I cannot imagine what parents, bloggers, influencers, the inspectorate, the DNA (National Anticorruption Directorate), and the state would do with the teacher today if something like this were to happen, but I repeat, in 1992, the whole town was silent and adored him for the countless Olympians he consistently placed in competitions, and only that mattered. I've since learned that those children also cried, that they were terrorized and brutally beaten at home to memorize, even rote learning, what they learned in the exorbitant private lessons. The talented ones, with potential, only did homework and nothing else, while those without a way out learned sequences of numbers by heart to pass exams. And they passed.
Because a parent-teacher meeting took place towards the end of the year, initiated by the homeroom teacher, who was desperate because she couldn't typically finalize academic records and couldn't get students into high school admissions, my mother found out, outraged, that it wasn't just her 'stinker' in this situation, but many others, even Ungureanu's, who had straight A's, even Pintilie's, the architect's, even Vlad's, who is a university math professor. She was seething, but she didn't comfort me with a single word. I started eating less and less, and more rarely, getting beaten for not eating, falling asleep more and more difficulty, curled up in a ball, and only after rocking myself under the blanket for a while.
The teacher was somehow pressured by the scandal and the chorus of colleagues in the staff room to ease up. But he punished us brutally, although I don't think he received any disciplinary action. During a break, he issued a threat about a 'real' test to 'cure us' of tattling, which he then gave, and no one passed it; it's unknown what level it was, probably some of his own explorations turned into a fun game with nervously overloaded children, and at the same time, a bomb without a target. He said he would record a grade of two for everyone (this clearly lowered the averages of even the good students), because 'someone leaked something at home' and that deeply disturbed him. Now, he didn't say who, or what exactly, or where it was leaked from (from private lessons or school?), or if the 'leak' meant that our parents understood the situation and came together for the meeting with minimal and obvious information, or if it was something specific. We all knew we were innocent; we didn't tattle, because we had no one to tattle to, we were afraid, and we were the ones getting beaten at home. The fact is, he dropped the bombshell, grinding his teeth, that we had a snitch among us, then he slammed the door shut and left us to tear each other apart.
What I saw then haunts me to this day. The ruler is perfume. Getting a failing grade for nothing is insignificant. I saw four years of blind hatred and a need for revenge explode in crude, shaken minds, searching for an abstract target of blame. I heard the 'alpha' teenager, the one in whom we recognized competence, who seemed delicate, even graceful, who hadn't raised his voice in eight years, whom all the girls on the landing were in love with, I heard him roar like a cornered beast, with a broken voice like a cave primate, a voice I didn't even know existed: Who?! Who are you, man? He didn't think to ask first, to process, nothing... Just revenge, he's 14, what do you expect from him... He turned towards Bogdan, the chubby one in the first row, the stuttering and fearful one, who had recently joined the group, brought in with connections from a Lipovan community at the border in the last year, to do math with the teacher... Next to him, the other tall and athletic boys, the math Olympians, those who couldn't 'leak' anything because they shared a common secret, gathered mimetically and subserviently, and cruelly rained punches on him: You?! This one, crying in terror, panicked, with a red face, no..., pointing instinctively behind him, to escape. Aaaah, you, Mardare, you animal? I have never seen greater savagery in my entire life, not even in a street brawl between adults, compared to how they beat Mardare. Mardare took the beating, crying like a man, silently, and said, disfigured: not me, maybe Codrin, who is his nephew, he's his sister's son, that's why he got him into this class, so he could do math with him.Oh! This wasn't known. So this quiet, introverted person infiltrated like a dummy and never breathed a word that he was related to the teacher?! This automatically means he's been a spy for years…
Oh, how they beat Codrin too. He screamed that he hated him, that he wouldn't side with him even if he were dead, that his uncle always beat him black and blue, especially him, right in the living room, during tutoring sessions, he showed them the bruises on his body from before, and they let him go. So it must be Pântea. No, Antoci! Or Grosu. Ahh, no, Covataru. Or Bobârnac, since he's an idiot anyway. Or Colțuneac. Or that small, chipped-tooth idiot Rotaru? And so on.
I was in the second row, and I still remember the taste of fear that cut across my tongue like poison. I expected the blame to fall on me in turn and to be covered in blood, but the 'alpha' didn't hit any girls, as if girls were out of the question. The massacre lasted twenty minutes, the entire long break. All this time, frozen ‒ victims, aggressors, and spectators – it occurred to NO ONE to open the classroom door, to simply go to the bathroom, to run into the yard, to shout, to tell an adult, to go to the principal's office, nothing!!!!! Or in the evening, to a parent. Someone! Mardare was beaten with a belt at home too, because he came home with his shirt untucked, his eye swollen, and his clothes torn, and he wouldn't admit, even when trampled, who he had gotten involved with, a giant, but gentle boy, who had never caused problems at school and who had become, behold, a hooligan, only now, in eighth grade. I think we were absolutely stupid. Mardare was beaten twice! And by his parents, do you understand?
(to be continued)
Cosmina Dragomir
Photography by Noemia Prada
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