J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

‘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 Davíd 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, Davíd?’ 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 sidewalk. 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 thirsty 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.’

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, Davíd,’ 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.’