M I C HAEL S M AL L, W RITER MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 2011
BORN LOSER The bell eventually rang, to everyone’s relief. ‘Chairs up!’ instructed the bespectacled Mr Jackson, whose short, slight corduroyed frame – particularly frail on Friday arvos – became obscured by a haphazard scaffolding of bars, horizontal and vertical but mainly skewed, through which he could only just make out the remains of Positano on the poster peeling from the opposite wall, white houses nestling on the rocky cliffs above the Tyrrenhian Sea, whose stippled shades of turquoise lulled way beyond his retirement package. ‘Massimo, you’d better stay behind!’ the commands continued, the teacher’s fraught nerves notwithstanding, trying to spread his body by an extension of hands to a chair-back erected on the front row. But the acid was already roiling in his stomach. ‘Why, sir? It was un accidente!’ ‘Don’t argue with me! Do as I say! The rest of you may go quietly.’ ‘I wasn’t the only one, sir. Sir! Hey, sir!’ A fizz of thirty-three fourth-formers in bottle green sweaters and tan tunics or grey drainpipes at half-mast was uncorked for the weekend celebration. ‘Quietly, I said!’ fired a down-trodden voice. ‘And do those ties up! Hey, where do you think you’re going?’ ‘A la mia casa, por certo!’ ‘As long as you’re in this classroom, you’ll speak to me in English.’ ‘Home!’ retorted Massimo, indignation clasping his lips, as he bee-lined for the door.