“The Preparatory School,” by Hebe Uhart

This is the ninth story in this summer’s online Flash Fiction series. You can read the entire series, and our Flash Fiction from previous years, here.

Driven by necessity, I accepted a position as a substitute Latin teacher at the National School of Buenos Aires, an élite preparatory school. I’d never thought that I would teach high-school Latin, although I was equipped to do so. As for the substitution: they didn’t explain if the teacher I was stepping in for was sick or had died or been fired; his absence sounded more like a time-out. It was not only time that seemed frozen; the school did, too. Something had sucked the air out of that place: at school functions, students did not breathe, and the teachers’ lounge featured enormous portraits of illustrious rectors, plus a gigantic one of a major naval battle. The teachers’ lounge was dark, as were the courtyards, and in those places I would sense disapproving looks aimed in my direction.

There was surely a modern methodology for teaching Latin, but that place prevented me from making any plans. I would go in terrified and feel calm again only once I was at least two blocks away. I felt that everything I did was wrong; my fear was a kind of animal fear, and I was just relieved that they didn’t beat me or lock me inside.

The school has always been a nest for fledgling leaders, dissidents, and success stories, but, at thirteen and fourteen years old, those kids were punished for any little thing; a security guard, who was said to work for the police, did not allow them to go to the bathroom during classroom hours, no exceptions. Those were the conditions I had to work in, and teaching Latin no less. The sentences my students translated went like this:

The slave prepares a dinner of roasted eel for the lady.
The dog must be obedient to his owner, the child to his parents.
Young lady, put on the light-blue toga to honor our goddess.
Caesar advances forty-five parasangs with his Army.

How far is a “parasang”? Whom could I ask?

Young lady, you must put flowers on the goddess’s altar and cinnabar on Janus’.

What might “cinnabar” be? The students were going to fuck with me by asking, but neither I nor they actually wanted to know. Having made a fool of myself, I would leave the school still not knowing such things, and if, as I expected, some punishment were to be inflicted upon me, at least I would know the reason. The texts used such restrictive and cruel language; it was always an order, a demand, an altar for some goddess. But the passage I hated most was the one by Arria, the matron who, with great conviction, told her sick husband in one room that their son, who had died in another, was getting better and had eaten a hearty meal.

Since I taught Latin class from 11 A.M. to 1 P.M., I would lighten the mood by teaching Roman culture in the second hour and describing what the Romans ate.

One thing I always found odd about Roman cuisine was that one creature was cooked inside another. For example, you might find a goose inside a pig, and, inside the goose, a little chicken, all of this smeared in honey, the glue that kept it together.

I would say to my students, “How interesting!”

And they would reply, “Disgusting! Why are you telling us this—and right at noon!”

I also taught them that, in ancient Rome, people would toss everything in the streets—piss and all the rest. The lesson generated such an uproar that I wasn’t able to contain it. I was saved by the bell, but the security guard who was with the police still came in and stared at me. I fled to a café that was about five blocks away and not on my regular route; I wandered around like a lost puppy. When I sat down, the café seemed extraordinary to me, the street like a sanctuary, and the waiter a prince. ♦

(Translated, from the Spanish, by Anna Vilner.)

This is drawn from “A Question of Belonging: Crónicas.”