MY FATHER'S TEACHER
What a fine trip I took yesterday with my father! This is the way it came about.
Day before yesterday, at dinner, as my father was reading the newspaper, he suddenly gave an exclamation of surprise. Then he said:—
“And I thought him dead twenty years ago! Do you know that my old first elementary teacher, Vincenzo Crosetti, is eighty-four years old? I see here that the minister has conferred on him the medal of merit for sixty years of teaching. Sixty years, you understand! And it is only two years since he stopped teaching school. Poor Crosetti! He lives an hour's journey from here by rail, at Condove, in the country of our old gardener's wife, of the town of Chieri.” And he added, “Enrico, we will go to see him.”
He talked of nothing but him the whole evening. The name of his primary teacher recalled to his mind a thousand things which had happened when he was a boy,—his early companions, his dead mother. “Crosetti!” he exclaimed. “He was forty when I was with him. I seem to see him now. He was a small man, somewhat bent even then, with bright eyes, and always cleanly shaven. Severe, but in a good way; for he loved us like a father, and forgave us more than one offence. He had risen from a peasant by virtue of study and privations. He was a fine man. My mother was attached to him, and my father treated him like a friend. How comes it that he has gone to end his days at Condove, near Turin? He certainly will not know me. Never mind; I shall know him. Forty-four years have elapsed,—forty-four years, Enrico! and we will go to see him to-morrow.”
So yesterday morning, at nine o'clock, we were at the Susa railway station. I should have liked to have Garrone come too; but he could not, because his mother is ill.
It was a beautiful spring day. The train ran through green fields and hedgerows in blossom, and the air we breathed was perfumed. My father was delighted, and every little while he would put his arm round my neck and talk to me like a friend, as he gazed out over the country.
“Poor Crosetti!” he said; “he was the first man, after my father, to love me and do me good. I have never forgotten certain of his good counsels, and also certain sharp reprimands which caused me to go home with a lump in my throat. His hands were large and stubby. I can see him now, as he used to enter the schoolroom, place his cane in a corner and hang his coat on the peg, always with the same gesture. And every day he was in the same humor,—always conscientious, full of good will, and attentive, as though each day he were teaching school for the first time. I remember him as well as though I heard him now when he called to me: ‘Bottini! eh, Bottini! The fore and middle fingers on that pen!’ He must have changed greatly in these four and forty years.”
As soon as we reached Condove, we went in search of our old gardener's wife of Chieri, who keeps a stall in an alley. We found her with her boys: she made much of us and gave us news of her husband, who is soon to return from Greece, where he has been working these three years; and of her eldest daughter, who is in the Deaf-mute Institute in Turin. Then she pointed out to us the street which led to the teacher's house—for every one knows him.
We left the town, and turned into a steep lane flanked by blossoming hedges.
My father no longer talked, but appeared entirely lost in his reminiscences; and every now and then he smiled, and shook his head.
Suddenly he halted and said: “Here he is. I will wager that this is he.” Down the lane towards us a little old man with a white beard and a large hat came, leaning on a cane. He dragged his feet along, and his hands trembled.
“It is he!” repeated my father, hastening his steps.
When we were close to him, we stopped. The old man stopped also and looked at my father. His face was still fresh colored, and his eyes were clear and bright.
“Are you,” asked my father, raising his hat, “Vincenzo Crosetti, the schoolmaster?”
The old man raised his hat also, and replied: “I am,” in a voice that was somewhat tremulous, but full.
“Well, then,” said my father, taking one of his hands, “permit one of your old scholars to shake your hand and to inquire how you are. I have come from Turin to see you.”
The old man stared at him in amazement. Then he said: “You do me much honor. I do not know—when were you my scholar? Excuse me; your name, if you please.”
My father told his name, Alberto Bottini, and the year in which he had attended school, and where, and he added: “It is natural that you should not remember me. But I recall you perfectly!”
The master bent his head and gazed at the ground in thought, and muttered my father's name three or four times; the latter, meanwhile, watched him with intent and smiling eyes.
All at once the old man raised his face, with his eyes opened widely, and said slowly: “Alberto Bottini? the son of Bottini, the engineer? the one who lived in the Piazza della Consolata?”
“The same,” replied my father, holding out his hands.
“Then,” said the old man, “permit me, my dear sir, permit me;” and advancing, he embraced my father: his white head hardly reached the latter s shoulder. My father pressed his cheek to his brow.
“Have the goodness to come with me,” said the teacher. And without speaking any further he turned about and took the road to his dwelling.
In a few minutes we arrived at a garden plot in front of a tiny house with two doors, round one of which there was a fragment of whitewashed wall.
The teacher opened the second and ushered us into a room. There were four white walls: in one corner a cot bed with a blue-and-white checked coverlet; in another, a small table with a little library; four chairs, and an old map nailed to the wall. A pleasant odor of apples was noticeable.
We seated ourselves, all three. My father and his teacher were silent for several minutes.
“Bottini!” exclaimed the master at length, fixing his eyes on the brick floor where the sunlight formed a checker-board. “Oh! I remember well! Your mother was such a good woman! For a while, during your first year, you sat on a bench to the left near the window. Let us see whether I do not recall it. I can still see your curly head.” Then he thought for a while longer. “You were a lively lad, eh? Very. The second year you had an attack of croup. I remember when they brought you back to school, thin and wrapped up in a shawl. Forty years have gone by since then, have they not? You are very kind to remember your poor teacher. And do you know, others of my old pupils have come hither in years gone by to seek me out: there was a colonel, and there were some priests, and several gentlemen.” He asked my father what his profession was. Then he said, “I am glad, heartily glad. I thank you. It is quite a while now since I have seen any one. I very much fear that you will be the last, my dear sir.”
“Don't say that,” exclaimed my father. “You are well and still vigorous. You must not say that.”
“Eh, no!” replied the master; “do you see this trembling?” and he showed us his hands. “This is a bad sign. It seized on me three years ago, while I was still teaching school. At first I paid no attention to it; I thought it would pass off. But instead of that, it stayed and kept on increasing. A day came when I could no longer write. Ah! that day on which I, for the first time, made a blot on the copy-book of one of my scholars was a stab in the heart for me, my dear sir. I did drag on for a while longer; but I was at the end of my strength. After sixty years of teaching I was forced to bid farewell to my school, to my scholars, to work. And it was hard, you understand, hard. The last time that I gave a lesson, all the scholars accompanied me home, and made much of me; but I was sad; I understood that my life was finished. I had lost my wife the year before, and my only son. I had only two peasant grandchildren left. Now I am living on a pension of a few hundred lire. I no longer do anything; it seems to me as though the days would never come to an end. My only occupation, you see, is to turn over my old schoolbooks, my scholastic journals, and a few volumes that have been given to me. There they are,” he said, indicating his little library; “there are my memories, my whole past; I have nothing else left to me in the world.”
Then in a tone that was suddenly joyous, “I want to give you a surprise, my dear Signor Bottini.”
He rose, and approaching his desk, he opened a long casket holding numerous little parcels, all tied up with a slender cord, and each bearing a date in four figures.
After a little search, he opened one, turned over several papers, drew forth a yellowed sheet, and handed it to my father. It was some of his school work of forty years before.
At the top was written, Alberto Bottini, Dictation, April 3, 1838. My father instantly recognized his own large, schoolboy hand, and began to read it with a smile. But all at once his eyes grew moist. I rose and inquired the cause.
He drew one arm around my body, and pressing me to his side, he said: “Look at this sheet of paper. Do you see? These are the corrections made by my poor mother. She always strengthened my l’s and my t’s. And the last lines are entirely hers. She had learned to imitate my letters; and when I was tired and sleepy, she finished my work for me. My sainted mother!”
And he kissed the page.
“See here,” said the teacher, showing him the other packages; “these are my mementoes. Each year I laid aside one piece of work of each of my pupils; and they are all here, dated and arranged in order. Every time that I open them thus, and read a line here and there, a thousand things recur to my mind, and I seem to be living once more in the days that are past. How many of them have passed, my dear sir! I close my eyes, and I see behind me face after face, class after class, hundreds and hundreds of boys, and who knows how many of them are already dead! Many of them I remember well. I recall distinctly the best and the worst: those who gave me the greatest pleasure, and those who caused me to pass sorrowful moments; for I have had serpents, too, among that vast number! But now, you understand, it is as though I were already in the other world, and I love them all equally.”
He sat down again, and took one of my hands in his.
“And tell me,” my father said, with a smile, “do you recall any of my roguish tricks?”
“Of yours, sir?” replied the old man, also with a smile. “No; not just at this moment. But that does not in the least mean that you never played any. However, you had good judgment; you were serious for your age. I remember your mother's great love for you. But it is very kind and courteous of you to have come to seek me out. How could you leave your business, to come and see a poor old schoolmaster?”
“Listen, Signor Crosetti,” responded my father with vivacity. “I recollect the first time that my poor mother accompanied me to school. It was to be her first parting from me for two hours; of letting me out of the house alone, in other hands than my father's; in the hands of a stranger, in short. To this good creature my entrance into school was like my entrance into the world,—the first of a long series of necessary and painful separations; it was society which was tearing her son from her for the first time, never again to return him to her entirely. She was much affected; so was I. I bade her farewell with a trembling voice, and then, as she went away, I saluted her once more through the glass in the door, with my eyes full of tears. And just at that point you made a gesture with one hand, laying the other on your breast, as though to say, ‘Trust me, madam.’ Well, the gesture, the glance, from which I saw that you had understood all the feelings, all the thoughts of my mother; that look which seemed to say, ‘Courage!’ that gesture which was an honest promise of protection, of affection, of indulgence, I have never forgotten; it has remained forever engraved on my heart; and it is that memory which induced me to set out from Turin. And here I am, after the lapse of four and forty years, for the purpose of saying to you, ‘I thank you, my dear teacher.’”
The master did not reply; he stroked my hair with his hand, and his hand shook, and glided from my hair to my forehead, from my forehead to my shoulder.
In the meantime, my father was noticing the bare walls, the wretched bed, the morsel of bread and the little phial of oil which lay on the window-sill; and he seemed desirous of saying, “Poor master! after sixty years of teaching, is this all your reward?”
But the good old man was content, and began once more to talk gayly of our family, of the other teachers of that day, and of my father's schoolmates; some of them he remembered, and some of them he did not. And each told the other news of this one or of that one. When my father interrupted the conversation, to beg the old man to come down into town and lunch with us, he replied effusively, “I thank you, I thank you,” but he seemed undecided. My father took him by both hands, and insisted.
“But how should I manage to eat,” said the master, “with these poor hands which shake in this way? It is a penance for others also.”
“We will help you, master,” said my father. And then he accepted, as he shook his head and smiled.
“This is a beautiful day,” he said, as he closed the outer door, “a beautiful day, dear Signor Bottini! I assure you that I shall remember it as long as I live.”
My father gave one arm to the master, and the latter took me by the hand, and we walked down the lane. We met two little barefooted girls leading some cows, and a boy who passed us on a run, with a huge load of straw on his shoulders. The master told us that they were scholars of the second grade; that in the morning they led the cattle to pasture, and worked in the fields barefoot; and in the afternoon they put on their shoes and went to school. It was nearly midday. We met no one else. In a few minutes we reached the inn, seated ourselves at a large table, with the master between us, and began our lunch. The inn was as silent as a convent. The teacher was very merry, and his excitement increased his palsy: he could hardly eat. But my father cut up his meat, broke his bread, and put salt on his plate. In order to drink, he was obliged to hold the glass with both hands, and even then he struck his teeth. But he talked constantly, and with ardor, of the reading-books of his young days; of schools of the present day; of the praises bestowed on him by his superiors; of the rules of late years: and all with that serene countenance, a trifle redder than at first, and with that gay voice of his, and that laugh which was almost the laugh of a young man. And my father gazed and gazed at him, with that same expression with which I sometimes catch him looking at me, at home, when he is thinking and smiling to himself, with his face turned aside.
The teacher let some wine trickle down on his breast; my father rose, and wiped it off with his napkin. “No, sir; I cannot permit this,” the old man said, and smiled. He said some words in Latin. And, finally, he raised his glass, which wavered about in his hand, and said very gravely. “To your health, my dear signer, to that of your children, to the memory of your good mother!”
“To yours, my good master!” replied my father, pressing his hand. And at the end of the room stood the innkeeper and several others, watching us, and smiling as though they were pleased at this attention which was being shown to the teacher from their parts.
At a little after two o'clock we came out, and the teacher wanted to escort us to the station. My father gave him his arm once more, and he again took me by the hand: I carried his cane for him. The people paused to look on, for they all knew him: some saluted him. At one point in the street we heard, through an open window, many boys' voices, reading together, and spelling. The old man halted, and seemed to be saddened by it.
“This, my dear Signor Bottini,” he said, “is what pains me. To hear the voices of boys in school, and not to be there any more; to think that another man is there. I have heard that music for sixty years, and I have grown to love it. Now I am deprived of my family. I have no sons.”
“No, master,” my father said to him, starting on again; “you still have many sons, scattered about the world, who remember you, as I have always remembered you.”
“No, no,” replied the master sadly; “I no longer have a school; I no longer have any sons. And without sons, I shall not live much longer. My hour will soon strike.”
“Do not say that, master; do not think it,” said my father. “You have done so much good in every way! You have put your life to such a noble use!”
The aged teacher bent his hoary head for an instant on my father's shoulder, and pressed my hand.
We entered the station. The train was on the point of starting. “Farewell, master!” said my father, kissing him on both cheeks.
“Farewell! thanks! farewell!” replied the master, taking one of my father's hands in his two trembling hands, and pressing it to his heart.
Then I kissed him and felt that his face was bathed in tears. My father pushed me into the railway carriage, and at the moment of starting he quickly removed the coarse cane from the schoolmaster's hand, and in its place he put his own handsome one, with a silver handle and his initials, saying, “Keep it in memory of me.”
The old man tried to return it and to recover his own; but my father was already inside and had closed the door.
“Farewell, my kind master!”
“Farewell, my son!” responded the teacher as the train moved off; “and may God bless you for the consolation which you have afforded to a poor old man!”
“Until we meet again!” cried my father, in a voice full of emotion.
But the teacher shook his head, as much as to say, “We shall never see each other more.”
“Yes, yes,” repeated my father, “until we meet again!”
And the other replied by raising his trembling hand to heaven, “Up there!”
And thus he disappeared from our sight, with his hand on high.