You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [19]
In the auditorium a few hundred cramped seats descended to a large stage. I found an empty place on an aisle. The kids who knew one another talked about their summers, gossiped, scanned the crowd for familiar faces, people to smile at, people to hate, and so on. The same scene everywhere. First day of school, the usual gossip, the usual team making.
“Please, everyone sit down. This won’t take long. Please. Quiet. Everyone. Everyone.”
It’s a universal language that headmasters, school directors, and principals speak. Whatever the title, you hear the same cadence, the same rhythms, the same techniques. Everyone. Beat. Everyone. It has to be a learned code. A sort of prayer to quietness. And amazingly, the room quiets.
“My name is Paul Spencer. I’m the head of the upper school. I know many of you and quite a few of you I don’t know.”
“What up, Spence?” someone yelled from the back of the auditorium.
Mr. Spencer smiled. “Clearly some of you are enthusiastic about the new school year. That’s good. Indeed, while my name is Mr. Spencer, I’m popularly known as Spence. You’re welcome to call me either.”
Spence continued. We were welcomed, encouraged, informed, welcomed and encouraged once more and then released into our day. There was nothing about France in his speech. Nothing about the city and its relationship to the school or how lucky we were to be there, or what an honor it was to be studying in a city like Paris. There was nothing in his introduction about how Paris would be an integral part of our education, about the way that art and culture and language and food would be incorporated into our daily experience at the International School of France. And that’s what I remember most from that first morning—the mundane nature of the experience and how the city I’d fallen in love with had been totally ignored. The city was irrelevant to the school.
ISF was its own country.
* * *
After the speech we had twenty minutes to find our lockers and make sure that the combinations we’d been given worked with the built-in locks. I found mine, number 225. I stared into it for a moment, reached into my backpack, took out several pens and placed them on the bottom of the locker. I took long breaths not knowing what to do. I kept my right hand on the door and moved it on its hinge—open and closed, open and closed. I don’t remember how long I was there but eventually I turned and walked away. I didn’t know the school at all but you walk as if you do. I wanted to get outside. Already they were looking at me. He doesn’t talk to anyone. He just stares into his locker.
I walked out onto the field behind the school, a wide green lawn running the length of the building and edged by tall poplar trees. Beyond the field toward the school cafeteria were some picnic benches.
One of them was set to the side beneath a small pine tree. I sat there looking back at the school, a strong wind blowing the poplars from side to side. I liked those trees and the way they moved so slowly. I sat at the table until I heard the bell ring—a strange electronic reproduction of a church bell.
* * *
He was wearing jeans and a white shirt, his hair dark and cut short. The desks were arranged in a circle with his at the front of the classroom. He was sitting on its edge, holding one of those classic teacher’s grade books—dark green and spiral bound.
The lights were off. The curtains had been pulled back and the windows were open as wide as they’d go. Through them I could see the swaying poplars.
He glanced up at me and smiled when I walked in.
He had striking green eyes and very long eyelashes, which made him look feminine. He had a few days’ stubble and was very tan. His jaw was square but he had round boyish cheeks. Each of his physical features seemed to contrast another. I couldn’t tell what he was—old or young, tall or short, sharp or soft.
I paused at a desk beneath one of the windows.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Can I sit where I want?”
“Sure. Wherever you’d like. What’s your name?” he asked me.
I told