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The hub building, too, was transformed. What had yesterday been a half-empty
nursery school was now a purposeful seat of learning. Halfway through the
morning Ana was dragged out of the office to help Teresa with her fifteen
eleventh and twelfth graders, who were finding it difficult to settle back
into the classroom after two days of freedom.
"I just need another adult today," Teresa told her as they hurried around the
circular hallway. "You don't need to do anything they'll settle down if you
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just go and stand next to them while I'm trying to teach."
Not a terribly flattering judgment of Ana's abilities, perhaps, but it was
true that the repressive presence of an adult any adult goes far to smooth
down youthful high spirits. Ana dutifully stood, and drifted, and saw the
classroom gradually cool off from the near-boil. By lunchtime, concentration
had been achieved.
The kids exploded out the door, and Teresa dropped down into her chair with
her head thrown back. Ana noticed idly that despite Carla's version of the
community regulations that specified no jewelry, this woman too (whom Ana
would have classified as an ardent follower of rules) was wearing a necklace,
in her case a delicate gold chain. Teresa sat forward and the chain
disappeared under her collar. Perhaps the rule meant only no necklaces on top
of clothing?
"It is always so difficult for them to focus when they have been away,"
Teresa said. "I've come to dread field trips."
"Sitting in a bus for all those hours," Ana said. "Maybe they need some
'sweat meditation' when they get in."
Teresa looked surprised, then thoughtful. "You could be right. Perhaps I'll
mention it to Steven."
"Do you have any idea when he'll be back?"
"It was supposed to be tomorrow, but we heard this morning it will be three
or four days. Well, let us go and have some lunch."
Three or four days. Ana was seized by an abrupt spasm of boredom at the
thought of it, because it would then be three or four more days while the
great man settled in and found the time to exchange a few words with the
newcomer, plus two or three more before the community got back into its normal
functioning.
She told Teresa she had things to do, and excused herself from lunch, going
instead to her room to change into her oldest clothes. She spotted the silver
moon that she had bought in Sedona and obediently removed the night before,
and after a moment she picked it up and dropped it over her head, tucking it
under her shirt. She felt obscurely comforted by the small weight, and by the
minor rebellion against the rules.
Rocinante's cupboards provided some stale bread and a piece of cheese for
lunch, and soon Ana was elbow-deep in the bus's engine, red-faced and
muttering, with the ancient, much-taped-together repair manual propped open at
the heater section. Forty minutes into it she heard footsteps approach and
stop behind her; she looked around and saw Dulcie's serious and
disconcertingly familiar face.
"Hello, Dulcie. I wondered where you'd gotten to. I think you must be my good
luck, because I just this minute found what's wrong with Rocinante's heater.
You see this little switch? Well, you can't tell it's a switch, but the book
says it is, and says it's supposed to flip on to let the heat in, and it
isn't. You probably shouldn't touch it," she said, drawing it back slightly
from the child's inquiring finger. "It's really filthy. So am I, in fact.
How've you been? How's the rug coming along?"
"Can you fix it?"
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"What, the rug? Oh, you mean the switch. I don't think I can fix it, but now
that I know what the problem is, I can buy another one and replace it. I
hope."
"Why do you call your car Rosy Nante?"
"Rocinante? That's her name. Have you ever heard about Don Quixote, the
Knight of La Mancha?" She rolled the name on her tongue with magnificence and
raised her eyebrows at the child.
Dulcie shook her head.
"Don Quixote was a great man, although he was a little bit crazy." Ana
reached for the small screwdriver and settled herself into the story while she
put the engine back together.
"Don means 'sir', or 'lord', so it's like calling him Sir Quixote. Anyway,
Don Quixote lived a long time ago, in a country called Spain, where he spent
all his spare time reading exciting adventures about knights who rode out and
rescued maidens and punished bad guys. Could you hand me that roll of skinny
black tape? And I promise not to bite it with my teeth." Ana pulled her head
out far enough to exchange grins with the child, accepted the tape, and
returned to her task. "Where was I? Oh yes. Don Quixote loved to read stories
about knights and their squires that's the person who helps the knight,
bringing him food and polishing his armor. Are you reading yet, Dulcie?"
The child nodded. Ana paused to scrabble through the toolbox for a stub of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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