NOBODY IS GOING TO HELP YOU
On his first day at school, little Samuel got such a monumental beating from the other pupils a teacher had to take him home. Along the way, Samuel didn’t complain. He was still stunned and walked with a look of incomprehension, like a duck, while gazing in surprise at the dark red blood staining the handkerchief he held against his nose. His parents thought about moving him to another school, but, either because it was too late or because they decided, as the teacher had told them, that this was just children’s stuff, the fact is, a week later, without having informed him, they put Samuel in the back seat of the car, gave him a letter and left him back in the school.
By this time, Samuel had acquired an insuperable horror of the concrete playground the children ran around during the half hour that break lasted and, while the beating wasn’t repeated, he made quite sure he avoided any gangs, groups where picture cards were being traded, places far away from the entrance to the classrooms and other children in general. For the first three days, he stayed almost by the door, watching the others’ games and slowly eating the vast cheese and quince sandwiches prepared for him at home.
Between the basketball court and an adjoining building site was a hidden space which was out of bounds. This was where little Samuel found a perfect refuge for the dangerous half hour over the next five days. There were rusty cans, nails and abandoned spades. In the midst of all these things and on top of pieces of Uralite, he used to sit in silence, eating his sandwiches and waiting for the bell. On every single day, at the start of break, he did more or less the same thing: while the other children raced noisily and loudly down the stairs towards the playground, he lingered for as long as he could on the steps, gazing through the windows. By the time he got down, all the others were busy with their games, football matches, miniature reptile markets. Busy enough, at least, not to observe him. So it wasn’t difficult for him to bustle quickly in the direction of the building site without anybody noticing.
But on the fifth day he was in for a surprise. He was running when he arrived and had to pull up smartly: in the refuge was another child. The child was standing on a builder’s wheelbarrow, jumping up and down. He was from a higher year, three spans taller than little Samuel, and his face was flushed from the effort he was making. When he saw Samuel come in, he also stopped for a moment and studied Samuel carefully: his face, the light blue smock that signified a lower year, the numbers embroidered in red on the right, his sandwiches… He screwed up his nose with indifference and carried on jumping up and down, without paying him the slightest attention, as if to say, ‘You do not exist.’ Samuel also chose to ignore him, though for him this was a comfort, and scurried over to his corner to unwrap the sandwich from its covering of aluminium foil.
For about ten minutes, the two of them behaved as if the other wasn’t there. The child kept throwing bricks at some lizards that scattered over the pavement and the wall. He lifted the bricks apparently with just one hand, but with a lot of effort, sweating inside his dark blue uniform, and from time to time cast a furtive glance at Samuel.
‘You’re a little ’un,’ he said at last, without looking at him, tired of not hitting a single lizard. Samuel didn’t say anything, but his tranquillity had suddenly disappeared.
‘We pushed you about on the first day, remember?’ the other boy continued, searching now for some cans, which he made into a pile, ‘because you were late. Any little ’uns arriving late can be knocked about by the older children.’
Samuel had stopped eating. He was toying with the top button of his smock. Staring at his fingers, he whispered something to himself. The other boy gave the pile of cans a violent kick, and they flew in different directions, with a terrible racket. He turned around, feeling very proud of himself, and sought Samuel’s unconditional admiration.
‘If you like,’ he said, ‘I can be your friend.’
At that moment, the bell rang. Samuel still hadn’t answered.
In the playground, the teachers were blowing their whistles, and the children were running to form queues in front of the classrooms. When little Samuel stood up to hurry away, the other boy grabbed hold of his arm and said:
‘This place is off limits. I always play here. If you tell anybody, I’ll kill you.’
From that day onwards, Samuel stopped visiting the refuge. He’d worked out he could stay on the stairs leading down from the classrooms to the corridor. During break, the lights were switched off, and it was possible to wait in the shadows and join the rows of children coming up. Sometimes, sitting there, he heard the rapid footsteps of an older child carrying a message to the classrooms or teachers walking down the stairs, chatting in pairs: at that point, he would make himself invisible by crouching behind one of the doors. He was a very small child, even for his age, and could fit anywhere. He also had the capacity to be quiet and still for hours on end.
The following week, from his cubbyhole, he heard what sounded like the crying of a child approaching. The head-teacher was marching up the stairs, dragging a child by the ear. The child was sobbing and tussling like a hare. As he passed, Samuel recognized the boy he’d met in the refuge a few days earlier. They stared at each other for a second. He didn’t say a word. What for? It only takes a second for a threat to be issued.
While having lunch at home that day, in front of a large plate of mashed potatoes, Samuel moved his spoon in circles. At a certain point, in a barely audible voice, he said he was never going back to school.
Shortly before nightfall, his mother was in the kitchen, talking to a friend on the phone. His father had just returned from work and was watching TV in the lounge. There was a knock at the door. When his father went to open, he found a teacher again accompanying little Samuel, who was bruised and soaked from head to toe. The teacher spoke in serious, grave tones: a group of older children had beaten Samuel and thrown him into a pond.
In the lounge could be heard his father shouting at the teacher and the other’s feeble excuses. Meanwhile, in his room, Samuel’s mother took off his wet clothes, applied antiseptic to his wounds and put him to bed. During the night, little Samuel cried and coughed, clinging to the side of the bed. His mother sat beside him and gently rubbed his back with her cold, slender hand. She removed a lock of hair that had fallen over his forehead with two fingers and started talking in a melodious voice:
‘Samuel… your father and I were talking, and we both think you should go back to school. Your father made the head-teacher promise that nobody will beat you, and they’re going to punish those who did it. They’ll get a real hiding, you’ll see.’
The child’s face remained pressed against the pillow, his gaze lost in the darkness of the room. His mother continued:
‘You have to go back and keep studying. Be the best pupil there is.’ At this point, her voice turned into a kind of supplication, it even seemed as if it was going to break and she was going to cry as well, though in the end she didn’t. ‘That way, nobody will ever laugh at you or hit you. You have to study as hard as you can, more than anybody else, so that when you’re older, everybody will love you… as much as we love you now, Samuel.’
Little Samuel didn’t turn around, nor did he look at his mother. He wasn’t even really listening to her, to tell the truth. He was thinking about the playground, the stairs, the people, and how he had to think of something quickly because the following morning, when he woke up, he’d be back there for another half hour and he still didn’t know how he was going to defend himself.
