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TWO

In the Beginning was the Word

The effects of my unmasking were not slow to make themselves felt. I had barely sat down after my mauling at the hands of the Viper when I heard the first whispers and felt the first covert glances. I had no doubt the whispers were about me: my downfall was being rejoiced at, and a mean kind of consolation derived from the discovery that I, too, worshipped the Ice Queen, and shared in the general suffering. It was unendurable.

After school I made my way, as I always did at life’s difficult moments, to the nearby park (called, ironically, Zeromski Park), where I could think things through calmly and try to find some sort of solution. I sat down on a secluded bench and began to analyse the situation.

I had been imprudent and had been held up to ridicule as a result. But the episode had also forced me to face facts: I, too, had fallen for Madame la Directrice. I was not immune; in refusing to admit it I had simply been deceiving myself.

My act of self-analysis, however, failed to produce its usual salutary effect: instead of making me feel better, it made the wound fester. I would now suffer not only all the tortures that went with the disease but also the humiliation of being, in my own eyes and everyone else’s, another victim. This was too degrading a prospect to be borne.

No, I thought as I gazed at the changing colours of the leaves in the October sun, I can’t allow this; I can’t abase myself like this. I’ve got to do something. If I don’t, I’ll soon be like all the rest of them – pathetic, oblivious to all sense of shame, stooping to anything for the slightest scrap of attention.

I was eighteen years old – at least twelve years younger than she was. I was also her subordinate, and of the lowest rank. I knew that in these circumstances I could seek consolation only in words: to hope for anything more was ridiculous and would lead to agonies of embarrassment and humiliation. By ‘words’ I didn’t mean ‘literature’; I didn’t intend to behave in accordance with Shakespeare’s description of the third age of man and take to composing ‘woeful ballads’ or – God forbid – besieging her with love letters. What I had in mind was something else: a kind of game in which words acquired a plurality of meanings and also a new strength. A game in which words became more than just a means of communication; they became, in a sense, facts. In this game, language, within a certain domain, became reality: ephemeral sounds with conventional meanings became things of flesh and blood. It was to be a kind of fulfilment through words.

I had already experienced the magic power of words; I knew what they could do, how much they could achieve. Not only could they change reality, they could create it and in some cases supplant it. It was through words that I had reversed, in the offices of the ASTB, a decision that had seemed without appeal; it was through words that, later, I had subdued the rabble. Words had been the true source of that unforgettable moment after the Choral Festival: it was the magic ‘No more’, that cry of ‘What you say?’ which had transformed our relief into an ecstatic Dionysian frenzy and brought catharsis.

And weren’t words always mightier than facts, even in the underground life of school? Of the dozens of incidents engraved forever in the collective memory of our class, Roz’s notorious essay was unquestionably the one that held first place. It even beat Titch’s inspired, uncompromising siege-breaking manoeuvre, which faded somewhat over time and lost some of its sparkle.

Not without reason was the book which proclaims that all things began, and always begin, with the Word known as the Holy Book!

I decided to make use of what I had learnt. I would not rely on Providence for opportunities to exploit the magic power of words. I would create them. I would deliberately pave the way and prepare the ground.

This, like the jazz ensemble and the theatrical performance, involved a certain amount of work. But this time, creating the necessary conditions for future rapture would consist mainly in amassing concrete and detailed knowledge about Madame and her life. The matter had to be approached scientifically. No more absurd fantasies, no more guesswork or wild surmise: it was time for some serious research. And the information had to be substantial, not useless facts like the shade of her lipstick. If I was to initiate the game I was planning, I needed a good hand, with a few aces. In short, an investigation was called for.

This bold plan, if I was not to dismiss it the next morning as some ridiculous fantasy conceived in a moment of gloom, had to be quickly anchored in reality. Immediate action was required. What was there I could do at once? Of course! The telephone book! I could find out her address.

I rose and set off with a determined step for the post office.

It was unlikely that a school head wouldn’t have a home telephone. But that didn’t mean the number would be in the book. It might be ex-directory, or in someone else’s name; if the phone had been recently installed, it might not figure in the last edition, for a new phone book only came out every two or three years.

My fears turned out to have been needless. Only three people with the same surname as Madame were listed, and of these only one had a woman’s first name. Furthermore, it was Madame’s. In addition, there was an academic title after the comma: ‘MA’, it said. This seemed to settle the matter: it could only be She.

The easy, swift success of my first stab at detective work had a dual effect. It evoked a shiver of excitement and strengthened my faith in my plan, but it also brought a sense of deception. For I was now back where I had started, facing a blank wall, and this in turn revived all my doubts.

Subjecting these feelings to a thorough analysis, I concluded that they were symptoms of a subconscious fear. Instead of getting on with it, I was stalling. While I longed for the day when, armed with the necessary knowledge, I could finally begin my Great Game, I also feared it; so I looked for reasons to procrastinate, even to give up altogether.

I’ve got to overcome this, I thought; I have to play an attacking game. And before I could change my mind I set off for the address in the phone book.

The street – more precisely, the housing estate – to which it led me was roughly halfway between the school and my own house. When I got off the bus and plunged into the maze of paths that wound around the buildings, my heart beat faster. What if I ran into her? It could happen at any moment. Wouldn’t she think it odd? Of course, I might have any number of perfectly good reasons for being there, but still . . . What should I do if it happened? Utter a polite greeting and walk on? Or say something? Act surprised, make some comment, try to engage her in conversation?

None of these answers was satisfactory. A chance encounter just now would upset my plans and was definitely to be avoided. I put myself on guard. As soon as I spotted her, I decided, I would change direction or turn away; if the worst came to the worst, I could pretend to be wrapped in thought and pass by as if I hadn’t seen her. As long as I was outside this presented no problem; but what if I met her at the entrance to her building, or – even worse – on the stairs? I’d have to say something then.

Luckily, the list of tenants was displayed on the outside of the building. Having found her name, I looked at the names of her neighbours and memorised a couple of them just in case. Armed with this knowledge, and slightly relieved, I began to walk slowly towards the entrance. Now I could run into her right at the door and I had an answer ready: however surprised or suspicious she was, I could say, ‘I’m going to see Mr So-and-so,’ giving the name of one of the upstairs neighbours. ‘What’s so extraordinary about that?’

The building had four storeys; she lived on the second floor. In front of her door I was engulfed by another wave of emotion. So it was here! This door! This doorknob! This doorframe! Having made sure that there was no spyhole in the door opposite through which someone might see me, I put my ear to the cold surface of the door. Silence. No one seemed to be in. I went upstairs and checked the names on the doors there, just in case. Then I ran downstairs and outside into the courtyard, and counted the windows.

This wasn’t difficult, as all of them clearly gave onto the courtyard, and there were only three on each floor. The one nearest the staircase proved, after a glance at the clearly visible interior of the ground-floor flat, to be the kitchen window; the other two, a big one with four panes and a smaller one with two, belonged to a room, or perhaps two rooms – here the ground floor brought no enlightenment, for the curtains were drawn.

I surveyed the building opposite, identical in every feature, and made for the entrance directly across from hers. There I began my observations – first from the second-floor landing and then from the third.

Despite the short distance between the buildings, it was hard to tell whether there was an interior wall between the two main windows. I thought there wasn’t, but I couldn’t be sure; and this uncertainty, in a matter apparently quite trivial, gave me no rest. For the possession of two rooms implied a great deal.

In those days, because of the housing shortage, a certain number of square feet was assigned per person; if one had no special privileges, one was condemned to the existence of a bee in a hive. If, for one reason or another (for instance, because someone had died), there was a bit more space, the other family members lived in perpetual fear that one fine day an eviction notice would come through the letterbox and send them off to a smaller flat, since their own now exceeded the permitted norms. Every square foot of extra space also cost a fortune in rent (a means of exerting additional pressure on tenants), and few people could afford this. So it rarely happened that a single person had more than a so-called a-1 (a studio) or at best an a-2 (a kitchen-cum-bedsit).

So if the flat I was now straining to glimpse, mentally and visually, from the third-floor landing of the building opposite had two rooms, its tenant either shared it with someone, or enjoyed special privileges, or paid a king’s ransom in rent. Of these three possibilities I would have preferred the second, which also seemed the likeliest; and I wouldn’t have minded the third. The first, although perfectly possible, was more disturbing. But why should it be? After all, if she lived with someone and I found out, sooner or later, who that someone was (a family member? a male friend?), I would have some good material for my ‘siege’.

Then, in one moment, all this conjecture was dispelled, for dusk was falling; it fell early in the autumn. A light came on in the flat above hers, and it lit up the entire space behind the two windows, clearly showing that there was no wall between them. This was further confirmed when the tall figure of a man appeared at one window to draw the curtains and reappeared to perform the same action at the other literally no more than a second after disappearing from view at the first.

I breathed a sigh of relief. So it was one room after all! A large one, certainly, but only one. Such a humble, unobtrusive little detail, but so uplifting! It improved her reputation (she may still have privileges, but more modest ones); it eliminated once and for all the possibility of a flatmate; and it radically reduced the rent she paid for extra space, or perhaps cancelled it altogether.

In my excitement I forgot all about the debacle with the Viper and the prospect, looming darkly on the horizon and bristling with traps for the unwary, of being grilled about the anatomy of the rabbit. Ebullient, I walked along the dark streets and summed up my achievements for the day.

Although there was nothing very remarkable about the knowledge I had acquired, it brought things into sharper focus. Within less than two hours I had reduced the distance between us by light-years. From a tiny point, flickering somewhere in the vastness of the cosmos with a mysterious, pale-blue light, she had become a solar disc seen from a nearby planet. I was no longer just one among dozens of her pupils, kept at a businesslike distance; I had become a singular kind of acquaintance. I knew where and how she lived; I could phone her; I could send her a letter, and on the envelope, after her name, I could put the academic title I had found in the phone book.

And then the significance of that title, or rather of its presence in the phone book, hit me. Of course, it was there as an additional distinguishing feature, in case someone else shared both her names. But the possessor of such a title must be able to produce the document establishing his right to use it – in this case an MA certificate. Which meant she had been to university and had finished her degree. It seemed so simple, and yet it had taken me so long to think of it.

Today’s Subject: All Saints’ Day

The conversations with which Madame began her lessons were always on some topic of current interest: a headline event, something to do with the life of the school, the approaching holidays, things of that kind. It turned out, accordingly, that the topic of our next lesson was All Saints’ Day, which was drawing near. The conversation was funereal: tombstones, coffins, wreaths, candles, obituaries and gravediggers – the point being, as always, to familiarise us with some of the vocabulary connected with a given subject.

This was inconvenient for me. Nevertheless, when my turn came I stuck to my plan, and began as follows: ‘Quant à moi, je n’ai pas encore de morts dans ma famille, no one in my own family has died. But,’ I continued, ‘I still intend to go to the cemetery with a group of other pupils, to tend to the neglected graves of some university professors.’

‘C’est bien louable,’ she observed. Commendable. But instead of elaborating on her compliment or at least asking me about my plans, which is what I’d been counting on to help with the next step in my vertiginous climb, she said, ‘The graves are mossy, and ivy covers the crosses.’

One could only agree with this observation. It did not, however, get me very far. I made another attempt. ‘Oui, en effet,’ I conceded, a tinge of melancholy in my voice. ‘Unfortunately it also covers the names on the gravestones. That’s why we’re going to clear it away.’

She seemed quite indifferent to this. ‘Les tombeaux où rampent les lierres sont souvent beaux,’ she went on. ‘Ivy-covered gravestones have a certain beauty. You must make sure you don’t spoil anything.’

What extraordinary taste the woman had! The dubious beauty of a grave was more important to her than the person buried there. She was inhuman.

‘Naturally,’ I agreed and then, not wanting to get stuck on this shoal, rushed on: ‘But perhaps you know of some neglected grave we could tend? We’d be glad to do it.’

She considered this for a moment. ‘Non, rien ne me vient à l’esprit.’

Nothing occurred to her?

‘Tous vos professeurs sont toujours en vie?’ I hazarded, unable to keep the disappointment from my voice. Surely all her teachers couldn’t still be alive?

‘A vrai dire, je n’en sais rien; I’ve no idea,’ she replied coldly, impenetrable as a slab of granite.

I looked about desperately for some crack in this smooth surface, anything that would give me a handhold, for I felt in danger of falling off at any moment. ‘Well, then, perhaps you remember some names, at least? Maybe some of the older ones?’ I blurted out. ‘We could check where their graves are, or try to find them.’

This wasn’t the most felicitous of remarks, and I wasn’t surprised when she riposted by dismissing my enthusiasm as morbid. ‘Tout cet intérêt pour les morts me paraît quelque peu exagéré.’

Exaggerated? ‘Mais pas du tout!’ I said indignantly. Feeling this was my last chance, I launched a frontal attack: ‘It’s for my friends. They asked me to find out, so that’s what I’m doing. It occurred to me that you might know.’

‘Me?’ She shrugged in puzzled inquiry. ‘Why should I know anything about it?’

But her position was now hopeless: ‘Didn’t you get your degree at Warsaw University?’

‘Si, bien sûr. Where else?’ She had given up a pawn – she had said what I wanted to hear. And yet her voice still vibrated with a kind of regal petulance.

‘Well then!’ Emboldened by my triumph, I plunged on: ‘C’était quand, si je peux me permettre?’

But asking what year she had earned her degree was of course too much, and she let me know it at once. ‘Je crois que tu veux en savoir un peu trop,’ she pronounced grandly. ‘And anyway, what difference does it make?’

‘Oh, none at all,’ I said, backing off – and immediately regretted it. The move had been thoughtless; I had lost a good strategic position. I compounded the error by adding, even more foolishly, ‘C’était seulement une question pour entretenir la . . . dialogue.’

She could not let such an advantage slip away. ‘Pas la dialogue,’ she corrected immediately, ‘mais le dialogue; dialogue est masculin. In this case, however, you should have said conversation, not dialogue. That’s one point. And the other is that the subject today is cemeteries and gravestones, not higher education, and particularly not mine.’

It was a classic move. Whenever anyone exceeded some limit, especially if they began asking questions, she would first tell them off for bad grammar and then put them firmly in their place.

But this time her thrust hardly touched me. I had what I wanted, and the mess I’d made of my bold, indeed frankly insolent, last charge – after all, asking when she got her degree was tantamount to asking her age – left scarcely a scratch. The only bothersome thing was the way I’d bungled it; that stung a little, and to appease the sting I decided to turn it all into a joke. ‘If I used the word dialogue instead of conversation,’ I said, ‘it was just to avoid the rhyme.’

‘Comment? What rhyme?’ Her face twisted with regal displeasure. I pursued calmly, ‘Si j’avais dit: “c’était seulement une question pour entretenir la conversation,” ça ferait des vers. Can’t you hear it?’

‘Qu’est-ce que c’est que ces bêtises!’ she said impatiently and, waving me away, told me to sit down.

Material for the Report

That same day, straight after school, I presented myself at the Department of Romance Languages at Warsaw University. There I said that I was a pupil in my final year at a school that the Ministry of Education, in its wisdom, had decided to transform into a bold experiment with French as the language of instruction, and that I had been delegated to approach the department with a certain request. The circumstances of this request I explained as follows.

I had been entrusted with the task of writing a report about the study of Romance languages at the university. It was to be mainly about the entrance exams and programme of study for each year, but was also to contain a so-called historical sketch – this had been stressed – outlining the department’s work over the years and supplying brief portraits of its most distinguished figures, including some of its former students who had excelled in some way or gone on to interesting careers.

Now, while I had succeeded in obtaining the data for the main part of the report (the entrance exams and programme of studies), as well as for its historical part (the history of Romance language studies and the famous professors), and indeed on these subjects had more material than I knew what to do with, I had no information, absolutely none at all, about any interesting or distinguished students, and God knows I had done my best. I’d pestered everyone with questions, I’d tried to find the right contacts – nothing. I was directed straight back to the department, every time – here to this very office, where all the records were. So I would be most obliged, and naturally my superiors would also be grateful, if the department would kindly make the relevant records available to me.

The secretaries in the dean’s office gazed at me with such concentration that their faces contorted with the effort, as if I were speaking some exotic language. But my exposé sounded so convincing, and the cause so worthy, that they couldn’t bring themselves to send me away empty-handed; they merely remarked that they weren’t sure they had quite understood and asked what exactly they could do for me.

‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble,’ I said politely. ‘Perhaps if I could just see the lists of graduates? That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, should it?’

They gazed at me in blank astonishment.

‘I just want the basics,’ I said, conciliatorily. ‘The year of graduation, the title of the MA thesis, that sort of thing.’

‘For which years?’ one of them, presumably the senior, finally asked.

I performed a rough mental calculation, and decided that Madame couldn’t have finished university before 1955. ‘Well, let’s say from the mid-1950s.’

‘From the mid-1950s!’ the Senior One gasped. ‘Do you know how much of it there is?’

‘It can’t be helped, I’m afraid, that’s the task I’ve been set,’ I replied, and spread my arms in a gesture intended to express helpless devotion to duty.

She rose, went up to an enormous cupboard, placed a ladder against it and ascended. Reaching up to the top shelf, piled with stacks of bulging folders, she extracted an unimposing-looking file, shook the dust off it and came back down.

‘There you are,’ she said, handing it to me. ‘From 1955 to 1960.’

Struggling to contain my excitement, I sat down at one of the desks and began to peruse the documents entrusted to me.

The pages were divided into five columns, headed ‘Name’, ‘Date of birth’, ‘Title of thesis’, ‘Supervisor’ and ‘Final mark’. I took a notebook out of my briefcase and slowly, page by page, began to go through the list of graduates. From time to time, when I felt the eyes of the secretaries upon me, I made a show of copying something down in my notebook.

Madame’s name was not on the lists for 1955, 1956 or 1957. This wasn’t seriously disturbing; indeed, in a sense it was a relief, for it also delayed her date of birth: she was younger than I’d thought, and that could only be in my favour. In this situation, every year that reduced the age difference between us was worth its weight in gold.

The tension did not begin to mount until I had gone through the list for 1958 and still hadn’t found her name. The chances of finding her now were swiftly diminishing: there were only two years left. If she wasn’t in those, I would have to ask for lists from the following years, and the secretaries might find this suspicious; besides, I didn’t want to abuse their patience, already sorely tried.

I turned over the page with ‘1959’ inscribed on it in an elaborate calligraphic style. And there it was, finally, on the very first page. A shiver of relief and anticipation ran through me. I took in at a glance the data entered in the five columns, and became the possessor of the following knowledge:

– that in addition to the name by which she was known, a graceful but popular one, she also had another, much rarer: Victoria

– that she was born on the twenty-seventh of January, 1935

– that her thesis was entitled La femme émancipée dans l’oeuvre de Simone de Beauvoir

– that her supervisor had been Dr Magdalena Surowa-Léger

– that her final mark had been the highest and rarest: an A

A little dazed and slightly overwhelmed, I stared at this information and wondered what to do next. I had what I wanted; I had made progress. But this only whetted my appetite. I was still in the woods: my new knowledge gave rise to a whole new series of unanswered questions, and made me realise how much more there still was to find out. In fact, of the things I had discovered one alone was entirely satisfactory: her date of birth. I now knew that she was thirty-one years old, and that in three months she would be thirty-two. Everything else cried out for further inquiry and explanation. Why ‘Victoria’, for instance? And what had she written in her thesis? And why that topic in the first place – had she chosen it herself, or had it been assigned? I’d heard that students usually chose their thesis topics themselves. But if she had chosen it herself, why had she done so? Because of her literary tastes? Her views? Her personal experience?

Simone de Beauvoir had been translated into Polish, and I had read several of her books: the first two volumes of her autobiography, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, and La Force de l’âge. I hadn’t been very taken with them: I’d found them long-winded and overwritten, in some places grotesque in their extreme rationalism, in others effusively over-emotional. Nevertheless, I couldn’t deny that they gave me some insight into a woman’s psychology, and in particular into the morals and intellectual life of the Paris existentialist set.

The general impression I got was of a sort of learned twittering. Beauvoir tells us how she rejected compromise and ‘bourgeois’ values in favour of intensity of experience, and resolved to lead what was known in existentialist terminology as an ‘authentic’ life. But the ‘authentic’ life, contrary to what one might suppose, was not one of decadence and extravagance. It consisted, first, in a fanatical and ridiculous politicising of every conceivable sphere of existence: one had always to be in opposition to something, to protest and to rebel against something or other. This protest was usually indulged in at little cost to oneself – indeed it tended, if anything, to be quite profitable – and always made a horrendous din. Secondly, it involved interminable and relentless self-analysis: every single experience, reaction and desire had to be subjected to rigorous intellectual scrutiny and then interpreted psychologically and philosophically. That, at least, is what it looked like. Reading these fat, bloated tomes full of verbiage, one got the impression that from her earliest childhood Simone de Beauvoir had lived in a state of permanent self-vivisection. She treated herself as an object of scientific inquiry, and her internal eye was alert to the slightest reaction. Every detail of every emotion was immediately noted down; nothing was overlooked, nothing left unanalysed.

What was there in all this that could have interested Madame? Did she like it or was she repelled by it? Did Beauvoir’s personality, views and way of looking at the world seem foreign to her, or did they strike a familiar chord? Was her choice of thesis topic prompted by approval and admiration, perhaps even by a feeling of kinship? Or was it, on the contrary, the result of profound disagreement, irritation and disgust? She was, after all, the head of a socialist school, and as such was unlikely to feel much sympathy, let alone approval, for anything written by the (admittedly unofficial) consort of the author of L’être et le néant. For however enlightened this reigning deity of artistic and intellectual life in Paris in the 1940s and 1950s might be, however left-wing and fervent in her dreams of world revolution, however slavish in her devotion to the French communists and outspoken in her support of movements of national liberation throughout the world, the fact remained that she was connected with existentialism. And existentialism, from the Marxist point of view, was a ‘nihilist’, ‘fundamentally bourgeois’ and even ‘fascist’ doctrine. (After all, Martin Heidegger – ‘Hitler’s right-hand man in Nazi higher education’ – had been one of its co-founders!) Marxism, of course, as ‘the only truly scientific system’, had long ago exposed, with childish ease, the intellectual poverty and moral rottenness of this ‘pseudo-philosophy’. Nevertheless it continued to proliferate, as weeds do, and to poison people’s minds. It was still necessary, therefore, to oppose it.

After 1956, opposition to existentialism assumed a new form. During the early years of the Cold War it had been simply taboo; with the ‘thaw’, however, it was allowed some expression, although mainly in order that it might be ridiculed and condemned. That, at least, was the official ritual, and numerous journals, magazines and academic conferences acted accordingly. This being the case, what could one expect from an MA thesis, especially an MA thesis supervised by someone with such a sinister name?

Surowa-Léger: the name was not just sinister but dubious. The woman had connections with bourgeois France! She had probably married a Frenchman. So she must be interested in trips abroad. And that meant she must be ideologically untainted – or at least very careful. She must have seen to it that Simone de Beauvoir’s famous ‘emancipated woman’ turned out to be ‘incorrectly’ or at best ‘superficially’ emancipated.

‘Do you know how I could get in touch with Dr Surowa-Léger?’ I asked.

‘Dr Léger,’ replied the Senior One, neatly omitting the first barrel of the name, ‘left the department a long time ago.’

‘She’s at the Academy, I suppose?’ I asked in tones of respectful gravity.

‘She left the country,’ the other secretary hastened to explain. ‘Five years ago. She went to France. For good.’

‘Oh, I see . . .’

My head began to spin with new questions. Gone! Left for good! Stayed in the West! It was like some kind of malevolent curse. People who went to the West and stayed there were considered ‘traitors’ or ‘renegades’; at best they were seen as people with no ‘moral fibre’, so tempted by Western trinkets – clothes and cosmetics, cars and nightclubs – that they succumbed to the shameful lure of consumerism. Of course, Dr Léger had probably left in order to join her French husband – but perhaps she had planned the whole thing in advance, in cold blood? Perhaps Magdalena Surowa had married M. Léger not for love or even because of a common interest in things French, but only because she hoped that sooner or later, through him, she would get to the West? In any event, that wasn’t the important thing. The question was who she was while she was still in Poland. An ideologically pure Marxist, critical of existentialism and other Western novelties? Or someone who approved of it, even admired it, along with other forms of Western decadence?

On the answer to these questions depended the interpretation of Madame’s final mark. What was the significance of that A? Had it rewarded a devastating critique or a sympathetic analysis? Or perhaps the thesis was no more than a pretence at criticism, a mask, assumed in order to wallow safely in forbidden ideas? How on earth was I to find out?

‘Where could I find out more about these people?’ I asked, gesturing towards the open file.

‘Which people, exactly?’ inquired the Senior One, an edge of impatience in her voice.

I almost said, ‘Well, for example, about Miss . . .’ but at the last minute I thought better of it. I began leafing nonchalantly through the file, as if the choice were a matter of complete indifference to me, until I came to 1959 again.

‘Oh, well, let’s say these, for instance,’ I said offhandedly, ‘the ones from ’59.’

‘Fifty-nine,’ the Other One repeated, ‘let me see, whom have we there?’ She got up and came over to look at the list. Once again I was on the verge of supplying Madame’s name as an example, and once again I held my tongue. The Other One went down the list of names with her finger. About halfway down she stopped.

‘There you are!’ she cried in a joyful voice, ‘Dr Monten. He’d be perfect for you. He’s a lecturer in our department, in seventeenth-century literature.’

Monten, Monten . . . wasn’t that the name of my mountain cicerone, the man who had taken me to the Tatras, the friend of my parents’ from before the war? Could it be the same man? Could this 1959 graduate of Warsaw University and possessor of that seldom-found combination of first names, Frederick Bonaventure, have any connection with my friend? Was he perhaps a relative, even his son?

I knew there was a son, but I had no idea what his name was, how old he was or what he did. Somehow we’d never talked about it, and I had never met him. Now, excited by this extraordinary coincidence, which might turn out to be priceless for me, I feverishly began to calculate whether it was possible.

Indeed it was. My guide had been around sixty when he took me to the mountains; he could easily have a son of thirty-two. All I needed now was some confirmation.

‘Would that be the son of Professor Constant Monten?’ I inquired, knowing full well that my Tatras guide possessed no such title.

‘Professor Monten?’ asked the Senior One. ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

‘But surely,’ I insisted, ‘surely you know who I mean? That famous geologist – you know. And he’s a well-known mountaineer, too.’

‘I’ve no idea, I assure you,’ she said, shrugging, and cast an inquiring glance at the Other One. The Other One just goggled.

‘Well, never mind,’ I said lightly, then added, poker-faced, ‘On the other hand, it would be quite simple to check.’

‘You could just ask,’ said the Other One, her tone clearly implying that if it was so important to me I could take the trouble of going to the source and inquiring about it myself.

‘Oh, there’s no need to bother him with questions,’ I said. ‘Couldn’t we just check the name?’

‘What name?!’ snapped the Senior One, barely controlling her impatience.

‘His father’s,’ I explained equably. ‘If it’s Constant, he must be the one. It’s not a very common name.’

‘And where do you expect us to check it?’ inquired the Other One, equally impatient.

‘Surely you must have a record of it somewhere? In this country you have to give your father’s name on every form you fill in.’

‘We’d have to call administration . . .’ mused the Other One, half to herself and half to her superior.

‘Yes, why not do that?’ I agreed enthusiastically.

‘Yes, all right, but what’s it got to do with anything, anyway?’ said the Senior One, giving way to her irritation. ‘What’s the purpose of all this? What does it matter whether Dr Monten is or isn’t the son of this professor of yours?’

‘Oh, but it does, it does,’ I sighed enigmatically, ‘it matters a great deal. You have no idea how much depends on it!’

The Senior One cast a martyred glance at the heavens, reached for the telephone and began to dial. ‘It’s me again, from the dean’s office,’ she announced. ‘Could you please check Dr Monten’s first name for me?’

‘His father’s name!’ I hissed desperately at her.

‘I mean, Dr Monten’s father’s name,’ she corrected, drumming her fingers on the desk. There was a pause, during which I shut my eyes and crossed my fingers. ‘Thank you, thank you so much,’ I finally heard her say, and the receiver came down with a crash. ‘Yes, his name is Constant. And that’s the last thing I’m doing for you today. We have work to do, you know.’

‘I’m so terribly grateful, I don’t know how to thank you,’ I said, jumping up and kissing her hand. ‘And you, too, of course,’ I added, bounding toward the Other One. ‘And now I’ll take myself off. I won’t bother you any more. I’m gone!’ I said, rushing for the door. ‘Au revoir, mesdames!’

Outside in the corridor, just as I was letting go of the door-handle, I heard the muffled voice of the Senior One exclaim, ‘Good heavens, what an odd creature! Where in the world did he come from?’

Freddy the Professor

In the bus, I took up my usual position near the rear door, facing the back window, so that I had a view of the street and not of the crowd of passengers inside, and began to arrange my spoils into some sort of order in my mind.

The information that a student from Madame’s year, someone who had studied with her, was almost certainly the son of my Mountaineer made everything else I had learned pale in comparison. Her date of birth, the title of her thesis were dry, official facts, a poor second-best beside the juicy first-hand knowledge undoubtedly in the possession of Frederick Bonaventure, to whom Fate, in her magnanimity, was now directing me.

The directions supplied by Fate, however, were no more than an opportunity, and it was up to me to make good use of it. Constant Monten’s son might be a rich source of information, but I couldn’t assume he would reveal everything he knew about Madame as soon as he saw me or heard my name. I had to lead up to it. The question was how. I couldn’t just ask him straight out. It seemed I was going to have to play more games, give another one of my performances; but I had no idea at the time of the sort of comedy this would turn out to be. All I knew was that I had to start with the Mountaineer.

That evening, after supper, when my parents were listening to Radio Free Europe in the dining-room, I took the telephone from there into my room (so as not to disturb them), plugged it in and, having closed all the doors behind me, dialled Constant’s familiar number.

‘I have an unusual favour to ask,’ I began after we had exchanged greetings.

‘Go ahead – what can I do for you?’

Even at that moment I wasn’t sure how I would open my game. It seemed sensible to begin by making sure that the precious Dr Monten from the Department of Romance Languages was indeed his son. In the end I chose a somewhat bolder opening move.

‘Does Professor . . . um, that is, Frederick, does he still work at the university?’ I asked, promoting the son as I had recently promoted the father.

‘Professor? Frederick?’ he repeated.

I froze. It wasn’t him after all! How awful! ‘Your son, I mean,’ I stammered.

‘Oh, you mean Freddy!’

I breathed again.

‘For a moment I couldn’t think who you meant, you made it sound so formal. Yes, of course, he’s still teaching at that little school.’

‘School?’ I repeated, with a return of anxiety.

‘Well, what else would you call that university of theirs nowadays? A kindergarten – not even a high school! Before the war it was a university, but now . . . it’s a joke.’

‘Seriously? Is the standard so low?’ I asked in a worried tone.

‘I’m telling you, it’s a waste of breath even to discuss it.’

‘Well, I’m glad you told me, because that’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t know if you remember, but this is my last year of school. Soon I’ll have to decide what I’m going to study at university, and I’ve been thinking about Romance languages. But I haven’t quite made up my mind; I’m still hesitating. So I thought Professor . . . Freddy, I mean . . . might be able to give me some advice, since he lectures there, and he got his degree there as well. Do you think that might be possible?’

‘I would even say it was advisable,’ he replied wryly.

‘That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. There’s just one thing . . .’

‘Yes, what?’

‘If you could keep it all to yourself. Especially as far as my parents are concerned. You see, they’re quite irritated by my leanings toward the humanities. They’d like me to do some sort of science.’

‘Well, actually, they’re right.’

‘Yes, I know you agree with them, but still, I’d be grateful if . . .’

‘Yes, all right, I won’t tell them. But I’m warning you in advance, I’ll do my best to make sure Freddy puts you off the idea. That won’t be difficult, anyway: he’ll do it himself without any prompting from me. He has a very low opinion of the whole enterprise.’

‘I’ll listen carefully to what he has to say, and I’ll take it to heart. I’d especially like to hear anything he has to say about his own student days – that would be important in making up my mind, more than anything else, I think. In fact, it might be crucial. So – when and where?’

‘Freddy’s coming over for lunch next Sunday. Why don’t you come around at about five? He’ll be all yours.’

‘Thank you. See you then.’ I put down the receiver and fell exhausted onto my bed.

Over the next few days, like a chess player preparing for an important match, I practised over and over in my mind every possible variant of every conceivable strategy I could use in the conversation that awaited me, so that I would never be at a loss for the next move. There was no doubt that the subject that interested me would come up sooner or later: at some point he was bound to ask who my French teacher was, indeed it seemed quite likely that he’d start off with that very question. But even if it didn’t arise, it would be easy enough to provoke it. The problem was, what then? What if Madame’s name evoked no reaction at all? If Frederick Monten, for whatever reason, just ignored it, as if he had never heard of her? Of course, I could always throw out a casual question like ‘I don’t suppose you know her, by any chance?’ But that would be a last resort. The main thing was not to expose my design; he mustn’t have the slightest suspicion of what I was after. The thought that someone might find me out, might discover that I was in thrall to Madame, was terrifying.

It was shame – shame, the enemy of experience. That was the tyrant that held me in its grip, forcing me to act undercover, always pretending, always in disguise.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the very sound of the name overwhelmed Dr Monten with an uncontrollable flood of memories, so that he fell into a sort of narrative trance and began, unprompted, to recount tale after tale from the life of the young Madame? And I would sit there and listen to him with feigned indifference, interjecting the occasional ‘Well, well,’ or ‘Really? How extraordinary!’ This, however, seemed highly improbable.

The Song of Virgo and Aquarius

As I waited for Sunday, I was also waging an inner battle, for I was tempted to make some use of the things I had already learnt, and while I tried to resist the temptation, I also spent much time reflecting on how this might best be done.

At the next French lesson, the time usually devoted to conversation was given over to reading aloud from an article in a glossy magazine devoted to popular science about the structure of the universe. Madame would write some of the basic concepts up on the blackboard – ‘Solar System’, ‘Milky Way’, ‘Big Dipper’ – and we were supposed to copy them down into our notebooks. We ended up with some dozen new phrases to learn and, to extend our vocabulary in this domain, were set an essay on any subject connected with the universe or the celestial dome.

This time the nature of the assignment accorded well with my aims. The idea came to me during the lesson, and by the time I got home, all I had to do was put it into good French. This is what I wrote (I give it here in translation, for the convenience of the reader):

When we talk about the sky, the stars and the planets, we are naturally led to think also of astrology – the older sister of the Queen of Sciences, as the study of the universe was once known. Astrology is based on the assumption that the celestial bodies in our stellar and planetary system have an influence on the earth, and in particular that they influence us – our character and our destiny.

The basic concepts of astrology are the horoscope and the Zodiac. The Zodiac is a stellar ring on the celestial sphere, consisting of twelve constellations, along which our sun wanders in the course of a year. Each of these constellations has its own name and sign. Their origins are lost in the mists of time, in the myths and strange legends of the ancient world.

In the light of modern science the domain of astrology tends to be dismissed as poetry or childish fantasy. However, there are still people – and by no means only the uneducated – for whom it is a genuine area of knowledge. For astrology represents a sort of challenge for modern science. It is synonymous with mystery; it is a different path toward knowledge.

The best and most famous expression of scepticism about the value of science, and of fascination with Magic, is to be found in Goethe’s Faust. At the very beginning Faust talks about how, despite all his learning, he is no further forward than when he began:

To Magic therefore have I turned

To try the spirits’ power and gain

The knowledge they alone bestow;

No longer will I have to strain

To speak of things I do not know.

A moment later, on picking up a volume of the predictions of the sixteenth-century doctor Nostradamus (a Frenchman, incidentally), considered to be the greatest astrologer of the modern era, he says:

What secrets lurk in this old book

In Nostradamus’s own hand?

Perhaps it’s here I need to look

To grasp the stars’ mysterious flight;

I’ll learn what Nature has to teach;

I’ll hear, endowed with magic’s might,

The spirits whisper, each to each.

My own attitude towards astrology and horoscopes was always extremely sceptical until one day I, too, like Faust, picked up the ‘mysterious book of Nostradamus’ – his Centuries Astrologiques, written in 1555 – and began to read. I studied it thoroughly; in particular, I checked my own horoscope very carefully to see how accurate it was. I was astonished at the result: everything fitted, everything was confirmed.

I was born in September. On the tenth of September, to be precise. Which makes me a Virgo.

Virgo – the Virgin – is an earth element, and earth represents certainty and stability. People of this element have a clear aim in life and are unwavering in their progress towards it. They are logical and rational, precise and industrious. They never give up before they find a solution to a problem; they think everything through and approach it methodically. Their love of order can be excessive, even pathological; in such cases Virgos become slaves to their own principles. Finally, Virgos have excellent memories and are good at music and chess.

Is this not the perfect portrait of me? Let those who know me well be the judge.

I know, I know: you’ll say a portrait like this is easily coloured to suit. All right. But what if there is more than just this vague portrait – what if there are other things that fit, traces of deeper connections?

What I am about to tell you shook me profoundly when I first came upon it.

Up to now the thing more or less held together. From here on, however, it became unadulterated drivel:

We must start with the myth of Virgo and Aquarius.

Each of us must surely have wondered why the signs of the Zodiac are mostly animals, and why these particular animals and not others; and why Libra – the Scales – is among them, and then why two humans are also among them. Most important, we wonder why these two people are not just a man and a woman but the Watercarrier and the Virgin.

The ancient legends that lie at the source of this intricate construction tell the story of the Cosmic Division.

In the beginning there was Monos, a homogeneous entity, closed and infinite like the surface of a sphere. But the defining principle of his existence was flawed: Monos, in his monomania, folded in upon himself, sank deeper and deeper into his Monosity, and sought his own destruction. Finally, when he reached the critical moment, he spoke. It was the last instinct, perhaps, of his fading will to exist. He said ‘I’: ‘I am.’ Having spoken, he heard himself; and, having heard himself, he ceased to be a monolith: he became Hearing and Voice. He split himself in two. In short, by his act of speech he became Heteros.

This new principle of existence remains the foundation on which the world is built.

The Zodiac is an ingenious expression of this dualism. Everything that is, is a duality: it has its ‘thesis’ and its ‘antithesis’, and these, in their eternal conflict, cause the world to oscillate. All forms of life embody this duality. Hence we have two Fish (Pisces) and the Twins (Gemini). Nearly all the animals exhibit some sign of it: the Ram (Aries), the Bull (Taurus) and the Goat (Capricorn) have two horns; the Scorpion (Scorpio) and the Crab (Cancer) have two front pincers.

The most perfect embodiment of this dualism is to be found in the human pair: the Virgin (Virgo) and the Watercarrier (Aquarius). Alone, each is incomplete; together, they form a unity and a whole. And while Leo (the Lion) and Sagittarius (the Archer) form a hostile pair, expressing man’s conflict with the beast that lurks within him and his desire to destroy it, the Virgin and the Watercarrier together express love; they are the ‘north’ and the ‘south’ of the universe, its two poles, which, bound by the force of mutual attraction, create a magnetic tension.

This beautiful idea was echoed as early as the fourteenth century, in the work of the divine Florentine. This is how Dante ends his Divine Comedy:

The love that moves the sun and the other stars.

But that isn’t all the ancient legends have to say about the Virgin and the Watercarrier. It turns out that these two figures, which move the world by the force of their mutual attraction, have other, deeper and more complicated meanings. They appear to be the figures of a young girl and a mature man, but when we look at what they are doing, it turns out that each of them represents an element that contradicts this embodiment.

Aquarius, the Watercarrier, is presented in a desert landscape, giving water to fish. He pours it out carefully from a jug that is always full. The Virgin, meanwhile, sits or kneels gazing dreamily into the distance, a goose-quill pen in her hand.

What is the significance of these objects, these poses and these occupations?

Let us note, first of all, the fundamental difference between the two figures: while Aquarius is clearly busy with something (pouring water from a jug), Virgo cannot be said to be doing anything much. She dreams, she gazes – perhaps she wants to write? – but this cannot be called work.

Next, let us recall what water symbolises. Water invariably signifies a source, a beginning. It is the materia prima. In the Indian tradition, for instance, water is the source of the Cosmic Egg; in the Hebrew Genesis, at the dawn of all things, the spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters. For this reason water is always associated with the female element, with fertility, with dark, unknown depths and life-giving powers.

And indeed, did life not begin in water? Did it not creep out to land from the dark womb of the sea?

Aquarius, then, although embodied in the form of a man, actually represents all that is female. By giving water he gives life; he watches over life’s creation. And at the same time, with the sound of splashing water, he beckons, he tempts.

And what about Virgo? We have already observed that she sits idle, lost in thought, holding a goose-quill pen and gazing off into the distance. The goose-quill pen symbolises the art of literature – originally a male domain. Our word poetry comes from the Greek poiein, which means to make, to produce or create. The ability to create – especially out of nothing – is a divine attribute, and God as a causative force is always male. (Woman does not create out of nothing; she transforms what there is.) Thus the poet is essentially male, even if physically a member of the fairer sex. Look at Sappho, for instance – we know what she was like.

Virgo, then, although embodied in the form of a woman, actually represents all that is male.

This is also expressed in her name, associated with virginity, purity and innocence. These may appear to be female characteristics, but in the sphere of ideas virginity is a male attribute. Womanhood, in fact, is never a state of virginity: Woman is always initiated. The Male, on the other hand, cut off from blood – menstruation, defloration, giving birth – not only is in a state of virginity but cannot be otherwise. Maleness is by its very nature always inexperienced, always uninitiated.

That virginity and maleness are indissolubly linked is a truth so glaringly obvious that it hardly needs stating. It even finds expression in some Romance languages, especially in French: the French virginité and virginal come from the Latin vir, which means man, or male. What further proof could one want?

Virgo and Aquarius, then, the royal pair united by love, only appear to be a young woman and an older man. In fact they are a young man and a mature woman. It is he who gazes into the distance, innocent and inexperienced, daydreaming and composing poetry; while she, experienced and knowing, well aware of what is important, beckons to him enticingly with the splashing sound of water. ‘Come, here is the source,’ she seems to be saying, ‘come to me and I will let you drink; I will quench your thirst.’

Let us now leave these celestial heights and descend from the firmament to the earth.

Since the day I discovered this myth and learnt the deeper significance hidden in the signs of the Zodiac, I have been testing it, checking how much of it is confirmed in practice, and whether Virgos really are in some way connected with Aquariuses. Naturally, I began with myself. To whom am I drawn? Who, I asked myself, dazzles me? Who has the power to captivate me, to charm and beguile me like the Erl King? Is there such a person? Yes – Mozart, the greatest genius who ever lived. His music enthrals me, enraptures me; I could listen to it forever. He is the love of my life, the altar at which I worship.

And what is his sign? On which day of what month did he come into the world?

The date of his birth is engraved in my memory like holy writ; my music teacher drilled it into me from my very first lessons:

the twenty-seventh of January

The sun on that day was in the first decade of Aquarius.

And I am not alone. My case is a common, even classic, one.

Take, for example, the greatest of the Virgos – Goethe. (Goethe, let us recall, was born on the twenty-eighth of August.) As we all know, Goethe had a rich life. He knew hundreds, even thousands of people, and to many of them he was bound by some special circumstance or connection. But three people stand out particularly on this list: Mozart, Mendelssohn and Franz Schubert.

Goethe saw Mozart just once in his life, at a concert in Frankfurt-am-Main. He was fourteen and Mozart was seven. The child prodigy played the most difficult compositions on the piano and the violin and then, without looking, gave a musical definition of the pealing of bells and the chiming of clocks. He made such an impression that Goethe couldn’t get him out of his mind; he is said to have mentioned him even on his deathbed. ‘I see him, I see him clearly,’ he is supposed to have whispered through withered lips. ‘Little man with the sword . . . don’t go! . . . More light!’ And when he was younger he listened constantly to Mozart’s music, with wonder and adoration. When he became director of Weimar’s famous theatre, Mozart’s operas were the main ones staged there. He was so taken with the beauty of The Magic Flute that he spent many years trying to write a sequel. He also couldn’t get over his disappointment that Mozart hadn’t set Faust to music. ‘Only he could have done it,’ he is supposed to have remarked in his old age. ‘He could have done it, and he should have done it! The music to my Faust should be like the music to Don Giovanni!’

Then there is the story of Goethe and Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn appeared fairly late in Goethe’s life, when the latter was seventy-two and the former eleven – barely older than Mozart. And the result of this first meeting? Within an hour the cocky little imp had the mighty Jove at his feet, ecstatic with admiration, devouring him with his eyes and ears, utterly captivated.

But what role was the child playing? What was it, exactly, that little Felix was doing when he performed before the Master? Why, yes, of course – he was teaching him! Opening his eyes and ears, playing Beethoven and Bach, whose music Goethe had never heard, initiating him into the mysteries of harmony and technique. Educating, instructing, enlightening. In short, the child was teaching the old man. Extraordinary! Unbelievable!

Unbelievable? It might have been if the child hadn’t been an Aquarius. But Felix, too, like the divine Mozart, was born under that sign (on the third of February). He was thus a female element, older by definition.

And so we come, finally, to the story of Goethe and Schubert: not quite like the others, but equally significant.

This time it is Goethe who is the object of fascination. Schubert falls in love with his poetry. He reads it, he recites it, he is overwhelmed with admiration. And one passage in Faust affects him so strongly that he is moved to tears. Which passage is it? Of course: it is Margaret’s monologue, spoken as she sits at her loom. Those unforgettable first four lines:

My peace is gone

And my heart is sore;

My soul is heavy,

There’s no calm any more.

They resound in Schubert’s head, they obsess him. He cannot sleep. Finally he understands that he will get no rest until he sets them to music. And thus is born the most famous of his songs, Gretchen at the Spinning-Wheel. It is the beginning of a new chapter – a new era! – in musical history. Gretchen is followed by one masterpiece after another; all in all, Schubert sets about sixty of Goethe’s poems to music.

Need one add when Schubert was born? Could this passionate lover of the inspired verses of a Virgo have been anything other than an Aquarius? The thirty-first of January was the date he came into the world.

This last example is perhaps the most significant of the three. It is a kind of archetype.

When Goethe, greatest of the Virgos, wrote that extraordinary poem, the song of a virgin in love, he was giving expression to his deepest self, to what he was because of the stars. I am Margaret, he might well have said (anticipating Flaubert, who many years later was to say the same of his Madame Bovary). For indeed, is this a woman’s experience of love? Does a woman in love lose her mind, give way to madness, long for death? Of course not. A woman who loves is calm and controlled, for love is her realm and her natural state. A woman in love knows perfectly well what she wants, and she strides boldly towards her goal. She wants to conceive and give birth; she wants life, not death.

But the male element, when pierced by Love’s arrows, behaves just like Goethe’s Margaret. Let us listen to his lament:

My thoughts spin round,

My poor head aches;

My poor mind reels

Till I think it will break.

His face alone

From my window I seek;

It’s him alone

I run to greet.

O to embrace him,

To clasp him at last!

To touch and enfold him

And hold him fast!

And kiss him till

I’ve no more breath,

And kissing brings

A blissful death.

And what does the Watercarrier do, moved by the desperate cry of the wounded Virgin? What does a mature woman (in the person of Franz Schubert) do when she hears the lament of a young man (the eternally young Goethe)? She goes towards him; she stretches out her hand to him. She swallows her ambition and pride, forgets her fear of humiliation and speaks to him. She lends him her voice: she composes music and transforms words into song. She turns the savage cry into sweet melody.

For song brings harmony and reconciliation. It is through song that opposites are united and dissonances resolved; it is through song that the ultimate synthesis is reached, and the spirit reconciled with the flesh.

In the song of Virgo and Aquarius, the Stellar Victoria is realised.

I long for that victory with my Aquarius!

It was well after midnight when I put down my pen. I had written almost twenty pages. Feeling strangely dazed, I closed my notebook and went to bed.

The next day I paid another visit to the university, this time to the departmental library, to find a French translation of the passages I had quoted from Faust and look up a few words and phrases I wasn’t sure of in Larousse, Robert and various other dictionaries. This done, I made the appropriate corrections and then read the essay through from the beginning, marking all the liaisons with a pencil and underlining the words to stress when reading it out loud.

As soon as I got home, I took advantage of my parents’ absence to have a sort of dress rehearsal: I read the whole thing out loud. And while up to that point I’d been rather pleased with it, I now began to have serious misgivings. It wasn’t that I read badly; I stumbled over the occasional word, but not so often, and this could easily be corrected with practice. The problem lay elsewhere: the thing was just too long. I couldn’t possibly hope to get through it all in one lesson. Knowing Madame, I could be sure she would stop me after the first few minutes, whether or not I had made any mistakes. If she didn’t find anything wrong with it, she might let me read on for about six paragraphs, say, before cutting me off with that soulless ‘bien’ and entering the mark in her book; and if my art d’écrire turned out to be less than sound, she would interrupt with constant corrections, thus distracting from the content, and finally say that was fine, I needn’t go on, and tell me to sit down. And then there was her suspicion of people who volunteered; that, too, had to be taken into account.

Leaving all that aside, and assuming that by some miracle Madame let me read on to the end, uninterrupted, I still had serious reservations. The rest of the class was bound to realise that something was up: over half an hour! Twenty pages instead of the usual three or four! An essay of that length couldn’t fail to arouse suspicion. And the content! All those fantastic stories, connected loosely at best with the subject; all that suspect erudition; all those transparent allusions and obvious hidden meanings – ‘young man’, ‘mature woman’, ‘virginity’, ‘initiation’; even an outsider would smell something fishy, and it certainly wouldn’t take the class long to figure out where the author was headed and what his true purpose was. Even the ones at the bottom of the class in French and the ones who never paid attention would rouse themselves from their lethargy and prick up their ears, intrigued by this reading that went on and on. And they’d probably wake up just when I got to the second half, where the layer of hints and allusions was thickest.

It was absurd to imagine that anyone would interpret this extravagant linguistic performance as an effort to improve my marks in French. Nor would it be dismissed as some bizarre flight of fancy, a laboured whim meant to dazzle the teacher and earn the gratitude of the class for taking up most of the lesson. It would be taken solely as proof that despite my ostentatious displays of indifference I, too, was in thrall to Madame; that I, too, like dozens of others, was utterly, helplessly smitten.

‘It’s not just Ashes under the desk any longer,’ they’d say. ‘Now he’s volunteering to read! Look at him, fawning on her, insinuating himself into her good graces, stooping to anything for a bit of attention!’

Awakened to this prospect, imagining the sniggers and jeers, I relinquished all thoughts of volunteering to read. Now I wouldn’t read even if I was called. I would simply refuse, explaining enigmatically that I had allowed myself to get carried away and wouldn’t like to take up the class’s precious time with my scribblings, but, of course, she could see my essay any time she liked, here it was, voilà, regardez mon cahier, j’ai écrit presque vingt pages – I’ve written almost twenty pages; but if for some reason she didn’t want my notebook, if it was too heavy, for instance, then – and here an entirely new idea came to me – then she could have a copy, a clean copy that I’d made, on just a few pages of foolscap.

Yes, that wasn’t a bad idea at all: copying it out so that I could hand the copy to Madame if need be. Suddenly it seemed the best solution; none of the others was quite so satisfactory. I abandoned my attempts to perfect my recitation, took up my pen and carefully copied the whole thing onto several sheets of cross-ruled writing paper.

But on the day of the lesson new doubts assailed me. Even if everything goes as planned, I reflected as I left the house that morning, going over it all for the hundredth time, even if I give her the copy and manage to make it look casual, almost as an afterthought, is this a good move? What will it achieve? I’ll only be revealing myself, exposing my position. It’s far too early for that – it’s the last thing I need. It’s a gambit that might cost me a great deal.

By the time I got to school the thought of any ploys with the copy could not have been further from my mind, and when the lesson began I was praying I wouldn’t be called.

Per Aspera ad Astra

Madame was in a remarkably good mood that day. She was cheerful and relaxed, and more talkative than usual; she spoke more freely, less formally. During the conversation period she strolled about among the desks, which she rarely did, stopping here and there to strike up a conversation. At one point she even permitted herself a little joke: when someone was describing how, during a terribly hot summer in the country, he’d cooled off with a plunge into a clay-pit, she observed with a smile, ‘On peut dire que tu as joui de la vie comme un loup dans un puits: one might say you had as much fun as a wolf in a well.’ Her interlocutor seemed to have missed some of the implications of this remark, for he appeared enchanted with it, agreeing happily and vigorously nodding his head.

‘And how did your essay about the stars go?’ she asked finally, proceeding to the next stage of the lesson. ‘All done? Would someone like to read theirs?’

This was unheard of. Never before had she asked for volunteers. The class was stunned, and Madame continued in a teasing tone: ‘Quoi donc? Il n’y a personne? No one wants a good mark? What’s the matter with you today?’

I felt my pulse quicken. Perhaps I should volunteer after all? In the circumstances . . . She did ask for volunteers, and no one seems very eager . . . No, definitely not. It’s out of the question.

‘Bon, alors, since there don’t seem to be any volunteers, I’ll have to pick on someone. Mademoiselle Swat, then, please.’

The plump, tapir-like Adrienne Swat heaved herself to her feet and launched, crimson-faced, into her essay. It wasn’t exactly thrilling. Indeed, it didn’t even meet the criteria for a composition; it was more of a collection of sentences strung together, like a definition, or something out of a children’s book:

‘Quand il n’y a pas de nuages, nous voyons le ciel, le soleil et la lune . . . Le ciel est bleu ou bleu pâle . . . Les étoiles sont loin . . . des millions de kilomètres d’ici.’ And so on in the same vein. Luckily it didn’t last long.

Madame did not interrupt the reading at any point, but she was displeased, and said so. ‘Je ne peux pas dire that I’m dazzled by your originality. Frankly, I expected more of you. It’s a pity. Not very satisfactory. However. It’s worth a C – at most.’ She entered the mark carefully in her book. ‘All right. Who’s next?’ She ran a manicured finger down the list of names. The nail was a polished, pale pearl. ‘Qui va me stimuler . . . qui va m’exciter? I’d like to get something out of this too . . . some pleasure . . . plaisir . . . from the fact that I’ve finally managed to teach you something.’

I don’t know about the others, but on me the effect of these words was electrifying. This was what I had meant, that day in the park when I’d sat on the bench in the afternoon sun and thought out my plan, by a game in which words acquired a plurality of meanings. Her words were meant quite innocently, spoken in good faith and intended at face value. But to me they sounded different – as if spoken in a different key. Only one element of the game was lacking: the initiative had not been mine. The words her lips had pronounced had been prompted by the circumstances – circumstances in which my role had been passive; she had not spoken them to me, or not only to me. Their value was thus diminished. Was there anything I could do to obtain more?

‘Bon, alors,’ the manicured finger halted at a name near the bottom of the list; ‘what does Mademoiselle Wanko have to offer us?’

Agnes Wanko, the daughter of a wing-commander in the air force for whom every official memorial day or anniversary was an opportunity to descend upon the school and lecture us about the defence of Poland or reminisce about the war, was the class swot, with all the characteristics typical of the breed. Respectful, ingratiating, her hand eternally raised (fingers straight, head up), she sat in the front row and kept well away from anyone and anything that could conceivably be viewed with disapproval. She could not be said to dazzle with her looks, nor was she distinguished by any eagerness to be helpful to others. She was always one of the first to arrive, spent her breaks in exemplary fashion, strolling in the corridor, always ate her sandwiches in the canteen the way you were supposed to and not, like most of the others, wherever she happened to be (even in the lavatories), and after school invariably went straight home. In short, she was a model of good behaviour; she might have been a robot instead of a human being. No loitering about, no insubordination, and, of course, no question of ever playing truant. As for clothes, boys and other amusements of that kind, she seemed to have no need of them. She cared only about her results: everything else – including Madame – was a matter of complete indifference to her. She was, of course, assiduous in her efforts to get good marks, but she pursued this goal with none of the slavish idolatry some of the others displayed.

Madame’s picking on her now seemed to me – especially since for once, and despite the appeal for volunteers, Agnes had not raised her hand – to be an act of warning from an angry goddess whom someone had neglected to propitiate. She was demanding a sacrifice. I can see, she seemed to be saying, that you don’t worship me, and I am not pleased. But don’t imagine you can get away without offering me homage. The fact that I usually ignore your raised hand does not mean that you may cease to raise it. It is your duty to raise it, since you deny me love.

The diligent Agnes Wanko rose, picked up her notebook and read out, with excessive care over her accent, the title of her essay: ‘De Copernic à Gagarin.’

Titters and stifled guffaws came from somewhere in the back of the classroom. Madame glared repressively at those dark, forgotten regions and said politely, ‘Bon, alors, on t’écoute.’

Agnes Wanko’s essay had as its epigraph Per aspera ad astra, and consisted of selected examples of man’s progress in his struggle to free himself from the earth’s restraints and soar ever higher into the celestial regions. It began with Copernicus, went on to the Montgolfier brothers and their balloon flight, and proceeded, by way of Lomonosov and his many discoveries (most prominently the helicopter in which he was alleged to have flown over the mountains of the Caucasus with a certain Georgian, who went on to live for another hundred years and tell the tale), to the final and longest part, namely the countless extraordinary achievements of Soviet aviation, the greatest of them being, of course, Yuri Gagarin’s triumphant space flight.

Listening to this, one could be in no doubt as to who had suggested the essay and provided the material for it: Wing-Commander Wanko’s little talks left an indelible mark on the memory. The work now being read out was characterised by the same way of thinking, the same arrangement and the same emphasis. First came the ritual bow in the direction of Polish scientific achievement (the patriotic touch); next, given the language in which the essay was written, a polite gesture of acknowledgment towards the French (the international touch); these tributes made, the balance was immediately restored with an impressive example from the inexhaustible treasury of Great Russian Science (the political touch); finally, there was a paean of praise for the technical and scientific achievements of our Brother the Soviet Union, Motherland of the Proletariat and Land of Progress (the faithful ally touch). The choice of material, its use and its arrangement were all exemplary.

However, before Agnes had waded through to the end, an incident occurred that disturbed her grave and reverential recital. Its instigator and protagonist was none other than the infernal Roz Goltz, that irrepressible enfant terrible who let nothing and no one stand in his way. At the very beginning of her essay, in the part about Copernicus, Agnes was quoting the following popular couplet about our greatest scientist:

He moved the Earth, he stopped the Sun,

Of Polish soil he was the son.

(which in her translation, although it lacked both rhyme and rhythm, sounded even more pompous:

Il a arrêté le Soleil, il a remué la Terre.

Il tirait son origine de la nation polonaise.)

when Roz Goltz suddenly burst out, in Polish, ‘Polonaise? What does she mean, polonaise?! He was a German, not a Pole! And he wrote in Latin.’

‘Calme-toi!’ Madame intervened, but Roz paid no attention.

‘His mother’s maiden name was Watzenrode – that’s not a Polish name. And he studied in Italy – in Bologna, Ferrara and Padua.’

‘So what?’ retorted one of the romantics, traditional enemies of the insufferably objective Roz. ‘He was born in Torun, and he worked and died in Frombork.’

‘Those were crusader settlements,’ Roz interrupted immediately, ‘built by the Germans. You can still tell, even today.’

‘You don’t know anything about Polish history!’ shouted the ‘romantics’.

‘Silence, et tout de suite!’ commanded Madame, stepping in firmly between the opposing sides. ‘What’s the matter with you? You can discuss it later, at the end of the essay. And in French, not in Polish!’

‘Je préfère en polonais,’ Roz replied, undaunted. Whenever he let himself be drawn into a skirmish of this kind, he would get excited, lose his temper, and dig his heels in. ‘Of Polish soil he was the son!’ he jeered, mimicking Agnes Wanko’s pompous tone. ‘What’s that supposed to mean, anyway? That if he hadn’t been Polish he wouldn’t have been what he was, or what? Or that his scientific genius is a source of rightful pride for the whole nation? Either way it’s an incredibly stupid statement. You have to be out of your mind to think that belonging to a particular nation can be the cause of an astronomical discovery. And all this pride just because a countryman of yours did something interesting and became famous for it is an admission that you yourself are a worthless moron, and with an inferiority complex to boot. One’s just as bad as the other. If Poland had produced thousands of scientists like Copernicus instead of just poor old him, and other countries just one or none at all, then it would be different. But even then all I’d say is that statistically there were more great discoverers born in Poland than elsewhere.’

At this the romantics sniggered loudly, Agnes Wanko continued to stand placidly where she had stood, and Madame, for the first time, seemed to be at a loss.

‘There’s nothing funny about it!’ said Roz, offended. ‘And since you’re so cheerful, I’ll tell you something else. The reason the Poles are so sensitive about their achievements as a nation is that they’re insecure. If they were as good as they want to appear, their history would be quite different, for one thing; and for another, they wouldn’t go on and on about all their great achievements. Do the Italians go on about Leonardo, or the English about how terribly English Newton is? But in this country you hear that kind of thing all the time. And that’s also because the nationality of most of its greatest figures tends to be a bit hazy – a bit of a sore point. Chopin, for instance: he was half French. So was Gallus Anonimus, the first Polish historian. Even the author of the first dictionary of the Polish language, Samuel Linde, was German. And the only writer of Polish origin who ever made it, and is read all over the world, unfortunately didn’t write in Polish. I mean Conrad, of course. And thank God for that! Because if he’d written in Polish, he would probably have written like that precious little wonder of yours, Zeromski. Well, isn’t that right?’

‘You talk as if you weren’t Polish yourself,’ one of the romantics said.

‘He’s not,’ muttered another: ‘Goltz isn’t a Polish n—’

‘That’s enough!’ Madame cried. ‘I will not listen to this any longer! You’re to stop it right now!’

But Roz could never let anyone else have the last word. ‘Whether or not I’m Polish remains to be seen. If I ever amount to anything, and especially if I become famous, then I’ll turn out to be more Polish than any of you. I’ll be treated like a king! And you’ll all go around boasting that you went to school with me. Unfortunately that’s how it works. And that’s how it’ll always work here. The best people either aren’t really Polish or get the hell out.’

Then something extraordinary happened: Madame strode energetically up to Roz and said, in Polish, ‘One more word out of you and you’ll be sent out of this classroom.’ A deathly hush fell. ‘Stand up when I’m talking to you!’

Roz got to his feet, visibly subdued.

‘You’re to come to my office after school, at two o’clock. And now I’m warning you: if I hear one more interruption, if you disrupt my lesson one more time, you’ll regret it. No one ever wins with me. Remember that.’

She returned to the blackboard, and Roz meekly subsided onto his bench.