The Teacher Page 2

  The size of her scream was blatantly disproportionate to the deed. Even she might have agreed with this assessment, had we lived in a world in which we could present her with this question at leisure, after the fact. But in the present her reaction was imbued with the deadly essence of unbiased truth, the senseless howl of an animal, not always escaping voluntarily, although she made sure to lend this eruption the appearance of control, letting it out seemingly by design, releasing it from its cage in full swing only to lock the door again, as if taking pleasure in making us shudder or hurting us, or perhaps in signaling to us that she was beyond pain, beyond shudders. Was all this even directed at us? Did she sense that something was tormenting her and she was, in fact, at its mercy, and right then and there she turned the tables and placed us at her mercy, not because she intended to hurt us, but because she could no longer endure being subjected to someone or something else? Since we knew nothing of the daily battle over her sanity, we viewed it as a kind of demonic outburst. All of a sudden she turned into a volcano of rage. She was not ashamed of it. It did not last long. It ebbed and flowed. We could never predict its appearance, but we knew it would eventually subside. There was always a good reason to be angry. The anger could flare up over a mistake or act of negligence, bad timing, or simply stupidity. Her reaction to these only appeared to be arbitrary. Deep inside her operated a strict logic, from which she could not afford to deviate. The unruly demon emerged when something grated on her nerves, and she, in turn, frayed ours. The shock of her temper made us forget the scene that had triggered the event. The neural moment interrupted our studies like a fire alarm. It was an abrupt test during which we momentarily lost our balance. She, for her part, looked at us with something between triumph and defeat. Was she not aware that she was being violent toward us? Would she, who was so averse to violence, have called her actions violent? Did she really feel threatened? Not because she feared for her skin or her body or her safety, but then, what exactly? Was she trying to shock? To tell us in her own way that violence was out there, lurking wherever we turned, lest we be surprised or naïve? She probably thought she wasn’t abusing her power, that she was applying merely moderate pressure in order to yield certain results, and immediately loosened her grip once she obtained them. She employed her authority while loathing authority. She could not help but apply force, without seeking recognition of her power. Despite the combative impression her appearance made, it seemed as though the battles took place all around her, while she herself remained standing in situ, exhausted.

  We couldn’t imagine how haunted our persecutor was. We knew the drama wasn’t limited to the confines of the classroom. We assumed she was being controlled by higher powers. We respected those powers simply because we knew they did not express the growl of arbitrary desires or a futile need for power, because we knew she herself was not her own master. We therefore submitted ourselves to her own submission. We neither enticed nor embarrassed her, neither provoked nor played tricks on her; we did not seek to test her endurance. We did not try to rebel against her, to say no, to refuse to cooperate. We were young, good children, we could withstand her attacks. We did not interpret her actions, we did not make an effort to understand her. She did not have to excuse her behavior to us and we were not entitled to her explanations. We lived in the acute tension she created between reward and punishment, in a space shaped by the threat embodied by her sheer existence.

  6

  Like any other teacher, Weiss destined herself for the ungratefulness of her students, who were meant, perhaps even expected, to eventually do better, to exceed her, to forget her in some way. Her fate supposedly positioned her among those left behind so we could move forward, those left, in a sense, on the doorstep of real life, not to cross it but to train others to do so, people who did not demand our gratitude, unique but replaceable, accepting as if by divine decree that our world would become richer and more complex than theirs, that it would exclude them. Like any other teacher, she lived in horrible fear that everything she had learned and known, everything she believed in, would be revealed as useless against the skeptical, dismissive arrogance of her students, for whom thought was still a bold experiment free of form and considerations. Like in the movie A Miracle in the Town, the first film I saw as a child, over and over, mesmerized, in which the boys tie their sleeping rabbi to a tree, and he wakes up terrified by their ropes and his absent authority, not knowing which is stronger, their alertness or his slumber, she too had probably come to accept the fragility of the relationship, knowing that a circus-like reversal was in the cards. Fighting in vain to silence our voices, a different teacher, younger and homegrown, picked up her desk and let it drop, the loud thud lingering in the classroom. A desperate rage towered above us when she roared: “There is a limit to a teacher’s humiliation,” the Rs rolling out as if in a foreign language. But what suddenly confronted us with the awful possibility of this humiliation—of the humiliated teacher, the teacher who is derided or derides herself once realizing that she is condemned to unbearable disregard, beyond what she had imagined or could afford—what momentarily humbled us, was something that deviated from the logic of daylight to which the school was subjected, six days a week. The incident of the younger teacher’s humiliation made us realize the glaring distinction between the subject matter—everyday lessons and morals taught by her and her fellow teachers and quickly forgotten—and the portrait’s impression left on us at random, imprinted through her body language and gaze with an intimacy that deviated from the established rules of decency, dormant for years, as if patiently lurking in a dark chamber. An impression that could have remained hidden had it not been revealed inadvertently, through an incident that happened to me, by which I learned that everything, so it seems, is in the service of something else, as if there is still a heavenly design, even though there is neither justice nor judge. An impression that implored me to develop it, to contemplate this portrait and question—have I ever really seen this face, did I see it then as I see it now, with its light washing over me?

  7

  The years went by and I too became a teacher. I taught literature at one of the high schools in Tel Aviv and, like all teachers, subsisted on a meager salary. I told the students to call me by my first name, as I had introduced myself, and cringed when they chose to address me in a formal manner, as if they were granting me something that wasn’t mine. I examined at length the lives forming before me, and partook in them, voluntarily and involuntarily. The age gap between us widened. I sought to stop the passing of time, I erected floodgates against change. From that insufferable thing I accumulated, often called experience, I could witness the agonies of adolescence down to the finest facial expression. I did not always dare ask myself how they viewed me. I feared they attributed to me advantages life had actually deprived me of, I was frightened of the power I held, I wanted them to size me up accurately. I was familiar with the Eros sustaining the relationship, I made sure to learn their names by heart. I tried opening the windows, not to seal, not to blind, not to coerce. I would arrive in the classroom early. On rare occasions I immediately sat at my desk near the blackboard. I knew that once I sunk heavily into the chair, it was a foreboding sign, a sign of fatigue, a sign that I would not be able to speak a word that day, that I would sit bare and depleted, the words would emerge like ghost emissaries of another spirit. Through an unspoken pact, it seemed they understood that something was being told to them in a secret language. Because that’s what I learned with time, that there is a secret language between teachers and students, neither sufficiently deciphered nor consciously registered. I leafed through my papers absentmindedly, my gaze resting upon crammed paragraphs I had jotted down without being able to disentangle them during class. I didn’t know how to hide. Daydreams fought for my attention and conquered substantial areas of my consciousness while I adamantly sought to talk about other things. I often switched off and couldn’t be a teacher, unless I was a teacher then too, more of a teacher
than at any other time. I was a teacher when I could be and I was a teacher when I couldn’t be, a teacher when I could help it and when I was helpless. I taught helplessness, I sat with it in their company. I removed my glasses and saw blurry figures. I tossed words into the air, speaking to no one in particular, wondering what I was conveying to them; I assumed that students, their gaze accompanying the teacher’s hand gestures and body language, recognized something profound in the empty source of her words, without being familiar with her private life; that their ears were tuned into the inflection, the melody, into what she was saying and what she was not saying. Every so often, at the end of class, I was presented with a student’s sketch of me, which interestingly enough was never realistic. Usually it was an expressionist sketch that flooded what was bubbling beneath the surface, that same past I had given them despite my intentions, a past that is not the historical past, which they could probably read about in books, but the one I saw, the one I experienced, what I understood about myself and about others. All those years I knew that I myself was still searching for a teacher, that I had not yet called off the search. I searched for a teacher desperately. I searched for the teacher. I wanted to know what the lesson was that only few could teach, or that only one in particular could teach.

  I don’t know whether what I am about to relay is indeed about her. I imagine it probably is, but I can’t be one hundred percent certain and I am not sure I wish to explore further. I am not sure I really want to know. I am not built for research; I admit that I have no investigative instincts, or what they call “intuition.” My knowledge is of a different kind, the knowledge of what might have happened, or rather, what should have happened and most likely did happen to the one who went to the point of no return. I had no need to talk about it with anyone, not out of vanity; I wanted to tread beside the facts, not lean on them. I sought to touch the margins of what had happened, something I imagined was close to reality, yet fell short of it. On one occasion (and I will soon elaborate), she stood by me and almost without turning her head said: Look at me. Just once. Without questions. Try to describe what you see. Use your freedom. But how does one use freedom? No one had told me her story. A few people knew some of it, tiny fragments that never formed a sequence. But I know. I know that she was born on 1917, that she passed away in 1982, that she parted from her parents in July of 1944. I know that she crossed oceans and continents. I know everything and nothing at all. Oh well, I tell myself. From this point forward, it is all fiction.

  8

  She used to wake up at four-thirty in the morning without an alarm clock, drink a cold glass of water in one long sip, and put on her one-piece bathing suit with flowers printed in red, blue, and white, like the French flag—a choice not without whimsy—with a U-back design that let the breeze brush against her skin; during those long days of summer break in which she abandoned the pool for the beach, she would lie exposed to the sun that still showed mercy toward her withered, lean body, indulge in the soft grains of sand that sent a sweet shiver through her bones, and then go into the water and tease the waves, closing her eyes, turning her back on them, bending her neck, submitting to their authority and letting them carry her to safe shores. During the school year she would take the canvas bag that awaited her at the entrance to her apartment, shove a clean towel, swimming cap, and her purse inside it and scurry down the three flights of stairs, rushing north to the end of her street and turning left toward the sea, to Gordon Pool. Summers and winters, Shabbats and holidays, Elsa Weiss was summoned by the pure saltwater like a devout Jew to the morning Shacharit prayers. She greeted the guard at the entrance, gave a reserved smile to the few bathers who managed to arrive before her, placed her bag in her locker and sat at the end of the pool for a brief moment of meditation before diving in. Empty of all thoughts, Elsa Weiss swam twenty laps, her firm legs and muscular arms cutting through the water with fixed and elaborate strokes, propelling her forward inside the thawing element, her lips pursed like those of a fish, contained in her silence. Later she would quickly pat herself dry with the stiff towel, put on her light cotton dress and dash back to her apartment. She would stop by the grocer’s near her building. He would already have her salami sandwich and pickle waiting. She added milk and sweetener to the tab—“What do you need sweetener for, Ms. Weiss, with a body like yours?” the grocer would tease her—yogurt, sliced cheese and a few vegetables for a salad she would prepare when she returned from school. “The usual?” “The usual. Put it on my account. I’ll pay you at the end of the month.” “No problem, Ms. Weiss. Have a good day.” And already she’s climbing the stairs to her apartment, spreading out the Haaretz newspaper she had removed from the mailbox, opening the window facing the backyard to let the air in, putting on the kettle, pouring herself a cup of black coffee and spreading a thin layer of butter and blueberry jam on two pieces of toast. The radio is broadcasting the seven o’clock news; student papers are piled at the end of the dining room table; she reminds herself to shake off the crumbs before putting them in a folder; sometimes she forgets. The small traces of bread and occasional grease stains suggest, to our relief, that she is taking care of herself.

  9

  She did not wake up with firm resolutions. They lunged at her on her way to school and she served as their holy instrument. She offended and crushed and seemingly enjoyed the awe she inspired behind her back, or perhaps was unable to gauge the vulnerability of those whose daily bread was not pain and suffering. No, she would not give anyone the pleasure of loving her, she did not care one bit if she was loved or not, all the better, she would be the disliked teacher; she would be intolerable and set their teeth on edge, jar their ears and upset their balance until they climbed the walls.

  We learned because we were afraid, not because we loved her; we submitted more than we complied, but it is possible that we did not recognize that learning was a gift we presented in her honor. In the courtyard by the school we fought about her with passion and anger, but even behind her back we preserved her honor. We did not call her cruel names. To those who remained silent during these arguments, or at least weren’t quick to respond, Weiss was in some odd way too intimate a subject. They could not begin to explain it, not even to themselves. It’s possible that they were struggling for their present, or even their future. The future was the teacher, and more specifically, the future was that quality she possessed, a quality that placed the exceptional in our midst, not as a miracle or wonder, but as a gleaming possibility. The exceptional was possible. Since she did not deliver sermons, she left, in a sense, only herself, who she was, the gradually fading memory of her. She was an axis on the world map, the South or North Pole, alternatingly too hot and too cold, a pole that awaited us at the end of a journey that could have been fated or meaningless. There were no tears there, in these parts. It was dry as a desert. We couldn’t know anything about it. She, on the other hand, could neither describe it nor invite us in, and perhaps she did not wish us to ever come near this territory. It was hers, her lot in life. She did not want to teach from within it, to turn it into a profession, but neither could she be a teacher from outside it.

  10

  Elsa Weiss taught English. The grease that occasionally smeared the tests and papers she corrected alluded to the ethics of manual labor, the ardor of a craftsman or peasant who never missed a day’s work. The English slowed down the communication. It also veered her off her straight path. If any words of truth were spoken in it, they were simple, basic words that circumvented anything that was important to say. The English language disguised her insult and replaced it with a mode of communication whose discursive units allowed for shared practice, correction, and improvement. A hidden treasure, a language always has something to teach; we might abuse it, manipulate it to lie, distort, dirty our mouths, deceive others as well as ourselves, but at least with Weiss we’d learn how to use it properly. English enabled her to create a coherent space. One word stood in for another word, a synonym. But her world
deviated from any translation. Nothing could be inferred about her internal grammar from the dictionary we memorized. She did not teach what she had learned firsthand, as if the teacher had to shed herself from herself in order to teach, as if learning and teaching had to come from different facets of her being, in a foreign language, a language she undoubtedly commanded, but not a full command, and one she never treated as her own. As if she had imposed on herself to forever be foreign, an outsider in the place that had become her home, in the medium and in the subjects she taught. She thought you could be a teacher without betraying a thing, with a kind of blanched hypocrisy meant to protect her and her students. She had placed a heavy burden on herself, but it was not a matter of restraint. It was a strict forbiddance she deliberately imposed on herself, as if understanding she must not draw her students close to the voids that her teachings concealed. There were certain things they didn’t need to know, lest they imagine it was within their power to save her. And the teacher knew no one could really save her.

  She became the one to whom that thing had happened, and we, born a generation after her, in a different country, on a different continent, what could we possibly have understood? We could be lured in. Others lured us, she despised it. She also found no use in pointing out numbers or drawing battle maps. Putting it in our mouths meant risking it might be corrupted, not because we were corrupt, but because we simply had no clue. She developed tactics to sidestep, to cover up, to conceal. Nothing slipped out of her mouth for no reason, inadvertently or by mistake. Once, unexpectedly, following an article we had read together in the Jerusalem Post, she lingered on the word Nazism. “What is ‘Nazism’?” her voice carried across the classroom. Silence prevailed. She looked at us with either despair or disdain, and for a moment it seemed she was considering what to say. “Well?” “National-Socialism,” I finally dared to reply with a feeble voice. It is likely that everyone knew what Nazism was. It wasn’t a matter of knowledge. Something else had prevented the others from speaking. In order to answer, we had to momentarily ignore the fact that it pertained to her. The silence of the others was no less essential than my “correct answer.” Both were attentive to the tremor in Weiss’s voice.