The Class Read online

  “She just runnin her mouth. So m’sieur, already when you were born did you wanna be a teacher?”

  “No. Not till I was two or three.”

  “Well yeah, at’s what I mean, she just says whatever.”

  At the start of the individual help sessions I asked the students to read that day’s assignments from their pads. Rather ugly Sofiane started reading the instructions for an art project. Her timid voice was barely audible, and it became clear that her assignments had been poorly noted, which was what I wanted to demonstrate. I had her repeat her recital, and she kept skipping over one of the terms. Testy because it was Monday, I brusquely snatched the pad from her. The muddled term, scribbled after “imagine a credible,” was practically illegible. Youssuf, UNLIMITED 72, deciphered it as “scenario.” I turned back to Sofiane.

  “How come Youssuf wrote ‘scenario’ and you didn’t?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Still, ‘scenario’ is a word you know, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, you don’t know the word? The rest of you people—you must know what ‘scenario’ means, certainly.”

  No one validated that certainty.

  “Scenario? Really?”

  Eventually Yelli moved hesitant lips.

  “It’s, like, the story kind of.”

  “Good. That’s it, it’s the story, not the pictures. Before a director starts making a movie, he has a kind of big book that tells what the characters do and what they say. So ‘imagine a credible scenario’ means what? What did your teacher want you to do?”

  Even Yelli didn’t budge. My feet dug into the platform.

  “Credible—what does that mean?”

  Mody would have loved to know, to raise his hand, and to say the answer. Lacking it, he threw out words at random. “Interesting? Wise? Serious?”

  “Yes, that’s right, it’s a little like ‘serious’ but more particular. ‘Credible’ comes from the verb croire, to believe—it means a thing you can believe. For instance, if Mody came in late and told me he’d had to kill off a bunch of Martians that spurted up out of his sink, I’d tell him, ‘Mody, your excuse is not credible.’ On the other hand, if he told me that he woke up late, I still might not believe him, but I could—it would be possible to believe him, it’s ‘credible.’ So ‘Imagine a credible scenario’—now do you all understand that?”

  A few heads sketched a ‘yes’ barely distinct from a ‘no.’

  “What you have to do is imagine a story, but not fall over into craziness, like for example ‘Yesterday I woke up I had eight legs and I hid inside a mushroom to eat penguin ears in mayonnaise.’ I really think your teacher must have been afraid of nonsense, that’s all, and that’s why she asked for something credible. So there you are, that’s what you were supposed to do for today—but if you didn’t understand what she said, how did you manage to do it?”

  Still empty at the appointed hour, the study hall, rearranged specially for the event, slowly began to fill. People kept arriving to take seats around the U of tables after the principal, at the head of the U, had already opened the discussion.

  “If everything goes according to the law, foreign newcomers will first go into an intensive French language class, then into an orientation class, and only then will they enter a regular middle school, with the option of doing a course in French as a Second Language or French as a Foreign Language.”

  Marie took an uncontested turn at speaking.

  “Is there a structure available for the non-French-speaking pupils who aren’t Chinese? I’ve got a case like that in sixth grade.”

  A scowl of concern distorted the principal’s face.

  “The problem is that there is so little room, we have to consider priorities. If you find ten students like that one, we could put them together a class. But until then, we have to work with the largest numbers, and—take a look at your geography—that’s the Chinese.”

  Unmoved by the humorous parenthesis, Marie dove back into correcting papers. Claude had never been distracted from his. Alongside him Leopold, with three rings in each eyebrow, opened a file folder to reveal a poster page featuring a vamp with enormous wide eyes done up in greasepaint.

  “Who’s that?”

  Leopold whispered some Italian name.

  “What kind of music?”

  “Metal.”

  “There is such a thing, Italian metal?”

  “Oh yes, her group is one of the best in Europe.”

  The principal was still talking.

  “What I propose is the following: that one member of each instruction group locate which day in the schedule the students risk having really heavy bookbags, and see what can be done to lighten them.”

  That interested Valerie, Claude, and Danièle.

  “Oughta start by seeing to it they don’t take home any more than they have to.”

  “They have to be taught to carry only what’s needed.”

  “There should be a collection of textbooks available in the class ” rooms.”

  Leopold was looking over the words of a song he had copied out in gothic letters on the back of his folder.

  “What does that say?”

  “It’s a suicide note.”

  “She killed herself?

  “Well of course not, since she’s singing.”

  “Am I a dope.”

  The principal was still talking.

  “The advantage of our point system is like the one for the driver’s license: the student knows when there’ll be a penalty and it’s an incitement to slow down. The disadvantage is also the same as with the license: as long as he still has points left, he can go as fast as he likes with impunity. It may be necessary to invent a penalty system that has him lose all the points at once, but in that case we might as well not bother with points in the first place, so it’s complicated.”

  He forced himself to raise the volume of his soft voice in order to be heard over the private conversations, which were becoming less and less so. With little conviction, he went on to raise a couple of further points of discussion, then suggested a pause before we broke into groups to lay the groundwork for a schoolwide plan. The proposal had the effect of a factory whistle in a henhouse: Silence first, then chairs shoved back by heavy legs that finally left the room.

  In the bathroom, Jacqueline and Chantal were sharing the sink.

  “Till what time will this go on, do you think?”

  “Whatever, I’ve got my kids to pick up at school.”

  “Damn, out of towels.”

  I walked toward the end of the corridor. The custodians had deserted their station. I swiped a sugar packet and opened the doors to the metal cabinet looking for a dishtowel.

  “It starts with the number one.”

  I turned to the door from which that mannered voice seemed to come, but the man was standing at the opposite side, against the light of the window flooded with sunshine. A shadow.

  “Counting to a hundred starts with one. If the one is missing, the count is no good.”

  I had never heard that ageless voice.

  “The one doesn’t guarantee the hundred, but without the one, no hundred.”

  He pulled out a blue striped towel from the upper shelf of the cabinet and laid it against my torso. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven . . .”

  Back in the study hall, the counting went on in my brain. Depopulated, the U awaited the first returnee from the break to draw others back. Taking her seat with a mug of hot chocolate in hand, twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three, Lina asked me with quiet sarcasm what a “schoolwide plan” was.

  “We have to define broad goals and suggest ways to get to them.”

  Twenty-nine, thirty, back to counting drops, exaggerating the stupidity of the situation.

  “What do we have to do?”

  “What are we supposed to talk about?”

  Thirty-four, thirty-five, sitting back down herself, Geraldine offered to
keep minutes of the meeting. Rachel began the discussion.

  “Well, I propose a project on uncivil behavior. They’re endlessly throwing insults back and forth at each other, that should be punished in some systematic way.”

  “We should photocopy the Complete Roughneck Dictionary and make them translate from it each time.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s this book that lists slang expressions from the projects and gives you the equivalent. For instance, ‘faquin’ is ‘bastard.’”

  Claude neither laughed nor raised it one better, facing into the general tendency to do so like a headwind.

  “The main problem, we all agree, is the seventh graders. They’re the ones we have to do something about.”

  Gilles spoke up for the first time all afternoon.

  “I’m sorry but we’re paying for last year’s stupid mistakes. Last year in the sixth grade they were already making serious trouble, a couple of discipline committee hearings would have quieted them down.”

  Bastien hastily swallowed his cookie and spoke without asking permission of Geraldine, who was in charge of granting it.

  “And besides, it’s typical trash behavior, they’re constantly challenging you.”

  Valerie spoke without asking permission of Geraldine, who was in charge of granting it.

  “Still, you realize that the kids who are pulling this crap don’t understand anything, what’s needed is to take them aside and start everything over again from zero.”

  One, two, Gilles suddenly doubled his usual number of comments.

  “I’m sorry but among the bad kids there are lots who are not poor students at all.”

  “Yeah, but the others no.”

  To conclude this day of reflection, the principal broke out champagne. By now we were only a dozen, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. Correctly popped, the cork from the first bottle bounced against the wall, then rolled to rest beneath a desk.

  Dianka was laughing over something or other with Fortunée, her knee showing above the desk and LIFESTYLE across her vest. She played deaf the first time I called her name. I raised my voice. “Sit up straight.”

  She did it halfheartedly.

  “Better than that.”

  She stiffened ironically.

  “All right, I’m listening.”

  “Wha?”

  “I’m listening, I said.”

  She wavered about still pretending not to understand. Every second was a brick walling her into her game. Her neighbor murmured something that made her smile.

  “OK, you come see me after class. Amar, sentence five, I’m listening.”

  “Camels drink little water.”

  “Now, why is that in the present tense?

  “General truth.”

  “Yes, it’s a general truth, something that can’t be contested.”

  Khoumba, red beads at the tips of her braids, did not raise her hand.

  “M’sieur some camels do drink.”

  “Yes, but very little.”

  “More than people.”

  “Only proportionally.”

  “So it’s not a general truth.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “You said if anyone disagrees then it’s not a general truth, well I disagree.”

  The bell had the effect of a breadcrumb tossed into a pigeon coop. Out of the corner of my eye I watched Dianka wondering whether I’d forgotten or not. She came up, casting a glance at Fortunée, who would be waiting for her in the hallway. LIFESTYLE.

  “Hand me your home-note booklet and look at me.”

  She resisted only half the command. I looked for the page meant for notes to the parents.

  “You’re to write out ten good resolutions for the year. Get it signed at home. I’m adding that if you persist in your attitude I’ll ask for a three-day suspension. Look at me when I talk to you.”

  She and her chum were communicating by eye. I’d slept badly.

  “You’re an imbecile, it’s amazing what an imbecile you are.”

  “You can’t go insulting me no way.”

  “It’s not an insult, it’s the truth, if I say you’re an imbecile it’s because you are an imbecile, if I say you’re an idiot it’s because you’re an idiot, if I say you’re stupid it’s because you’re stupid. And the day you are no longer an imbecile, an idiot, or stupid, I will say: ‘Dianka is intelligent, clever, and . . . intelligent.’”

  “You’re not spose to talk to me like that.”

  “I’ll insult you if I want, if I feel like saying you’re an imbecile I’ll say you’re an imbecile, and if I do say it it’s because it’s true, you are an imbecile, I’ve got three classes and right now you’re the one—by a big margin—who holds the title of the champion imbecile student. By a very big margin.”

  “Fine.”

  “No it’s not fine. Three months from now you’ll be saying to yourself god why was I so stupid, you’ll be saying why did I waste my time with my stupid tricks, three months from now you’ll be saying to yourself the French teacher was right, I should have listened to him, I would have started right up with the work and I wouldn’t have wasted three months, that’s what you’ll be saying to yourself in three months, you wanna bet? You’ll be saying I’ve been a jerk and I wasted my own time, so look, what I suggest is, tell yourself all that starting right now, that way there won’t be any more problem. You can go now I’ve seen enough of you for today.”

  The passage in the novel described a rigid bourgeois woman.

  “Does anyone know the meaning of ‘drawn together with four pins’?”

  From the ranks burst a bunch of anarchic and impermissible suggestions. I was glad of the chance to explain.

  “The expression means when a lady is dressed very correctly, so neat that you might say she’s held together by four pins or tacks pulling at her—you see what I mean?”

  They saw, barely.

  “It’s actually the stiffness that matters most, you know those people who dress so carefully, always holding themselves tight so they don’t mess anything up?”

  Every word was a step backward.

  “It’s like the saleswomen at the Galeries Lafayette. You know the place, the Galeries Lafayette?”

  Their silence and my powerlessness pushed me to take a sharp tone.

  “No, of course you don’t know it, since it’s in a different arrondissement from this one.”

  Sandra, who had been only half-listening, sat up abruptly, knocking an elbow against the wall and hurting the wall.

  “Look, all right, we’re not peasants, the Galeries Lafayette, I go there almost every week so all right.”

  The bell interrupted her protests at the same time as the fouro’clock uproar, which tripled then evaporated in the corridors like a flight of ducks into the distance. I suddenly saw wild geese follow the ducks over the pond. They were heading toward the Midi, the Mediterranean. A flight of partridges rose over the lake and into the . . . Sandra mounted siege to my desk, flanked by Imani and Hinda, who looked like somebody, I can’t think who.

  “M’sieur, why’re you always riding us like we don’t know anything?”

  “Not always, you’re exaggerating.”

  “Yeah well with the Galeries Lafayette you got us real mad because, like, me I know it very well I go there every week.”

  “It’s true that I sometimes get the feeling you never leave the neighborhood.”

  “Well that’s wrong too m’sieur. My boyfriend he’s in the seventeenth.”

  Airforce in to support artillery: Hinda stepped up. “That’s not just some story m’sieur, her boyfriend is in the seventeenth, that’s why she goes there all the time.”

  All I could do was retreat or set up a diversionary operation.

  “So, the two of you have made up?

  Sandra moved her big belt up over her little pot belly.

  “That’s our business, m’sieur.”

  Rain had begun to beat at the windowpanes. Sylvie was rec
ording notes in the ad hoc ledger and Geraldine was bit by bit eroding a brioche set in the middle of the oval table.

  “Actually, I’m looking more in the twelfth.”

  “That’s true, the twelfth is nice.”

  “Yeah, there’s some parts that really are nice.”

  “Not all, you gotta admit.”

  “No, not all.”

  “Come to that, the eleventh is good, because all of it is nice.”

  Lips pursed dubiously, Sylvie drew a long breath through her nose.

  “All nice, I don’t know about that. We’ll have to see.”

  “Sure, it’s not the sixth, no, but still, it’s nice overall.”

  “Even the sixth isn’t nice overall.”

  “Exactly, you know what I’m saying, the eleventh is lively everywhere, and it’s mostly young folks, too.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Well, young, I don’t know, but socially, you know, you don’t run into these old super-rich bourjie ladies staring at you in the elevator, with their dogs and all.”

  Sylvie closed up her record book and picked off a bit of brioche with two fingers.

  “Yes, but it’s nice to live around teachers.”

  They filled the classroom with an afternoon hubbub. I asked everyone to sit down without success. Dico and Khoumba were swearing at each other in the back. I thought it was just the usual provocation routine, but the pitch rose and Dico shoved her. I rushed over to intervene. He fully expected to go on, but without actual violence.

  “Go to your desk and sit down.”

  Khoumba irritated him by challenging him.

  “You too, Khoumba, quiet down and go sit.”

  Futile orders. Drawn by the noise, younger kids had stopped on the threshold of the still open doorway. As I approached, they took off up to the next landing. Hélé, the one bringing up the rear, turned around.

  “Come over here.”

  “What? S’not me.”

  “What do you mean, it’s not you?”

  “S’not me.

  “Apologize.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “Good.”