by Tom Michell
“His Excellency Don Juan Salvador de Pingüino”
It seems to me that there is a very particular polish that is only ever used in schools, and its odor permeated the atmosphere as the babble of students shattered the quietude of the dormant boardinghouses. The tramp of feet and crash of trunks bulging with uniforms and sports gear as they were dumped unceremoniously at the ends of beds by their owners heralded the true beginning of a new seventeen-week term. The college was juddering back to life. I was not sorry to see the return of the boys that spring. It was becoming clear that Juan Salvado loved company, and with more than three hundred people on campus, it was certain he would not be short of friends.
The college was home not only to the students during the term but also to many of the teaching staff and their families together with the nurses of the sanatorium, and in that close-knit community everybody knew everybody by name. Each of the classes at St. George’s had fifteen or so students, and dormitories were of a similar size. The dining hall could hold the entire school complement, and did so three or four times a day; Jorge, the chef, knew how to feed the Argentine appetite of that young army. The chapel, too, was large enough to include everybody, and we met there, with only slightly less frequency and enthusiasm, for servings from the chaplain.
I stood at the top of the stairs and directed the traffic, wondering how long it would be before any of the boys looked out the glazed terrace door. I didn’t have to wait long. An intelligent lad with a mop of jet-black hair and an irrepressible smile wandered that way and looked out over the fields toward the river, feeling, no doubt, the mixed emotions common to everybody at the start of a new term. He was from Peru, but his grandfather had been a Russian émigré.
It was several seconds before something close at hand attracted his attention.
“There’s a penguin out there!” he said quietly. He looked away and then back, almost pressing his nose against the glass. Spinning round, he saw me and repeated, “There’s a penguin out there!”
“Oh, I expect it has just flown in for a rest as it migrates south for the winter,” I said. Cognitive contradiction was a teaching style I liked—saying untrue things that forced students to challenge the ideas they were presented with.
Igor frowned and looked back toward the terrace but then spun round instantly, the word “No!” dying on his lips as he saw my expression. He grinned, too, in acknowledgment of the joke. “May I go out there?”
“If you are very calm and gentle, yes.”
Gingerly he opened the door and stepped down onto the terrace. I moved to watch. Juan Salvado flapped his wings in greeting as Igor walked slowly over to him and stooped to stroke his head. The penguin ducked and moved away, but soon he was egging the boy on, playing to his audience. Igor looked back at me. “Can I tell the others?” he asked.
—
Like wildfire, news that there was a penguin on the terrace ran round the School House, and a crowd of boys eager to know the truth about this rumor jostled excitedly around the terrace door. Initially I regulated the numbers allowed outside at any given time, fearing that Juan Salvado might be overawed by the attention, but we soon learned that there was no apparent upper limit to the number of admirers that particular penguin deemed to be enough.
The boys were delighted to be allowed to feed him, and very soon I had volunteers, especially from the younger set, to feed Juan Salvado, to wash down the terrace on a regular basis, and to buy fish from the market each day. Responsibility can so often bring out the best in students, and there was no shortage of willing helpers just ready to let the best be brought out of them by tending to the needs of Juan Salvado.
Only seeing penguins in their natural environment can give one a real understanding of the meaning of gregarious as an adjective. Humans, in general, can be described as gregarious, but penguins crowd together in untold numbers with no apparent concept of personal space. Having said that, perhaps an English boarding school (or one in South America) mirrors life in a penguin rookery more than most other forms of human society.
Rising early in the morning, streams of students would leave their boardinghouses to go to the dining hall for breakfast. They’d return to collect the essentials for the morning lessons, then the tide of boys would ebb out again to attend chapel and their classes. A midmorning break would see them flood back to the house, to substitute books and apparatus appropriate for the next set of lessons. At lunchtime they’d come back to the house to drop their belongings in their lockers before rushing out again on their way to the dining hall. Hunger for victuals satisfied, they’d head back to their dormitories for a siesta. Refreshed, the tide would flow out again to partake in games and physical exercises of many and various sorts. Back at their respective houses they’d shower and collect their books, hungry once more for the pearls of wisdom that would fall from the lips of my colleagues during the day’s final set of lessons. Then in they’d come again to leave their books before going to the dining room for their last meal of the day. Finally they’d return to studies and common rooms for prep, after which every boardinghouse would buzz with boys enjoying their only free time of the day before a final shower and bed. Such is the routine of boarding schools.
So there was a regular coming and going of youngsters, which might have been designed for the amusement and delight of a penguin in residence. Whenever he heard boys going by, Juan Salvado would animatedly run up and down his terrace, straining to see, and invariably some of the boys would go out onto the terrace and talk to him or feed him fish.
While the free time of boys in a boarding school is very limited, it was quite possible for an enthusiastic chap to make twenty minutes available between the end of games and the start of afternoon lessons, and there was never a shortage of boys volunteering to go to the market and purchase sprats. After the first few days, Juan Salvado had settled down to a regular daily diet of only half a kilo of fish, so it was perfectly possible to maintain a goodly stock in my fridge with just three trips a week to the fishmonger. The reward for getting provisions from the market was the privilege of feeding Juan Salvado and washing the terrace.
Usually a small group of up to half a dozen boys would sit on the parapet of the roof terrace and feed their new friend. At the beginning of a meal Juan Salvado would snatch and swallow fish as fast as the feeder could pick sprats from the bag, and with scant respect for the fingers of the unwary or inexperienced. (I should say here that nobody suffered permanent injury from Juan Salvado’s eagerness for fish!) However, toward the end of a meal he would slow down, as swallowing became more of an effort. Observant benefactors would notice when Juan Salvado was full and stop feeding him, but occasionally schoolboys whose fingers were no longer in jeopardy of amputation and who were lost in conversations of their own would continue to feed him until he could no longer swallow at all and a fish tail was sticking out of his beak.
Thus replete and totally contented, Juan Salvado would stand in the center of the little group of boys and gaze lovingly up at them, drinking in every word. Then, overcome by an overly tight waistcoat and the warmth of the late afternoon sun, he would nod off, falling sound asleep while leaning against the helpfully vertical legs of the boys. And there he would remain until they left. The more considerate among them would gently lower him onto his fat belly, where, childlike, he would sleep on without stirring. The less thoughtful just got up and ran off when they suddenly noticed they were late for their next appointment, leaving Juan Salvador to topple over. On such occasions he would simply shake his head like an indulgent grandparent and then settle down again to continue his afternoon nap. Such was the life of Juan Salvador the penguin, snoozing on peacefully, while the rest of us returned to our labors.
One afternoon, shortly after Juan Salvado had taken up residence on my terrace, I was in my rooms when my attention was suddenly caught by the sound of excited chatter. I assumed that it emanated from a group of boys walking toward the house, but it had a frisson that was unusual
in some way I couldn’t quite identify. I was preoccupied with the radio and the lengths of wire attached to the aerial that I had draped around the room in an unsuccessful attempt to tune into the BBC World Service for news from home. It was usually a waste of effort at that time of day, but occasionally my endeavors were rewarded with the homely tones of British newsreaders, sibilantly modulated by the ionosphere.
The group reached the house and walked up the steps. I heard the front door open and close and the voices slowly grow louder as the party climbed the stairs and eventually came to a halt outside my flat. The radio had failed to deliver and curiosity got the better of me, so I went to investigate, anticipating the knock. Opening the door, I found a boy with a triumphant expression on his face and the object of his elation, a large, old, and grubby galvanized iron basin in his hands. It was oval in shape, about three feet long by two feet wide and some nine inches deep, with handles at either end.
“Cortés,” I said, full of admiration, “you are quite brilliant! Where did you steal it from? Not some poor old lady’s garden?”
“I don’t steal nothing!” he said indignantly.
“No, I was only joking,” was all I actually said, “but you’re still brilliant. Where did you get it?”
The beaming smile returned to his face. “I was walking back from town and saw it among the junk in one of the workshops. I asked how much they wanted for it and was told that if I could get it out I could have it.”
“Didn’t the gate guards stop you?” I asked. They had clear instructions to prevent the boys from bringing rubbish into the college.
“They wanted to, but when I said you needed it for the penguin and had sent me to get it, they let me through. You did send me to get it for you, didn’t you?”
“Ah! Yes!” I said, “now I recall! Well remembered! You’ll go far, Bernado Cortés!”
In the few weeks that Juan Salvado had been at the college he had adapted to life on the terrace as a duck to water. The table provided him with shelter, if he needed it, from the sun or hail, and he loved the daily shower that he was given either by me or by the boys. A gentle stream of water was arranged by letting the end of the hose dangle from the table, and Juan Salvador could stand under this homemade waterfall.
The ritual was always the same. He would dip his beak into the flow for a second or two and then shake his head energetically. After repeating this two or three times he would begin to wash his face and neck with one foot while balancing on the other. Then he would move on to clean other parts of his body. It was astonishing how much he could groom with his feet; he seemed to have pliant bones that allowed for any contortion. Next he would move away from the running water and attend to his feathers with his beak, starting at his neck and working at every bit of himself, until he reached his tail, which he wagged spasmodically, rapidly, and vigorously throughout the process. At this signal we would towel-dry him gently, which would set him about preening his feathers anew.
We had wondered about how much water penguins usually drank or if their water requirement came wholly from the fish they ate. Consequently Juan Salvado had never been left without water in a large saucepan. College water was extremely saline, so I wasn’t worried that he might be deprived of essential salts, even though I never actually saw him drink. I was reassured that it was available to him should he need it.
Bernado Cortés had been inspired when he spotted the large galvanized basin in some grimy corner of a workshop in Quilmes. It would allow Juan Salvado to have a bath and to be fully immersed in water, if that was what he wanted, to cool himself when necessary as the heat of the summer increased. It helped to ease my mind about Juan Salvado’s immediate well-being. His feathers showed no sign of regaining their impermeability.
As Cortés held out his prize for me to inspect, it was immediately obvious that the basin had been well used. I could imagine it for sale in a hardware shop or general store at the end of the nineteenth century, hanging from a hook on a ceiling beam, bright and new, with a handwritten price tag made of buff manila card and attached with hemp string. It had been bought, I didn’t doubt, by some pioneering family of the time, along with other barest essentials. I pictured a young man, with his wife of just a few days, purchasing only the indispensable items that their pockets could afford and which wouldn’t overload their horse-drawn and almost obsolete cart: some sheets of corrugated metal, wood, nails and a hammer, fencing wire, a pick, a shovel, matches, flour, seed corn, potatoes, a white enameled jug, some ammunition, and this metal bath. These few things, together with their love and determination, would be enough to start a homestead of their own from scratch, but only just.
There, Juan Salvado’s bath had been at the heart of their domestic life as they struggled to tame the land, make a living, and create a new farm south of Buenos Aires. Perhaps it had served in the kitchen for preparing food and as a sink for washing up after meals. Doubtless it had done service in the laundry and in the bedrooms, too. New babies would have been bathed in it and water heated in it. Covered, it would have made a dry, pest-proof store. As the household grew, prospered, and climbed the social ladder, it was slowly relegated to ever more menial jobs, such as a feeding trough for the pigs and bucket for slops. Eventually, after a lifetime of duty, battered, scraped, and beginning to rust, it went as part of a job lot in a farm auction when the family home was sold. And so it had passed through different hands until finally it languished, unwanted, in a breaker’s workshop in Quilmes. But Fate had one more noble calling for it and arranged matters so that a passing schoolboy recognized its potential that particular afternoon.
“It’s exactly what we need!” I congratulated him. “Well done! Put it out on the terrace and give it a wash.”
Willing hands bore the trophy out onto the terrace for cleaning. Mud, grime, and spiderwebs were swept away under the full force of the water from the tap as Juan Salvado stood beside the basin in order to supervise. Satisfied with the progress, he rubbed his head against his chest in the fine mist that bounced from his feathers, and again I marveled at his astonishingly flexible neck, which allowed him to turn his head upside down in the process. The rainbow created by the sunbeams in the spray around the penguin made for an unforgettable image.
In no time at all the loose material had been cleaned off and the basin, filled with bright, clean water, stood ready to do service once more.
There were some blocks of quebracho wood close to hand. They had been brought from the abundant stocks in the woodsheds to hold the hosepipe down on the table and to stop it from snaking off when the tap was turned on. The word quebracho can be translated as “breaker of hatchets.” As its name suggests, it is an exceptionally hard, dense wood that sinks in water and is of no great practical use except as a fuel, because it burns like coal. Its density made it useful as a counterweight, and now, placed against the outside of the basin, the blocks made a stairway for Juan Salvado to climb up and into his bath, while a similar arrangement placed inside the basin gave him a means to get out again. Being quebracho, they didn’t float but stayed where they were put, on the bottom, under the water.
When all was ready we stood back to see what the penguin would make of this new addition to his terrace furniture and were ready to congratulate each other on a job well done as he rushed into the water with delight and swam around, but Juan Salvado did no such thing. He took no interest at all in his new tub; he simply continued preening. He didn’t even look at the bath, which was most unusual. Generally any new object on his terrace would immediately elicit his curiosity.
The watching boys were decidedly crestfallen.
“¿Por qué no usarlo?” asked one.
“¿No le gusta?” responded a second.
“Speak in English!” I reminded them. When the boys were not in Spanish classes, the college rules were quite inflexible on this matter.
“Sí, it not like him!” stated a third.
“Give him time,” I said. “It’s just unfamiliar to h
im.” I tried to be encouraging, but like the boys, I was very disappointed by the penguin’s reaction.
Suddenly one of the boys said, “I know! I know what he want. He want yelo!” Turning to me, he asked, “You have yelo?”
“What do you mean, yellow?” I asked. “Yellow what? Yellow paint?” And then I answered myself: “Of course he doesn’t want paint, stupid boy! Why on earth would he want yellow paint?” The boys loved my imitation of an ex-colonial colonel.
“No, not paint, just yelo by its own! So he feel at home!” he said, grinning.
The other boys laughed and translated for him. “Just say ‘ice’!” they teased.
“Sí, ice! Hielo! ¿Tiene? You have?”
“Ice! Where? In there? It wouldn’t make a jot of difference to put a few ice cubes in that amount of water! Not the slightest!”
“Yes! Yes! Sí,” they chorused. Suddenly all the boys thought it was a really good idea and the key to the problem. “Please! You have?”
“Well…” I hesitated. “I do have a little ice in my fridge, but only a tiny amount, not much. It won’t make any difference at all. He’s not an Antarctic penguin, so he won’t be the slightest bit influenced by a few ice cubes.” Besides, it was very nearly six-thirty and time for the bell that summoned the boys to go to the dining room for dinner. It heralded one of the few peaceful moments in the college day, when I sometimes enjoyed a gin and tonic on the terrace with colleagues, and my precious ice made from bottled water was an imperative part of the ritual. I hoped I had poured cold water on their idea.
“Oh, please!” they begged, in such a pitiful way that I felt I had to make the supreme sacrifice. Reluctantly I went into the flat, took out the small tray of ice from the freezer compartment, and slyly slipped a couple of cubes into a glass, which I put back in the fridge for later.