J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

Moreno is about to reply, but a couple who have impatiently been waiting their turn break in. ‘Maestro, we are so excited that you are back! In Estrella we feel so cut off from the true life of the mind! Will this be your only appearance?’

He drifts away.

‘Why did señor Arroyo call you a philosopher?’ asks the boy.

‘It was a joke. Surely you know señor Arroyo’s manner by now. It is because I am not a philosopher that he calls me a philosopher. Have something to eat. It is going to be a long evening. After the reception there is still señor Moreno’s lecture. You will enjoy it. It will be like a story-reading. Señor Moreno will stand on a platform and tell us about a man named Metros, whom I have never heard of but who is evidently important.’

The refreshments promised in the invitation turn out to be a big pot of tea, warm rather than hot, and some plates of hard little biscuits. The boy bites into one of them, pulls a face, spits it up. ‘It’s horrible!’ he says. He, Simón, quietly cleans up the mess.

‘There is too much ginger in the biscuits.’ It is Mercedes, who has appeared noiselessly at their side. Of the cane there is no sign; she seems to move quite easily. ‘But don’t tell Alyosha. You don’t want to hurt him. He and the boys were baking all afternoon. So you are the famous Davíd! The boys tell me you are a good dancer.’

‘I can dance all the numbers.’

‘So I hear. Is there any other kind of dancing you do besides number-dancing? Can you do human dancing?’

‘What is human dancing?’

‘You are a human being, aren’t you? Can you do any of the dances that human beings do, such as dancing for joy or dancing breast to breast with someone you are fond of?’

‘Ana Magdalena didn’t teach us that.’

‘Would you like me to teach you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, until you learn to do what human beings do you can’t be a full human being. What else don’t you do? Do you have friends you play with?’

‘I play football.’

‘You play sports, but do you ever just play? Joaquín says you never talk to the other children at school, you just give orders and tell them what to do. Is that true?’

The boy is silent.

‘Well, it is certainly not easy conducting a human conversation with you, young Davíd. I think I will look for someone else to talk to.’ Teacup in hand, she drifts off.

‘Why don’t you go and say hello to the animals?’ he suggests to Davíd. ‘Take Alyosha’s biscuits along. Maybe the rabbits will eat them.’

He makes his way back to the circle around Moreno.

‘About Metros the man we know nothing,’ Moreno is saying, ‘and not much more about his philosophy, since he left no written record. Nevertheless, he looms large over the modern world. That, at least, is my opinion.

‘According to one strand of legend, Metros said there is nothing in the universe that cannot be measured. According to another strand, he said that there can be no absolute measurement — that measurement is always relative to the measurer. Philosophers are still arguing about whether the two claims are compatible.’

‘And which do you believe?’ asks Valentina.

‘I straddle the gap, as I will try to explain in tonight’s talk. After which my friend Juan Sebastián will have a chance to respond. We have set up the evening as a debate — we thought that would make it more lively. Juan Sebastián has in the past been critical of my interest in Metros. He is critical of metra in general, of the idea that everything in the universe can be measured.’

‘That everything in the universe should be measured,’ says Arroyo. ‘There is a difference.’

‘That everything in the universe should be measured — thank you for correcting me. That is why my friend decided to quit clock-making. What is a clock, after all, but a mechanism for imposing a metron on the flux of time?’

‘A metron?’ says Valentina. ‘What is that?’

‘The metron is named after Metros. Any unit of measurement qualifies as a metron: a gram, for example, or a metre, or a minute. Without metra the natural sciences would not be possible. Take the case of astronomy. We say that astronomy concerns itself with the stars, but that is not strictly true. In fact it concerns itself with the metra of the stars: their mass, their distance from each other, and so forth. We can’t put the stars themselves into mathematical equations, but we can perform mathematical operations on their metra and thereby uncover the laws of the universe.’

Davíd has reappeared at his side, tugging at his arm. ‘Come and see, Simón!’ he whispers.

‘The mathematical laws of the universe,’ says Arroyo.

‘The mathematical laws,’ says Moreno.

For a man so unappealing in his exterior, Moreno speaks with remarkable self-assurance.

‘How fascinating,’ says Valentina.

‘Come and see, Simón!’ the boy whispers again.

‘In a minute,’ he whispers back.

‘Fascinating indeed,’ echoes Consuelo. ‘But it is getting late. We should be making our way to the Institute. A quick question, señor Arroyo: When will you be reopening the Academy?’

‘The date is not yet settled,’ says Arroyo. ‘What I can tell you is that, until we find a teacher of dance, the Academy will be solely an academy of music.’

‘I thought señora Mercedes was going to be the new dance teacher.’

‘Alas, no, Mercedes has duties in Novilla that she cannot escape. She visited Estrella to see her nephews, my sons, not to do any teaching. We have yet to appoint a teacher of dance.’

‘You have yet to appoint a teacher of dance,’ says Consuelo. ‘I know nothing about this Dmitri person beyond what I read in the newspaper, but — excuse me for saying so — I hope that in future you will be more careful about the staff you appoint.’

‘Dmitri was not employed by the Academy,’ says he, Simón. ‘He worked as an attendant in the museum downstairs. It is the museum that should be more careful about the staff it appoints.’

‘A homicidal maniac in this very building,’ says Consuelo. ‘The thought makes me shiver.’

‘He was indeed a homicidal maniac. He was also personable. The children of the Academy loved him.’ He is standing up not for Dmitri but for Arroyo, the man who was so wrapped up in his music that he allowed his wife to drift into a fatal entanglement with an underling. ‘Children are innocent. Being innocent means taking things at face value. It means opening your heart to someone who smiles at you and calls you his fine little man and dishes out sweets.’

Davíd speaks. ‘Dmitri says he couldn’t help himself. He says passion made him kill Ana Magdalena.’

There is a moment of frozen silence. With a frown Moreno examines the strange boy.

‘Passion is no defence,’ says Consuelo. ‘We all feel passion at one time or another, but we don’t go killing people because of it.’

‘Dmitri has gone away to the salt mines,’ says Davíd. ‘He is going to dig up lots of salt to make up for killing Ana Magdalena.’

‘Well, we will make sure we don’t use any of Dmitri’s salt on the farm, won’t we?’ She glances sternly at her two sisters. ‘How much salt is a human life worth? Perhaps you could ask that of your Metra man.’

‘Metros,’ says Moreno.

‘I beg your pardon: Metros . Simón, can we give you a lift?’

‘Thank you, but no — I have my bicycle here.’

As the gathering disperses, Davíd takes him by the hand and leads him down a dark stairway to the little enclosed garden behind the museum. A light rain is falling. By moonlight the boy unlatches a gate and on hands and knees crawls into a hutch. There is an explosion of squawking among the hens. He emerges with a struggling creature in his arms: a lamb.