‘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