The Class Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Translator’s Note

  twenty-five

  twenty-eight

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  thirty

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

  Copyright Page

  Translator’s Note

  The school pictured here lies in a lively arrondissement notably mixed in language as well as in race and class. As dialect renditions can be oppressive to read over the length of a book, I have merely sketched the speech styles of the speakers and then left them to communicate in ordinary language. An occasional omission in the English occurs where the original lines turn largely on a problem in French sound.

  The narrator here teaches French language and literature, and serves as head (homeroom) teacher, to one middle-school class of fourteen-year-olds. The class moves as a group through other teachers’ rooms for other subjects.

  A coordinator/supervisor (called a CPE in France, and here referred to as “dean of students”) acts as go-between among students, teachers, and principal. In American schools, this role, and that of the “bursar,” might fall to assistant principals or guidance counselors.

  The class is described here as being in ninth grade; this is the last year of middle school, which may end with a Brevet exam that partly determines placement in the lycée or high-school level. This final year of middle school is known—in France’s reverse counting system—as troisième, and is followed by the seconde, a link year during which students begin vocational training (lycée professionel) or courses in preparation for an academic baccalaureate program (lycée général or technologique).

  Three days before, I had unsealed the envelope with a feverish forefinger. Barely glancing at the first page, I went on to the second, darkened with a rectangular table divided into some fifty boxes. The columns for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were variously filled out, with Friday’s left untouched, as I had asked. On the school calendar stapled to the two sheets I counted thirty-three working weeks, which, multiplied by four, minus holidays and plus an estimate for related meetings, gave me the number of days my presence would be required. One hundred thirty-six.

  twenty-five

  On the appointed day, after coming out of the metro, I stopped at the brasserie to avoid being early.

  At the copper counter, the uniformed server listened with one ear to a fellow in his forties whose bespectacled eyes zig-zagged down a newspaper article.

  “Fifteen thousand less old folks, room for the young.”

  The two hundred fifty yards still left to go would take me two minutes, so I waited till a minute before nine o’clock to set off. I slowed outside the Chinese butcher shop so as not to overtake Bastien and Luc, shaking hands at the end of the street. After the corner, I could no longer avoid them as they joked with a monitor before the huge door, its solid wood panels opened onto the lobby.

  “I had a vague hope the whole place would’ve burned down.”

  “I suppose you’ll say it’s too late to set a bomb.”

  I left their snickers behind me. The summer construction wasn’t finished, and blue-overalled workers were moving from the tiled playground into the interior court with long narrow beams on their shoulders, setting them upright against one of the inner walls.

  The door to the staff room had been brightened up with blue paint. Gilles was pacing around the oval table away from the others, a forbidden pack of cigarettes in his hand.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  Scattered among the gray armchairs in the lounge corner, the new teachers listened to Danièle as she tried to relax them. I took a seat in the ragged circle, the edge of one buttock on the table holding the coffee machine. One thirty-something woman was the most talkative.

  “Anyhow, I knew that coming back intra-muros I was taking that risk.”

  She raised the stakes.

  “Intra-muros—gotta say that fast. Could go either way.”

  People were silent, waiting to see.

  Coffee cups into the trashbasket, we moved toward the study hall, where the principal hoped that we’d had a pleasant vacation. The audience murmured a Yes pointedly colored with regret that it was over. The principal said Oh well what can we do, then cleared his throat to change registers.

  “Although half of you are joining us for the first time this year, you all know that there are middle schools more restful than ours. You will see that the students here do not lack for spontaneity. Some, in fact, are extremely spontaneous.”

  Leaving it to his listeners’ throat-clearings to comment on the euphemism, he invited people to introduce themselves. We stood up in turn to tell what school we had come from or how long we’d been at this one. We’d been here for fifteen, ten, five, two years, or we had come in from the suburbs. We were named Bastien, Chantal, Claude, Danièle, Elise, Gilles, François, Geraldine, Jacqueline, Jean-Philippe, Julien, Lina, Luc, Leopold, Marie, Rachel, Sylvie, Valerie. We were awaiting our final schedules.

  When they had been distributed, few shouted with joy. We went back into the staff room to consult the lists of students in the classes we were assigned. For the sake of the newcomer called Leopold—thirties, right eyebrow pierced with a ring—Jean-Philippe, on the job four years already, slid his finger down the list of names in a seventh-grade class, at each one remarking “nice” or “not nice.” Leopold did the accounting in his head.

  Dico hung back from starting up the stairs after the other students.

  “M’sieur I don wanna be in this class it really stinks.”

  “Why does it stink?”

  “And besides, you for homeroom teacher that’s no good.”

  “Get going.”

  Most of the students were waiting for me in front of a room on the second floor. Frida now had long hair and red letters spelling GLAMOUR appliquéd on her black T-shirt. The students settled into the creaking chairs according to their affinities from the year before. The four Chinese girls took the two first rows against the right-hand wall.

  “Sit down and be quiet.”

  They sat down and were quiet.

  “To make things clear from the start of the year: I want people to get in order immediately. Five minutes lining up downstairs plus five minutes coming up the stairs plus five more to get ready, already we lose a quarter of an hour of work time. Just figure what that comes to, a quarter-hour wasted per period over the whole year. If we have twenty-five periods a week and thirty-three weeks, that makes over three thousand minutes wasted. There are some middle schools where they work a full hour per hour. Those schools—you start off three thousand minutes behind them. And then we’re surprised.”

  Khoumba, pink plastic earrings, didn’t raise her hand before speaking.

  “M’sieur there’s never an hour, every period is, I dunno, fifty minutes, never an hour. Like here we start at 8:25 and the first lesson ends at 9:20, that doesn’t come to an hour.”

  “It comes to fifty-five minutes.”

  “It’s not an hour, you said it’s an hour but it’s not an hour.”

  “Yes well all right, the important thing is that we waste too much time, and now again we’re wasting it. Take out a sheet of paper and fold it in half.”

  They wrote their last names, first names, addresses, and other information, all completely available elsewhere. Mohammed did not understand.

  “M’sieur why you asking for this? We already give this stuff to the student dean guy and all.”

  “Yes but this is just for me.”

  With the sole purpose of delaying the moment when we would get into the actual subject, I asked them to write a ten-line self-portrait. I wrote the term in chalk, hesitating over
the hyphen. Amar asked if he could do an imaginary self-portrait.

  “If you like, but I’d rather have your real portrait.”

  “Can I begin with My name is Amar?”

  “If you like.”

  Khoumba did not raise her hand before speaking.

  “M’sieur, I’m not gonna put My name is Amar, I’m gonna put My name is Khoumba.”

  “You being smart?”

  She hid a smile as she bent her head over her paper, she had a red clip stuck on top of her skull. Somebody knocked and the principal appeared in the doorway, followed by the bursar Pierre and the two main deans, Christian and Serge. Since the students had not done so on their own, he asked them to rise.

  “It’s just a way of greeting an adult walking into the room, that’s all. It shouldn’t be seen as a humiliation.”

  On the low table in the lounge corner, Bastien had left a packet of cookies meant for everyone. Danièle chose one.

  “I’m telling you, if you really take the time to exhale, with each breath you drop down another step toward sleep. The point is to yawn. I know what I’m talking about, I used to do relaxation therapy. Before, I would sleep maybe two hours a night, now I’m practically turning into a narcoleptic.”

  Lina plunged a hand into the open packet next.

  “You have some trick for a bad back?”

  “Same thing—relaxation techniques.”

  “Because this back is impossible.”

  “With me it’s mainly headaches.”

  “I’m telling you, relaxation techniques.”

  A bald baby smiled, taped inside the locker door of the woman named Elise, who was looking over her schedule again.

  “Three periods Friday afternoon, thanks a lot.”

  “I got the same thing Thursday.”

  “Yeah but still Thursday is better.”

  “Yeah but starting at eight Monday morning, no leeway.”

  “Yeah but at least the kids are still asleep, it’s calmer.”

  The newcomer Geraldine straightened up, parallel to the woman with the parasol in the painting behind her.

  “Anyone know how to get the copy machine to do both sides of the page?”

  Bastien spoke for everyone.

  “Um—nobody knows how, but there are cookies here if you want one.”

  “The bell ring?”

  Asking the question, Lina knew very well that it had. So did Danièle.

  “You sleep better, it changes everything.”

  They gave me the silent once-over. I forced myself not to smile.

  “So that’s it, you write your own self-portrait. You’ve got five minutes to do ten lines.”

  A boy with a shaved head raised his hand. Thanks to the folded sheet upright at the edge of his desk, I could identify him: Souleyman.

  “Why we doing this?”

  “I have all my classes do it.”

  “They’s no point.”

  “The point is getting to know you.”

  And stalling at the beginning of the year.

  “But we don’t know nothing about you.”

  I wrote my name on the board. They copied it into their home-report booklet. I absentmindedly stepped back a few feet to see whether it was straight. A kid with the name Tarek written in blue marker letters on his folded sheet had his hand up.

  “M’sieur are you a teacher that does a lot of dictations?”

  “What do you advise? Should I do a lot or not a lot?”

  “I dunno, you’re the teacher.”

  “In that case, I’ll give it some thought.”

  A short dark-haired boy in the front row had already turned around in his seat three times. After a glance at his folded sheet, I was able to call him by his first name.

  “Mezut, it’s me you watch.”

  He didn’t seem to hear.

  “Mezut, it’s me you watch, yes or no?”

  He mumbled an unconvinced Yes.

  “Come see me after class.”

  No folded sheet on a desk corner in the third row back, where I spotted a yellow satin polo shirt dozing.

  “How’m I supposed to talk to you, you back there? What should I call you? Should I call you Ninety-four?”

  “That’s not my name m’sieur. My name is Bien-Aimé.”

  “Oh, good, because I said to myself, he didn’t put his name at the corner of the desk because it’s already written on his shirt.”

  “It don’t mean that, m’sieur.”

  “So what is that, then, Ninety-four?”

  “I dunno, it’s some figure.”

  “You mean a number.”

  “That’s right, a figure.”

  The bell had the effect of a firecracker in a drowsing henhouse. I watched from the corner of my eye as Mezut considered whether I had forgotten or not, then decided not to risk it and approached in silence, first laying his self-portrait beside my attendance book.

  “You planning to be like that all year long?”

  His lowered head hid some expression I couldn’t make out.

  “I’m listening. You going to be like that all year?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that business of I keep turning around in my seat and I give a stupid smile when someone speaks to me.”

  “There was something I didn’t understand.”

  “You going to be like that all year?”

  “No.”

  “Because if you’re like that all year it’s going to be war and you’ll lose. Either it’s war and it will be a nightmare for you, or you do things right and it’ll go well. Have a nice day.”

  Geraldine was filling her grading book with student names.

  “You seen them yet, the 9-Cs?

  The question was addressed to Leopold, who was surfing on some Goth site and didn’t turn around.

  “Yep, for a minute.”

  “And?”

  “Looked okay to me.”

  “Yeah, same here, but we’ll see.”

  A masked Amazon in a leather bodysuit was inviting our internaut Leopold to come join her in the Underworld.

  “What about you, you seen the 8-As?”

  “For a minute.”

  “And?”

  “Looked okay to me.”

  “Yeah, same here, but we’ll see. Some teachers are already complaining about them.”

  Lina raised her voice over the copy machine, which was rapidly spitting forth a cartoon of Don Quixote. One sheet after another, all the same.

  “I don’t know if I’m allowed to screen a TV show for the kids?”

  No one offered to clarify the juridical principle raised.

  “I mean, because I’d like to show them Hasta Luego. It’s a series on Channel Six.”

  Geraldine was scanning the 10-Cs list, calculating the proportion of girls.

  “We don’t get Six at the house.”

  “It’s a really good series.”

  “Not Six, and not One, either.”

  “It’s a little silly, but that’s just why the kids might like it.”

  “The other day my father-in-law was over for the weekend, he wanted to watch the news on Channel One, we told him sorry, can’t get it.”

  Valerie blew in, angry.

  “Goddam, it’s just not tolerable, putting up with that. You see them yet, the 8-As?”

  “Yeah, for a minute.”

  “Because me, I think they’re crazy nuts. One period, and I’ve already written up three incident slips.”

  Lina had stuck a bulky video player under her arm. “It’s the 9-BS I’d like to do Hasta Luego with. Anybody seen them yet?”

  “Yeah, for a minute.”

  “And?”

  “They look okay.”

  “Same here, but we’ll see.”

  Small sheet large-graph paper: My name is Souleyman. I am kind of quiet and shy at school. But outside I am a different person, excited-like. I do not go out much. Just to boxing. I would like to have success in life in air-conditioning
after, and main thing I do not like conjugation.

  Small large-graph looseleaf sheet: Khoumba is my name but I do not like it much. I like French class even if the teacher is no good. People say I am mean-tempered it’s true but it depends if I get respect.

  Sheet from scratchpad: Djibril is my name. I am Malian and I am proud because this year Mali will be playing in the Africa Cup. In the draw it came out they going to play Libi and Algeri and Mozambic. I like my school because the teachers they let you alone cep if you get too ressless. Too bad I will leave here at the end of the year because I am in ninth grade.

  Large sheet small-graph paper: My name is Frida, I am fourteen years old and that is also the same number of years that I have been living in Paris with my father and my mother. I have no brother or sister but many friends. I like music, movies, theater and ballet which I have been doing for ten years. Later on I would like to be a lawyer because I think it’s the best profession in the world and that it is great to defend people. Personality-wise, I am very nice and agreeable to be with, but my parents say I think too much. On the other hand sometimes I have moods and I think it is because I was born under the sign of Gemini.

  Small large-graph sheet torn from spiral pad: My name is Dico and I have nothing to say about myself because nobody knows me except me.

  Ruled sheet torn from appointment pad: My name is Sandra and I am a little bit sad to be coming back to school but also glad because I like school, especially French class and history class, when we learn about how human beings have made the world we live in today. I have lots more things to say but you are going to collect the papers soon because I was too worried about doing something good and I only began to write two minutes ago excuse-me for the misteakes.

  Small-graph sheet torn from spiral pad: Tony Parker is the best basketball player. That why he plays in america. He is little but he runs fast and he makes great 3 point shots. So really he is big. When he is next to a reporter it the reporter who is little. Signed: Mezut.

  Small large-graph sheet, perforated edge: My name is Hinda, I am fourteen and I am glad to be alive. Later I would like to teach children. I would like to be in a nursery, that way it’s less work, just a sheet of paper and a marker that keeps them busy all day long. No, I’m kidding, just I really like children and also books about love.