The Teacher Read online

  Praise for Michal Ben-Naftali

  “This is not a classical Holocaust novel, but rather one that tries to shed light on the marginal corners of the period. An important and interesting novel that dares to take on subjects that are liable to be forgotten.”

  —Hadar Azran, Arutz 7

  “A portrait of a woman who defines herself more by ‘what she is not’ than by ‘what she is,’ The Teacher tells of guilt, disbelief in the face of the unthinkable, and the impossibility of a return to normalcy when everything is crumbling from one day to the next.”

  —Laëtitia Favro, Le Journal du Dimanche

  “With a sure hand [Ben-Naftali] transforms her sad story into an exciting adventure, similar to the discovery of a new continent. Ben-Naftali handles her heroine, a survivor devoid of heroism, with reverence.”

  —The Sapir Prize Committee

  “Writing, from Ben-Naftali’s point of view, is a gradual act of redeeming the other.”

  —Hanna Herzig, Haaretz

  “This is a lovely, moving novel…. There comes a moment, anticipated but sudden, at which the plot—or the writer’s insights into it—seizes the reader by the throat and brings them closer to themselves and to the other.”

  —Yael Geller, Yedioth Ahronoth

  THE TEACHER

  MICHAL BEN-NAFTALI

  Translated from the Hebrew

  by Daniella Zamir

  Copyright © Keter Publishing House

  Published by arrangement with The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature English translation copyright © 2019 by Michal Ben-Naftali

  First edition, 2019

  All rights reserved

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Available.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-948830-07-2 / ISBN-10:1-948830-07-8

  This book has won the Sapir Prize for Literature and the translation was made possible with the support of The Israel National Lottery

  This project and its translation are both supported in part by awards from the National Endowment for the Arts

  This project is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature

  Printed on acid-free paper in the United States of America.

  Text set in Garamond, a group of old-style serif typefaces named after the punch-cutter Claude Garamont.

  Cover design by Eric C. Wilder

  Interior design by Anthony Blake

  Open Letter is the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press: Dewey Hall 1-219, Box 278968, Rochester, NY 14627

  www.openletterbooks.org

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  THE TEACHER

  “For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.”

  —Walter Benjamin

  1

  The sidewalk was cleansed of the blood. Rivers of rain, water hoses, and street sweepers joined forces to scrub the surface after the last remnant was removed. Submissive, the street continued to absorb convoys of people, scraps of paper and cigarette butts hurled absentmindedly in its direction, strollers and bicycles crowding its narrow path. Children played, stumbled and fell, animals evacuated their bowels, garbage cans were tossed back after being emptied. Every so often ambulances rushed by. The fallen leaves piled up and were swept away. Who could remember that stormy night, thirty years ago, when a woman jumped to her death from her rooftop apartment in one of the few still-intact buildings? Of sound mind, with the same parsimonious strictness she used to do everything—pay bills, swim in the pool, or teach, with the same icy ruthlessness she used to drag her long fingernails across the blackboard to force her students to stop making noise—the teacher took her life.

  2

  No one knew the story of Elsa Weiss. Few called her by name. Most addressed her as one would a general or a sheriff, an authority figure, or a role that she herself created out of thin air and performed with a devotion owed to no one, neither to her superiors nor to those under her supervision, but to something greater and obscure, which she herself perhaps did not fully understand. She was called as one summons the goddess of wrath, a Gorgon-teacher, a Fury, subjecting her students to a torrent of tasks, to see if they could take it, if they had the stamina, if she could count on them to hang on, as if she wanted to destroy them to ultimately gain their trust.

  Elsa Weiss left no testimony behind. She refused to talk about herself, in fact, refused to discuss anything, to lecture or preach in the classroom. The sphere in which she operated did not expand to infringe on our preferences, influence our fate, shape our moral compass or consciousness. She never relayed to us a cohesive philosophical or political theory that could reveal something of her deep beliefs about knowledge, truth, or faith. Perhaps we could have made assumptions. We could have assumed she was not a woman of faith, that she didn’t keep kosher or observe the Shabbat. Her anger wasn’t that of a religious person. Or perhaps the opposite was true, despite every fiber of her being shouting defiance. If there was anything religious about her, it manifested in the zeal and extreme fervor with which she performed her tasks, in the ardent belief that accompanied her actions. We could have said that she gave her heart and soul, but what she really gave was something else.

  A single photograph, capturing her portrait more or less in her fifties—a rare passport photo taken about two decades after her arrival in Israel—traveled through all the yearbooks, as if it too carried the same consuming quality that seeks to make room for something else, something that isn’t a message or a vision, something that lends this word, teacher, its very meaning. Her face was a mirror of her life. It bore the pride and severity of someone who rarely talks to another soul, the crushing, tormented face of a Madonna and priestess, once seething with existential angst but now dulled into a blank mask that made you avert your gaze. It was impossible to linger on her face without feeling unsettled.

  3

  Elsa Weiss made her way to school each morning with swift, efficient strides, without pausing. She probably walked down Dizengoff Street, turning onto Ibn Gabirol up to Sprinzak. Or perhaps she chose the narrower streets, Huberman or Marmorek. And yet, no one actually saw her. No one chanced upon her outside of school hours—in the cafes, the theater, Meir Park, the Beit Ariela public library, where she sat and read for hours on end, in the pool where she swam—no one saw her coming or going. She entered the classroom as if materializing out of thin air, seeking to be left alone, to be seen when she wanted to be seen, invisible when she didn’t. And in any event, no one could keep up with her brisk and confident pace, which discouraged accompaniment.

  She was about sixty when she was our teacher. Her small, wrinkled face, which could be cupped in one hand,
seemed to have been shaped by a sudden blow of old age. The locks of her hair were coiled neatly and meticulously, as if on a potter’s wheel, and stacked high into a regal pyramid, elongating her already solemn expression. Had it been released from the dark pin that clasped it, her hair would have reached her waist and created the false impression that it had never been cut or shaved. The bun, towering above a very thin and narrow, flat-looking frame clad in cotton blouses and wool calf-length skirts, lent her a lofty height. Her eyes were a faded green-gray, their color diluted by filmy liquid, but the blue eye shadow she applied enlarged them, brightening her pupils like burning coal. Her fleshy, almost swollen lips—as if bitten too many times—were painted umber, not to say I am pretty, or even I am present, but to express strength and indignation. The heavy makeup, provoking the very idea of beauty and in complete contrast to the distinguished gray of her clothes, did not seek by way of deliberate embellishment to powder her face into a young and prettier image. It made a different statement: stay away, or better yet: keep your distance. As if attempting to conceal herself within an alienated body, which greedily gauged her age. However, she did not disguise herself as a teacher. Her disguise was herself, sui generis, a battle-seasoned tigress, pretty and ugly, nimble as a doe, despite the fact that no noble animal rhymed with her name, despite the fact that nothing noble was ever associated with her. Her colors were war paint, as if heralding a latent battle in which she was trapped, letting us know that in the center of the microcosm we high school students had founded stood a savage society still foreign to us, a society she embodied with her essence and life experience, without claiming her throne. Had we been children, perhaps we could have appealed to her with rudimentary requests that would have turned her world upside down. But we were teenagers, we revealed nothing more about ourselves than what reluctantly seeped out by dint of our forced coexistence in the classroom.

  And yet, she did not allow us to be adolescents. She positioned herself in the midst of youth and at the same time denied it, silencing its voices as if driving them out of the classroom. She did not want to hear anything irrelevant to the curriculum. Our lives were of no interest to her, our origins, our histories, our concerns. She extracted from us an obedient, passive, silent, and unspontaneous quality, as if uprooting us from the realm of youth before we were ready, leaving us floating in an undefined space. We were reticent around her, wore serious demeanors. She would not have us teach her anything, just as she spared us her own story. The wisdom of generations was sealed off from the unknowing wisdom of children, or from the sometimes contrary and uncreative lessons of youth. Life was already behind her, and she was ready to stop in her tracks without taking another step. We were waiting for what still lay ahead of us.

  4

  We vaguely knew that Weiss had only students, or mainly students. We were her entire world, or most of it, sewn and unraveled anew each year, without everlasting covenants. We knew, but paid it little thought. We were her lifesavers, simply put. Not specifically us, the sophomores, juniors, and seniors of the late seventies—she never adjusted herself to the shifting names and faces—but the essence of it, that same elaborate, well-oiled machine, the classroom, the roll call and protocols, the fixed, reserved manner. She would have none of those surprises that turn a classroom filled with boys and girls into a zoo, an outdoor market or a party. She made sure nothing changed as she dictated the rules, rules which we could actually enjoy when complying with them in full—whether willingly or unwillingly. We never admitted to ourselves that we enjoyed her classes the most, though not in a cheerful or lighthearted way. They went by in a flash, or to be precise: they were at once very slow and very fast. The detached proximity to the students gave her pleasure too, even though she did not allow it to affect her conduct. The joy flitted inside her like an old acquaintance rushing by and waving at her from the other side of the street.

  During her classes you could not idle, stare, slip into a lull, or daydream. She expected alertness. We entered the classroom several minutes before class started. We took our seats and prepared for her arrival. We took out our notebooks. On guard, we waited for her to burst in like a tornado, cleaving the room with her steps, perfecting her method that included a mix of cynicism, sarcasm, irony, a raised brow, and a roaring silence with surprising displays of compassion and gentleness. Her pursuit of perfection was cashed into small, tradable coins: proficiency, experience, professionalism, and, outside of class, physical exercise as well. From the few impressions she shared with us about the television programs she watched, it was fairly clear that what sparked her imagination was human nature once it evolved into pure nature, endowed with an innocence that could only be marred by the soul or the spirit.

  Most of us didn’t breach the distance. It was placed between us and her like the holy of holies. Few risked their lives by crossing over to her bank, with hubris or humility, and even extending their hand to her. Even fewer succeeded. The rest made do with the dense, pulsing contact during class, which preceded an unavoidable short-circuiting later repaired in the following lesson, and again and again. Along the corridors and in the yard we shook our heads with embarrassment. Even if she could be fully trusted, she was unapproachable, impervious to the camaraderie of participation, solidarity, or empathy. She could not be trusted with our secrets not because she wasn’t a perfect confidant, but because it was evident she had other things on her mind. We could not pressure her, ask for more, expect more. We never belonged to her, we did not compensate for her lack, we did not arouse her proprietorial instincts. We were never a family to her. There was no room for error on this matter. Her loneliness did not cry out for us. Weiss was a teacher, not a mother. The common reversal in the coming-of-age years, the desire for the teacher to become the mother and take her place, the fantasy that keeps count of the teacher’s glances, her hand gliding across your hair, the conversations held with and without words, the desire to conjoin mother and knowledge and, by doing so, break the everlasting covenant between father and knowledge did not apply in her case. None of us were confused about her. She did not force us to feel she was vital to us. In our eyes, the teachers—for there were others as well—embodied that otherness, which stood tall against the obvious conformism in which we grew up. While we might have thought of one as a mutation, three or four women were already a welcome challenge, a way of life, a real possibility. In a generation in which a thick line still divided genders and roles, we learned that you could live a full life without a family, in the traditional sense of the word. You could be around teenagers without being a mother. You could be maternal without being a mother. You could also not be maternal. You could be worlds away from all that, to pass on dry ground as someone else, something else, something we perhaps did not wish to resemble—it was too dark and dangerous, though not necessarily slavish or exilic—but we suddenly knew that it was possible and that it had a different force. These possibilities were cast before us as blunt facts of existence, whether embodied by those who came from there, or those who were born here. Even if the school sought to be a direct extension of the families who sent their sons and daughters there, it also turned its gaze toward a different horizon. We were outside the house. We went to a school that was, by virtue of its team of teachers, extraterritorial.

  5

  We were “you” to Weiss, second person plural, interchangeable and almost faceless, without distinctions other than the ones created naturally between the stronger and weaker students. She preferred the former, openly favoring them. The praise, however, was modest. She conducted her orchestra without allowing for solos, periodically introducing a first violin or viola, but only when she had had enough, after she had endured an overdose of nonsense that grated on her already overwrought nerves. Then she would call on one of the privileged few to extract an answer. We spoke only when called upon, when the questions asked had answers, ultimate and unyielding. Her questions held no mysteries. She never asked any that were unanswerable, although th
ese saturated dialogues gave us no comfort. We did not exchange opinions with her. The margin of risk was small when she taught, conveying only what was clear and unclassified. Hushed and hesitant, our voices sought approval in the presence of hers, which emerged in a tenor from her droopy lips. That downward tug, contrasting with the heels and the hairdo that pulled upward, was our only glimpse of the insult that life had paid her sometime in her past. At times a scream escaped her mouth. It meant that things were not up for discussion. “You did not do this yourself,” she would yell, hurling a thick notebook back at its desk with resolute rage and shooting the student a bone-chilling look. “But, Miss, why don’t you believe me? I wrote it myself. I swear,” the student would reply, collapsing in her seat and bowing her head, tears of despair already welling up in her eyes. “But, Miss,” another student would repeat. “You stay out of this,” the teacher would hiss at her, raising her arm as if about to cleave the air in two.

  Humiliation was a ceremony. The defendant would rise to her feet, denounced for her failure, and suffer a verbal lashing. We kept silent. There was no point in protesting and undermining Weiss’s position, it would only further enrage her and make the display all the more grotesque. We had to let it run its course. She did not enjoy it. She was not a sadist. But she also suffered no qualms or remorse. She never apologized, even when she was wrong. She was beyond reproach. Theories of ethics were the useless vanity of a world that betrayed fundamental principles, a world that could no longer be redeemed. Inside it she was free to stir up violence of mythical proportions, to stage horrors that probably created the only space in which it was possible to live and think. We were terrified of her. We feared her gaze, her vengeance, we feared her petrifying justice, a superior justice that transgressed all the rules she imposed on us, the justice of a guilty survivor tasked with educating guilty generations. Obviously, we were not guilty of murder. We were inherently guilty, guilty of being born, guilty that our lives were normal or could be normal, guilty of our complacent ignorance, which didn’t acknowledge that everything could still be turned upside down.