J. Coetzee - The Schooldays of Jesus

‘The city of Estrella knows me as a musician and as director of the Academy of Dance, an academy where no distinction is made between dance and music. Why not? Because, we believe, music and dance together, music-dance, is its own way of apprehending the universe, the human way but also the animal way, the way that prevailed before the coming of Metros.

‘As we in the Academy do not distinguish between music and dance, so we do not distinguish between mind and body. The teachings of Metros constituted a new, mental science, and the knowledge they brought into being was a new, mental knowledge. The older mode of apprehension comes from body and mind moving together, body-mind, to the rhythm of music-dance. In that dance old memories come to the surface, archaic memories, knowledge we lost when we voyaged here across the oceans.

‘We may title ourselves an Academy, but we are not an academy of greybeards. Instead our members are children, in whom those archaic memories, memories of a prior existence, are far from extinguished. That is why I have asked these two young men, my sons Joaquín and Damian, students of the Academy, to join me on the stage.

‘The teachings of Metros are based on number, but Metros did not invent number. The numbers existed before Metros was born, before humankind came into being. Metros merely used them, subjecting them to his system. My late wife used to call numbers in the hands of Metros ant numbers, copulating endlessly, dividing and multiplying endlessly. Through dance she returned her students to the true numbers, which are eternal and indivisible and uncountable.

‘I am a musician, ill at ease with argumentation, as perhaps you can hear. To allow you to see how the world was before the arrival of Metros I will fall silent while Joaquín and Damian perform a pair of dances for us: the dance of Two and the dance of Three. Thereafter they will perform the more difficult dance of Five.’

He gives a signal. Simultaneously, in counterpoint, one on either side of the stage, the boys commence the dances of Two and Three. As they dance, the agitation stirred up in his, Simón’s, breast by the confrontation with Dmitri dies down; he is able to relax and take pleasure in their easy, fluent movements. Though Arroyo’s philosophy of dance is as obscure to him as ever, he begins to see, in the dimmest of ways, why the one dance is appropriate to Two and the other to Three, and so to glimpse, in the dimmest of ways, what Arroyo means by dancing the numbers, calling the numbers down.

The dancers conclude at the same moment, on the same beat, in mid-stage. For a moment they pause; then, taking their cue from their father, who now accompanies them on the flute, they embark together on the dance of Five.

He can see at once why Arroyo called Five difficult: difficult for the dancers, but difficult too for the spectators. With Two and Three he could feel some force within his body — the tide of his blood or whatever he wants to call it — move in accord with the boys’ limbs. With Five there is no such feeling. There is some pattern to the dance — that he can faintly apprehend — but his body is too stupid, too stolid to find it and follow it.

He glances at Davíd beside him. Davíd is frowning; his lips move wordlessly.

‘Is something wrong?’ he whispers. ‘Are they not doing it right?’

The boy tosses his head impatiently.

The dance of Five comes to an end. Side by side, the Arroyo boys face the audience. There is a polite if mystified ripple of applause. At this moment Davíd leaps from his seat and runs down the aisle. Startled, he, Simón, gets to his feet and follows, but is too late to prevent him from clambering onto the stage.

‘What is it, young man?’ asks Arroyo with a frown.

‘It is my turn,’ says the boy. ‘I want to dance Seven.’

‘Not now. Not here. This is not a concert. Go and sit down.’

Amid murmuring from the audience he, Simón, mounts the stage. ‘Come, Davíd, you are upsetting everyone.’

Peremptorily the boy shakes him off. ‘It is my turn!’

‘Very well,’ says Arroyo. ‘Dance Seven. When you have finished I expect you to go and sit quietly again. Do you agree?’

Without a word the boy slips off his shoes. Joaquín and Damian make way; in silence he begins his dance. Arroyo watches, eyes narrowed in concentration, then raises the flute to his lips. The melody he plays is right and just and true; yet even he, Simón, can hear that it is the dancer who leads and the master who follows. From some buried memory the words pillar of grace emerge, surprising him, for the image he holds to, from the football field, is of the boy as a compact bundle of energy. But now, on the stage of the Institute, Ana Magdalena’s legacy reveals itself. As if the earth has lost its downward power, the boy seems to shed all bodily weight, to become pure light. The logic of the dance eludes him entirely, yet he knows that what is unfolding before him is extraordinary; and from the hush that falls in the auditorium he guesses that the people of Estrella find it extraordinary too.

The numbers are integral and sexless, said Ana Magdalena; their ways of loving and conjugating are beyond our comprehension. Because of that, they can be called down only by sexless beings. Well, the being who dances before them is neither child nor man, boy nor girl; he would even say neither body nor spirit. Eyes shut, mouth open, rapt, Davíd floats through the steps with such fluid grace that time stands still. Too caught up even to breathe, he, Simón, whispers to himself: Remember this! If ever in the future you are tempted to doubt him, remember this!

The dance of Seven ends as abruptly as it began. The flute falls silent. With chest heaving slightly, the boy faces Arroyo. ‘Do you want me to dance Eleven?’

‘Not now,’ says Arroyo abstractedly.

From the back of the hall a call reverberates through the auditorium. The call itself is indistinct — Bravo? Slavo ? — but the voice is familiar: Dmitri’s. His heart sinks. Will the man never cease to haunt him?

Arroyo bestirs himself. ‘It is time to return to the subject of our lecture, Metros and his legacy,’ he announces. ‘Are there questions you would like to address to señor Moreno?’

An elderly gentleman stands up. ‘If the antics of the children are over, maestro, I have two questions. First, señor Moreno, you said that, as heirs of Metros, we have measured ourselves and found we are all equal. Being equal, you say, it follows that we should be equal in the eyes of the law. No longer should anyone be above the law. No more kings, no more super-men, no more exceptional beings. But — I come to my first question — is it really a good thing that the rule of law should allow no exceptions? If the law is applied without exception, what place is left for mercy?’

Moreno steps forward and mounts the dais. ‘An excellent question, a profound question,’ he replies. ‘Should there not be room for mercy under the law? The answer our lawgivers have given is, yes, there should indeed be room for mercy, or — to speak in more concrete terms — for remission of sentence, but only when such is merited . The offender owes a debt to society. Forgiveness of his debt must be earned by a labour of contrition. Thus the sovereignty of measure is preserved: the substance of the offender’s contrition shall, so to speak, be weighed, and an equivalent weight be deducted from his sentence. You had a second question.’

The speaker glances around. ‘I will be brief. You have said nothing about money. Yet as a universal measure of value, money is surely the principal legacy of Metros. Where would we be without money?’

Before Moreno can reply, Dmitri, bareheaded, wearing his, Simón’s, coat, plunges down the aisle and in a single movement mounts the stage, bellowing all the time, ‘That’s enough, that’s enough, that’s enough!