by Marcel Ayme
“Shall we continue?” He said with a pained laugh. “I was saying then that you have had a week in which to do this French homework. Yes, a week. Indeed I shall look forward to finding out later when Béruchard did it. I’m sure that he didn’t wait a week, nor six days, nor five. Nor three, nor two. Béruchard did it the next day. And would you like to tell me what this homework consists of?”
Lucien, who was not listening, allowed the time for a reply to run out. His father then commanded him to answer in a voice that pierced three doors and reached as far as Aunt Julie in her bedroom. In her nightdress and with her hair down, she came to investigate.
“What is going on? Let’s see, what are you doing with the child? I should like to know”.
As misfortune would have it, at that moment Monsieur Jacotin was allowing thoughts of his palmes académiques to take over. This is why he was short of patience. Even while in the greatest of rages, he generally expressed himself in decorous language. But the tone of this old lady installed in his home as an act of charity and speaking with such a nerve to a man about to be decorated, seemed to him a provocation that called for insolence.
“You,” he replied, “I have four letters to say to you.”
Aunt Julie gaped, her eyes round and still incredulous, and as he explained exactly what he meant by those four letters, she fell in a dead faint. There were screams of fright from the kitchen, the loud clatter of a drama with gathering of hot-water bottles, saucers and flasks. Lucien’s sisters and their mother busied themselves about the sick woman with words of compassion and reassurance, every one of which wounded Monsieur Jacotin cruelly. They avoided looking at him, but when accidentally their faces turned towards him, their eyes were hard. He felt guilty and, sorry for the old maid, sincerely regretted being so carried away by his own linguistic indulgence. He would have liked to apologise, but the disapproval that so visibly surrounded him hardened his pride. While Aunt Julie was being carried up to her room, he pronounced loudly and clearly:
“For the third time, I demand to know what your French homework consists of.”
“It’s a comprehension,” said Lucien. “You have to explain the proverb: ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’”
“Well? I don’t see any problems in that for you.”
Lucien nodded his consent to this, but his face remained unconvinced.
“In any case, run and find your exercise books and get to work. I want to see that homework done.”
Lucien went to fetch his school satchel which was lying in a corner of the kitchen, took out an exercise book and wrote at the top of a clean page: Slow and steady wins the race. However slowly he managed to write, this hardly took up five minutes. He then set to sucking the end of his pen and staring at the proverb with stubborn hostility.
“I see you are setting about it with some reluctance,” said his father. “Take your time. I’m in no hurry. I shall stay up all night if necessary.”
Indeed, he had settled down as if ready to wait in comfort. Looking up, Lucien found his father exuding an air of composure that made him despair. He tried to concentrate on his proverb: ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’ For him, this was no more than a fact, a truth requiring no demonstration, and he thought with disgust of La Fontaine’s fable The Hare and the Tortoise. Meanwhile, having put Aunt Julie to bed, his sisters were starting to stack the crockery away in the cupboard and, however careful they were not to make a noise, clattered a few dishes, which irritated Monsieur Jacotin, as if they wanted to provide the schoolboy with a good excuse to stop work. Suddenly there was a terrible din. The mother had just dropped an iron saucepan into the sink where it rang against the tiles.
“Careful,” growled the father. “That really is annoying. How do you expect him to work, either, amidst such bedlam? Let it alone and be off somewhere else. You’ve done the washing-up. Go to bed.”
At that, the women left the kitchen. Lucien saw that he was now left alone with his father, with the night and, thinking of death at sunrise, as the saying went, he began to cry.
“Much good that will do you,” said his father to him. “You silly thing, come on!”
The voice was just as gruff, but a spark of compassion had crept in, for, still ashamed of the scene he had caused a moment ago, Monsieur Jacotin was hoping to make up for his behaviour with a little lenience towards his son. Lucien picked up the nuance, let down his remaining defences and cried all the harder. One tear fell on the exercise book, beside the proverb. Moved, the father came round the table, bringing a chair with him, and sat down next to the child.
“Come now, bring me your handkerchief and let’s get this thing finished. At your age you should know that if I tell you off, it’s for your own good. Later you’ll say: ‘He was right.’ There’s nothing better for a child than a father who knows how to be strict. Indeed Béruchard was saying exactly that yesterday. It’s a habit, for him, to beat his son. Sometimes it’s boxing his ears, sometimes a kick or, I think, sometimes the strap or the cord. He gets excellent results. Knows his boy is on the right path and that he’ll go far. But I could never strike a child, except of course just like that, once in a while. To each his own ideas. That’s what I was telling Béruchard. I find it more effective to appeal to the child’s sense of reason.”
Calmed by these kind words, Lucien had stopped crying and this disturbed his father.
“Just because I speak to you like a man, you won’t think I’m getting soft with you?”
“Oh, no!” replied Lucien, with the ring of deep conviction.
Reassured, Monsieur Jacotin gave him a fond look. Then, thinking on the one hand of the proverb and on the other of his son’s predicament, he thought he saw an opportunity to seem generous at little cost to himself and said affably:
“I quite see that if I don’t lend you a hand, we shall still be here at four in the morning. So, let’s hop to it. We were saying: ‘Slow and steady wins the race.’ Right, let’s see. Slow and steady … ”
Only a moment ago, the topic of this French homework had seemed almost absurd, so easy had it sounded. Now that he was taking responsibility for it, it appeared in quite a different light. Apprehension written all over his face, he reread the proverb several times and murmured:
“It’s a proverb.”
“Yes,” agreed Lucien who was waiting for what would follow with renewed confidence.
Such calm confidence discomfited Monsieur Jacotin. The thought that his prestige as a father was at stake unnerved him.
“When he gave that homework to you,” he asked, “did the teacher not say anything about it?”
“He told us: ‘Above all, avoid writing a summary of The Hare and the Tortoise. It is up to you to think of an illustration.’ That’s what he said.”
“Well, it’s true,” said his father. “The Hare and the Tortoise is a good illustration. I hadn’t thought of it.”
“Yes, but that one’s not allowed.”
“Not allowed, of course, not allowed. But then if everything is not allowed … ”
Somewhat flushed of face, Monsieur Jacotin cast about for an idea or a saying that would at least start them off. His imagination would not obey. He began to consider the proverb with a sense of trepidation and rancour. Little by little, his face took on the same pained expression only recently worn by Lucien.
In the end, he had the idea of elaborating on a newspaper subheading, The Arms Race, that he had read that morning. The development was working out quite well: a nation has been preparing for war for some time, building artillery, tanks, machine guns and aeroplanes. A neighbouring nation prepares only half-heartedly, so that it isn’t at all ready when war comes and struggles in vain to catch up. Everything required for an excellent homework was there.
Monsieur Jacotin’s face, which had brightened for a moment, clouded once more. He had just realised that his political convictions ought to preclude his choosing such a tendentious example. He was too upright to undermine his own convictions, but i
t was a shame all the same. Despite the certainty of his opinions, he allowed himself a flicker of regret at not being pledged to support one of the reactionary parties, which would have allowed him to use his idea with the full approval of his conscience. At the thought of his palmes académiques he came to himself again, though feeling rather melancholy.
Lucien was calmly awaiting the result of his father’s meditation. He had decided he was no longer called on to explain the proverb and was no longer even thinking about it. But as the silence dragged on, it began to seem very long indeed. Eyelids drooping, he yawned widely several times. His father, face strained with the effort of his cogitation, saw these as so many reproaches, each adding further to his irritability. However hard he tormented his mind, nothing came. The arms race was bothering him. It was as if it were welded to the proverb and the efforts he made to forget it only made him think of it again. From time to time, he sent a tense and furtive glance in his son’s direction.
Just when Jacotin had lost hope and was preparing to confess that he was stumped, he had another idea. It sprang from a transposition of the arms-race idea—and in doing so managed to drive out the original obsession. The situation was still a competition, but this time a sporting one, in which two teams of rowers were preparing, the one methodically, the other with evident carelessness.
“Here we are,” Monsieur Jacotin ordered, “write.”
Half asleep, Lucien started and took up his pen.
“I say, were you asleep?”
“Oh! No, I was thinking. I was thinking about the proverb. But I didn’t come up with anything.” His father gave an indulgent chuckle, then his gaze grew fixed and, slowly, he started to dictate:
“On this splendid summer Sunday afternoon, comma, what can these pretty, elongated, green objects be, comma, so striking to the eye? From afar one might say that they are furnished with long arms, but these arms are no other than oars and the green objects are in fact two racing shells, gently rocking on the ripples of the River Marne.
Seized by a sudden vague anxiety, Lucien dared to look up in mild alarm. But his father did not see this, being too busy polishing a transitional sentence, which would allow him to introduce the rival teams. Mouth half-open, eyes half-closed, he was watching over his rowers and gathering them in the floodlight of his mind. Groping at the table, his hand advanced towards his son’s pen.
“Give it here. I’m going to write it myself. It’s easier than dictating.”
He began to write feverishly, his pen racing. The ideas and words came easily, their order both logical and somehow elevating, inspiring him to lyricism. He felt powerful, the master of a magnificent, blossoming realm. Lucien looked on for a moment, not without a little lingering apprehension, as the inspired pen flew over his exercise book, but ended up falling fast asleep on the table. At eleven o’clock, his father woke him up and held the exercise book out to him.
“And now you shall copy that out nice and calmly. I’ll wait till you are done to read it through. Take special care with the punctuation.”
“It is late,” Lucien commented. “Perhaps it would be better for me to get up early tomorrow morning?”
“No, no. You must strike while the iron is hot. Another proverb for you there!”
Monsieur Jacotin smiled appreciatively and added:
“I should have no trouble explaining that proverb either. If I had time, mustn’t push me too far. It’s a magnificent subject. A subject on which I should have no trouble turning out my dozen pages. You do understand it, at least?”
“Understand what?”
“I’m asking if you understand the proverb: ‘Strike while the iron is hot.’”
Overwhelmed, Lucien almost gave way to despair. But he recovered and replied very sweetly:
“Yes father. I do understand. But I must copy out my homework.”
“Yes, true, copy it out,” said Monsieur Jacotin, in a tone that betrayed his contempt for such inferior activities.
A week later, the teacher was handing out the marked essays.
Overall, he said, I am far from satisfied. Apart from Béruchard whom I awarded thirteen, and five or six barely passable efforts, you have not understood the homework.
He explained what they were meant to have done, then, out of the stack of books splashed with red ink, he selected three for particular comment. The first was Béruchard’s, about which he spoke in glowing terms. The third belonged to Lucien.
“On reading yours, Jacotin, I was surprised by a turn of phrase unfamiliar to me from your pen, and which I found so disagreeable that I did not hesitate to give you a three. While I have frequently found myself censuring the flatness of your descriptions, I must say that this time you have erred in the opposite direction. You have managed to fill six pages while not once addressing the subject. But the most intolerable aspect is this jumped-up tone you have seen fit to adopt.”
The teacher spoke at length about Lucien’s homework, which he presented to the other boys as the model of what they should not do. He read aloud from several passages that he felt to be particularly edifying. There were smiles around the classroom, a few chuckles and even some full-blown laughs. Lucien was very pale. His own self-esteem wounded, so likewise was his sense of filial respect.
Still, he was upset with his father for exposing him to his friends’ mockery. Though always a mediocre student, never before, through negligence or ignorance, had Lucien been exposed to ridicule as he was now. Whether in French, Latin or Algebra homework, despite his shortcomings as a scholar, he retained a fair feeling for scholarly conventions, even for scholarly flourishes. When that night, eyes red with fatigue, he had copied out Monsieur Jacotin’s draft, he had had no illusions about the reception that awaited it.
Fully awake the next morning, Lucien had even hesitated to hand the essay in, being all the more alive to its false and discordant notes in view of his classmates’ usual habits. And at the last moment, instinctive confidence in his father’s infallibility had decided him.
Coming home at midday, Lucien recalled with bitterness that almost religious sense of confidence that had spoken to him more loudly than the facts. What had his father been after, as he explicated that proverb? Doubtless, he had not been seeking the humiliation of a three out of twenty for his French homework. This could well cure him of the desire to explain any more proverbs. And Béruchard with his mark of thirteen. His father would find that a difficult one to swallow. It would teach him a lesson.
At table, Monsieur Jacotin appeared cheerful, even kindly. A slightly feverish light-heartedness enlivened everything he said. He was sufficiently coy not to come out with the question that he was burning to ask and that his son was expecting every second. The mood at this lunch did not differ much from the usual. Rather than cheer the family, the father’s gaiety became a further source of unease. Madame Jacotin and her daughters tried to adopt a tone appropriate to his good humour—but in vain. As for Aunt Julie, she made a point of putting on her gloomiest expression and wearing an air of offended surprise so as to emphasise how extraordinary this good humour was for all the family. Monsieur Jacotin felt this himself, for he soon grew morose.
“Let’s get to the point,” he said, brusquely. “How about that proverb?”
His voice betrayed an emotion that sounded more like anxiety than impatience. Lucien realised just then that he could make his father miserable. He looked at him now with a freedom that revealed the man’s whole character. He understood how, for many long years, the poor man had depended on a sense of his own infallibility as head of the family and that, in explicating the proverb, he had risked his principle of infallibility in a dangerous enterprise. Not only was the domestic tyrant about to lose face in front his own family, but, by the same blow, he would lose all respect for himself. He would be crushed. What was more, at this kitchen table, opposite Aunt Julie who was seeking a way to get even, the drama that a single word might unleash was already horrifyingly real. Dismayed by his father’
s fragility, Lucien was moved by a generous impulse to pity.
“Are you away with the fairies? I am asking you whether the teacher has handed back my homework?” said Monsieur Jacotin.
“Your homework? Yes, he gave it back.”
“And what mark did we get?”
“Thirteen.”
“Not bad. And Béruchard?”
“Thirteen.”
“And the best mark was?”
“Thirteen.”
The father’s face lit up. He turned towards Aunt Julie with an emphatic look, as if the mark had been given in spite of her. Lucien was looking down and deep inside himself, feeling pleasurably emotional. Monsieur Jacotin tapped him on the shoulder and said kindly:
“You see, my dear child, when one attempts a task, it’s all about thinking it through carefully from the beginning. Understanding a task is three quarters of the work. Indeed that is precisely what I would like you to get into that head of yours, for once. And I shall manage. No matter how long it takes me. That said, from now onwards and henceforth, every French homework you are set, we shall do together.”
POLDEVIAN LEGEND
IN THE TOWN OF CSTWERTSKST there lived an old maid named Marichella Borboïé, who had acquired a great reputation for piety and virtue. She attended Mass at least once a day, took Communion twice a week, made generous contributions to the parish, embroidered altar cloths and distributed alms to the most respectable poor in the district. Wearing black in all seasons, speaking to men only in moments of extreme necessity and always keeping her eyes lowered, she inspired none of those evil thoughts that lead to the sin of lust and knew nothing of them herself. Furthermore, as if to enable her to complete her perfection, God had sent down a great and painful burden by means of which she did, by the miracle of a devout heart, seem to augment her piety.
With the tenderest and most vigilant care Mademoiselle Borboïé had brought up her orphaned nephew, Bobislas. In her simplicity and due to her faith in the masters of this establishment, the old maid had entrusted the lovable and promising child, whom she intended for the notary’s profession, to the state high school where he wasted no time in corrupting himself. As happens all too often under the tutelage of atheist masters, the philosophy classes of his final year were particularly disastrous. He learnt the mechanics of the human passions only the better to master his own and manipulate others’. He took up smoking, drinking and looking at women with eyes that shone with wicked concupiscence. Since he never used those eyes to look at the old maid and since he was a happy enough drunk to pass it off as general good humour, she did not even suspect that her nephew was going thoroughly astray. On leaving school, Bobislas was apprenticed to a notary in Cstwertskst, to be trained in the practice of his profession, and it was in the course of his apprenticeship that his infamous habits were revealed. One afternoon when the notary went out, Bobislas stole money from the till and ravished the notary’s wife as well as her two servants, then forced them to join him getting drunk on vodka and various wines in the cellar. By good luck, the notary’s seven daughters were not at home that day but the harm was nonetheless substantial. The robbed and outraged husband threw out his apprentice and brought his plaints to Mademoiselle Borboïé.