J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

But winter is upon them, and he dreads the rainy days. Though he is equipped with a capacious oilskin cape and a mariner’s oilskin hat, the rain nonetheless finds its way through. Cold and sodden, he is sometimes tempted to dump his pamphlets and return the bicycle to the depot. He is tempted, but he does not give in. Why not? He is not sure. Perhaps because he feels a certain obligation to the city that has offered them a new life, even though it is not clear to him how a city, which has no sensation, no feelings, can benefit from the distribution among its citizens of advertisements for twenty-four-piece cutlery sets in handsome presentation boxes at low low prices.

He thinks of the Arroyos, husband and wife, to whose upkeep he is in small measure contributing by pedalling around in the rain. Though he has not yet had an opportunity to distribute advertisements for their Academy, what the couple offer — dancing to the stars as a substitute for learning one’s multiplication tables — is not different in nature from what is offered by the lotion that miraculously brings hair follicles back to life or the vibrating belt that miraculously dissolves body fat, molecule by molecule. Like Inés and himself, the Arroyos must have arrived in Estrella with nothing but the barest belongings; they too must have passed a night sleeping on newspapers or the equivalent; they too must have scraped a living together until their Academy got going. Maybe, like him, señor Arroyo had to spend a while stuffing pamphlets into letter boxes; maybe Ana Magdalena of the alabaster complexion had to go down on her knees and wash floors. A city criss-crossed by the paths of immigrants: if they did not all live in hope, if they did not each have their quantum of hopefulness to add to the great sum, where would Estrella be?

Davíd brings home a Notice to Parents. There is to be an open evening at the Academy. Señor and señora Arroyo will address the parents on the educational philosophy behind the Academy, students will give a performance, after which there will be light refreshments. Parents are encouraged to bring interested friends along. Proceedings will commence at seven.

The audience, on the evening, is disappointingly thin, no more than twenty. Of the chairs that have been set out many remain empty. Taking their place in the front row, he and Inés can hear the young performers whispering and giggling behind the curtain drawn across the far end of the studio.

Wearing a dark evening dress with a shawl over her bare shoulders, señora Arroyo emerges. For a long moment she stands in silence before them. Again he is struck by her poise, her calm beauty.

She speaks. ‘Welcome, all of you, and thank you for coming out on a cold, wet evening. Tonight I am going to tell you a little about the Academy and what my husband and I hope to achieve for our students. For that it will be necessary to give you a brief outline of the philosophy behind the Academy. Those of you who are familiar with it, please bear with me.

‘As we know, from the day when we arrive in this life we put our former existence behind us. We forget it. But not entirely. Of our former existence certain remnants persist: not memories in the usual sense of the word but what we can call shadows of memories. Then, as we become habituated to our new life, even these shadows fade, until we have forgotten our origins entirely and accept that what our eyes see is the only life there is.

‘The child, however, the young child, still bears deep impresses of a former life, shadow recollections which he lacks words to express. He lacks words because, along with the world we have lost, we have lost a language fit to evoke it. All that is left of that primal language is a handful of words, what I call transcendental words, among which the names of the numbers, uno, dos, tres, are foremost.

‘ Uno-dos-tres : is this just a chant we learn at school, the mindless chant we call counting ; or is there a way of seeing through the chant to what lies behind and beyond it, namely the realm of the numbers themselves — the noble numbers and their auxiliaries, too many to count, as many as the stars, numbers born out of the unions of noble numbers? We, my husband and I and our helpers, believe there is such a way. Our Academy is dedicated to guiding the souls of our students toward that realm, to bringing them in accord with the great underlying movement of the universe, or, as we prefer to say, the dance of the universe.

‘To bring the numbers down from where they reside, to allow them to manifest themselves in our midst, to give them body, we rely on the dance. Yes, here in the Academy we dance, not in a graceless, carnal, or disorderly way, but body and soul together, so as to bring the numbers to life. As music enters us and moves us in dance, so the numbers cease to be mere ideas, mere phantoms, and become real. The music evokes its dance and the dance evokes its music: neither comes first. That is why we call ourselves an academy of music as much as an academy of dance.

‘If my words this evening seem obscure, dear parents, dear friends of the Academy, that only goes to show how feeble words are. Words are feeble — that is why we dance. In the dance we call the numbers down from where they live among the aloof stars. We surrender ourselves to them in dance, and while we dance, by their grace, they live among us.

‘Some of you — I can see from your looks — remain sceptical. What are these numbers she talks of that dwell among the stars? you murmur among yourselves. Do I not use numbers every day when I do business or buy groceries? Are numbers not our humble servants?

‘I reply: The numbers you have in mind, the numbers we use when we buy and sell, are not true numbers but simulacra. They are what I call ant numbers. Ants, as we know, have no memory. They are born out of the dust and die into the dust. Tonight, in the second part of the show, you will see our younger students playing the parts of ants, performing the ant operations that we call the lower arithmetic, the arithmetic we use in household accounts and so forth.’

Ants. The lower arithmetic. He turns to Inés. ‘Can you make sense of this?’ he whispers. But Inés, lips compressed, eyes narrowed, watching Ana Magdalena intently, refuses to answer.

Out of the corner of his eye, half hidden in the shadow of the doorway, he espies Dmitri. What interest can Dmitri have in the dance of numbers, Dmitri the bear? But of course it is the person of the speaker that interests him.

‘Ants are by nature law-abiding creatures,’ Ana Magdalena is saying. ‘The laws they obey are the laws of addition and subtraction. That is all they do, day in and day out, during every waking hour: carry out their mechanical, twofold law.

‘In our Academy we do not teach the law of the ant. I know that some of you are concerned about that fact — the fact that we do not teach your children to play ant games, adding numbers to numbers and so forth. I hope you now understand why. We do not want to turn your children into ants.

‘Enough. Thank you for your attention. Please welcome our performers.’

She gives a sign and steps aside. Dmitri, wearing his museum uniform, which for once is neatly buttoned, strides forward and hauls the curtains open, first the left curtain, then the right. At the same moment, from above, come the muted tones of a pipe organ.

Onstage a single figure is revealed, a boy of perhaps eleven or twelve, wearing golden slippers and a white toga that leaves one shoulder bare. Arms raised above his head, he gazes into the distance. While the organist, who can only be señor Arroyo, plays a set of flourishes, he maintains this pose. Then, in time to the music, he begins his dance. The dance consists in gliding from point to point on the stage, sometimes slowly, sometimes swiftly, coming to a near halt at each point but never actually halting. The pattern of the dance, the relation of each point to the next, is obscure; the movements of the boy are graceful but without variety. He, Simón, soon loses interest, closes his eyes, and concentrates on the music.