The salvation came suddenly from an unexpected quarter. In the Home a sweet, irreplaceable being lived, the wife of Ariton, Verna Jakovleska. Only rarely would you see her outside the little room in which she lived, closed in, quietly. Some said that the old woman was not all there, a little confused, the dear Headmaster keeps her under lock. In the war, her only son had been shot so, it meant that the dear Headmaster had had a son. Curse me, a son. They thought up other things too, but no-one had seen her face close up, she lived like a bat, like a nocturnal bird. Her presence in the Home wasn’t known about for a long time, as though she didn’t live amongst us, among people. We saw her for the first time that night by the water, then she seemed to me to be unreal, a shadow, a spirit. Now all of a sudden, she unexpectedly appeared in our sleeping hall. It was bed-time, we’d just put the blankets onto our beds. When she appeared at the door of our sleeping hall all of a sudden, all of us, every single one remained still, as if nailed to the spot. Certainly we were frightened by her unexpected visit, her scary appearance. We remained frozen at whatever we were doing, our hands were paralysed, with silent eyes we looked on this unusual dark woman. She was all in black. Curse me, black. She reminded us of something scary, of the death we’d seen in the yard. Seeing our confusion, she also remained on the threshold, uncertain, for a time, and during that time it was as if she was changing her mind. But then she seemed to remember something important and quickly, quickly she set off to Kejtin’s bed. At the end of the sleeping hall, in the comer. Curse me, she knew. Curse me, she threw herself at his little bed, we saw that she put a hand on his forehead, she gently stroked his injured face.
“My dear,” she said so softly, so gently that we were electrified. Just then we were freed from the stiffness, from the scary ice, we saw she was a mother, Kejtin’s mother. Curse me, our mother. Her hands were noble, her eyes sweet, and full of light, her voice soft and familiar, motherly, she woke him, “Dear son, dear son,” she said to him.
Curse me, we recognised the voice at once. It was in us, oh, the unforgettable voice of our mothers. That was the unfamiliar voice which called to us day and night, which led us to the Senterlev Mountain. Oh, if only that moment could be continued into eternity! I prayed, if sometime something can be held onto, then let it be the love of our mother. Oh, God, all of that was beautiful, scary, real, unreal, unique, close, painful. Curse me, mother. After the sun, surely the brightest light in the world is in a mother’s eyes, her immeasurable love. Oh, that unique, irreplaceable love, I swear. In his scary dream he heard her, her voice woke him, with parched lips, in a dream, in magic, in a trance, he said:
“Mother, my dear mother!”
I swear, at that moment his sick eye flashed. For the first time that day I saw in his eyes a shiny drop, curse me, he was crying. The son of Kejtin was crying, he was crying in his way, with sparks in his eyes, like he did everything in his own way. Kejtin, friend, I wanted to hug him, to never let him go from my arms. He was a still child, just like all the children in the Home. I swear, he was a child even though he could think like a devil and even though he could behave like an adult. I saw that he was a real and unfortunate child and that in his chest beat a crushed, young heart. Curse me, all the same he spoke, he repeated himself, he was rambling:
“Mother, my dear mother!” he asked for her over and over again, I saw, I saw, curse me, that unstoppable smile of his appeared on his face again. Curse me, he was smiling.
People, dear people, how I went crazy that day! I thought all fear had come out of me, all around I saw how the water rushed. I swear, a huge water, endlessly big hope. Curse me, hope.
Those who shouted at the tops of their voices acting like happy people, they were the biggest liars. Once I had the chance to see one such hero in action. Curse me, until then he had been very loyal to the Home and the administration. That day, I swear, all he needed was a part of a second. It was evening, after dinner, we were throwing away the rubbish, the good-for-nothing was the manager of the hygiene department. Curse me, he totally forgot about his character appraisal. This time, exactly the opposite occurred, the one who was allocated to watch us, to take care of us, the bad ones, shot through, without a word. To this day, I have never seen such a crazy, mindless escape. Certainly, he shocked the administration; certainly no-one expected such a repulsive, two-faced action. As far as the truth was concerned, it wasn’t as if you could say that anyone was overly excited; on the contrary, they said nothing, where the hell would he go, he will come back. Curse me, I prayed so much that that good-for-nothing would not come back. Soon a general revision started in relation to the character appraisals, some were proclaimed to be expired, incomplete; new ones were written. And it was right, no place remained for any sort of trust. Curse me, everything started from the beginning. The same lies, the same evil actions, the same worthlessness so that better character appraisals could be arrived at. That writing and rewriting of character appraisals lasted for centuries. That good-for-nothing really did come back, curse me, the following day, in the morning.
Something about the character appraisals, something about the dramas
The son of Kejtin was one of those wretched people who came into the Home without a family character record, without any sort of receipt. Curse me, receipt. With him, the matter was even worse because in the classes about character appraisals he conducted himself in a totally uninterested manner. Curse me, the son of Kejtin didn’t digest the classes on character appraisal at all. They got stuck in his throat like some hard morsel. Once he allowed sleep to overcome him during the class. Curse me, he fell asleep. In every other class a person could allow himself such a luxury, it wasn’t at all dangerous to fall asleep for a bit in another class, it was even preferred as something normal, natural. It even happened that our teachers fell asleep, a person can fall asleep. For example, the Meteor, our geography teacher, comrade Sekule, had fallen asleep, not once, not twice, it was lucky we were not keeping count. Curse me, we would debate a little about the Earth and the Sun, around the fact whether the Earth moves around the Sun or the Sun around the Earth (once the Earth moved around the Sun, another the Sun around the Earth), and after such heavy, intense discussion he would put his head down. But first of all, after we had mixed everything up, after we had turned the whole celestial vault upside down, the Meteor in a conciliatory spirit would say “Okay then, little fools, why are you insisting so much, what is most important, the Earth or the Sun, the Sun or the Earth, it’s all the same, it is important for you to know that they move, the main thing is that something moves, that’s enough.” He would say it and then put his head down again; with a single word, everything was explained, intelligently. Curse me, intelligently. Once he fell asleep exactly on Mars, curse me, in the lesson itself he started to snore. Old Sekula would let off the snores in such an intense way, you think it is a pan of beans cooking, he was so carried away that he carried us away too. Slowly, slowly, we put our heads down on the desks, we stretched out our little legs from desk to desk. Sleep spread like a sneeze. Soon, the whole classroom was purring, in the air, you could hear every type of sound, choirs, music. Curse me, it was an orchestra, an opera. Quietly we floated around the kind hearted planet Mars, we took over the sky and all of nature.