Four by Four

by Sara Mesa

  Then I slept like a log until the phone woke me again.

  Bad start to the day, bad start. The same female voice (the assistant headmaster’s secretary?) informed me that my students were waiting. I was late for class.

  I made up an excuse and dashed out, uncombed, sleep in my eyes (again).

  I couldn’t find the classroom at first. To a newcomer, the colich is a labyrinth. The lecture building can be accessed by two oppositefacing doors, but once inside, the symmetry is absolute: the two parts never meet. I later learned this layout is due to the single-sex segregation requirement. The resulting design is extremely detailed: a ruthless division of a more or less limited space. You need a good memory and understanding of spatial logic in order not to be confused.

  Lacking in both those areas, I walked in several circles before finding the door to my first class.

  Then it was just a matter of turning the knob and everything going blurry. All I remember from that first instant are dozens of eyes, all locked on me. An attentive silence, the sound of tree branches tapping lightly on the windowpanes, the polished floor, my unease.

  It became apparent the students were expecting something of me, but I had nothing to offer.

  I introduced myself, muttered vagaries. I knew I had to improvise. Suddenly, an idea: I handed out sheets of paper and told them to write down their most recent dream. Put their names at the top of the page, use their best penmanship, pay attention to the margins.

  “Sleep-dream or wish-dream?” they asked me.

  “Sleep, sleep, an oneiric dream,” I specified.

  Some told me they couldn’t really remember their dreams. Others couldn’t remember if they had dreamt at all.

  I told them they could make something up.

  One boy said he would make his up regardless; he was embarrassed to tell me the real one.

  I gave him permission to do so and they quieted down at last. I began to feel calmer. The scratch of pens on paper, a dog barking in the distance. I looked out the window and there was the mastiff again, running up and down one of the paths with a certain desperation. The dog was a giant.

  Given the results—peace and quiet—I did the same thing in the next class, and the next, and the next, until I finished with all four groups I’d been assigned: two classes of boys, and two of girls.

  I’m shocked I got through the morning without a serious mistake.

  I’ve realized that being a teacher is easy, in the end. You walk into class, decide what they have to do, and then they do it.

  The students wait for instructions, resigned as a herd of livestock—well-tended, comfortable livestock. You might hear a little commotion as you near the classroom door, and when you enter they might look at you with some distrust, but they’re always submissive. You speak and they listen. You order and they obey.

  I felt better having established this.

  But then in the dining hall, I was hit with another wall of anxiety. Several groups of teachers had distributed themselves evenly among the tables. I hesitated. If I chose to sit with some and not others, I’d almost certainly be positioning myself in some way. But, to be honest, no one asked me to join them. Not a single one made any gesture of recognition or friendship. I decided to eat alone.

  Then, as I was leaving, I saw the assistant headmaster come in with a pretty teacher, straight-backed, lively, compact. He nodded to me and she fixed her eyes on mine, flashing the hint of a bright smile.

  I still have her image in my mind, a lure toward something yet to be determined.

  (…)

  I’m back in my room, and I’m perplexed. What do they do around here in the evenings? Is something expected of me? Something I’m not even aware of?

  Slowly, I walk down the gold-trimmed carpeting in the hallway. It’s like being in an old hotel, but the walls are all white, the doors don’t have moldings, and the general vibe is more like a hospital than a school. My room is at the very end. I listen for sounds from behind the neighboring doors.

  Nothing.

  I’ll spend the evening in my room. I can’t think of a better option.

  Piles of graph paper covered in my students’ dreams and nightmares are spread out on the table.

  What should I do with all this? Just read them, make corrections?

  Can dreams be corrected?

  One paragraph jumps out: We lived in an enormous chalet surrounded by the sea. We were happy. One day, the world became just as small as if it were draining away down a funnel.

  The image is seductive. This could be my own dream, although—strictly speaking—I’ve never had a chalet by the sea.

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH

  After another morning just like the day before, I’ve been called to a meeting of the education team. The same phone, ripping me from sleep—this time during my siesta. The same voice, that secretarial voice that sets me on edge.

  The education team. I’m not really sure what an education team does. It sounds sporty, dynamic. Personally, I’m really rather passive. I prepare my folder with the student information sheets and spend the next two hours marking the assignments. I’ll bring them with me, just in case.

  They’re notable, the compositions. For one thing, the kids have a good command of writing: vocabulary, syntax, narrative strategies. Moreover, they have very strange dreams. They frequently live in houses that are but aren’t, with parents who are but aren’t, in a school that is but isn’t. Chases, murders, talking objects, impossible landscapes of sea, desert, mountains.

  Everything in the dreams could exist, but never does.

  One girl wrote: I dreamt of you even before I knew you had come to the school. Her name is Irene. I memorize it.

  I don’t assign grades. Some comments, sure, on spelling, etc…. I prefer not to comment on style. I firmly believe in freedom.

  I put all the papers in my folder and leave for the meeting. Inevitably, I get lost again.

  I ask a group of students stretched out in the courtyard for directions. I sense their disdain when they point to the building on the right side of the school, a stone building with large windows and exterior moldings, covered in jasmine: purely imported English design. The meeting room is in the back. At a near sprint, I make it just on time.

  I’m panting when I open the door. The assistant headmaster is there with a handful of teachers, all seated around a glass table. Everyone has a laptop except me. I decide not to consider it a disadvantage, but rather as a sign of character, of strength. I look for an open seat, set my folder on the table, and face them.

  The assistant headmaster looks tired. He rubs his eyes, smiles and speaks. “Before we continue, perhaps we ought to introduce ourselves.”

  They all nod and take turns standing up. I’m surprised once again by the colich’s discipline, its efficiency. Every action appears to be ruled by a series of steps so exacting a newcomer could never get them right. And yet, there’s a graciousness toward mistakes, a constant impression of affability. I’m blanketed in smiles and pleasant words. The same people who kept their distance in the dining room are now falling all over themselves in exaggerated cordiality.

  This makes me even more uncomfortable.

  There are many teachers and none really stand out: just a meld of faces, names, and subjects. But as I write, a certain Martínez comes to mind, a science teacher who almost broke my fingers while shaking my hand. Chubby and vigorous, probably close to retirement. I don’t know why, but he has a sort of paternalism that draws me to him. I’ve always liked to be looked after. I had seen the math teacher, Ledesma, in the dining room already: young, thin, a long, straight mustache and thick brows, always looking at the floor or off to the side. Sacramenta is another singular character, but this is due to her size: she’s excessively overweight, dark-haired, with an extravagant smile. She teaches History. She tells me to call her Sacra, an unpleasant-sounding nickname that reminds me of sacrum, or acrid.

  The pretty teacher who smiled at me yesterday c
omes over from the other side of the room and plants a kiss on each of my cheeks. She says her name, Marieta, and our eyes lock. Moments after she’s gone, I can still smell lilacs.

  I introduce myself by my last name, given that this seems to be the custom among the men.

  “Bedragare.” But then I add, “Isidro Bedragare.”

  Sacra furrows her brow. Italian? she asks. No, no, nothing like that. I hasten to explain further, but the assistant headmaster indicates that this is unnecessary. Despite his smile—or perhaps because of it—I read impatience in his movements, a disapproval of the interruption.

  Message received.

  To make up for it, I concentrate on listening to everyone carefully, even though I don’t understand much.

  The meeting is—I suppose—a normal teachers’ meeting. They discuss programming, performances, executive planning, bilingualism, rules, well-adjusted students and students on their way to becoming adjusted. I don’t believe I heard the words children, class, lesson, or exam. Nor composition, to my disappointment.

  Marieta is by far the most organized of the group. She constantly shares ideas, listens, shuffles papers, makes arguments, types, suggests, advises.

  She and the assistant headmaster are a team. This quickly becomes obvious.

  I’m out of my element.

  At some point, I must have a look of shock on my face because several teachers offer to clear up my doubts despite the fact that I haven’t expressed any.

  I simply thank them. I don’t say anything about the compositions. I don’t even open the folder.

  Several times, I’m afraid of giving myself away. My lack of teaching experience should be obvious, but maybe I can hide it by staying quiet, going with the flow, doing what they do, smiling and expressing my concerns at the right time.

  The effort required to fake all this is exhausting, but absolutely crucial.

  At least as long as this substitute job lasts. A long time, I hope. As long as possible.

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16TH

  Today was my fourth day at the colich, my fourth day of classes. A routine is slowly taking shape. I’m hopeful that discipline and order will come next, and then everything will be cyclical, steady living, no worries.

  I teach in the mornings and cover study hall or go to meetings in the afternoon. They continue to request my presence by phone when I least expect it, but now I’m managing to not be late or show up in the wrong place. I usually sit near Martínez, the only person who seems to recognize me as part of the group. He pats me on the shoulder, smiles kindly; I think he looks at me with pity, or compassion.

  Marieta also attends the meetings, but her professional bearing throws me off my game. I haven’t managed to talk to her directly, don’t even understand what it is she does at the colich. I don’t speak her language. Unfortunately, we don’t have the same lunch period either, and every time I leave the dining hall, she’s coming in. She greets me with a smooth wave and a quick smile, and that’s it.

  “What does that woman teach?” I ask a student in the hallway.

  The boy is chewing gum—against the rules—and answers without meeting my eye: “

  She’s not a teacher.”

  “Oh? What does she do, then?”

  “She’s the counselor.”

  Ah, I see. I’ve heard of them: adolescent psychologists, spiritual advisors, a kind of mentor, a steward of communal living. I’m pensive. So that’s what drives her to be so systematic, so attentive to every small shift in the psyche. I wonder if she’s already diagnosed me.

  The boy stares at the floor, chewing.

  “Spit out that gum.”

  It’s the first time I’ve exercised my authority. I surprise myself. The boy takes the gum out of his mouth, wraps it in a piece of paper, and puts it in his pocket.

  The kids aren’t badly behaved. They generally accept the hierarchy and don’t complain, don’t talk back. This makes me feel more confident in my masquerade.

  In class, everything revolves around their compositions and dreams. It’s going well; it’s easy and leaves me with plenty of free time. I do slight variations (I’m not very imaginative), such as forcing them to use certain words or narrate from different viewpoints (a character in a dream, a dream interpreter, even a fortune-teller making a prediction). Sooner or later I’ll run out of prompts, but I’ll wring what I can from them as long as they last.

  This morning, a girl interrupted me as I was assigning a new exercise:

  “The other teacher explained things in the book to us. We didn’t write as many compositions.”

  I believe things in the book refers to pronouns, articles, direct and indirect objects, that sort of thing.

  “I’m the teacher,” I answer.

  But that’s not true. Someone else is the teacher. I’m just a substitute.

  Even so, I don’t give in:

  “Include the words: vomit, piglet, interstellar, tamed, tank.”

  I watch as they consult their dictionaries, scratching their pens across the sheets of paper I hand out and later collect to bring back to my room, where I let them pile up in a corner of my desk.

  I’ve figured out who Irene is. Sharp expression, a know-it-all. She looks at me sideways, as I do her. She has a lazy eye with a twitchy lid. I think she even wears glasses with clear lenses to hide it.

  She still includes ambiguous innuendos in her work, but they’re so subtle I can hardly admonish her for it. Unfortunately, she’s not at all alluring—something I honestly would have preferred.

  FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 17TH

  Night. Silence all around. I look out at the star-festooned heavens blanketing—no, smothering—the colich. It must surely be cool outside, but in here it’s warm, protected. It was fine, I tell myself, everything went fine, but my voice doesn’t sound like my own. I successfully weathered the first week but I’m still uneasy: something about this place escapes me. As I’m turning it over in my mind, my sister calls.

  I had completely forgotten about her.

  “What happened?” she asks. “Why haven’t you called? I didn’t even know if you got there okay.”

  Her voice is a rebuke.

  “Of course I got here okay,” I say. “Why wouldn’t I have? And you’d know if something happened to me. It’s not like the guardia civil would pay for my funeral if I had an accident.”

  She isn’t amused, but she is persistent. She keeps complaining. She was worried, she says. She calls me inconsiderate, selfish. But her desire for details gets the best of her. She asks me what the colich is like, what documentation they asked me for, if I started teaching right away, how I’m getting on.

  Too many questions at once.

  I answer them in order, methodically: the school is peaceful and lovely; I’ve been teaching for five days; I’m doing the best I can; luckily no one has noticed anything, for the time being. I don’t conceal the difficulty of those first days, my disorientation, the issue with the bathroom, the perpetual, devastating feeling of clumsiness and inadequacy every time I face the students.

  “Well, I can’t understand why,” she says. “You wanted to be a writer, after all. There’s not much difference between writing and teaching language.”

  “Oh, no? Is that what you think? They have nothing to do with each other. The greatest writers weren’t school teachers.”

  “But you aren’t a great writer.”

  An unimpeachable argument. I don’t know what to say. She goes on:

  “One would assume you know something about words. And you have to teach others how to use them. I don’t see the problem.”

  No, maybe there is no problem. I feel brushed off.

  “Careful now,” I warn her. “This scheme of ours won’t last for long if they’ve tapped the phones.”

  “Are you serious? Do you think they would do that?”

  She sounds cautious, but still I detect a hint of dismissiveness. I know my sister well.

  “Of course I do. This is a ritz
y school. There are kids here whose parents are government ministers, big businessmen, actors—members of the mob, even. I wouldn’t doubt it.”

  “Do you think they’ll look into your background? What if he finds out?”

  He is her ex-husband, my ex-brother-in-law. He is the one who should be here, had he not left her without any explanation. It doesn’t bother me to be a bit cruel:

  “He’s not going to find out, dear sister … and you better accept that. He’s gone, he’s gone far away, to another country, across the ocean, maybe. He was smarter, or quicker, than the rest of us. What, do you think he’ll come back to collect his documents?”

  I picture my sister on the other end of the line. Looking old, upset. No one is coming back for her, that much is clear, but what if I am found out? If Señor J. or the assistant headmaster were to unmask me at one of their cryptic meetings? What would be the consequences for me, for her?

  “It’s better for you not to call,” I tell her. “I’ll call you soon.”

  We agree that I’ll call her on Sundays. She makes me swear not to forget. Don’t worry, I say, yawning. I hang up and sit by the window, not sure what to do.

  I’m annoyed by our conversation. My sister is too much like me not to grate on my nerves, no matter what she does. Whenever she talks or complains, argues for or against something, it’s like looking in a mirror. The way she has of curling her lip, her hand gestures, how she leans back when she’s been offended, and forward to attack: all of that is inherited. And shared.

  It’s now completely quiet. I can see two figures in the distance, out beyond the playing fields, running through the shadows like they’re trying not to be seen, or are hunched against the wind. I can’t tell who it is. I can make out the shape of the mastiff and hear her bark.

  Again, I wonder what would happen to me.

  I try to relax: at the end of the day, it’s no more than a question of having a degree, a name. Of being born into a particular family, staying on the right path, checking all the boxes, signing on the line, repeating the mistakes you’ve been taught, regurgitating what’s required where you need to, being patient. And here you are—your degree, sir. You may call yourself x and practice the profession indicated below. I call myself by another name and practice a different profession at this colich; I teach my classes, I dress like a teacher, I want a teacher’s dignity, his flexible authority, his steady stride. I have my students, my classes. I’m called to meetings and have the right to speak and vote in them. I have a room that someone cleans every day, my rations of food, a garden beneath my window, a place in the school, a job. Incredible.