Читать книгу Partner in Three Worlds - Dorothy Duncan - Страница 16

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AT the approximate age of eleven, our elementary schooling was complete. Normally a boy in my position would at this point leave school forever and go into training as an apprentice of a chosen craft. This is what many of my classmates proceeded to do, and I have often regretted that I didn’t follow them, but Mother had no intention of allowing me to stop my education so soon, as though I were no better than a son of the proletariat.

The boys who went on with their studies now passed from a public elementary school into one of two kinds of preparatory school, of which there were several in Prague. Classical schools prepared for university courses in philosophy, medicine, the humanities and what would be known in America simply as liberal arts. Nonclassical schools prepared for military academy, engineering and technical courses in the university, or one of the specialized academies which gave entrée into business or civil service in the empire.

There was no question of my entering a classical school. I had a revulsion toward the thought of becoming a doctor or a teacher, and even though I might have longed for a professional career as an engineer, the long years of study for such a life made it too expensive an undertaking for me to consider. A nonclassical school, in preparation for one of the civil service academies, was my choice, and Mother knew precisely which one she wanted me to attend.

It was located in a huge, beautiful building on the border of Smichov and the Malá Strana. It was very well equipped, with large, modern classrooms, an impressive entrance, wide marble stairs leading to the classrooms which occupied four floors, a fine gymnasium, buffet lunch served every day at ten o’clock to the students, and an excellent staff of teachers. But it also charged a yearly fee of a hundred and twenty kronen, and that was far beyond Mother’s means, even by the tightest of stretching.

She went to the Smichov town hall and applied for a written statement which was known as a “poverty certificate.” This document asserted that I was eligible through its possession to a waiver of the tuition at the nonclassical school. Gaining entrance in this fashion mortified me, but Mother rose above shame in her pleasure at seeing me enrolled in what she considered the most select educational institution in Prague. I could hardly disappoint her by refusing to go.

Here, for the next four years, I undertook to master such subjects as literature, history, geography and drawing; Czech, German and French; chemistry, physics, algebra and geometry. There may have been other subjects, too, which I have forgotten, but there was no singing. My classmates were chiefly the sons of the military aristocracy connected with the garrison. They were well-mannered boys and they never mistreated me, as the children in the public school had done. They merely ignored me. In the years I spent there I made not a single friend, and after awhile I gave up trying to find one.

I still have a photograph of my class, taken the year I entered, in 1907. Thirty-five boys were arranged by the photographer in four rows. In the center of the front row sat the headmaster of the school and the head of our form, their lips in straight lines, their eyes staring into the camera as though they were about to tell the photographer what a stupid and clumsy fellow he was. They were flanked on either side of the front bench by the boys whose fathers were the most socially prominent. Their names carried the prefix Graf or von or Freiherr. In the next row, also facing the camera squarely with self-confidence, were the next in rank. There were still smiles on the faces of the boys in the third row, but in the back row stood a disconsolate group of six. We were the backstairs lot. Our collars were too high, our haircuts too close, our eyes dulled from too much extra work at home. I was the shortest of the six and the poor food I had eaten all my life made my eyes seem too large and round for the rest of my face.

I found it increasingly difficult in this school to care whether I was good or bad in my assignments, for the highest praise I ever received for the best work I could do was a nod of indifference on the part of the professors. But Mother helped me in the evenings whenever I fell behind in a subject, working on her designs while I pored over my books on the other side of the big walnut table. She gave me confidence and sent me back to school each day with a renewed determination to win good marks in order to bring pleasure to her. I had finally outgrown my desire to torment her in order to ease my own small hurts.

One day I came home as usual after school, ready to make deliveries of Mother’s finished work to various parts of the city. I found her face warm with excitement and she could hardly wait for me to lay down my books to tell me about a wonderful surprise she had for me. She took me by the hand, led me to the cupboard and opened it with a flourish, turning to watch my pleasure when I saw what she had hidden there.

I looked at the two enormous books and then picked one of them up and turned it over in my hands. It was heavily tooled in gold leaf, ornate beyond belief. Its back indicated that it was volume two of an encyclopedia of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. That morning, Mother explained, a very nice gentleman had visited her, bringing with him the best regards of the headmaster of the nonclassical school. Mother was thrilled as she told it, and I tried to avoid her eyes. After compliments about me had been exchanged, the caller told her about a list he had been given, containing the names of the finest and brightest boys in the school. To the parents of those fortunate students he was making the remarkable offer of a set of the encyclopedia for the small sum of two hundred and fifty kronen, to be paid in monthly installments. He was sure Mother would appreciate the thought of the headmaster in giving her an opportunity of helping me in my work at school through the ownership of this beautiful edition. “Have you already signed for the whole set?” I said, trying not to show my dismay in my voice.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “And wasn’t it fortunate that I had enough in the house to give him the first payment this morning?”

“How much was it?”

“Ten kronen. That leaves just ten kronen a month to pay for two years.”

I felt sick and I wanted to run out of the room. Mother had been taken in by a swindler and I knew the headmaster had never sent him to see her. I listened as she went on to tell me how impressed the head would be when he heard that she had been willing to do this to help me in my career.

It made me ashamed of myself. I felt I should have been able to save her from being so humiliated. The encyclopedia was utterly useless to me or to anyone else, but how was she to know it when so many of my studies seemed senseless to us both? When I knew she could no longer accept my silence as surprise, I kissed her and thanked her for such generosity when it meant a sacrifice on her part for so long a time. At that moment was born a never-ending dislike and suspicion of all salesmen and promotion methods for selling useless articles. For months after that I dreamed at night of Jesus throwing the money-changers out of the temple.