I mean, something like that, a silly, unimportant coincidence, shouldn't upset you in this way, It didn't upset me, I just didn't sleep very much, I had a bad night, You probably had a bad night because you were upset. The mathematics teacher felt Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's shoulder tense beneath his hand, as if his whole body, from head to toe, had suddenly grown hard, and the shock was so great, the impression so strong, that it forced him to withdraw his hand. He did so as slowly as he could, trying not to show that he knew he had been rejected, but the unusual hardness in Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's eyes left no room for doubt, the pacific, docile, submissive history teacher whom he usually treated with friendly but superior benevolence is a different person right now. Perplexed, as if he had been set down in front of a game whose rules he did not know, he said, Right, I'll see you later, then, I won't be having lunch at school today. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's only reply was to bow his head and go off to his class.
...
CONTRARY TO THE ERRONEOUS STATEMENT MADE A FEW lines back, which, however, we neglected to correct at the time, since this story is at least one step above a mere school exercise, the man had not changed, he was the same man. The sudden shift in mood observed in Tertuliano Maximo Afonso and which had so shaken the mathematics teacher was nothing but a simple somatic manifestation of a psychopathological state known as the wrath of the meek. Making a brief diversion from the central theme, we might be able to explain ourselves better if we were to refer to the old classification system, albeit somewhat discredited by modern advances in science, that divided the human temperament into four main types, namely, the melancholic, produced by black bile, the phlegmatic, produced, obviously, by phlegm, the sanguine, related no less obviously to the blood, and finally, the choleric, which was the consequence of white bile. As you can see, in this quaternary and primarily symmetrical division of the humors, there was no place for the community of the meek. Nevertheless, History, which is not always wrong, assures us that they already existed in those far-off times, indeed existed in great numbers, just as the Now, a chapter of History al ways waiting to be written, tells us that they still exist, that they exist in even greater numbers. The explanation of this anomaly, which, if we accept it, would serve as a way of understanding the dark shadows of Antiquity as well as the festive illuminations of the Now, may be found in the fact that when the clinical picture described above was defined and established, another humor had been forgotten. We are referring to the tear. It is surprising, not to say philosophically scandalous, that something so visible, so commonplace and abundant as tears have always been should have gone unnoticed by the venerable sages of Antiquity and received so little consideration from the no less wise, although far less venerable, sages of the Now. You will ask what this long digression has to do with the wrath of the meek, especially bearing in mind that Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, who gave such flagrant expression to it, has not yet been observed to cry. The statement we have just made regarding the absence of the tear from the humoral theory of medicine does not mean that the meek, who are naturally more sensitive and therefore more prone to that liquid manifestation of the emotions, spend all day, handkerchief in hand, blowing their nose or dabbing constantly at tear-reddened eyes. It does mean that, inside, a person, be they male or female, could well be tearing themselves to pieces as a result of loneliness, neglect, shyness, what the dictionaries define as an affective state triggered by social situations and which has volitive, postural, and neurovegetative effects, and yet, sometimes, all it takes is a simple word, a mere nothing, a well-intentioned but overprotective gesture, like the gesture made, quite unwittingly, by the mathematics teacher, for the pacific, docile, submissive person suddenly to vanish and be replaced, to the dismay and incomprehension of those who thought they knew all there was to know about the human soul, by the blind, devastating wrath of the meek. It doesn't usually last very long, but while it does, it inspires real fear. That is why the fervent bedtime prayer of many people is not the ubiquitous Lord's Prayer or the perennial Ave Maria, but Deliver us, O Lord, from evil and, in particular, from the wrath of the meek. The prayer seems to have worked well for Tertuliano Maximo Afonso's students, assuming they have habitual recourse to it, which, bearing in mind their extreme youth, is highly unlikely. Their time will come. It is true that Tertuliano Maximo Afonso entered the room frowning, which caused one student who thought himself more perspicacious than the others to whisper to the colleague beside him, He looks really pissed off, but this wasn't true, what could be seen on the teacher's face were merely the final effects of the storm, the last, scattered gusts of wind, a delayed flurry of rain, with the less flexible trees struggling to raise their heads. The proof of this was that, having called the register in a firm, serene voice, he said, I had intended saving the revision of our last written exercise for next week, but I had yesterday evening free and decided to get ahead of myself. He opened his briefcase, took out the papers, which he placed on the table, saying, I've corrected them all and given marks based on the number of errors made, but I'm not going to do as I usually do, simply hand the work back to you, instead, we're going to spend this class analyzing the mistakes, that is, I want each of you to explain the reasons for your mistakes, and the reasons you give me might even lead me to change your mark. There was a pause, and he added, For the better. The students' laughter blew the last clouds away.
After lunch, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, along with most of his colleagues, took part in a meeting called by the headmaster to analyze the ministry's latest proposals for modernizing teaching practices, one of the many thousands of such proposals that make the lives of unfortunate teachers an arduous journey to Mars through an endless rain of threatening asteroids, some of which, all too often, hit their target. When it was his turn to speak, in a tone of voice that the other teachers found oddly indolent and monotonous, he merely repeated an idea that had long ceased to be a novelty and which always provoked a few benevolent smiles around the table as well as the ill- disguised annoyance of the headmaster, In my view, he said, the only important choice to make, the only serious decision to be taken as regards the teaching of history, is whether we should teach it from back to front or, as I believe, from front to back, everything else, while by no means insignificant, depends on that choice, and everyone knows this to be true, however much they may continue to pretend it is not. The effect of this speech was, as always, to elicit a resigned sigh from the headmaster and an exchange of glances and murmurs from the rest of the staff. The mathematics teacher smiled too, but his smile was one of friendly complicity, as if he were saying, You're quite right, none of this deserves to be taken seriously. The slight nod that Tertuliano Maximo Afonso sent back to him across the table meant that he was grateful for the message, but there was something else accompanying the gesture, something that, for lack of a better term, we will call a subgesture, telling him that the episode in the corridor had not yet been entirely forgotten. In other words, while the main gesture appeared to be openly conciliatory, saying, What's done is done, the subgesture hung back, adding, Yes, but not altogether. Meanwhile, it was the next teacher's turn to speak, and while he, unlike Tertuliano Maximo Afonso, discourses eloquently, pertinently, and proficiently, we will take the opportunity to discuss briefly, all too briefly given the complexity of the subject, the question of subgestures, which is, as far as we know, being raised here for the first time. People say, for example, that Tom, Dick, or Harry, in a particular situation, made this, that, or the other gesture, that's what we say, quite simply, as if the this, that, or the other, a gesture expressing doubt, solidarity, or warning, were all of a piece, doubt always prudent, support always unconditional, warning always disinterested, when the whole truth, if we're really interested, if we're not to content ourselves with only the banner headlines of communication, demands that we pay attention to the multiple scintillations of the subgestures that follow behind a gesture like the cosmic dust in the tail of a comet, because, to use a comparison that can be grasped by all ages and intelligences, these subgestures are like the small print in a contract, difficult to decipher, but nonetheless there. Putting aside the modesty that convention and good taste demand, we would not be the least bit surprised if, in the very near future, the study, identification, and classification of subgestures did not become, individually and as a whole, one of the most fertile branches of the science of semiotics in general. Stranger things have happened. The teacher who was speaking has just finished, the headmaster is about to move on to the next person, when Tertuliano Maximo Afonso shoots his right arm up in the air to indicate that he wishes to speak. The headmaster asked if he wished to comment on the points of view just expressed, adding that, if he did, according to the current rules of the meeting, as he doubtless knew, he must wait until everyone had had their say, but Tertuliano Maximo Afonso replied that, no, it wasn't a comment, nor was it to do with his colleague's very pertinent remarks, and that, yes, he knew and had always respected the rules, both those in current use and those fallen into disuse, all he wanted was to ask permission to be excused from the meeting because he had urgent matters to deal with outside of school. This time there was no subgesture, but there was a subtone, a harmonic, shall we say, which reinforced the incipient theory set out above as to the importance we should give to the many variations in communication, both gestural and oral,
