Gyorgy Dragoman - The White King

He was in the habit of giving anyone he thought wasn't paying attention a whack on the head, so I quickly turned the page from my drawing and started copying the last line from the blackboard as if I'd begun a new page, and when Sir Uclid got there he just barely swatted the back of my neck, it wasn't a real whack, and so I figured that was all I had coming to me, because by then Sir Uclid had passed by my bench, but then he reached back and grabbed my ear without so much as looking back, and he jerked it so hard that it felt ready to rip right off, and I cried out from the pain, and then I heard Sir Uclid suck in air through his teeth and tell me to bring along my notebook, and so I did, and he pulled me by the ear right up front toward the platform and he said, "Maybe you didn't notice that this is math class and not drawing class, but I'll make you notice, don't you worry about that," and he yanked the notebook right out of my hand and opened it, and he held my drawing up in front of the class for everyone to see, and he told me I should be ashamed of myself, and as he passed by the platform he yanked my ear so hard I almost fell right on the platform, and I heard the others laughing at me, and Sir Uclid still didn't let go of my ear, no, he took me straight over to the trash can and then let me go and kicked over the can, all that paper and all those apple cores and pencil shavings poured out onto the floor, and then I knew what my punishment would be, and indeed Sir Uclid really did announce that starting now until the end of class I'd be a pillar saint, and he said, "Power of two," which meant I had to stand on top of the upside-down trash can, and until the end of class I had to balance there like just that, on one leg and with my arms straight up in the air, and meanwhile I had to count in my head two times two and always multiply the product by two, and again and again and again, and by the end of class I had to come up with a number at least ten figures long, because if I didn't, Sir Uclid would automatically slap a failing grade on me for each digit short of that ten-figure number, and doing that was really hard, no one was ever able to complete it, because everyone got to four thousand ninety-six, no problem, but after that it wasn't easy keeping the numbers in your head.

Anyway, I stepped up on the trash can and stretched out my arms above my head with my fingers all spread out, just the way we were supposed to, because Sir Uclid always said that pillar saints had to hold their hands like that so birds could make a nest in their hands if they wanted. As I did this I noticed that Iza was looking at me because the trash can happened to be right there in front of the model students' bench, and meanwhile Sir Uclid leaned against the lectern on his desk and went on explaining when triangles are called similar, and that similarity is not the same as uniformity, and I tried counting, I even managed to double four thousand ninety-six, but the whole time I was looking at Iza, she had on thick brown tights and black shoes fastened with straps, and as I watched her I felt myself getting all warm, and my back started to itch and my school shirt was squeezing my neck even though my red cravat definitely wasn't pulled too tight. I tried multiplying thirty-two thousand seven hundred sixty-eight by two, but then I noticed what nice handwriting Iza had, how neat and orderly her letters were, and how she was sitting there all alone on the model students' bench, and then I saw that she'd filled up the page, and when she turned it I noticed that the next page didn't yet have a margin line, only all those little squares on account of its being graph paper, so she pulled out her ruler and put it on the page, just the way you're supposed to, four squares from the edge, and before drawing the line she looked right up at me and gave a smile, which ruined my counting. I didn't know two hundred sixty-two thousand what, and I felt myself blushing, and as Iza then drew the margin line, the ruler slipped to the side, and the tip of her pencil went right off the page, and then I noticed that she was blushing too, and she lowered her head, and as I stood there on the trash can with my arms held up high, all of a sudden I thought that maybe I was in love, and then I almost fell off the trash can, and I quickly went back to sixty-five thousand five hundred thirty-six and tried starting from there again, but by now my arms were hurting, it was getting hard to hold them up, and I didn't know how much time there was left in class. I tried not looking at Iza but at the others instead, so in the meantime I could think of the multiplying, but somehow my eyes went right back to Iza, and I wanted to know if I was really in love because never before had I really been in love, not even once, and Iza then stretched one of her legs, and I noticed that her blue school skirt had slipped a bit to the side, and one of Iza's knees showed through, along with just a sliver of her thigh, and then I thought again of what Feri told me about pussies, how he saw a black woman naked one time and her pussy hair was pure white, like when someone's gone all gray, but it's not like I believed him, so anyway, Iza then looked at me again, but this time she wasn't smiling, she simply looked up, that's all, and that made me all ashamed about the things I'd been thinking, and I tried counting instead, but by then my arms and my shoulders were really beginning to hurt, and I got hungry and thought of my midmorning snack, an apricot jam sandwich, but Sir Uclid just kept explaining away about triangles, and again I messed up the multiplying, the last number I remembered for sure was one hundred thirty thousand seventy-two, I really wished I could let my arms down already, and I saw that the guys were fidgeting a lot, which meant the class bell would ring in no time. I knew I didn't have to keep it up for long, and so I'd stick it out, I would, just like the great Communist hero Filimon Sirbu, who kept pulling that siren through the whole strike, and at the end, when the imperialists' volley cut him down, with the last of his strength he tied himself to the siren using his handkerchief, so that even with his lifeless body he would inspire his beloved comrades to strike, but unfortunately I didn't have a handkerchief with me, and it's not like I would have had anything to tie my wrists to anyway, and so I just kept holding my arms high and I tried counting, but it was no use at all anymore, and then all at once Sir Uclid looked at me and said, "The bell will ring any second now, so it's time to see what product divine inspiration has given our house saint, I can see that the storks haven't built any nests in his hands, but that doesn't mean miracles didn't happen in his head," and he told me to wipe that asinine look off my face because he'd kick the trash can right out from under me, instead I should be a good boy and say the number I'd reached, but by then my arms were hurting so bad that I couldn't even remember the end of sixty-five thousand whatever, and so I didn't say a thing, but then from the corner of my eye I noticed that Iza was looking at me again. She was silently whispering something, and I even managed to read the words on her lips, one billion seventy-three million seven hundred forty-one thousand eight hundred twenty-four, but her whispering it to me that way made me blush so hard that I couldn't say it, even though I really had read the whole thing on Iza's lips. I only stood there on the upside-down trash can with my hands held high and didn't say a thing, the skin on my face felt really hot all over, and then Sir Uclid said this would do, he'd given me a chance, but if it wasn't going to happen, well then, it wouldn't, and as he said that he smiled and suddenly kicked the trash can out from under me, and then the class bell rang.

I took a pretty hard fall, back and to the side, mainly I hit my butt and my elbow, and my school clothes got messy from the trash, and from down there on the floor even the ringing of the bell sounded a lot louder. Sir Uclid looked at me again and said what a good little weekly monitor boy I was, and right before sticking the roll book under his arm and leaving the classroom he told me to get ready to be called up front for an oral quiz during the next class, but I didn't care anymore about that because Iza was looking at me again, and I saw she was smiling.