The Schooldays of Jesus

  ‘He didn’t bury him. He just threw him in the bushes.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that, but the duck is dead. We can’t bring him back. You and I will go and bury him as soon as the day’s work is over.’

  ‘I wanted to kiss him but Bengi wouldn’t let me. He said he was dirty. But I kissed him anyway. I went into the bushes and kissed him.’

  ‘That’s good, I’m glad to hear it. It will mean a lot to him to know that someone loved him and kissed him after he died. It will also mean a lot to him to know he had a proper burial.’

  ‘You can bury him. I don’t want to bury him.’

  ‘Very well, I will do so. And if we come back tomorrow morning and the grave is empty and the whole duck family is swimming in the dam, father and mother and babies, with no one missing, then we will know that kissing works, that kissing can raise one from the dead. But if we don’t see him, if we don’t see the duck family—’

  ‘I don’t want them to come back. If they come back Bengi will just throw stones at them again. He is not sorry. He is just pretending. I know he is pretending but you won’t believe me. You never believe me.’

  There is no spade or pickaxe to be found, so he borrows a tyre lever from the truck. The boy leads him to where the carcass lies among the bushes. The feathers have already lost their gloss and ants have got to the eyes. With the lever he chops a hole in the flinty soil. It is not deep enough, he cannot pretend this is a decent burial, but he drops the dead bird in nevertheless and covers it. A webbed foot sticks out stiffly. He collects stones and lays them over the grave. ‘There,’ he says to the boy. ‘It’s the best I can do.’

  When they visit the spot the next morning the stones are scattered and the duck is gone. There are feathers everywhere. They search but find nothing save the head with its empty eye sockets and one foot. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and tramps off to rejoin the work crew.

  CHAPTER 2

  TWO MORE days, and the grape-picking is over; the truck has borne the last binfuls away.

  ‘Who is going to eat all those grapes?’ demands David.

  ‘They are not going to be eaten. They are going to be pressed in a winepress and the juice is going to be turned into wine.’

  ‘I don’t like wine,’ says David. ‘It’s sour.’

  ‘Wine is an acquired taste. When we are young we don’t like it, then when we are older we acquire a taste for it.’

  ‘I am never going to acquire a taste for it.’

  ‘That’s what you say. Let’s wait and see.’

  The vineyards having been stripped bare, they move on to the olive groves, where they spread nets and use long hooks to bring down the olives. The work is more taxing than grape-picking. He looks forward to the midday breaks; he finds the heat of the long afternoons hard to support, and pauses often to drink or just recover his strength. He can hardly believe that only months ago he was working on the docks as a stevedore, carrying heavy loads, barely breaking into a sweat. His back and arms have lost their old strength, his heart beats sluggishly, he is nagged by pain from the rib that was broken.

  From Inés, unused as she is to physical labour, he has been expecting complaints and grumbling. But no: she works by his side all day, joylessly but without a murmur. She does not need to be reminded that it was she who decided they should flee Novilla and take up the lives of gypsies. Well, now she has found out how gypsies live: by toiling in other men’s fields from sunrise to sunset, all for a day’s bread and a few reales in their pockets.

  But at least the boy is having a good time, the boy for whose sake they fled the city. After a brief, haughty estrangement, he has rejoined Bengi and his tribe—even, it would seem, taken over their leadership. For it is he, not Bengi, who now gives the orders, and Bengi and the others who meekly obey.

  Bengi has three younger sisters. They dress in identical calico smocks and wear their hair in identical pigtails tied with identical red ribbons; they join in all the boys’ games. At his school in Novilla David had refused to have anything to do with girls. ‘They are always whispering and giggling,’ he said to Inés. ‘They are silly.’ Now for the first time he is playing with girls, not seeming to find them silly at all. There is a game he has invented that consists in clambering onto the roof of a shed beside the olive grove and leaping down onto a convenient heap of sand. Sometimes he and the youngest of the sisters take the leap hand in hand, rolling over in a tangle of legs and arms, rising to their feet chortling with laughter.

  The little girl, whose name is Florita, follows David like a shadow wherever he goes; he does nothing to discourage her.

  During the midday break one of the olive-pickers teases her. ‘I see you have a novio,’ she says. Florita gazes back at her solemnly. Perhaps she does not know the word. ‘What is his name? What is the name of your novio?’ Florita blushes and runs away.

  When the girls leap from the roof their smocks open up like the petals of flowers, revealing identical rose-coloured panties.

  There are still grapes aplenty from the harvest, whole baskets of them. The children stuff their mouths; their hands and faces are sticky with the sweet juice. All save David, who eats one grape at a time, spits out the seeds, and rinses his hands fastidiously afterwards.

  ‘The others could certainly learn manners from him,’ remarks Inés. My boy, she wants to add—he, Simón, can see it—my clever, well-mannered boy. So unlike these other ragamuffins.

  ‘He is growing up quickly,’ he concedes. ‘Perhaps too quickly. There are times when I find his behaviour a little too’—he hesitates over the word—‘too magistral, too masterful. Or so it seems to me.’

  ‘He is a boy. He has a strong character.’

  The gypsy life may not suit Inés, and it does not suit him, but it certainly suits the boy. He has never seen him so active, so full of energy. He wakes up early, eats voraciously, runs around with his friends all day. Inés tries to get him to wear a cap, but the cap is soon lost, never to be found again. Where before he was somewhat pale, he is now as brown as a berry.

  It is not little Florita to whom he is closest but Maite, her sister. Maite is seven, a few months older than he. She is the prettiest of the three sisters and the most thoughtful in disposition.

  One evening the boy confides in Inés: ‘Maite asked me to show her my penis.’

  ‘And?’ says Inés.

  ‘She says if I show her my penis she will show me her thing.’

  ‘You should play more with Bengi,’ says Inés. ‘You shouldn’t be playing with girls all the time.’

  ‘We weren’t playing, we were talking. She says if I put my penis in her thing she will get a baby. Is it true?’

  ‘No, it’s not true,’ says Inés. ‘Someone should wash that girl’s mouth out with soap.’

  ‘She says that Roberto comes to the women’s room when they are asleep and puts his penis in her mother’s thing.’

  Inés casts him, Simón, a helpless glance.

  ‘What grown-up people do may sometimes seem strange,’ he intervenes. ‘When you are older you will understand better.’

  ‘Maite says her mother makes him put a balloon on his penis so that she won’t get a baby.’

  ‘Yes, that is correct, some people do that.’

  ‘Do you put a balloon on your penis, Simón?’

  Inés gets up and leaves.

  ‘I? A balloon? No, of course not.’

  ‘So if you don’t, can Inés get a baby?’

  ‘My boy, you are talking about sexual intercourse, and sexual intercourse is for married people. Inés and I aren’t married.’

  ‘But you can do sexual intercourse even if you aren’t married.’

  ‘It is true, you can have sexual intercourse if you are not married. But having babies when you are not married is not a good idea. On the whole.’

  ‘Why? Is it because the babies are huérfano babies?’

  ‘No, a baby born to an unmarried mother is not a huérfano. A huérfano is something quite
different. Where did you come across that word?’

  ‘In Punta Arenas. Lots of boys in Punta Arenas are huérfanos. Am I a huérfano?’

  ‘No, of course not. You have a mother. Inés is your mother. A huérfano is a child with no parents at all.’

  ‘Where do huérfanos come from if they don’t have parents?’

  ‘A huérfano is a child whose parents have died and left him alone in the world. Or sometimes the mother has no money to buy food and gives him away to other people to look after. Him or her. Those are the ways you get to be a huérfano. You are not a huérfano. You have Inés. You have me.’

  ‘But you and Inés are not my real parents, so I am a huérfano.’

  ‘David, you arrived on a boat, just as I did, just as the people around us did, the ones who didn’t have the luck to be born here. Very likely Bengi and his brother and his sisters arrived on boats too. When you travel across the ocean on a boat, all your memories are washed away and you start a completely new life. That is how it is. There is no before. There is no history. The boat docks at the harbour and we climb down the gangplank and we are plunged into the here and now. Time begins. The clock starts running. You are not a huérfano. Bengi is not a huérfano.’

  ‘Bengi was born in Novilla. He told me. He has never been on a boat.’

  ‘Very well, if Bengi and his brother and sisters were born here then their history begins here and they are not huérfanos.’

  ‘I can remember the time before I was on the boat.’

  ‘So you have told me already. There are lots of people who say they can remember the life they had before they crossed the ocean. But there is a problem with such memories, and because you are clever I think you can see what the problem is. The problem is that we have no way of telling whether what these people remember are true memories or made-up memories. Because sometimes a made-up memory can feel just as true as a true memory, particularly when we want the memory to be true. So, for example, someone may wish to have been a king or a lord before he crossed the ocean, and he may wish it so much that he convinces himself he truly was a king or a lord. Yet the memory is probably not a true memory. Why not? Because being a king is quite a rare thing. Only one person in a million becomes a king. So the chances are that someone who remembers being a king is just making up a story and then forgetting he made it up. And similarly with other memories. We just have no way of telling for sure whether a memory is true or false.’

  ‘But was I born out of Inés’s tummy?’

  ‘You are forcing me to repeat myself. Either I can reply, “Yes, you were born out of Inés’s tummy,” or I can reply, “No, you weren’t born out of Inés’s tummy.” But neither reply will bring us any closer to the truth. Why not? Because, like everyone else who came on the boats, you can’t remember and nor can Inés. Unable to remember, all you can do, all she can do, all any of us can do is to make up stories. So, for instance, I can tell you that on my last day in the other life I was among a huge crowd waiting to embark, so huge that they had to telephone the retired pilots and ships’ masters and tell them to come to the docks to help out. And in that crowd, I could say, I saw you and your mother—saw you with my own eyes. Your mother was clutching your hand, looking worried, unsure of where to go. Then, I could say, I lost sight of the pair of you in the crowd. When at last it was my turn to step on board, whom did I see but you, all by yourself, clinging to a rail, calling, “Mummy, mummy, where are you?” So I went over and took you by the hand and said, “Come, little friend, I will help you find your mother.” And that was how you and I met.

  ‘That is a story I could tell, about my first vision of you and your mother, as I remember it.’

  ‘But is it true? Is it a true story?’

  ‘Is it true? I don’t know. It feels true to me. The more often I tell it to myself, the truer it feels. You feel true, clutching the rail so tightly that I had to loosen your fingers; the crowd at the docks feels true—hundreds of thousands of people, all lost, like you, like me, with empty hands and anxious eyes. The bus feels true—the bus that delivered the superannuated pilots and ships’ masters at the docks, wearing the navy-blue uniforms they had brought down from trunks in the attic, still smelling of naphtha. It all feels true from beginning to end. But maybe it feels so true because I have repeated it to myself so often. Does it feel true to you? Do you remember how you were separated from your mother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, of course you don’t. But do you not remember because it didn’t happen or because you have forgotten? We will never know for sure. That is the way things are. That is what we must live with.’

  ‘I think I am a huérfano.’

  ‘And I think you are just saying so because it seems romantic to you to be alone in the world without parents. Well, let me inform you that in Inés you have the best mother in the world, and if you have the best mother in the world you are certainly not a huérfano.’

  ‘If Inés has a baby will he be my brother?’

  ‘Your brother or your sister. But Inés isn’t going to have a baby because Inés and I are not married.’

  ‘If I put my penis in Maite’s thing and she has a baby, will it be a huérfano?’

  ‘No. Maite is not going to have a baby of any kind. You and she are too young to make babies, just as you and she are too young to understand why grown-up people get married and have sexual intercourse. Grown-up people get married because they have passionate feelings for each other, in a way that you and Maite don’t. You and she can’t feel passion because you are still too young. Accept that as a fact and don’t ask me to explain why. Passion can’t be explained, it can only be experienced. More exactly, it has to be experienced from the inside before it can be understood from the outside. What matters is that you and Maite should not have sexual intercourse because sexual intercourse without passion is meaningless.’

  ‘But is it horrible?’

  ‘No, it isn’t horrible, it is just an unwise thing to do, unwise and frivolous. Any more questions?’

  ‘Maite says she wants to marry me.’

  ‘And you? Do you want to marry Maite?’

  ‘No. I don’t ever want to get married.’

  ‘Well, you may change your mind about that when the passions arrive.’

  ‘Are you and Inés going to get married?’

  He does not reply. The boy trots to the door. ‘Inés!’ he calls out. ‘Are you and Simón going to get married?’

  ‘Shush!’ comes Inés’s angry retort. She re-enters the dormitory. ‘That’s enough talk. It’s time for you to go to bed.’

  ‘Do you have passions, Inés?’ asks the boy.

  ‘That is none of your business,’ says Inés.

  ‘Why don’t you ever want to talk to me?’ says the boy. ‘Simón talks to me.’

  ‘I do talk to you,’ says Inés. ‘But not about private matters. Now brush your teeth.’

  ‘I’m not going to have passions,’ the boy announces.

  ‘That is what you say today,’ says he, Simón. ‘But as you grow up you will find that the passions have a life of their own. Now hurry up and brush your teeth, and maybe your mother will read you a goodnight story.’

  CHAPTER 3

  ROBERTA, WHOM on the first day they took to be the owner of the farm, is in fact an employee like them, employed to oversee the workers, to supply them with rations and pay them their wages. She is a friendly person, well liked by all. She takes an interest in the workers’ personal lives and brings little treats for the children: sweets, biscuits, lemonade. The farm is owned, they learn, by three sisters known far and wide simply as the Three Sisters, elderly now, and childless, who divide their time between the farm and their residence in Estrella.

  Roberta has a long conversation with Inés. ‘What are you going to do about your son’s schooling?’ she asks. ‘I can see he is a bright lad. It would be a pity if he ended up like Bengi, who has never been to a proper school. Not that there is anything wrong with Bengi.
He is a nice boy, but he has no future. He will just be a farm labourer like his parents, and what kind of life is that, in the long term?’

  ‘David went to a school in Novilla,’ says Inés. ‘It wasn’t a success. He didn’t have good teachers. He is a naturally clever child. He found the pace in the classroom too slow. We had to remove him and educate him at home. I am afraid that if we put him in a school here he will have the same experience.’

  Inés’s account of their dealings with the school system of Novilla is less than wholly truthful. He and Inés had agreed to keep quiet about their entanglements with the authorities in Novilla; but evidently Inés feels free to confide in the older woman, and he does not intervene.

  ‘Does he want to go to school?’ asks Roberta.

  ‘No, he doesn’t, not after his experiences in Novilla. He is perfectly happy here on the farm. He likes the freedom.’

  ‘It’s a wonderful life for a child, but the harvest is coming to an end, you know. And running around on a farm like a wild thing is no preparation for the future. Have you thought of a private teacher? Or of an academy? An academy won’t be like a normal school. Maybe an academy would suit a child like him.’

  Inés is silent. He, Simón, speaks for the first time. ‘We can’t afford a private tutor. As for academies, there were no academies in Novilla. At least no one spoke of them. What exactly is an academy? Because if it is just a fancy name for a school for troublesome children, children with ideas of their own, then we wouldn’t be interested—would we, Inés?’

  Inés shakes her head.

  ‘There are two academies in Estrella,’ says Roberta. ‘They are not for troublesome children at all. One is the singing academy and the other is the dance academy. There is also the Atom School; but that is for older children.’

  ‘David likes to sing. He has a good voice. But what happens in these academies besides singing and dancing? Do they hold proper classes? And do they accept such young children?’