December 1975
“For example,” he says. “For example when we used to be Muslim they taught me that Jesus escaped at the end. But in the Christian Bible it says he died on the cross. So how can all religions be true?”
“Ah, it’s not like that,” George Cubinar says. “God gave us different stories for different people at different times. God knew.”
“God knew, God knew, if God knew so much then why couldn’t He just make everybody believe the same thing? Why didn’t God invent the best and most perfect religion the first time itself? Pooooor Cyril Dragon wouldn’t have had to come and hide in this house just to say that all the gods are the same God.”
“But you see God wanted us to have free will,” George Cubinar bleats helplessly. “God did not want robots, he wanted—”
“I know what free will means, free will means whenever you’re bored you can switch to something else. That’s what Mama did, don’t you know?”
Relentless Reza. Forever at George Cubinar’s ankles.
“Didn’t God create the devil and didn’t He know when He created him that he was going to be the devil and he was going to tempt us and spoil everything? If God already knows what you’re going to do then that’s not really freedom what. He already knows if you’re going to choose the right thing or the wrong thing. Yes or not?”
Poor George Cubinar. Ill-equipped even to handle the standard-issue button-pushing and insurrection of the rest of his pupils let alone this terrifying boy. He stands there with his hands hanging by his sides his elbows bony under the dry skin, his front pocket stained with ink from his forever leaking pen.
“I mean to say,” Reza continues, “even the part where you’re going to pray to God and He’s going to change His mind, He already knows that part also, isn’t it? So since He already knows what’s going to happen why do we actually have to pray? Is it just because God has a big fat ego? Just like Mama’s old boss who liked people to tell him how wonderful he is, except even bigger and fatter?”
Annabelle Foo lays her face down on her desk and laughs into the intoxicating wood smell of it. The air hums and buzzes and George feels the whole class teetering on the edge of chaos.
“Oh Reza your brain is the most unique brain in the whole world!” Annabelle trills.
“I’m not trying to make anybody laugh,” Reza says. “I’m just asking questions what.”
He’s allowed her admiration to spill to the ground uncaught. Around her feet it slops in an embarrassing mess. Okayfine there is nothing she can do to charm Reza; that much she is learning quickly. But is also nothing she can do to get any attention from anybody else: neither hanging on to Reza’s coattails nor striking out on her own. Eyes wide open she lays her face back down on her desk.
Leo perches his elbows on the back of his chair and grins. Neela has told him: If that boy can ask questions you also can ask questions. You also put up your hand and ask whatever you like. But Leo feels no need to ask his own questions. He takes a proprietary pride in Reza’s.
George Cubinar’s hair is already thinning. The head hair is thinning before the face hair has had a chance to thicken. Five years ago—he thinks of those days as his younger days even though he is all of twenty-four years old—he was easy-going and malleable. Anywhere you wanted to put him he slotted in with a mild and beatific smile. But now he looks at Leo leaning back like a cowboy in the sun and he thinks, Oh to give Leo one tight slap like he deserves. At least Reza thinks up his own trouble to cause but Leo? Leo is just an unimaginative shit-eater. A ball-and-arse-licker. If you have no balls of your own you can only lick someone else’s isn’t it? And don’t even talk about the girls. Stupid giggling creatures and that Annabelle Foo at six years old already wanting the world to fall at her feet and worship her.
These children are giving him prickly heat. After particularly difficult mornings he has to rush back to his tiny bedroom and lock the door and pull down his trousers and underpants. Itchy boils will be popping up all over his groin. Scratching only worsens the problem. He airs his balls and shakes his head. That boy and his questions!
One day when Reza’s provocations nudge the class right over the edge of the cliff into wholesale pandemonium—George standing there like an idiot yapping “Stop it! Stop it! You cannot waste everybody’s time simply asking stupid questions! Other children have to learn also you know!” as the other children express nothing but delight at this descent into madness—Cyril Dragon himself comes sailing into the room like a boarding school headmaster. How? George Cubinar wonders. How did he know what was happening when he could not have possibly heard from all the way up in his office?
Somebody has told him. For the first time since he left his parents’ house George Cubinar feels his warm bath of trust cool a little. A shadow falls over the bathtub. A chill wind stirs the curtains. Footsteps in the corridor. The truth is one is always besieged. Even when one believes oneself to be surrounded by friends one is besieged.
“Oh dear,” Cyril Dragon murmurs. “These children are completely out of control.”
“But it’s not—” George Cubinar begins before Cyril cuts him off.
“Never mind, George, never mind. When class is over just come and see me in my office, would you?”
George Cubinar knows the “never mind, George” is supposed to be a consolation—a ruffling of the hair a pat on the head—and yes once upon a time he would have been nosing at Cyril Dragon’s hand like a bloody dog for these blandishments but now he cannot help but hear in it the same dismissal his father intended when in the recitation of his six times tables George had stammered “Six times nine is fifty—fifty- … six?” and his father had closed his eyes and calmly said “Go away, George.”
After class is over he goes as requested to Cyril Dragon’s office. By this point nothing surprises him. Not It’s very important that the children actually be encouraged to question received wisdom because after all that is what we are in the business of doing isn’t it? Questioning received wisdom? All the so-called truths and assumptions that are handed down to us ready-made? Not All this time you have been quite able to handle the class. And no not even I have to say I am a little disappointed.
He cannot defend himself. What is left to say? He tries to tell Cyril Dragon about Reza’s callous childish questions—“The oldest questions in the book surely,” George Cubinar says, “I mean to say haven’t these questions been adequately dealt with by now?” He tries to raise an eyebrow in such a way as to suggest that he has like Cyril Dragon read all the dealings with all these questions but Cyril Dragon only says with a superior smile:
“Well. Perhaps if they had come from an adult we could say they were banal, but surely from a child of his age they are extraordinary? After all hasn’t he arrived at these questions all by himself? When a child simply parrots scripture or dogma we know it is nothing but brainwashing. But when a child is asking questions he has not heard others ask—well, aren’t they wonderful questions, actually?”
Wonderful questions it seems. Never mind, George. Consider it a blessing in disguise: now you know where you stand. And so when Cyril Dragon takes to speaking in public about Reza’s “well-oiled brain”—“despite all our attempts to indoctrinate him, haha!”—George Cubinar tries to ignore the felt-wrapped dig at his own teaching and the fact that “despite all our attempts” is just another way of saying You are no match for this child, George! He tries to remind himself that to know where one stands is a great blessing indeed.
“A razor-sharp well-oiled brain,” Cyril says but these days he no longer tries to put his arm around Reza’s shoulder because even he knows how that attempt would go.
For years Leo will think of it as a Reza-sharp brain. But now he and Reza are friends Leo is no longer jealous of how Cyril Dragon will do anything to please Reza. Everyone can see Leo’s selfless admiration: that rare ability to be truly happy for someone else glowing right through his skin like he’s turned into some rudimentary phosphorescent organism. Like he’s cancelled himself out—his very selfhood. Ceased to exist. Exists only in and through Reza. Like the most saintly of Catholic saints fading to nothing but their Christ-love. Imagine that! George Cubinar says to himself. If that boy of all people can manage not to be jealous—
Leo’s love for his friend blinds him. He cannot see how Reza most of all hates the way Cyril Dragon smiles down from on high while praising others. He cannot see that Reza deserves none of this praise. How he takes it from Cyril Dragon and flicks it to the floor like a palmful of snot. George Cubinar sees it. He sees it and saves it up in his bulging purse of blessings-in-disguise.