The Last Teacher

Icarus 2001-1

Icarus 2001

There goes the school, another time in a lifetime. A boy comes out of it sooner or later, but if he happens to sit on the other side of the desk and likes to continue to be in the same totipotent generation to forget the progression into impotence of his own, then he gets a taste for it and never stops going to school again... even if, in words, the holidays will continue to be his supreme desire forever.

"The boarding school on Friday, that you could stay at the seaside for three more days, and then you only start in earnest in a dozen! It must be another one of those torturers who would pull you out of intensive care for the POF: that the ministerial programme is no good because you don't put your own spin on it.... Or if not, that he always has a nice urgent meeting under the flag, to cure you of your heart attack: because you can't just wait until you're discharged from hospital to discuss the regulation of field trips... especially, then, if Donvito wants to make them three days even in second grade, instead of the two it says. "

Thank goodness, Professor Battista did not have a heart attack, but there were plenty of headmasters who persecuted those who really suffered from it, and he definitely had no sympathy for authority without authority, but on the other hand inflated with obtuse authoritarianism.

On a beautiful late summer's day, Majorana approached along Via Bellisario, taking over the scene.

The building is low, actually, with only one floor above the mezzanine, but it is comfortably spread out for a fair length in the middle of a large green area, which at the back, around the athletics track, is thickly planted with tall poplars, in front has a large car park, to the right the brand new media library, to the left the Palasavena, and on the other side of the street, directly opposite, a five-a-side football pitch.

The sports hall is a bit more imposing, but also more secluded, plus Majorana has it in use as a gymnasium, so it is the school that is the centre of attention in that area of San Lazzaro, or at least that was the impression given to Battista when he lingered there with a smug look on his way to work.

He parked wistfully thinking back to the father he had just gone to say goodbye to. Now bedridden for more than a year, the old man still lived in the flat two floors below his that he had occupied for more than half a century, but even with the help of the Ukrainian caregiver,

his son's attentions were not enough to ease the pain of his distressing twilight.

He was in a real bad way, poor guy, with the arteriopathy that had knocked out his legs, and that numbness bordering on dementia that never left him.

And who knows how she treats him, that woman!? "

Battista did not know what to think, but his father had lost a lot of weight since he had entrusted him to her care. At first, he himself had advised her to keep him on a diet, since according to the doctors, fat was his most insidious enemy, but there is a limit to everything, what the heck! "What harm can there possibly be in adding a little extra pleasure to a poor fellow in that state?" Now it seemed to the good son that the lady had taken him a little too literally, and it worried him a little.

"I guess this one's skimming off the top, more like dieting!" He thought.

And to think that the old man really was an oak, as he had always said of himself. He had smoked like a chimney since his teens, and although he had been carrying emphysema for several decades, he had continued with two or three packs of cigarettes a day as long as he could stand. Not to mention his intolerance towards doctors and medicines. For his part, he had perhaps never resorted a doctor in his life, and even the few times that this had happened accidentally, the loved ones who had practically forced him to do so, at the end did not remember him to have ever followed the prescriptions. So the big lump should have died of cancer long ago, the way he had always treated himself, but there he was, good old Vincenzo, at the threshold of eighty-two: a bit battered, of course, but thank God still able to wait for his son every day, and to be happy every time he saw him reappear at the edge of his sickbed.

The thought of his father nostalgically reminded him of his mother, who was no longer there.

When her husband was first admitted to hospital hospitalized, with the priest at the foot of the bed to give him the last rites, she was perhaps already ill, but she did not know it yet.

During his stay in hospital, while the inveterate smoker in a semi-comatose state continued to mime in bed the funny ritual of taking a cigarette out of the packet, lighting it, smoking it and throwing away the butt, his mother had spent the nights sitting in an armchair at his bedside, so much so that in order for her to go and rest at least a little, Giovanni had had to ask the head doctor to forbid her to do so. But in the end fate had been more hasty with her, and in less than three months thedamned disease had taken her away.

"What a sad time! - Battista thought - Not even half of my wedding guests are left by now... It's like watching the desert invade our beautiful garden and swallow the flowers in the sand one by one without being able to do anything about it... And now there's auntie too."

Yeah. Fortunately, he didn't have to take care of her as well, since it was the two remaining aunts who did that, but Mom's 90-plus-year-old sister was staying on the first floor, and it was no longer the cheerful time she once had to stop there for a greeting, since she had begun to stare at him silently from her wheelchair.

On the other hand, Battista realized that he was even lucky, compared to those who are orphaned as children, and are thus forced to feel the desert sand between their teeth at an early age. In the big picture of life, he felt that his present situation was acceptable, and despite the bitterness of not having children, which made him scrutinize with dismay the time when it would be his turn, all in all he felt fulfilled and serene, led his existence with participation, and was still capable of a fair amount of enthusiasm.

He entered the school which was still deserted, and as always in such cases, the janitors buzzed lazily in the resounding building, in and out of the huddle they made around the switchboard, like bees around the hive on a sunny day.

They smiled relaxed, letting it be known that the big jobs were still a long way off, and from the Nutella-coloured tans they were sporting, it was clear that the houses in Lido Adriano, instead, were still in full swing, and waiting for them in the afternoon for another weekend of sun and sea.

The deputy also looked like a gianduiotto1 chocolate, but unlike the janitors, his smile was already fleeting and distracted, as he rambled here and there with a few papers in his hand.

"Oh there Ubaldo! I see even you managed to take a little holiday, where have you been?"

The vicar stood on the threshold of the office, raising his eyebrow on his side with a strange grimace that was the greatest expression of confidence and greeting of which he was capable. But he was not haughty, in fact... perhaps he was just a little shy.

"Welcome back! I missed you: when will you stop calling me that?"

He had ignored his colleague's question, but it was normal for him to gloss over idle arguments. Besides, he preferred to insist that it would be undignified if the boys heard him and then started to address him in that way too.

"You are right! - Said Battista - But it comes naturally to me... Baldoni tastes so much like a cardinal, that I wouldn't want to pass without realising it to Eminence... that would be even worse, wouldn't it?"

In response, the deputy shook his head like a horse.

Battista then resigned himself to calling him Sergius, which was then his baptismal name, and one who is registered at the registry office as John the Battista, certainly cannot deny a baptismal name.

“ have a new boss, don't we? Who is it?"

"A guy called Eros Zanetti, do you know him?"

"Never heard of it."

"One from Imola, from Fioravanti... he's there, look."

In the dimmed light, halfway down the long corridor, a stocky guy of average height was entering the presidency in the company of a woman clambering in heels that would certainly have given a six-foot-four Miss Italy a very elegant gait, but she was forced to tiptoe like a slightly drunk ostrich, and with all that, she could barely reach the ears of the one next to her.

"And the lady on stilts?"

Carmela Tappa2: the secretary, also new.

'Damn... we're in the realm of bespoke names here. Well, well... but what a guy.... Then it all changes this year."

"Yeah... and I'll give you a piece of friendly advice: be careful not to make gaffes, you being so 'spontaneous', because they seem to be getting it on."

He thanked him for the warning, but of the strange couple he could learn no more. The vice-principal didn't even know them yet, and besides, he was the kind of guy who only indulged in gossip for good reason, sparingly, and always grudgingly.

That year the third B2 was articulated with electronics, because for two separate classes there were no numbers, and in mechanics there were seven foreigners out of thirteen, all freshly arrived from halfway around the world without knowing a word of Italian.

"Better and better! - Grumbled the teacher - And how do I tell these guys about entropy?"

The meagre consolation was that in all likelihood he would not have told them about it at all, since by this time many Italians were also arriving at the three-year degree without knowing how to make equivalences... and some even at university... "But then you also have to pay him, the architect who makes you buy ten thousand square kilometres of tiles to cover the bathroom!?”

Baldoni shrugged his shoulders. From behind, a vaguely mocking voice greeted, then urged Battista not to get too excited: 'But always with this talk, you? That's how it is now, you know? Resign yourself! It's useless to get bitter blood for the four pennies they give us. So take my advice as a friend: look after yourself, and don't give a damn."

It was not exactly Battista's philosophy of life. He always tried to do his best, but unfortunately it had a logic, in the school bazaar of the time.

He turned towards the tempter. At the top of the imposing mole, Sacchi's snow-white face winked slyly at him just below his thick brown curls.

"Oh hey Mephisto! Thanks for the bad advice, I'll take it into account.... But does four money then become five, to give a damn?"

The TDP Professor admitted the poor profitability of his survival strategy, buuuut... And Battista was not at all surprised by that seemingly illogical 'buuut...'. He too knew well that conforming wraps one in an invisible and warm cloak of consensus, while the truth exposes one to the pitfalls of a thousand revenge. Thinking it, the single thought, is less of an effort, and by sparing one's neighbour the disgust of looking at oneself in the mirror naked, the popularity one gains is much greater. As for the money, it is certainly not the truth that pays off the most.

And to think that when it was a little less of a bazaar, school seemed serious. He had had to endure a huge competition to get in, complete with a written exam on gas turbines, the design, calculations and drawings of a clutch, a practical exercise on a hydraulic system, and an oral on the entire university syllabus... But then, since the state could not afford the luxury of so much knowledge, it had merged the Professorships to cut costs and so, once he was in, overnight he was also assigned the subjects of another degree, which had nothing to do with that little bit of examination.