Suite d'Existence - 3. Courante

It had been two months since Sigurd had left to Norway, leaving a vacancy and an empty space behind. Thirty-seven days ago, just a bit later than planned, the emptiness had been filled by Sara, or Saartje. The newborn girl was maybe somewhat young to teach physics, but as a daughter she got all the attention she deserved. The moment she’d arrived, Tristan had felt an overwhelming feeling of joy and pride, it was.

Of course one could not expect otherwise, but the arrival of a baby remained one of the great wonders of nature, whether human or otherwise. Where Daan looked a lot like his father, Sara appeared to show more characteristics of Mara. Her hair was blonde, her eyes were grayish-green. Yes, things could change with growth, but her parents were sure their children were perfectly “balanced” between the two of them.

The birth of his second child had been an inexhaustible source of conversation topics. Today wasn’t an exception; before the start of classes a lot of (mainly female) teachers came to find out about recent developments around the girl. Yes, she was growing as expected and she’d succeeded in putting a lot of her fingers in her mouth. Just as he came to the part about her heavy crying episodes (yes, she was definitely different than Daan), Tristan’s speech was interrupted by the arrival of the director.

The headmaster, mister De Graaff, was a quite short man in his late fifties. He always, without exception, wore some kind of multicoloured shirt that fit with his glasses. Considering the array of shirts the man owned, he must have had an enormous collection of glasses. Tristan and his colleagues had counted them once; there were at least thirty of them. The guy probably had some sort of glass cabinet at home with a few of those little spotlights, to display his pretty eyewear. Well, what else does one speculate about during lunch breaks…

Behind him appeared another man, around thirty years old Tristan guessed. He was wearing a plain, dark-grey shirt, and he seemed quite friendly, though maybe a tad self-conscious. The guy’s appearance was pretty much the opposite from the man he walked behind. His gait was unusually light, considering the newcomer must have been at least two meters tall.

A leather schoolbag dangled from his right shoulder; the brown thing represented the things Tristan found completely unnecessary. He’d always thought of it as some useless attempt at looking wise or high-ranked. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of money you’d have to pay to obtain a piece of leather. No, a backpack would do fine, he had decided before starting his career as a teacher.

Anyway, the stranger wás wearing a shiny brown leather bag. He probably wanted to look nice and tidy on his first day at school. Tristan had no trouble remembering the impression his former teachers had made; some of them owned a bag like that. Maybe it made him respect them more, but they surely weren’t getting any friendlier because of it.

“People, can I get your attention please? This is the, hopefully definite, substitute of Sigurd. He’ll teach physics to the higher grades, and Sylvia will continue to take care of the first three grades.”

Sylvia was a young teacher, probably not even twenty-five yet, though none of her male colleagues had dared to ask for her age. During her internship she’d not only impressed the director and her co-workers, but the students too. When Sigurd had announced his departure, it was no surprise she’d been hired immediately.

The new teacher anxiously looked around for a bit, before starting to talk:

“Hi everyone, I’m Ernest de Witte. Hopefully I’ll be good enough to replace your former colleague adequately.” Several greetings flew from various corners towards him. He still didn’t seem too comfortable, but he’d definitely been accepted by the rest of ‘the crew’.

The awful buzzing sound of the bell (which reminded Tristan of the standard ‘a’ on his digital metronome) meant there was no time to get to know Ernest better before lunch. A group of younger, female teachers didn’t seem too happy about the start of classes; they’d eyed the newcomer since he’d appeared in the doorway. Tristan already felt sorry for the guy; he told himself to remember inviting him to sit with the guys at lunch. It would be inhumane to leave the man to the bunch of predators.

-

The morning had simply been horrible. First his complete fourth grade had managed to forget their books, which made Tristan stress out because he had to come up with something impromptu. Next the students had unanimously decided to hate their new task, causing him to become way more annoyed than he ever let himself be.

His fifth grade wasn’t much better; they behaved, but only two out of twenty-four pupils had managed to pass their most recent test. Such low grades always made him doubt his aptitude, though he knew perfectly well that is was lack of motivation that had caused twenty-two grades being lower than a six. The thought didn’t exactly made Tristan lose his doubts; there must be some way or another to motivate the kids. He wasn’t planning to ‘fail’ again anytime soon.

Lunch was therefore a welcome distraction. While plowing through his bag to find his sandwiches, Tristan spotted a bewildered Ernest standing in the doorway. He didn’t seem to know where to take a seat. The guys Tristan normally had lunch with were in a natural sciences meeting. To save the new man and to arrange someone to talk with, he put his hand up and waved a bit.

“Hey, want to join me?”

His offer was accepted with a quick nod. Ernest walked towards his table and took a seat.

“Thanks. I’m not that good at spontaneous socializing”, he said with a slight grin.

Tristan not only noticed his amusement, though. While observing Ernest, he had plenty of time to get a view of his face. The slender face with greyish brown hair above it, really reminded him of…

“Uh, hello?” the man in front of him said. “Everything all right?”

“Oh, huh, what?” Tristan answered, not sure how he’d looked while observing. It had obviously startled his lunchpartner.

“Well, you were kind of absentmindedly staring in my face. I just wondered –“

“Yeah, sorry about that. This is going to sound stupid, but you really remind me of… Forget it, you don’t know him anyway.”

“Try me.”

The statement surprised Tristan, but he didn’t refuse.

“Well, you remind me a lot of Vincent –“

“Dumestre?”

Huh? How the hell does he know Vincent Dumestre? I surely haven’t met anyone before who recognized the name, even if I spelled it out to them…

“You know him?”

“Well, yeah. I like the music of Poème Harmonique, and when I googled him, I was really shocked to see a bunch of pictures that looked like me.”

Ánd he knows Poème Harmonique? Well, this certainly is a surprise.

“So you like that kind of music? You know, baroque, early music?”

“Yeah. Yes I do.”

While talking, Tristan had seen Ernest’s eyes wander off to the table. It turned out he was looking at Tristan’s I-pod. He’d been listening to Poème Harmonique since arriving in the staffroom.

Ah, he’s tricking me into thinking he likes the unusual kind of music that I’m fond of. He just read what’s on my screen, so he probably knows a lot less than he appears to do. Well, I can just find out, can’t I?

“I don’t believe you.” Tristan said bluntly. Ernest’s eyes turned wide with surprise.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, while obviously suppressing his amusement.

“Well, I’ve never met anyone who understood my love of that kind of music. Furthermore, you’ve been staring at my I-pod, so you’ve probably seen that I was listening to Poème Harmonique.”

The newcomer didn’t seem to sure what to say next. There was a short period of silence, before he spoke again:

“Ask me something that can confirm my love of early music.”

Well, he’s trying hard for sure. Maybe I misread him. It won’t hurt to test him a bit, though.

“Hmm… Okay. What’s the most recent piece of baroque music you’ve listened to?”

The answer came quick. Quicker than expected.

“That’s easy, I think it’s still on pause on my I-pod. This morning I’ve listened to a harpsichord suite by Jean-François Dandrieu.”

“Be more specific. It can be a guess, after all.” The conversation was getting more playful at this point; Tristan pretty much knew that Ernest was speaking the truth, but it was fun to talk with someone who shared this interest.

“Deuxième Livre de Clavecin. I think I paused it in the middle of the Courante. Happy now?”

He laughed while putting his hands up in defense. “Okay, okay. You’ve convinced me. Nice to meet someone who shares the love for Chaconnes and Rondeaus. Nice to meet you, Ernest the Witte.”

They shook hands, though they’d pretty much met already.

“Nice to meet you… What was your name again?”

“Oh sorry, I don’t think I’ve mentioned it yet. Tristan. Tristan Mulder.”

“Nice to meet you then, Tristan Mulder. Yóu, by the way, look an awful lot like Ferran Savall.”

Right. Now there was absolutely no way anymore the guy didn’t know anything about early music. He noticed I look a lot like Savall, he couldn’t have made that up.

The remaining twenty minutes of the break were mostly filled with conversation about school. Ernest had had a good morning, the first meetings with his students had gone well. Tristan had decided not to mention the fact that soon the kids would start to get a lot more annoying than they were now. He didn’t want to ruin the first day of the newcomer.

He’d also made it clear that he didn’t understand much about physics. Ernest’s response had been something like “Hmm… I’d watch out for the physics-clan. They’ll try to recruit anyone that comes along.” First his face had been serious, but soon he’d burst out in laughter. It was nice to see the shy man open up a bit, Tristan had thought. It wouldn’t be a problem if he joined him and the others at lunch for the rest of the year.

-

“Mara, are you there?” Tristan asked as he walked towards the kitchen. On the way home his bicycle had broken down, again, and he hadn’t been able to repair it this time. As a result he had to walk the remaining four kilometers to the house. The walk itself wasn’t a problem, but he wanted to make sure his wife hadn’t got worried. He was therefore relieved when a female voice replied from the kitchen: “Yes, I’m here! Did you have a meeting today? I always forget when you have a meeting.”

She was standing at the counter, chopping mushrooms, beautiful as always. It was quite possible the woman was the personification of tranquility; her long dark-blonde hair and loving eyes made everyone like her immediately. Not to mention she was probably the wisest woman, apart from his mother, Tristan had ever met.

He walked up to her and placed a kiss on her temple. “Hi, dear. Missed you. No, the bike broke down again and this time I couldn’t fix it while all those cows were looking.” Yes, he was surrounded by pastures and grazing cows when the front wheel had collapsed.
Mara chuckled. “You really should look for a new one soon, Tristan. There will be a moment that both the wheels are going to fall off when it’s raining.”

“I will.” Tristan promised. He wasn’t too fond of spending money, but a bicycle was something you’d have to invest in once in a while. “This smells lovely, by the way”, he said, while lifting up the lid of a large pan.

“Thanks. It’s an attempt at making some kind of Spanish stew, though it might have turned out a bit too –“

“Hot!” Tristan almost yelled between heavy breaths. He had sneakily tasted a bit of the boiling liquid.

“That’s what you get from tasting without my permission”, Mara grinned. Her husband was chucking down a glass of milk while she put her hands on her hips and shook her head, watching him.

“Maybe… ugh… Maybe it needs to be thinned out a bit. Whoa, no! No, don’t do that! I’m going to check on the kids!” Tristan managed to say before being chased off with a dripping spoon.

Sara was sleeping soundly, so it would be a bad idea to wake the girl up. There was no way he would deny his daughter any sleep; this routine seemed to work, without having to feed a lot through the night. Daan was happily playing in the living room, though. He was concentrating hard on putting his stuffed giraffe upside down in a car. The long neck made it impossible, unfortunately, but the boy didn’t give up. Tristan decided to help him out of his misery.

“Hi, Daan! Come here, love.”

As soon as the boy had noticed his father, he smiled and walked towards him. His dad engulfed him in a big hug.

“I loooove you”, Tristan told him playfully, while rocking his son back and forth.

“I wuuuuuv yoe”, Daan mimicked.

God, he’s so wonderful. I cannot fathom how something so beautiful can contain a bit of me.

He proceeded to tell Daan about his day, like he did every day. This time, though, the story contained a new friend. His name was Ernest.