Whether they had captured cats or saved dogs, the children would then hasten—wearing short capes for the wind if it was winter, their leather sandals (known as "mevas") flapping if it was summer—toward school and work. While crossing the market, they would glance quickly at the displays of fruit, mountains of oranges and tangerines, of medlars, apricots, peaches, tangerines,1 melons, and watermelons rushing past them, of which they would get to taste only the least expensive, and that in small quantities; two or three turns at jousting on the broad shiny rim of the basin at the waterspout, and they would go alongside the warehouses on Boulevard Thiers, where they would be hit in the face with the smell of oranges coming from factories that peeled them to make liqueurs with their rinds; up a small street of gardens and villas, and they would come out finally on rue Aumerat into a swarm of children who, while chattering away at each other, were waiting for the doors to open.
Then came class. With M. Bernard, this class was always interesting for the simple reason that he loved his work with a passion. Outside, the sun might blare on the tawny walls while the heat crackled in the classroom itself, though it was shaded by awnings with big yellow and white stripes. Or the rain might fall, as it does in Algeria, in endless deluges, making a wet dark well of the street, but the class was hardly distracted. Only the flies during a storm could sometimes divert the children's at-
1. sic
tention. They would be captured and grounded in the inkwells, where they suffered a hideous death, drowned in the purple ink that filled the little cone-shaped wells that were set in holes in the table. But M. Bernard's method, which consisted of strict control on behavior while at the same time making his teaching lively and entertaining, would win out over even the flies. He always knew the right moment to bring from his treasure chest the mineral collection, the herbarium, the mounted butterflies and insects, the maps or ... to revive his pupils' flagging interest. He was the only person in the school to have obtained a magic lantern, and twice a month he would do projections on some subject in natural history or geography. In arithmetic, he instituted a contest in mental calculation that forced the students to think quickly. He would put forth a problem to the class, all sitting with their arms folded, in division, or multiplication, or sometimes a somewhat complex addition. How much is 1,267 + 691? The first one to give the correct answer was awarded a plus that counted toward the monthly ranking. Besides, he used the textbooks with competence and accuracy . . . The texts were always those used in France. And these children, who knew only the sirocco, the dust, the short torrential cloudbursts, the sand of the beaches, and the sea in flames under the sun, would assiduously read—accenting the commas and periods—stories that to them were mythical, where children in hoods and mufflers, their feet in wooden shoes, would come home dragging bundles of sticks along snowy paths until they saw the snow-covered roof of the house where the smoking
chimney told them the pea soup was cooking in the hearth. For Jacques, these stories were as exotic as they could possibly be. He dreamed about them, filled his compositions with descriptions of a world he had never seen, and was forever questioning his grandmother about a snowfall lasting one hour that had taken place in the Algiers area twenty years earlier. For him these stories were part of the powerful poetry of school, which was nourished also by the smell of varnished rulers and pen cases; the delicious taste of the strap on his satchel that he would chew on at length while laboring over his lessons; the sharp bitter smell of purple ink, especially when his turn came to fill the inkwells from a huge dark bottle with a cork through which a bent glass tube had been pushed, and Jacques would happily sniff the opening of the tube; the soft feel of the smooth glossy pages in certain books, which also gave off the good smell of print and glue; and, finally, on rainy days, the smell of wet wool that emanated from the wool coats at the back of the classroom and seemed to be a harbinger of that Garden of Eden where children in wooden shoes and woolen hoods ran through the snow to their warm homes.
Only school gave Jacques and Pierre these joys. And no doubt what they so passionately loved in school was that they were not at home, where want and ignorance made life harder and more bleak, as if closed in on itself; poverty is a fortress without drawbridges.
But it was not just that, for Jacques considered himself the most unfortunate of children when, to get rid of this tireless brat during vacations, his grandmother
would send him to a holiday camp, with fifty or so other children and a handful of counselors, at Miliana in the Zaccar Mountains; there they lived in a school that had dormitories, ate and slept comfortably, played or wandered around all day long, watched over by some nice nurses, and despite all that, when evening came—when shadows rose so rapidly on the mountain slopes and from the neighboring barracks the bugle began to throw the melancholy notes of curfew into the enormous silence of this small town lost in the mountains, a hundred kilometers from any really traveled location—the child felt a limitless despair rising in him and in silence he cried for the destitute home of his entire childhood.a
No, school did not just provide them an escape from family life. At least in M. Bernard's class, it fed a hunger in them more basic even to the child than to the man, and that is the hunger for discovery. No doubt they were taught many things in their other classes, but it was somewhat the way geese are stuffed: food was presented to them and they were asked to please swallow it. In M. Germain's1 class, they felt for the first time that they existed and that they were the objects of the highest regard: they were judged worthy to discover the world. And even their teacher did not devote himself just to what he was paid to teach them; he welcomed them with simplicity into his personal life, he lived that life with them, told them about his childhood and the
a. stretch out and exalt secular school.
1. Here the author uses the teacher's real name.
lives of children he had known, shared with them his philosophy but not his opinions, for though he was for example anti-clerical, like many of his colleagues, he never said a word against religion in class, nor against anything that could be the object of a choice or a belief, but he would condemn with all the more vigor those evils over which there could be no argument—theft, betrayal, rudeness, dirtiness.
But most of all he talked to them about the war that was still recent, which he had fought for four years, and about the suffering of the soldiers, their courage and their endurance, and the joy of the armistice. At the end of each term, before sending them home for vacation, and from time to time when the schedule allowed him to, he would read them long excerpts from Dorgeles's Les Croix de Bois.a For Jacques these readings again opened the door to the exotic, but this time an exotic world stalked by fear and misfortune, although he never made any but a theoretical connection with the father he never knew. He just listened with all his heart to a story that his teacher read with all his heart and that spoke to him again of snow and his cherished winter, but also of a special kind of men, dressed in heavy cloth stiff with mud, who spoke a strange language and lived in holes under a ceiling of shells and flares and bullets. Pierre and he awaited each reading with ever-increasing impatience. That war everyone was still talking about (and Jacques listened silent but with ears wide open when
a. see the book. [A novel of the First World War—Trans.]
Daniel would tell in his own way about the Battle of the Marne, where he fought and he still did not know how he had come out alive when they, the Zouaves, he said, they were put out in front and then at the charge down a ravine they charged and there was no one ahead of them and they were advancing and all of a sudden the machine gunners when they were halfway down they were dropping one on top of the other and the bed of the ravine was all full of blood and the ones crying for maman it was awful) that the survivors could not forget and that cast its shadow over everything in the children's world and shaped all the ideas they had for fascinating stories more extraordinary than the fairy tales read in other classes, and that would have
disappointed and bored them if M. Bernard had taken it into his head to change his curriculum. But he went on with it, funny scenes alternating with terrifying descriptions, and little by little the African children made the acquaintance . . . of x y z, who became part of their world; they talked about them among themselves as if they were old friends who were right there and so much alive that Jacques at least could not for a moment imagine that though they were living in the war, there was any chance they could be victims of it. And on the day at the end of the year when, as they arrived at the end of the book,* M. Bernard read them the death of D. in a subdued voice, when he closed the book in silence, facing his own memories and emotions, then raised his eyes to his silent, overwhelmed
* novel
class, he saw Jacques in the first row staring at him with his face bathed in tears and shaking with sobs that seemed as if they would never end. "Come come, child," M. Bernard said in a barely audible voice, and he stood up to return the book to the case, his back to the class.
"Wait a minute, kiddo," M. Bernard said. Now he stood up with difficulty, ran his index finger over the bars of the cage, so that the canary chirped all the more: "Ah! Casi-mir, we're hungry, we're asking our father," and [got himself] to his little schoolboy's desk on the other side of the room, near the fireplace. He rummaged in a drawer, closed it, opened another, pulled out something. "Here," he said, "this is for you." Jacques received a book bound in grocery-store paper with no writing on its cover. Before he even opened it, he knew it was Les Croix de Bois, the very copy M. Bernard had read to the class.
"No, no," he said, "it's . . ." He wanted to say: "it's too beautiful." He could not find the words.
M. Bernard shook his old head. "You cried that last day, you remember? Since that day the book's belonged to you." And he turned away to hide his suddenly reddened eyes. He went back again to his desk, turned to Jacques with his hands behind his back, then, brandishing a short solid red ruler* in his face, he said, laughing, "You remember the 'sugar cane'?"
* The punishments.
"Oh, M. Bernard," said Jacques, "so you kept it! You know it's forbidden now."
"Pooh, it was forbidden then too. But you're a witness that I used it!"
Jacques was indeed a witness, for M. Bernard was in favor of corporal punishment. True, the everyday punishment only consisted of minus marks that he would deduct at the end of the month from the number of points accumulated by the pupil, thus bringing him down in his overall ranking. But in more serious cases M. Bernard did not bother to send the offender to the principal's office, as did many of his colleagues. He followed an unalterable ritual. "My poor Robert," he would say, calmly and still with good humor, "we shall have to resort to the 'sugar cane.' " No one in the class reacted (except to snicker behind his hand, according to the eternal rule of the human heart that the punishment of one is felt by the others as pleasure).a The child would stand, pale but in most cases trying to put a good face on it (some were already swallowing their tears when they left their table and headed toward the desk that M. Bernard was standing beside, in front of the blackboard). Still conforming to the ritual, and here there was a touch of sadism, Robert or Joseph had to go to the desk himself to get the "sugar cane" and present it to the sacrificer.
The "sugar cane" was a red wood ruler, short and thick, spotted with ink, marred with nicks and slashes,
a. or, what punishes one makes the others rejoice.
that M. Bernard had long ago confiscated from some forgotten pupil; the boy would now hand it to M. Bernard, who usually received it with a mocking air, then held his legs apart. The child had to put his head between the knees of the teacher, who by tightening his thighs would hold him firmly. And on the buttocks thus presented, M. Bernard would inflict some solid blows with the ruler, the number varying according to the offense and equally divided between the two cheeks. Reactions to this punishment differed according to the pupil. Some began sobbing even before being hit, and the unfazed teacher would observe that they were getting ahead of themselves; others would naively try to protect their bottom with their hands, which M. Bernard would slap aside with a casual blow. Still others, smarting under the blows of the ruler, would buck desperately. There were also those, among them Jacques, who took the blows without a word, shivering, and returned to their places holding back a flood of tears. On the whole, however, this punishment was accepted without bitterness: first, because almost all these children were beaten at home and so physical punishment seemed to them a natural method of upbringing; then too because the teacher was absolutely fair, they all knew in advance which infractions, always the same ones, would result in the ceremony of atonement, and those who went beyond the limit of actions that resulted only in minus points knew the chance they were taking; and finally because the sentence was imposed with hearty impartiality on the best students as well as the worst. Jacques, whom M. Bernard obviously loved very much, suffered it like
the rest, and he even had to undergo it the day after M. Bernard had publicly shown his preference for him. When Jacques at the blackboard had given a good answer and M. Bernard had patted his cheek and a voice in the classroom whispered, "teacher's pet," M. Bernard had pulled him close and said with a kind of solemnity: "Yes, I am partial to Cormery as I am to all those among you who lost their fathers in the war. I fought the war with their fathers and I survived. I try at least here to take the place of my dead comrades. And now if someone wants to say I have 'pets,' let him speak up!" This speech was received in absolute silence. At the end of the day, Jacques asked who had called him "teacher's pet." To take such an insult without responding would have meant a loss of honor.
"I did," said Munoz, a big blond boy, rather flabby and insipid, who though undemonstrative had always shown his antipathy to Jacques.
"All right," said Jacques. "Then your mother's a whore."a That too was a ritual insult that led immediately to battle, for to insult mothers and the dead had been from time immemorial the most serious of affronts known to the shores of the Mediterranean. Even so, Munoz hesitated. But a ritual is a ritual, and others spoke for him: "Come on, it's the green field." The green field was a sort of vacant lot, not far from the school, where sickly grass grew in scabby bunches, littered with old hoops, tin cans, and rotting barrels. This
a. and your ancestors are whores.
was where the donnades took place. A donnade was just a duel, with the fist taking the place of the sword, but obeying the same ceremonial rules, at least in spirit. Its aim was to settle a quarrel where the honor of one of the adversaries was at stake, either because someone had insulted his parents or his ancestors, or had belittled his nationality or his race, or had been informed on or had accused another of informing, had stolen or been accused of it, or else for the more obscure reasons that come up every day in a society of children. When a pupil reckoned, or especially when others reckoned for him (and he was aware of it), that he had been insulted in such a way that the offense must be compensated, the ritual statement was: "Four o'clock, at the green field." Once the declaration had been made, provocation ceased and all discussion ended. The two adversaries withdrew, followed by their friends. During the classes that followed, the news sped from bench to bench with the names of the principals, whom their classmates would watch out of the corner of their eyes and who therefore affected the calm and resolution appropriate to manliness. Inside it was another story, and even the most courageous were distracted from their work by the dread of seeing the moment approach when they would have to face violence. But the members of the enemy camp must not be given cause to snicker and to accuse the protagonist, according to the time-honored expression, of being "scared shitless."
Jacques, having done his duty as a man by challenging Munoz, was certainly scared enough, as he was every time he put himself in a situation where he had to
face violence and to deal it out. But he had made his decision, and in his mind there was never for an instant any question of backing out. This was the
nature of things, and he knew also that the touch of nausea that would grip his heart beforehand would vanish at the moment of combat, swept away by his own violence, which in any event would hurt him tactically as much as it helped him .. . and had earned him at1
On the afternoon of the fight with Munoz everything took place according to ritual. The fighters were the first to arrive at the green field, followed by their supporters turned into seconds and already carrying the principals' satchels, and they in turn were followed by all those attracted to the fight, who closed a circle around the adversaries on the battlefield. The principals took off their short capes and jackets and handed them to their seconds. This time Jacques's impetuousness worked to his advantage. He attacked first, not very confidently, forcing Munoz to retreat; Munoz backed up in confusion, clumsily parrying his antagonist's fists, then landed a painful blow on Jacques's cheek that aroused a blind rage in him intensified by the shouts, the laughter, the encouragement of the crowd. He hurled himself at Munoz, rained blows on him with his fists, bewildering him, and was lucky enough to land a furious hook on the right eye of his unfortunate opponent,