“Accounts of certain facts” by Yasmina Reza, a cabinet of fear and curiosities – Libération

The book brings together vignettes, samples of criminal and broken lives, things seen in a Venetian street or experienced among friends.

In second grade, in a girls’ high school in Saint-Cloud, Yasmina Reza’s history and geography teacher is an old woman close to retirement, Ms. Kling. Faced with her, the kids are merciless: “Even though we still wore the pink apron, we were a bunch of farters thirsting for disobedience.” Mme Kling “had no authority. She walked back into the classroom with her schoolbag, her neck forward, her head shaking with each step. She gave her lessons the old-fashioned way, chalk in hand, delivering her knowledge in a monotonous voice. She kept saying “huh” all the time. Nobody listened to him.” The more the year goes on, the more the class behaves badly. One day, Mrs. Kling “came down from the stage and stared at us with her shaking head. “What’s going on? Why don’t you want to learn?…Huh? What’s going on?” The girls giggle, “more or less embarrassed”. Student Reza stands up and says: “Because your class is boring us, ma’am. It’s boring. You don’t know how to interest us.” Mme Kling “went back onto the stage, trembling, picked up her things and went out. /The girls laughed. No one praised me or criticized me. Everything was normal. I was overwhelmed by the evidence of my leadership./ We never saw Mrs. Kling again. Neither in class nor in the corridors of the establishment.

“In what twists and turns of life did she disappear?”

The writer has almost everything o