by D. W. Goates
He gave no reply but remained, unmoving.
Elke turned and began descending the steps but stopped midway to look back. There he was, right where she had left him. “Do you know what it is called—that music? It’s wonderful!”
“Das Leben ein Tanz.”
“Life—a Dance . . .” Wistfully, she repeated his words before turning again to go.
“The composer is a Wiener named Strauss,” he volunteered, but by the time it was out of him she was gone, having slipped back into the night whence she came.
That evening the young teacher slept well and deeply as she had not in many months. The dreadful crime she had witnessed had been reported and would be dealt with, and she was finally going home to Bremen. The interlude at the palace—as delightful as it had been fortuitous—only further brightened her mood and soothed her disquieted mind.
Ten days passed before Elke again walked the Weserstrand. Nearly broke, Elke had been so happy to return to her beloved Brem that she indulged herself alone that first night in a celebratory meal at her favorite restaurant down by the river. The weather was cool and misty, but the strong schnaps and familiar and friendly wait staff did much to warm and to cheer the weary returnee.
She had begged off a meal with family that evening, though it wasn’t as if she—an only child—still had much of one. The tree of her youth that had been so filled with grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins was now but a withered branch. Naturally, death had claimed some of its elder parts, but this was no explanation for its fundamental disconnection and impending dissolution. The blame for this Elke placed upon her preceding generation’s selfishness and infidelity, and it was a claim for which the introspective and objective young woman had much evidence.
At some point before Elke left for Bavaria, she had become convinced that her small family—and mother in particular—thought her career plans frivolous. Before this, her enthusiasm for teaching had blinded her to their opinions. But over time, through a succession of little comments, cutting words, a mound had been built up that would later become a mountain. When this mountain eventually toppled onto the young woman, its full weight of disapproval made the situation clear to her: in her endeavors outside of marriage and childbearing, Elke could expect little support and much undermining. While none were manly enough to come at her head-on in this—not even her most outspoken mother—she could be sure to expect further impediments of the kind insidious, gravitational.
At her brief call, earlier in the evening, Elke had detected a familiar note in her mother’s voice. She knew what it meant and had little patience for it, or for the advice that she could invariably expect once her brain had been sufficiently picked clean of its recent details. It was as if she had never left Bremen. No, there would be plenty of time to catch up with her small family later on, and when she did, Elke was confident she would find that nothing had changed in their petty lives.
Fräulein Schreiber went back to work as a teacher’s assistant in the same private school as before. All remained exactly as it had been with one notable exception: in her absence, another of the assistant teachers had been awarded her own classroom. This woman, who was neither more skilled, nor more educated or tenured than Elke, had quite simply benefitted from a retirement.
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have left.” The words came from a fellow assistant teacher, answering Elke’s idle complaint one day during a break between classes.
“In large, it is why I left,” Elke retorted. “The only thing that appears assured of receiving its reward around here is a dogged adherence to the roster.” Such basic—base—seniority!
Her coworker tossed her head in reluctant agreement, adding wryly, “I’m ahead of you now on that roster—thanks to your departure.”
By May, over three months had passed since Elke’s return from Bavaria. Had she been asked, she would have admitted that it seemed as if she had never left, or as if she had merely dreamt the strange adventure. But on this day, something about the cliquishness of the teachers in her school made her think back on it.
Before, she had been oblivious—another member of the school staff. Lately, however, Elke had begun seeing herself as quite distinct from it. That she was generally a serious woman, disinclined to casual relations with her coworkers, was news neither to them, nor to her. Nor was it that she was anti-social so much as given to avoiding bathos wherever she found it. But now something was becoming unsettling to her: something about how her interests and those of her fellow teachers never seemed to coincide. She began to wonder, what if there is nothing more to them? What if their shallowness is not superficial, but instead a deep well—an abyss? None of them seemed to derive any joy from teaching as she would define it, and especially not from the subject matter. The only thrills that they made manifest appeared to coincide with moments in which a student became one with their way of thinking: students rewarded—not for becoming their own better selves—but for doing what they were told, becoming what was expected.
The behavior of these teachers—who admitted themselves their dislike of the profession, and who toiled to assure that their charges learnt nothing more than how to think and to behave as they—reminded Elke of the citizens of Waldheim.
Inspired, by lamplight that evening she penned a letter to the investigator in Munich. A season had passed, and she had still yet to hear from him. Surely there was news. There had better be news! She had so many questions for him she was forced onto a second page, and then a third. Posting it without delay the following morning, Elke would have to wait for over a month before receiving a reply.
The reply Elke received that very afternoon was of a very different sort. Returning home to her modest boarding house, the young teacher was surprised to discover that a letter had been delivered. It was from a small boys’ school located across town.
A position was open for a teacher of history. The need was immediate. Would she be interested in a formal interview? With excitement, Elke answered the post with a resounding yes. In with her response she included the contact information for the school where she worked should they decide instead to send a runner directly. They did. The following day she was at the school, meeting with its principal, a kind and rotund little man, himself new to the facility.
Elke’s knowledge of the place was scant; she had applied to it almost a year ago as a last resort, well before her trip to Waldheim. Then, as now, the history position had become available. There was but one; the classes were combined. Early in the interview the principal admitted that it was “the smallest school in the city,” providing its tiny enrollment with an education spanning no less than eight grade years.
Founded by a Prussian, and based upon a prototype there, this branch school had been established in Bremen to address the specialized needs of its wayward and delinquent children. All of its students were boys, and Elke was to expect each of them to present a unique and difficult challenge—most unlike the mannered students at her present school. The principal was forthright in admitting his hesitancy in answering her aged application. Male candidates were preferred, for obvious reasons, but the truth was that they had simply run out of them. If hired, Elke would be only the second woman to ever teach at the school.
It wasn’t really much of an interview—more a detailing of what Elke might expect, and a confirmation of her assent to such circumstance. If hired, she was assured to be subjected to the gamut of foul behavior from the students, with offensive language and lewdness being the least of this.
The job the principal described was not ideal by any stretch of the imagination. However, owing to the rumors and speculations of the other teachers in her school, Elke had at least known some of this before she applied, and having heard the rest, she agreed to its terms. Almost three years had passed since she completed her professional education, and she was desperate for her own classroom. If this reform school was to be her only route to i
t, then she was determined to make the best of it. She began even to convince herself of the hidden blessings in the situation, for if any place was in need of a teacher, it was here.
Not even the true dangers, mentioned soberly by the principal—the potential for physical violence, theft, and other appalling possibilities—could dissuade her as they might have before. Elke felt herself possessed of a certain fearlessness in the wake of her experiences down south, a quality that others might refer to in less complimentary fashion as foolhardy.
In light of her enthusiasm, the young teacher was ushered on the same afternoon into a meeting with the school administrator. Elke knew of him; he was a Bürger of some note and carried much influence with the city aristocracy. Her interview with him was nothing more than perfunctory.
She was hired the very next day—to report the following Monday at eight o’clock.
Not quite sure what to expect on her first day, Elke spent the weekend preparing a basic plan of introduction. She felt it was important—necessary in fact—that a good relationship be established with the students at the outset before any teaching, and thereby learning, could take place. Along with her introduction, she prepared a simple lesson in geography. The principal had promised her that she could start anew. She would not have to pick up where the previous teacher had left off, and could therefore ensure that certain basics were covered. Fundamental geography would provide the students with the framework upon which to build in future lessons. As it turned out, however, neither her introduction nor her first lesson were needed. Before she would be permitted to meet with her class, she was to spend the entirety of her first week in the school alone, learning the school’s unique methods.
A book, written by the Prussian theorist and founder of the school, was provided to her; she read it, taking detailed notes. His methodology involved a rigid system of points wherein students were to be rewarded or penalized based upon their behavior. As a teacher in this school, Elke would be expected to follow his method without deviation, though as she was new, she would be allowed to implement it in stages.
It was certainly a novel approach, this method. Elke at once perceived its reliance upon exacting consistency for effect; she herself agreed that constancy, when properly employed, was a pillar virtue of the pedagogical arts. The eager teacher did her best during the training week to prepare in the new way, and so received rather a shock—one commensurate with her preparation—when the following Monday made its appearance.
Elke was responsible for five class periods each day, teaching history in all but the last. In her final afternoon class, she was to focus on encouraging good citizenship.
Her first class went well enough. It was small, as would be the rest, comprising a mere ten students from two of the middle grades. The students were somewhat more rambunctious than those of a normal school, and while they did seem amused to discover that a woman was their teacher—a young attractive one at that—Elke encountered nothing from them that she was incapable of handling. Indeed, any concern she had stemmed not from their behavior, but from the grade year differential. Concurrently teaching students from two different grade levels was always a challenge in itself, irrespective of other issues that might come to be overlaid on the situation.
Her second class proved more difficult. Though only eleven students, this time three grade levels were represented. And these boys were older, more jaded, and more cynical. It was here that the young teacher encountered the first of words no doubt calculated to shock her . . .
During her introductions, Elke wanted something back from each of the students: something that spoke to his desires for the future. Surely children their age had goals, if not yet the plans for how to achieve them. She felt it was one of her solemn responsibilities as a teacher to know her students’ ambitions. In fact, helping students to fulfill their dreams was why she had entered the profession.
After her model start, she went around the room giving each student a turn to share his future hopes with the class. Some of the boys offered silly responses—“I want to be rich”—though even these the creative teacher was able to turn into thought-provoking discussions. One, however, she could not.
“I want to fuck bitches.”
Taken aback, Fräulein Schreiber refused to take the bait, though she was for a moment rendered speechless. It was when the dead-eyed, rough-looking, muscular teenager sought to punctuate his utterance with a gesture—the licking of a “V” made with his fingers—that she managed to move on.
“All right, then . . . What about you? What’s your name? And what would you like to do after leaving school?”
Fortunately, this next fellow—a Herr Fischer—wanted to become a brewer.
As she became more acquainted with the students, and they with her, Elke remained confident in her abilities. By adding something of her own to the school’s method, she would foster an environment of mutual respect whereby such behavior would be eliminated organically. It was imperative that it be done in this way, for she considered herself no mere disciplinarian. The boy was testing her. Yet she remained steadfast, refusing to begin the relationship with an ending. Later, at the conclusion of class, and after docking him the requisite number of points, Elke returned Herr V’s behavior card to him without discussion.
It was the next class on her first day that presaged the real problems endemic to the school.
In a neighboring classroom—another of the precious few composing the school—some of the students were to be tested. Because of this, Elke was asked to watch those who were not. Four of these students had already been through history class with her that morning. They had already introduced themselves. They were already familiar with the initial geography lesson that followed. Furthermore, the now thirteen students combined to represent no less than four different grade levels in the tiny classroom—a handful for the lone teacher. It came as no surprise to her that the class suffered. The students who had attended before were disruptive, and Elke—reluctant to resort to harsh measures, on day one no less—found it difficult to think on her feet.
Though her final class went better, by the end of the day the young teacher was exhausted. Ever the planner, she resolved to be better prepared for such contingencies in the future.
Despite her best-laid plans, things only got worse.
Elke discovered that the haphazard testing that had been so disruptive to her third period history class that first day was not an aberration but a regular occurrence. She was told to expect this testing to take place each and every week, and was given no assurances as to the day or hour. The principal insisted, for these test results were the only measure of student progress made available to the school’s patrons.
Nevertheless, Elke looked more closely into the matter and became appalled by what she found. These “tests” were nothing more than rote memorization—the same questions, over and over again, until “perfection” was assured, in spite of the fact that the students were otherwise unable to use their information in any broader context. They knew the capital of France, but could not even so much as find France on a map.
How monstrously hypocritical—a method school so valuing its consistency that it saw fit to inconsistently remove students from their classrooms and teachers, and for what? A pathetic excuse for assessment! Delinquent children needed consistency, yes, but regular classrooms, regular lessons, and regular teachers. Here, instead, they received only the irregular, and neither the principal nor the administrator—seen ducking in from time to time—took issue with it. Did they too share somehow in the aggrandizement of the school’s patrons?
Worse still, on the third day Elke came to recognize an insidious influence at work; its source—the school’s adjutant. Perhaps well-meaning, this simple-minded, dedicated disciplinarian had managed to create a unique and familial culture in the place wholly counterproductive to its purpose. His duties were to ensure that the students
got to school on time, attended morning and evening formations, and changed classes in an orderly fashion. In practice, however, he did much more than this: he saw himself as the boys’ father figure. Elke saw now that his feelings were in no way mutual; to the boys he was but a dupe.
This man made sure that the teachers, especially the newest one, were kept distinct. He wore his distrust for Elke like a badge of honor. She was given to wonder if the many teachers who had tried before her in this place had really been so poor and deserving of his ire, or had he and his gang of boys simply run them off?
Elke soon came to an equal suspicion of the adjutant. Though most of her misgivings she owed to his overt attempts to undermine her authority, some were attributed to his occasional queer behavior, like on Thursday morning when he became apoplectic upon discovering that she had arrived earlier than he at school.
“How did you get in?” he accused.
“A key,” replied Elke, as a matter of fact.
She had been sitting at her desk in her classroom, drinking her coffee, tired and wondering to herself which class that day would receive an upheaval. She wondered also about the nature of the upheaval, for they were always somewhat different. Would it be first, second, third, or fourth period? Or perhaps it was to be all of the above? Would it be an addition of students this time, or subtraction? And how would she handle make-up assignments?
“I’m supposed to open the building. You’re here too early!”
“Sorry . . .” she said quizzically, as he disappeared from her doorway.
She wasn’t that early—maybe thirty minutes—and had thought nothing of it, but now, after this odd exchange, she was unable to restore her disordered train of thought. She went to the door, intent on asking why it was such a concern that she had arrived first, but he had already left, gone back to his own small office.