Eva smiled to herself and thought of a couple of delinquent senior management personalities back at school who could do with a little firm policing. She smiled to herself at how apparently unconnected events in the world outside seemed to echo her inner states. She smiled, yet also felt annoyed at how people and events that she would now rather forget somehow managed to pursue her wherever she went, even here on holiday. Snippets of conversation and scraps of anger about what was happening at work would well up unexpectedly and lead a life of their own, going round in circles in some usurped space in her head. It was like having her mind forcibly colonized. In one way she wished they would go away, but in another she welcomed this fresh backdrop of Prague against which to peruse them. It reminded her that her working cosmos was only one of many microcosms after all, and that its conflicts were only storms in a teacup. She was grateful that there were other realities that were just as real. Such as this place, which was her solace and refuge, her confirmation that civilization and meaning can still be retrieved.
Whenever Eva left Prague to go back to England she would arrive back home and turn out her handbag, where she would find, tucked into side pockets, little packets of sugar from this or that cafe on the Old Town Square or the Lesser Town, or Metro tickets. She had a special jar in her kitchen where she would put the little packets of sugar, sometimes loose, sometimes in lumps, planning to use them when visitors came round for coffee. But when they did come round she would look at the packets, especially the ones with the name of the cafe on, and she would put them back in the jar. Instead, she would get out the sugar bowl belonging to her tea service and offer that sugar to her guests. Josh, her husband, would sometimes find her standing in the kitchen staring at an old Prague metro ticket, not having the heart to throw it out. If she kept the tickets in her bag for a while, she felt childish, pathologically sentimental, but if she threw them away it was as if she was discarding something precious that needed to be preserved, as evidence of her other world. There seemed no way round her sense of loss.
But at times such as this sunny morning at the end of July on Republic Square, at the very start of the school summer holidays, Eva also found the contrast amusing between herself, as she already luxuriated in a personal civilization that was her private possession. The powerful people at her school, she mused as she took in the view of summer Prague and took her first sip of coffee, were still busy with timetables and forward planning and their jostlings for power. This thought lent an extra note to the coffee's aroma. Oh, the joys of being a nobody, she thought. How wonderful to be enough of a nobody to be able to be oneself.
A scene from the last day of term reenacted itself before her inner eye in this deliciously incongruous setting. The Board of Governors at Ransom's, legendary for their aloofness, had been compelled by a recent crisis to pay some attention to what was happening in the upper echelons of the school. Exhausted teachers, their minds already fixed on distant beaches, were tying up loose ends on the last day, and house staff who could not remember their last decent night's sleep stumbled over cases and boxes and fought their way through a fog of hungover breath from students who had been having an illicit party all night in an attic. Against this backdrop the Board of Governors were, at long last, meeting at Ransom's to deal with 'The Crisis'. Groans of tired exasperation struggled with naked curiosity when a plenary staff meeting was called for four o'clock that afternoon in the Great Hall. One by one, the Senior Management Team were summoned to the Board to give an account of themselves and the situation.
On a good day, Eva's mother used to refer to the Senior Management at Ransom's as 'arrogant narcissists'. On a bad day, they were known as 'that bunch of hyenas', or even 'those f****ing cannibals'. This was how, for example, she had explained the sudden departure a couple of months earlier of a recent addition to the team, who had had the effrontery, as Eva's mother put it, of being a civilized human being. Adele Branston had been savaged by the cannibals and sent packing, but not before her lawyer had tied them up in knots. Awkwardly, moreover, for the Senior Management Team, they had accomplished this feat not only in unseemly haste, but also without consulting either the Parents' Association or the Board of Governors. Eva and her colleagues had arrived at work one Monday morning to the news that their brand new Head of Senior School, Adele Branston, was now their brand new ex Head of Senior School. Furthermore, she was being replaced, for an 'interim' period of two years (Eva and her mother had shrieked with laughter at this) by none other than the Bursar, Armstrong-Cripps.
For some reason the Senior Management Team found inexplicably perverse, this brief but dramatic series of events was willfully interpreted en masse by staff, parents and students alike as a coup d'etat. Parents threatened to remove their children from the school, while several members of staff also made it clear that they would be moving on at the first opportunity. Moreover they churlishly insisted on assuming this to be the first outward sign of a major power struggle going on within the ranks of the Senior Management Team for the overall Headship of Ransom's. The Senior Management's astonished dismay at public reaction to these events, and above all at the response to the way in which these events had been communicated to the outside world, appeared to be entirely genuine.
"What more proof do you need, my dear," Eva's mother had said, "that the school is being run by narcissists?"
The Narcissi Theory appeared to have been resoundingly confirmed. The school braced itself for news that Barbara Styles would soon be resigning as Head of Ransom's, and that her role would be taken over either by the Bursar, now Head of Senior School as well, or Drummond MacLean, the Director of Studies.
"I give her eighteen months at the outside," Harry Hollingsworth the music teacher had said to Eva.
Even this dark prophesy of doom turned out to be hopelessly optimistic. On the last day of the summer term, at the plenary staff meeting scheduled for four o'clock, the bombs dropped. The first public intimation that something was wrong had come in Styles' end of year letter to parents, in which she stated that "mistakes had been made," and that she would be tabling a 'Vote of Confidence' at the beginning of the next school year. Cannier members of staff took this to mean that her position was weak and that she was attempting to take the wind out of her opponents' sails by tabling the issue of confidence herself.
Exhausted though everyone was by the end of this turbulent school year, no one's face was missing from the Great Hall that afternoon. The brief preamble included a passing reminder: the plenary session would be followed by the customary farewell party for employees who were leaving that year (the Exodus Fair, as Eva called it). Then the Director of Studies got up slowly from his seat in the front row. It was a swelteringly hot summer's day, but with his eyes fixed dramatically on his audience, he very slowly pulled on an elegant black jacket to match his elegantly cut black trousers. Eva had never seen MacLean wearing a dark suit before: he usually dressed more in the smart casual, deceptively neutral, apparatchik style. It was difficult to avoid the impression of deliberately relished, macabre drama. The name of Machiavelli sprang spontaneously into the minds of many of those present. The Bursar's wife, Mrs. Armstrong-Cripps, was sitting immediately behind Eva, who turned round to her and said,
"This feels like an execution!"
"That's exactly what it is!" came the immediate reply.
MacLean stepped up with exaggerated ceremony on to the podium and placed his hands on either side of the lectern.
Now it had to be said that Barbara Styles, of the twitching hand choreography and the compulsive snide quip, was not what one would call the most beloved of Heads, if indeed there is such a thing. She was undiplomatic, tactless, obtuse and devoid of empathy and charm, thus arguably ideal for a meteoric corporate career. The Director of Studies referred in his preamble to the present meeting of the Board of Governors, which was still in session, and intimated that the Senior Management Team had come under criticism from the Board, among other things, for being 'inhumane' ("Not difficult to believe!" thought Eva).
He went on to inform the assembly that after prolonged and concerted efforts (i.e. the ten months since the start of the current academic year), he had reluctantly arrived at the conclusion that the Head, Dr. Styles, could not be worked with and that if she remained at the school, he himself would, as he put it, finish the timetables for the coming academic year, but would be unable to continue in his present function. There was a hush of held breath as the mood of the assembled staff oscillated between stunned skepticism and euphoric hope at the prospect of this loss.
Hardly had this bombshell of information been delivered before Armstrong-Cripps, the Bursar, tight lipped, livid with rage and immaculately turned out in dark blue, sprang to his feet and strode to the podium, just as the Director of Studies was sitting down. The Bursar proclaimed that for his part he considered it to be his duty to support Styles as Head of Ransom's in this difficult transition period and that if she were to leave, he regretted that he would no longer be at the disposal of the school as interim Head of the Senior School. The assembled staff gasped as one. Or almost as one: a colleague sitting next to Eva commented with macabre glee: "My God! There's so much shit, you can't see the fan!"
As the Bursar returned to his seat, Barbara Styles stood up and said that she had spent her first year just getting to know the school and hoped that she would not be condemned before she had had time to show what she could do. She added that until the previous day she had had no idea that any colleague was finding her difficult to work with ("If there were such things as a Nobel Prize for Obtuseness!" thought Eva). Styles went on to say that she found the criticism leveled against her, that she was not responding to parents' concerns, to be quite unfounded, and that she had always been available to hear the concerns of parents. "Liar!" volunteered a voice in the row immediately behind Eva. "She has been ignoring all emails from the Parents' Association for weeks!"
Styles sat down, and a handkerchief was seen dabbing decorously eyes behind her glasses. Eva thought silently of at least one colleague who had left Barbara Styles' office in tears of humiliation in the course of the last few months. She knew that what goes around comes around, but she hadn't realized it would come around as fast as this. The generally elliptical orbit of karma at Ransom's appeared to have become circular overnight. Eva closed her eyes and pictured herself on Charles Bridge in Prague first thing on a summer morning. Soon, very soon, she would be there, and this would seem like a mirage.
"Do I detect the smell of burning hubris?" Harry Hollingsworth volunteered from the seat next to Eva. Not for the first time, Eva decided that ignorance was not so much the absence of knowledge as the presumption of it. The significance of the occasion lay not only in what was said, but equally or even more so in what was not being said. At no stage in the course of that afternoon did any member of the Team make any reference to the best interests of the students, or the school as a whole.
Eva found herself wondering what could suddenly induce people like the Bursar and the Director of Studies, who appeared to define themselves in terms of power, status and titles, suddenly to make so free with threats of resignation. The answer seemed clear: the Senior Management Team were under pressure themselves, and were being threatened with dismissal by the Board of Governors, or at least with the dissolution of their committee as a decision making institution. This was a face saving, damage containment exercise, she decided. They seemed to be unaware that they had brought this crisis on themselves.
She wondered what had happened to her in the last couple of years. Only a few months ago, these extraordinary events would have had her upset, anxious, furious and outraged. It was difficult to tell whether she had crossed an invisible line, or whether they had, but what she was witnessing here made it impossible for her to sustain any form of personal engagement with what she could now only look on as a circus. These people were out of control. She had realized a while ago that they were beyond reason and persuasion. She now believed them to be beyond rescue. Somewhere along the line she had discovered that she floated a lot better when she stopped struggling, and the flailing hands of her once drowning arms had now set themselves into a pleasantly stiff middle finger.
That had only been two days ago. This, now, was that blissful moment of good coffee on the first day of a well earned holiday in her special city. The end of a school year always felt like an interminable childbirth that seemed to go on for two or three weeks, growing more intense and exhausting with every hour. This one had, in one respect, been worse than most. Then, suddenly, it was over. The nightmare was past (until September anyway). She was delivered. The square rumbled and bustled in the golden light of morning. Every place has its own special quality of light, and Prague's summer light was golden, its winter light silver, as befitted a royal imperial city.
She could have picked a much quieter, more beautiful place in Prague than Republic Square, and yet it felt right to be here. Eva's eyes traveled to the Powder Tower to her right, the beginning of the Royal Mile that led up to the Castle. She did not know why, but this was where she liked to start her walks through Prague these days. For years she had taken the metro to Mustek station at the bottom of Wenceslas Square, out of habit more than intention, and walked through to the Old Town Square from there, but nowadays it was as if her feet kept drawing her back to this other route, to the true beginning. The Powder Tower, its golden stone black with pollution, resembled in shape that other imposing tower that marked the entrance to the Charles Bridge, where her walk would almost certainly take her today. The Powder Tower was her portal into Prague. It was her way of saying "I am here: show me." She drank her second coffee and counted the angels on the Tower.
Having paid the waitress, she approached the tower and walked through. She wondered why there were actually two gateways into the street beyond. One led through the Tower itself, the other was immediately to the right, adjoining one side of the Municipal House. There was the royal portal of the Tower, perhaps originally intended for vehicles, Eva mused, and another for pedestrians, giving the traveler the choice of either. Or perhaps the point was to be both riding a vehicle and to be a pedestrian at the same time? To be both stationary and moving, leading both an inner and an outer life? In this case the portal could be seen less as a way into the sacred and out of the profane, and more as a way of joining the two in a new way. They were not mutually exclusive, but complementary. She remembered how the Tarot card symbol of the Tower had had a very different meaning when she had given readings years ago; her deck, long ago discarded, had shown a picture of a Tower being struck by lightning and a figure falling from the top to the ground. It was a symbol of precipitate, often unforeseen and far reaching upheaval.
The night before, lying in her single hotel room in the Old Town, Eva had been hovering softly above the horizon of sleep when she had become aware of an invisible, dark, troubled presence in the room, a black moving shadow trying to reach her. Eva had had experiences like this many years earlier, when she had regularly read the Tarot cards for people. Then she had not known what to do with the rather terrifying visions she sometimes had, and had simply given up the practices that seemed to invite them. But, lying in her hotel room the night before, she had silently affirmed to this being, whoever or whatever it was, her identity as a servant of good, and the presence had left her. Somewhere along the road between those earlier days and now she had learned how not to be a slave to fear.
A few days later, Eva bought a book on alchemy. Included in its many anecdotes was a ghost story about the very street in which her hotel had been. It was about a barber who had abandoned his wife and daughters some centuries ago out of his obsession with becoming an alchemist. Without the head of the family to provide for them, his family had quickly been reduced to destitution. His wife had committed suicide: his daughters had been compelled to go and work in a brothel. It is said, so the story goes, that the ghost of the barber still haunts the streets near where he once lived in the Old Town, perhaps looking for a way to return to his former modest living and make up for the neglect of his worldly responsibilities. In the thick of her duties at school, and bombarded by its spiraling lunacies, Eva was often tempted to abandon her working life. This gateway to the Old Town seemed to be telling her that she did not have to, even that it would be unwise to do so. A slower, more modest, earthbound pedestrian pace allowed her and other travelers like her to absorb more of the depths of the place, its signs and symbols, rather than be swept away by its grace and beauty and miss their message.
It had struck Eva that the tower was not placed at right angles either to the street in front of it, or to the streets that lay behind it. It did not merely open up the way for a predetermined route that was already prepared. On the other side of the tower the traveler was immediately presented with a choice of different destinations, and different ways to arrive at the same destination. Familiar with the Tower from many previous walks, Eva knew that all these various routes, even the ones that appeared to be diversions, eventually wound back to where she wanted to go. She felt that she was being invited to make her own way. She could take the first turning to the right to the Paris Hotel, or she could veer slightly to the left and go along Celetna Street, which led straight to the Old Town Square. She walked through the arcade down the left hand side of the road leading to Celetna Street and stood still for a few moments to breath in the atmosphere on this side of the Tower. Only a few steps from Republic Square, she might have been in a different city. This made her stop and look around her. Having decided to go down Celetna street, she was immediately faced with yet another choice: she could either continue straight along Celetna, or take another left turn, which she now knew would eventually take her back on to the main shopping street, a little way along from where she had just had her coffee. It was as if the heart of the city wanted to make sure that you really wanted to be there, and tested your intentions. Free will was built into the architecture. Standing on the corner and facing down Celetna Street along her planned route, her eyes wandered upwards, for the first time, to a statue she had never noticed before. On a corner building, inside a golden cage, was the statue of a Black Madonna and child. Taking her guidebook out of her handbag, she read that this was a statue of the Black Mother of God. She couldn't understand how she had been walking past it year after year and never noticed it before. On the ground floor of the corner building there was a bookshop named after the statue. She had been going there for years to buy posters and postcards of Prague and had never noticed its name before either. Only a few steps further on there was another bookshop on the same side of the street. She had never been inside before. She went in now.
Not long after the dismissal of her ghost the night before, Eva, still hovering on the edge of sleep, had had a vision of a serpentine creature uncoiling itself in and around her body. Once she had addressed her fear, as with the previous, ghostly presence, the serpentine creature (it seemed to have many heads) disappeared from view, but its presence remained, quiet and not at all menacing, as she sank into sleep, although it was then followed by some visions of strange creatures of descents and depths, which Eva nevertheless, by now too tired to get excited all over again, decided to ignore.
Armstrong-Cripps, the Bursar of Ransom's, a pragmatist to his bone marrow, to express his attributes charitably, was fond of quoting the former Kanzler of Germany, Helmut Schmidt, who had allegedly asserted: "People with visions should go to the doctor." This was a viewpoint that went some way towards explaining the fate of Adele Branston, the visionary and newly ousted Head of Ransom's senior school, at the hands of her illustrious colleagues of the Senior Management Team. A belief in bringing out the best in people can prove fatal when their best is a conspicuous talent for sticking knives in each other's backs. On the other hand, those at Ransom's who adhered to its Christian principles may at some stage have read, thought Eva to herself, as she emerged from the esoteric bookshop in Celetna Street, the verse from the Book of Proverbs that now sprang to her mind: "Without vision the people perish." People certainly seemed to be perishing at Ransom's, Eva thought to herself wryly.
She looked down at her purchases from the bookstore: a large book on Esoteric Prague, a book about the alchemist Simon Bakalar, and another about the life of John Dee, the Elizabethan alchemist.
"Hurray for the inner life!" she thought to herself with a smile and set off at a brisk pace for the Old Town Square to start reading.
聚合中文网 阅读好时光 www.juhezwn.com
小提示:漏章、缺章、错字过多试试导航栏右上角的源