The Catholic School

by Edoardo Albinati

  Well, it isn’t true.

  In fact, while you may either obey or rebel against authority imposed by force, since there are no other options, there are many ways to oppose a wise paternalism while pretending to accept it. And those were the methods we employed.

  THEY DIDN’T GET IT. They couldn’t understand. They couldn’t understand that their liberal precepts turned our stomachs, since they were conceived to make us behave. Of course, we were taking advantage, we took advantage shamelessly, but we held them in contempt, manifesting our scorn as if it were an open challenge, which they saw clearly but were forced to pretend not to see. Down to the last drop, we sucked the equivocal status of permissive education. That honey squeezed out of modern doctrines and mixed with traditional goodness. We reviled anyone who tried or expected to “understand us.” Those of us who committed full-blown crimes, I believe they ended up committing them for the fun of seeing how far they could push it, by continuing to be “understood.”

  The knife cuts into understanding as if it were butter.

  SINCE WE OURSELVES WERE PRODUCTS of those progressive fairy tales about upbringing and education, we knew perfectly well how to disprove them, or perhaps we should say that we were the living, breathing disproof: proof that it worked the other way around. The first generation to have enjoyed almost limitless liberty made the worst possible use of it, which is after all the only use possible, the most significant use, because of how exceptional and extreme it is. Pure liberty consists of nothing more than this. And it is its very purity that kindles fear.

  INTO THE VOID. The danger of the end of school. A great, great danger, a cliff. After you graduate, at the moment your daily commitments suddenly come to an end, the mandatory alarm clock at seven, etc., every day, year-round . . . something that’s been going on since you were small and then, suddenly, breaks off. A structure collapses, the scholastic regime, a regime guiding your life. Whose sheer repetitiveness helps, in a boy, to stitch the various parts of you and hold them together, and even the bad mood caused by all the activities you’re pursuing against your will serves as an adhesive, it integrates you, it gives form to your persona. Your frustration or resentment against the teachers, the discipline against whose bars you bang your head and rub your back, all help you to gain awareness of your own head, your own back. The various pieces that make up a boy search for a limit within which they are contained, and they are grateful to that barrier, even as they never stop complaining about it for even a minute, as it prevents them from collapsing and being scattered, like the pages of a manuscript flying off in a gust of wind. The ineluctable duty of school wins over even those who hate it, indeed, it is only reinforced by that hatred. An unbroken chain of tyrannical inanities keeps those who are subjected to them awake.

  BUT BEFORE THE END, every summer, the long, very long, practically endless summer vacation! So long that we’d forget everything. Whoever had been sent back for a new set of final exams in September would show up after the summer holidays even more ignorant than they had been in June.

  It wasn’t recovery, though that was the term used for it! It was a regression.

  There were those who claimed that such a long break was harmful to the boys, there were others who were convinced we absolutely needed it, to “recharge our batteries.” All I know is that it was a time of great joy. Unquestionably the greatest pleasure of our lives: the only wish that was granted, 100 percent, the summer would come, necessarily, all we had to do was wait and the vacation would come, school ended, locked its doors, you could count on it, you could bet money that that long-awaited event would actually occur. When? June sixth, eighth, maybe ninth. At the very latest, the twelfth. You just had to be able to wait.

  IT WASN’T JUST THE THINGS we had studied during the school year that were forgotten, but rather the very existence of school itself. Three, nearly four months of time off erased it. June, July, August, September: each of these months had its own special color and sound, yes, it resonated in an unmistakable manner.

  June: Yellow Astonishment City Expanding Ultramarine Ardor.

  July: Fullness Red Buzzing Discovery.

  August: Burnt White Dust and Emptiness.

  September: Melancholy Thought Unknown City Heart Pounding in Your Throat.

  UPON OUR RETURN, the city was new, our home was new, the furniture had never been glimpsed before. Reentering our bedroom, retaking possession of it, jumping onto the bed, it all starts over from scratch . . .

  Two opposite sensations, the first prompted by the return home with the frantic excitement at seeing friends and classmates and starting a new life over again, the second caused by the impending end of vacation as we already mourned our summer adventures, those experienced and those missed out on—these two sensations electrified the last days before school: excitement and sadness, which usually present themselves at different times, swelled and grew until they reached high points of an overwhelming intensity and mingled in a single sentiment, like certain vegetables that can be found at the market only when they are in season, lasting no more than a few weeks and then vanishing for the rest of the year. There is no other month quite like September, no other set of feelings quite so special: you might feel happy or disgruntled or angry or fearful or envious at any given moment, and then on for the rest of your life, albeit with differing gradations and nuances, but the distinct sensation that seizes a boy by the throat in the month of September really has no equal.

  WHEN I WAS LITTLE, though, how I loved to go to school! Inconsolable if I was forced to stay home sick. And intolerable the idea of going home when lessons were over. What happened to me was the exact opposite of what happened to young Törless as a student: just like when he was away from home, when I was away from school, that is, from SLM, there descended over eyes and heart a damp veil of melancholy; and I sometimes struggled to choke back my sobs. When as the sun set I found myself alone, eating a snack, standing at the kitchen counter, dipping slices of zwieback into my milk, and watching the way the wet half would break off and drop into the mug, I felt like the last man on earth and, seriously, I had to make an effort to choke back the tears. In reality, I was by no means alone, my brother was at home, likable and glad to socialize, and so was my little sister, and the maid, and at the far end of the apartment, in her bedroom, on the bed reading or making a phone call or drinking a cup of tea, my mother. In my bedroom I had plenty of toys and books and comic books and records to pass the few hours left till dinner. Nonetheless, I felt every bit as lifeless and aimless. Because what I missed was my classmates. And the gym, the courtyard, the chapel, the priests.

  11

  THE HEADMASTER of SLM wore dark glasses, but only partially dark, like the ones I’ve seen only certain prelates, local notables, and ophthalmic patients wear. Behind those lenses, you can glimpse the eyes, but the lenses make the expression inscrutable. Those who peer at you through those eyeglasses don’t conceal themselves entirely, in fact, they don’t conceal themselves at all, but instead reveal only as much of themselves as they feel it’s worth the bother of unveiling, which is to say, their power: which alludes without ever displaying itself, without being transformed into a clear, concrete image, a specific act. The most indisputable and sovereign gesture would only limit the scope of that power. And however magnetic a look may be, you end up being yoked far more effectively to its dominion by the absence of certainty as to where it’s directed and what it expresses: whether it’s monitoring us or ignoring us, whether it approves of us or holds us in contempt.

  Our headmaster never exercised his prerogatives: he never punished, never suspended anyone, he literally did little or nothing; but he cared very much about giving the impression of always being on the verge of doing so, always ready, always on the brink of taking very grievous initiatives that would surely impact us with incalculable consequences. If there had been precedents of punitive measures of any description, or for any specific variety of infractions, we might have had a way of imagi
ning what might ensue if and when we committed them, rendering them commensurate with those of the past. But as far as I am able to recall, nothing had ever happened deserving of anything more serious than his ironic and cutting scoldings, and come to think of it, not even those seemed to spring from the individual shortcomings of any particular classmate, but were rather directed at all of us students as an amorphous, indistinct mass.

  Or perhaps not, perhaps something terrible had already happened which had been buried or suppressed without ever coming into the light of day. But we didn’t know what that might be.

  That was what constituted the halo at once menacing and faintly laughable, the aura that surrounded the headmaster. We were afraid of him, I have to admit it, in part because we were all basically cowards and if by chance anyone really rebelled, he did it out of pure idiocy and was almost never capable of sustaining for any length of time the consequences of his decisions, which were therefore reduced to sheer buffoonery, and fell into the ranks of parsonage pranks, oratory out of a sports locker room, where the boys lose all shame and then, in the end, are deeply ashamed of themselves. They’re outbursts that don’t manage to vent a single real thing.

  We would prick the skin of the beast and then turn to run as fast as our legs would carry us.

  So we were afraid of the headmaster, we were very afraid of him, but it wasn’t a serious fear and so, really, it wasn’t real fear at all. We knew that in any case he couldn’t lay a finger on us. He did not really stir the obscure depths of our fear.

  And do you know why? Because, whatever happened, it was we who paid his salary.

  The truth is that we can never really fully fear someone whose survival we guarantee, out of our own pockets. That is an economic law even before it’s an emotional one, or maybe it’s just a law of emotional economics. The fear that the headmaster struck into us was a conventional, theatrical effect, due to the roles that we played at school, surely more powerful than the fear emanating from the individual teachers but still not enough to hold back our lack of respect, which sprayed out of our attitudes the minute the panic caused by his unannounced appearances began to subside. In fact, if we didn’t mistreat our headmaster it was only because we had already exhausted our imagination and energy in mocking the teachers, objectively less powerful: the religion teacher, poor Mr. Golgotha, the art history teacher, the French teacher, and the music teacher, people who walked into the classroom already well aware they didn’t count for shit. No two ways about it, sovereign power cannot derive from the subjects over which it is exercised, which means that in democracies, too, the true power, the real power, is either not democratic or else it is not power. There is no point in wasting any more chitchat on it, anyone who wishes to understand will already have grasped the point. And then if it is based on a dependency of economic nature . . . specific and binding . . . the kind that only money can generate . . . then that’s that. Neither love, nor violence, nor culture: it is money that can subjugate one man to another, independent of his beliefs and his actions. Maybe it’s just a few stray spores of Marxism that have wafted onto me from the recent past that make me say it and reiterate it, today: who can really know? The bonds of money may be patent or they may remain invisible, like the leash woven to capture the monstrous wolf, son of Loki, but these bonds cannot be torn or severed.

  And so: would a captain whose salary was paid by his own crew ever dream of ordering a swabbie keelhauled for insubordination or malingering? And you, rank-and-file musicians of a symphony orchestra, would you suck up without blinking an eye the tantrums of a conductor whose salary your own families paid, depositing a monthly sum in his account? And what else was the tuition fee that our parents paid, if not a demand for certain services, and at the same time, a guarantee of impunity?

  I think back nowadays with a greater understanding that, yes, certainly, we were afraid of the headmaster, we hid from his sight . . . but it was he who had a leash around his neck, not us.

  WHATEVER THE CASE, his unruffled, ironic manner of speech made him especially odious to us, given that it reduced our rare acts of insubordination to a level so insignificant and ridiculous as to destroy any pleasure we might take in having committed them. He never took us seriously, in other words. He never spoke directly to us, because we didn’t deserve it. Protected behind his lenses, his eyes seemed to look a foot or so above our heads, as if to communicate to us his disappointment, his impatience, and something like his disgust at seeing that we had not grown up sufficiently. Moral and intellectual midgets is what we were, if not midgets in actual, physical fact. What conflict can there be with someone who refuses to consider you as an individual? To the headmaster we were merely a motley crew, a mass, a mass of idiots, idiots and nothing more, but so lacking in the basic prerequisites that constitute a person that it wasn’t worth wasting on us even a drop of genuine anger. Let alone respect. We were mildly harmful microbes, numbered slots on the class ledger, nicknames, ghosts. In his presence, I, who thought of myself as fairly independent and proud, felt like a piece of shit devoid of personality. All it took was his dark glasses and the occasional wry phrase tossed off in the midst of his generic statements, in which he never had it in for anyone in particular, perhaps to make it clear to us that we were always and in any case all guilty, even when we hadn’t done a thing, because just doing nothing was itself a wrong, a fault. But a petty one, inane. At a certain point in his sermon he would stop, fall silent, slowly turn his head toward a corner of the classroom from which a tiny buzz had arisen, point to a student who wasn’t doing anything in particular, and warn him: “Hey, you . . . that’s right, you . . . a little less cocky.”

  The classmate would be seized by doubt, since the headmaster had employed nothing more specific than his invisible gaze to single him out, his hands had remained crossed over his large belly in that all-too-priestly position that telegraphs tranquillity and amiability at all costs, or else hooked by the thumbs to the sash that held the tunic around his waist, and frequently because of this intentional equivocation about the actual identity of the accused, two or three other students would grimace in disbelief, as if to say, “Me? Are you speaking to me? What do I have to do with any of this?”

  But it was perfectly clear who he was speaking to.

  “Yes, that’s right, you, I’m talking to you . . . a little less cocky.”

  Sometimes, after a stretch of silence, he would add: “. . . So are we clear, sweetheart? Fine.”

  THE HEADMASTER, in fact, ended every sentence with a “fine,” just as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice said “well” at the end of each sentence. Any proposal brought to him or objection raised or request submitted, his answer, whether it was positive or negative, always ended with a “fine.”

  CLASS REPRESENTATIVE: “Mr. Headmaster, sir, could school let out an hour early, today? Mr. Golg . . . that is, the religion teacher is absent . . . his mother has been admitted to the hospital.”

  HEADMASTER: “I know all about it. No, I’m sorry, you can’t leave early, I’ll make sure and send you a substitute. Fine.”

  IMPERO BAJ (custodian): “The third-floor bathroom is flooded, what should we do?”

  HEADMASTER: “Tell the kids in the scientific high school to use the bathroom on the second floor, and the ones from the classical high school to go to the fourth floor. Is that all clear, Baj? Fine.”

  IMPERO BAJ: “Maybe someone ought to call a plumber, I don’t know . . .”

  HEADMASTER: “I’m already picking up the receiver, you see that? I’ve already dialed the number. All right, fine.”

  HEADMASTER: “Well?”

  SCOLDED STUDENT: “I won’t do it again.”

  HEADMASTER: “Is it a promise?”

  SCOLDED STUDENT: “It’s a promise.”

  HEADMASTER: “Fine.”

  It wasn’t a simple verbal tic, but instead something quite serious. It was fine, the inevitable conclusion of any issue had to be good, well, fine, positive, even matters tha
t at first glance seemed thorny or painful.

  It may be more useful for me to explain with an example, and perhaps the readers will understand—if, indeed, they are benevolent—my difficulties in explaining myself otherwise, especially because the example I intend to bring up does not constitute a digression, but rather a direct and immediate continuation of the story.

  So, one day the headmaster found himself face-to-face with an extra problem and he took it on as was his wont. Three or four of the older boys had cornered one of my classmates, Marco Lodoli, during recess. With at least a hundred boys running around, milling, and shrieking all at once, no one had noticed that Marco had been targeted. What was the reason for that ill-intentioned interest? The fact that Marco, slight and skinny, tall, bespectacled, was also long-haired: an ash-blond halo of frizzy hair around an intelligent and invariably slightly mocking face. That’s why the upperclassmen had long since sized him up as a target, and that day they started shoving and jerking him around, grabbing him by his shirt front, giving him little slaps that at first seem friendly but then increase in intensity, and finally grabbed his glasses and half-broke them, yep, that’s right: one of them, without a word of explanation for what he was doing, pulled off Marco’s eyeglasses and snapped, with the strength of his fingers, in a single sharp move, the bridge that held together the two lenses. Then he handed them back to him. As I said, nobody had noticed a thing, but when we returned to class, everyone noticed that our classmate was forced to hold his eyeglasses up, pressing them onto his nose with his fingers.

  Cosmo, our Italian teacher, jumped in.

  And he asked Marco what had happened to him.