The Teacher (English version)

The teacher Ivan Petrov walked into the teachers’ room greeted by the thick and common for this time of year smell of rotting flesh.

A rat had died behind the heavy shelves opposite the windows but that came as no surprise for this was the season of the rats. They died there every year and rotted away at leisure from February till May and there was nothing that could be done about it. This was God’s way. He breathed in deeply the heavy smell and stepped up to the windows. His first thought was to open them all but then he remembered the purpose of his visit here today. For more than a year he had been marked as the Black Sheep by the school management and for a good reason, too. For example, the thing that had frayed their nerves to the edge was a passing remark of his on the case of the red stain that had been found in the history box in the school register the previous week:

“What is this?” asks the aging music teacher. “Looks like blood to me.”

“Someone has been having sex on the register again,” he casually observes.

“Sex?” the music teacher is startled, her signature in the sign box checked midway.

“Again?” chimes in the history teacher. That means this has happened before.”

“Of course,” he replies. "As a matter of fact, it happens quite often.”

“Couldn’t you marvel at these desires!” laughs the Bulgarian Language teacher rising up from the tattered chair by the shelves under the direct impact of the first school bell.

“What a smell, really! It seems to me there’s more than one dead rat here. How could they have had sex in these conditions?”

“One could say that this is a rat pandemic or something, but this is rather like love in the time of cholera. No dead rats could stand in its way!” he says and leaves the room.

He was half way through the next class when the door of his shabby room with holes in the walls and peeling paint opened and the school hygienist told him that the principal wanted to see him.

In the principal’s office it was elucidated to him that remarks like his were not going to be tolerated any more – frivolous and undermining the reputation of the school as institution. He was reminded of other gruesome crimes that he had committed like the systematic neglect of keeping the attendance record and his unrhythmical examinations. To the above said they rubbed in the already fading memory of his being reprimanded three times in teachers’ meetings for managerial decisions, something connected with a long story in which he believed he was an innocent victim.

The teacher Petrov knew that he might be able to retire without having been fired, on the other hand the thought of the possible firing was going to haunt him till the rest of his working days and no one could tell how many they would be. After the last incident with the school management in his mind had lodged an idea. There was an elegant way of breaking the stalemate. There was only one solution, one way to end it all – their desire to fire him in a grand, spectacular and edifying manner to all the rest and his inner denial of the label stupid teacher, who could bear all injustice in the world and live off social assistance, which passed for a salary, put up with the stench of the dead rats, which for no known reason, chose the shelves in the teachers’ room as their last repose and the thousands of other things which made his profession detestable and repugnant to himself. He went to the nearest window and opened it. It was right above the powerful comparatively new Opel of the principal. Ivan Petrov looked at the computer next to it, which had no printer, and also due to the lack of internet access in the school, was rendered completely useless . Then he lifted the computer and held it out of the window.

He looked outside.

Students were playing badminton in the schoolyard. Birds were chirping in the crisp morning air and in the music room students were singing “I Believe in You” by Quiora. Below, positioned directly under the window, the crimson colored Opel Omega metallic hurt his eyes in the strong March sun. He shuddered as if waking from a trance and released the computer on to the window-sill. What foolishness this was going to be! He wiped with his hand the sweat that had stood out on his forehead. He stayed there for one lingering moment listening to the song of the birds. Then he looked down again and was newly blinded by the alloyed wheels, the window-panes and the trunk of the car. He turned around and the sticky thick smell hit his nostrils with the amplified force of stale air kept in an enclosed space. Thinking no more, Ivan Petrov took the computer in his hands and flung it with all his might into the scorching sunlight. He managed to see the computer smash the windshield of the car with an effective crash accompanied by the powerful car alarm system which deafened the last remaining vestige of reasoning in his mind. He turned around and took in his hands the cheap 14-inch monitor and hurled it as hard as he could towards the shiny fancy car, steeped in March sunlight. Grinning, he stepped back and heard the footsteps running towards the teachers’ room. He remembered with a pang of remorse that he had robbed the Math teacher of his only joy in life. He used to spend all his gap hours playing pinball on that computer, and in spite of the heavy rat smell in the room, had reached the stunning and unreachable 40 000 000 points.