Читать книгу The Restless - Gerty Dambury - Страница 15

4.

When our teacher comes back, our joy has disappeared. It’s just like Marlyse, who’s a Jehovah’s Witness, says: “Joy has withered away, away from the sons of men.”

The first thing to know, Papa, is that Madame Ladal arrives late that afternoon. That’s really strange. You should know she’s never late.

We ask her, “Why are you out of breath?”

She doesn’t answer.

She calls us by our last names like when she takes roll: from Absalon to Zakarius. But normally, in class, she always uses our first names. She makes us come to her desk, one by one, and she hands out our report cards.

“But madame, you always give us our report cards the last Wednesday of the month. Today’s only the twenty-fourth.”

“Get them signed tomorrow, Thursday, and bring them back on Friday.” Normally on the Saturday after report cards, we come to school to clean our desks. We scrape off the ink stains, we wash the inkwells, and then we have finally earned our prizes.

“Why are you handing out the report cards early?”

This May has been really strange. Our teacher has been nervous all month long, and I even failed composition.

I’m ranked thirty-one out of thirty-two students.

I don’t want to tell anyone at home because Émile will make fun of me: “We’re going to laugh real hard when our father’s little princess has to repeat a grade.”

All because I failed the dictation! I tried to erase my mistakes and rubbed my paper with the hard side of the eraser, but it left blue marks. So I rubbed even harder and made a hole in the paper. I tried to recopy it but wasn’t able to finish, and I didn’t get to answer any of the questions.

Émile is going to make fun of me: “Her first zero in spelling—Papa’s little girl.”

And I’m afraid of disappointing my mother. She gives us practice dictation every Thursday and Saturday morning when we’ve finished cleaning our assigned part of the house. I’m in charge of the blue bathroom.

I know I don’t deserve a prize. Books, dolls, those plastic tumblers that collapse and can be stored in a little round box—they’re not for me.

I really wanted one of those tumblers, but not a doll. I hate them and they scare me. Annie will end up with the tumbler that everybody wants because she’s first. (Normally, “Émilienne is first, Annie second.”) I’ll just get the red blotting paper to remind me of my composition’s “awful ink spots.”

After she hands out the report cards, our teacher opens a cupboard she calls “our own library,” where all the books she’s brought from home are kept.

Normally, she only opens the cupboard on Saturdays. Every Saturday, we turn in the books we’ve borrowed and read the first few pages of other novels and stories.

We’re supposed to make our choices in silence, but we whisper all the same, “Which one did you like?”

It’s forbidden to argue. Everyone is supposed to get a chance to look at each book (but I’ve already chosen mine).

Our teacher doesn’t want to see us forming any groups by neighborhood, courtyard, or skin color. Every time we invent little excuses (“Pauline is too poor”), she dismisses them calmly, without punishment.

Wednesday, after her evaluation, after the report cards, she leads us to the cupboard, takes out all the books, and puts them on a table. As she does this, we all stare openmouthed.

She stacks the books into little piles, thirty-two little piles, gathered with no rhyme or reason, two books or three books to a pile. She puts a blue ribbon around each, thirty-two blue bows. She lines them up on another table and asks us to come up, in alphabetical order. First name, first pile, second name, second pile, until nothing’s left on the table.

Nobody asks the right question: “Why are you doing this, teacher?”

Only: “What did you get?” or “Can we trade?”

For once, there isn’t a first or last place. I’m not going to say anything. I won’t say anything. I’m not thirty-first of thirty-two students.

I can show my books, my prize, first. And afterwards, but only afterwards, I’ll admit the truth about the report card—n’avoue jamais, jamais, jamais, jamais—and about my ranking and having failed dictation. I tell myself somebody’s going to have to sign the report card, even if it means I’ll get yelled at.