Julian

JULIAN KANERVA let his gaze wander over the rows of students. They always looked the same, younger every year, self-sufficient, flawlessly beautiful, looking perfect by virtue of their youth, like young sprouts, shamelessly certain that their futures would open up in front of them complete and give them all the best things that they could imagine. That’s how it felt to be sixteen, in the first year of high school: no fear, no hesitation. Nothing but possibilities.

Julian enjoyed teaching the first-year course. Some of the students didn’t bother to hide their lack of interest, but most of them were cautiously eager to think. And there were also those whose eyes saw the world opening up little by little: at the end of every lesson their eyes shone with a budding insight into that incomprehensibility at the core of reality, all the possibilities that literature and philosophy had to offer. Julian saw it in a few students every year; something almost like dread, a combination of impatience to understand and a powerful realization of something unspeakable. These realizers — that’s what Julian called these special students, to himself — were usually girls. Sometimes there were a few boys, too: tormented, misunderstood, artsy wretches. But usually the realizers were girls: girls with serious gazes, ennobled by an inner melancholy, sensitive, touchingly childish and innocent.

The realizers were the reason Julian was a teacher. That dread and impatience and excitement and the flickering threshold of understanding in their eyes.

There was one realizer in this class. A girl who sat in the second row, always in the same place, next to her talkative friend. A shy but open look on her face, a timid smile, and a hint of knowledge of the weight of the world behind her eyes. That kind of girl. Her name was Mari. An all-too-ordinary name for a girl like that.

Julian enjoyed being provocative. He often read aloud from something that would spur a heated discussion. The girls’ cheeks would redden with fury, the boys would scoff in embarrassment, and then someone would present a counter-argument, and someone would comment on it, and the debate would be over.

He had a particular quote in mind for today. He had cited the passage in previous years, and it always provoked a lively discussion. The quote today was a game. It was a message for the girl, Mari. Not a serious message — just a playful sentence tossed out for her to catch if she wanted to. These were the little joys of teaching, secret meanings that went over the heads of the less perceptive students, went right past most of them, but hung in the air ready to be plucked by those who were on the right wavelength. Julian had been thinking that they could go out for coffee. She had asked him to recommend some books to her, so there wouldn’t be anything strange about inviting her out for coffee. They could talk about literature. Maybe he’d buy her some ice cream. All part of the game — nothing serious.

He primed the game with a relaxed, flirtatious introduction:

“Love,” he began, flashing a small, teasing smile.

The students were quiet, and several girls in the front row smiled back.

“Love and desire,” he said with emphasis, pausing deliberately before he continued. “Could there be any subjects more frequently dealt with in literature than these? What new things could a work of literature possibly have to say about these subjects? And what can we learn about love and desire from literature, when all the essential facts are well covered in Cosmopolitan?”

A few students laughed, but the effect wasn’t quite as hilarious as Julian had hoped. He continued in a slightly more serious tone.

“I submit that it is in this very subject, the subject of love, that literature’s greatest dynamism lies. It allows us to hope for the impossible. It allows us to desire. Literature shows us situations in which a statement and its opposite are equally valid. Literature places right and wrong in question. Do they even exist, right and wrong, and if they do, where do you draw the line between them? These are the questions literature presents to us.”

He paused again, dramatically this time, glancing at the realizer in the second row, registering her burning, fervent gaze before he turned back to his book and read, “A woman’s beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.”

The students were shocked into silent seriousness. No one dared to say a word. Some of the boys at the back of the room had nodded off. The girls in the front tittered. A quick girl on the left end of the front row — a budding feminist, one of those humorless girls who had been awakened to the fact of inequality with all the force of youthful sentimentality — finally raised her hand and answered before Julian had a chance to call on her.

“Why should that be?” she demanded. “Obviously a woman’s whole being belongs to the woman herself.”

Julian was pleased with the answer: it allowed him to present his planned counter-argument. “Right. A woman’s body and being, of course, belong to no one but the woman herself. But beauty. Beauty. How can it be anyone’s private possession?”

The repetition was for effect. Beauty. He laid stress on the word, and as he did, he looked at Mari. She smiled. She understood his meaning.

Now she raised her hand.

Julian nodded — he didn’t say her name, just nodded.

“But what does it mean to share beauty?” she said. “If sharing beauty is a duty, you have to define what sharing it means.”

“You’ve hit the nail on the head,” Julian said with a smile, looking her straight in the eye. “That is indeed the problem. Beauty — who does it belong to, and what does it require of you? Not an easy question.”

She didn’t avert her eyes. So she’s not shy after all, Julian thought. Sensitive, maybe, but not shy. Bold, in fact; even brazen. She gave him a challenging look. The air between them vibrated. The game was still pleasurable, innocent. Easy, pleasurable, and innocent.

He could ask her to coffee. Why not? Maybe he would.