Black is Beautiful I.

If they pay attention they learn extremely fast. There were children with fiery minds among them, geniuses of memory and combination. And never since then have I met such wild, almost fanatic will to learn as that possessed by Frederic, James, Starrie, or Irving. They had really strong personalities. 

The violent-tempered Frederic was hurt because of every trifling thing, he would hit immediately, but in his better moods he charmed us all with his humour, brilliant movements and sense of music. For Starrie music was everything. He knew everything about singing, but if he happened to make a mistake, he would tear away from the circle crossly, and ignored us until the end of the class. 

Roger snapped his answers with careless elegance, he never put up his hands, but he almost always knew the right answers, although he was not very musical. He was so clever that he picked up his musical knowledge easily. He always pretended, as if asking questions were beneath his dignity, but his face was radiating if he was interested. 

Irving started out by turning his back to me during the first classes, and when I later asked him, he grumbled ”Shut up!” If I had not lived among children under state care for six years, and hadn’t heard everything from these deeply-offended young ones, I would perhaps have reacted harshly to these rude behaviours. But I was looking at the rejection, and not style in his answer, and that I had to accept. 

A seven-year-old child has the right to accept or reject somebody. Irving did not only reject me, but also his mates, even more than he rejected his teachers. He couldn’t make friends with them until the end of the term. In his good mood he was sometimes playing or talking with them, but he never really belonged to them. He was a lonely child. His extraordinarily aggressive behaviour frightened away his mates. He only liked drawing and writing, and so he did only those exercises in singing in which he could draw or sing. He hardly ever participated in round-dancing, or, if he did, there was nothing to be gained by it, he dragged, tripped up, and then ridiculed his mates. In almost every class, he got into some sort of conflict, and then walked away grumpily. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that he had written the music-dictation almost flawlessly. He was obviously listening while we were seeing only his back.

I also had a lot of problems with the rhythm-cards and the tune-puzzle boards. Children tore the cards and threw the boards around. Those who happened to be angry, damaged the others’ game and their own, as well. I then came up with the idea of keeping the rhythm cards in named envelopes. It didn’t help much. They threw away the whole thing, envelope and all. 

My daughter, Zsuzsanna had the idea of making large, colourful folders. We put something special on them for everyone, it could be tied up with a string. We took immense trouble with these, and they must have felt it, although I had not mentioned it. There were some who painted me there with long, straight hair, but black complexion. 

Kevin, our unpredictable and completely incompatible boy who had a poetic soul looked at me while drawing and asked: “Miss Klára, why is your arm white?” “I am white, that is why” I said. “But your heart is black” he said and went on drawing, not looking up. At these times I felt that in spite of it all, perhaps we managed to redeem the world if even on a small scale.