Passed a good four hours.
When I’d finished it, I went into the
street for an evening paper. More fighting, at the faculty of medicine in particular, and in our
own faculty. I didn’t attend today. Why bother?
*
Marcel Winder stopped me in the street to tell
me they’d beaten him up again.
‘That’s number eight,’ he told
me, not specifying whether it was his eighth fight or his eighth injury. He had a black bruise
under his left eye. He was chatty, almost cheerful. Superior at any rate. I’ve certainly
never aspired to that kind of thing. I’ve steered clear. It looks like the lads are
getting ready for 10 December, but Winder didn’t want to tell me too much about it.
‘Not your sort of thing, pal. You’ve
better things to worry about. And coincidentally, just coincidentally, they stop you getting
into trouble with us. Just a coincidence.’
Winder is wasting his time. He’s flogging a
dead horse: I don’t have that kind of vanity.
*
In a letter from Mama I received today:
… And, in particular, don’t go to
the university. I’ve read in the paper that big fights have broken out again, and the
milliner’s son, when he was home, told me it’s worst of all at your faculty. Leave
the showing off to the others. Listen to your mother and stay home.
‘Leave the showing off to the
others.’ If Mama could know how that sounds.
*
Can that be it? This morning I went to the class
on Roman law. No one said a word to me. I took notes feverishly, in order not to have to lift my
eyes from my desk. Halfway through the lecture, a ball of paper falls on the bench, beside me. I
don’t look at it, don’t open it. Someone shouts my name loudly from behind. I
don’t turn my head. My neighbour to the left watches me carefully, without a word. I
can’t endure his gaze and I look up.
‘Out!’
He barks the command. He stands up, making space
for me to get by, and waits. I feel a tense silence around me. Nobody breathes. Any gesture from
me and this silence will explode.
No. I slide out of the desk and slip towards the
door between two rows of onlookers.
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