School For Patriots Page 8
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Neater than ever, the flowerbeds in Plaza de Mayo help give a clean and tidy look to the square as a whole. The time of year does not exactly help them flourish: it is towards the end of May, and the city’s autumnal air is heavy and gloomy. Yet the rows of flowers are bright and colourful, and combine with the lively jets of water from the rubbish-free fountains, so that the sometimes tawdry, sometimes chaotic aspect of Buenos Aires’ main square is lessened, and the sense of a harmonious landscape restored. This is the only place in Buenos Aires where great patriotic celebrations can be held. In a few days’ time another anniversary of the May Revolution is to be commemorated. Gathered in large but orderly groups outside the Cabildo, where those historic events took place, are high dignitaries of the Church, stern members of the Armed Forces, chosen representatives of diverse social organizations (patriotic leagues, secret clubs, charities, philanthropic centres) as well as more loosely formed knots of the so-called general public. Above all, there are the perfectly-behaved lines of pupils from the National School of Buenos Aires.
This is a true exception to the rule: traditionally, the pupils march through the streets of Buenos Aires on 20 June, the date commemorating the passing away (in solitude and poverty) of Manuel Belgrano, national hero and former pupil at the school. It is on that day, the eve of winter in Argentina, that the current members of the school pour out onto the streets to march and show how unwaveringly they can keep their eyes to the front. They walk from the school building on calle Bolívar down to calle Moreno, and then to Avenida Belgrano. Here they turn and carry on to calle Defensa, where Santo Domingo church is situated. It is in the entrance to this solemn place of worship that the hero’s remains have been laid to rest, surrounded by Greek effigies.
This year, however, there are exceptional circumstances, which warrant an exception being made: the pupils are to march through the streets a month earlier than usual, on 25 May rather than 20 June, or possibly 25 May as well as 20 June, and they are to do so in the opposite direction to usual: that is, leaving along Bolívar to calle Alsina, then down to Diagonal Julio Argentino Roca until they come out directly opposite the Cabildo in the middle of Plaza de Mayo. They are taking part in the official celebrations of another anniversary of the first cry of freedom in the entire South American continent. It is drizzling and windy, but no-one can complain about that, because history tells us that on the day itself, in other words on 25 May 1810, it also was raining, and nobody cared.
María Teresa’s glasses are misted over. She wipes them every so often in order to be able to see properly. She is of course directly responsible for her third year class ten, but the instructions spelled out emphatically to all the assistants by Señor Biasutto are that they should all keep an eye on everyone. There is no fear of misconduct or any lack of discipline: inspired by their patriotic feelings, the pupils are unlikely to indulge in any unseemly behaviour. However, it is also clear that journalists will come to report on the event, and not only journalists from the local media (such as, for example, Gente magazine, the weekly Somos or La Nación newspaper founded in fact by Bartolomé Mitre, who also founded the school), but also journalists from abroad, from countries like France or Holland, who are in Argentina as correspondents. The pupils are instilled with a desire to expand their knowledge, but also to take pride in what they do know. They spend many hours learning English or French (those who study English from years one to four then do French in years five and six, and vice versa). Their usual teachers are Miss Soria and Mademoiselle Hourcade. When they heard there would be foreign journalists at the 25 May celebration, many of the pupils were excited at the idea that they might be able to practise their language skills with native speakers: French with French reporters, English with the English. There is obviously a very praiseworthy motive behind this, a desire similar to that of wanting to carry out experiments in chemistry, physics, or biology. But when the alert class assistants heard these comments, they passed them on to Señor Biasutto, who passed them on to the Head of Discipline, and he informed the Deputy Headmaster. The Deputy Headmaster went round each class in person to talk to the pupils and explain in simple but eloquent fashion that unfortunately they could not trust the foreign journalists to be completely honest; that the questions they asked might seem perfectly well-intentioned, but that the stories they later wrote for their own press back home could be just the opposite; that any innocent declaration the pupils might make when they saw the little red light of a tape-recorder switched on in front of them could subsequently suffer (and there were more than enough reasons to fear this) grave distortions slyly intended to damage the image of Argentina in the eyes of the world. As a consequence, the school authorities gave strict instructions that there was to be absolutely no contact with representatives of the foreign press.
The school pupils line up stiffly facing the Cabildo. The assistants have to ensure that they all follow their instructions carefully. Some people in anoraks and carrying umbrellas come over:
—Qu’est-ce que vous pensez de la guerre?
None of the pupils respond. They smile, wave a hand, or pretend they did not hear, but none of them gives a reply. Soon it is time for the singing of the national anthem. For once, the musical accompaniment is not supplied by the scratchy sounds of a worn record, but by a proud rendition from the mounted grenadiers of the General San Martín regiment. The drizzle stops, but not the wind. Following this there is an impassioned speech by a dignitary wearing civilian clothes: dark grey suit with matching tie under a black raincoat glistening from the rain. His voice echoes round the square. Emotional reactions abound.
María Teresa wipes her glasses with a small orange cloth, but cannot make them as clear as she would like. She puts them back on but still sees everything through a mist. She peers through it at the pupils of third year class ten. It is odd to see them like this, lined up as usual in their uniforms and with expressionless faces, but outside school, outside the quads and classrooms, in the open air, at the mercy of the elements. Her mind wanders again, until a shout from the crowd of ‘Long live Argentina!’ snaps her out of it.
The event draws to a close and the crowd starts to disperse. The clouds do not lift, but the sky seems lighter. María Teresa notices Señor Biasutto coming towards her. He looks so determined she thinks he must want to say something, but in the end he does not speak. He stays close by her, merely raising an eyebrow or wrinkling his forehead as if to communicate that everything is in order. She smiles faintly to show that she agrees.
The school pupils stay in rows, silent witnesses to the slow dispersal of men wearing purple, those in olive-green caps, the ladies with their smart headscarves, the crowd with their little plastic flags. Only when they have all gone are the pupils told to march off in formation back to school. They have to repeat to themselves the military rhythm ‘left-right, left-right’ (to think but not say it, like the one-two-three, one-two-three of people learning to dance, trying out new steps on the polished floor), so that they are all perfectly in step with each other.
When they reach the front stairs, the assistants watch the pupils going into school. They enter class by class. At the doorway, Señor Biasutto once again comes over to María Teresa. It seems so clear there is something he wants to say to her that she turns towards him, ready to listen. Instead, he lowers his gaze, wrings his hands, and the thin line of his moustache trembles. He does not say anything. María Teresa thinks she must have upset him, and so turns back to survey the pupils, at the moment when her class is starting to climb the grey steps.
That evening she discovers that being out in the wind and autumn drizzle has made her cold worse. She spends the weekend in bed, with occasional bouts of fever. She coughs and sneezes, her throat aches, and her continually blocked nose makes her feel sleepy. Meanwhile in the living-room the mother spends her time with the television and the radio; for days now she has adopted the language of nautical technology. Two postcards arrive from Francisco, the two
of them together but in different envelopes. He must have posted them at a few days’ difference: one on a Thursday, for example, and the other the following Tuesday, or one on a Monday and the other a week later; but the Azul post office, or the postal service on the Azul base, apparently collects quantities of mail before sending the letters out all together to their respective destinations, so that the exact moment they were written becomes irrelevant, as they are all dispatched on one single day.
The two postcards show the same image of the statue of General San Martín in the main square at Azul. Even so, they are not identical, because in one of them the colours are much duller, as though the original photograph was taken on a cloudy day (that, however, is not the real reason: this postcard, but not the other one, must have suffered from being exposed to the sun for a long time while on display in a rarely-changed shop window, and it is well-known that over time this kind of exposure bleaches out colour).
On the back of the first card, Francisco has written his name and surname. On the other, the one he posted several days later but which arrived at the same time, he wrote only his first name. María Teresa keeps her brother’s cards in the bedside table drawer, among religious pictures and childhood family photographs. During the days she is recuperating, she repeatedly takes them out and reads them over and over, as though they were long letters with lengthy anecdotes. She cries and prays, sometimes for peace, at others for victory, but always for her brother. The rest of the time she dozes in bed, and if she feels better she gets up to keep the mother company. They watch television together and share sporadic comments.
—What can I say, Marita? I’ve never ever liked the sea.
In the evening they play rummy. The mother always wins. She does so because she is better at guessing, but also because she has an extraordinary memory for the cards that have already gone. The radio and television are still there in the background: the television is showing a lengthy fund-raising programme, full of tearful faces and offers of jewellery (just like the ladies of the city of Mendoza who entered into history thanks to their donations to General San Martín’s heroic venture across the Andes to liberate Chile); on the radio they are alternating songs in Spanish and interviews with prominent figures from Argentinian society, who talk with great emotion about heroism and the cold weather.
That night the telephone rings. It is unusual for this to happen: neither María Teresa nor the mother have many friends. Francisco does, but he is not there, and so these days almost nobody calls. The ringing of the telephone startles them.
—Who could that be?
The mother shrugs her shoulders.
—You get it, Marita.
They behave as though there were something to fear in a telephone call. Before she picks up the receiver, María Teresa smooths her hair with both hands. The mother looks expectantly at her. María Teresa is anxious, but as soon as she hears the familiar voice over the buzzing at the other end, her expression changes to a smile: it is Francisco calling from the south. He has managed to find some tokens to make the long-distance call, but they have to make the most of the short time they have. The brother says he is fine, no longer in Azul but in Bahía Blanca, and is fine; he does not want to talk about himself, but to ask after them, the mother and sister; he has nothing to say about his new life: they should tell him their news. So María Teresa informs him a little about what they are seeing on television, and hearing on the radio; the surprise call has made her nervous and she mixes things up, gets confused. All at once, almost without saying goodbye, she hands the telephone to the mother. The mother uses the rest of the time, until she hears a click and then the busy tone, to give him dozens of recommendations: to keep warm, eat properly, avoid catching a chill, about his friends, smoking, draughty rooms at night, about authority and obedience, the benefits of getting a good night’s sleep. While the mother is speaking she does not cry, not even when the call finishes and she has to hang up. In fact, these days she hardly sheds any tears, sometimes almost none at all, much less anyway than when Francisco was in Villa Martelli. What she has done is become an expert in naval terms, talking of nautical miles and knots, words she never used before.
These two days of rest allow María Teresa to recover from her illness, or rather to prevent it, if, properly speaking, it could be said she was never really ill. On Monday she returns to school as good as new, and in fact with an energy she has not felt for some time. She feels more confident, more determined to take the initiative.
—Don’t lean there, Capelán. Don’t hang, it’s not a clothes hanger. Step apart, that’s all.
She has thought deep and hard about her method of investigation in the boys’ toilet. She has seen her mistake: going into the cubicles after hours demonstrated it clearly to her. Her error was to concentrate on the boys’ toilet during the breaks between lessons, in the belief that this would be when anyone wanting to smoke in secret at the school would do so. But now that she has seen the empty toilet for herself, the quiet, forlorn toilet, she understands this was the wrong approach. If anyone, Baragli for example, or Baragli and others, is smoking at school, as she has strongly suspected ever since her sensitive nose alerted her, he or they must do it in the toilet, because there is no other possible place, but not as she thought during the breaks, because at that time lots of pupils are going in and out and would notice something, and anyone breaking the rules would not want so many possible witnesses. Anyone smoking in the toilet, Baragli for example, or whoever else it might be, must be doing it during classes, when cloisters and toilets are deserted, or almost so, when the teachers are busy in the classrooms and the assistants are dealing with administrative duties in their own rooms on each floor. This must be when those pupils raise their hands, and the teacher sees them and asks what question they have, and they say no, no questions, just an urgent need to go to the toilet. The teachers are not keen on permitting pupils to leave classes, and some of them even refuse in all cases; others, however, do occasionally give permission for them to go to the toilet, and the pupils leave the room.
After making this discovery, María Teresa completely changes her strategy. She does not spy on the toilets during the breaks: there is no need. Instead, sure that she is right, she takes a crucial decision. One afternoon, at the end of the first break, in other words during the third period, she slips unnoticed out of the assistants’ room, glides through the empty cloister, and creeps secretly into the boys’ toilet. She is already familiar with the place, but the situation now is very different: this time it is likely (and indeed for her, certain) that a boy will come in. This is why she hastily hides in one of the cubicles, bolts the door, and waits. As the minutes go by, she finds that instead of becoming calmer, as usually happens, she grows more nervous. Her increasing anxiety is because at any moment she expects to hear the creak of the swing doors at the toilet entrance, and to have her investigative efforts finally come to fruition. A pupil will come in and María Teresa, who is an assistant but also a guardian of the school’s reputation, will discover whether he is behaving properly, without him being aware of it.
The first time she keeps watch in a cubicle, no-one comes in, but that does not discourage her. She is well aware that this is simply a first test; she never imagined there would be a constant flow of pupils during class time, nor that the defiant act of smoking there would be a permanent one. What she is after is the exception rather than the rule (because what she wants to confirm is nothing less than the rule being broken). This requires not only the virtue of patience but the ability not to give up. Aware of this, she returns to the same spot at later times on subsequent days. It becomes a kind of habit with her. Her insistence begins to bear fruit, even though of a modest kind. She has not yet managed to catch any smoker in flagrante; but from her hidden lookout post she is able to check on the way the boys use the toilet. Finally one day she hears someone come in. She hears the door swing open and then shut, and the boy’s footsteps as he enters the toilet. There are no
more than two or three steps, enough to take him from the door to the closest urinal. María Teresa presses herself against the cubicle wall, and tries to breathe more quietly. She can hear and sense everything: the pupil has come to a halt in front of the urinals she knows so well. His belt is loosened, the zip on his trousers undone. Now he must be using his fingers to get out that thing he has; he must be holding it in his hand. In order not to give herself away, she scarcely draws breath, although she somehow realises this is not the only reason why she feels she cannot get enough air. She can now clearly make out the liquid sound of urine gushing out, splashing against the white surface and snaking its way down to the bottom drain. When the noise stops, she remembers her father telling her brother when they were little to make sure he shook his thing afterwards so that there would be no drops in his trousers. That must be what the boy is doing now: gently hitting or waving whatever it is boys have dangling down in front of them. Without knowing why, María Teresa closes her eyes, as though by not seeing she is more likely not to be seen. After that the pupil doubtless puts his thing away, folding it or stuffing it inside his underpants, the zip is done up again, the loosened belt is tightened once more, the boy does not wash his hands as hygiene requires, but simply takes the three steps back the way he came, pushes open the swing door, and leaves.
María Teresa discovers that her hands and legs are trembling. She has also perspired a little, even though the weather is so cold. She thinks this must be from a fear that, trying to catch the boys out, she herself is caught instead; but she imagines that as the days go by she will feel more secure in her hiding place. True enough, the pupils come and go without suspecting her presence in any way. They enter, do what they have to do, and leave, without once looking round the toilet. Only anyone sneaking in to smoke might take precautions, but these would doubtless consist in checking that there was nobody close to the toilet, rather than being worried that there was someone inside it. And anyway, until now not a single boy has come to the toilet to smoke.