I’d been urged to attempt the Cambridge Entrance exam by my maths teacher, as I had, at 18, an aptitude with numbers. However, in order to be considered for a place at Cambridge I had to obtain a good ‘O’ level result in a foreign language.
I was, and still am one of those unfortunate English people whose fear of being ridiculed has made us virtually unable to speak in a foreign tongue, beyond stammering a few apologetic words to the effect that “Je ne parle pas…”
So it was that a friend of my mother’s recommended a tutor to “cram” me through French ‘O’ level.
Her name was Madame Mendelssohn, and she was located in a small flat in the religious Jewish area of Golders Green, a few minutes’ walk from my home.
Although I too am Jewish by birth, I had not been brought up with any religious or cultural Jewish identity. I felt much more English than Jewish.
When the day of first lesson came, I was greeted at the door by a slight, sharp-featured woman. She was carrying on her hip a fair-haired little boy of about three years old.
The woman had (as I also have) the heavy lids and large large sharp nose typical of Eastern European Jews. She had a small mouth with a slightly protruding lower lip, which gave her a permanent look of disdain. She was probably in her early twenties, but appeared older to me.
She wore a wig, which, I have since learned, is obligatory for married religious Jews, who are not allowed to show their natural hair to anyone but their husbands. The wig was sandy-hued and ill-matched her thin black eyebrows. She wore a plain white blouse with a beige tartan skirt that came down to her knees. I noticed she was in her stockinged feet.
“Bonjour, Joseph”, she said curtly, eying me quickly and intently, as if to judge whether it was safe to let me in. “Bonjour Madame Mendelssohn” I muttered in reply, but she had already turned her back and was walking swiftly into the dining room, carrying the little boy.
She motioned for me to sit at down at the lace-covered dining table, which was adorned with two large silver candlesticks with fresh white candles.
I showed her the textbook I had brought. She stood, still with the child on her hip, and flicked through it quickly with one hand, with no visible reaction, while I explained when my exam due to take place, how much French I had studied up till then, and so on.
She put the boy down a spoke to him in French: “Bennie, Maman doit enseigner maintenant, aller à la chambre à coucher et joue!” She kissed him on the top of his head, holding her lips to him for a full second, then half patted, half smacked his bottom, propelling him towards the door as she turned to fix me with a stare.
“Now, Joseph, you have only a few weeks to study. You must work hard, and practice each day, not just before each lesson. You won’t let me down, you will pass your exam, YES?”
“I’ll try,” I said, smiling. She didn’t seem satisfied with my reply, and returned to the book.
The lesson began immediately in French, with Mme Mendelssohn sitting next to me at the dining table asking me a few simple questions from the textbook, which I answered slowly in what even I could tell were appalling English accents, and with every possible error of case, gender and tense.
“Regardez ma bouche”, she said, putting a finger to her lower lip.
“Say ‘ee'”.
“ee”.
“Now “oo”.
“oo”.
“Now make your mouth into this shape where you will say “oo”, but inside your lips, say “ee”. “tu t’appele Joseph” Her lips held my gaze.
“too t’appele Joseph”, I said, still regarding her lips.
Bennie, the boy appeared at the doorway and edged in slowly and cautiously. “Maman, j’ai fini jouer!”
“Joseph, read this page”, she told me, rising to deal with Bennie. As I half-read the page, I saw her bending, whispering rapidly and close to Bennie’s face. Then she gave him a quick series of kisses and pats on his face. The boy stood for a moment then walked out slowly, his head low, shoulders high around his ears.
As the lesson continued, she began to fidget with her pencil in exasperation at my attempts at declension, and Bennie’s further interruptions, till she finally shut the book with a slam.
“I go!” She said, and looked at me, waiting. Confused for a moment, I eventually responded, “Je vais”.
“You will go!”
“Vous irai.”
“Bien! She has gone!”
“Elle a alle?”
“NON! Elle..EST..alle. She has gone!”
“Elle est alle”.
“If you you want to pass the examination you must know these all per-fect-ly. QU’EST CE QUE TU VEUX?” The question was addressed to Bennie, who had tiptoed back into the room and now stood peeping at us from the above the other side of the table.
She grabbed the boy, stood him on the dining table and smacked him smartly on the bottom three times. He looked shocked, but didn’t cry. She picked him up by his arms, holding them flat against his body, and marched out with him. I heard a door slam.
I waited, listening. After a few minutes, I needed to use the toilet. I didn’t venture to call her to ask where it was, as I assumed she was trying to get Bennie to sleep. I stood in the hallway trying to guess which was the toilet when she suddenly emerged from one of the rooms, buttoning her blouse.
I felt that she might have thought I had got up to snoop around.
Why was she buttoning her blouse, I wondered, and with a small sudden thrill imagined that she has given the boy a taste of her breast to pacify him.
“If you’re looking for the toilet, it’s in there.”
I re-entered the dining room and sat back down next to her.
“Maybe I should smack you as well, you might learn your tenses. What do you think? Do you think I should smack your bottom?” She looked at me with a fleeting smile, and appeared to be contemplating the idea.
“Alors. Reflexive verbs.” She said finally, seeming to have come to some private decision, and the lesson resumed.
Soon the stream of verbs, cases, genders and plurals started to overwhelm me, but she remained relentless. I was sure I was making more mistakes than ever, but every so often, she would interject with a “Bien!” which encouraged me. I heard the pencil roll off the table on to the floor.
“Prenez le crayon.” I reached down, wondering why she couldn’t pick her own pencil up. My head came close to her lap as I groped for the pencil, which I could see lying under the table. As my fingers found it, her foot moved onto my hand. I flinched, banging my head on the underside of the table. I heard her giggle. I saw her toes grab the pencil, through her stockings. She shuffled her skirt up to her thighs, and bent and lifted her leg so that her foot was above the seat of the chair, and I caught a glimpse of the flesh above her stockings. She plucked the pencil from her toes and replaced it on the table, and readjusted her skirt.
“Verbes Réfléchis. Levez-vous.” She gestured for me to stand. I stood up. The pencil rolled off the table again, but she ignored it.
“Asseyez-vous.” I sat down.
“Que faites-vous?”
“Je… m’assieds.”
“Levez-vous. Que faites-vous?”
“Je me leve”.
“Asseyez-vous. Que faites-vous? Levez-vous. Que faites-vous?” She spoke faster and faster as I stood and sat, stood and sat. I found it slightly absurd, yet went along with the game.
“Couchez-vous. Que faites-vous? Clumsily, I lay down on the parquet floor beside the table.
“Levez-vous. Que faites-vous?” Then:
“Déshabillez-vous. Que faites-vous?”. I started to laugh, but she didn’t even smile.
“Ne comprenez-vous pas? Déshabillez-vous. Que faites-vous?”. I found to my confusion, that I started to obey, and began undressing. “Je me déshabille.” I said, too numb to notice that I had neglected to remove one sock.
“Viens.” I was led to a nearby settee. She sat down and pulled me quickly down by my arm till I was bent over her sideways. I could feel her skirt against my belly.
“I go!”
“Je vais”, I mumbled into a cushion.
“You will go!”
“Vous irai.”
“She has gone!”
“Elle a alle. No, no..”
“ELLE..EST..ALLE.” Each word was punctuated by a stabbing pain in my bottom. I had no idea what she was doing. But whatever it was, it was too much for me. “Please stop..” I began, but a fresh stab stopped me. I twisted my head round to see that she was holding one of the candles from the dining table like a dagger. “Please stop..”. I began to moan in an impossible blend of pleasure, sense of futility and pain…
She kept on remorselessly until she judged that I’d lost all capacity to resist. I no longer twitched at the repeated thrusts with the candle.
Finally she said, “She has gone.”
“Elle est alle”, I repeated for the twentieth time.
“BIEN ENFIN! Now lie on your back.” I didn’t even notice that she was now speaking to me in English.
I turned gingerly on the settee, and waited, staring at the ceiling. The sun from the window was in my eyes. I could hear her unzipping her dress and stepping lightly out of it. She straddled me, facing my feet.
She sat low over my face, pushing the sharp line of my nose so hard on to her pelvic bone that I felt that it would break. She began to make small wriggling movements.
The sun flicked in and out of my eyes as she moved. As I surrendered to the feel of her buttocks around my face, the light, delicate smell from her knickers, the rustling sounds of her little movements and the flickering of the sunlight, my penis, which had been small with fear till then, began to stiffen and I started to feel a pure delight.
But then she stopped suddenly and exclaimed:
“Mais, tu n’est pas circoncit!”
She scrambled off me hastiliy as though she had just realised she had been mistaking me for someone else.
She stood a little distance from me, her arms folded. “Est-ce que tu est Juif?” She demanded.
“Oui, mais…” My command of French was not enough to explain that although Jewish by birth, I had not been circumcised, the discovery of which seemed to be the cause of her sudden change.
She told me to dress and that the lesson was over.
As I left, she reminded me to make sure I had learned all the irregular verbs we had practiced.
I continued with her over the next weeks. The lessons were formal, brisk and thorough, and she continued to drum the lessons in with her hypnotic and commanding voice, as though the first day had gone quite normally.
Needless to say, I passed my ‘O’ level.