by Ib Svane
John heard his mother call, ‘Time for school — come and get your lunch!’
He walked down the stairs to the kitchen, picked up the lunch box his mother had prepared and put it into his school bag. He kissed her, said goodbye, and walked out the door. She waved at him. A bit down the street, he turned left into a small park and sat on a bench. John did not want to go to school. It was cold, and a sprinkle of snow had powdered the lawns and scrubs during the night.
Two crows were fighting over a piece of bread. An elderly lady used to come to the park and feed the ducks. John thought the crows had stolen the bread from the ducks now that a thin layer of ice covered the pond. He looked at his watch and towards his home, which he could see in the distance. Half an hour had passed.
John knew his mother passed the park on her bike to work. John saw her, got up, and walked back the same way he came. He locked himself into the house and walked up the stairs to his room.
He sat on his bed and looked outside the window at the winter landscape. There were houses and gardens as far as he could see. All the gardens had bare fruit trees. A thin layer of snow covered the grounds. The paths from the streets to the main doors had already been swept free from snow. He saw a man sweeping the sidewalk in front of his garden hedge. In John’s house, only his father swept the path and the sidewalk, but not now because his father was away at work.
‘My father is always away, never at home for any length of time,’ he murmured.
He looked forward to the summer vacation when he and his father would go fishing. John looked at a picture on the wall. He was standing with his father holding up a trout — it was his first. John felt good in his room. He was safe.
John took out a coloured magazine he had hidden under the mattress. It was pornography and had passed through many hands. He looked at pictures showing couples having sex in the most phenomenal positions. The text was full of dirty words he didn’t know. He got the magazine from a school friend, the only one he had.
John looked up from the magazine, folded it, and put it back under the mattress.
He thought about his teacher, Mr Nielsen, and how often he had been beaten, knocked, pushed, and laughed at in front of the class. He did not know why his teacher had taken such a disliking towards him, but he knew when it started. Early in the first semester, with Mr Nielsen as the teacher, he was called to the blackboard to write words. John was always nervous at the school blackboard and did not understand why. He found it overwhelmingly large and terrifying, like an endless space he could not grasp. The eyes on his back felt like piercing arrows. The small piece of chalk in his hand was slippery from sweat. His handwriting became shaky and his spelling terrible; the chalk fell out of his hand many times. At his desk, he wrote well, and his grammar was generally correct, but not on the blackboard.
Mr Nielsen asked him to write words he spoke aloud. If he got it wrong, he was ridiculed and asked to repeat it. With every letter John uttered, Mr Nielsen would punch his shoulder, accompanied by endless scolding and a hammering fist. Eventually, he let him go.
The school desks in John’s class were the old-fashioned ones. Each desk had a bench for two students and a sloping desktop. The edge of the desktop had a grove for pencils, and in the centre, there was an inkwell. At the beginning of the school year, the inkwells were clean, and the janitor regularly topped them up with fresh ink. But now, somebody had poked blotter paper into the wells. When the ink pen was pushed too deep, the fibres from the blotting paper would stick to the pen tip making the writing thick, something Mr Nielsen did not appreciate.
The benches were from a bygone age when students were smaller, so the larger boys were uncomfortable. The desk had all kinds of engravings, ink writings of girl names, and foul words. Deep holes were drilled into the edge facing the sitting students, many filled with blotting paper. John’s desk was in the back of the class. He had one for himself. It has not always been like that. At the start of the school year, he was sharing a desk with his friend. It was the third desk in the window row, but Mr Nielsen asked him to move to the back, giving his seat to one of his favourite students.
John was not the only one who was a victim of Mr Nielsen’s wrath and ridicule. He regularly slapped boys on their cheeks, punching their chests, but slapping was his favourite punishment.
Mr Nielsen would call an unfortunate student to the podium and list the student’s demeanour. Before he had finished, he would suddenly and swiftly slap the victim, who was taken by surprise. This treatment was only for boys.
Over time, there was a competition among the boys on how many slaps one could endure and how smart, and elegant slaps could be avoided. Once, one of the larger boys was quick enough to raise his arm, stopping Mr Nielsen’s hand before it reached his face. From then on, he ensured the student’s arms were straight down before he executed his slap.
There was one student, Peter, who was exceptionally fast. He moved his head backwards swiftly, making Mr Nielsen miss his face. This action upset Mr Nielsen, and he counted with a left-handed slap, but with the same result. He missed. Then, with his left hand, he grabbed Peter’s shoulder and pressed his thumb hard into the flesh next to his collarbone. Everyone could see on Peter’s face the grip was painful, but Mr Nielsen did not hesitate. He swung his right hand against Peter’s head, but before the blow landed, Peter forcefully dropped to the floor, avoiding the smack. But that did not stop him.
In anger, Mr Nielsen kicked Peter in his ribs and shouted, ‘Go to your desk!’
During the interval, Peter was celebrated as a hero.
John looked up and saw the postman placing a brown envelope in their letterbox at the gate. He felt his heartbeat as adrenalin pumped into his blood.
Shall I go down and get the letter or not? He thought, sitting motionless on his bed.
After a while, he picked up his lunchbox and looked inside. Then took a bite of a sandwich but felt no appetite. John just looked at the roofs and the gardens with the naked fruit trees. He looked again at the letterbox and saw his older sister arriving with her boyfriend. They were on bikes. John knew they had an entire hour interval, and they had come home. His sister took the brown envelope out of the letterbox and locked themselves into the house. John closed the door to his room and sat still.
His sister and her boyfriend were laughing in the kitchen, but it paused. John guessed they were kissing. He heard steps up the staircase as they passed his door and entered her room. John pressed his ear against the wall to listen to what was going on. He heard moaning, sighing, puffing, murmurs and intensive whispering, and the noise of somebody laying on her bed and small laughs.
Then his sister suddenly said, ‘Get inside me, now!’
The sounds of rhythmic movements on the bed reached John’s ear, and he felt a sudden sexual excitement. His curiosity took over. He carefully and silently opened his door and, in socks, moved towards the door of his sister’s room. They had left the door ajar. John peeped into the room and saw the lower part of two naked bodies on the bed. He saw his sister’s boyfriend’s lower back and bare buttocks moving up and down as he pressed and released his lower body between his sister’s widely spread legs.
His sister was moaning, breathing loudly and shouting, ‘Come on, come on!’ As she encouraged her boyfriend.
Everything went quiet. John moved silently back into his room, closing the door, but could not avoid a slight “click” from the catch. The door to his sister’s room was shut.
John sat silently in his room and looked over the roofs and the gardens with the naked fruit trees. He could feel his erection pressing against his pants but did not think about what he had just experienced; his erection would not go away.
This thing has a life of its own, he thought.
John’s sister and boyfriend left her room for the bathroom and then disappeared down into the kitchen. He heard the fridge door open and shut several times while the two lovers giggled. With sandwiches in their hands, they go out to their bikes. At that moment, John’s sister looked up and saw him at the window. She stared at him firmly and moved her index finger across her throat. John knew what that meant, “If you tell, I will cut your throat!” The two lovers disappeared down the street towards the school.
John went to the bathroom, where he relieved himself from his erection. He took his school bag and went down the stairs to the kitchen. The brown envelope was on the kitchen table. It was a letter addressed to his mother, with the school shield on the bottom right. Underneath was a text, “From the Headmaster’s Office.”
John looked at the letter and thought, This is it. I knew Mr Nielsen would get me!
John thought about Mr Nielsen and the many times he had threatened him in the class when called to the podium for general ridicule.
Mr Nielsen would say, ‘We have a special school for delinquent students like you. One day you will be relegated from our school and sent there in disgrace — I am looking forward to that day!’
The frequent ridicule and the poorly disguised encouragement from Mr Nielsen had turned many of his fellow students against him.
In the schoolyard, during intervals, John was often bullied. One day, he ended up in a fight with one of Mr Nielsen’s favourites. Unfortunately, that day Mr Nielsen was the schoolyard guard. He grabbed John, dragged him towards the entrance of the classroom building and asked him firmly to stand there and wait. A few minutes later, the bell rang, showing the end of the interval.
When the sound went silent, Mr Nielsen inspected the columns of students lined up in rows two by two and class by class, which was the standard procedure for entering the classrooms.
Mr Nielsen did not give the signal for orderly entrance but shouted, ‘This school misfit here.’ He pointed at John standing by the gate. ‘Has made himself a reputation as a bully always picking fights. This time I will dispatch him to the headmaster, who I am sure will relegate him at once!’
Mr Nielsen gave the order, and the rows of students paraded through the wide door as if swallowed up by a large, dark hole. They all passed John and gave him a stare and a face. His misdemeanours were now widely known.
After the dark gate swallowed the last student, Mr Nielsen dragged John to the headmaster’s office and commanded him to sit on a bench outside. Mr Nielsen knocked on a door and slipped into the secretary’s office. After a few minutes, he came out and disappeared down the corridor, leaving John waiting.
Later, the secretary announced the headmaster was ready to see him. The headmaster looked gravely at him, explained the travesty of schoolyard fighting, and suggested that he give his opponent and Mr Nielsen an apology. It was too much for John. He started crying and let out an incoherent flow of complaints against his teacher Mr Nielsen.
John shouted at the headmaster, ‘Mr Nielsen is a mean bastard — he beats people!’
The headmaster pressed a button on his desk, and the secretary appeared, ‘Mrs Jones, will you please call John’s mother, Mrs Smith, and ask her to come and pick up her son.’
John’s mother arrived directly from her work and took him home. The next day, John and his mother had an appointment at the headmaster’s office. John was confronted by Mr Nielsen and his opponent from the schoolyard fight. He realised his opponent was full of guilt, and John had no problem shaking his hand and apologising. But, with tears in his eyes, he refused to apologise or shake Mr Nielsen’s hand.
The headmaster told John to go to his class and complete his school day. He did not tell him about his conversation with his mother and Mr Nielsen. His mother knew about the beating and had seen her son’s red, swollen face many times.
John placed the envelope inside his shirt, put his coat and beanie on, grabbed his schoolbag, and walked down the street to the park. He sat on the bench and looked at the pond and the ducks struggling with the thin ice. John finished a half-eaten sandwich and stared at the dark water in the pond. He got slowly up and walked to the edge, leaving his school bag on the bench.
John thought about the brown envelope on his chest, Mr Nielsen, and the awful experience in the headmaster’s office. John remembered his mother’s sad face when she arrived. He looked over the pond and felt tears running down his cheeks. He took a step forward into the water. John stood there, looking at the ducks swimming away from him. The water reached his knees.
He took a step further and felt his feet sinking into the mud. He did not feel the cold water; surprised by how warm it was. He walked step by step until the water reached his chest. Here, John stopped and paused; he felt like he was waiting for something.
His thoughts were suddenly empty; he heard birds singing and ducks quacking. John walked further towards the ducks and thought they would welcome him as a friend in their flock.
The water reached his mouth, but he did not mind. The water was warm and welcoming. He felt nothing. John looked at the path and saw an elderly lady pass with a filled plastic bag in each hand. He recognised her as the one who fed the birds and ducks. She did not see him. John had stopped breathing, but he did not know it. He tried to walk further, but his legs did not move. John slowly sank into the dark.
John’s mother and sister arrived at the morgue. Their sorrow had long dried their tears. A police officer was there. After identifying John’s body, he asked them whether they would have his clothes and school bag.
John’s mother shook her head and quietly said, ‘No.’
‘He had a brown envelope inside his shirt. The forensic people have opened it. I will give you a copy,’ the police officer said.
He handed a piece of paper to John’s mother, who passed it on to his sister as if it would burn her hands.
The police officer said, ‘I am so sorry for your loss — such a fine young man. I cannot understand why this has happened, and we have no witnesses. I am so sorry!’
John’s mother and his sister sat silently at the kitchen table at home. They expected John’s father the next day.
His sister stared at the paper they got from the police officer. She read aloud, ‘From the headmaster’s office. Dear Mrs Smith, I will inform you that based on the evidence; the school board has terminated Mr A. Nielsen’s contract and dismissed him as a teacher for our school with immediate effect. Yours sincerely …!’