As the first window was being opened wide, pale-yellow rays flooded in, revealing the shapes of desks arranged in rows. With the opening of the second window, the light increased, enhancing the various colours in the room. Written in white in the top corner of the rectangular, green blackboard that faced the room were the words: “Day – Month – Year –” In the black groove at the bottom of the board, bits of chalk lay in white dust. The light in the room intensified as the third window came ajar. The teacher’s table stood to the right of the blackboard, a chair neatly placed behind it. On the table were a khaki chalk box and a red glass vase, which was filled with dark-red gerberas*. The flowers had begun to wilt and their petals drooped and leaned against one another in the middle of the vase. More light flooded the room, adding a reddish hue to the shadow of the vase that stretched across the table. In a back corner of the room silently stood a wastepaper basket, a broom and a dustpan, and above them the last window was about to be opened.
In came the sound of a violin, not a smooth melody, but a rising and falling whine, as if the player was practising for the first time. The sound came from the teachers’ quarters. In the stillness of the morning, the shriek of the violin drifted far.
Fak stepped out of the room after he had finished opening all of the windows and doors. This was the last of the sixteen rooms he had to look after every day as part of his job. There were ten classrooms, the headmaster’s room, two teachers’ rooms, a music room, an arts-and-crafts room and a first-aid room. Each room had five windows and two doors, which had to be opened every morning and closed every evening. It was part of his routine, as set out in the school regulations.
He left the building and walked along the concrete path around it to the back, where seven water tanks stood in a row. He turned on the tap and filled a galvanised bucket. As the water neared the oval-shaped top, he turned off the tap, took the bucket and a mop and walked back to the main building. He went up the stairs and, hurriedly pushing the mop back and forth, set out to clean the entire upper floor and veranda. He changed the water before he began mopping the lower floor. After he had finished, he went to the other building, where he only had to clean the top floor; the ground floor was a cemented area where students gathered on Friday evenings.
His floor cleaning done, Fak took the bucket and mop back to their place beside the water tanks, then returned to the main building and went upstairs to the headmaster’s office. There, he opened the door of the glass showcase that stood behind the headmaster’s desk next to the school flag hanging on a base. Inside the showcase, silver trophies and shields, each representing a victory the school had achieved in various competitions, were on display. He took the national flag from the bottom shelf of the showcase, slung it over his shoulder and closed the glass door. He then went down and walked across the schoolyard to the flagpole, which stood on a circular cemented block in front of the school, and tied the flag to the cord at the foot of the pole. Around the base, an outer ring of bricks enclosed small ixora* bushes with contrasting orange flowers and green leaves.
The morning was bright and sunny, but to Fak it was rather oppressive. The back of his shirt was soaked with sweat.
The students had started to arrive, alone or in groups, their off-white shirts appearing from every direction. They carried their schoolbags awkwardly and some of them had metallic lunch boxes as well.
Old Monk Phon and Brother Daeng appeared from the coconut grove hugging their alms bowls and cut across the schoolyard as they made their way back to the temple, a temple boy carrying a lunch box in their wake. Fak let go of the flag, which had yet to be fully attached to the cord, and, squatting down, placed his palms together and bowed to the monks. When they had walked past, he stood up and continued winding the double cord around the metallic peg at the bottom of the pole.
The big bell at the temple rang frantically for a while and ended on three separate sharp clangs. Like the radio, the chime announced the time – it was eight in the morning. The sun was rising higher in the sky. More students were arriving. Some teachers, who came from town by minibus, were already there, but those who stayed in the teachers’ quarters had not turned up yet. Neither had the headmaster, whose house was close by.
If this were the rainy season, Fak would have to stand by the stairway beside the concrete foot bath to ensure that the children washed their feet before taking their bags and lunch boxes into the classrooms. Some of them would carry their shoes all the way from home and put them on only once they reached the school. A new regulation stated that all students had to wear shoes, especially those in grades five to seven. During the monsoon the tracks to school that went through plantations were muddy, and lumps of mud would stick to the children’s feet. Occasionally, some of them slipped and fell and got themselves covered head to foot in mud and, when they reached the school, they had to scrub themselves completely before being allowed inside. But this was the cold season, and the rule about feet washing was not strictly enforced.
A cacophony of flutes, drums and a xylophone started up, each player blowing away or beating as he felt like. The seventh-graders who made up the school band were tuning their instruments in the music room in preparation for the morning parade. Having a band for the parade was the brainchild of one of the new teachers, who had some rudiments of music, and the idea had been adopted by the headmaster and all of the teachers. It was a sign that this village school was as developed as the schools in town. After quite a long time had been spent practising, the students now had the flutes, drums and xylophone as accompaniment when they sang the national anthem and, when they walked to the classrooms, there was a marching tune to the beat of the drums – left-right, left-right... It was another sign of the advance of the school and of the village. Before long, a violin would be added to the band and this was why the music teacher practised morning and evening.
The sun was keeping time by rising higher and higher in the sky. Everything was getting increasingly hectic – the chatter and bustle of the children, almost three hundred of them, playing in the schoolyard and beside the school; the white of the shirts, the blue of the skirts, the khaki of the shorts, all mixing everywhere.
When the school bell rang its double note, the whites and blues and khakis froze. Walking, running, the students went to assemble in front of the flagpole, the older children filing up more quickly than the younger ones, who were pushing and shoving, their rows all askew. Their teachers had to come and help, cane in hand. The school band stood upfront, followed by the first-graders all the way to the seventh-graders. By the time the second bell rang, all of the rows were in fairly good order and only the little ones were still fidgeting about.
The accents of the national anthem –
The chanted morning prayers –
The beat of the drums –
The students filed into the school, one row at a time, until they had all disappeared inside. The teachers, walking and chatting in a group, were the last ones to go in. All that remained was the schoolyard, green, open and empty. Once again the school was quiet, as it had been in the early morning. The only difference was that now there were teachers and students inside.
Fak went upstairs to the headmaster’s office as he did every morning to receive his instructions for the day. The headmaster was at his desk reading a newspaper. He was about forty, round-faced and balding. A finely cropped moustache on his upper lip made him look suave and respectable. When he saw Fak, he covered the paper with both hands, folded it with one and laid it on the desk.
“How are you today?” the headmaster asked, in a way that didn’t seem to require an answer, as when people greet each other with “Where have you been?”
“Start digging the ground in front of the school, about a meter away from the concrete path. Make four plots of the same size, with an even space between them, running the whole length of the veranda. Break up the soil and get it ready for planting. I’ll bring you some coleus*. Nice plants will make the school look beautiful and should impress officials when they come from town for inspection.” He paused for a while before asking, “Can you get it finished today?” This time, the question needed an answer.
“Yes, I think so, sir.”
“Good. Try to speed it up.” He smiled at Fak. “Oh, by the way, Master Preecha told me that this morning when he went to take a bath your woman pulled up her blouse and showed him her breasts. Come on; get a grip on her, will you. She’s your woman, isn’t she?” he asked with a toothy grin. When Fak didn’t answer, he went on: “The teachers who are staying in the quarters are not from here. Don’t let anything happen that would harm the good reputation of our village.” The headmaster seemed to have run out of things to say, so he added, “Well, you can go now. Get on with the work or you’ll never get it finished.” He picked up the newspaper and started reading again.
Fak turned around and walked out of the room. As he went along the veranda, past the classrooms in which the teachers stood in front of their classes, he felt as if every pair of eyes was staring at him, as though everybody already knew that Master Preecha had seen M’am’s breasts.
(‘M’am’ was what Fak called his stepmother, Somsong, because he just didn’t know what else to call her. When his dad was still alive, Fak hardly ever spoke with her. Since his dad’s death, Fak was forced to stay un
As the first window was being opened wide, pale-yellow rays flooded in, revealing the shapes of desks arranged in rows. With the opening of the second window, the light increased, enhancing the various colours in the room. Written in white in the top corner of the rectangular, green blackboard that faced the room were the words: “Day – Month – Year –” In the black groove at the bottom of the board, bits of chalk lay in white dust. The light in the room intensified as the third window came ajar. The teacher’s table stood to the right of the blackboard, a chair neatly placed behind it. On the table were a khaki chalk box and a red glass vase, which was filled with dark-red gerberas*. The flowers had begun to wilt and their petals drooped and leaned against one another in the middle of the vase. More light flooded the room, adding a reddish hue to the shadow of the vase that stretched across the table. In a back corner of the room silently stood a wastepaper basket, a broom and a dustpan, and above them the last window was about to be opened.
In came the sound of a violin, not a smooth melody, but a rising and falling whine, as if the player was practising for the first time. The sound came from the teachers’ quarters. In the stillness of the morning, the shriek of the violin drifted far.
Fak stepped out of the room after he had finished opening all of the windows and doors. This was the last of the sixteen rooms he had to look after every day as part of his job. There were ten classrooms, the headmaster’s room, two teachers’ rooms, a music room, an arts-and-crafts room and a first-aid room. Each room had five windows and two doors, which had to be opened every morning and closed every evening. It was part of his routine, as set out in the school regulations.
He left the building and walked along the concrete path around it to the back, where seven water tanks stood in a row. He turned on the tap and filled a galvanised bucket. As the water neared the oval-shaped top, he turned off the tap, took the bucket and a mop and walked back to the main building. He went up the stairs and, hurriedly pushing the mop back and forth, set out to clean the entire upper floor and veranda. He changed the water before he began mopping the lower floor. After he had finished, he went to the other building, where he only had to clean the top floor; the ground floor was a cemented area where students gathered on Friday evenings.
His floor cleaning done, Fak took the bucket and mop back to their place beside the water tanks, then returned to the main building and went upstairs to the headmaster’s office. There, he opened the door of the glass showcase that stood behind the headmaster’s desk next to the school flag hanging on a base. Inside the showcase, silver trophies and shields, each representing a victory the school had achieved in various competitions, were on display. He took the national flag from the bottom shelf of the showcase, slung it over his shoulder and closed the glass door. He then went down and walked across the schoolyard to the flagpole, which stood on a circular cemented block in front of the school, and tied the flag to the cord at the foot of the pole. Around the base, an outer ring of bricks enclosed small ixora* bushes with contrasting orange flowers and green leaves.
The morning was bright and sunny, but to Fak it was rather oppressive. The back of his shirt was soaked with sweat.
The students had started to arrive, alone or in groups, their off-white shirts appearing from every direction. They carried their schoolbags awkwardly and some of them had metallic lunch boxes as well.
Old Monk Phon and Brother Daeng appeared from the coconut grove hugging their alms bowls and cut across the schoolyard as they made their way back to the temple, a temple boy carrying a lunch box in their wake. Fak let go of the flag, which had yet to be fully attached to the cord, and, squatting down, placed his palms together and bowed to the monks. When they had walked past, he stood up and continued winding the double cord around the metallic peg at the bottom of the pole.
The big bell at the temple rang frantically for a while and ended on three separate sharp clangs. Like the radio, the chime announced the time – it was eight in the morning. The sun was rising higher in the sky. More students were arriving. Some teachers, who came from town by minibus, were already there, but those who stayed in the teachers’ quarters had not turned up yet. Neither had the headmaster, whose house was close by.
If this were the rainy season, Fak would have to stand by the stairway beside the concrete foot bath to ensure that the children washed their feet before taking their bags and lunch boxes into the classrooms. Some of them would carry their shoes all the way from home and put them on only once they reached the school. A new regulation stated that all students had to wear shoes, especially those in grades five to seven. During the monsoon the tracks to school that went through plantations were muddy, and lumps of mud would stick to the children’s feet. Occasionally, some of them slipped and fell and got themselves covered head to foot in mud and, when they reached the school, they had to scrub themselves completely before being allowed inside. But this was the cold season, and the rule about feet washing was not strictly enforced.
A cacophony of flutes, drums and a xylophone started up, each player blowing away or beating as he felt like. The seventh-graders who made up the school band were tuning their instruments in the music room in preparation for the morning parade. Having a band for the parade was the brainchild of one of the new teachers, who had some rudiments of music, and the idea had been adopted by the headmaster and all of the teachers. It was a sign that this village school was as developed as the schools in town. After quite a long time had been spent practising, the students now had the flutes, drums and xylophone as accompaniment when they sang the national anthem and, when they walked to the classrooms, there was a marching tune to the beat of the drums – left-right, left-right... It was another sign of the advance of the school and of the village. Before long, a violin would be added to the band and this was why the music teacher practised morning and evening.
The sun was keeping time by rising higher and higher in the sky. Everything was getting increasingly hectic – the chatter and bustle of the children, almost three hundred of them, playing in the schoolyard and beside the school; the white of the shirts, the blue of the skirts, the khaki of the shorts, all mixing everywhere.
When the school bell rang its double note, the whites and blues and khakis froze. Walking, running, the students went to assemble in front of the flagpole, the older children filing up more quickly than the younger ones, who were pushing and shoving, their rows all askew. Their teachers had to come and help, cane in hand. The school band stood upfront, followed by the first-graders all the way to the seventh-graders. By the time the second bell rang, all of the rows were in fairly good order and only the little ones were still fidgeting about.
The accents of the national anthem –
The chanted morning prayers –
The beat of the drums –
The students filed into the school, one row at a time, until they had all disappeared inside. The teachers, walking and chatting in a group, were the last ones to go in. All that remained was the schoolyard, green, open and empty. Once again the school was quiet, as it had been in the early morning. The only difference was that now there were teachers and students inside.
Fak went upstairs to the headmaster’s office as he did every morning to receive his instructions for the day. The headmaster was at his desk reading a newspaper. He was about forty, round-faced and balding. A finely cropped moustache on his upper lip made him look suave and respectable. When he saw Fak, he covered the paper with both hands, folded it with one and laid it on the desk.
“How are you today?” the headmaster asked, in a way that didn’t seem to require an answer, as when people greet each other with “Where have you been?”
“Start digging the ground in front of the school, about a meter away from the concrete path. Make four plots of the same size, with an even space between them, running the whole length of the veranda. Break up the soil and get it ready for planting. I’ll bring you some coleus*. Nice plants will make the school look beautiful and should impress officials when they come from town for inspection.” He paused for a while before asking, “Can you get it finished today?” This time, the question needed an answer.
“Yes, I think so, sir.”
“Good. Try to speed it up.” He smiled at Fak. “Oh, by the way, Master Preecha told me that this morning when he went to take a bath your woman pulled up her blouse and showed him her breasts. Come on; get a grip on her, will you. She’s your woman, isn’t she?” he asked with a toothy grin. When Fak didn’t answer, he went on: “The teachers who are staying in the quarters are not from here. Don’t let anything happen that would harm the good reputation of our village.” The headmaster seemed to have run out of things to say, so he added, “Well, you can go now. Get on with the work or you’ll never get it finished.” He picked up the newspaper and started reading again.
Fak turned around and walked out of the room. As he went along the veranda, past the classrooms in which the teachers stood in front of their classes, he felt as if every pair of eyes was staring at him, as though everybody already knew that Master Preecha had seen M’am’s breasts.
(‘M’am’ was what Fak called his stepmother, Somsong, because he just didn’t know what else to call her. When his dad was still alive, Fak hardly ever spoke with her. Since his dad’s death, Fak was forced to stay un
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