A Thirty-Year-Old Teacher of French

I very well remember when a thirty-six-year-old teacher of French, my colleague in Zagora, told me a lot about his love story with one of his classmates during his university days. As an avid listener to this real story, I did not concern myself with trivial things of any love story, such as the places they used to go together, what they used to tell each other when night fell, the sort of their relationship, or all the things they exchanged as lovers. But I still carried on listening until the thing that would draw my attention was raised. It was the promise they made to get married once they landed a job. As this friend of mine told me, they loved each other so vehemently during the four years they spent at university to the extent that even some passers-by thought that they would make a successful couple. He added that they revised their lessons so diligently and did a good job at their studies. This was why, he said, they were optimistic about their future. As their studies came to an end, and they all graduated with success, they went to sit for the entrance exam to the teacher training center. To their utter dismay, she succeeded, while he failed. Still worse was the fact that he failed all the following entrance exams of the four years that ensued. His would-be wife kept her promise during the first two years, but as the third year was about to end, she began to get bored. My friend told me that he felt so through her new behavior and lifestyle. She no longer phoned him, and she did not ask after him anymore. When he asked her why, she made up some flimsy excuses, like that of having to care for her parents or that of busying herself with her teaching career. This would-be wife, my friend believed, did not do so out of innocence, but rather out of apathy and selfishness, particularly that she was now a teacher, while he was still jobless and penniless. A few years later, she turned a deaf ear to all his approaches. She even changed her phone number and made it impossible for him to even stay in contact with her. Only then did he understand that this girl was no longer going to be his other half. He became dejected and hopeless on the spot, he said to me. One day, he heard that she got married to someone else, but he did not know anything about his occupation. With time, this friend of mine at last succeeded and became a high school teacher of French. And he was appointed in Zagora, and I had the chance to live with him in the same house. He lived upstairs, and I lived downstairs. And we sometimes met and talked. One day, I raised this love story of his to him once more, and he said that he had some advice for me. I then had to listen with awe. Never put all your eggs in one basket, he said to me.