The Schooldays of Jesus

  Dmitri the liberator of the statues and paintings frowns. ‘No need for that. No need to weigh up anything. You would be stupid to refuse the Academy. You would regret it for the rest of your life. Señor Arroyo is a master, a true master. There is no other word for it. It is an honour for us to have him among us in Estrella, which has never been a great city, teaching our children the art of dance. If I were in your son’s position I would clamour night and day to be allowed into his Academy. You can forget about your other options, whatever they are.’

  He is not sure that he likes this Dmitri, with his smelly clothing and his oily hair. He certainly does not like being harangued by him in public (it is mid-morning, the streets are full of people). ‘Well,’ he says, ‘that is for us to decide, is it not, Inés? And now we must be on our way. Goodbye.’ He takes the boy’s hand; they leave.

  In the car the boy speaks up for the first time. ‘Why don’t you like him?’

  ‘The museum guard? It’s not a question of liking or disliking. He is a stranger. He doesn’t know us, doesn’t know our circumstances. He should not be sticking his nose into our affairs.’

  ‘You don’t like him because he has a beard.’

  ‘That is nonsense.’

  ‘He doesn’t have a beard,’ says Inés. ‘There is a difference between wearing a nice, neat beard and not caring for your appearance. This man doesn’t shave, he doesn’t wash, he doesn’t wear clean clothes. He is not a good example to children.’

  ‘Who is a good example to children? Is Simón a good example?’

  There is silence.

  ‘Are you a good example, Simón?’ the boy presses.

  Since Inés will not stand up for him, he has to stand up for himself. ‘I try,’ he says. ‘I try to be a good example. If I fail, it is not for want of trying. I hope I have, on the whole, been a good example. But you must be the judge of that.’

  ‘You are not my father.’

  ‘No, I am not. But that does not disqualify me—does it?—from setting an example.’

  The boy does not reply. In fact he loses interest, switches off, stares abstractedly out of the window (they are passing through the dreariest of neighbourhoods, block after block of boxlike little houses). A long silence falls.

  ‘Dmitri sounds like scimitar,’ the boy says suddenly. ‘To chop off your head.’ A pause. ‘I like him even if you don’t. I want to go to the Academy.’

  ‘Dmitri has nothing to do with the Academy,’ says Inés. ‘He is just a doorman. If you want to go to the Academy, if your mind is set on it, you can go. But as soon as they start complaining that you are too clever for them and want to send you to psychologists and psychiatrists, I am taking you out at once.’

  ‘You don’t have to be clever to dance,’ says the boy. ‘When are we going to buy my dancing slippers?’

  ‘We will buy them now. Simón will drive us to the shoe shop right now, to the address the lady gave us.’

  ‘Do you hate her too?’ says the boy.

  Now it is Inés’s turn to stare out of the window.

  ‘I like her,’ says the boy. ‘She is pretty. She is prettier than you.’

  ‘You should learn to judge people by their inner qualities,’ says he, Simón. ‘Not just by whether they are pretty or not. Or whether they have a beard.’

  ‘What are inner qualities?’

  ‘Inner qualities are qualities like kindness and honesty and a sense of justice. You must surely have read about them in Don Quixote. There are a multitude of inner qualities, more than I can name off the top of my head, you would have to be a philosopher to know the whole list, but prettiness is not an inner quality. Your mother is just as pretty as señora Arroyo, only in a different way.’

  ‘Señora Arroyo is kind.’

  ‘Yes, I agree, she seems kind. She seemed to take a liking to you.’

  ‘So she has inner qualities.’

  ‘Yes, David, she is kind as well as being pretty. But prettiness and kindness are not connected. Being pretty is an accident, a matter of luck. We can be born pretty or we can be born plain, we have no say in it. Whereas being kind is not an accident. We are not born kind. We learn to be kind. We become kind. That is the difference.’

  ‘Dmitri has inner qualities too.’

  ‘Dmitri may well have inner qualities, I may have been too hasty in judging him, I concede that point. I simply didn’t observe any of his inner qualities, not today. They were not on display.’

  ‘Dmitri is kind. What does estimable mean? Why did he say the estimable Ana Magdalena?’

  ‘Estimable. You must surely have come across the word in Don Quixote. To esteem someone is to respect and honour him or her. However, Dmitri was using the word ironically. He was making a kind of joke. Estimable is a word that is usually applied to older people, not to someone of señora Arroyo’s age. For instance, if I called you estimable young David it would sound funny.’

  ‘Estimable old Simón. That’s funny too.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Dancing slippers, as it turns out, come in only two colours, gold and silver. The boy refuses both.

  ‘Is it for señor Arroyo’s Academy?’ the shop assistant asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All the children at the Academy are outfitted with our slippers,’ says the assistant. ‘All of them wear either gold or silver, without exception. If you turn up wearing black slippers or white slippers, young man, you will get very strange looks indeed.’

  The assistant is a tall, stooping man with a moustache so thin it might be drawn on his lip in charcoal.

  ‘Do you hear the gentleman, David?’ says he, Simón. ‘It’s gold or silver or dancing in your socks. Which is it to be?’

  ‘Gold,’ says the boy.

  ‘Gold it is,’ he tells the assistant. ‘How much?’

  ‘Forty-nine reales,’ says the assistant. ‘Let him try on this pair for size.’

  He glances at Inés. Inés shakes her head. ‘Forty-nine reales for a child’s slippers,’ she says. ‘How can you charge such a price?’

  ‘They are made of kidskin. They are not ordinary slippers. They are designed for dancers. They have built-in support for the arch.’

  ‘Forty reales,’ says Inés.

  The man shakes his head. ‘Very well, forty-nine,’ he, Simón, says.

  The man seats the boy, removes his shoes, slides the dancing slippers onto his feet. They fit snugly. He pays the man his forty-nine reales. The man packs the slippers in their box and gives the box to Inés. In silence they leave the shop.

  ‘Can I carry them?’ says the boy. ‘Did they cost a lot of money?’

  ‘A lot of money for a pair of slippers,’ says Inés.

  ‘But is it a lot of money?’

  He waits for Inés to reply, but she is silent. ‘There is no such thing as a lot of money in itself,’ he says patiently. ‘Forty-nine reales is a lot of money for a pair of slippers. On the other hand, forty-nine reales would not be a lot of money for a car or a house. Water costs almost nothing here in Estrella, whereas if you were in the desert, dying of thirst, you would give everything you owned for just a sip of water.’

  ‘Why?’ says the boy.

  ‘Why? Because staying alive is more important than anything else.’

  ‘Why is staying alive more important than anything?’

  He is about to answer, about to produce the correct, patient, educative words, when something wells up inside him. Anger? No. Irritation? No: more than that. Despair? Perhaps: despair in one of its minor forms. Why? Because he would like to believe he is guiding the child through the maze of the moral life when, correctly, patiently, he answers his unceasing Why questions. But where is there any evidence that the child absorbs his guidance or even hears what he says?

  He stops where he is on the busy footpath. Inés and the boy stop too, and stare at him in puzzlement. ‘Think of it in this way,’ he says. ‘We are tramping through the desert, you and Inés and I. You tell me you are th
irsty and I offer you a glass of water. Instead of drinking the water you pour it out in the sand. You say you thirst for answers: Why this? Why that? I, because I am patient, because I love you, offer you an answer each time, which you pour away in the sand. Today, at last, I am tired of offering you water. Why is staying alive important? If life does not seem important to you, so be it.’

  Inés raises a hand to her mouth in dismay. As for the boy, his face sets in a frown. ‘You say you love me but you don’t love me,’ he says. ‘You just pretend.’

  ‘I offer you the best answers I have and you throw them away like a child. Don’t be surprised if I lose patience with you sometimes.’

  ‘You are always saying that. You are always saying I am a child.’

  ‘You are a child, and a silly child too, sometimes.’

  A woman of middle age, a shopping basket on her arm, has stopped to listen. She whispers something to Inés that he does not catch. Inés shakes her head hurriedly.

  ‘Come, let’s go,’ says Inés, ‘before the police come and take us away.’

  ‘Why are the police going to take us away?’ says the boy.

  ‘Because Simón is behaving like a madman while we stand here listening to his nonsense. Because he is being a public nuisance.’

  CHAPTER 6

  MONDAY ARRIVES, and it falls to him to convey the boy to his new school. They get there well before eight o’clock. The studio doors are open but the studio itself is empty. He sits down on the piano stool. Together they wait.

  A door opens at the back and señora Arroyo enters, dressed as before in black. Ignoring him, she sweeps across the floor, stops before the boy, takes his hands in her own. ‘Welcome, David,’ she says. ‘I see you have brought a book. Will you show me?’

  The boy offers her his Don Quixote. She examines it with a frown, pages through it, returns it to him.

  ‘And do you have your dancing slippers?’

  The boy takes the slippers out of their cotton bag.

  ‘Good. Do you know what we call gold and silver? We call them the noble metals. Iron and copper and lead we call the slave metals. The noble metals are above, the slave metals are below. Just as there are noble metals and slave metals, there are noble numbers and slave numbers. You will learn to dance the noble numbers.’

  ‘They are not real gold,’ says the boy. ‘It’s just a colour.’

  ‘It is just a colour, but colours have meaning.’

  ‘I’ll leave now,’ says he, Simón. ‘I will be back to fetch you this afternoon.’ He kisses the boy on the crown of his head. ‘Goodbye, my boy. Goodbye, señora.’

  With time to kill, he wanders into the art museum. The walls are rather sparsely hung. Zafiro Gorge at Sunset. Composition I. Composition II. The Drinker. The artists’ names mean nothing to him.

  ‘Good morning, señor,’ says a familiar voice. ‘How do we impress you?’

  It is Dmitri, sans cap, so dishevelled he might just have got out of bed.

  ‘Interesting,’ he replies. ‘I am not an expert. Is there an Estrella school of painting, an Estrella style?’

  Dmitri ignores the question. ‘I was watching when you brought your son. A big day for him, his first day with the Arroyos.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you must have had a chance to speak to señora Arroyo, Ana Magdalena. Such a dancer! So graceful! But childless, alas. She wants to have children of her own but she can’t. It is a source of distress to her, of anguish. You wouldn’t think it, to look at her, would you—anguish? You would think she was one of the serene angels who live on nectar. A little sip now and again, nothing more, thank you. But then there are señor Arroyo’s children from his first marriage, whom she mothers. And the boarders too. So much love to give. Have you met señor Arroyo? No? Not yet? A great man, a true idealist who lives only for his music. You will see. Unfortunately he does not always have his feet on the ground, if you understand my meaning. Head in the clouds. So it’s Ana Magdalena who has to do the hard work, taking the youngsters through their dances, feeding the boarders, running a household, seeing to the affairs of the Academy. And she does it all! Splendidly! Not a word of complaint! Cool as a cucumber! A woman in a thousand. Everyone admires her.’

  ‘And all of these are housed on the same premises—the Academy of Dance, the boarding establishment, the Arroyo household?’

  ‘Oh, there is plenty of space. The Academy occupies the entire upper floor. Where are you from, señor, you and your family?’

  ‘From Novilla. We lived in Novilla until recently, until we moved north.’

  ‘Novilla. I’ve never been there. I came straight to Estrella and have been here ever since.’

  ‘And you have worked in the museum all that time?’

  ‘No, no, no—I have had more jobs than I can remember. That is my nature: a restless nature. I started out as a porter in the produce market. Then I had a spell working on the roads, but I didn’t like it. For a long while I worked in the hospital. Terrible. Terrible hours. But moving too—the sights you see! Then came the day my life changed. No exaggeration. Changed for the better. I was hanging about on the square, minding my business, when she walked past. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Thought it was an apparition. So beautiful. Unearthly. I jumped up and followed her—followed like a dog. For weeks I hung around the Academy, just for a glimpse of her. Of course she paid me no attention. Why should she? An ugly fellow like me. Then I saw a notice advertising a job at the museum, a cleaner, bottom of the ladder, and to cut a long story short I started work here and have been here ever since. Promoted first to Attendant and then last year to Principal Attendant. Because of my diligence and my punctuality.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand. You are referring to señora Arroyo?’

  ‘Ana Magdalena. Whom I worship. I am not ashamed to confess to it. Wouldn’t you do the same if you worshipped a woman—follow her to the ends of the earth?’

  ‘The museum is hardly the ends of the earth. How does señor Arroyo feel about your worshipping of his wife?’

  ‘Señor Arroyo is an idealist, as I told you. His mind is elsewhere, in the celestial sphere where the numbers spin.’

  He has had enough of this conversation. He did not ask for this man’s confidences. ‘I must leave, I have business to attend to,’ he says.

  ‘I thought you wanted to see the Estrella school of painters.’

  ‘Another day.’

  Hours yet before the school day ends. He buys a newspaper, sits down at a café on the square, orders a cup of coffee. On the front page is a photograph of an elderly couple with a gigantic cucurbit from their garden. It weighs fourteen kilograms, says the report, breaking the previous record by almost a kilogram. On page two a crime report lists the theft of a lawnmower from a shed (unlocked) and vandalism at a public toilet (a washbasin smashed). The deliberations of the municipal council and its various subcommittees figure largely: the subcommittee on public amenities, the subcommittee on roads and bridges, the subcommittee on finances, the subcommittee charged with organizing the forthcoming theatre festival. Then there are the sports pages, which preview a high point of the football season, the forthcoming clash between Aragonza and North Valley.

  He scans the Employment Offered columns. Bricklayer. Mason. Electrician. Bookkeeper. What is he looking for? Light labour, perhaps. Gardening. No demand for stevedores, of course.

  He pays for his coffee. ‘Is there an Office of Relocations in the city?’ he asks the waitress. ‘Of course,’ she says, and gives him directions.

  The relocations centre in Estrella is not nearly as grand as the one in Novilla—nothing but a cramped little bureau on a side street. Behind the desk sits a pale-faced, rather mournful-looking young man with a scraggly beard.

  ‘Good day,’ says he, Simón. ‘I am a new arrival here in Estrella. For the past month or so I have been employed in the valley doing casual labour—fruit-picking mainly. Now I am looking for something more permanent, preferably in the city.’


  The clerk fetches a card tray and sets it down on his desk. ‘It looks like a lot, but most of the cards are duds,’ he confides. ‘The trouble is, people don’t let us know us when a position is filled. How about this: Optima Dry Cleaners. Do you know anything about dry-cleaning?’

  ‘Nothing, but let me take the address. Do you have anything that is more physical—outdoor work, perhaps?’

  The clerk ignores his question. ‘Stockman at a hardware store. Does that interest you? No experience needed, just a head for figures. Do you have a head for figures?’

  ‘I am not a mathematician, but I can count.’

  ‘As I said, I can’t promise the position is still open. You see how the ink is faded?’ He holds the card up to the light. ‘That tells you how old the card is. How about this one? Typist in a law office. Can you type? No? Then there is this one: cleaner at the art museum.’

  ‘That position has been filled. I met the man who filled it.’

  ‘Have you considered retraining? That may be your best option: enrol for a course that retrains you for a new profession. As long as you are in training you continue to get your unemployment allowance.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he says. He does not mention that he has not registered for unemployment.

  Three o’clock approaches. He makes his way back to the Academy. At the doorway is Dmitri. ‘Come to fetch your son?’ says Dmitri. ‘I make a point of being here when the young ones come out. Free at last! So excited, so full of joy! I wish I could feel that kind of joy again, just for a minute. I remember nothing of my childhood, you know, not a minute. A complete blank. I mourn the loss. It grounds you, your childhood. Gives you roots in the world. I am like a tree that has been uprooted by the tempest of life. Do you know what I mean? Your boy is lucky to have a childhood of his own. How about you? Did you have a childhood?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No, I arrived fully formed. They took one look at me and marked me down as middle-aged. No childhood, no youth, no memories. Washed clean.’

  ‘Well, no use pining. At least we have the privilege of mixing with the young ones. Maybe some of their angel dust will rub off on us. Hark! End of dancing for the day. Now they will be saying their thanks. They always end the day with a prayer of thanks.’