<<  -- 4 --  Jenna Orkin    THE LAST CLASS

Mlle Dieudonne, who had begun to doze, awoke, startled, and froze like a squirrel who senses he is being watched. Then, like an animal who lives in a constant state of emergency she acted, grabbing Joseph Kaufman in the first row with a strength that, he later said, amazed him.

Joseph was distinguished from the rest of the student body -- a body whose scruffiness was typical of students who've been away from home for a week in high summer -- by his suit which he wore out of respect for Boulanger although his fellow students often reminded him that she wouldn't be able to see it.

As he sat down, a hand rose from the medium's lap and reached shakily for the keyboard. Hitting two adjacent notes it fumbled, then rose again to descend onto a note a fourth below. The spirit having tapped out its message, the hand withdrew slowly to come to rest once more in Boulanger's lap.

'Mr Kau -, Mr K -, do you know how many notes there are?'
'Well, Mademoiselle, I, too, thought an infinite number.'
'No,' Boulanger moaned. Mlle A soothed her and turned the wheelchair to take it back to the apartment. Boulanger did not protest or perhaps even notice.
As soon as she rounded the corner, pandemonium broke out in the classroom.
'Mr Kuh -, Mr Kuh -' croaked one boy in imitation of the scene that had just taken place. Another boy did a grotesque parody of a monster drawling incoherent, preposterous demands. Mlle Dieudonne played a thundering chord to bring us back to reality and spent the rest of the period on a tortuous musical dictation which sobered us up in no time.

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