The Big Water

Something about the character appraisals, something about the dramas

The son of Kejtin was one of those wretched people who came into the Home without a family character record, without any sort of receipt. Curse me, receipt. With him, the matter was even worse because in the classes about character appraisals he conducted himself in a totally uninterested manner. Curse me, the son of Kejtin didn’t digest the classes on character appraisal at all. They got stuck in his throat like some hard morsel. Once he allowed sleep to overcome him during the class. Curse me, he fell asleep. In every other class a person could allow himself such a luxury, it wasn’t at all dangerous to fall asleep for a bit in another class, it was even preferred as something normal, natural. It even happened that our teachers fell asleep, a person can fall asleep. For example, the Meteor, our geography teacher, comrade Sekule, had fallen asleep, not once, not twice, it was lucky we were not keeping count. Curse me, we would debate a little about the Earth and the Sun, around the fact whether the Earth moves around the Sun or the Sun around the Earth (once the Earth moved around the Sun, another the Sun around the Earth), and after such heavy, intense discussion he would put his head down. But first of all, after we had mixed everything up, after we had turned the whole celestial vault upside down, the Meteor in a conciliatory spirit would say “Okay then, little fools, why are you insisting so much, what is most important, the Earth or the Sun, the Sun or the Earth, it’s all the same, it is important for you to know that they move, the main thing is that something moves, that’s enough.” He would say it and then put his head down again; with a single word, everything was explained, intelligently. Curse me, intelligently. Once he fell asleep exactly on Mars, curse me, in the lesson itself he started to snore. Old Sekula would let off the snores in such an intense way, you think it is a pan of beans cooking, he was so carried away that he carried us away too. Slowly, slowly, we put our heads down on the desks, we stretched out our little legs from desk to desk. Sleep spread like a sneeze. Soon, the whole classroom was purring, in the air, you could hear every type of sound, choirs, music. Curse me, it was an orchestra, an opera. Quietly we floated around the kind hearted planet Mars, we took over the sky and all of nature.

But that was the geography class, naturally. Just try to do that to the dear Headmaster, in the character appraisal class. The old man was a devil, and he was able to make the classes rich, with content, very interesting. He knew how to instigate issues for discussion, to make an intrigue. Curse me, we would be unravelling it for centuries. The dear Headmaster would expertly embroider the whole thing, I swear, then the devil himself would be forced into a bottle. At the end, the idea of the subject itself was hidden, he aimed to put the matters in as tangled a form as possible, as unclearly as possible. Curse me, tangled. A person would never know what and who the matter was about. Who was the thief, who was the honest one, who was stealing and who was protecting? Go on, untangle it, identify the main characters, who are they, how many of them are there, where are they and how did they get tied up with the dishonest action. Curse me, you can speculate for centuries and still remain on the same spot, not a step forward. I swear, in most of the examples, it was the same person who was stealing and protecting. Curse me, the same one. But whether he is guilty was the next question before which we stood as though in front of a wall.

“His whole life,” would say the dear Headmaster and he would begin to narrate with decorations and medals weighing down his shirtfront. “What do you think now, is he guilty?” the dear Headmaster would put the question directly. After that we would answer, in order, each according to his own knowledge.

“Yes, he was guilty, such a man with medals.”

“No, he wasn’t guilty, they are the merits that he had. It is easy to spit on a man. He was fighting.”

“Yes, those who fought are honest.”

“I swear, yes.”

“No,” some crazy boy would disagree. “No,” he says and will not give in, rip his tongue out if you want to, he will still say “No.”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“No!”

“How many are yes?”

“How many are no?”

“Ten, fifteen, twenty, no.”

Looking at the answers, that man is found guilty. The dear Headmaster would shake his head in a dissatisfied way; he was totally dissatisfied. “It’s as if your heads are full of sand,” he would say, “nothing stays in your heads.” Then he would twirl his moustache and tirelessly he would begin from the start. But that was just in the beginning, after that even a rock, even a tree could understand the truth. Curse me, the truth. The later answers were clear, pure. We have to acknowledge that, in connection with those matters, the dear Headmaster really made us sweat. “Further work must be done, day and night,” he would say in a dissatisfied way, summarising the results. He would breathe in and he would begin from the beginning. He would bring out new examples, for the second, for the third, for the thirteenth time, he would convey to us the biography of the deluded comrade, he was an angel, we were living in a great delusion, we were blind. It is better to bite off a man’s tongue than leave him to live in a delusion.

“What do you think now, my little chickens?” the dear Headmaster would ask at the end. “Is the comrade that was stealing guilty?”

The first one “No, the one who was stealing, he wasn’t guilty of anything.”

The second one “No, he wasn’t guilty, on the contrary, he is an honest man, I think.” (Curse me, the little devil thinks.)

The third “No, no.”

The fourth “No, his image of a warrior, builder...”

The fifth “No, no, no...”

The sixth,

the seventh,

the eighth,

the eighteenth,

all of us “No,” we answered in chorus.

It’s as if I can still see the happy smiling face of the dear Headmaster before me. Thank you, God, he was happy, why, how, I never understood it. One thing was important.

“All of you say “No”! That is the truth, eagles, you have got into the content so well, into the idea,” he concluded victoriously, proudly.

Maybe it was better if a person could answer that way for everything. “No” and full stop. Curse me, no. May the devil take away the heart; it did not always understand, it was not obedient, it could not always reply like that. Poor man, then he would have to start from the beginning, the heart can break when it is crazy. There was no end yet to that matter, I swear.

All of those classes, with all their mindlessness, with all their stupidity were like poison to our children’s heart. We were dying for another love, for other words, for so many days, nights, centuries we looked for that source, but there they filled our heads with stupid things. And however funny that was, and impossible and alien, it quickly became the truth for a large number of the children. The most frightening was that we began to believe in such mindlessness. Curse me, mindlessness. But right next to you was one forgotten, scorched water; we became deaf to the voice of the Big Water. I swear, we lost the path to the Senterlev mountain. Curse me, for centuries we lived with those blind things, dark things. There was only a small number of children who believed that those people who did not have character appraisals were worth something, too; maybe they too, suffer so much, love so much, and also as much are our friends. Dear mother of mine, the people who did not have character appraisals or whose character appraisals were blemished, were our enemies. Curse me, enemies. In the Home, the son of Kejtin fought for one such ingrate. He came without a character appraisal and after that he left without one.

“No problems,” the dear Headmaster was saying, “we will create a character appraisal for you, Kejtin. You donkey, you lazy bones. You’re not capable at anything. What, what have you done, you eat bread here for free, you talentless boy,” he attacked him with the most hurtful words every class, simply, he trampled him. You could say that there was not a single class when he did not make Kejtin get out of his place, that he did not make him answer questions, to pick on him in some way. It was known the dear Headmaster had taken him as a target and in this case, nothing could be done against him, curse me, he wanted to make a man out of the son of Kejtin. Kejtin, on the other hand, always answered in the same way, with boredom, he yawned, as briefly as he could, with half a word, he used abbreviations which then had to be teased out, he answered deliberately badly, without interest. Sometimes he was a trouble maker and evil toward the dear Headmaster, he made fun.

“I don’t understand,” he would say, “comrade Ariton Jakovleski,” he would say, “I don’t understand how such a man can allow himself, Ariton Jakovleski, and if he has already put out his hand...”

“That is an example, you little idiot.”

God, how could he not understand that, we were all amazed. Then, even I started to hate him, he was distant from me, alien. An enemy, curse me, the son of Kejtin was my enemy.

At those times, he was all alone, abandoned by everyone. A person without a character appraisal, tortured by horror. He was attacked by enemy glances from all sides, contempt, malice. He had to put up with all of that quietly, inside himself. He had to stand in the corner during class hundreds of times, separated, for a punishment. I don’t believe that anything hurt him more in the Home than the humiliation that he had to put up with in every class on character appraisal.

The class when he fell asleep, the glass was full to the brim. Finally, we were all against him, there wasn’t even one, not a single heart on his side. Curse me, he saw it. For the first time, submissively, obediently he lowered his head, as though he were not the son of Kejtin. Curse me, what sort of people were we going to grow up into, for what sort of people were they preparing us for with a rein tied to the character appraisals, only God knew that.

Later, the class on character appraisals lost its strength and sacredness.

The battle for new character appraisals was even stronger, harder. Curse me, we got so many character appraisals, killing off so much that was human, we flew on slogans, shooting birds. Unexpectedly, the son of Kejtin got into that game. Curse me, the son of Kejtin’s character appraisal. The dear Headmaster was delighted with Kejtin’s conduct, he had the right to ascribe to himself the greatest merit. Not only once did he nod his head approvingly while looking at the reborn son, he would say, “That’s it, my eagle. I want to see you in the line with everyone else.” The son of Kejtin even managed to get a commendation, he was outstanding, I swear he triumphed.

What was happening with him, what did he think up, this thought was troubling me, day and night, there was no way to know what he was cooking up for them. Curse me, if he was behaving as he should, if he really was in the line with everyone else. He said he was planting some sort of cucumbers for the administration but he was using a different type of seed. It was difficult to work out.

Where did the son of Kejtin go, my friend, I looked for him more than once after that. I went back over every corner where I could to find him, but he lost himself in the same way that everything started to be lost from the earth. Again I started to check every part of the huge wall, that coldness which settled into the son of Kejtin and in my heart. I was listening for the Big Water, I waited for her voice.

It was as if everything in the Home was dead. Even in the hunting room it was dead. No-one traded with anyone any more, no one believed in anyone, the wall was higher than ever before. Curse me, everything was built in by a wall. No one knew where friendship went, the glances, human beauty, goodness, the Big Water, dreams, wishes. The Senterlev mountain, the birds, the sun, what sort of weather is this without any wind, without rain, why don’t the bright rains of Spring roar, what sort of weather is this, dry and infertile, this huge snow which closes our roads, this darkness through which we passed like shadows, unknown, this poisonous dust in our eyes, where did the golden brightness from the eyes of the son of Kejtin go, what is this lie which enslaves us, which separates us? He was behaving as though he did not notice me at all, as though he did not notice the wall and everything that surrounded us in the Home, at all. He acted like he really had been reborn, as though he really did find himself in paradise. Curse me, paradise. At the top of his voice I could hear him boasting in front of the other boys, acting the happy man.

I knew, I swear, he was saying all of those mindless words emptily, that this was his big game, and I did not like it. I was afraid of every coming day, I trembled at the sight of his acting like a reborn boy; I speculated with certainty he was acting like this while preparing himself for the future. But what kind of future could he have, our future? One thing was clear, clear as the Spring sun. That would be the last punishment for the son of Kejtin. They could kill him like a fly, the thought hit me in class and I fell silent. Dear God, even the children themselves could kill him, for revenge. And how much they tried, wore themselves out fighting with him over everything so that they did not fall behind. I swear, he was even better than the boys with the best character appraisals, he tormented their souls, he wore them out. Yes, they could kill him, it hit me, certainly they would kill him. In that, they were more cunning than him, shivers crawled through my veins, I lost all peace of mind, all my sleep.

Metodija Grishkoski and the others would never forget his presentation on the wounded partisan, extracted from the drama of the same name. Curse me, drama. Kejtin represented a partisan, a captured, wounded fighter, and Metodija represented a fascist, a prison guard. Metodija Grishkoski, who, in everything until then had been first and who had the most flattering character appraisal, in any other situation would not have taken the role even if you had killed him, but now he agreed from a mean motive. There was fighting, the role gave him the chance to beat the wounded partisan, the son of Kejtin, to death. The stupid fool had made himself keen even before then, he was boasting that he would put funeral oil on the son of Kejtin. There was no reason not to believe the dog. Would Kejtin just stand there with arms folded and be beaten, agitated others. All that gave to the play a particular artistic interest. Curse me, artistic. We were all waiting, we were all trembling in anticipation, the closer the day got, the more restless we were. That show-off Metodija Grishkoski, that great crawler, finally got up everyone’s nose. Curse me, it was a play about life and death. So many wounded, unfortunate souls awaited the fight. I swear, it seemed someone had to die that day.

The presentation started solemnly enough, in silence. In the semidarkness, in a tiny, poor light. A fascist soldier in front of the prison. He’s marching. Heavy, murderous steps. From time to time from the prison comes the thin, but brave, song of the wounded partisan. The song is getting louder, the light is getting brighter. It irritates the eyes of the fascist guard. He is getting angered, stomping with his boots, he says:

“Will you stop, you slippery bastard, or not!?”

The wounded partisan answers him in song.

“Cut my throat, if you want, or hang me, I will not stop and in my grave I will fight on, you can be sure. I will sing song,” he answers very bravely.

“You’ll sing, you’ll sing,” Metodija Grishkoski snarled at him. He dragged him out of the prison cell and in the most repulsive way, he started to stomp on the wounded partisan. Heartlessly, with his stick he started to hit his head, his arms, his legs, to poke out his eyes. At that moment, Comrade Olivera Srezoska who was responsible for the presentation from behind the curtain splashed a bucket of blood, watery red earth, and rivers ran on the whole of the stage from the wounded partisan. But that man sang again, curse me, all covered in blood, he sang. I swear, he set our hearts on fire. He was singing,

“Oh, fascists, cursed fascists.”

That was the peak. Then Metodija, the fool, with a heavy boot stepped on his throat and said to him:

“So, you are still singing? I will hang you.” And in a flash, he took a rope and threw it up to the ceiling. Curse me, he was going to hang him. He started to put his head in the noose. Oh, God, what poor Kejtin had to suffer through. Now there was nowhere to go, the rope was around his neck.

“No! No!” one of the children shouted wildly.

“No, no!” all of the children went mad.

“Cursed fascist!”

“Soulless monster!”

“Blood sucker!” the angriest protests possible flew from all around, pieces of wood and rocks were hurled at the head of Metodija Grishkoski. All of us in turn got up from our places with clenched fists. Curse me, with clenched fists.

Kejtin poured the last drop in his own, full glass. His eyes turned back, he went limp, oh, the devilish artiste, he reached his bloody hands towards us and softly, softly, weakly, he said:

“Comrades, I am dying. May sweet freedom live. May the Revolution live. Down with tyranny, death and the fascists!”

Oh, God, he said it in such a way that we had to believe him, we went wild. I swear, we were struck dumb when the dear Headmaster jumped up from his place in the front row, as though his burn was on fire with a revolver in his hand, and like the craziest bird cried:

“Cursed fascist dog, you will not hang him,” he aimed the loaded revolver straight at the luckless boy Metodija Grishkoski.

Fortunately, at that moment, the Meteor showed himself to be in control of himself and brave, may they rest in peace, all those strange, unnoticed heroes, downtrodden people, always on the edge, thrown out, I swear, in the middle of the fire he stood up and he grabbed Metodija Grishkoski in his arms. As if suffocating him he said: “Die, little fool, if you love your life. You must die, you fascist,” that quietened the dear Headmaster down a bit. He said:

“Certainly, that will be the most proper penalty. How could you stab him with that huge knife, you cursed good for nothing. You are taking his liver, his golden heart, his dear eyes, you are ripping off his skin.”

“Murderer,” echoed in the huge, northern hall.

“That’s no knife at all dear Headmaster, that’s a broom, a kitchen broom,” poor Metodija Grishkoski tried to defend himself.

“Quiet,” said Meteor to him wisely, “it’s your own fault. You went too far, you stupid boy.”

“Fascist!”

“Death!”

“You kill, slaughter, hang people!”

“Death!”

All of his character appraisal fell into the water at that moment. Curse me, into the water. Certainly he would never forgive him that. In pain, bloodied, like a wounded little beast, each day he growled, he followed the son of Kejtin in every place in the Home, he was preparing to exact the scariest revenge. Curse me, just that, revenge.

I waited for that revenge every night alongside the wall. Sometimes also when the children were in bed, I would steal away and like a shadow, like a beast I lingered along the wall. Not until late into the night would I at last return. With heavy feet as though I was returning from seeing someone in the administration, I dragged myself over the stairs as though broken. Curse me, through the dark, worn out stairs of the Home. To the third floor, in the northern section, to the cursed dormitory. How could they think up such crooked, high, dark steps for disabled people and thin children. For the first time I wanted to bellow out loud. Son of Kejtin, I wanted to shout, Kejtin friend, I wanted to wake him, escape from the Home, they are going to kill you.

The son of Kejtin, as though he had heard my breathless voice, was waiting for me on one of the upper stairs.

“Coo,” he made a sound like a bird, he frightened me and started to laugh out loud, in his own way.

“Get away,” I said to him, “go, go from this Home.”

“O, Leme, little Leme,” he said. “Why don’t you collect yourself, why don’t you sleep, Leme?”

“Sleep,” I said, “how can I sleep, friend?”

“Set your jaw, Leme, and dream,” he said laughing the whole time, unable not to laugh and, like always, he began to wipe his mouth with his hands, to reconsider, to move off with his thoughts, to travel.

As though mowed down, like someone had cut us off at the roots, we tumbled down the stairs. It was already late at night and the Home was sinking in that familiar deafness. You would think that death had been a guest here since a long time ago and that the last ray of life had been lost here. We are all dead, shadows.

I do not remember if, after that, for a whole century, we said even a single word to each other. We were quiet as though struck dumb, overwhelmed by the electricity of the Big Water. The Big Water strangely came back again like a distant echo, as if in a dream. Curse me, it was coming. I swear, nothing was changed in his heart, it was the same thing, it was Kejtin-like. Here were friendship and love and comradeship and the look of a friend and smiles, his smile, wishes and the belief in the Big Water, the truth about the Senterlev mountain. Curse me, that mountain existed after all, that mountain with a sun, with golden mists, with eternal mists. Good dreams came back, nothing could destroy the wish for freedom and the Senterlev mountain in our little hearts. In our hearts there was a lot of love, my friend. Curse me, love. The Big Water was all around, I swear that was the only thing that remained of life in the Home. What could we have that was bigger, better?