Someone had thought to place a microphone on the terrace. Two of the bay windows were wide open and had loudspeakers on the sills.
I hung around at the back of the group. A boy with long fair hair said, “Hello. I’m Willem,” and extended his hand.
“I’m Anton,” I said, somewhat taken aback by his friendliness.
“Do you live in Ruizele?”
I shook my head. “No, in Stuyvenberghe. It’s not far from here.”
“I live in the woods near here,” he said. “My father’s an architect,” he added, as if the two were connected.
He spoke in a soft, well-mannered kind of way, which I found just as pleasing as his hair. But the others thought he sounded funny: they glanced at him and sniggered.
He was not one of us. The speech patterns underlying his language were different. He did not have the musty, cavernous tone that distinguished the regional accent, instead he spoke in a leisurely, mellifluous sing-song.
“So what does your Pa do?” he asked.
“We used to farm,” I said.
He did not pursue the subject.
The door of the monastery opened and a short, doll-like figure emerged. He stepped daintily to the microphone, adjusted his brown Homburg hat, slipped his hand into the pocket of his fluttering nylon raincoat and drew out a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. He put them on with a flourish of the fingers.
“That’s Father Deceuster,” Willem said. “He’s the principal. A do-gooder.”
The priest unfolded a sheet of paper with delicate movements. A pause ensued, during which he eyed us sharply. When he finally pronounced the words “Good morning young men”, we all started at the volume of his voice.
His booming salutation was instantly met with a tinny screech from the loudspeakers blaring out over the brick paving.
The priest took his spectacles off and hissed, “François, François!”
The man with the dough-face tiptoed to the front, made a reassuring gesture and ran inside. The screeching stopped.
Recovering himself, the priest readjusted his glasses and said, “You have just made the acquaintance of Mr Bouillie! Devoted study supervisor and a pillar of this institution. A round of applause for Mr Bouillie!”
A couple of boys started clapping dutifully. Willem kept his hands in his pockets.
The priest considered this to be a blessed day, for it was the first day not only of term but also of the school year, which meant that we were embarking on a great adventure.
“He says the same thing every year,” Willem murmured. “He’ll be telling us about the new sports hall next.”
“This school is ready and waiting for you,” the priest said, beaming. “With all the proper modern facilities, and we are proud — as I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr Bouillie — to announce that the new sports hall can finally, yes finally, be put to use. From now on we play basketball indoors and we swim in our own private pool!”
“It took him fifty seafood banquets to raise the funds,” Willem said. “My father couldn’t stand it any more. After the third one he wrote a cheque. That stopped them.”
“… and then our entirely renovated typing classroom,” the priest continued, “for which Mr Villeyn has quite rightly been campaigning for years.”
“Villeyn, rhymes with villain,” Willem murmured.
I wondered how he knew all these things. “Have you got an older brother here by any chance?”
He avoided my eye. “I’ve been put back a year. Tried too hard.”
Father Deceuster looked ecstatic, as if he were about to levitate. He held forth about a schoolboy’s duty to be a good Christian and drifted into a muddled discourse on happiness, which in his view was to be found in little things. Screwing up his notes, he wished us a good term and good progress on our road to a strong and healthy adolescence.
There was a feeble round of applause.
Mr Bouillie took a brisker line. He took the mike from the priest and barked, “I am going to call out your names followed by an A, a B or a C. After roll-call I shall give you a signal for you to go to the teacher holding your designated letter.”
He pointed to the far end of the yard, where three teachers were standing on the step in front of a wooden gate, each holding up a sign.
I was given a B.
So was Willem.
“We’ll be together, then,” I said.
We crossed the yard and went to our respective teachers.
“It’s Vaneenooghe,” Willem said, “which isn’t too bad. He teaches religious education.”
“I want you to file in an orderly fashion and I don’t want to hear another word,” Mr Vaneenooghe said.
He paused. “Not another word,” he repeated.
When everyone was quiet he snapped his fingers.
The row started moving.
Willem nudged me.
Mr Vaneenooghe pushed against the gate, which swung wide open as if it were the mouth of hell.
CHAPTER 5
A FLIGHT OF BLUESTONE STEPS took us to the upper level, where neon strip lights flickered. We filed down a narrow passage with wood panelling along one wall. The other wall had high windows through which you could see grey sky, lamp-posts, and a cable swaying in the breeze.
Mr Vaneenooghe held open the door of our cage. He ushered us in with a gallant bow. “Do come in, gentlemen,” he said.
We were surrounded by stark green walls, the only relief being a crucifix hanging slightly askew over the blackboard and a faded poster showing a lad chewing a straw. The caption underneath read, “Hope is the Fountain of Youth.”
The wood of the desks was far too hard to carve your name in the surface, the gleaming varnish was indestructible. I picked a desk in the middle, somewhat nearer to the door than to the blackboard.
“Mind if I sit next to you?” Willem asked.
I said I didn’t mind.
We both looked on with interest as a young lad in front of us unzipped his school bag lovingly and took out a tartan pencil case, a sharpener in the shape of a cow, a wooden ruler, a pair of compasses, a protractor, a bicoloured rubber, a marker pen and two tubes of glue. He crossed his arms in eager readiness, and seemed somewhat taken aback when Mr Vaneenooghe instructed us to raise the lids of our desks.
“You’ll find all the exercise books you need inside,” he said.
Each exercise book had a photograph of a school on the cover — all of them different but all run by the same religious order. The same shoeboxes everywhere, the same paved school yard. No doubt they all had their own Mr Bouillies to patrol their borders.
Disheartened, I rested the lid against my forehead.
“Anything wrong?” Willem asked.
I shook my head.
“You can take them home with you after school today,” Mr Vaneenooghe continued, “so you can put your names and numbers on the covers.” There were dotted lines to indicate where. Everything had been thought out beforehand, nothing would be left to chance.
Back at my old school Mr Snellaert would be herding a new flock into his classroom, where the walls were covered in photographs and postcards. Sums would become palpable as if by magic, as real as the click of the beads on the old-fashioned abacus he still used. On the walls he would unroll maps as big as Gobelin tapestries, he would usher his pupils into the great halls of history and unfold Belgium as if it were an imaginary kingdom encompassing regions such as Lorraine, with its sombre resonance of Teutonic ruins. Harnessed in his grey suit of armour he was ever on the alert for the slightest sign of a scaly claw, a forked tongue, so that he might sally forth and save us from the demon of boredom.
Mr Vaneenooghe, on the other hand, seemed to have stepped straight out of a cut-price clothing store. His suit looked as though it was still on the hanger as he moved stiffly about the classroom. His enthusiasm, however, was clearly moth-eaten.