All of a sudden he was interrupted by a whistle from someone or other, then all of us together, as if we’d planned it, we started shouting:
“We don’t want to grow up! We don’t want to! We don’t want to! We want them to stop cutting off our electricity!”
He froze as if he was paralyzed. But not for long. Raising his voice to drown out our shouts, he began to yelclass="underline"
“Who are the ringleaders? Who are the ringleaders? The rest of you will be let off! I want to know who the ringleaders are!”
This brought even louder whistles and shouts and stamping of feet. He gave as good as he got. He tossed his head and waved his arms. His face was red as a beetroot. It looked like blood was about to come bursting from his eyes and nose and mouth.
“All of you, on your feet! Ten-shun! On the parade ground, now! We’ll sort you out. We know how to handle you! You’re trash! Criminals! We know what you have on your conscience, every one of you! We have a file on everyone! Robbery! Arson! Rape! Murder! We know everything. And we’ll use it! We’ll send you where you should have been sent to begin with! Rebellion cannot be tolerated! People who do that don’t deserve school, they need to be sentenced and put behind bars! Otherwise we’ll never clean this country of tainted blood! Youth is no excuse! Enemies need to be destroyed whatever age they are! Destroyed, destroyed without mercy! The sooner the better!”
“Best of all in the cradle!” shouted one of the boys, his hands formed into a trumpet.
The rec room burst out laughing. He was struck dumb. His eyes seemed to fall still. And calmly, but with energy, like an order he barked:
“Who said that? On your feet this instant! Show you’ve got the guts! Well, I’m waiting!”
Everything went quiet, it was like the laughter had been cut off with a knife. He took out his watch and held it in his hand.
“Well? You’ve got ten seconds. If you don’t come forward …”
We all stepped forward, the whole room as one. His eyes scanned us furiously.
“I see.” Then he roared: “Just you wait!” He virtually ran from the room.
So we waited, expecting the worst. We didn’t know what it might be, since it’s always hard to conceive of the worst. We imagined various eventualities. In the end we came to the conclusion there was no point in waiting. We’d run away. The whole school would run away. The very next night. We agreed on which hut would go first and which would go last. The first was to leave before midnight. Then after that, the other huts at one-hour intervals. By the afternoon we’d end the revolt and go back to our huts, the teachers would relax and be sound asleep, and then we’d run away.
But that morning the music teacher paid an unexpected visit to the rec room. He was a little tipsy already. He pulled out his bottle, took a swig, and asked:
“Anyone want a drink?” Then he said: “They sent me to talk you out of it, boys. But I don’t know how. I couldn’t talk myself out of anything. I thought I might write a song for you. Every rebellion is remembered in song. But I’m not in the right frame of mind for it today. Forgive me. So what’s to be done here? What’s to be done? You can’t just sit around like this. If I wrote something you could sing a little. How about that? Or maybe we could have an orchestra practice? I ought to have done it long ago. That was the pedagogical task I was given from the beginning. Come on, let’s do it.”
He pulled out his bottle and took another swig. Then he had us take up our instruments.
“Stand over there with them, boys.” He pointed to the end of the room.
Each of us grabbed the first instrument that came to hand, because we thought it was some kind of game. We’d never had orchestra practice before. He would just tell us from time to time that that was why he’d been sent here. Plus, with him drunk what kind of practice could it be. One of the boys asked him if we could take the broken instruments as well. He probably thought the teacher would say no, get mad. But he nodded yes. Everyone laughed, and some of the boys made a point of choosing a broken instrument.
I picked up the saxophone, but to my surprise he stopped me.
“Not the saxophone. There’s no saxophone in this score. Back then the saxophone didn’t exist, son. Take a violin.”
There was only one violin left. It had no strings and the neck was cracked. There was no bow.
“This is the only one there is,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Stand at the back behind the other ones.”
He started arranging us. Violins here, violas there, here the woodwind, there the brass, cellos on this side, behind them the double basses, and so on. We started to laugh again. By now we’d been occupying the rec room for three days, we thought he was trying to amuse us, to prevent us from getting bored. But he was far from laughter. He was serious as never before.
“Don’t laugh, boys,” he said. “Today is my day too.”
It seemed he was done with arranging us, but he still wasn’t content, he told one boy to move over there, another to come here, a third one to scoot to the side a bit, a fourth to step back a little. It was as if he still didn’t quite trust himself not to have overlooked something. All of us were standing the way he’d organized us, but he still had one boy give his violin to someone else, pick up the other boy’s horn and take his place. Another boy he had swap his bassoon for somebody else’s trombone, a third one had to hand over his flute and join the cellos, while one of the cellists moved to the double basses. The whole time he was unsatisfied. As if it was us who didn’t match our instruments. Or perhaps we spoiled his recollection of some other orchestra.
It was a big orchestra. We filled almost a third of the rec room. And like I said, the place took up an entire hut. The group of boys that hadn’t found a place in the orchestra was much smaller, they were standing at the other end of the room.
He must have felt tired from arranging us all, because he sat down on a bench.
“Forgive me, boys, it’s just for a moment. I need a breather.” He drank from his bottle, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, gave a couple of deep sighs, then stood in front of us again. “Don’t laugh now. Be serious. Each of you, hold your instrument as if you were playing it. But don’t try to actually play. Please don’t actually try to play.”
He evidently decided he wasn’t drunk enough yet, because he pulled out his bottle and took another mouthful. Then he handed the bottle to the closest boy, who seemed like the first violinist.
“Put it over there. All right, pay attention now boys.”
He spread his arms and froze. He stood for a moment in this position. Then he raised his hands over his head. At this point one of the boys in the orchestra laughed again.
“For the love of God, don’t laugh. I’m asking you. It’s the anniversary today. I’ll explain later. All right, attention now, one more time.”
No, he never told us what anniversary it was. But no one laughed anymore. In the meantime he spread his arms again and stood there for a long time, as if he could neither lower them nor raise them higher. He inclined his head slightly and narrowed his eyes. We were sure he’d fall over, because he’d been pretty well gone when he came in, and since then he’d tipped the bottle back a good few times. But for a drunk guy he was quite steady. He stood there. Again someone in the orchestra gave a quiet laugh. This time, though, he seemed not to notice. He stayed in the same pose, arms wide, leaning forward, his eyes half closed. At one moment he whispered in a voice that I may have been the only one to hear:
“It’s like you weren’t alive, boys. Forgive me. You don’t have mouths or hands, just instruments.”