But that was the geography class, naturally. Just try to do that to the dear Headmaster, in the character appraisal class. The old man was a devil, and he was able to make the classes rich, with content, very interesting. He knew how to instigate issues for discussion, to make an intrigue. Curse me, we would be unravelling it for centuries. The dear Headmaster would expertly embroider the whole thing, I swear, then the devil himself would be forced into a bottle. At the end, the idea of the subject itself was hidden, he aimed to put the matters in as tangled a form as possible, as unclearly as possible. Curse me, tangled. A person would never know what and who the matter was about. Who was the thief, who was the honest one, who was stealing and who was protecting? Go on, untangle it, identify the main characters, who are they, how many of them are there, where are they and how did they get tied up with the dishonest action. Curse me, you can speculate for centuries and still remain on the same spot, not a step forward. I swear, in most of the examples, it was the same person who was stealing and protecting. Curse me, the same one. But whether he is guilty was the next question before which we stood as though in front of a wall.
“His whole life,” would say the dear Headmaster and he would begin to narrate with decorations and medals weighing down his shirtfront. “What do you think now, is he guilty?” the dear Headmaster would put the question directly. After that we would answer, in order, each according to his own knowledge.
“Yes, he was guilty, such a man with medals.”
“No, he wasn’t guilty, they are the merits that he had. It is easy to spit on a man. He was fighting.”
“Yes, those who fought are honest.”
“I swear, yes.”
“No,” some crazy boy would disagree. “No,” he says and will not give in, rip his tongue out if you want to, he will still say “No.”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“How many are yes?”
“How many are no?”
“Ten, fifteen, twenty, no.”
Looking at the answers, that man is found guilty. The dear Headmaster would shake his head in a dissatisfied way; he was totally dissatisfied. “It’s as if your heads are full of sand,” he would say, “nothing stays in your heads.” Then he would twirl his moustache and tirelessly he would begin from the start. But that was just in the beginning, after that even a rock, even a tree could understand the truth. Curse me, the truth. The later answers were clear, pure. We have to acknowledge that, in connection with those matters, the dear Headmaster really made us sweat. “Further work must be done, day and night,” he would say in a dissatisfied way, summarising the results. He would breathe in and he would begin from the beginning. He would bring out new examples, for the second, for the third, for the thirteenth time, he would convey to us the biography of the deluded comrade, he was an angel, we were living in a great delusion, we were blind. It is better to bite off a man’s tongue than leave him to live in a delusion.
“What do you think now, my little chickens?” the dear Headmaster would ask at the end. “Is the comrade that was stealing guilty?”
The first one “No, the one who was stealing, he wasn’t guilty of anything.”
The second one “No, he wasn’t guilty, on the contrary, he is an honest man, I think.” (Curse me, the little devil thinks.)
The third “No, no.”
The fourth “No, his image of a warrior, builder...”
The fifth “No, no, no...”
The sixth,
the seventh,
the eighth,
the eighteenth,
all of us “No,” we answered in chorus.
It’s as if I can still see the happy smiling face of the dear Headmaster before me. Thank you, God, he was happy, why, how, I never understood it. One thing was important.
“All of you say “No”! That is the truth, eagles, you have got into the content so well, into the idea,” he concluded victoriously, proudly.
Maybe it was better if a person could answer that way for everything. “No” and full stop. Curse me, no. May the devil take away the heart; it did not always understand, it was not obedient, it could not always reply like that. Poor man, then he would have to start from the beginning, the heart can break when it is crazy. There was no end yet to that matter, I swear.
All of those classes, with all their mindlessness, with all their stupidity were like poison to our children’s heart. We were dying for another love, for other words, for so many days, nights, centuries we looked for that source, but there they filled our heads with stupid things. And however funny that was, and impossible and alien, it quickly became the truth for a large number of the children. The most frightening was that we began to believe in such mindlessness. Curse me, mindlessness. But right next to you was one forgotten, scorched water; we became deaf to the voice of the Big Water. I swear, we lost the path to the Senterlev mountain. Curse me, for centuries we lived with those blind things, dark things. There was only a small number of children who believed that those people who did not have character appraisals were worth something, too; maybe they too, suffer so much, love so much, and also as much are our friends. Dear mother of mine, the people who did not have character appraisals or whose character appraisals were blemished, were our enemies. Curse me, enemies. In the Home, the son of Kejtin fought for one such ingrate. He came without a character appraisal and after that he left without one.
“No problems,” the dear Headmaster was saying, “we will create a character appraisal for you, Kejtin. You donkey, you lazy bones. You’re not capable at anything. What, what have you done, you eat bread here for free, you talentless boy,” he attacked him with the most hurtful words every class, simply, he trampled him. You could say that there was not a single class when he did not make Kejtin get out of his place, that he did not make him answer questions, to pick on him in some way. It was known the dear Headmaster had taken him as a target and in this case, nothing could be done against him, curse me, he wanted to make a man out of the son of Kejtin. Kejtin, on the other hand, always answered in the same way, with boredom, he yawned, as briefly as he could, with half a word, he used abbreviations which then had to be teased out, he answered deliberately badly, without interest. Sometimes he was a trouble maker and evil toward the dear Headmaster, he made fun.
“I don’t understand,” he would say, “comrade Ariton Jakovleski,” he would say, “I don’t understand how such a man can allow himself, Ariton Jakovleski, and if he has already put out his hand...”
“That is an example, you little idiot.”
God, how could he not understand that, we were all amazed. Then, even I started to hate him, he was distant from me, alien. An enemy, curse me, the son of Kejtin was my enemy.
At those times, he was all alone, abandoned by everyone. A person without a character appraisal, tortured by horror. He was attacked by enemy glances from all sides, contempt, malice. He had to put up with all of that quietly, inside himself. He had to stand in the corner during class hundreds of times, separated, for a punishment. I don’t believe that anything hurt him more in the Home than the humiliation that he had to put up with in every class on character appraisal.
The class when he fell asleep, the glass was full to the brim. Finally, we were all against him, there wasn’t even one, not a single heart on his side. Curse me, he saw it. For the first time, submissively, obediently he lowered his head, as though he were not the son of Kejtin. Curse me, what sort of people were we going to grow up into, for what sort of people were they preparing us for with a rein tied to the character appraisals, only God knew that.
Later, the class on character appraisals lost its strength and sacredness.