J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

‘No, he is not afraid. And he sings well too. I am no musician but I can hear it.’

Señor Arroyo raises a hand and languidly brushes the words away. ‘You have done well,’ he says. ‘You are the one, are you not, who has taken responsibility for raising him. So he tells me.’

His heart swells. So that is what the boy tells people: that he, Simón, is the one who has raised him! ‘Davíd has had a varied education, if I may put it that way,’ he says. ‘You say he is confident. That is true. At times it is more than confidence. He can be headstrong. With some of his teachers that has not gone down well. But for you and señora Arroyo he has the greatest respect.’

‘Well, if that is so then we must do our best to deserve it.’

Without his noticing it, señora Arroyo, Ana Magdalena, has slipped away. Now she re-emerges into his field of vision, receding down the lakeshore, tall, graceful, with a cluster of naked children gambolling around her.

‘I should be leaving,’ he says. ‘Goodbye.’ And then: ‘The numbers, two and three and so forth — I have been struggling to understand your system. I listened carefully to the lecture that señora Arroyo gave, I question Davíd, but I confess I still have difficulty.’

Señor Arroyo raises an eyebrow and waits.

‘Counting does not play a great part in my life,’ he plunges on. ‘I mean, I count apples and oranges like everyone else. I count money. I add and subtract. The ant arithmetic your wife spoke about. But the dance of the two, the dance of the three, the noble numbers and the auxiliary numbers, calling down the stars — that stuff eludes me. Do you ever get beyond two and three in your teaching? Do the children ever get to study proper mathematics — x and y and z ? Or is that for later?’

Señor Arroyo is silent. The midday sun beats down on them.

‘Can you give me some clue, some fingerhold?’ he says. ‘I want to understand. Genuinely. I genuinely wish to understand.’

Señor Arroyo speaks. ‘You wish to understand. You address me as if I were the sage of Estrella, the man with all the answers. I am not. I do not have answers for you. But let me say a word about answers in general. In my opinion, question and answer go together like heaven and earth or like man and woman. A man goes out and scours the world for the answer to his one great question, What is it that I lack? Then one day, if he is lucky, he finds his answer: woman. Man and woman come together, they are one — let us resort to that expression — and out of their oneness, their union, comes a child. The child grows up until one day the question comes to him, What is it that I lack? , and so the cycle is resumed. The cycle resumes because in the question already lies the answer, like an unborn child.’

‘Therefore?’

‘Therefore, if we wish to escape the cycle, perhaps we should be scouring the world not for the true answer but for the true question. Perhaps that is what we lack.’

‘And how does that help me, señor, to understand the dances you teach my son, the dances and the stars that the dances are supposed to call down, and the place of the dances in his education?’

‘Yes, the stars. . We continue to be puzzled by the stars, even old men like you and me. Who are they? What do they say to us? What are the laws by which they live? For a child it is easier. The child does not need to think, for the child can dance. While we stand paralysed, gazing on the gap that yawns between us and the stars — What an abyss! How will we ever cross it? — the child simply dances across.’

‘Davíd is not like that. He is full of anxiety about gaps. Sometimes paralysed. I have seen it. It is a phenomenon not uncommon among children. A syndrome.’

Señor Arroyo ignores his words. ‘The dance is not a matter of beauty. If I wanted to create beautiful figures of movement I would employ marionettes, not children. Marionettes can float and glide as human beings cannot. They can trace patterns of great complexity in the air. But they cannot dance. They have no soul. It is the soul that brings grace to the dance, the soul that follows the rhythm, each step instinct with the next step and the next.

‘As for the stars, the stars have dances of their own, but their logic is beyond us; their rhythms too. That is our tragedy. And then there are the wandering stars, the ones who don’t follow the dance, like children who don’t know arithmetic. Las estrellas errantes, niños que ignoran la aritmética , as the poet wrote. To the stars it is given to think the unthinkable, the thoughts that are beyond you and me: the thoughts before eternity and after eternity , the thoughts from nothing to one and from one to nothing , and so forth. We mortals have no dance for from nothing to one . So, to return to your question about the mysterious x and whether our students at the Academy will ever learn the answer to x , my answer is: Lamentably, I don’t know.’

He waits for more but there is no more. Señor Arroyo has had his say. It is his turn. But he, Simón, is lost. He has nothing to offer.

‘Be comforted,’ says señor Arroyo. ‘You came here not to find out about x but because you were concerned for the welfare of your child. You can be assured. He is well. Like other children, young Davíd has no interest in x . He wants to be in the world, to experience this being-alive that is so new and exciting. Now I must go and give my wife a hand. Goodbye, señor Simón.’

He finds his way back to the car. Inés is not there. He dresses hurriedly, whistles for Bolívar. ‘Inés!’ he says, addressing the dog. ‘Where is Inés? Find Inés!’

The dog leads him to Inés, seated not far away under a tree on a little knoll overlooking the lake.

‘Where is Davíd?’ she says. ‘I thought he was coming home with us.’

‘Davíd is having a good time, he wants to be with his friends.’

‘So when will we see him again?’

‘That depends on the weather. If it continues fine they will stay the whole weekend. Don’t fret, Inés. He is in good hands. He is happy. Isn’t that all that counts?’

‘So we are going back to Estrella?’ Inés gets up, dusts off her dress. ‘I am surprised at you. Doesn’t this whole business make you feel sad? First he demands to leave home, now he doesn’t even want to spend the weekend with us.’

‘It would have happened sooner or later. He has an independent nature.’

‘You call it independence but to me it looks as if he is totally under the thumb of the Arroyos. I saw you having a chat with el señor. What was that about?’

‘He was explaining his philosophy to me. The philosophy behind the Academy. The numbers and the stars. Calling down the stars and so forth.’

‘Is that what you call it: philosophy?’

‘No, I don’t call it philosophy. Privately I call it claptrap. Privately I call it a load of mystical rubbish.’

‘Then why don’t we pull ourselves together and remove Davíd from their Academy?’

‘Remove him and send him where? To the Academy of Singing, where they will have some nonsensical philosophy of their own to peddle? Breathe in. Empty your mind. Be one with the cosmos . To the city schools? Sit still. Recite after me: one and one is two, two and one is three . The Arroyos may be full of nonsense, but at least it is harmless nonsense. And Davíd is happy here. He likes the Arroyos. He likes Ana Magdalena.’

‘Yes, Ana Magdalena. . I suppose you have fallen in love with her. You can confess. I won’t laugh.’

‘In love? No, nothing like that.’

‘But you find her attractive.’