The Last Teacher

Icarus 2001-3

"But unfortunately it is the rule, and sometimes it seems like a stinker contest. Matitone is a holy man compared to this one.... Do you know that he withheld a day's pay from my marriage leave?"

One could hardly believe it, but it was true.

"And just about this time, that is, basically DURING THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS!!! A gift I still can't swallow to this day."

"You can tell he was jealous!" Battista teased her.

Piccoli didn't fit that surname at all; in fact, as a side dish to his six-foot-nine frame, he had two gladiator shoulders that occupied the doorway as wide as his stature above. At his side, Bella looked like the Queen of the Amazons, or rather, the graceful interpretation a Bolshoi etoile might have made of her.

"Oh! Here comes Beautiful!" Maurer announced at the entrance of the two cheerful gym Professors, who indeed, pulled shiny by the sun, looked as if they had just stepped off the set of the soap opera.

"The Magnificent Two. I confess I'm a bit envious! - Said Battista, squaring Manuela admiringly from head to toe - What, do they audition you, to take you to ISEF?"

The newcomers smiled in satisfaction, lingering as if waiting for applause. Battista often said this: when he taught at the Villaggio del Fanciullo, several times he had passed entire teams of PE students at the pool bar who went to train there, and for crying out loud, whether male or female, they were all cool!

For every most eccentric human quality, Piccoli had had a Professor at ISEF who was its universal icon, so this time it was inevitable that the talk would fall on that mighty womanizer, more handsome than Apollo and stronger than Samson, whom they called Rasputin.

Of course, the nickname required no explanation, but Piccoli was keen to point out that it came from the rumour that the man was even more gifted than the irrepressible lover of the Tsarina of All the Russias, and perhaps even her descendant.

True to his reputation, Rasputin lectured between parallel bars and rings, haranguing them in a stentorian voice like the monk of Aleksandra Feodorovna Romanova, and, among other things, preaching a bizarre and somewhat racist doctrine that the athlete is a kind of superman with an irrepressible need to express himself through libido. But something unbridled by satyrs and bacchae, though, not by asphyxiated and undersized ordinary mortals!

Thus, 'spiritual' guide of boys in the throes of testosterone torment, and first aid of maidens stunned with lust by all the eros that permeated the air around him, Professor Rasputin had also become almost as much a legend as his more illustrious namesake.

And as a legend, the gifted physical education teacher marked his students profoundly. Andrea was no exception, so that summer, between beach volleyball matches on the beaches of Romagna, he tried hard to imitate his example.

For her part, Bella had put the master's precepts into practice by roasting in the sun under the watchful gaze of the Riviera's bronze bay watchers, capable of lifting a blowfly with one arm.

His wife and her husband, on the other hand, were retrograde bank clerks who would never have dreamed of making a pilgrimage to Moscow to visit Grigory Efimovich's pea mausoleum, if there was even such a monument next to Lenin's macabre tomb, so they finally tired of it, and a few weeks earlier had locked them both out of the house on the very same day.

"Oh, what a coincidence!" Exclaimed Mastroballante, who had just arrived.

In reality, this was no coincidence.

The spouses of the two colleagues, long-time family friends, who knew the exuberance of this sporting generation all too well, while conforting each other for years had fallen in love, so that they had each decided to replace their own spouse with the other's, and now they had concerted the showdown in this way to make them pay for it to the end.

In any case, Piccoli and Bella didn't seem too shaken by the family's vicissitudes. While waiting for both of them to find better accommodation, she was hosting Andrea in the country house she had inherited from her grandmother, and as far as they could tell, they both considered it a fun game, instead of the drama one might have thought.

"Mah! If it goes well for them... - Battista pondered - Then maybe it's all a scene for the people, and inside they suffer like dogs, poor things... Besides, it's guys like that who colour the world... and personally I much prefer it colourful, rather than grey!"

"You are in mortal sin, you know that, don't you?" Said with marked affectation Lorenzo Chiesa, who had arrived with Mastroballante.

"The voice of conscience! - Commented Battista sarcastically, who had not missed the religion teacher's heated glance at Bella's toned procacity - Come on we know how much you'd like to be in Andrea's place!"

He nodded with a smirk under his thin moustache, and watching him, Battista could not help but marvel for the umpteenth time at the oddity of names. In fact, here was Piccoli3, who had nothing to do with his one , and next to him Bella4, who she could not have interpreted better hers. But then there was also Chiesa: a perfect example of a 'nomen omen' put there by the Curia, who taught what sins are and that one should not commit them, which is nevertheless inevitable because we are sinners by nature, but all in all it is not the case to worry too much about the health of the soul, because sincere repentance cancels them all out.

"Whatever..." Thought the mechanics teacher, then his gaze fell on Mastroballante5.... "Ah yeah! And where shall I put this other one, who spends his holidays touring folk dances from Reykjavik to Istanbul, and of Sister Teresa of Calcutta he cares at most how she danced the tarantella?"

"We are together again this year, prof, do you know that?" Mastro told him, intercepting his gaze.

"Alas, yes!" Groaned Battista.

Actually, he didn't mind at all, because by now he had grown fond of that ITP from Abruzzo like himself, to whom he had most often been paired. Not to mention that Mastro was one of the minor problems among certain technical-practical mechanics teachers with whom he had to be paired at Majorana.

He, at least, did not allow himself to be clocked in by his colleagues with the pretence of being a Knight of Labor, and of a justified complaint he knew how to accept even a certain harshness with dignity.

Peluso did not. He gave a damn about rules and responsibilities, not least because he was the headmaster's brother-in-law. And since human beings learn by imitation, he didn't miss any pupils in the school. Too bad they were the ones on the wrong side of the desk.

Battista had had him in drawing the year he arrived at Majorana, but had never seen him among the drafting machines. The following year, he had found him in systems.

"It's a heavy programme, we have to divide the tasks well." had told him in the deserted workshop on the day of the first meeting.

Caught by surprise in the grey silence of the computers still immersed in summer hibernation, Peluso had lifted his eyes from la Repubblica with a dumbfounded expression on his chubby face, and glancing at the unlit monitors from behind his gold-rimmed glasses, he had protested: "What do you mean, divide our tasks! We're together, and we do everything together, right?" But of his understanding of the word Battista had already had enough: "What do you mean all together? - He had asked sarcastically - In the sense that I work, and together we carry the burden of the salary? That you will occasionally stick your nose into the classroom while I lecture for you? Or even that you might teach the boys something yourself sometimes, since we get paid for it?"

"How... how... how... what would you like to imply..."

"Nothing: I do not insinuate. But last year you didn't make an hour's attendance, and I don't investigate where you were going because it's none of my business... however, this year the music must change."

No one had ever dared so much with him: "But you hear where we have come! Even my colleague's slanders I have to listen to now?" The accused was offended.

"Slander my foot, Peluso! Know that I have no intention of working for two and leaving a salary in Pizzo Calabro again this year... so let's resolve this matter once and for all and civilly, if possible."

'Civilly, you say? Infamous without restraint and you even dare to say civilly? For pity's sake, whom have they put me with! Ah, but rest assured we'll settle it right away, my way, though: I'll go to the headmaster and he'll take care of it. I have nothing more to say with you!"

Still youthfully confident in the impartiality of those vested in it, Battista could not help laughing.

"To the headmaster? You go to the headmaster? Please, have a seat! Let's see what he tells you!" Had been his mocking conclusion.

In reality, he never knew what the comrades had said to each other, but since the partnership was later dissolved, he was satisfied with that too, nor did he care to discover the mystery. Rather he should have turned him in, that thief, but he was not a spy.

"Why do you say alas? The kids had fun with the model aircraft, didn't they? And so did we... I'm fine with that!"

Called to account, Mastroballante also questioned himself. Concretely, his contribution never went beyond a general surveillance between the benches, but at least for that he was there, and if not for the rest, Battista could not even throw the cross at him.

As students, those of Mastro's generation had ink and ruler in their pencil cases, i.e. they drew in ink and did calculations with a graduated ruler that looked like a magic wand. But above all, they spent eighteen hours a week in the workshop making adjustments with the file. Now they had to teach CAD, computer science and numerical control... many had not made it through such a radical conversion without proper training from the top, so today they were greying among PCs, algorithms and machining centres like melancholic carers away from home.

"Sure: we all had fun playing on the lawn," replied Battista, "but do you have any idea how much it cost me to carry out that project, and what satisfaction it gave me in return?"

"Mah... I can imagine."

"No, you can't. Before I started, I didn't even have the faintest idea where something like this would take me. I spent dozens of hours learning from reps and dealers everything you've ever seen about resins, composites, electric motors, radio controls and whatnot, and you know what Jason told me when he got the four I gave him instead of the two he deserved? That I hadn't done s**t! Not to mention certain colleagues, who don't even have the excuse of being boys... Do you know what did Miravalli, our esteemed dean and head of the school's website where for two years there has been nothing but a faded photo?"

Mastro shook his head: "No... what did Miravalli do?"

"Nothing! I wanted to put the pages of the model aircraft on the site, which would be good publicity for mechanics, and for me it meant at least the small bonus from the school fund, and he refused with the excuse of copyright! That is, HE did not use MY work, at MY request, so as not to violate MY rights, do you understand?"

"Yeah... what do you want to do. That one thinks he's the leading lady. What did you expect? Let it go, if you don't want to fight. - He paused briefly, then changed the subject - Anyway, we have systems this year, not technology."