B004QGYWKI EBOK (6 page)

They were mature and settled men by now and we all had a wife, car, children who studied at Champagnat, Immaculate Conception or St. Mary’s, and they were building themselves a little summerhouse in Ancon, St. Rose or the beaches in the south, and we began to get fat and to have gray hair, potbellies, soft bodies, to wear reading glasses, to feel uneasy after eating and drinking and age spots already showed up on their skin as well as certain wrinkles.

1.

Javier jumped the gun by a split second.

“The whistle!” he shouted, already up on his feet.

The tension broke, violently, like an explosion. We were all standing up. Dr. Abasolo’s mouth was open. He turned red, clenching his fists. When he raised his hand and, getting a grip on himself, seemed on the verge of launching into a sermon, the whistle really did blow. We ran out in an uproar, frenzied, urged on by the crow’s cackle from Amaya, who pushed ahead turning over desks.

Yells jolted the courtyard. The third- and fourth-year students had gotten out earlier: they formed a huge circle that swirled beneath the dust. The first and second years came out almost at the same time we did: they brought new, aggressive phrases, more hatred. The circle grew. Indignation was unanimous in the high school. (The elementary school had a small blue mosaic patio in the opposite wing of the building.)

“He wants to screw us, the hick.”

“Yeah, up his.”

Nobody said a word about final exams. The students’ excitement, the shouting, the commotion, all pointed to this as the right time for confronting the principal. Suddenly I stopped trying to hold myself back and I feverishly started running from group to group. “He picks on us and we don’t say a word?” “We’ve got to do something.” “We’ve got to do something
to him
.”

An iron hand yanked me out of the center of the circle.

“Not you,” said Javier. “Don’t get mixed up in this. They’ll expel you. You know that already.”

“Doesn’t matter to me now. I’m going to make him pay for everything. It’s my chance, see? Let’s get them into formation.”

We went around the courtyard whispering in each ear: “Get in line.” “Form ranks, on the double.”

“Let’s line up!” Raygada’s booming voice vibrated in the suffocating morning air.

A lot of the others chimed in:

“Ranks! Ranks!”

Surprised, the school monitors Gallardo and Romero then saw that the uproar had suddenly subsided and that the ranks were formed before recess was over. Watching us nervously, they were leaning against the wall next to the teachers’ lounge. Then they looked at each other. In the doorway several teachers had appeared: they too were surprised.

Gallardo came over.

“Listen!” he shouted, confused. “We still haven’t—”

“Shut up,” somebody snapped back from the rear. “Shut up, Gallardo, you queer!”

Gallardo grew pale. With long strides, with a threatening gesture, he invaded the rows. Behind his back, several students yelled, “Gallardo’s a queer!”

“Let’s march,” I said. “Let’s go round the courtyard. Seniors lead off.”

We started marching, stomping vigorously, until it hurt our feet. On the second time around—we formed a perfect rectangle, in line with the contours of the courtyard—Javier, Raygada, Leon and I started in:

“Sche-dule; sche-dule; sche-dule…”

Everybody joined in the chorus.

“Louder!” burst out the voice of someone I hated: Lou. “Shout!”

Immediately the din rose until it was deafening.

“Sche-dule; sche-dule; sche-dule…”

Cautiously, the teachers had disappeared, closing the door to the lounge behind them. When the seniors passed the corner where Teobaldo was selling fruit on a plank, he said something we didn’t catch. He moved his hands, as if cheering us on. Pig, I thought.

The shouting got stronger. But neither the rhythm of the march nor the stimulus of the shrieking were enough to hide our fear. The wait was nerve-racking. Why did he delay coming out? Still feigning courage, we repeated the chant, but they had begun to look at each other and from time to time little laughs, sharp and forced, could be heard. “I mustn’t think about anything,” I said to myself. “Not now.” By this time it was hard for me to shout: I was hoarse and my throat burned. Suddenly, almost without realizing it, I looked at the sky: I was following a buzzard that glided gently over the school, under a big, blue dome, clear and deep, lit up by a yellow disk like a blemish on one side. I lowered my head quickly.

Small and livid, Ferrufino had appeared at the end of a corridor that led out into the recess grounds. His short, bowlegged steps, like a duck’s, brought him closer, harshly breaking the silence that suddenly reigned, surprising me. (The door of the teachers’ lounge opens: a dwarfish, comic face peeps out. Estrada wants to get a look at us; he sees the principal a few steps away; he vanishes swiftly; his childish hand closes the door.) Ferrufino was facing us: he roamed wild-eyed through the groups of silenced students. The ranks had broken: some ran to the lavatories, others desperately encircled Teobaldo’s stand. Javier, Raygada, Leon and I stood motionless.

“Don’t be afraid,” I said, but nobody heard me because the principal had said at the very same time:

“Blow the whistle, Gallardo.”

Again the rows formed, this time slowly. The heat was not unbearable yet, but we were already suffering from a certain drowsiness, a kind of boredom. “They got tired,” Javier murmured. “That’s bad.” And, furious, he warned:

“Careful about talking.”

Others spread the warning.

“No,” I said. “Wait. They’ll go wild the minute Ferrufino opens his mouth.”

Several seconds of silence, of suspicious seriousness, went by before we raised our eyes, one by one, toward that little man dressed in gray. He stood there with his hands clasped over his belly, his feet together, perfectly still.

“I don’t want to know who started this commotion,” he recited. An actor: the tone of his voice, measured, smooth, the almost cordial words, his pose like a statue’s, were all carefully calculated. Could he have been rehearsing all by himself in his office? “Actions like this are a disgrace to you, to the school and to me. I’ve been very patient, too patient—mark my words—with the instigator of these disruptions, but this is the limit….”

Me or Lou? An endless and greedy tongue of fire licked my back, my shoulders, my cheeks, at the same time that the eyes of everyone in the school turned in my direction. Was Lou looking at me? Was he envious? Were the Coyotes looking at me? From behind, someone patted my arm twice, encouraging me. The principal spoke for a long time about God, about discipline and the supreme values of the spirit. He said that the administration’s doors were always open, that the truly courageous should come in to face up to the consequences.

“To face the consequences,” he repeated: now he was authoritarian. “That is, to talk face to face with me.”

“Don’t be a sucker!” I said quickly. “Don’t be a sucker!”

But he’d already raised his hand when Ferrufino saw him take a step to the left, breaking ranks. A satisfied smile crossed Ferrufino’s mouth and vanished immediately.

“I’m listening, Raygada…” he said.

As Raygada spoke, his words gave him courage. He even managed, at one moment, to wave his arms dramatically. He asserted that we weren’t bad and that we loved the school and our teachers; he reminded him that youth was impulsive. In the name of all of us, he asked for pardon. Then he stammered but went on:

“We ask you, Mr. Principal, to post an exam schedule as in past years…” Frightened, he grew silent.

“Take note, Gallardo,” said Ferrufino. “The student Raygada will come to study next week, every day, until nine at night.” He paused. “The reason will go down on your report card: rebelling against a pedagogical decree.”

“Mr. Principal…” Raygada was livid.

“Seems fair to me,” whispered Javier. “Serves him right.”

2.

A ray of sunlight pierced the dirty skylight and ended up caressing my forehead and eyes, filling me with peace. Still, my heart beat faster than usual and at times I felt short of breath. A half hour was left before dismissal; the boys’ impatience had settled down a little. Would they respond after all?

“Sit down, Montes,” said Professor Zambrano. “You’re an ass.”

“Nobody doubts that,” asserted Javier, right beside me. “He is an ass.”

Could the rallying cry have reached every grade? I didn’t want to torment my brain all over again with pessimistic assumptions, but I had my eye on Lou a few feet away from my desk, and I felt anxious and doubtful, because deep down I knew that what was at stake was not the exam schedule, not even a question of honor, but a personal vendetta. Why give up this lucky chance to attack the enemy when he’d dropped his guard?

“Here,” somebody next to me said. “It’s from Lou.”

I accept taking command, with you and Raygada
. Lou had signed twice. Between his signatures, like a small blot with the ink still shining, there appeared a sign we all respected: the letter C, upper case, enclosed in a black circle. I looked over at him: his forehead and mouth were pinched; he had slanted eyes, sunken cheeks and a strong, pronounced jaw. He was watching me intently: maybe he thought the situation required him to be cordial.

I answered on the same piece of paper:
With Javier
. He read without shifting and shook his head yes.

“Javier,” I said.

“I know,” he answered. “Okay. We’ll give him a rough time.”

Give who? The principal or Lou? I was just about to ask him but the whistle for the end of the period distracted me. At the same time, the shouting rose over our heads, mixed with the noise of pushed desks. Someone—Cordoba maybe?—whistled loudly as if trying to stand out.

“They know already?” Raygada asked, on line. “To the embankment.”

“What a fast thinker!” somebody called out. “Even Ferrufino knows.”

We went out the back door fifteen minutes ahead of the lower grades. Others had left already and most of the students had stopped in the street, forming small groups. They were talking, fooling around, shoving each other.

“Nobody hang around here,” I said.

“The Coyotes with me,” Lou shouted proudly.

Twenty boys surrounded him.

“To the embankment,” he ordered. “Everybody to the embankment.”

Arm in arm in a row linking the two sidewalks, the seniors brought up the rear, elbowing our way through, forcing the less enthusiastic ones to speed up:

A cool breeze that could not even stir the dry leaves of the carob trees or the hair on our heads blew the sand from one side of the embankment to the other, covering the burning hot surface. They had responded. Before us—Lou, Javier, Raygada and I, with our backs to the railing and the endless dunes stretching from the opposite bank of the river—a packed crowd extending the length of the whole block remained quiet, even though from time to time strident, isolated shouts could be heard.

“Who does the talking?” Javier asked.

“I will,” proposed Lou, ready to jump up on the railing.

“No,” I said. “Javier, you speak.”

Lou checked himself and looked at me, but he wasn’t mad.

“All right,” he said, and shrugging his shoulders, added: “What’s the difference?”

Javier climbed up. With one hand he leaned on a twisted, dry tree and with the other he held himself up on my neck. Through his legs, agitated by a slight quivering that disappeared as the tone of his voice grew convincing and forceful, I could see the dry, burning riverbed and thought about Lou and about the Coyotes. A mere second had been enough for him to take over. Now he was in command and they looked up to him, him, a little yellow rat who not six months earlier had been begging me to let him join the gang. The tiniest slip, and then blood pouring down my face and neck; and my arms and legs, immobilized beneath the moon’s brightness, unable now to answer back to his fists.

“I beat you,” he said, panting. “Now I’m the leader. Let’s get that settled.”

None of the shadows spread out in a circle over the soft sand had moved. Only the frogs and crickets answered Lou, who was insulting me. Still stretched out on the hot ground, I managed to yell out:

“I’m quitting the gang. I’ll start another one, better than this one.”

But I and Lou and the Coyotes still crouched in the shadows knew it wasn’t true.

“I’m quitting too,” said Javier.

He helped me get up. We went back into town and while we were walking through the empty streets, I was wiping away the blood and tears with Javier’s handkerchief.

“Now you talk,” said Javier. He had got down and some of them were applauding him.

“Okay,” I answered and got up on the railing.

Neither the walls in the background nor the bodies of my pals cast shadows. My palms were moist and I thought it was nerves, but it was the heat. The sun was in the center of the sky; it was suffocating. My buddies’ eyes didn’t meet mine: they looked at the ground or my knees. They kept quiet. The sun protected me. “We’ll ask the principal to post the exam schedule, just the same as other years. Raygada, Javier, Lou and I will make up the committee. Junior high agrees, right?”

Most agreed, nodding their heads. A few shouted, “Yes.”

“We’ll do it right now,” I said. “You’ll wait for us at Merino Square.”

We started walking. The main door to the school was shut. We knocked loudly; behind us we heard a growing murmur. Gallardo opened up.

“Are you crazy?” he asked. “Don’t do this.”

“Don’t get mixed up in it,” Lou interrupted him. “Do you think a hick scares us?”

“Go in,” Gallardo said. “You’ll see.”

3.

His little eyes observed us closely. He tried to feign irony and a lack of concern, but we knew that his smile was forced and that deep inside his thick-set body were fear and hatred. He knitted his brow and wiped away his scowl as sweat gushed out of his small, purple hands.

He was shaking.

“Do you know what this is called? It’s called rebellion, insurrection. Do you think I’m going to submit myself to the whims of a few idlers? I’ll crush your insolence….”

He lowered and raised his voice. I saw him fight not to shout. Why don’t you explode once and for all, I thought. Coward!