Читать книгу His Name is David - Jan Vantoortelboom - Страница 11

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THE MOTHER SUPERIOR placed the list of names on her desk. Each name was marked with a stern black dot. She read them out loud, rhythmically tapping her index finger. I listened, more to the way she read than her actual words. When she stopped and looked at me, I was afraid she would ask me to repeat the names. For some reason, one name had registered: Marcus Verschoppen. I don’t remember what made it stand out from the others, as she went on to tell me some trivialities about each of the eight boys’ backgrounds. She hoped I would remember the facts, though her tone of voice, punctuated by her ticking nail, did not seem to express much confidence. She nevertheless considered it her duty to provide a new teacher with all the relevant information. Could it have been her slight hesitation when reading the name, as if silently saying more than she put into words, making the rhythm of her ticking finger falter? She ended by saying I was in luck, I’d be able to see the boys, if I wanted to, because at this very moment they were being taught—she hastily thumbed through a little red book lying on the desk before continuing—Catechism in classroom four. Experience had shown that the boys found learning the texts by heart difficult, so they started them early, in August. I suddenly wondered how on earth my father had managed to get me a job as a teacher in a Catholic school. I wasn’t christened, hadn’t attended church as a child, had not received my first Communion and had never been instructed in religious subjects. The finger had stopped tapping and was frozen in mid-air like a hook.

‘The classroom is at the end of the corridor,’ she said. The hook straightened out as she pointed in its direction. ‘Incidentally, it will also be your classroom.’

So there I was, on a Friday afternoon under a sunny cotton-wool sky, peeking in through the window of my classroom. And there they were. Caught in a shaft of light slanting down from the tall window. My class. The boy in the first row was sitting on his own. He was wearing a smart white shirt. His hair was combed to the side, parted on the right. I would have bet my last cent on his name being Marcus Verschoppen. I recognized the twins, too: scrawny, ginger-haired boys. I looked at the sombre walls, the portraits of the Belgian Kings, the cupboard with its halo of grime, and high above the blackboard, directly over the portrait of King Leopold II, Jesus Christ.

In my mind, I started decorating the almost maliciously bare classroom with wall charts, drawings by the boys and poems. I imagined the children’s voices and the music that would bring it back to life. I would even put these abandoned windowsills to use. I jumped when a hard object hit the window with a bang, cracking the pane. It was then they spotted me—a new face, caught peering in through the window. They stared at me for several seconds, united in uncertainty, until the lips of the boy in the second row moved. Then came the laughter, collective, a bomb of voices exploding into the outdoors through the gap underneath the door. I turned and walked away.