him, no waves, no ripples. Like the way he talks, our famous man of reason. But believe me, old Simón here is as much of a mess inside as you or I. In fact, more of a mess. Because at least I don’t pretend to be what I am not. This is how I am, I say, and this is how I talk, all mixed up. Are you listening, my boy? Catch my words while you can, because Simón here wants to drive me away, out of your life. Listen hard. When you listen to me, you listen to the truth, and what do we want, finally, but the truth?’

  ‘But when you see Ana Magdalena in the next life, you won’t make her heart stop again, will you?’

  ‘I don’t know, my boy. Maybe there won’t be a next life—not for me, not for any of us. Maybe the sun will suddenly loom large in
the sky and engulf us, and that will be the end of us all. No more Dmitri. No more David. Just a big ball of fire. That’s how I see things, sometimes. That’s my vision.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then nothing. Lots of flames, then lots of silence.’

  ‘But is it true?’

  ‘True? Who is to say? It’s all in the future, and the future is a mystery. What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s not true. I think you are just saying so.’

  ‘Well, if you say it’s not true then it’s not true, because you, young David, are Dmitri’s king, and your word is Dmitri’s command. But to get back to your question, no, I won’t do it again. The salt mines will cure me for good of my badness, my rages and my murderousness. They will knock all such nonsense out of me. So you needn’t fret, Ana Magdalena is safe.’

  ‘But you mustn’t do sexual intercourse to her again.’

  ‘No sexual intercourse! This youngster of yours is very strict, Simón, very absolute. But he’ll come round as he grows older. Sexual intercourse—it’s part of human nature, my boy, there’s no escaping it. Even Simón will agree. There is no escaping it, is there, Simón? No escaping the thunderbolt.’

  He, Simón, is mute. When was he last hit by a thunderbolt? Not in this life.

  Then suddenly Dmitri seems to lose interest in them. Restlessly his eyes flicker around the room. ‘Time to go. Time to return to my lonely cell. Do you mind if I hold on to the biscuits? I like to nibble on a biscuit now and then. Come and see me again, young man. We can go for a ride on the bus, or visit the zoo. I’d enjoy that. I always enjoy chatting to you. You are the only one who really understands old Dmitri. The psychologists and the psychiatrists with their questions, they just can’t work out what I am, man or beast. But you see right through me, into my heart. Now give Dmitri a hug.’

  He lifts the boy off the ground in a tight embrace, whispers words in his ear that he, Simón, cannot hear. The boy nods vigorously.

  ‘Goodbye, Simón. Don’t believe everything I say. It is just air, air that blows where it listeth.’