Born Twice (Vintage International) (13 page)

“I was terrible at it,” she says proudly.

I look down at the ground. It takes so little to transform a conversation into a farce. Just one person. This too is a test.

“All right, Paolo, now listen to me. If I divide one hundred by two, what do I get?”

“Fifty,” he replies instantly.

Rapidity doesn’t matter. This is the third time we do the problem. At this point, it’s no longer a question of doing the math but remembering words.

“And fifty divided by two?”

“Twenty-five.”

“And twenty-five times two?”

“Fifty.”

“And fifty times three?”

He stares at me. He’s sure, as I am, that he’s going to make a mistake.

“Think about it,” I say.

When I say that I know he stops thinking. Why do I do it? Is it because he
wants
to make a mistake?

He’s nervous. He sticks out his chest and his eyes are shiny. He’s falling over a precipice.

“A hundred.”

“No!” I slam my fist down on the table. “Why did you say a hundred?”

He looks at me a little less fearfully because he finally made a mistake and because I’ve finally gotten angry.

“I don’t know!” he shouts back, in a strangled voice.

I don’t want to give up. It’s my one weakness. In life, when there’s no alternative, we give up. A lot of people can’t wait for anything else. They live so that one day they can give up. There, I’m doing it again. I magnify other people’s shortcomings in order to minimize my own.

Why don’t I give up? Is it because of me? “No,” I say out loud, “it’s for him.” He looks at me: I’m talking to myself. No, I think to myself, it’s for me. He’s scared. There has to be a reason. I should be scared too. I am his enemy. And he is mine.

I put my elbow on the table and rest my chin in my hand. After a few seconds I look up.

“Let’s try again, Paolo.”

He is startled.

“What do you get if you double fifty?”

“A hundred.”

“What’s half of a hundred?”

“Fifty.”

“So far, so good.”

I spread out my hands on the table, as if to keep my stability in check as well as my power.

“And half of fifty?”

“Twenty-five.”

So far, it’s just memory. He’s not calculating; he remembers the words. This is not understanding math, it’s memorizing what you’ve heard.

“Why don’t you just leave him alone?” Franca interrupts.

She looks pale. She’s been listening from the kitchen, but now she comes rushing into the living room, fully exasperated with me and ready to liberate and vindicate him.

Paolo looks at her gratefully; she’s his unexpected salvation.

“I’m trying to find out whether he understands math or whether he’s just memorizing it.” I defend myself with an unnatural smile.

“Why? Do
you
understand math?” she exclaims. “Do
you
understand the concept of numbers?
You
—of all people!”

Her
you
is charged with aggressiveness, desperation, disdain. What could I possibly understand—me, of all people—about math? I always relied on memory. Suddenly I recall the sense of paralysis I experienced when the teacher asked me a
different
question. What constituted an exciting aperture for her always proved to be a fatal one for me. It began with, “So, in other terms. . . .” I hated those other terms. I could never imagine what they were. I could never guess what they were.

“Answer me,” Franca urged.

“You’re right, it’s true.” I feel both discomfort and relief.

“Then it’s idiotic of you to torment him like this!”

She said idiotic, not idiot. It’s less personal; it’s a tacit convention between us, a loophole to avoid saying it directly.

“I just wanted to try and get him to reason, not just to remember,” I reply. “I think sometimes he makes mistakes on purpose.”

“On purpose?”

“He gives up thinking as soon as I get nervous. And then comes the wrong answer, as if to punish himself. Or maybe to punish me.”

“I’m so sick of your theories!” she yells. “If that’s how it is, why bother insisting?”

“I made a mistake!” I yell back. I pound the arm of my chair with my fist. “Can’t I make mistakes too?”

I have never been so proud of my mistakes as at this very moment. So arrogantly proud, and in such a crisis too.

“So cut it out!” she says, grabbing my arm.

I jump to my feet, grab her by the shoulders, and shake her violently. She frees herself from my grasp and yells, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“What are
you
doing?”

There’s fear and hate in her eyes. I let go of her. She rubs her shoulders as if they were sore and flops down on the chair.

“Don’t exaggerate,” I say.

I try to control my breathing. I try to reacquire a normal voice. Show calm, especially when you lose it. She’s trying to regain hers too. Her breathing is even. She looks blankly into the empty space in front of her.

Paolo has been watching all this. He’s scared but fascinated by these irregularly recurring scenes. Franca, sounding as if she had just woken up from a restful nap, calmly asks, “Now, what exactly is the problem?”

The unwritten laws of a relationship force her to speak in a delicate voice and to blank out what has just transpired between us.

“The math tests are the problem,” I reply distastefully, both communicative and cordial. “We keep looking for excuses, but the truth is that he just doesn’t know how to do these tests.”

“Now stay calm,” she says, gently placing her hand on my knee. “You always said these kinds of tests were unfair indicators.”

“In fact, they are.”

“That they’re quantitative and that they ignore the emotional mind-set.”

“It’s stonewalling,” I say, following her lead.

“What’s stonewalling?”

“What he’s doing when he refuses to cooperate.”

“He does it with you because you don’t know how to deal with him.”

“No, he always does it.”

“That’s not true.”

She’s silent for a moment. She’s bitter, edgy, and poised. Then she turns slowly toward him and says, “Paolo, I want you to try with me.”

Paolo looks at her apprehensively. She’s changing from his emancipator to assuming my role. She grips the arms of the chair.

I stand up and go to the kitchen. The sky has turned dark; it’s still raining. I run the water in the sink and drink a glass of water. I just heard on TV that even bottled water is toxic and that tap water may actually be a little less so.

I go back into the living room and watch her shift her hands from her knees to the table. A cone of light from the overhead lamp falls on them.

“No, Paolo. Now try and stay calm. If sixty times two is a hundred and twenty, what is half of it?”

Paolo looks at me. He’s lost. He’s looking for help.

“Answer your mother,” I say.

He has nowhere else to look. There’s no getting out of it.

“Fifty,” he answers.

“No!” she shouts. “You remember fifty because your father said it before. Fifty has nothing to do with this.”

Paolo lets go of the chair. He turns very red. His lip is trembling.

“Leave him alone,” I say. “We’ll try later,” I add.

She closes her eyes. “All right.”

I sit down at the table. She stands up.

“Dinner’s in half an hour. OK?”

“Fine.”

I take Paolo’s hand in mine. His eyes are brimming with tears, but he doesn’t cry.

“Now tell me, who’s right? Your mother or me?” I ask.

The Singing Principal

When Paolo passes from fifth grade into middle school, I ask that he be placed in a section with some of his classmates. It’s an unorthodox request.

The principal greets me with white gloves. That’s not a metaphor. No one’s sure if she wears them to distinguish herself or because she’s afraid of catching something. They’re made of white lace. For as long as anyone can remember (which is three years, since she was transferred to this school), she’s never taken them off.

She’s petite and spirited; she looks positively turgid in her tight dress. She has a bubbly voice. She likes to show off her talent as a singer by performing at the end-of-the-year recital, provoking laughter, confusion, and amusement in the audience. She has a strong character, like most integrated and flamboyant people. She comes toward me in a vaguely theatrical manner, almost like an eighteenth-century dame in an opera by Cimarosa.

“Oh, Professor Frigerio, I’ve heard so many wonderful things about you and your son Paolo!”

I bow ever so slightly. “Why, thank you.”

She motions for me to sit down across from her at her desk. There’s a large vase of yellow flowers on each end. I’m not sure what kind they are; I can never remember the names of plants. They might be gladioli. Behind her is an oriental screen: marsh birds flying diagonally across a background of green stylized plants.

“Do you like it?” she asks, turning sideways to look at it.

“Yes, very much.”

“I brought it in from home. A distant uncle of mine who spent twenty-one years in the diplomatic corps in China gave it to me.” She looks at me for a moment and then adds, “It’s not worth very much, but it breaks up the academic environment. You’ve probably heard how much I detest bureaucracy.”

“Yes,” I say. “I have.”

“So there’s no need to worry about your son.” She rests her hand on a pile of gray folders. “He’ll be in class One-C, with an excellent teacher’s aide: Professoressa Molteni. Do you know her?”

“No, but I—”

“She’s done excellent work with a child that has—how do you say it?—behavioral problems,” she says, interrupting me.

“I see,” I say, as I often do when I am entirely unclear about something but still want the conversation to go on. “But that’s not the point.”

“What is?” she asks in surprise, retreating a bit on her swivel chair.

“I wanted—that is, I would have liked—Paolo to be with some of the children from his fifth grade class. He’s grown very attached to them.”

“He’ll make friends with his new classmates,” she says resolutely. “What’s the problem?”

“Well, you see, he’s the one who asked me about it,” I say with some difficulty. “If it wasn’t right, I’d be the first one to say no. But it seemed like a reasonable request.”

She looks at me carefully. “How many years have you been teaching, Professor Frigerio?”

“Twelve,” I say uncomfortably, as if under interrogation.

“I’ve been teaching for twenty-nine years,” she says, calmly but triumphantly. “I hate to admit it because it reveals how old I really am.”

She has a malicious air about her. I react too late to what she’s said, managing only the hint of a smile.

She lowers her voice. “Experience counts. I know your son will be happy with his new classmates.”

“Is there some kind of bureaucratic impediment?” I insist.

“Luck of the draw,” she says firmly. It’s the immediate response of a superior who wishes to include an inferior in some secret and at the same time maintain her distance. “You’re not familiar with statute 328 comma 5 of 1976? Well, I suppose not, seeing that you teach at the high school level.”

She who so despises bureaucracy has suddenly become very serious. There’s nothing like a statute to delight or humiliate a person.

“What does the statute say?” I ask.

“That first-year middle-school students will be assigned to their classes based on the results of a random drawing. We’re all equal in the eyes of the law.”

“Yes, but he’s not equal to the others,” I say.

“Professor Frigerio,” she says, losing her patience, “this norm was introduced to do away with discriminatory acts. Now you want to introduce one.”

“Yes,” I say, “that’s right. I’d like to introduce a discriminatory act.”

I’m beginning to see a way out of this. Paradoxes have always been of great help when reason fails me.

“Actually, the facts introduce it,” I add. “He’s
not
equal to the others.”

“You are insistent, aren’t you?” she says, as if I were insisting on some irregularity. “I never would have imagined you to be the type, Professor Frigerio—”

“Please, Signora Preside, listen to me,” I say. The use of her title, both stark and bureaucratic, creates instantaneous equality among diverse ranks. “You can surely guess how I feel about discrimination. But that’s exactly why he shouldn’t be considered like the others. It would be a kind of discrimination for the others and a new one for him.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you,” the principal says, shaking her head in a pantomime of confusion.

“Racism is an altogether different thing,” I say, branching off into a discussion that I should perhaps avoid but it’s already too late. “Recognizing diversity is not a form of racism. It’s a duty we all have. Racism, however, draws its diverse laws from the differences between races. But we believe that everyone should have equal rights.”