Christophe’s Story: Opening Pages
“You’ll be fine!” Papa said.
Christophe looked through the gates at his new school. His legs didn’t want to move.
“You remember which way you have to go?”
“Yes, Papa!”
“Smile! You look as if you have eaten bad meat!”
Christophe tried to smile.
“Good! Now off you go! Miss Finch is waiting for you!”
Forcing himself to turn away from Papa, Christophe walked across the deserted playground. He was eight years old, and he hadn’t been to school for two years.
***
He entered the classroom. All the children turned and stared and the teacher stopped talking. She smiled at Christophe and said, “There you are!”
Christophe nodded politely. His cheeks felt as though they were burning.
“This is Christophe!” Miss Finch told the class. “He has come from a country in Africa called Rwanda, and he is joining our class. Say ‘good morning, Christophe!’“
“Good morning, Christophe!” the children chanted.
“Sit there, next to Greg!”
Miss Finch pointed at an empty place.
The chair scraped over the floor as Christophe pulled it towards him. Nobody spoke. He felt as if every one was looking at him.
Miss Finch set the children some work to do, then she came to talk to Christophe. She had eyes as blue as the sky, long silky hair the colour of corn, and pale pink skin. When she smiled, he thought that the sun had risen.
“You speak lots of languages, don’t you!” she said. “Who taught you to speak English?”
“My Papa did. He can speak French and English. And Kinyarwanda.”
“He’s a clever man! What kind of work does he do?”
“He’s a doctor, but he doesn’t work now.”
“Oh!” said Miss Finch. She gave a little cough. Placing an open book on the table before him, she said: “You haven’t been to school for a long time, have you? Don’t worry, you’ll soon catch up! Let’s see what you can tell me about this story!”
A story? In a book? But stories shouldn’t be written down! That’s what Babi said!
Christophe felt sick. He stared at the black squiggly patterns of the ink on the white page. Didn’t his teacher know about stories? A storm began to blow up inside him.
“I don’t like reading!” he said.
“Don’t you?” Miss Finch said softly. “I’ll read it to you. Watch my finger. I’ll point at each of the words as I say it!”
The teacher’s pink fingertip slid over the page; the words dropped from her red lips and fell like grains of sand to the ground. He listened, he watched and he waited, but nothing happened. It wasn’t like the stories that Babi told. When Babi told stories Christophe saw pictures in the sky, but here in the classroom there were no pictures, only a heap of words that dropped from the teacher’s mouth and piled up on the floor. Babi was right: stories shouldn’t be written down!
“It will be great when you can read it for yourself!” said Miss Finch.
Why would it be great? Christophe couldn’t understand what she meant.
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