concentrated on tying the unfortunate Roz in knots, involuntarily reveal some of his own knowledge about the object of Roz’s bold comparison?
‘I don’t know,’ he muttered finally.
‘Ah!’ The teacher was triumphant. ‘You don’t know. Well, then, if you don’t know, don’t write about it. And the only reason you’re not getting an F is that you volunteered to read.’
There were sighs of relief, but also disappointment. Not, of course, because Roz hadn’t got an F, but because that rare thing, a discussion in class on such a fascinating topic, had come to an end.
Such, then, was the daily bread of our school.
Madame la Directrice
On this somewhat Lenten menu the figure of the headmistress occupied a prominent position. Or, rather, not so much the headmistress herself as the elaborate tangle of surmise and speculation that grew up around her person.
The headmistress appeared rather late on the scene – just as we were entering the sixth form – and taught French. She was a very good-looking woman of thirty-odd, and the contrast between her and the other teachers – a grey, boring and embittered lot, of whom the best that could be said was that they were nondescript – was a striking one. She was always well dressed, in clothes whose quality and cut made it immediately apparent that they were of Western manufacture; on her well-cared-for hands she wore a discreet number of elegant rings. Her face was carefully made-up, and her chestnut hair, cut short and styled by a skilful hand to display her long, graceful neck, was smooth and glossy. Her deportment and manners were impeccable; and there wafted about her, in delicious waves, the intoxicating aura of good French perfume. At the same time she gave off an icy kind of chill.
Beautiful and cold, splendid and unapproachable, proud and merciless – this was our headmistress. The Ice Queen.
Her arrival threw the school into a turmoil, and for a number of reasons. Her appearance and behaviour alone would have been enough; the senior teachers eyed her with suspicion and were a little afraid of her, while the younger lot either were jealous – of her looks, her clothes and her position – or tried to insinuate themselves into her good graces. But there was also a rumour, spread soon after she came, that she was planning a radical reform of the school, and planning it for the very near future. The alleged aim was to make the school into an early outpost of a new educational experiment: to use a foreign language – in this case, of course, French – as the language of instruction. Her efforts in this direction were said to be well advanced; some thought the change might even take place with the beginning of the next school year.
This prospect, on the face of it so beneficial, sowed terror throughout the school. For most of the teachers, some of whom had been there for years, it augured inevitable departure: in an experimental outpost of this kind, all subjects except history and literature had to be taught in both Polish and the other language simultaneously, and so they would have to be not merely fluent in the latter but capable of teaching in it as well. And for the pupils the thought of having to learn everything in two languages conjured up nightmares.
Another element in the consternation caused by the coming of Madame la Directrice was the disquieting tangle of emotions she stirred in the hearts of the students. At first – almost at first sight – she inspired an instinctive affection, bordering on worship; she was like something not quite of this world, a goddess who by some miracle had stepped down to earth from Olympus. Then her coldness, her superciliousness and her peremptory ways began to make themselves felt, sometimes painfully, and the enthusiasm waned somewhat. The ensuing disappointment, however, transformed itself not into hostility or a thirst for revenge, but into something quite different: a classic case of sadomasochistic love, fuelled by humiliation and pain on the one hand and images of filth and violence on the other.
In other words, worship of the headmistress continued, but in a very particular form. In secret she was the object of fervent prayers, in which all past cruelties and humiliations were forgiven; in public – in the lavatories, in corners of the schoolyard – of coarse ale-house gossip and obscene and brutal fantasies. These acts of sacrilege, in which the object of worship was verbally humiliated and abused beyond all bounds of shame, helped to deaden the stings of unrequited love, but they were also degrading to the desecrators themselves, so that, when they returned to their inner sanctuary to prostrate themselves before their idol, they paid for their profanities with further pain and self-inflicted torment.
It was some time, however, before we experienced for ourselves the stifling atmosphere of heated passions generated by Madame la Directrice, for when she first came she did not teach our class; all this was gossip and hearsay that filtered down to us from other classes. I myself was too busy with theatre at the time to pay much attention. It wasn’t until I abandoned my extracurricular activities that I became interested.
The main topic of discussion in school was, of course, Madame’s private life. This was a fertile and highly rewarding subject of speculation, for Madame la Directrice was unmarried. How, when and by whom this fact had been established no one knew, but it was considered incontrovertible. And indeed she wore no wedding ring, had never been seen in the company of a man who might have been her husband, and had never once, it was claimed, mentioned her family – an eloquent omission, for all the teachers spoke of their families at some point, for one reason or another. And then there was something the Tapeworm had allegedly let slip: on one occasion, carried away on a stream of effusive praise for her talents, her energy and her organisational abilities, he is supposed to have added, ‘And her lack of family ties, too, is important, for it allows her to devote herself entirely to her work here at school.’ In short, we devoted most of our time to a minute analysis of the implications of the headmistress’s single state. The permutations were endless.
She was unmarried, yes . . . but was she single or divorced? (The possibility of widowhood was not even considered.) And if divorced, who had her husband been and why had they separated? Had she left him or had he left her? And if she had been the one to leave, why had she left? Incompatibility? Of habits, of temperament? Was he too macho or too much of a wimp? Or perhaps they had split up because of someone else. Was there someone else? Had he found someone or had she? How, where? And so on and so forth. We went over every conceivable possibility.
But if she was single . . . ah, then the possibilities were even more exciting. Single, and thirty years old. No, over thirty! Could she still be a virgin? Hard to believe. So when was the first time? Where, and with whom? When she was at university? During the holidays? In a student dormitory? Unlikely. Well, then, perhaps in more luxurious surroundings – in some hotel, or a suite of rooms, or an elegant apartment? And what about now? How often does she do it? And what’s the arrangement? Is she living in sin with one person? Or is it a series of brief encounters, each time with someone new? In other words, does she sleep around? And isn’t she worried about getting pregnant? Does she take precautions? What are they? Dear God, what are they?
Another urgent issue, and the subject of much lively debate, was her membership of the Party. Of this, as of her single state, we had no evidence, but it was virtually unheard of for a school head not to belong to the Party; Party membership was almost a sine qua non for such a post. And here another series of pressing questions presented itself. Had she joined the Party from true conviction or for the good of her career? If it was for her career, what did she expect to get out of it? Money? Position? Or privilege – the main privilege of Party membership being the chance to go abroad, to the West, to France perhaps, to Paris, where she could stock up on good clothes?
These questions naturally led to others. Did she have anything on her conscience? Any past act of shabbiness, anything shameful or base? (It was the general opinion that membership of the Party inevitably entailed such things.) Had she ever denounced anyone, informed on anyone, done anyone an injury? Turned away from a ‘politically
