The Poetry Class
Winter came early that year. The gravel was crisp beneath my steps and small white clouds formed in my breath. I slung the school bag over my shoulder and closed the entrance gate carefully behind me. It squealed on its rusty hinges.
A few doors down the empty street, a beam of light flickered behind the thin lace curtain. The house was simple; two dreamy front windows, a rough entrance door made from second-grade timber, a water pump with its long iron handle looking sleepily over rose bushes planted close to the entrance gate. There was a small orchard behind the house and an overgrown vegetable patch next to it. The pale-yellow house looked tired in the grey light of the early morning.
My best friend Marko lived there.
Marko and I were best friends ever since the summer he walked across the street and asked me what I was doing lying on my stomach in the wet grass next to my grandparents’ water pump.
Looking for snails, I responded.
He asked if he could look for snails with me.
I said yes.
He lay on his stomach next to me and fixed his gaze on the grass. We were six. We did not find any snails that afternoon, but we kept looking through many lazy summer afternoons.
Later, when summers stretched only as far as the school holidays, we ran through our neighbours’ cornfields, across to the gypsies’ land to roast cobs of corn over the open fire until they blackened, and milky juice squirted out.
Sometimes we sat under the wide apple tree Marko’s father had planted behind his tool shed and talked.
Marko’s father was a truck driver with large hands and a pointy moustache that curled upwards when he smiled. His smiles were as broad as the smell of the cheap plum brandy in his breath.
In the early dusk, our dreams glittered like jewels.
I remember Marko leaning against the apple tree, telling me about the big open stages where he would play guitar one day. He wished for his mother to see him then. His mother, dressed in a factory issued uniform, hiding the fresh bruises under her large, still eyes. He promised to take me with him. With my face turned towards him, I was sure we were almost there.
Like my grandparents and others on our street, Marko’s parents left their village and came to the city, lulled by the promise of a better life.
After the war, Tito’s partisans exchanged their arms for shovels to build cities of steel. Fierce and determined. Strong hands were needed, and many traded open fields for dreams made of steel.
They came in droves, nestling in distant outskirts of a city with the ornate heart of an old empire. Built makeshift dwellings and went to work in factories that made guns, or cars, or furniture. Women planted gardens and hung out heavy linen sheets on dry, sunny mornings. In late summer, the street would shimmer with multicoloured rugs, the aroma of ripened fruit, and the sound of long, slow songs.
Marko’s and my primary school class hummed with the brisk, rapid vowels of northern villagers, mixed with the slow, drawn-out ones of the hinterland. It was a new school built for the children whose voices still carried the sounds of the open fields their parents came from. The school was named after a revolutionary war hero. The local party official cut the red ribbon and gave a speech about progress, and the bright, new future the pupils of the school were going to build.
The new settlements were slowly surrounding the old city. We rarely ventured into its heart.
Until high school.
I tucked my hands deeper into my pockets and quickened my step. There was only one bus every half an hour to take us to the city.
The high school was in an old building next to the national theatre. It was once a museum, and a catholic boarding school before that. There were many narrow corridors and open staircases. A fresh coat of colour covered the paintings of baby Jesus on the ceilings in some classes.
The bus arrived, and the warmth of early commuters enveloped me. I could feel my toes again. It was as crowded as usual, no seat left unoccupied.
A cattle bus, Marko called it, for the likes of us; we are nothing but cannon fodder, hands for the factories. He reminded me of my grandfather when he spoke like that. I did not wish to be reminded of my grandfather in the crispness of the early mornings, on board my bus to the future.
I clutched my books, my inner gaze fixed on the vision of elegantly dressed people sitting in warm, well-lit rooms, speaking softly about art and love and poetry. Sipping slowly from tall glasses and porcelain cups with delicate water-colours of ladies in crinolines sitting on sprawling lawns.
In that future I was seeing through the dirty windows of a crowded bus on most mornings, the elegantly dressed people spoke kindly to me. I was a member of their circle. None of them knew or cared to know about my absent parents or a grandfather who has not been sober since he lost his war and was forced off his land. All I have to do is just study harder. I was sure of it. I thought every detail out so many times, I could almost feel the warmth of those rooms and hear the sounds of eloquent conversations.
It is how it was that morning. I took the earlier bus on purpose. So that Marko cannot whisper in my ears and spoil my vision of the future.
The first class was poetry.
The poetry teacher was a young woman with a willowy figure and large, moist eyes. She wore soft pastel colours and subtle makeup. Her voice was gentle and her sentences well-formed. I thought her very smart. Marko said that she looks through us, as all people from the old city do. They call us newcomers who invaded their city. Kids whose families lived in the place for generations imitated our speech and laughed at us at recess. I buried my nose in a book and pretended not to notice.
I loved poetry.
My primary school teacher thought my poems were good enough to be read to the whole class, and once even at the school’s assembly. She said I had talent. I loved Yesenin and fashioned my poems on his.
One such poem was carefully written on the first page of my new poetry notebook. I could not wait to read it. I expected the teacher to ask if anyone would like to read their work. I was ready. But I did not want to start without Marko, and he was late. I wanted him present. To witness the triumph of zeal and determination against all odds. Like in the great proletarian revolution. I never doubted the strength of my poem.
Engrossed in the vision of the teacher complimenting my work, I almost missed the moment. The teacher asked if anyone would like to share their writing. Marko was still absent. I could not wait any longer. My hand went up. The teacher smiled and motioned for me to stand up. I did.
My hands were trembling, my whole body tense. Tiny beads of perspiration formed above my upper lip.
The poem was titled The Wedding, and it was full of colours and sounds of the recent wedding celebrated in our street. Street musicians and barefoot gypsy dancers laughed between the lines.
I had only read the title when the door opened, and Marko walked in.
He started with an apology, but the teacher placed her long finger over her mouth and motioned him to sit down. He passed by me, standing with my notebook open. I could feel his eyes on me. The teacher smiled again, signed for me to continue. The class went silent.
After the first few lines, I sensed a commotion.
I stopped reading and looked up. The teacher was leaning on the desk, resting her chin in the palm of her right hand. Her smile was broader. From the corner of my eye, I could see smiles on the faces of my classmates. The short boy with a freckled face, whose grandfather owned fur shops in the city before the war, turned towards me, he was grinning. The heat rose under my breastbone, travelling upstream to my face. I returned to reading.
The laughter started. First softly, then louder. I looked up again.
The freckled boy’s shoulders were shaking. I looked at the teacher. Above the hand covering her mouth, her eyes glistened with tears. Tears of laughter. My face burned with fire. In its glow, I could hear the distant cry of a violin, the melody of a song the bride sang, her long, dark curls cascading down her back. Over the rich embroidery of her wedding dress. I gasped for breath and clenched my fingers tighter over the page. My voice rose above the laughter, I continued reading.
There was silence again.
I read the last verse. The laughter erupted stronger than before.
The teacher was no longer attempting to hide her mirth inside her hand. I was standing with my notebook open as the class was laughing. Large, hot tears rushed down my face. Like a waterfall. Unstoppable.
Marko took the notebook from my hands and placed it in my bag. He then took my hand and squeezed it tightly in his, leading me out of the class down the narrow staircase and out of the school.
More than twenty years will go by before I attempt to read a poem I wrote to an audience again. In a different country and in a different language. The large, hot tears rushed down my face that time too. Like a waterfall. Unstoppable.
