The Man Who Walked through Walls by Marcel Ayme

Author:Marcel Ayme [Marcel Ayme]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781908968203
Publisher: Steerforth Press
Published: 2012-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

A week later, the teacher was handing out the marked essays.

Overall, he said, I am far from satisfied. Apart from Béruchard whom I awarded thirteen, and five or six barely passable efforts, you have not understood the homework.

He explained what they were meant to have done, then, out of the stack of books splashed with red ink, he selected three for particular comment. The first was Béruchard’s, about which he spoke in glowing terms. The third belonged to Lucien.

“On reading yours, Jacotin, I was surprised by a turn of phrase unfamiliar to me from your pen, and which I found so disagreeable that I did not hesitate to give you a three. While I have frequently found myself censuring the flatness of your descriptions, I must say that this time you have erred in the opposite direction. You have managed to fill six pages while not once addressing the subject. But the most intolerable aspect is this jumped-up tone you have seen fit to adopt.”

The teacher spoke at length about Lucien’s homework, which he presented to the other boys as the model of what they should not do. He read aloud from several passages that he felt to be particularly edifying. There were smiles around the classroom, a few chuckles and even some full-blown laughs. Lucien was very pale. His own self-esteem wounded, so likewise was his sense of filial respect.

Still, he was upset with his father for exposing him to his friends’ mockery. Though always a mediocre student, never before, through negligence or ignorance, had Lucien been exposed to ridicule as he was now. Whether in French, Latin or Algebra homework, despite his shortcomings as a scholar, he retained a fair feeling for scholarly conventions, even for scholarly flourishes. When that night, eyes red with fatigue, he had copied out Monsieur Jacotin’s draft, he had had no illusions about the reception that awaited it.

Fully awake the next morning, Lucien had even hesitated to hand the essay in, being all the more alive to its false and discordant notes in view of his classmates’ usual habits. And at the last moment, instinctive confidence in his father’s infallibility had decided him.

Coming home at midday, Lucien recalled with bitterness that almost religious sense of confidence that had spoken to him more loudly than the facts. What had his father been after, as he explicated that proverb? Doubtless, he had not been seeking the humiliation of a three out of twenty for his French homework. This could well cure him of the desire to explain any more proverbs. And Béruchard with his mark of thirteen. His father would find that a difficult one to swallow. It would teach him a lesson.

At table, Monsieur Jacotin appeared cheerful, even kindly. A slightly feverish light-heartedness enlivened everything he said. He was sufficiently coy not to come out with the question that he was burning to ask and that his son was expecting every second. The mood at this lunch did not differ much from the usual. Rather than cheer the family, the father’s gaiety became a further source of unease.

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