TE23 Double Feature

Andrea Tompa

The Hangman’s House

face, a tiny bubble of saliva came to his lips and his hackles rose visibly; he grasped the girl’s left arm tightly, his sharp nails digging in just by the previous day’s injection which the whole class had been given with a nice blunt needle, he held on to her, abandoned his guard-post, and without a word took her upstairs to the teachers’ room, as the purple patches darkened on his face and veins stood out on his temples and his hand stung through the thin man-made fibre blouse as if she had some skin disease, and until finally he deposited her outside the teachers’ room where a few others were already standing, heads bowed, Comrade teacher Antal’s morning haul, and there was still a biology lesson to come in the day, starting after break at 11.10, but during break, instead of eating her favourite mustard sandwich, she had to line up in the concrete yard for Square, where she could expect to be called out from VIII-C because of the uniform; the summons to appear before Square usually began with the little ones, 352

and that day nothing unusual happened— they too were sent over to Square from the other building—but the biology teacher, in his pale pink shirt, sharply creased trousers and immaculate lab coat, made his own class line up in the bitter cold at 10.50, classes 1 to 4 on the right, 5 to 8 in the middle and the big ones, classes 9 to 12, on the left, with the class leaders in front of them, and finally the head teacher, the deputy, the teacher on duty that week and three other teachers, Hope it lasts as long as possible , thought the Girl, because then the biology lesson would be late starting, Antal took the list of names from his coat pocket, and when one’s name was called out one went to the middle of the yard, VIII-C, she heard her name, Uniform! he shrieked, and as she went to the middle of Square and stood in front of the victims of the day she heard laughter evoked by her uniform; but she couldn’t be sure whether they were laughing derisively and scornfully at her or, on the other hand, 353