works by william pham, 2005-present
"Guinevere", Chapter 2: The Japanese Choir from Sapporo Middle School, the Girl from Ipanema
There was something attractive to me in the way a classroom smelled on the first day of regular instruction. The dust of chalk, the freshly-sharpened pencils with their perfectly rounded erasers, textbooks unopened for three months: these things conjured in my mind the faint imprint of fond memories. The students filed in before and after the ringing of the bell, throwing down their backpacks and bags, erupting into the cacophony of relating shared memories and new experiences. New cell phones, new clothes, new boyfriends and new girlfriends and sometimes new scars, but always new faces.
I turned my back to write my name on the chalkboard as the students seated themselves.
Mr. Nguyen
pronounced "new-win"
Or just call me sir
"Excuse me, uh, sir."
"What?" I asked without turning around.
"There are some people here. They, uh, say they're here to sing."
There were nineteen of them in all, filtering in through the doorway to fill the classroom. Ten Japanese boys, and nine Japanese girls, dressed in traditional black school uniforms: the boys in black pants and white dress shirts under black jackets, the girls in white stockings and long black skirts and white blouses under black jackets. They bowed all at once, an impressive force for the concept of formality. They couldn't've been older than thirteen or so, and I thought of the Children's Crusade. I imagined children with dirty faces, dressed in rags and wielding swords, marching through sand-covered wastelands; I imagined those same children as corpses on those same sand-covered wastelands, bloodied and mutilated, scarred and blasted. And in however many years had passed, what has changed? Nothing, really. Nothing at all – in nations across the world, how many children were waging war? No, not waging war, but playacting the part of the soldier.
How valuable could the sum of human knowledge be if so many never learned from it? All the world could be the Library of Alexandria, razed to the ground and everything lost, and we'd be exactly where we were now.
And then the nineteen Japanese children began to sing in clear tones and crystal notes, drowning out my thoughts with their quietly powerful voices. I knew the melody from somewhere, some time – and as if to answer me, the children formed the wordless music into unfamiliar words:
Olha que coisa mais linda
Mais cheia de graça. É ela menina
Que vem e que passa
Num doce balanço a caminho do mar
Moça do corpo dourado
Do sol de Ipanema, o seu balançado
É mais que um poema
É a coisa mais linda que eu já vi passar
Ah, por que estou tão sozinho
Ah, por que tudo é tão triste?
Ah, a beleza que existe
A beleza que não é só minha
Que também passa sozinha
Mas, se ela soubesse
Que quando ela passa o mundo inteirinho
Se enche de graça e fica mais lindo
Por causa do amor
There was no mistaking it; this was "The Girl from Ipanema", but these weren't the English lyrics I was used to hearing. The Japanese children's accentuation, pronunciation were both pitch-perfect as far as I could tell – though admittedly my knowledge of foreign languages spanned just about the distance from my left eye to my right. It wasn't Italian, and I didn't think it was Spanish either. The foreign words hung in the air for some time as they hummed the melody. Then they began to build upon it in turns, some singing softly as others hummed, then louder, and they launched into an operatic rendition of the English lyrics that truly thundered:
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes
Each one she passes goes "aah"
When she walks she's like a samba
That swings so cool and sways so gently
That when she passes
Each one she passes goes "aah"
Oh, but I watch her so sadly
How can I tell her I love her?
Yes, I would give my heart gladly
But each day when she walks to the sea
She looks straight ahead not at me
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes I smile
But she doesn't see
The last word was more of a crash than anything else, though a beautiful crash, like the Titanic tipping its hat to the iceberg as the orchestra played until the end. Their singing was, again, perfect. And as abruptly as the Japanese children had begun to sing they stopped, bowed to my students, turned to face me, and bowed again, all in perfect synchronization – like the inner mechanisms of a Swiss clock.
A boy and girl stepped forward and said to me: "We are the Japanese Choir from Sapporo Middle School. Thank you for allowing us to sing for you."
"No, thank you," I replied, bowing my head slightly. I wasn't quite sure what else to do, but they accepted my sparse words and sparser gesture and filed out of the classroom.
All in all, that qualified as one of the last things I expected to happen on the first day of the term.
I looked at my students. A few were asleep, somehow, but the others seemed to be in a daze. I clapped my hands together.
"So, how was everyone's summer?"
---
"What did you think of the choir?" J. asked. We were holding coffee cups; he was standing, and I was sitting on a cheap plastic chair in the English department's staff room. Gray cupboards, gray table, gray counters, gray walls and gray carpet. It was a very dour setting. Tim Burton would have approved. The chair, of course, was also gray.
"It was a surprise, that's for sure. What language was that, at first?"
"Oh, so they did the Portuguese bit for everyone? Damn," he said, grinning. He drank some of his coffee and went on. "And here I was thinking I was getting the special treatment. What a grand welcome that would've made, getting two languages instead of one. Alas, I was not singular in my reception of the better version." He looked at me. I looked back at him somewhat incredulously.
"No pity for the poor History teacher? I am wounded. Grievously." Theatrically he clutched at his heart and swayed then staggered one step, and two. But that was the limit; the room was not intended to accommodate track and field – just a handful of teachers standing or sitting around a table and drinking coffee.
"Cut it out," I said, but I couldn't help but chuckle. Neither I nor the room was used to humor; the other English teachers tended to be bitter, old, and tired. "So. What was that all about, anyway?"
"I think they're on a field trip."
"A field trip?" He nodded. "To here?" He nodded again. "This town?" And he nodded a third time. "Why would anyone want to come here for a field trip?" I couldn't see a legitimate reason to go to this town, this town of a couple hundred thousand or so people, this town where despite the presence of so many living, breathing people, nothing ever seemed to happen. Except for the usual: buildings being built, buildings being destroyed, people going to work and school or not going to work or school. It was all the same. I sipped at my coffee.
"Likely to study the indigenous life forms." He appropriated a monotone voice, imitated holding a microphone, and pointed his styrofoam coffee cup at me: "And here we have the twenty-something English teacher, listless and hopped up on caffeine as if it were black tar heroin. The life span of the twenty-something English teacher is usually drawn unexpectedly short by stress due to his hobbies, which often include wrestling with crocodiles and trying to explain morality via F. Scott Fitzgerald to fifteen-year-olds..."
I shook my head in bemusement. "Quit it. As humorously enacted as that was, it was also frighteningly accurate."
J. switched to a mock British accent: "Dear God, don't tell me you're on the brink of suicide!" "Not quite. I was referring to the 'listless' part," I said. "I'm not here because I directly want to be here. I'm here because there's nowhere else to be."
J. suddenly walked up to me and put his hand on my shoulder.
"Don't worry, Sender. Something's going to happen." He spoke with such finality, such self-assurance, that I couldn't exactly argue with him.
And, well, he was right about me in some ways, and he was definitely right about that. Something did happen.
copyright (c) 2005 by william pham