Walter de wiskundeleraar (it sounds better in Dutch)
transl.:
Walter the math teacher
When I enter the dining room for the first time, there are three people sitting at the table. A women wearing a buddhist cloak, her grey hair cut very short. A elderly man with white hair, a cheerful face and a big earring in his left ear. And there's Walter.
Walter looks like he just arrived from the fifties. His black, grey hair is thin and combed from one side of his head to the other, although some of the hairs decided not to follow and are standing up in all kinds of directions. His skin is white, yellowish and he is wearing an ochre jacket over his brown spencer. When he stands up clumsily to shake my hand, his face is clenched in the strangest expression of severeness and suprise. I feel offended, it's like his expression states that I am the alien when they are obviously the aliens here. In what kind of pool of intolerant, pragmatic, unworldly beings have I arrived, I ask myself quietly?
When I learn that Walter is a math teacher in high school I am simply astonished. How is this possible? I was assuming he was some kind of dusty librarian or mad scientist. These kids must eat him alive...
Walter is very interested in my being here. He keeps on looking at me with that strange expression and then he asks me what I am doing here. It's very annoying to have to explain myself to him, especially since I've just arrived and still nervous for being in a totally new situation. But when I give him my awkward answer he just replies:"I hope you find what you're looking for."
During the course of the week, somehow whenever I make the most clumsy moves or find myself utterly helpless, Walter is always there to experience it. He says nothing. He just looks at me with his typical expression and helps me out. I forget to take a book, sitting there empty-handed when the service already started and he walks out of the room, returning with an extra book. I keep on turning the pages not knowing where the hell we are and he bends a little bit in my direction, pointing his finger to the correct page. I storm out of my room hastily when the bells are already ringing and I still have to go to the toilet, he just stands at the top of the stairs, patiently waiting.
In conversations, Walter's social skills are also very different from what I'm used to. When I say something, he bursts into an enormous laughter as if I said the most funny thing he ever heared, for example. He utters a loud "Haha!", tilts his head towards the ceiling and slaps his knee. And at other times, when I finish my sentence he looks at me as though there is more to come. But it's clearly his turn to say something.
Still, I'm starting to like him, this strange Walter the math teacher. In all his strangeness there is a kind-hearted, curious, funny man.
On his last day at the convent, he knocks on the door of my room. "Goodbye," he says, and he shakes my hand. "You were my muse". "Oh", I reply, "Thank you." I was his muse. Something in this comment shakes me. I feel sad and happy at the same time, but I don't really know why. I return to my chair by the window and watch the birds as they come and go. Goodbye Walter.
