The Class Page 2

  Small sheet large-graph: My name is Ming. I am fifteen years old, I am a Chinese. I live in 34 rue de Nantes 75019 with my parents and I going to school with my frens. My good points is I am nice and hard worker. My bad points is I am curious.

  Half-sheet drawing tablet: My name is Alyssa, I am thirteen years old and have problems with my knee because I grew too fast. French class I don’t know what I think about it yet. Sometimes I like it, and sometimes I think it is totally useless to wonder about questions that have no answers. I would like to be a humanitarian doctor because a humanitarian doctor told me about his work and I knew that that was what I should do. I will not say any more, I leave it to you to judge for yourself.

  I strolled among the desks, casting an unseeing eye at the work-books hidden by elbows as I passed. I was bored.

  “All right let’s see what we’ve got. Give me a phrase using ‘after’ plus a verb. Hadia what do you suggest?”

  Black plastic earrings marked with pink hearts, LOS ANGELES 41 on her sweatshirt. “After he gone to school, he came home.”

  I wrote her dictation on the blackboard and stepped back. “All right, what’s the problem here?”

  A silent Hadia.

  “Yesterday I told you that after ‘after,’ we use the indicative, not the subjunctive. Why? Because the subjunctive expresses only hypothetical things, actions that aren’t certain. For instance—Mezut? If you’d kindly look this way.”

  “I don’t understand the question, m’sieur.”

  “Start by listening to it, you’ll find it’s easier to answer. Cynthia?”

  Pink stitching on a black T-shirt. “It is necessary that I go—um, necessary that I go to school.”

  “Very good, that’s an example of the subjunctive, something’s not sure. But when we say ‘after’ about an action, the action is certain— it has already occurred, it’s now ‘afterwards’—so there we use the indicative. So in this other sentence, what do we do? Cynthia again.”

  PINK.

  “Umm . . . ‘After he went . . . has gone . . . went to school, he returned home.’”

  I wrote on the blackboard as she spoke. “Good, you used the indicative with ‘after,’ that’s right. The only little problem is, and it’s the second thing wrong with Hadia’s example, is that actually we don’t use the simple past tense there, we use the past participle, which is?”

  PINK.

  “Umm—‘After he has gone to the pool, he has went home.’”

  “Yes, but no. You have to use the past participle right through the whole sentence.”

  “Umm—‘After he has gone to the pool, he is gone home.’”

  “Watch out for the auxiliary verb—‘be’ and ‘have’ are not interchangeable.”

  “Umm—‘After he has went—’”

  “No! Watch it!”

  “Umm—”

  “You had it.”

  “Umm—‘After he has gone to the pool he has gone home.’”

  “That’s it.”

  Just then Alyssa sat straight up.

  “But m’sieur, that’s not always true, that the action is already over when we say ‘after’ something.”

  Damn.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, frinstance if I say ‘You must . . . it is necessary that you . . . after you do . . . something’—I dunno, that means the person hasn’t done the thing yet, so there you use the subjunctive usually.”

  “It’s true that in that case we could use the subjunctive but actually not. In that case, we use a peculiar tense called the ‘future anterior.’ ‘After you will have played the game, it will be necessary that you eat.’”

  “That’s not logical.”

  “You could say that, yes, but you know, that rule about ‘after he such and such’—nobody really knows it and everybody makes the grammatical error, so it’s not worth getting too worked up over it.”

  I had slept badly, they were all sleeping. The door opened without a knock and Sandra was there, and the walls shifted.

  “Good morning.”

  It was a “good morning” with a more urgent purpose than apologizing for a late arrival, she was already on her way to the back of the room, sweeping past her usual place beside Hinda, who resembled I can’t think who and was looking sad today, the sparkle dulled in her handsome dark eyes. Sandra threw her bag onto the table where Soumaya sat by herself in the last row and took a seat beneath the poster about Holidays in Ireland.

  “How come you’re changing your seat like that?”

  “Because, m’sieur.”

  “Oh, I see, of course, now that you explain it you’ve convinced me.”

  “I can’t tell you m’sieur.”

  “Some classified military secret?”

  “What’s that mean m’sieur?”

  “Meaning it’s a state secret?”

  “What’s ‘state secret’ mean m’sieur?”

  “Meaning a very very secret secret.”

  “That’s right.”

  They were supposed to have written an aphorism using the general truth present tense. Gibran was snickering behind his hand over something or other, echoing Arthur, who was snickering behind his hand over something or other.

  “Gibran, I’m listening.”

  “What m’sieur?”

  “I’m ready to hear your aphorism.”

  “My what, m’sieur?”

  “Your aphorism.”

  “I dunno what it is, that thing m’sieur.”

  “It’s what you were assigned to do for today.”

  Someone knocked and Mohammed Ali came in, TRENDY-89-PLAYGROUND.

  “Did I say to come in?”

  “No m’sieur.”

  “And you came in anyhow?”

  “You want me to go back out m’sieur?”

  “No no it’s all right. You have a note?”

  “Well no m’sieur, because I thought how like its no sense getting even later stopping at the office and all.”

  “And why are you late?”

  “It’s my elevator m’sieur.”

  “It’s slow?”

  “No m’sieur, it gets jammed all the time.”

  “That must have been awful.”

  “No, that’s OK, it’s chill.”

  Zineb’s hand had been up for two minutes. Pink bandana knotted at the neck, plastic earrings, same color.

  “Can I tell my aphorism?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m not sure it’s any good.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I warn you I’m not sure it’s right.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

  “Very good.”

  Mohammed Ali had just sat down, TRENDY 89 PLAYGROUND.

  “Me m’sieur I don’t agree. Frinstance you break both legs, well you’re not dead but you’re not as strong.”

  “It’s better to just stay put in a jammed elevator, that way nothing happens.”

  Hinda raised her hand and her dull gaze.

  “Yes?”

  “Betraying a friend is like betraying yourself.”

  A cry of outrage, cracks in the walls, Sandra,

  “You’re a fine one to talk.”

  Soumaya echoed her.

  “Just start with your own self, then we’ll see.”

  Hinda, looking like I can’t think who, did not deign to hear their invectives.

  “Other examples?”

  Sandra, under HOLIDAYS IN IRELAND.

  “Respect others as you want them to respect you.”

  “Are you using the familiar address tu to me now?”

  “No, it’s in the aphorism.”

  “All right then.”

  As was fitting, Fangjie and Ming shared a desk. I had noticed their names on the class list without wondering about their level of spoken French. Now I was worried about calling on them and causing them to tense up with incomprehension like porcupines snared by a paw.
During the first exercise I craned over their shoulders. Their written sentences were neither more nor less correct than other students’, but this was a grammar class, and they might be transcribing the sentence mechanically from the lesson book.

  When I reached their desk after circling through the room during the correction review it became necessary to get into it. Ming seemed less panicky. He read the sentence with a strong accent, stumbling over one tough verb but able to identify the tenses.

  Toward the end of the hour he even volunteered to pick out the examples of verbs in the different tenses. He stopped at etait tombé. I chose not to point out that the participle “fallen” following the “had” makes “had” an auxiliary verb, not the verb itself, properly speaking; I was betting on the silence of the other students. No one spoke up right away, but I did not dare claim victory, because Frida had her hair pulled back and shrewd little eyes.

  “M’sieur, ‘had’ isn’t really the verb, it’s the auxiliary. After it there’s ‘fallen,’ so ‘fall’ is the verb, not ‘have.’”

  “Yes, but ‘have’ has to be conjugated even when it’s an auxiliary, so it could be considered a verb.”

  “So then is ‘fall’ the verb here, or is it ‘have’?”

  “A little bit both.”

  “It’s what you call a dilemma, except that in this case it’s supertragic because either way you lose. On one side you’ve got life, existence, and existence is what?—sickness, suffering, the death of loved ones, lots of other stuff too, but still it’s all those hard things you have to undergo. And on the other side, well—you’ve got death, nothingness—that is, for all the people who don’t believe in God. So overall, either you suffer or you die, knowing that in the end you’ll have to go through both. That’s it, roughly speaking, that’s the way it is, to be or not to be. To be suffering or not to be at all, that is, to die. Have I answered your question, Lydia?”

  Mohammed spared her a polite lie.

  “M’sieur, you rather be or not be?”

  “That is the question.”

  “Me I rather be.”

  “You’re right, but we’ll go on with the lesson now.”

  By way of example of the present tense used as immediate future, I’d written, “Bill is leaving for Boston tomorrow.” Djibril began to speak without asking permission, ADIDAS 3 in small letters beneath a triangular shield on the left side of his chest.

  “Why is it always Bill or like that?”

  “You raise your hand when you want to speak.”

  He did it.

  “Why’s it always Bill or like that? Why’s it never, I dunno, Rashid or some other name?”

  I was annoyed that my strategy for dodging the problem hadn’t worked.

  “If I start trying to represent every nationality with people’s names I’ll never get done with it. But okay, we’ll say Rashid, just to make Djibril happy.”

  At the back of the room some unidentified voice muttered Rashid, that’s a dumb name, but my hand had already erased BILL and was carefully shaping the letters of RASHID. Rashid is leaving for Boston tomorrow.

  Gilles dropped a flat tablet into a glass of water. Struggling with the copying machine, Sylvie said,

  “You look tired.”

  “Yeah, I dunno.”

  He hesitated to elaborate, foreseeing that to do so would depress him still more, then went ahead and elaborated anyhow.

  “It’s the eighth-graders. They’re starting to give me . . .”

  To finish the sentence, he pinched his Adam’s apple twice between thumb and index finger. Leopold had a row of rings at the crest of each ear.

  “Listen, if you saw the 7-As!”

  Elise agreed.

  “They’re nutcases, I swear! I already filled out four incident slips this morning. If this keeps up it’s gonna be the end for me. Last year my blood pressure went crazy, I have no desire to start up with that again, thank you very much.”

  For the third time Marie scooped her useless coin from the base of the coffee machine. “Does anyone have change for fifty centimes?”

  The effervescent tablet began dissolving in Gilles’ glass.

  “There are some dreadful kids in 8-D. Hadia for instance, she’s unbearable.”

  Jean-Pierre smiled from the corner sofa. “You know what ‘Hadia’ means in Arabic? ‘Silent nobility.’”

  Gilles swallowed the now-bubbling liquid in one gulp. Bastien asked him if he wanted

  “. . . a cookie with that?”

  “Wouldn’t help.”

  Valerie had a picture magazine open on her lap, with Claude at her side craning over at it.

  “I’m a Scorpio, means I’m pretty easy-going, you know, and at the same time also kind of moody.”

  “I’m a Gemini.”

  “Aiee! With what rising?”

  “Leo rising.”

  “Oh, well yeah, you do have your little quirks.”

  “Why?”

  “Usually that’s how it is, Leo rising—those folks are touchy.”

  “Oh really? Watch it you Scorpio, just go easy there.”

  “Listen, Scorpios are straightforward, direct.”

  “Oh sure.”

  “So—you’re Gemini?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “To me, Geminis . . .”

  “What about Geminis?”

  “Well, Geminis, they’re not real comfortable in their skin. They sort of, they chafe, you know, just not real natural.”

  “Pisces are the ones who chafe.”

  “No, I mean, Geminis are like double-faced, you know what I mean? No? Aren’t you double-faced, yourself?”

  “I sure am, I’m an English teacher by day and by night I’m a serial killer.”

  Not a twitch of the neck from anyone. The guidance counselor was explaining the study programs possible in high school after students finished ninth grade here. She studded her account with questions punctuated by anonymous and laconic responses from the audience that wrongly convinced her of their understanding, authorizing her to go on with the outline sketched on the blackboard.

  “You have two major families of curriculum starting in high school—the vocational and the general academic or technological. Now: the vocational is called that why?”

  “Because it’s for working.”

  “Very good, that’s right, it provides for quicker entry into the working world. You might say that what they teach there is closer to the area of skills-training.”

  Nobody asked the meaning of skills-training.

  “So for instance, in the BEP secretarial course you’d learn to write a letter, whereas in the STT you’d do something more in the area of business law.”

  Nobody asked the meaning of business law. On the bent back of Djibil’s jersey the letters DJIBIL made a half-circle above the impressive numeral 5. Dianka and Fortunée were chuckling at something outside the window. The others sat in listening posture.

  “So now: At the end of ninth grade, you’ll have to fill out an application for the high school you choose—that is, the high school you’ll choose according to what’s possible. For the choices, you see there’s this chart with an abscissa and an ordinate—Down and Across—with the abscissa listing what you want to do and ordinate what you can do. Roughly speaking, you have to work out a compromise between wish and reality.”

  She wrote the two words on the blackboard with a slash between them.

  “When you’ve worked out a good compromise, the principal of your middle school will register the class council choices, and then it’ll be up to you to follow through with the next steps.”

  Nobody asked about “register.” The guidance counselor distributed green slips to fill out on the spot. Wish/Reality. I moved from the back of the room to collect the slips from the rows. Huang had no idea where to start. Nervously, he began to fill out the questionnaire. Faced with “mother’s profession” he wrote in “textile machinist.”

  “Out of twenty-four papers, only two
show a rough understanding of the term ‘meaning of life.’ What does that mean, the meaning of life?”

  Frida, LOVE ME TWO TIMES in black on a pink t-shirt.

  “It means a what a person is here for.”

  “We raise our hand when we want to speak. Okay, what’s a person here for?”

  The four boys at the back were not listening.

  “Kevin you have no interest in the meaning of life?”

  “Wha?”

  “We don’t say ‘wha.’”

  “What did you say?”

  “The meaning of life doesn’t seem to interest you.”

  “Sure it does.”

  “So what is it?”

  “I dunno.”

  “In that case, listen to the other people and you will know. Frida, can you tell us how we give meaning to life?”

  Frida didn’t have to search for the answer, she found it right off. “Like, I don’t know, frinstance if a person believes in God and all.”

  “Fine, exactly. People who believe in God, that’s a way of giving a meaning to existence. And people who don’t believe, what do they do?”

  The four at the back were not listening.

  “Kevin, what do you say to people who think they might as well just shoot themselves?”

  “I dunno.”

  “You let them go ahead?”

  Lydia spoke up without raising her hand.

  “The meaning is also helping other people.”

  “We raise our hands to talk. Help them how, Lydia?”

  “Ahh, I dunno, like giving them food.”

  “Yes, that’s right, good, for instance we can make ourselves useful by what we call humanitarian commitment, that sort of thing. And what else?”

  She smiled. “Teaching them things.”

  “Teaching whom?”

  “Other people.”

  “So then a teacher’s life has meaning?”

  “Well yeah, because he has like a mission and all.”

  “You mean he was put on earth for that reason?”

  “Maybe . . . I dunno.”

  Sprawling in his chair in the left first row, Dico emerged from his silence.