Four by Four

by Sara Mesa

I’m uncomfortable.

  I decide to just come out with it and ask about García Medrano. All at once something changes. A startled look, an anxious smile.

  “I already told you, sir, I don’t know why he got sick.”

  “But you knew him well? You had contact with him?”

  She purses her lips. A flash of what could be mistrust—however fleeting—passes over her face.

  “I don’t know what you’re referring to, sir. What kind of contact?”

  She obviously feels cornered, which wasn’t my intention. Inadvertently, my question had seemed suggestive. Her discomfort supplied an answer different from the one I’d hoped to hear.

  What sort of relationship had they had?

  I calm her, assure her I wasn’t referring to anything out of the ordinary. I had simply heard very good things about my predecessor and hoped she could help me find him, that was all. I haven’t lost sight of the fact that I’m just his substitute. I want to do a good job, but I lack his experience at the colich. I have doubts when I’m teaching sometimes and wish I could consult his papers, even speak with him and ask for help. Being a teacher isn’t as easy as it might look, I add.

  Gabriela shrugs and nods toward my desk.

  “But you have his teacher’s notebook, sir.”

  She’s right. I’ve had it since the first day, but there’s nothing of interest in it, just the students’ file cards and their grades. That slanted, hurried handwriting, simple everyday notations.

  There had to be more. More facts. How long had García Medrano been working at the school? Did he leave on the weekends? Did he store his personal belongings at Wybrany? Did he take them with him when he left? Were they being held somewhere?

  Gabriela shakes her head the whole time. She insists she knows nothing. She doesn’t think he left the school very often, but she can’t be sure. He was a normal teacher, normal behavior, polite, middleage, discreet, and studious.

  “He was like you, sir,” she concludes.

  Me, discreet and studious? I’m amused. I laugh softly and accept that the conversation has reached a dead end. Maybe it’s enough to hear her use the past tense, he was. It seems finished. Obstructed, for sure. Gabriela looks impatient: the scouring pad is still in her hand, foam waiting to be rinsed accumulates in the sink. I thank her for her patience and leave so she can finish.

  Poor Gabriela. I pressed her, took advantage of this insidious hierarchy.

  It’s Ledesma’s fault. What was he hinting at? Where did it lead? What was he trying to do when he mentioned Gabriela? Confuse me, confuse her?

  I go back out to the grounds and sit on a bench out of sight of Señor J.’s window. I wait.

  A figure approaches from the distance, but I can’t make it out with any certainty. Every time I get tense—which happens too often lately—sparks and stains float before my eyes. I get muddled. The figure draws near and something about it reminds me of Sacra—the obese body, generous bosom, that tilting, satisfied walk. I’m not sure it’s her, but I flee anyway. There’s no one I want to talk to.

  Gabriela is gone by the time I get back to my room. Everything clean, everything tidy. I flop down on the bed, assaulted by an incomprehensible desire to cry.

  (…)

  I just remembered my sister. It’s Sunday. I have to call her.

  I have no interest in doing so, but I do.

  A predictable conversation. She’s still afraid. I try to reassure her, but she tells me I don’t know what I’m talking about, that I’m not there to witness what is happening.

  Shots were fired below her window the other night. The police used tear gas. She said she saw a man smashed against the door to the pizzeria, the pizza box destroyed at his feet, the food just pulp spilled on the sidewalk.

  “You need to stay inside as much as possible,” I tell her.

  “But I have to look for work, do the shopping.”

  “Don’t worry about work. I already told you, you can count on my paycheck every month. And do the shopping early in the morning. One person doesn’t need much. Store up provisions, like ants do. Then don’t go out again for the rest of the day.”

  I don’t know if she understands me. It’s like speaking to a small child. She fusses the whole time, sputters that she doesn’t want to live like a captive, murmurs something else, unintelligible.

  Then she asks me about the colich. She sighs with envy when I tell her about it. I sense that it’s good for her to keep believing that this place exists exactly as she imagines it, and so I go on. I describe a refuge, idyllic and remote, an oasis of education and peace.

  Since the sham is already well underway, I also tell her that I’ve started working on a novel.

  What does it matter, in the end?

  One more lie. I tell them all the time.

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 4TH

  I met with Marieta today. Her pretenses weren’t false: in effect, she was concerned about what she called my “pedagogical methods.” She cut right to the chase.

  Why was I always assigning compositions? Is that all I did with the students? All I’ve done since I arrived at Wybrany?

  I confess, but quickly mount a defense.

  “I planned to dedicate this trimester to written expression. It’s an important part of language learning.”

  “But why just the compositions? You could incorporate other activities.”

  “Writing these pieces is the best way to determine the students’ abilities. The compositions are simply a road leading to something else in the future. I plan to do other things.”

  I know my lies don’t sound credible. She looks at me coldly and I avert my eyes. Her spotless, organized office is dominated by metal and the color white. She neatly shuffles the papers in front of her, dressed in white as well, and wearing a silver necklace. When she addresses me, her voice is cool:

  “A mother has complained that you oblige the students to write about their personal dreams. Dreams, Isidro, belong in the realm of intimacy. Don’t you think?”

  A mother complained? That’s funny. Even funnier when I discover it was Irene’s mother. Irene, my sweet student with the prominent jaw and lazy eye.

  I don’t go into detail with Marieta so as not to further complicate matters, but I’m circumspect. Of Irene, in particular.

  “They weren’t forced to tell me their real dreams. Lots of them made things up. The topic of dreams was just a pretense to get them writing. There’s no mystery here.”

  “These children are more innocent than we think,” she says. “If you order them to write their dreams, they’re not going to make them up. Therein lies the problem, Isidro. Seen from the outside, it looks like you were trying to exercise some kind of psychological control over them.”

  Psychological control? Innocent children? She couldn’t possibly be referring to my students. I feel like I’ve landed on a different planet.

  “Moreover, compositions are an outdated teaching method,” she adds. “They’re hardly used anymore.”

  She talks to me about books, authors, theories, a smooth erudition that unfurls on its own accord. Her eyes remain calm; it’s an unseeing look, one that grazes and burns at the same time.

  She’s determined, indomitable. I like dominant women, so I set aside my arguments and submerge myself in her voice. I don’t want to ruin this encounter; at least she’s made an effort to be cordial and in the end, I suppose, she’s only doing her job.

  I tell her she’s right. Okay, I recognize that the compositions are a little anachronistic and that it’s unusual to assign them every day. I can admit that. I pledge to use other methods. I apologize for making my students uncomfortable.

  For a moment she looks alarmed. Did she think I was mocking her by giving in so easily? But she quickly relaxes and a satisfied expression spreads across her face. Mission accomplished.

  The meeting ends and I leave without a shred of hope.

  No, Marieta doesn’t look at me the way I look at her.

&nb
sp; TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5TH

  Today, I say in class, you are going to write your last compositions. Or the last ones for a good long while, in any case. But don’t worry: this time, I’m not going to ask you to write about your dreams. I don’t want you to feel like your privacy has been violated.

  I emphasize the word privacy and look at Irene, who returns my look impassively, lips pressed together. Her face remains unchanged when I propose the new topic:

  “You are going to write a story about me, about how you could hurt me. Fiction allows for this kind of thing. Therapeutic violence, let’s call it, nothing I’ll hold over you later. A story about how you could ruin my life, that’s all. Give free rein to your animosity. Be perverse. Have fun. Today, nothing is out of bounds.”

  I repeat the same speech in each one of my classes. All are left bewildered. Even Ignacio lifts his head and looks at me, surprised, a startled blink that could almost appear innocent.

  They take turns asking questions, complaining, bickering.

  “Are you sure you won’t get mad?”

  “I can’t think of anything!”

  “I’d rather tell you about last night’s dream.”

  “Can we really write whatever we want?”

  I tell them to quiet down. I address their doubts, the class settles. They write on their sheets of paper and I look out the window in the meanwhile. Everything is routine and peaceful. I still have that sense of images projected on a screen, a vague déjà vu.

  I don’t know what came over me, what led me perform this bit of audacity, but I suddenly feel more confident. Less afraid.

  Later, the students set their papers on my desk. From the corner of my eye, I glance at some of the paragraphs.

  Traditional version: We hired a hit man to kill you. He was huge, ripped, almost 200 kilos, used to torturing and killing mercilessly. When the fateful night arrived, he entered your room and found you deep asleep. He was ready to strangle you with his enormous hands, but up close you reminded him of his father, from whom he had been estranged since childhood. His eyes filled with tears and he couldn’t kill you. But to prove he’d done it, he brought us a dog’s eyes and tongue, assuring us they were yours …

  Fantastical version: Just like in Alice in Wonderland, someone gave you a potion to drink that shrunk you and turned you into a little tiny creature. A student put you in a hamster ball and we played ping-pong with it …

  Cowardly version—with spelling errors (a scholarship student, obviously): a groop of people wanted to beat you up, some of us tried to help you but we couldn’t do anything, it was imposibble. They left you with a messed up face and a missing leg.

  Vengeful version with Borgesian overtones: The Headmaster ordered you to write compositions not only about your dreams but about everything you saw around you: conversations you heard, things happening at Wybrany, things you saw and didn’t see, the past and the future, too. You spent all day writing, but you never had enough time to write it all. You stopped eating. You couldn’t let yourself miss a single minute. You became so thin that you wasted away, nothing but skin and bones …

  Irene is the last student to turn in her assignment. I set aside her paper to look at it in my room.

  I’ve just finished reading it.

  The title is written in rounded, uppercase letters. Explicit: WHAT I WOULD DO TO RUIN YOUR LIFE. And then: To ruin your life, I would put a pair of panties in your briefcase. I would take naked pictures of myself and put them between the pages of your books. Then I would tell my mother and we would report you. The evidence would be irresistible. They would give you life in prison …

  Disturbing girl, that Irene. Even though she confused irresistible and irrefutable. I mark it with a red pen and take a rest.

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8TH

  My new focus for the week: teaching methods.

  After many trips to the library, I still can’t manage this linguistic terminology.

  How could it possibly be useful to fill kids’ heads with all this conceptual baggage?

  Language stripped of life, of flesh, gutted: that’s what I think of syntactical analysis. Semantics: dead words under a magnifying glass, meaning in the throes of death like a fish flopping out of water. Phonetics: incomprehensible babble, harsh stutters.

  What can I say? This subject is of absolutely no interest to me.

  But it is useful for passing the time.

  The library is housed in a room with long wooden cross-beams and a checkered tile floor, the geometric patterns made to look antique. Dark wooden shelves and tables with little lamps and computers are arranged neatly throughout the entire space: a blend of modernity and tradition that isn’t at all appealing. A faint, greenish light illuminates the heads of the few students who have come here to study.

  I’m assisted by an inexperienced young woman, completely lacking in charm: dyed blonde hair cut too short, bulging eyes, flat chest. I think she comes and goes from the colich daily, who knows from where. I don’t care to find out, just as she doesn’t care about my sudden interest in didactic texts. Stuffed into her suit, she speaks to me between yawns and has a visible distaste for anything other than the magazines hidden under her desk.

  Silence and emptiness. Since becoming a regular, I’ve rarely come across any colleagues in the library. Just Ledesma, on one occasion. He raised his eyebrows in a hint of a greeting but otherwise didn’t move—sunken shoulders, elbows on the table—as if he had completely forgotten our conversation at the edge of the woods. He is a peculiar one.

  Hours and hours spent consulting books with instructions and answer keys. Hours and hours tangled up in the online data bank. All that material, still incomprehensible and useless.

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9TH

  While I was miles away in my own thoughts, Marieta approached me in the library.

  She broke through my daydream, peering over my shoulder to see what I was reading. She seemed pleased. After the chilliness of Monday’s meeting, her tone was somewhat friendlier: agile, transparent. She emanated something akin to happiness—limited, perhaps, excessively contained—but happiness nonetheless.

  For some unknown reason, she suggested we get coffee. She was deigning to speak to me. I couldn’t refuse.

  Gabriela was helping in the kitchen that weekend, and waited on us. I felt a bit anxious: uneasy that Gabriela was seeing me with Marieta and worried that Marieta would pick up on my familiarity with Gabriela.

  “Sir, miss,” she said, setting the cups on the table.

  Then she disappeared discreetly.

  Marieta was radiant. The floor lamp bathed half her face in light, and her skin looked soft and warm. I wanted to touch her. I contemplated her at length, captivated. She looked at me intently, chatting away, though she was as restrained and discreet as always.

  Whenever I’m with a beautiful woman, I have a suspicion that the universe has made a terrible mistake. I feel guilty or insecure or afraid that someone—someone merciless, unknown—will recognize the error and punish me. But nothing happened, at least nothing like that. Marieta was relaxed and even seemed inclined to confide in me.

  “I haven’t been feeling well lately,” she said. “I’m not sleeping—I’m troubled by strange thoughts.”

  This was undoubtedly not true—she looked wonderful. Did she hope I would take up the subject, confess my own unease? I didn’t—there was little I could do except smile stupidly.

  As I watched her, I thought I glimpsed Señor J. through the window at her back. I squinted and she turned to look behind her.

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” I said. “My eyes give me trouble sometimes. I was trying to see who it was.”

  Yes, she confirmed. It was Señor J. He was strolling around the grounds with his wife. A round young woman, very blonde. I recalled Señor J.’s comments about her, the woman he hadn’t divorced yet.

  I would have liked to ask Marieta about them, to find out more about Señor J. or the assistant headmaster, or even García Medr
ano, but I knew that was a wall I couldn’t breach. Everything Marieta said with regard to the colich was steeped in praise. It would be useless to ask, and would probably just raise suspicion. I couldn’t get her to talk about herself, either: did she receive visitors, too? Did she have someone outside the colich? Why had Martínez said she was “occupied”?

  “Don’t you ever leave on the weekends?”

  “I can’t, I just can’t,” she said. “My responsibilities here are too great. I can’t afford to leave.”

  That was all. That, and few blinks of her evasive eyes. To be honest, she seemed more interested in asking questions than answering them.

  “And you?” she said. “Don’t you ever get out?”

  “No, not at the moment …”

  “But you get along with your colleagues, right? I’ve seen with you Martínez, especially.”

  “Oh, sure. Martínez is a good guy. We play chess, we talk … he’s always in a great mood.”

  “And Ledesma?”

  “What about Ledesma?”

  Alarm bells.

  “Ledesma isn’t very happy,” she said.

  “No, he isn’t.” I hesitated. “But I don’t know him well. We’ve barely spoken a handful of times.”

  “Ah, I thought I saw you together, out in the field.”

  Apparently, everyone knows what happens outside the walls of the colich. Were we under surveillance? I shook my head, dismissing the thought.

  “We’ve had a few normal conversations. He’s very quiet. We don’t even have any students in common.”

  Marieta finished her coffee and looked at me with a smile, as if she were saying something more than what I understood. The conversation was over. I left a short while later with the uncomfortable feeling of having been duped. Our coffee date had simply been an excuse to take my psychological pulse, in the end. What had I expected? That she was actually interested in me?

  I’m beginning to realize that every day here has an emasculating aftertaste.

  SUNDAY, DECEMBER 10TH

  A small group of us ate lunch together today. This is unusual for a weekend: those of us who have nowhere to go usually confine ourselves to our rooms, out of pride or embarrassment. But this time, Martínez was able to bring us together with his enthusiasm. We had been spread out among the tables and he managed to gather us together, making a big fuss, not even waiting for our consent. Did we want to sit together? It didn’t matter.