A peaceful morning, as well as wealthy. The local paper had a bland retraction of any nasty hints it might have dropped, studiedly airy, so that one needed to know how to read between the lines before realizing that Paul had thrown a fright into them and Siegel, after blowing up a large red balloon, had rather unfairly gone and popped it. Devout protests about not wishing to cast aspersions upon impeccable credentials.
This all had an immediate effect upon business. The phone rang; a woman sounding middle-aged and fairly excitable had a problem. How urgent was the problem? Could it wait until tomorrow? Today was rather a busy day. Well all right, yes.
It spurred Arlette into thinking it Was a busy day, and she dressed in a hurry.
The Lycée Fustel de Coulanges looks much the same today as at the turn of the century. Or since the Revolution, come to that: the fine eighteenth-century façade, in the dark red and pale pink of Alsace sandstone, needs only the tide-mark at its foot removed – the seawrack of metal beercans and plastic yoghurt-pots. The visual impression left by parking cars in the Place du Chateau, between the Cathedral and the Rohan Palace, is deplorable.
Behind the façade the military quadrangle is equally unchanged: the uniformed boys changing class to the roll of the drum, just like V.M.I. or West Point, would not feel displaced. The scruffy horde in jeans, like the motorbikes outside, looks fragile and impermanent. Some are girls now, but it is not easy to tell which. ‘May I just take your trousers down an instant?’ begs the anthropologist politely. Lifting perhaps his solar topee.
The twin pillars of such an establishment, the Provost and the Dean, are unchanged too; remote gods behind padded doors, only appeased by human sacrifice. But you do not go to them for casual information about a pupil; you go to the director of studies. Arlette found the director in a small cluttered office papered entirely in work-charts and graphs, a big easy comfortable man. Face of severity, and of much kindness and humour. Framed in the large shaved jaw the mobile mouth was dangerous. Like a sea-anemone waving innocently. Small imprudent animals could find themselves caught. He had the enviable skill, while being at all times frantically busy, of appearing to have all the time in the world.
‘What can I do for you, Madame?’
‘I’m trying to identify, and get hold of a boy of whom I know very little. His name is Michel, he does Greek, and I think he’s in the final year.’
‘That’s no problem. A child doing Greek is now a rare species. This one I know well. Good pupil.’ A turn half-left, a glance at a chart. ‘Won’t be in yet. No class before ten.’ The door opened, a youngish overseer bustled in with a draught, said, ‘Excuse me,’ and dumped some dirty-looking papers on the crowded desk.
‘What’s that?’ with distaste, not looking.
‘That horrible Zissel.’
‘Is he there? Shoot him in. Excuse me a moment, Madame,’ as an inky boy was produced and stood limp and boneless. ‘Zissel, you’re a vile child,’ mildly, big thumb turning over the dirty papers.
‘Your father – you’re aware?’ The papers were covered in exasperated scrawls in red ink. ‘Your professors are feeling ground down. So is your father. You’re asking in fact for a monumental backhander. This work reeks of an immense capacity for not taking pains. You’re putting a huge effort, Zissel, into persuading everybody that you are mentally deficient. I know you to be nothing of the sort. What have you to say?’
Shapeless mumble, totally inaudible.
‘I see.’ Another glance at his chart. ‘You’re free at four. Where does your mother work? You will go and wait for her, and you will give her this message with my compliments: will she have the kindness to come in and see me on her way home, and we’ll have a talk. Concerning you. You have now three seconds to get from here to your classroom, while stopping on the way for a good wash. That will do, Zissel. I beg your pardon Madame, you were saying? Young Carlin who does Greek.’
‘Who would know him best?’
‘His work, his character? – makes no odds really. His principal professor is Monsieur Perregaux. Who is,’ a swing half-right, to another set of charts ‘ … as well nothing before ten: he’ll be preparing his courses,’ picking up a telephone without looking at it, the thick fingers agile on buttons, ‘Perregaux there? Ask him could he manage to speak to a lady interested in one of his pupils. He can? Straight away if he likes. You’ll find him at the foot of the stairs, Madame, by the concierge’s office. Not in the least; enchanted to be of any service.’ Wonderful, she thought. A man who wastes no second asking who I am and what my business is, takes one glance, decides I’m serious, and fixes it all within the halfminute, with young Zissel thrown into the bargain.
The nine o’clock bell, far worse than any drumroll – even that for an execution – took her back to her childhood along with the smells and the corridors full of children in crowds parting amiably, vaguely to let her pass without even a glance. Just a Mum, come to complain to the Surge about her Zissel.
Monsieur Perregaux was easily recognized, an elderly gentleman with round-shouldered academic bearing, this one a real figure from her childhood, the teacher with a master’s degree and a doctorate, of terrifying erudition about the Bacchae of Euripedes. Unexpectedly sharp eye, shooting her an amused smile.
‘Young Michel? A splendid boy. The rare bird at any time, rarest now when Mathematics is the New Latin. Has it struck you as funny? We based our criteria for excellence on the ability at the Latin Theme, we abandoned all that with horror as outdated élitism, and we now do exactly the same thing, with algebraic formulae substituting for Ciceronian pedantries. Both the same Chinese. Michel is one of the few to whom scholarship has meaning. Asks what the job is, instead of what it pays. I’m tempted to say he knows more about the Achaeans than I do.’
‘Hot-house plant?’
‘Oh yes, we still have our class preparing for Advanced Schools rather than that preposterous university, that Social Security knocking-shop with its courses in Envy and Calumny, the Gold Brick and the Polished Apple.’ The old boy was funny, but she wasn’t getting nearer Michel.
‘Will you tell me what he’s like?’
‘I’m an old man. I no longer care what I say. I’m not to be relied upon. They’re retiring me at the end of this year. High time, where they’re concerned. Not modern, you know. Give me a chiming clock and a lot of polished speeches, forty years of devoted collaboration, but glad to get rid of me. Hm, maybe I will tell you. But I’ve remnants of prudence. Who are you; why do you seek information from me?’
‘I have a partly professional, partly friendly interest in a girl of his age, not one of your students, who has or had a friendship and perhaps an emotional relationship with this boy Michel. She’s a little secretive and evasive about it. That’s more or less all.’
‘Is it?’
‘All right. She’s under some suspicion of handling or possessing drugs. Not officially, not a police matter. I’ve seen no sign of her using drugs, but it can be difficult to detect and I’ve not seen much of her. Getting to know something of her friends and associates is a step that’s obvious. There’s no point, quite frankly, in asking any official of the Lycée a question like that. Their interest is in hushing things, in keeping the parents from getting anxious. I’ve no complaint to make of that.’
The old man laughed silently.
‘A social disgrace,’ he said. ‘Enquiry likewise fails as to how many have lice in their hair. Or gonorrhea. And all these people we have now? – school doctor, nurse, social and psychiatric counsellors – there seems no end to them.’
‘All pretty superficial to my mind. And whatever I did would be not enough or too much. Make a polite murmur, the lips would be sealed. Shocked expressions, and they’ve never heard of such a thing. Push a bit harder and there’d be a hullabaloo, which I don’t want.’
‘And would the evidence be worth much? The children don’t confide in these people, whom they view as the tame auxiliaries of authority, meaning repression. Nor I may say do they confide in me, but then I don’t hang about sucking up to them. Well, well, I’ve answered my own question.
‘Drugs? Yes of course. Shows up in their work. An anxiety, a febrile showiness. These children suffer from anxiety, and there is great pressure upon them to acquire social prestige – success in an examination. I’ve never paid much attention to it in consequence. Use of hashish and opiates is a very old oriental tradition. Some modern pharmaceutic products, nasty things, adults all have cupboards full, doctors hand them Out to all and sundry, how could you expect the children to do otherwise. Doesn’t thus shock or surprise me. I’ve two or three in my classes mixing sedatives and stimulants. The parents wouldn’t thank me for voicing my opinions.
‘Michel? – no. He’s not all that gifted intellectually; I’ve had lots much brainier. A good power of synthesis, a flexible gift of expression, a readily flowering imagination: not however the infant phenomenon. His precocity of development is shown more in an unusual sensitivity of observation, and a surprising maturity. Highly disciplined and a sharply focused ability to concentrate. What shall I say? – taken in isolation none of these talents would appear as exceptional. Taken together they’re to my thinking of much promise. His analytic powers are lower. His philosophy professor has not as high an opinion of him as I have.
‘Oh make no mistake, he’s bright. And on the other hand I’m not seeing him as the young Proust.
‘What he wants, he’ll get. Tough of fibre, close of texture.
‘For the rest, a quiet gentle boy. Can’t abide brutality or cruelty. Patroclus rather than Achilles. Defensive, naturally, about this dreamy sensitive side. Puts on a bit of a tough act with the motorbicycle oafs. Repressive about romanticism. Suffers. Hum, I’m saying no more.’
‘I couldn’t have done better in a month of Sundays, as the English say.’
‘Flattering of you. Well, I must go think about my courses.’
‘How do you find the girls?’
‘The girls? Ah – I enjoy them greatly. I like to smell their beautiful clean hair. When spotty and unwashed of course, even more pathetic than the adolescent male. And no less vulnerable. Ah me. The elderly pedagogue is not always pederast. Like Theseus, I’ve a taste for Amazons. Well: to shed light is my calling in life; I hope I’ve been of use: one so seldom is.’