Crackpot, page 14
The class appreciated teacher for leaving herself open that way by telling funny stories about herself. She sure was lucky to get to travel like that. How come it was always dull old people like teachers who travelled so much anyway? They must get paid plenty, so what were they always so sour about? She didn’t have many real adventures to talk about, though; some of her stories were pretty corny, and they laughed more to make her feel good than because they found them funny.
Though Hoda had listened to teacher’s speech with an apparent intensity of concentration that was revealed by the rapt and dazzled expression on her upturned face, and though she laughed with the class, automatically, at the appropriate and inappropriate times, she scarcely took in a word. All she heard was the surge and counter-surge of “yes, I will” and “no, I won’t” within her, as her feeling fluctuated, first with a radiating joy at the sure knowledge that the time had come to reveal herself at last, and then with a dreadful, inexplicable fear that something would go wrong if she did. The “yes, I will” and “no, I won’t” continued for a couple of weeks as Hoda awaited her turn. Teacher had scrambled their names and assigned them each speaking times, and Hoda had to wait while more than half the class, two a day, got up and told about themselves or their hobbies. Teacher sat at the back and pretended to be a student. After the two students had spoken teacher made some comments, and then if there was time there was discussion and the class had a chance to make comments. Then teacher summed up and reminded the kids who were speaking next day to be ready. After that they went on to the next lesson. But as far as Hoda was concerned this was the only lesson in the day that meant anything, because each day’s two students brought her day that much closer.
None of the other things which normally would have disturbed her, slight or misunderstanding or unpleasantness, had the power to touch her nearly now. It was not that she didn’t notice them, rather that she saw them now as from a great distance, as anachronisms, prehistoric, soon to be extinguished squibs from a time that was already dead. Not that, now that her turn was rapidly approaching, she was yet sure that she was actually going to give the speech that she had been preparing and revising and practising out loud by herself in the shed for hours and hours. She was only preparing it just in case she decided, at the last minute, to give it after all. The trouble was there was so much to tell she didn’t know how to keep it short enough for the time allotted and still explain all the important things. Daddy would know what could be left out, but she wasn’t going to tell Daddy, not yet. That was why she practised in the shed, though Daddy wouldn’t have understood most of the English anyway, if he heard, and anyway, even if he understood and caught on to what she was doing, he would probably be terribly proud. But he mustn’t know till afterwards, not till after she had actually done it, and carried home her triumph to him, all the wonder and the admiration and the respect and the popularity and the affection that would be the natural crop of her revelations, as well as at least forty-one, counting teacher, orders for bags and baskets that the whole class would make their parents buy to begin with, which was peanuts compared to the rush of business that would come later, when the story got around, and orders came in from the whole school.
Yet time and again she changed her mind and decided that when she got up there in front of the class she would just say anything that came into her head, or tell a lot of jokes on herself, like Jerry, who thought he was imitating teacher, or pretend she had got stage fright like big Morgan really had, who couldn’t say a word once he got up front, which gave teacher a chance to talk about how much he had to say from his seat when other people were trying to talk, while he stood there shuffling his feet and getting redder and redder. Teacher really had him nailed there, though she wouldn’t have liked what he had to say afterwards about what he’d like to do if ever he got Bottoms-up alone some dark night.
Hoda wasn’t used to getting low marks but there were times when she knew that she would rather fail than risk telling them, that she wouldn’t mind even if Miss Boltholmsup gave her a big fat zero for her mark in the project. But Hoda knew that she wasn’t a big fat zero. Far from it! She was glad that Strawberry Gertie was speaking before her, because then her talk would be freshest in everybody’s mind and the kids could start asking questions right away, and Miss Boltholmsup would let her answer the questions in more detail than she could put into the story itself because of the time limit. Maybe teacher would even let them run on into the next period this time, because it would be so interesting, and the next period was only music.
Even as she pulled herself out from behind her constricting desk, tugged her tunic down all round, and moved, somehow footlessly, to the front of the class, Hoda rejected the ungenerous temptation to let them go on thinking what they thought in ignorance. She owed them the opportunity to know, all those kids and the teacher who were even now waiting expectantly, with no idea of what they were to hear, owed them the opportunity to trade unqualified love for love at last.
Hoda cleared her throat, smiled tenderly, and at the same time reached both hands around her bosom to clasp each other on the ill-defined differential line between it and her belly, in imitation of teacher’s speechmaking stance. She could see by their grins that some of them thought she looked pretty funny that way, and to protect them from feelings they would later be ashamed of she plunged quickly into her speech, though even as she heard herself begin to speak she had a strange, twisty feeling in her heart, as though for some reason someone in there was wringing her hands. But she didn’t even want to stop now.
“I want to tell you how my parents were married and saved the whole village from the plague and the pogrom and even though they lost the first baby they didn’t give up, and thank God I was born.” Hoda had worked for a long time on that opening sentence. She knew that right from the start she had to establish the importance of what she was going to tell them, so that they would listen, really listen to what she had to say, because it was so significant and there was so much she had to leave out. But somehow it didn’t sound the same as it had when she had practised the sentence in the shed, over and over again, large and portentous and serious. She did not quite understand why it sounded different; it had somehow got dissipated among all those faces in front of her. Were they feeling it?
“You see,” she continued earnestly, her eyes scanning their faces eagerly as she spoke, “my father has been blind for most of his life, since he was a little boy, and my mother, well, she had one shoulder higher than the other so she looked a little hunchbacked.”
From her seat in the back row Miss Boltholmsup heard about blind father and hunch-backed mother while she was still trying to assimilate the fat girl’s breathlessly delivered opening sentence. So far there had been no trouble from this one; a certain blowsy eagerness, a super-abundance of physical presence, she was one of those bodies you felt was impinging on all your senses; you might not actually be able to, but you felt as though you could even smell her at a distance. And wasn’t there a certain reputation, shrugged away by some, but hadn’t there been a revolting story about this one and some of the boys last year, that had spoiled her tea in the staff room one day? Miss Boltholmsup leaned forward across her desk, a movement immediately noticed by Hoda, who realized with a thrill of relief and pride that teacher was really interested. She addressed herself directly to Miss Boltholmsup now, eyes on her eyes, words aimed at her ears, watching for the circuit to be completed that would tell her that teacher heard and truly understood, searching for the light that would go on in her eyes, and stay on, shooting rays of sympathy and wonder. It was hard, though, to be sure if those were lights in somebody’s eyes when you were staring at them, because your own got slightly glazed and teary with the effort of looking in, and you lost the rest of her face in blur, and after a while you lost the feeling of your own face too, and had a hard time remembering the next words in your speech. But Miss Boltholmsup’s eyes stayed glued to her own and Hoda was certainly not going to insult her by being the first to reject the preferred intimacy and look away. Wide grey eyes staring gamely into blue eyes that glared helplessly (for how was Hoda to know that teacher felt trapped there?) the girl continued, telling all about how “my father and mother, they never even knew each other, even though they grew up in the same town in the old country, not until the plague came. Maybe it was because my mother was a little older than my father, just a few years. She was sorry about that, but my daddy didn’t mind. And nobody else did either, when the plague came. The plague is a terrible disease and people die all over, but some good things can happen, if God wants them to, even in a plague. For instance if the plague keeps on getting worse and worse and everybody is sick and dying, and it really is a dreadful kind of sickness;” here Hoda, to emphasize her point, just had to make them realize how bad it was, because she really was afraid that she wasn’t making them feel the way Daddy made her feel about it when he told it, the whole holy horror of it. So she digressed from her planned account to give a graphic description, vividly detailed, of what happened when people were dying of cholera. They really were listening now. Little shudders ran around the room, though there were some funny little giggles too. Unfortunately Hoda couldn’t resist the temptation to glance around and see the effect of her description, and in doing so she lost the connection with Miss Boltholmsup’s eyes. She sought it again contritely, but Miss Boltholmsup had her eyes on the sheet of paper in front of her now, on which she appeared to be writing something. What interesting question or comment was she preparing? Hoda had no time to speculate.
“At the same time,” she continued confidently, “the Christians in the neighbouring towns and farms were mad because the plague was killing more gentiles than Jews, so they blamed the Jews and said they were sending the plague, and wanted to kill them, because Christians in the old country didn’t know much about Jews or anything. My mother said it was because Jews washed more so the plague germs couldn’t get them so easily.”
Miss Boltholmsup heard these assertions with hardly more astonishment than she already felt. Her momentary weakness, the paralysis of will which had locked her eyes in baffling parody of communication with those of the fat girl, a contact which repelled and yet seemed to draw her like an obscene demand of the flesh, had alerted her to danger.
One way or another Miss Boltholmsup always recognized trouble in the bud; her instinct had never failed her. She did not have to ask herself now why this creature was mouthing these morbid distortions; her question, more germane, was where, where was the fat girl going? What was she leading up to? She was too pleased with herself in all this, was rushing ahead too eagerly not to have something worse up her sleeve. Those insolent eyes which had tried to outstare her a moment ago, they had been speculating, daring her, trying to gauge how far she would be allowed to go. There was more to come; oh yes, she could hear it in the voice, the husky, coarse voice, speaking more loudly than necessary, a voice gross like the body which Miss Boltholmsup could feel in front of her, though she could not, as yet, bring herself to look up from the sheet on which she was pretending to write, knowing that the eyes hovered on her face, waiting to entrap her again. But she could not prevent herself from hearing the words which assaulted, like crudely wielded weapons, though she was not as yet sure of which part of her being was most endangered.
“So if the plague didn’t stop soon all the Jews were going to be in real trouble, because those Christians were killers in the old country.” Hoda had made sure when she prepared her speech that she differentiated between the murderous Christians of the old country and the few potentially civilized Christians, including teacher, who were part of her audience. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt people’s feelings. She wished teacher would look up again. She wanted to smile at her to make sure she understood. She noticed at this point in her talk that some of the Jewish kids moved uncomfortably and threw some timid glances at the gentiles, but she hurried on earnestly; there were more important things to bring to their attention now. “So you see they had to act fast to get rid of the plague. And that was where my mother and father came in; they were chosen to save the town, and even the Christians, too, from more plague and more dying.”
It occurred to Miss Boltholmsup that there were a lot of Jews in her class, occurred with a new vividness, though she had always known it as part of her ordeal, yes, and an awful lot of them in the school, in the city more and more of them, and nobody doing anything about it though suddenly a person could find herself surrounded by fat presences with loud voices and demanding eyes. She risked a quick glance at the speaker, who had paused briefly, and experienced a sinking sensation as her eyes were snared once again in Hoda’s ardent orbs of light. Captured. But no longer helpless, no; knowing the danger she could no longer afford to be helpless. But she had to proceed carefully, gauge the temper of the rest of them, find out whether this was an isolated instance of insolence or the signal for organized disruption of the class. Oh yes, there was more in it. Miss Boltholmsup steeled her eyes and stared hard, trying to will a warning.
“Everybody knows that there is one sure way to chase the plague away, if you’re really desperate.” Hoda said it that way deliberately, though she knew in her heart that probably very few of them knew, though Miss Boltholmsup might, being a teacher, and she smiled confidentially at teacher, who looked so serious, and had surrendered her eyes to Hoda again, as she realized tenderly, in token of her complete absorption. Dear Miss Boltholmsup, I never knew you were so nice. It gave Hoda such a buggy feeling, having to keep her eyes hooked in one place that way, when she’d rather just cross looks occasionally. But for teacher’s sake Hoda clung, hard though it was to fulfill the responsibility of reciprocal love.
“If the plague gets so bad you don’t know what else to do and the goyem are after you too, so you just have to do something or else stay barricaded in your homes and wait for them to come and get you, and you’ve tried everything else, there’s just one thing left to do. You have to start a life thing happening instead of a death thing. The way to do that is, you have to get two very poor people who can’t help themselves, especially if they’re crazy or cripples or something, though my parents weren’t that way exactly, and it’s a lucky thing for me. And you have to take them to the graveyard, the Jewish graveyard. And if they’re the right special people and if God wants you to get rid of the plague, He makes them fall in love and He tells them to get married right away, and they get married, right there in the graveyard, with everyone watching. The town didn’t even want to pay for a baby too, or anything, but God wanted it, and they had to make those two people get married then and there. It was their only chance.”
What did she mean by “married?” What exactly did she mean? Light and heat flooded Miss Boltholmsup’s brain simultaneously. Suddenly she knew exactly where Hoda was leading, saw in disgusting detail the whole obscene picture, the wretched couple of cripples copulating in the graveyard while a bearded, black-robed, fierce-eyed rabbi stood over them, uttering God knows what blasphemies and unholy incantations, with the whole, barbaric townful of them avidly looking on. Miss Boltholmsup was positively sick to the stomach with the vividness of it. She had to shut her eyes against the nausea.
“It happened this way. They made my mother take a special bath first to see if she was alright. Then when they brought Daddy to the graveyard they had to practically carry him at first; my daddy was very frightened, but suddenly he saw he was…”
“Hoda that’s enough!” Teacher’s voice rang out, very high in the air. Hoda jumped. She had seen that teacher was moved, by the expression on her face when she released Hoda’s eyes at last to shut her own. And no wonder! Hoda could feel her own excitement mounting with the unbearable poignancy of it as her father and mother took on their holy roles. But that teacher’s eyes should spring open again so suddenly, glaringly, as if at something dreadful she had seen within, and be accompanied by such a shout, high, like a scream; half the class jumped too.
“Hoda, that’s quite enough,” teacher repeated, more quietly now, and got to her feet. Quietly, don’t show anger; don’t get them all excited; calm; don’t overstress; puncture quickly and move to other things; divert them; don’t lose control; don’t show too much; oh God, help me! help me! How? How?
“But I haven’t finished.” Hoda still stood there, eyes rapidly blinking, suffused, voice no longer confident and assertive, curiously childish, rather, even in its huskiness. “I haven’t finished,” she repeated.
“Haven’t you?” Miss Boltholmsup moved forward, and even managed a tight little smile in Hoda’s direction, as she sought desperately for the right words. “I think we can say you’ve said quite enough for now. Take your seat.” Miss Boltholmsup had reached the front of the room and pointed insistently to Hoda’s desk, to which the hulking girl was moving blindly at last.
Miss Boltholmsup daringly waited till the girl was quite seated, and noted with satisfaction that the rest of the class waited quietly too. “Now class, I want your attention.” The authoritative voice sliced, just on time, through the sigh of incipient murmurs which arose uneasily as Hoda sat. “I have something to say. We’ve just been hearing a very interesting story.” Miss Boltholmsup spoke quietly, slowly, feeling her way. “But it’s a perfect example of what I’ve wanted to discuss with you before, class. You young people have to learn not only what to say and how to say it, but you have to know what not to talk about, and in fact, at your age, what not even to think about, if you can help it. All of this is part of growing up. People get married. It’s nothing to snicker about, nothing to be crude about. People have a right to their privacy. Even if, in more primitive times and places, they have taken part in curious rites, and of course I don’t know the degree of truth in this case, but even so some things are best to remain buried in the past, together with certain accusations and prejudices which, at this time and distance it would be foolish to continue to brood over. We have no right to judge.”
