School For Patriots

by Martin Kohan

  It is the second day since María Teresa stopped going near the toilets. During the breaks she takes up position by the stairs, on the far side of the cloister, making sure that no pupil has stayed in their classroom (this is the latest fad: for some inexplicable reason a few pupils say they do not want to go out at break-time. However, they are not permitted to stay in their classrooms. Going outside for their breaks is compulsory). She is talking to her colleagues a little more. They think she is shy, and are not far wrong. Yes, she is shy, and finds it hard to open up and talk. Now though she spends more time, as was the case a few days earlier, in the assistants’ room; this means the conversation flows a little more freely. Of late the assistants have not had all that much to do. As long as the teachers turn up for their lessons, they have quite a lot of spare time. Those assistants who are students use this time for precisely that: to study. Most of them are doing law degrees, a few engineering. María Teresa watches them struggle, ears bright red, to memorise the contents of the weighty tomes they lug around all day. The others chat, almost always about the life of the school, although in recent days the men are all busy talking football (their proud boasting about the Argentinian team even spreads to the women: the World Cup winners of 1978, strengthened by the presence of Ramón Díaz and Diego Maradona, are bound to win again).

  María Teresa follows their conversations, although she can rarely think of anything to add. To show she is listening, she nods and smiles. She is hoping Señor Biasutto will not appear in the room. She feels better with other people around, but Señor Biasutto is their supervisor, and so sooner or later he always drops in. In a business-like way, he deals with three or four unresolved issues (taking the requests for punishment to the Head of Discipline, the return of the cinema keys to the janitor’s office, his authorization for ordering new white chalks), he has a quiet word with Marcelo, checks the attendance and late-arrivals’ sheets. María Teresa has the impression that he is stalking her: that his apparently casual drifting round the assistants’ room is in fact no such thing. She thinks he is looking surreptitiously at her. She has no wish to find out if this is so, and bends over the sheet of marks she is completing. Eventually, Señor Biasutto leaves the room.

  She tries not to be on her own at break-times, but this goes against the way the assistants work in order to patrol the cloisters as efficiently as possible. Señor Biasutto is always somewhere around. It is quite obvious he wants to approach her, but equally plain that he does not know how to do so. She sometimes sees him staring at her from a distance. At one point in the middle of the third break he heads towards her, but just then she discovers a boy in the seventh or eighth year (it does not matter which) who has the top button of his shirt undone beneath the knot of his blue tie, and so hastily goes over to tell him off. She stands there, making sure the pupil corrects this infraction: he loosens his tie, pulls it down, squeezes the shirt button between two fingers and does it up, then tightens the knot again, straightens it. While all this is going on, Señor Biasutto leaves.

  Another day goes by. They all pass slowly now. As is only logical, María Teresa starts using the women’s toilet reserved for the assistants. It is smaller and more comfortable, with a towel and soft toilet paper. The door is a proper one, and can be locked, although there are two frosted-glass panels, so there is no complete privacy. Whenever she feels the need, which fortunately is not very often, this is the toilet María Teresa uses, as she did when she first started working at the school. It is not far from the assistants’ room: it takes less than a minute to reach it. This is probably the only moment in the entire day that María Teresa is on her own: when she goes to this toilet, and when she comes back. Earlier today she drank two cups of lemon tea almost one after the other, so now she does need to go to the toilet. She hurries there. She takes advantage of the trip to tidy up in front of the mirror, which in this toilet is not streaked. She adjusts the clips she is wearing to keep her hair out of her face. She leaves the toilet to return to the assistants’ room. Halfway down the cloister, Señor Biasutto intercepts her. At first it seems as though he is going to walk with her and accompany her, but then he stops and forces her to come to a halt as well.

  —Everything all right with you?

  —Yes, Señor Biasutto.

  He clears his throat.

  —Any news? Anything you’d like to tell me?

  —No, Señor Biasutto.

  He sways oddly from side to side, nodding approvingly.

  —Good, very good. I’m really pleased.

  He spreads his hands, then suddenly brings them together, as if about to applaud. But he does not do so, or if he does it is in complete silence. It is more a gesture of satisfaction.

  —Well then, follow me.

  María Teresa nods, and follows him. She does so in a very odd way: she takes the lead, and Señor Biasutto walks behind her. Yet it is true that she is following him, that he is the one choosing where they go, and that she is merely obeying. They reach the end of the cloister, then turn left. They continue towards the tuck shop, but when they reach it, they turn off.

  She enters the boys’ toilet without taking any great precautions. They are not necessary: Señor Biasutto is with her, and his presence is enough to justify whatever they do. Despite their rapid entry, he does not choose the cubicle at random. He aims for the second from the left, and once inside, María Teresa notices that the broken bolt has already been replaced, good as new, firmly fitted with four new screws (not three, as before). Rough as cigars, Señor Biasutto’s fingers slide the bolt across with a clunk that sounds irreversible. María Teresa gazes at him expectantly, as if she does not know. Señor Biasutto avoids meeting her eye.

  He is hardly less clumsy than the first time. His hands become knotted, either from haste or anxiety, from his urgent need. He heaves her skirt up so violently that she feels a cold breeze on her legs; he almost tears off her knickers, oblivious to the stretching material. He does nothing at all to make this second time any easier for her. The strict repetition of actions he would like to become a ritual is no compensation either. For María Teresa it is exactly the same: consternation at first, then embarrassment, then terror. She trembles, face pressed against the wall. The only relief she can glean from this painful replay is that this time she knows from the start that Señor Biasutto’s thing is not going to play any part in what happens. It is his clumsy hand forcing its way in again, his middle finger groping violently inside her. His strange whimper, the long wait, enduring the pain, the end that has no real end. Señor Biasutto’s inane grin, begging her indulgence or bestowing it. The cold in the school toilets.

  María Teresa straightens her clothes. Señor Biasutto does not leave the cubicle yet. The afternoon is damp as well as cold, and a thin cloud of steam covers the surface of the toilet tiles. He runs a hand (his left hand) through his stiff, brilliantined hair. Today he seems smaller, stockier, harder to shift. This pause would be inexplicable, but for the bewildered look on his face. Finally he turns round, draws back the bolt, leaves the cubicle. For a moment it seems as though he is going to look at himself in the mirror, not deliberately, but simply because he is going to pass in front of it; in the end he does not do so.

  They leave the toilet together. There is no-one in the corridor. They walk for a while side by side until Señor Biasutto comes to a halt. She does the same.

  —I want you here on Monday, understood?

  María Teresa stares at him.

  —Here, in the toilet, understood? Searching for those trouble-makers who are breaking the rules.

  With this, Señor Biasutto walks off, not caring that she is no longer alongside him. But after a few steps, he slows down and turns back to look at her.

  —You understood, didn’t you?

  María Teresa says nothing.

  —You did understand, didn’t you?

  —Yes, Señor Biasutto.

  —Sure?

  —Yes, Señor Biasutto.

  Señor Biasut
to nods.

  —Until Monday then.

  —Until Monday.

  When she reaches the assistants’ room where her colleagues are gathered, it seems to her impossible that life is going on as normal. Yet that is what is happening: no-one has noticed a thing, and everything else is following its usual course. The rest of the world, the world of other people, does not change because of what has happened to her: it does not collapse or fall apart, it continues as usual. No ripples, however invisible or unexpected, disturb or upset it. María Teresa is astonished at this proof that things carry on regardless. She is surprised there is not even the slightest unexplained disturbance to everyone else’s everyday reality, even though none of them knew anything about what happened to her, and had no way of knowing.

  This same feeling returns even more strongly when, a short time later, her work finishes and she leaves the school. In the street, the indolent persistence of the most ordinary things seems to her monstrous. The blue and yellow number 29 bus goes by, heading for La Boca. The corner newspaper kiosk is shut: it only opens in the mornings. The flower seller is listening to the radio by the light of a dangling bulb. People pass by without looking at her, without finding any real reason to be interested in her.

  She wants to get home as quickly as possible. On days like these, though, it is as if the difficulties multiply: the queue to buy tokens for the metro is longer than usual, the train takes ages to arrive and depart; at night there are problems and unexpected halts in the tunnels between stations. Only her own rate of walking can be accelerated.

  At home, the mother is watching television. The news is showing an interview with Mario Kempes, the hero of the 1978 World Cup. Kempes says he can promise the fans that the colours of Argentina will be raised to the heights once more. Kempes has been playing in Spain for several years, and it is obvious his pronunciation has changed. In the 1978 World Cup he scored six goals, two of them in the final.

  María Teresa says hello to the mother, then goes into the bathroom. Contrary to her usual habit, first she soaps her body, and then pours shampoo onto her hand to wash her hair with. She uses roll-on deodorant rather than a spray, because that makes her sneeze, and besides, it does not seem to her very feminine. Sometimes she sprinkles on talcum powder. Today she does.

  She dresses casually: gym pants, pyjama jacket, slippers with a furry lining. She sits down to watch television with the mother, but cannot concentrate. The images jump from one thing to another: an earthquake, a race, rain somewhere, a wounded man, a sinking ship, a trench; she can barely understand what she is seeing.

  She asks if there is any news from her brother. None at all. He has not written or telephoned. Nothing. She is alarmed.

  Curled up in bed later that night, she tries to sleep but finds it impossible. This happens all the time. She tries several new ruses to help her doze off: she has always said her prayers and clutched the rosary in her hands, but now that is not enough. She tries other methods, like imagining her bed is floating in the middle of an icy lake, going over in her mind the names and nicknames of all her friends in the Child Virgin group, fantasizing a journey in which she leaves all her problems behind, letting her mind go blank, pulling the bedclothes over her head, calling on God.

  Eventually one or other of these techniques is successful, or perhaps her tiredness finally gets the better of her, and she falls asleep. But in her sleep she dreams. And her cruel dreams wake her up again. This is what happens on the Friday, when she dreams of a tunnel, and on the Saturday, dreaming of a well. And now, precisely now, on Sunday night, as the weekend is reaching its conclusion, she has just had a dream about an ocean; a huge, deep ocean with ten or twelve scattered objects floating in it. These objects are people, and one of those people is her brother. Not all of them have to make the same effort to stay afloat. Her brother, for example, does nothing: he is lying flat on his back as if he had a bed rather than an ocean beneath him, and is floating comfortably. But from the shore a figure she cannot make out very well is holding sheets of paper with lists of names on them. He is reading them out. Although it is a wide-open space, the names are heard crystal-clear. Thanks to some obscure magic, there is a link between a name and a destiny: some drown, others are saved. Still dreaming, or possibly already coming out of it, María Teresa realises that she and her brother both have the same surname. Even though this is obvious, it gives her a jolt.

  She wakes up, not sure whether she has cried out or not. Who knows: if she did, she must have disturbed the mother (for some time now she has been a very light sleeper, and for the past few nights has done no more than doze). The night is silent. Her terrifying awakening finds no echo in the rest of the apartment. The curtains are still, the air stagnant, the clock ticks steadily, proclaiming the eternal victory of the present.

  María Teresa sits upright in bed, but soon collapses back onto the pillow and under the covers. She goes over the terrifying dream she has just had, in the hope that by remembering the details now she is awake she can repel its distressing effects. She is worried about her brother: about Francisco down in Comodoro Rivadavia. This concern quickly fuses with another. She is petrified to think that in a few hours’ time, three or four at most, the alarm clock will go off in this very room, she will be nervous all morning, will not want to eat lunch, and then will leave for school. The next day, which strictly speaking is today, she will have to go to school, as she will on the following days, and she will have to diligently fulfil her duties as a class assistant.

  She will not be able to get back to sleep until she can separate this truth from the rawness of her nocturnal thoughts. The hours go by. The alarm clock goes off. She is already awake. Awake and thinking what has been constantly on her mind: that she has to go to school and carry out her duties.

  The mother meanwhile has switched on the radio.

  16

  On Monday 14 June 1982, Port Stanley falls. The Argentinian general Mario Benjamín Menéndez, Governor of the islands, signs the surrender in the presence of the British General Jeremy Moore, commander of the victorious forces. This marks the end of the armed conflict, seventy-four days after the Argentinian invasion. In different parts of the islands, the defeated soldiers line up to surrender, piling up their weapons under the watchful eyes of the British troops taking them prisoner. Added together, the number of men lost by both countries in the conflict totals more than nine hundred.

  At the National School of Buenos Aires, the pupils are given three days off. There are no classes on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. The assistants tell the pupils this on the staircase up to the front entrance. Once they have done so, they too go home, without entering the locked school building.

  On Thursday they resume their activities as normal. By then the school authorities have been completely renewed. There in a new Headmaster. A new Head of Discipline as well. Also a new supervisor of assistants. All of them have been appointed provisionally by the governing body of the University of Buenos Aires to cover the undetermined period that is already being called, both within and outside the school, a period of transition. The previous authorities (the Deputy Headmaster, the Head of Discipline, the assistants’ supervisor, and even Mr Vivot) do not reappear to take their leave or to take part in any kind of handover ceremony. Nothing of this kind takes place. On Thursday everyone at the school meets the new staff, who are already in post. Those who preceded them in these positions are simply no longer there. They are no longer there, they no longer come, they will no longer be seen at the school.

  Francisco Cornejo returns from Comodoro Rivadavia in an Argentinian Air Force Hercules. It touches down in the early hours of Saturday morning at the El Palomar airbase. The reunion with his family two hours later at the Villa Martelli barracks is restrained but emotional. His mother Hilda and his elder sister María Teresa are waiting for him on the far side of the wooden fence on Avenida San Martín.

  Two months after his return, Francisco finds a job in a car factory in Córdoba p
rovince. He moves with his mother and sister to a suburb of the provincial capital. The neighbourhood is called Malvinas Argentinas. They live in a typical little villa which has its own modest charm. There is a small back garden, and so they are able to fulfil a longstanding dream and adopt a dog. He’s a Labrador, whom they call Tobias.

  Monserrat school in the city of Córdoba employs only male assistants. But a manager at the Renault factory with good connections promises to find out if there is a possibility of a job for María Teresa in administration.