“Only you bite your nails. Like a little girl.” Then out of the blue he buried his head in my lap and said, “Help a poor student, won’t you?”
I tensed up, wrenched my hand free, and started stroking his hair. For a while he stayed where he was, but then raised his head, took my hand, and, giving the palm a lick, snapped the other pair of handcuffs around my wrist and the other arm of the chair.
“There,” he said, satisfied. “Now you’re mine, all mine.”
“Let’s stop this stupid game, shall we?” I said, blushing again.
“So you still hope it’s a game,” he said ironically.
“Enough of your antics, Igor. If you think you’re getting back at me, bringing me to justice…”
“Justice! You don’t have a clue, Comrade. I don’t give a damn about justice.”
“The reason I failed you is that I was certain you’d denounced me to Cees Draaisma.”
“Me?!”
“After the first semester somebody complained to Cees that we hadn’t done a thing in class, that it was a big waste of time, and that I forced you to go to cafés with me.
“You don’t say!” he said in English, his scoffing language.
I had the feeling he wasn’t the least bit surprised.
“Cees told me all about it.”
“And you really think it was me?”
“Well, it was one of you. You or somebody else.”
“So what?”
“So what! You lied about me, you informed against me, you didn’t have the nerve to tell me to my face what was bothering you; no, you ran to Cees and told him behind my back!”
“So you decided to get back at us.”
“I wasn’t getting back at you. I was doing my job.”
“But what if nobody did complain? What if Draaisma dreamed the whole thing up?”
“Why would he do a thing like that?”
“For the fun of it. Or to show how easy it was for him to manipulate you, manipulate all of us.”
“I don’t think so. It had the ring of truth, what he said. He seemed to have reports on each and every class.”
“Know what I think, Comrade? I don’t think Cees is the problem, and I don’t think we’re the problem; I think the problem is you. You were itching for it to happen. Even if we had complained, you could have ignored it, forgotten it. Or you could have dealt with it. We’re all in this together, after all. You could have forgiven us. You could have pitied us shitheads. You could have talked it over with us. You had all kinds of options. See? And the one you chose was to wage an angry little war against the class.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand.”
“Tell me, why did you give me an F?”
“I don’t know,” I said. It was the most honest response I could come up with.
“You know perfectly well, you fucking bitch,” he said calmly, touching my knee, “only you’re embarrassed to admit it.”
“Don’t you dare use that language with me! And remove these handcuffs immediately or I’ll call the police.”
“You’re pathetic, Comrade.”
“Pathetic?”
“How do you propose to dial the number?”
He had me there.
“What do want from me anyway?”
“You sound like you get your lines from some B movie. What do I want from you? I don’t know what I want from you the way you don’t know why you gave me an F. Let’s just say I want to make you squirm a little. I want to hear what you sound like when you sound the alarm. I want to hear what’s really going on.”
“What’s really going on?”
“Oh, I read you like a book. I know how scared you are. But there’s something keeping you from taking off that Teacher mask of yours. I feel like I’m at a fucking course in fucking territorial defense.”
“I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to scream.” I couldn’t believe how stupid I sounded.
“Scream and I’ll give you such a slap…”
“You wouldn’t dare,” I said.
“Wanna bet?”
Before I could open my mouth, he slapped my face, slapped it hard. All the breath went out of me.
“You’re out of your mind!” I managed to come out with.
“And you?”
“How dare you!” I said, catching my breath.
“I’m a daring kind of guy. And now that I’ve slapped off your mask, you can drop the airs and graces bit.”
“Look, Igor, all I have to do is dial the office and report a grade change.”
“You’re being pathetic again, Comrade. I’m an A student. One F doesn’t mean a thing.”
He had me there. I had no means of defending myself. Nor the will to do so. I took a deep breath and said guardedly, “Forgive me, Igor. Forgive me. Please.”
“I can’t seem to get it out of you,” he said calmly.
“Get what out of me?”
“What needs to be said.”
“You can’t and you won’t, because I haven’t got it! I’ve been trying for months now!”
I was trembling with fury. Once more I heard myself sounding like a student in a Croatian for foreigners course. I tried jerking my hand free, but yelped with pain.
Igor took in my protest as if watching a bad stage production. Then he dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a roll of adhesive tape.
“Where do you keep your scissors?”
“On the shelf,” I said through my tears.
Igor snipped off a piece of tape and placed it over my mouth with the skill of a pro.
“There! Now you’ve got what you were after: a movie of the week. You’re a proud one, you are. You’ve got a high opinion of yourself: you know you’re up shit creek, but you’re sure you’ve got a paddle, you’re sure you’ve got status, assets: a man (though he’s run off to Japan), a flat (though it has strangers living in it), a library (though the books are yours no more), a Ph.D. (though a lot of good it does you). In some far-off corner of your brain you’re sure life will go back to the way it was before. The life you’re living now is just an outing, a little outing you thought you’d go on. All you have to do is snap your fingers and — hey, presto! — everything will be back to normal. Am I right? And even though you’ve spent months counting feet through the window, even though you’ve seen B movies galore, you’ve never pictured yourself in another scenario: standing in a shop window in the red-light district luring clients to your mini-room, mini-basin, and mini-towel, or humoring gaga geezers like Meliha, or scrubbing toilets like Selim.
“Has it ever occurred to you that your students might be better than you, better people? Well, has it? You’re no insensitive lout, Comrade. Something of the sort may have occurred to you. But has it occurred to you that your students might know more than you? Except they’ve been schooled in humiliation and don’t throw their weight around. Experience has taught them that things are relative. And things are relative. Until yesterday distances were measured in centimeters: you could be hit by a grenade. Sure you felt sorry for the people who suffered, who actually were hit. But — not that you’d ever admit it to yourself — somewhere in the recesses of your brain you think a grenade chooses where it lands. And if it does, there must be some fucking reason for it. Something keeps you from making connections, from grasping that your being our teacher is only a matter of chance. It could just as easily have been the other way round: you could have been sitting with us and, say, Meliha could have been the teacher. That grenade — it reduces us all to shit, human shit, but you seem to think you’re a little less shitty than the rest of us and you’ve raised your momentary feeling of superiority into a law of nature.