Those of us in the middle of the class, the average ones, dream that one day we might move up to the front row beside Adriano, but it’s not easy. If you get a better mark than someone in a higher row, you go and sit in his place, and he moves back to your row. Occasionally I’ve got as far as the third row, but the next day I always got moved back because the person whose place I’d taken had gone and worked really hard all day Sunday, so he can get his place back among the top ten. It’s only the front row that never changes, because Adriano, Willy-Dibas and Jérémie are so clever, they confer with each other so no one else can come up to their level. If the three of them are cross with you they pass a little piece of paper to someone in the class who doesn’t like you. They write down the answers to the question on this piece of paper, and the classmate, who you don’t like either, just copies them down. When you get into class the next morning, the classmate in question has changed places, now he’s just behind Adriano, Willy-Dibas and Jérémie. And you’re hopping mad.
I try really hard not to get moved to the back row, to stay in the middle of the class. In my row no one bothers you, and no one sees you either, because the teacher usually only notices the front and back rows.
Us boys wear khaki shirts and blue shorts, and the girls wear orange shirts and blue skirts. Every morning, to be allowed into class, you have to recite the first four articles of the law of the National Pioneers Movement, the MNP. I know them by heart now. Sometimes I dream that I’m reciting them in a stadium that’s even fuller than the Revolution Stadium. Every evening before I go to bed, and every morning before I get up, I recite them. I close my eyes, I imagine I’m someone about to serve his country, that thanks to me capitalism won’t reign victorious in our country, and I murmur the four articles, like a prayer:
Article 1: the pioneer is a conscientious and effective junior militant. In all things he obeys the orders of the Congolese Workers’ Party.
Article 2: The pioneer follows the example of the immortal Marien Ngouabi, founder of the Congolese Workers’ Party.
Article 3: The pioneer is thrifty, disciplined and hardworking, and completes his tasks.
Article 4: The pioneer both respects and transforms nature.
There’s a boy in our class called Bouzoba who is not very bright. When I say he’s not very bright, I’m being nice because Bouzoba is the stupidest boy in the whole class, so he sits in the back row, in a corner, where he can get on with being stupid without being seen. It was him that invented the famous ‘mirror game’ which is the craze at the moment in the playground. During break, he goes around with a little mirror in his pocket and when the girls are playing he comes up behind one of the girls who’s standing up and puts his little mirror on the ground between the girl’s legs to see the colour of her pants. Then he comes and tells us that the girl standing over there is wearing red pants and the one beside her has green pants with a hole in. And when the girls walk past us, we say, ‘Marguerite, you’ve got red pants on! Célestine, you’ve got green pants with a hole in!’ The poor girls start whimpering and go and tell the teacher that we’ve seen Marguerite’s red pants and Célestine’s green pants with a hole in. The teacher also goes to tell the head teacher that some of the children have seen Marguerite’s red pants and Célestine’s green pants with a hole in. And the head teacher comes personally to beat the boys in our class, because no one dares tell on Bouzoba, because he’s strong and muscular and he’ll beat us up in the playground and make us pay a month’s fine: we have to give him our pocket money every day, and scratch his backside when he’s got an itch.
The head teacher’s very crafty and he really wants to know who made up the mirror game. First of all he gives us all a good hiding, and then he goes up onto the platform and says, ‘Who can tell me what colour Célestine’s pants are?’
The class sits in silence — you can hear the flies buzzing. The head teacher repeats his question with a broad smile, as though promising not to belt anyone who can tell him the colour of Célestine’s pants. This is when that idiot Bouzoba puts his hand up at the back of the class and yells, ‘Sir, sir, Célestine’s pants are green!’
‘Really? And how do you now that?’
‘I saw it with my pocket mirror!’
He gets out his pocket mirror, waves it in the air. Then he adds, ‘I’m not lying, sir, look, here’s my mirror!’
The head teacher grabs Bouzoba by the ears and drags him into his office to beat him even more, and make him tidy the books and clean the windows as a punishment.
Our desks are too small, so we’re all squeezed up together. You can easily read or copy what the person next to you is writing if you haven’t done your homework. Everyone does it. I’ve stopped looking at what the others do, because every time I end up copying their mistakes. When someone’s writing quickly, as though he knows what he’s doing, you don’t imagine he’s making a mistake. So you copy off him, without thinking, because if he was writing rubbish he wouldn’t be writing that quickly, he must be really clever, like Adriano, Willy-Dibas or Jérémie.
The teacher says, ‘Anyone who finishes quickly can go home before the others.’
I know it’s a trap to catch out the idiots. I’m not going to fall for it, I work at my own pace. Besides, it’s better to write slowly, even if you’re the last to leave. At least the next morning, when the teacher does the corrections, he won’t beat you. He’ll remember you weren’t in a rush to get home to eat and sleep, like some capitalist’s child. He’ll think you love school so much you didn’t want to go home. So he won’t hit you hard.
~ ~ ~
It’s chaos in Teheran at the moment. The Iranian students have taken hostages in the American embassy, even though America’s the world’s number one country. Papa Roger reminds us that it’s usually the Americans who help out when there’s a world war against the Germans. The Americans always head off to Europe, to some place called Normandy, where there’s a beach. They get out their sophisticated weapons and they go on shooting till there are no Germans left trying to occupy France and massacre the Jews. I wonder how the Iranian students dare go and provoke a country like America by imprisoning fifty or sixty Americans in the basement of the embassy. Can the Ayatollah Khomeyni be stronger than the Americans’ president?
Roger Guy Folly explains that the Iranian students won’t release the hostages unless the Americans hand over the Shah of Iran, who’s in hospital in their country. And the Americans are at their wits’ end, and agree to have talks with the students. And since they really want to talk in order to save their fellow countrymen, Yasser Arafat’s going to arbitrate between them. Papa Roger points out that he has already told us about Yasser Arafat, who was the witness at Idi Amin Dada’s wedding, when he got married for the fifth time. Yasser Arafat is the president of Palestine, a country which people refuse to recognise as a proper country like ours. He must be very pleased to be arbitrating in the American hostage affair. If I was him, I would say to the Americans: ‘If you want to negotiate, ok, but I’m happy to help you get the Iranians to free your fifty or sixty countrymen that they’ve shut up in the basement of the embassy. But I have an important request: first everyone must accept that the country of Palestine does exist, I want it to be accepted right now, straight away, or else I will tell the Iranian students to go on holding your citizens hostage in the cellar!’