The Last Lesson of Mrs de Souza by Cyril Wong

Author:Cyril Wong
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789810762339
Publisher: Epigram Books
Published: 2017-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

“I NEVER HAD another one-on-one conversation with this student of mine again.”

After our conversation, Amir behaved as he had always behaved in class: keeping mostly to himself, but remaining ostensibly attentive and answering questions when called upon to speak, whispering the occasional remark to his classmates in hushed tones when he thought I was not looking. In fact, he behaved like most of the other boys in the class, or like any boy in any class that I have taught since. I needed urgently to believe that I had made some indelible and positive impact on Amir after our talk. I thought perhaps that Amir looked less withdrawn than before; I told myself that this was not something I was simply imagining. What I did not tell Amir was that I had a plan, a good surprise (I hoped) for Amir and his father, with positive results for the long-term future.

One evening I spoke to Christopher about what I planned to do, telling him about the whole episode of Amir’s passionate confession, and then confessed my scheme. “I’m not sure it’s the best way to go,” he said over dinner, expressing his ambivalence. I sensed an argument coming but told myself to be patient. I knew I would be able to reason with Christopher. We were at the coffee shop downstairs from our flat. Because of our busy teaching jobs, neither of us had any time to cook at home. Luckily, Christopher and I did not have any children to feed. It was so much easier this way when the two of us could just have quick meals after work together. With children, life would have been so much more complicated; we would not have had the luxury to engage in meaningful conversations over dinner about anything and everything, about things that happened at work, or new revelations about teaching that we learnt in the course of our professional lives. There were no children to distract us from enriching each other’s minds over the span of a meal. Both of us had agreed that the world was overcrowded enough without us producing offspring to feed on the earth’s dwindling resources.

Besides, I had always taken for granted that our respective students were like our surrogate children anyway. We nurtured them, taught them, helped them to speak and write better and become better people, shaped them by leading them through our examples as caring educators. I am particularly proud when ex-schoolboys (the small handful who manage to find the time to do so) visit me years later to drop by my classes or the staff room to say hello, to show me how far they have arrived in life, and to hand me gifts of appreciation for my patience with them during their student days. Can any schoolteacher ask for anything more?

This is not to say that Christopher had not occasionally brought up the topic of having children, especially during the first few years of our marriage. “Don’t you ever wish to have a baby in your arms? I do, sometimes.

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