their absence were sufficient for that.
Another colourful story that made the rounds concerned Titch, a big, stocky youth who sat in the back row. He was blessed with a booming voice and was said to be prodigiously endowed, which made him the object of constant jokes and much daring speculation. This anecdote concerned the singular and inspired way in which he rescued a group of his friends from imminent discovery when they were enjoying a smoke in the lavatories – even though he himself disapproved of smoking.
Smoking was strictly forbidden, of course, and severely punished. The life of smokers was not an easy one. Subjected to pocket searches, breath tests and humiliating examinations of clothes for the odour of tobacco and fingertips for tell-tale nicotine stains, they had to resort to various complicated manoeuvres to conceal their habit and lived in perpetual fear of discovery. They smoked at every break, but only during the long lunch break could they do so in relative safety and with some enjoyment, for the teachers were too busy then to patrol the lavatories. From time to time, however, a spot-check was made even in the lunch break, and then the smokers, their vigilance lulled, would be caught red-handed. The consequences were dire: confiscation of the cigarettes and a D in discipline, which was one step away from expulsion.
The teachers sometimes stalked in packs and sometimes on their own. By far the more dangerous was the lone hunter: he would walk nonchalantly down the corridor, apparently minding his own business, wrapped in thought or perhaps conversing amiably with a student. Then, as he neared the cloakroom, he would suddenly bang the door open and there he would be, bursting through it and falling on his prey. There’d be no question of flight; everyone was caught.
On the day of the famed incident, the smokers were subjected to just such a raid. But on this occasion the lone hunter who marched fearlessly into the cloakroom like the legendary Commendatore was the least expected of people: it was the art teacher, a tiny, modest, delicate wisp of a thing who blushed terribly at the slightest provocation. Someone must have asked her to make the rounds; she would never have done it on her own initiative.
The lavatories were filled with smoke, and the smokers were enjoying a lively discussion about whether it was better to inhale through the nose or through the mouth, when someone shouted, ‘Look out! It’s a raid! They’re coming!’ Everyone rushed for the stalls, hoping to drown the evidence; but it so happened that all the stalls were occupied, and they were left with the instruments of their crime dangling helplessly in their hands. Someone tried desperately to open the window, but it was too late.
At that moment Titch, the disapproving non-smoker, rushed to their aid with an inspired counter-attack, worthy of Blücher at Waterloo; and it was this that broke the siege. Taking in the situation at a glance, he extracted his monstrous member and then, with the confident step of the experienced exhibitionist, strode straight towards the enemy, as if making for the urinal. From behind the clouds of smoke came a brief, muffled squeal of terror, and then Titch’s deep booming voice, ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry, miss, but these are the men’s lavatories.’
The art teacher beat a flustered retreat and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Titch was the hero of the hour and the recipient of many appreciative pats on the back. ‘He chased her off with his sprinkler,’ was how the affair was popularly summarised.
Another story worth repeating concerned Roz Goltz and the unforgettable beginning of his essay about the lot of an oppressed serf, as described in Boleslaw Prus’s novella Antek. Roz (his real name was Roger) was an unusual boy. Secretive and unapproachable, he moved in his own mysterious ways, made no close friends, and had an odd way of speaking. His habit of asking strange – but by no means stupid – questions in class, confounding the teachers and backing them into corners, had earned him the nickname ‘the Philosopher’. He was an extreme rationalist: everything had to be explained from first causes and followed to ultimate conclusions, which often led to a reductio ad absurdum. His smart-aleck ways, sometimes verging uncomfortably on mockery, would doubtless long since have earned him a good talking-to were it not for his scientific gifts. He was very strong in physics and chemistry, and his maths was of university standard. He also knew a lot of things that weren’t on the school syllabus. He had read dozens of popular books on natural science, history and medicine.
Despite his agile and receptive brain, Roz had an Achilles’ heel: he was hopeless in literature. He couldn’t fathom the set books and had no idea how to discuss them; writing essays was torture for him. He would usually copy them from friends during break, and repaid the favour in kind by letting them copy from his maths notebook; but when he tried to write anything himself it ended up full of linguistic and stylistic oddities, and, more important, strayed ridiculously far from the assigned subject.
The literature teacher, knowing he would have to pass him whatever happened, because of his brains, would sigh and shake his head. ‘Well, there it is, your native language just isn’t your strong point.’ Usually he gave him a D minus.
On the day when the essays about the plight of serfs were due, Roz volunteered, for the first time in his life, to read his out.
The teacher couldn’t believe his ears. ‘What’s this? Roz is volunteering to read? But certainly, by all means! How could one not applaud such a momentous event?’
So Roz got up and began to read. And his first sentence was as follows: ‘After a hard day’s work, Antek looked like male genitalia after intercourse.’
The boys whinnied loudly, the girls giggled, and then a deep hush fell on the room as the class held its breath, waiting for the teacher’s reaction. The teacher, however, continued to sit there quite calmly, smoothing his goatee, as if nothing special had happened. ‘Well, go on,’ he said matter-of-factly.
But the rest of Roz’s essay was not distinguished by anything of note. Perhaps the style was slightly more strained than usual in the effort at originality.
‘Why did you volunteer to read?’ the teacher asked when Roz reached the end.
‘Because I wanted to get more than a D minus,’ Roz unhesitatingly replied.
‘And what made you think you would?’
‘The liveliness of the style, which you’re always telling me I lack, but mainly the fact that I took to heart what you’re always saying about how words should be surprised at themselves if the style is to be original.’
The teacher’s face reflected with painful eloquence his inner battle. He was clearly tempted to let it go and dismiss Roz as a hopeless case, but he knew he couldn’t let that first sentence pass without comment.
‘All right,’ he said finally, ‘I’ll give you higher than a D, but only if you explain exactly what Antek looked like after a hard day’s work.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Roz, surprised. ‘He looked the way I said he did.’
‘Describe it, then. What did Antek look like, exactly?’
‘He looked,’ Roz stammered, ‘like male . . . genitalia.’
‘Ah! But surely that’s not all?’ insisted the teacher.
‘Like male genitalia . . . after intercourse,’ Roz mumbled feebly.
‘Precisely!’ The teacher mercilessly pinned Roz to the wall. ‘And that means – what, exactly? Do tell us.’
A long silence fell, and the suspense in the room reached new heights. Would Roz dare to press on over such slippery ground? And if he did, wouldn’t he sooner or later come out, willy-nilly, with some filthy monstrosity?
