The Schooldays of Jesus (23 page)

A glance passes between Mercedes and Alyosha. ‘A sore spot, evidently,' says Mercedes. ‘Forgive me for touching on it.'

‘How about a walk?' says Alyosha to the boys. ‘We can go to the park. Bring some bread—we can feed the goldfish.'

They leave. He and Mercedes are alone. But he is in no mood for talk; nor evidently is she. Through the open door comes the sound of Arroyo at the keyboard. He closes his eyes, tries to calm himself, to let the music find its way in. Alyosha's words come back to him:
If we listen with attention the soul will begin to dance within us.
When did his soul last dance?

From the way the music kept stopping and starting he had assumed that Arroyo was practising. But he was wrong. The pauses last too long for that, and the music itself seems sometimes to lose its way. The man is not practising but composing. He listens with a different kind of attention.

The music is too variable in its rhythm, too complicated in its logic for a ponderous being like him to follow, but it brings to mind the dance of one of those little birds that hover and dart,
their wings beating too fast to see. The question is, where is the soul? When will the soul emerge from its hiding place and open its wings?

He is not on close terms with his soul. What he knows about the soul in general, what he has read, is that it flits away when confronted with a mirror and therefore cannot be seen by the one who owns it, the one whom it owns.

Unable to see his soul, he has not questioned what people tell him about it: that it is a dry soul, deficient in passion. His own, obscure intuition—that, far from lacking in passion, his soul aches with longing for it knows not what—he treats sceptically as just the kind of story that someone with a dry, rational, deficient soul will tell himself to maintain his self-respect.

So he tries not to think, to do nothing that might alarm the timid soul within. He gives himself to the music, allowing it to enter and wash through him. And the music, as if aware of what is up, loses its stop-start character, begins to flow. At the very rim of consciousness the soul, which is indeed like a little bird, emerges and shakes its wings and begins its dance.

That is how Alyosha finds him: sitting at the table with his chin propped on his hands, fast asleep. Alyosha gives him a shake. ‘Señor Arroyo will see you now.'

Of the woman with the cane, the sister-in-law Mercedes, there is no sign. How long has he been absent?

He trails behind Alyosha down the corridor.

CHAPTER 17

THE ROOM into which he is ushered is pleasantly bright and airy, lit by glass panels in the roof through which sunlight pours. It is bare save for a table with a mess of papers on it and a grand piano. Arroyo rises to greet him.

He had expected a man in mourning, a broken man. But Arroyo, wearing a plum-coloured smoking jacket over pyjamas and slippers, seems as solid and cheerful as ever. He offers him, Simón, a cigarette, which he declines.

‘A pleasure to see you again, señor Simón,' says Arroyo. ‘I have not forgotten our conversation on the shores of Lake Calderón, concerning the stars. What shall we discuss today?'

After the music and then the slumber his tongue is slow, his mind befuddled. ‘My son David,' he says. ‘I have come to talk about him. About his future. David has been growing a little wild of late. In the absence of schooling. We have applied for him to enter the Academy of Singing, but our hopes are not high. We are worried about him, his mother particularly so. She has been thinking of hiring a private tutor. But now we hear rumours that you may be
opening your doors again. We are wondering…'

‘You are wondering, if we reopen, who will do the teaching. You are wondering who will take the place of my wife. Who indeed! Because your son was very close to her, as you know. Who can replace her in his heart?'

‘You are correct. He still holds on to the memory of her. Will not let go. But there is more to it than that.' The fog begins to retreat. ‘David has great respect for you, señor Arroyo. He says you know who he is.
Señor Arroyo knows who I am
. I, on the other hand—so he says—do not know and have never known. I must ask: What does he mean when he says that you know who he is?'

‘You are his father yet you do not know who he is?'

‘I am not his true father, nor have I ever claimed to be. I think of myself as a kind of stepfather. I met him on the ship coming here. I could see that he was lost, therefore I took charge of him, took care of him. Later I was able to unite him with his mother, Inés. That is our story, in a nutshell.'

‘And now you want me to tell you who he is, this child whom you met on board ship. If I were a philosopher I would reply by saying: It depends on what you mean by
who
, it depends on what you mean by
he
, it depends on what you mean by
is.
Who is he? Who are you? Indeed, who am I? All I can tell you with certainty is that one day a being, a male child, appeared out of nowhere on the doorstep of this Academy. You know that as well as I do because you brought him. Since that day it has been my pleasure to be his musician accompanist. I have accompanied him in his dances, as I accompany all the children in my care. I have also
talked with him. We have talked a lot, your David and I. It has been enlightening.'

‘We agree to call him David, señor Arroyo, but his true name, if I can use that expression, if it means anything, is of course not David, as you must know if you know who he really is. David is just the name on his card, the name they gave him at the docks. Equally well I could say that Simón is not my true name, just a name given to me at the docks. To me names are not important, not worth making a fuss about. I am aware that you take a different line, that when it comes to names and numbers you and I belong to different schools of thought. But let me say my say. In my school of thought names are simply a convenience, just as numbers are a convenience. There is nothing mysterious about them. The boy we are talking about could equally well have had the name
sixty-six
attached to him, and I the name
ninety-nine
.
Sixty-six
and
ninety-nine
would have done just as well as
David
and
Simón
, once we got used to them. I have never grasped why the boy I am now calling David finds names so significant—his name in particular. Our so-called true names, the names we had before
David
and
Simón
, are only substitutes, it seems to me, for the names we had before them, and so on backwards. It is like paging through a book, back and back, looking for page one. But there is no page one. The book has no beginning; or the beginning is lost in the mists of the general forgetting. That, at least, is how I see it. So I repeat my question: What does David mean when he says you know
who he is
?'

‘And if I were a philosopher, señor Simón, I would respond by saying: It depends on what you mean by
know
. Did I meet the
boy in a previous life? How can I be sure? The memory is lost, as you say, in the general forgetting. I have my intuitions, as no doubt you have your intuitions, but intuitions are not memories. You remember meeting the boy on board ship and deciding he was lost and taking charge of him. Perhaps he remembers the event differently. Perhaps you were the one who looked lost; perhaps
he
decided to take charge of
you
.'

‘You misjudge me. I may have memories but I have no intuitions. Intuitions are not part of my stock in trade.'

‘Intuitions are like shooting stars. They flash across the skies, here one moment, gone the next. If you don't see them, perhaps it is because your eyes are closed.'

‘But
what
is flashing across the skies? If you know the answer, why don't you tell me?'

Señor Arroyo grinds his cigarette dead. ‘It depends on what you mean by
answer
,' he says. He rises, grips him, Simón, by the shoulders, stares into his eyes. ‘Courage, my friend,' he says in his smoky breath. ‘Young David is an exceptional child. The word I use for him is
integral
. He is integral in a way that other children are not. Nothing can be taken away from him. Nothing can be added. Who or what you or I believe him to be is of no importance. Nonetheless, I take seriously your wish to have your question answered. The answer will come when you least expect it. Or else it will not come. That too happens.'

Irritably he shakes himself loose. ‘I cannot tell you, señor Arroyo,' he says, ‘how much I dislike these cheap paradoxes and mystifications. Do not misunderstand me. I respect you as I respected your late wife. You are educators, you take your profession
seriously, your concern for your students is genuine—I doubt none of that. But regarding your system,
el sistema Arroyo
, I have the most profound doubts. I say so in all deference to you as a musician. Stars. Meteors. Arcane dances. Numerology. Secret names. Mystical revelations. It may impress young minds but please don't try to foist it on me.'

On his way out of the Academy, preoccupied, in a bad humour, he stumbles into Arroyo's sister-in-law, almost knocking her over. Her stick goes clattering down the stairs. He recovers the stick for her, apologizes for his clumsiness.

‘Don't apologize,' she says. ‘There ought to be a light on the stairway, I don't know why the building has to be so dark and gloomy. But since I have you, give me your arm. I need cigarettes, and I don't want to send one of the boys, it sets a bad example.'

He assists her to the kiosk at the street corner. She is slow, but he is in no hurry. It is a pleasant day. He begins to relax.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?' he proposes.

They sit at a pavement café, enjoying the sun on their faces.

‘I hope you weren't offended by my remarks,' she says. ‘I mean my remarks about Ana Magdalena and her effect on men. Ana Magdalena was not my type, but in fact I was quite fond of her. And the death she met—no one deserves to die like that.'

He is silent.

‘As I mentioned, I taught her when she was young. She showed promise, she worked hard, she was serious about her career. But the transition from girlhood to womanhood was hard for her to deal with. It is always a difficult time for a dancer, in her case especially
so. She wanted to preserve the purity of her lines, the purity that comes easily to us when we are immature, but she failed, the new womanliness of her body kept coming out, kept expressing itself. So in the end she gave up, found other things to do. I lost touch with her. Then after my sister's death she suddenly re-emerged at Juan Sebastián's side. I was surprised—I had no idea they were in contact—but I said nothing.

‘She was good for him, I will say that, a good wife. He would have been lost without someone like her. She took over the children—the younger one was just a baby then—and became a mother to them. She extracted Juan Sebastián from the clock repair business, where he had no future, and got him to open his academy. He has flourished ever since. So don't mistake me. She was an admirable person in many ways.'

He is silent.

‘Juan Sebastián is a man of learning. Have you read his book? No? He has written a book on his philosophy of music. You can still find it in the bookshops. My sister helped him. My sister had a musical training. She was an excellent pianist. She and Juan Sebastián used to plays duets together. Whereas Ana Magdalena, while she is or was a perfectly intelligent young woman, was neither a musician nor what I would call a person of intellect. For intellect she substituted enthusiasm. She took over Juan Sebastián's philosophy holus bolus and became an enthusiast for it. She applied it to her dance classes. God knows what the little ones made of it. Let me ask, Simón: What did your son make of Ana Magdalena's teaching?'

What did David make of Ana Magdalena's teaching? He is
about to give his reply, his considered reply, when something comes over him. Whether it is the memory flooding back of his angry outburst to Arroyo, or whether he is simply tired, tired of being reasonable, he cannot say, but he can feel his face crumple, and the voice that issues from his throat he can barely recognize as his own, so cracked and parched is it. ‘My son, Mercedes, was the one who discovered Ana Magdalena. He witnessed her on her deathbed. His memories of her are contaminated by that vision, that horror. Because she had been dead, you know, for some time. Not a sight that any child should be exposed to.

‘My son, to answer your question, is trying to cling to the memory of Ana Magdalena as she was in life and to the stories he heard from her. He would like to believe in a heavenly realm where the numbers dance eternally. He would like to think that, when he dances the dances she taught him, the numbers descend and dance with him. At the end of each school day Ana Magdalena used to gather the children around her and sound what she called her arc—which I later found was just an ordinary tuning fork—and get them to close their eyes and hum together on that tone. It would settle their souls, she told them, bringing them into harmony with the tone that the stars gave out as they wheeled on their axes. Well, that is what my son would like to hold on to: the heavenly tone. By joining in the dance of the stars, he would like to believe, we participate in their heavenly being. But how can he, Mercedes,
how can he
, after what he saw?'

Mercedes reaches across the table and pats his arm. ‘There, there,' she says. ‘You have been through a trying time, all of you. Perhaps it would be best if your son put the Academy behind
him, with its bad memories, and went to a normal school with normal teachers.'

A second great wave of exhaustion sweeps over him. What is he doing, exchanging words with this stranger who understands nothing? ‘My son is not a normal child,' he says. ‘I am sorry, I am not feeling well, I cannot continue.' He signals to the waiter.

‘You are distressed, Simón. I will not detain you. Let me just say, I am here in Estrella not for the sake of my brother-in-law, who barely tolerates me, but for my sister's children, two lost little boys to whom no one gives a second thought. Your son will move on, but what is their future? Having lost first their mother then their stepmother, they are left behind in this hard world of men and men's ideas. I weep for them, Simón. They need softness as all children need softness, even boy children. They need to be caressed and cuddled, to inhale the soft odours of women and feel the softness of a woman's touch. Where are they going to get that? They will grow up incomplete, unable to flower.'