November 23, 2012--Chapter 15: Give Him A Treatment Boys

Emile Tron was well named—Emile signified his Frenchness; Tron his fearsomeness.  Both essential characteristics for someone attempting to teach introductory French to a class of hormone-thumping, tone-deaf ninth-grade boys.. 

I attended a science high school and the administration decided that all subjects should have science as themes.  These academics thought of themselves as avant-garde educators (to use one of the few French phrases I remember) in attempting to make the curriculum relevant.  And so our English class spent a great deal of time reading Galileo’s notebooks; our art class was substantially devoted to poring over Da Vinci’s engineering doodles; and our French class had as its text a chemistry book that was in wide use in lycées all over France.

This meant that rather than having us focus on day-to-day French, useful things such as “Comment allez vous?” and “Je m’appelle Lloyd,” we were required to read in French about how by doing something to water with electrode one could break it down into its constituent parts—two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. 

All well and good, but there was one significant problem—none of us had as yet studied chemistry in English and thus we didn’t even know for certain what hydrogen was. 

As you might imagine, we stumbled forward slowly.  The class at first was devoted to reading the text out loud, working on our pronunciation—Mr. Tron attempted to teach us not to pronounce the “h” at the beginning of a word or “e’s” at the end; and so hydrogène, was pronounced something like eye-dro-jean. 

Fortunately, Charlie Rosner was in my class and had a sister who was a French major at Brooklyn College, and from her via him I was helped to learn that if a French word ended in a “c” (diagnostic), “r” (distiller), “f” (charbon actif), or “l” (ethanol) I should be sure to pronounce it.  And the best way to remember these seemingly random assortment of letters (what would have been so wrong about pronouncing an end-of-word “t”?) was to use what she called a “mnemonic,” a memory device.  In this case the letters we needed to remember to pronounce were all the consonants in the word “careful.”  So with Charlie’s and Myna’s help I at least knew what to pronounce and what should remain silent. 

But in spite of this—even remembering to leave off final “e’s” and “a’s” and pronouncing “c’s” and “l’s”--my version of French still sounded more Brooklynese than the français of un garçon from Paris.

This and the struggles of my classmates infuriated Monsieur Tron.  He tried as best he could to transform us into Francophones, pacing about the room like a caged tigre (with the “e” not pronounced and the “r” rolled).  He became even more upset when after about two weeks of this mutual frustration, Milty Leshowitz screwed up his courage and, while slumped in his chair to avoid eye contact, croaked, “Monsieur Tron, I think the reason we are having so much trouble with French is because none of us knows anything about chemistry.”  

Mr. Tron wheeled on him and with eyes blazing, pointing at cringing Milty with a finger that looked like a spear, screamed, “Give him a treatment boys!” 

We froze in our seats.  We had seen him frustrated and on edge but never raging.  

Also, none of knew what a treatment was that we were supposed to give Milty. 

“I said give him a treatment boys.  Mais,” he paused, waiting for any glimmer of understanding, “parce que none of you seem to know what I mean, let me demonstrate.”  And with that he raced down the aisle to the back of the room where poor Milty, in an attempt to hide from Mr. Tron’s fury, had slid entirely under his desk. 

Glowering at the quivering Milty, Monsieur Tron bent to yank him up by his shirt collar and, when he had Milty half extracted from his hiding place, punched him in his caved-in chest.  

Clearly pleased with himself, our professeur straightened himself and, with a daemonic smile, instructed us, “This is what I mean by a treatment.  Now, boys, give him a treatment!” 

Which we, terrorized, proceeded to do, at first tentatively but, with Mr. Tron inciting us, much more forcefully, until the three of us closest to Milty were pummeling him with a vengeance. 

Giving treatments soon became a classroom routine, as familiar as the Oral-Aural exercises.  But in spite of these, with the exception of Aaron Bernard who grew up in France, none of us made any discernable progress in reading; understanding what we were reading (the periodic table was a special torture); pronunciation (in spite of Myrna’s tutoring); or dictée, where Mr. Tron read to us at a mile-a-minute clip, with him displaying pride in his proficiency in rolling “r’s,” while we wrote down in a frenzy what we thought he was dictating.  

But pronouncing even the simplest words was my particular nemesis, which guaranteed that I would get weekly treatments.  So many in fact that I stopped wearing short sleeve shirts at home for fear that my mother would see my bruises, none of which I could explain without turning my life into even more of a nightmare as she would inevitably insist on bringing it to the attention of the principal who, I knew, would stand by Mr. Tron, and as a result I would be the one to suffer the consequences. 

* * *

In addition to the futile effort to make learning relevant to students who were

more interested in after school activities and the life of the streets, as another strategy to engage us, there was homeroom—that once-a-day time when a group of us would meet with a teacher who would begin by taking attendance and rushing a list of absentees down to the principal’s office so he could sic truant officers on the missing and drag them back to school.  After that we would proceed to something our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Schwartz, called “Contemporary Issues.”  This at first was devoted to current events—what was happening in the city and around the world--but it was in fact an “opportunity” for us to talk about anything “that was on our minds.”   

Ours was a high school for boys and it was assumed that in the benevolent and non-threatening presence of the relatively youthful Mrs. Schwartz we would be willing to talk about girls and dating and maybe even about our emerging experiences with . . . “physical love.” 

No chance of that.  We did not trust anyone associated with that school, even Mrs. Schwartz, and certainly not about subjects we wanted to keep private or talked about or lied about among ourselves. 

Thankfully, Joey Lombardy could be counted on to fill much of those daily fifty-minute sessions.  “I was thinking, Mrs. Schwartz,” he wondered, pretending to care, “what if the Russians really decided to attack us.  Don’t you think they would bomb Washington because that’s where the president is?” 

“I don’t know about that, Joey,” she said, taking him seriously and empathetically wanting to allay his concerns, “you know New York not only has Times Square and Wall Street but then there’s the Brooklyn Navy Yard,” she gestured toward to window, “less than a mile from here.” It was not clear how putting Brooklyn in the bulls-eye was supposed to be assuring. 

“But do you think,” Joey persisted while the rest of us snuck peeks at the clock, wishing it would move faster and release us, “Do you think they have enough a-bombs to do that?  I mean, bomb both New York and Washington?  I think if I was a Russian and had to choose I’d drop a couple on Washington.” 

“That’s an interesting thought, Joey.  What do the rest of you think?”  We were all staring down at our desks, thinking that maybe it would be better to be talking about girls. 

We were hoping Lanny Diamond, who was also good at killing the time, would join in and fill the void.   “I think we should be more worried about the Red Chinese,” he mused, “I don’t think they have the bomb yet but they have billions of people who I once saw in a war movie attacking in human waves.  That was scary.  The American soldiers who were killing them ran out of bullets, but the Reds kept on coming and when they got to the Americans they cut their throats.” 

“I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Lanny.  Or the rest of you,” she noticed how images of cut throats had agitated us, “because how would they get here?  To America, I mean.”  Mrs. Schwartz also taught geography, “They would have to cross the Pacific Ocean coming a long way, at least eight thousand miles, before they got to California.  And then there are still 3,000 miles more before they would reach New York.”  She smiled, feeling satisfied that she had calmed our anxieties, at least about the Chinese. 

“Anyone else have an issue they want to discuss?”  We all ducked so as not to catch her eye.  Undeterred, she tried to take the discussion, such as it was, in a new direction, “Howard, I understand that you may have a new girl friend.  Do you have any issues about this that you want to share? 

Howie Binder did in fact have a new girl friend, maybe, knowing him, even two new girlfriends; but instead of taking up Mrs. Schwartz’s offer to share some issues, he asked, “Can I have the bathroom pass?  I need to go.”  He grabbed it and raced out of the room, leaving the rest of us with still twenty more minutes to endure. 

One of Mrs. Schwartz’s techniques when we stared mutely at our desk tops was to remain silent herself, knowing that would make it feel to us as if time itself had ground to a halt.  Counting on how unendurable this would be, she hoped someone would break down and bring up a real issue about which she had been trained to deal. 

But we too had been trained.  We were good at devising our own techniques to thwart people who had authority over us.  In homeroom this could be as simple as twisting uncomfortably in our seats, shuffling our notebooks and papers, and enduring until the bell would ring and release us.  Mrs. Schwartz, however, was good at waiting us out and it didn’t hurt that she was the only attractive teacher in the school.  So she sat on the edge of her desk, with her legs seductively crossed, sweeping her eyes from Milty to Charlie to Lanny to Aaron to me.  Patiently applying to us the force of time and silence and shapely legs. 

Under this pressure, Aaron finally relented.  We could see his hand inching up to where it locked in a half-raised position.  He had never participated before.  He was shy and we suspected a little self-conscious about the remnants of his French accent. 

In a barely audible voice he said, “I think we should talk about our French class.” 

Mrs. Schwartz hopped off the desk and moved toward the side of the room where Aaron sat.  The rest of us froze in place, holding our collective breathe.  What was he up to?  What kind of trouble would he get us into? 

“You can talk about that, Aaron.  About anything here.  And the rest of you can join in.”  No chance of that.   

“Well, Monsieur Tron,” his pronunciation was of course to die for, “he is a very complicated man.”  We began to breathe again—complicated we could deal with. 

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Schwartz whispered, a technique she employed to encourage Aaron and the rest of us to feel comfortable about joining in.  By bringing a hush of intimacy to the room she implied that this was to be a private conversation that would go no further than the eighteen of us. 

“He is very passionate about the French language,” Aaron continued, “and it is upsetting to him when the boys,” he meant the rest of us, “when the boys make mistakes.  He even gets angry with them.  At times,” he paused and leaned forward in his seat, he too was now whispering, seemingly just to Mrs. Schwartz who had come to stand pressed against his desk, “at times he becomes très angry.”  He paused to gather himself, “Violently angry.”  Blood was now throbbing in my ears. 

“What do you mean Aaron?”  It was as if just the two of them were in the room. 

“He has something he calls the treatment.” 

“The treatment?” 

“Yes, he makes us give each other treatments when we make a mistake, when someone mispronounces a word.” 

“And he . . . ?” 

“He makes us punch each other.  When Milty or anyone makes an error he has the rest of us beat him up.  That is the treatment. 

“And you do . . . ?” 

“Do what?”

“Beat each other up?”

“Yes,” he said, turning toward me.  “Lloyd got a treatment this morning because he failed the dictée.” 

I did not want to be drawn in and leaned back in my chair so I could better study the light fixtures that hung from the ceiling, pretending to be more interested in a burned-out bulb that what Aaron was reporting.  

“Go on, Lloyd,’ Aaron said, now full voiced and insistent, “roll up your sleeve and show Mrs. Schwartz what he did to you.” 

“Yes, please Lloyd, show me.”  She had now come over to where I was.  Still wanting no part of this, I pointed up at the glass globe that wasn’t lit.  “It’s OK, you can show me.”  She put her hand gently on my shoulder.  “Please.”

Aaron had followed her to my desk and stood next to her.  “Do it.  Show Mrs. Schwartz.  We have to do something about this.  We have to stop what he is doing.  He has made us turn against each other.  He is only giving the orders; but we are the ones carrying them out.”

I sat there trembling in fear.  He turned to the rest of the class and addressed them, “You know that I grew up in France but you do not know what my life there was like.  You know that I came to America after the war.  You know that my mother and father are both dead and that I live with my aunt and uncle.”  We knew all of that.  

“But you do not know how my parents came to die.”  He turned away to avoid our stares.  But then continued.  Now in a monotone.  “They were killed.  By the Nazis.  In Auschwitz.”  We could hear him beginning to sob. 

“I was there too.”  

And with that, turning back to face us, he slowly raised the left sleeve of his sweater.  As it rose on his arm, revealing the numbers tattooed there, I rolled up my shirtsleeve to uncover my welts and bruises.