The Book of Proper Names

by Amélie Nothomb

  She wondered what she had done to deserve this. Until then, as far as she was concerned, lunch had been a pure enchantment: by candlelight, protected from the world by red velvet drapes, a beautiful mother, magnificently dressed, bringing her cakes and creams that she didn’t even have to eat, all to the sound of heavenly music. And now, amid the cries of hideous, dirty children, in an ugly, foul-smelling hall, they slopped green mush onto her plate, and told her she couldn’t leave the cafeteria until she swallowed everything.

  Outraged by the injustices of fate, the child started eating. It was horrible. She had trouble swallowing. Halfway through, she vomited onto her plate and understood the source of the smell.

  “Yuck, you’re disgusting!” the other children said to her.

  A lady came to take her plate away. “Oh, my goodness!”

  At least she wasn’t forced to eat anything else that day.

  * * *

  AFTER THIS NIGHTMARE she had to listen once again to the woman who was trying, without success, to make herself interesting. On the blackboard, the teacher jotted down combinations of letters that weren’t even pretty to look at. Finally, at half past four, Plectrude was allowed to leave this absurd and abject place. Outside, she spotted her mother, and ran toward her as one runs toward a safe haven.

  Clémence had only to look at her to know how much her child had suffered. She swept her up in her arms. “Now, now, it’s over, it’s over.”

  “Really? I won’t be going back?” asked the little girl hopefully.

  “Yes, you will. It’s required. But you’ll get used to it.”

  Now Plectrude understood that we aren’t put on this planet to enjoy ourselves.

  * * *

  SHE DIDN’T GET used to it. School was hell.

  Luckily, there were the ballet lessons. What her schoolteacher taught was useless and stupid. What her dance teacher taught was precious and sublime.

  This discrepancy began to create some problems. After a few months, most of the other children in her class were able to decipher letters and draw their shapes. Plectrude had decided such matters had nothing to do with her: when her time came, and the teacher showed her a letter written on the board, she pronounced the first sound that came into her head, always completely wrong, making her lack of progress a little too obvious.

  The teacher called in her parents. Denis was embarrassed. Nicole and Béatrice were good pupils, and he was not accustomed to this kind of humiliation. Although she would not have admitted it, Clémence felt a vague kind of pride. Her little rebel didn’t do anything the way anyone else did.

  “If it goes on like this, she’s going to be held back a year,” the teacher told them ominously.

  Plectrude’s mother widened her eyes. She had never heard of a child having to repeat kindergarten. It struck her as daring and high-minded for its sheer insolence. What child would dare to repeat kindergarten, where even the most mediocre pupils get through without too much difficulty? Her daughter was already proudly asserting her independence—no, her exceptional nature.

  That wasn’t how Denis saw it. “We’ll work this out!” he told the teacher. “We’ll take charge of things!”

  “Is there any chance of her not repeating a year?” asked Clémence, filled with a wondrous hope that the others misinterpreted.

  “Certainly. If she can learn to read her letters before the end of the school year.”

  Plectrude’s mother concealed her disappointment. It had been too lovely to be true.

  “She will learn to read them,” said Denis firmly. “You know, it’s strange. The child seems very bright.”

  “That’s entirely possible. The problem is that she isn’t interested.”

  She isn’t interested! thought Clémence. She’s amazing! She isn’t interested! Other kids swallow the lot without a murmur. But my Plectrude has already decided what’s worthwhile and what isn’t!

  * * *

  “I’M NOT INTERESTED in it, Daddy.”

  “Come on, of course learning to read is interesting!” Denis protested.

  “Why?”

  “So that you can read stories.”

  “The teacher sometimes reads us stories from our reading book. They’re so annoying that I stop listening after two minutes.”

  Clémence mentally applauded.

  “Do you want to take kindergarten over? Is that what you want?” asked Denis, furious.

  “I want to be a dancer.”

  “To be a dancer, you’ve got to get through kindergarten.”

  Clémence suddenly realized that her husband was right. She immediately went and got a gigantic nineteenth-century book from her bedroom.

  She took the child on her knees and went through the entire collection of fairy tales with her, being careful not to read them, only to point out the lovely illustrations.

  The child had never felt such wonder as when she discovered princesses too magnificent to touch the ground with their feet, or locked up in towers, or who talked to bluebirds that were really princes, or who disguised themselves as scullery maids only to reappear even more ravishing than before four pages later.

  At that moment she knew, with that certainty only little girls are capable of, that one day she would be one of those creatures who transform toads, defeat witches, and dazzle princes.

  “Don’t worry,” Clémence told her husband. “She’ll be reading by the end of the week.”

  * * *

  THE TRUTH EXCEEDED her prediction: two days later, Plectrude’s brain had turned to its own advantage the boring and pointless letters it didn’t realize it had absorbed during school, and found a coherence between signs, sounds, and meaning. Two days later, she was reading a hundred times better than the best pupils. There is only one key to knowledge, and that is desire.

  She had looked on the fairy-tale book as an instruction manual to help her become one of the princesses in the illustrations. Because reading was necessary to her now, her intelligence had grasped it.

  “Why didn’t you show her that book before?” Denis cried in delight.

  “I didn’t want to spoil it by showing it to her too soon. She had to be old enough to appreciate a work of art.”

  * * *

  THUS, TWO DAYS after her meeting with Plectrude’s parents, the teacher was astounded to find that the little dunce who had not been able to identify a single letter of the alphabet was now reading like the best of the ten-year-olds.

  In forty-eight hours, the child had learned what a professional hadn’t managed to teach her in five months. The teacher thought her parents must have a secret method, and called them to find out what it was. Denis, full of pride, told her the truth: “We didn’t do anything at all. We just showed her a book that was so beautiful it made her want to read. That’s what was missing.”

  Plectrude’s father didn’t realize that he was making a dreadful blunder.

  The teacher, who had never much cared for Plectrude, now began to despise her. Not only did she consider this miracle a personal humiliation, she also felt for the little girl all the malice a mediocre mind feels for a superior one: “Little Miss Princess needed a beautiful book! How about this one! It’s beautiful enough for everyone else!”

  Perplexed and furious, she read from cover to cover the book that was under attack for being uninteresting. It told of the daily life of Thierry, a smiling little boy, and his big sister, Micheline, who made him bread and jam for his afternoon snack, and kept him out of trouble because she was sensible.

  But it’s charming! she exclaimed to herself as she finished reading. It’s fresh, it’s delightful. What else could the silly goose possibly need?

  What she needed was gold, myrrh, and frankincense, mauve and lilies, midnight blue velvet scattered with stars, engravings by Gustave Doré, unsmiling little girls with lovely, serious eyes, gloomily seductive wolves, evil forests—she needed all kinds of things. Not Thierry and his big sister, Micheline.

  * * *

  FROM T
HEN ON the teacher never missed an opportunity to voice her disgust with Plectrude. Because she was at the bottom of the class in arithmetic, the teacher called her “hopeless.” One day when Plectrude wasn’t able to perform even the simplest of additions on the blackboard, Miss told her to return to her seat, saying, “You might as well stop trying. You’ll never be able to do it.”

  The other pupils were still at that follow-the-leader age at which the adult is always right, and dissent unthinkable. So Plectrude was the object of universal contempt.

  In her ballet classes, by the same logic, she was the queen. The teacher was ecstatic about her gifts, and, without daring to say so (because it was not a very good pedagogic approach), treated her as the best student she had ever had. The other little girls worshiped Plectrude and jostled one another to dance next to her.

  As a result she led two quite distinct lives. There was school life, where it was Plectrude versus everyone else, and life in her ballet class, where she was the star.

  She was clear-sighted enough to know that the children in her dance class would be the first to despise her if they were in school with her. For that reason, Plectrude was distant toward the girls who sought her friendship—and this intensified their passion for her.

  * * *

  PLECTRUDE ONLY JUST passed kindergarten by making sustained efforts at arithmetic. As a reward, her parents gave her a barre so that she could practice her exercises at home. She spent the summer training. By the end of August she could hold her foot in her hand and extend her leg.

  When she returned to school, a surprise was waiting for her: the class’s makeup was the same as it had been the previous year, but with one important exception. There was a new girl.

  Roselyne was a stranger to everyone except Plectrude, because she was in her ballet class. Struck dumb with happiness to be in her idol’s class, she asked permission to sit next to Plectrude. Never before had anyone asked to sit there. The request was granted.

  As far as Roselyne was concerned, Plectrude represented the absolute ideal. She spent hours studying this inaccessible muse who had miraculously become her neighbor at school.

  Plectrude wondered whether the worship would survive discovery of her being unpopular in the classroom. One day, when the teacher was remarking upon her weakness at arithmetic, the children ventured some snide comments about their fellow pupil. Roselyne flew into a rage at their behavior. “Have you seen how they treat you?”

  Plectrude, who was used to it, shrugged her shoulders. Roselyne only admired her all the more.

  “I hate them!” she said.

  Plectrude then knew that she had a friend. This changed her life.

  How can one explain what friendship means to children? They believe that it is the duty of their family to love them. It never occurs to them to see value in something that is, as far as they are concerned, merely part of the job. Most children say, “I love him because he is my brother (my father, my sister…). I have to.”

  The friend is the one who chooses her. The friend is the one who gives her what is not her due. Friendship is the supreme luxury—and luxury is what noble souls desire most ardently. Friendship gives the child some sense of the splendor of life.

  Returning home, Plectrude solemnly announced, “I’ve got a friend.”

  It was the first time she had said it. Immediately Clémence felt a twinge of jealousy in her heart. However, she very quickly managed to reason that there would never be any competition between this outsider and herself. Friends move on. Mothers don’t.

  “Invite her over for dinner,” she said to her daughter.

  Plectrude opened her eyes wide with terror.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why? We want to meet your friend.”

  This was how the little girl discovered that when you wanted to meet someone, you invited them over for dinner. It struck her as disturbing and absurd. Did you know people any better once you’d seen them eating? She imagined what they thought of her at school, where the cafeteria was a den of torture and vomit.

  If she wanted to know someone, she would invite her over to play. People revealed themselves at play.

  * * *

  NEVERTHELESS, ROSELYNE WAS invited over for dinner, because that was the way adults did things. Everything went very well. Plectrude waited impatiently for the small talk to come to an end. She knew her friend would sleep in her bedroom, and that idea struck her as marvelous.

  Darkness, finally.

  “Are you afraid of the dark?” she asked hopefully.

  “Yes,” said Roselyne.

  “I’m not!”

  “I see monsters in the dark.”

  “So do I. But I like that.”

  “You like dragons?”

  “Yes! And bats.”

  “Don’t they frighten you?”

  “No. Because I’m their queen.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I decided.”

  Roselyne thought this an admirable explanation.

  “I’m the queen of everything you see in the dark: jellyfish, crocodiles, snakes, spiders, sharks, dinosaurs, slugs, octopuses.”

  “Don’t they disgust you?”

  “No. I think they’re lovely.”

  “Doesn’t anything disgust you?”

  “Dried figs.”

  “Dried figs aren’t disgusting!”

  “Have you eaten them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well don’t, not if you love me.”

  “Why not?”

  “People who sell them chew them and then put them back in the packet.”

  “What?”

  “Why do you think they’re all mushy and horrible?”

  “Is that true?”

  “I swear. People chew them up and then spit them back out again.”

  “Yuck!”

  “There’s nothing in the world more disgusting than dried figs.”

  They swooned with a shared revulsion that drove them to ecstasy. They endlessly detailed the repugnant aspects of this desiccated fruit, uttering cries of pleasure.

  “I’m never going to eat them ever again,” Roselyne said solemnly.

  “Even under torture?”

  “Even under torture!”

  “And what if someone stuffs them into your mouth by force?”

  “I swear I’ll throw up!” the child declared, with the conviction of a young bride.

  That night elevated their friendship to the level of a secret cult.

  * * *

  PLECTRUDE’S STATUS HAD changed in school. She had moved from pestiferous outcast to adulated best friend. Had she been adored by a clod, she could have gone on being undesirable. But in the eyes of the pupils, Roselyne could do no wrong. Her sole defect, which consisted of being a new girl, was but a very temporary stain on her character. They began to wonder if they hadn’t been mistaken about Plectrude.

  Of course, no discussions about this actually took place. The thoughts circulated in the collective unconscious of the class. Their impact was all the greater for it.

  Certainly, Plectrude remained a dunce in arithmetic and many other areas. But the children discovered that a weakness in certain subjects, particularly when it was taken to extremes, could sometimes have something admirable and heroic about it. Gradually they came to understand the charm of subversion.

  The teacher didn’t.

  * * *

  PLECTRUDE’S PARENTS WERE again summoned.

  “With your permission, we are going to have your child undergo some tests.”

  Denis felt profoundly humiliated. They were saying his daughter was deficient. Clémence was delighted: Plectrude was extraordinary. Even if they detected a mental defect, she would take it as a sign that her child was one of the elect.

  So Plectrude was subjected to all kinds of logical sequences, abstruse lists, geometrical figures containing irrelevant puzzles, formulae pompously called algorithms. She replied mechanically, as quickly as possible,
in order to hide a violent to desire to laugh.

  Was it chance or the brilliance of instinct? She did so well that everyone was astonished. And thus it was that within the space of an hour, Plectrude went from class dunce to genius.

  “I am not surprised,” her mother commented, vexed at her husband’s amazement.

  * * *

  THE CHANGE OF TERMINOLOGY conferred advantages, as the child soon became aware. Previously, when she couldn’t work out a problem, the teacher would give her a pained look, and the more hateful pupils laughed. Now, when she couldn’t get to the end of a simple task, the teacher contemplated her like the albatross in Baudelaire’s poem: her massive intelligence prevented her from doing basic adding and subtracting. Her fellow pupils were ashamed at having so stupidly reached a solution.

  Given that she really was intelligent, she wondered why she couldn’t solve easy math questions. During the tests, she had given correct answers to exercises that were actually far harder.

  She remembered that she had not been thinking at all during those tests, and concluded from this that the key to everything was absolute thoughtlessness.

  From that point onward, Plectrude took care not to think when solving a task and instead wrote down the first numbers that came into her head. The results weren’t any better, but they weren’t any worse, either. Consequently she decided to keep to this method, which, by virtue of being just as ineffective as the earlier one, was fantastically liberating. And that was how she became the most highly esteemed dunce in France.

  It would all have been perfect had there not, at the end of each school year, been annoying formalities designed to select those who would be lucky enough to move up to the next class.

  This was a nightmarish period for Plectrude, who was only too well aware of the role chance played in these events. Fortunately, her reputation as a genius preceded her: when the teacher saw her results in mathematics, he concluded that the child’s answers might be right in another dimension, and ignored the scores. Or else he questioned the little girl about her reasoning, and what she said left him flabbergasted. She had, you see, learned to mimic what people thought was the language of a gifted girl. For example, at the end of a stream of utter gibberish, she would conclude with a limpid “It’s obvious.”