On the 3rd floor (Rm. 322) the situation was more of a mystery.
Mr. Willosong chose to decorate his classroom with enlarged photos of opera
singers, in splendid regal dress, heads lifted, hands extended. Kathleen Battle,
Jessye Norman, Maria Callas, names and people Radix had never heard of. "You
like opera?" Radix asked him once as he came in. "Oh, yes, I do…are you an opera
buff?" Radix regretted he was not; and abruptly Mr. Willosong's face fell flat. It
seemed the opera was his passion; he was always ready to talk about it, but with
seriousness; and only with fellow opera buffs.
More puzzling was the image he presented, if you looked in through the plexiglas
panel, of a teacher very much in control of his charges. No students taking
basketball shots. No one brazenly eating in his room.
Mr. Willosong sat at his desk, a tall, thin black man, with a face so lean the flesh
seemed wrapped like tinfoil on the bone. His head stuck out of a thick turtleneck
sweater, stiff and shiny; and his eyes bulged and glowed like tiny round furnaces
burning and sending heat to the rest of his body.
He spoke in a slow precise manner, in a deep baritone that seemed to shovel and
heft his words. And his students, a class of juniors, mostly girls, seemed pinned to
their seats on the other side of his desk, listening or reading or writing but always
on task.
How, Radix wondered, did he achieve this miracle of classroom management at
John Wayne Cotter? How did this gaunt man with his shiny cheekbones bend
fractious student behavior to his single will?
And he did all this from his chair at his desk, rarely standing up. Not once did
Radix see him walking between the desks, or pacing, or writing on the board. A
man severely apart, like teachers back on his island in the old days; magisterial in
his detachment.
It might have passed off as odd and unusual, a happy circumstance, had not Mr.
Willosong revealed a personal obsession: at this time of year, he told Radix, he
preferred the windows of his classroom closed. Always closed.
It seemed an unusual request, for at times the heating system clanked and made
the room unbearably stuffy, causing students, who liked to keep their stylish
jackets on, to complain.
When one morning Radix opened the windows a few cracks to release the stuffy
air, then forgot to close them before leaving, Mr. Willosong returning for his class
stormed past the desk and shut them with a fierce bang. Radix looked up, startled;
he said he was sorry, he'd forgotten about the windows. Mr. Willosong nodded,
tightlipped. Radix could tell he was displeased, very displeased, as he turned away
to write the objectives of the day's lesson on the board.
Only then did Radix sense something plainly bizarre about Mr. Willosong and this
entire situation: the students' correct behaviour, the far from standard teaching
methods, the eerie stillness, the windows shut tight ̶ all of this happening in a
quiet corner on the third floor, away from the tumultuous operations of the school.
Was any one else in the building aware of the behavior of this gaunt, cold-fearing
man teaching English at John Wayne Cotter?
He raised the question casually one day with Judy Weiner. She wasn't sure which
teacher he meant until Radix used the words "gaunt" and "English Department".
She smiled in recognition, and lowering her voice revealed there was a rumor
about that English teacher. He was in fading health. In fact, he was said to be
dying. Only in his thirties, and already dying. Of Aids, that new, body-shrinking
incurable disease. At least this was what they were saying, she couldn't be sure.
Radix felt mortified; he was only know finding out what everybody apparently
knew; and hearing about it through furtive whispering.
As for his students, had they sensed something wrong with their teacher ̶ not
yet a cadaver, sitting upright with a cold frightening will? Were they sworn to some
secret student pact that helped him carry on, their heads bowed, obedient to his
every wish, his every insistent breath?
Primed with this information he started peering in with new interest at Mr.
Willosong. The man sitting grim-willed at his desk now looked more ghoulish than
"gaunt"; truly like a dying man who felt tidal waters sweeping him towards the
precipice. A rock of defiance, though, with each passing day; his slow strange well-
bred manner saying to the cold air frosting up his windows, Not quite ready, not
finished yet.
(from "Ah Mikhail, O Fidel!", a novel by N.D.Williams, 2001)
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 