by Inès Cagnati
Without thinking, I said, “Yes.”
It wasn’t until she held out the dormitory key to me that I really understood. I took it and started running like a fool to the dormitory stairs, both out of joy, and for fear that she might change her mind.
Calmly I climbed the stairs. I thought of my bicycle, alone in the dark in the back of the courtyard. I thought about the leave pass, too. What a stupid lie. I should have signed it the usual way or copied my mother’s handwriting. The thought had not even occurred to me. That said, I don’t know how my mother signs her name; I’m the one who signs things at home. Like my little sisters’ school forms, and my own. Maria, that great big arrogant pest, doesn’t want me to touch hers. She signs them herself. That’s dumb. If our teacher compared our forms, she would see that the signatures weren’t the same. That would make a nice tale to tell at school. Not at home. At home, we don’t bother about what happens at school. There are too many of us, and too many other worries. When the teacher, not the mean one, the other one, came to the house—which showed a lot of guts—to talk to my parents and tell them how smart I was, and how I absolutely had to go to the high school so I could have a decent future, and that she’d take care of the applications for the scholarship and all that, my father and my mother said you don’t have to be smart to do farm work, and that’s true. The teacher wanted to keep on talking, but my father and my mother went off to the streams to cut wood and left her in the yard with the dog. That’s how it is at our place. Luckily, the teacher didn’t get discouraged. She didn’t come back to the house. It was too awful and she wasn’t used to it. But she did all the applications just the same. I’m at the high school now.
10
I OPENED the door of the dormitory. I mulled it over a bit then decided to leave the key in the door, on the outside. The key would be fine. And this way, the supervisor wouldn’t have to bother me for the key. I didn’t want anyone to speak to me. Even to ask me to return a key.
I sat down on my bed. I took out my two pieces of bread. I started to eat them. One bite from the one on the right, one from the one on the left, so neither would feel left out. I like things to be totally fair. For example, I don’t like to water the flowers in the garden I planted behind the house. I water them, but I don’t like it. All flowers are equally thirsty. But even when I pay close attention, I end up giving less water to one plant than to another. Whatever I do, at least one plant is scanted, which is unbearable. I don’t want to give any flower less water than any other. I worry about this all the time. I tell myself it’s better to let them all die of thirst than to give one of them less than the others. But I can’t do that. I don’t want everything to die. It’s really terrible. I feel like screaming when I think that everything will always be like this.
•
I got undressed and took my smock to the showers. I snuck some soap from a toiletry kit and washed it. It was too bad that it wasn’t a Saturday. If it had been a Saturday morning, I could have kept the soap and even pocketed some other things. I would have taken them home, it might have made my mother happy. But it was Sunday, and if the girls complained about things going missing, the supervisors would go through everything, and everyone would know it was me. Maybe they’d expel me. I couldn’t take a thing, but it wasn’t for lack of will.
I spread my green smock over the radiator, stretching it out in every direction so it wouldn’t be too wrinkled when it was dry. I would like to be clean and well dressed.
I took a shower. To lather up, I looked for a perfumed soap. I had a variety of choices, which didn’t happen often, usually I don’t have soap. I took one that smelled of sweet almond. I love the scent of fresh almonds.
In the shower, I let the steaming water flow down over me for a long time while lathering myself over and over. By the end I couldn’t see anymore, there was so much steam. I’d never felt so good. I would have liked it to last my whole life, but that wasn’t realistic. I sang at the top of my lungs while I rinsed off and while I made my way to bed. It echoed really loudly in the empty hallways. You’d have thought I was at least a hundred people. That made me happy. I kept on singing like that until I was in my bed, under the covers. But there my voice sounded like someone being smothered. It wasn’t fun anymore at all. So I stopped. That was better.
•
I tried to come with up stories to send myself to sleep. I couldn’t. My thoughts kept returning to my pass. When something like that is on my mind, I can’t think of anything else.
If the supervisor found out I hadn’t brought back my signed pass, would she write home to check and see I’d actually been there? Usually she does. She always wants to know what we do when we’re away from the high school. Me, I think it’s none of her business. It’s the parents who ought to ask what goes on at the high school on Sundays. But they couldn’t care less. In any case, mine don’t. What I do, where I am and all that doesn’t matter to them. They never wonder anything about me at all.
The supervisor cares so much about what we get up to on Sundays when we’re away from her high school because she imagines that if we don’t go to our own homes, we go to some boy’s house. That’s automatic for her. For example, if she found out that I hadn’t gone home, I mean, into the house, and I told her that I’d slept in the straw with my dog then wandered around in the countryside, she wouldn’t believe it. Even if I explained it all to her thoroughly, she wouldn’t believe it, because it would never occur to her to leave the high school to go sleep with a dog in the straw in a barn. She would think I had gone off to see a boy. That’s a completely ridiculous idea, but what can you do? If a supervisor is determined to believe that you’ve gone off to see a boy, you can’t convince her otherwise.
As for the letter she’d send home, that didn’t worry me. First off, my parents wouldn’t care where I’d been on Sunday. Plus, they’ll never get the letter. They never get any letters. The mailman is still spooked from the days when he used to try to come to the house to deliver our mail. So he stops my little sisters or me on the school path to give us our letters. At first, the little ones and I would take time to consider each letter, its envelope, its handwriting, its contents, before gathering beside a stream to decide its fate. Soon we understood that we had to drown all the letters and that’s how it would always be. We decided to drown them immediately, without wasting any time thinking about it. This drives the mayor, the police, and the tax collector completely insane. They don’t understand where their letters end up, and they have to lie in wait for my father when he goes to the village. In any case, the supervisor can write letters to my father until the end of the world if she wants. He’ll never get them. They’ll be drowned in the cold waters of the marshes. Obviously, I can’t tell her that. Too bad for her.
I thought about it a little more, then decided there was no need to worry about the unsigned pass. I went back to thinking up other things to make me fall asleep. Nothing came to mind. I don’t have much imagination. When I was little, I had plenty. Every night I would tell myself the same story.
When I was little, this is what I told myself: My parents, all my sisters, the stones in the earth, the sullen waters of the marshes, none of it matters to me. Because these are not my parents. My real parents are rich. They live in vast mansions, they eat meat and warm bread all day, wear shoes even in summer, and coats in winter. They have warm stockings, they’re clean, and they smell good. They sleep in soft beds, one bed each, on beautiful sheets embroidered with horns of plenty, without the smell of babies or anything. All day long, you can walk into their house without shame, the house gleams and sings. And all day long, they love one another and they love me; all day long they laugh at everyone because they aren’t afraid of anybody and everyone loves them. My real parents lost me. They’re looking for me everywhere and they’re desperate. One day they’ll find me again, they’ll take me far away from the fogs of the marshes, to lands where the days are gilded with sunshine, where you sleep at night cradled in the blue
of the waves of the sea. I don’t care that there are so many stones, that we live buried behind streams, that my mother cries, that my father beats me. It’s all the same to me. A day will come when my real parents will take me far away, into the light and heat.
•
Every night I would dream of that moment. I waited. I don’t know when I stopped waiting. Or maybe I waited too long. I don’t know. One night I dreamed of a day when I’d have a lot of money and we would buy serene, beautiful land. Now I’m at the high school.
I tried to tell myself a story about the land we’ll own one day. I couldn’t do it. I quit thinking about it.
11
SUDDENLY, a clanking noise rose up around me. I thought of my father moving around the barn. If he found me lying in the dog’s straw bed, he’d get out his cattle prod. I made a superhuman effort to raise myself. I didn’t want to die at the bottom of a hole, crushed like a mouse. I wanted to die, but not like that. I made another superhuman effort, and at last was able to get up.
The supervisor was standing by my bed, rapping the metal bedstead with her bunch of keys. She said, “Hurry up. It’s late,” as she always does.
I said, “Yes. I know,” which wasn’t true.
She left. I sat in bed a moment collecting my thoughts. My heart was racing. Sometimes I think I have a completely crazy heart. I looked around the dormitory a little. It was empty, all the beds were unmade. The girls must have been in the bathroom. Usually I’m the first, to make sure I get a spot. There aren’t enough sinks in my high school. I decided I’d go to the sinks later. I got up. I folded my blankets and my sheets. The supervisors want us to fold everything every morning. At noon we go up again and make the beds. It’s ridiculous, so much fuss about a bed. But the supervisors all decided it would be that way. They’re maniacs. And they never laugh.
I started dressing and went to the sinks to look for my green smock. I didn’t worry if it would still be on the radiator. I’ve tried to lose it many times, with no success. It was there, but on the floor and pretty rumpled. I shook it out noisily, like my mother does with the sheets, then put it on. Washing it had brightened the green, my smock shone and gave off the scent of soap. I like the smell of soap. Then I went to the bathroom.
Only a few girls were left. Dirty sinks disgust me. The girls don’t clean up after themselves. That great big string bean Lydia, who always gets up last, said “Good morning” to me, and I said “Good morning” in turn, while water flowed from the sink. I splashed water all over my face. That woke me up and immediately I felt glad to be back. Really glad. I raised my head and amused myself by listening to the water drops trickling down my skin and falling from my chin. When I’m happy I like to do that. When I’d finished I opened my eyes and there was great big Lydia, still in front of me.
She flashed all her teeth, big as almonds, and said: “What did you memorize for your recitation?”
It took me a while to understand what she was talking about. I opened my mouth to answer, but I had nothing to say. So I turned my back on that yellow string bean and dried my face. She left. Besides, I never talk to her. At first, I didn’t know any better. I would answer when she talked. But then she would mock what I’d said in front of the others. For example, the time when she asked what my parents do. I hate it when people ask me what my parents do. It had made me angry. I said, “My parents prospect for gold in Alaska.”
That’s not true of course. But she shouldn’t have asked me what my parents do and all that nonsense. That’s why I said: “My parents prospect for gold in Alaska.” And also because I was thinking of people hunting nuggets. It wasn’t true that my parents prospected for gold, but it could have been true. After I told that story, great big Lydia made fun of me, and now I don’t answer her questions. Even when she’s nice. With her, you never know. I don’t answer anymore.
I combed my hair without looking at myself in the mirrors. I don’t like looking at myself. Then I went and locked myself in a bathroom stall while I waited for the breakfast bell.
I thought about the recitation. We have French class the first hour of school, and the professor wants us, all of us, to have memorized something to recite. You can choose anything you like, it’s all the same to her, as long as you’ve memorized something. I’d completely forgotten. Some days I lose it. Right now, for instance, I knew very well that I was at the high school because I felt so happy to be back. But it hadn’t quite registered, not really, since I’d forgotten about the recitation, the classes, the professors, and even Fanny. That’s how I get when I lose it. I’m aware of something, and at the same time I’m not. It’s terrible to be like me.
It was too late to memorize something new. So I searched my brain for a poem I already knew. I know a lot of poems by heart, a hundred, maybe more. The teacher at my grade school, the one who was nice, lent me her books. I thought for a while. I couldn’t remember anything at all. Finally, the only one that came to me was: “Forehead on the windowpane like mourners keeping vigil.” I was happy because I like that one a lot and because I would be able to go calmly into the schoolyard with Fanny. Thinking of Fanny filled me with sunlit joy. She is so marvelous.
The bell rang. I decided to leave the bathroom stall. The girls were walking to the stairs in their well-ironed pink smocks with their made-up faces. The science professor doesn’t want us to use makeup. She says that before long our skin will look old and wrinkled if we paint our faces like that. The professors use makeup, of course. But they already have wrinkled skin. It doesn’t matter anymore. Me, I don’t make myself up. For one thing, I don’t have any makeup. And for another, if I used it I’d look even more like a clown. Nobody would take my made-up face seriously.
At the table, I was seated again next to Lydia. I didn’t talk to her. Nobody spoke to me. Lydia included. She must have understood. It isn’t because of her huge teeth that are always flashing in the air, or because of her legs like giant matchsticks. It’s that she’s mean. I drank café au lait and ate two enormous pieces of bread with jam. I’m always hungry. I’ve got to eat, I’m always hungry. I think it’s a habit. For fourteen years, I’ve been in the habit of being hungry. Now I keep it up, even when it’s not needed.
We all got up. We went out to the schoolyard. The girls shouted as they ran. There was snow everywhere. I knew that but I’d completely forgotten. I ran too, but without jostling anyone, I didn’t feel like it.
The day students and the boarders who come back to school Monday morning had already dirtied the snow with their footsteps. Some of the students were circling the courtyard, going over their lessons as they walked, some threw snowballs, some packed snow to make a snowman. I looked over the wall at a sky of a gray that was almost as pale as the snow. All of a sudden I felt really happy. I walked around looking for Fanny. You can see her from far away, with her hair like the sun. The cold invaded my feet through the rubber of my boots. For a while I had fun pretending I was walking barefoot in the snow. Often I think that one day I’ll walk like that into a desert of snow, deeper and deeper. I will walk for a very long time in all that glittering silence. Then I will disappear in the snow, and everything will be as if I had never existed.
•
I saw Fanny at last. She was throwing snowballs with the other girls in our class. How beautiful she was with her laughing face! If I had been born in the sun, amid the rolling blue waves of the sea, I would have been beautiful like that.
I walked toward the place where Fanny was playing, trying to look like a passerby who strolls nonchalantly, lost in thought, paying no attention to his surroundings. I was thinking about all the dead nuns we walked over every day.
Before it was a high school, my high school was a convent. It still has the vaulted hallways, the chapel, and the thick pillars; and in the dormitories, colorful stained-glass windows filled with scenes that keep you from ever seeing the light of day. There’s a high wall around the high school studded with broken glass. Most important, in the schoolyard, the
nuns are still there. The schoolyard used to be the cemetery. They say that every day the nuns came there to dig their graves. Every day. Me, what I’d like to know is what they did once they’d finished digging, if they didn’t die straightaway. Surely they didn’t dig another one. One would be enough, and you couldn’t dig one for anyone else, because each one of them was supposed to tend her own. And surely they didn’t fill them back in and start all over again. It would have been idiotic, or awkward, if they happened to die before they finished, that’s something you can’t foresee. So, what did they do when they finished digging their graves, if they didn’t die straightaway?
Afterwards, when the convent became a high school, they didn’t remove the dead nuns. They simply tarred over the cemetery and turned it into a playground. Now the nuns are at rest with their faces covered with tar and we—we walk on top of them. It’s unbearable. In the schoolyard, whether we walk quietly or play, we are trampling the stomachs and faces of dead nuns covered with tar.
My heart felt heavy.
Suddenly, Fanny was there. From a distance, she said, “Galla!” And me, I said, “Fanny!” and we started running. When we were face to face we stopped. She stared at me, and I stared back, at her face filled with sunshine and laughter. We didn’t know what to say to each other. When we meet, Fanny and I, we’re so happy that we forget what to say. We walked a little and I took care to put my feet only on fresh clumps of snow. And then Fanny said, “You came?”
I looked at her. I saw that her face was sad. Golden and sad. I said, “Yes.”
The bell rang. I said, “At recess, we’ll make a snowman as high as the sky.”
I didn’t want her to look sad. Afterwards, surrounded by the others, we walked to class without saying anything. We were at the back of the line, next to each other. As we went in, Fanny said, “I’m happy you’re here. I was thinking about you so much. So, so much. Could you feel that I was thinking about you?”