Speak now

“Speak now.” An invitation to confess to someone else’s crime. 

Laszlo sat behind his desk, peering over grubby half-moon lenses, a fierce midday sun illuminated a half-cleared fingerprint, the greasy remains of his breakfast sausage. The day’s heat enticed a sheen to his hairless dome, a lone bead meandered toward his jaw, ignored, his hands occupied with a switch, flexing the cruel rod, warming it to the task ahead.

In the court of Laszlo, justice is swift, often misplaced. He doesn’t care for the testimony of the innocent, isn’t perturb by the sparing of the guilty. Paramount; the asserting of authority, executing punishment.

Markham twitched uncomfortably alongside us. White slivers, evidentiary slugs, punctuated an early-spring tan where his eyebrows once flourished, his shuffling announcing a greater discomfort than those he accused.

“We didn’t do it, Sir,” said Paulson. “Honest,” hoping the rejoinder would affirm our innocence.

“Markham?”

We knew Markham’s dilemma, understood the anxiety that disabled his eye-contact, the pleading that strained his face, the wrangling between falsehood and the truth, unwilling to speak either, assessing his risks, weighing outcomes. I caught his eye, the merest glance, enough for him to catch my nod, to grant permission and deliver relief.

“They did it, Sir.”

“Who’s they, Markham?”

He raised a reluctant finger, an inadequate denouncement.

“Names, boy.”

“Paulson and Wright, Sir.”

It was unclear whether Laszlo’s contempt was for the crime or Markham’s betrayal. I think we all disgusted him. I doubt any of his charges brought him joy, rather, a constant reminder that his position necessitated contact with the spawn of the school’s benefactors.

Placing the cane on the desk before him, he drew his hands together, the stubby digits interlocking, leaning forward to pronounce our fate, close enough that his words carried the carrion of halitosis.

“You two,” he paused, floundering for a word sufficiently egregious, “Sicken me. Paulson, side. Wright, front. Over,” the instructions failing to disguise his gleeful malice.

“But, Sir,” I tried.

“Over!”

We leaned before his desk, hands resting on the scarred mahogany, where innumerable others had bent awaiting the introduction to Laszlo’s switch. Prising himself from his chair, gathering his cane, he circumnavigated the desk, flexing the thin shaft of bamboo.

“Drop them.”

We straightened, loosening belts, allowing pin-stripes to fall to our ankles, returned our hands.

“Look at him.” He pointed the cane at Markham who’s attention rested on the floor. “And you at them, boy.”

Paulson took the meatier blows, copping Laszlo’s first flush, twelve hide-bound lacerations that intensified the more Paulson contained his hurt. I didn’t match his resistance, whimpers escaping with each stroke, but I avoided tears, unlike Markham, who while only a witness, began crying at the first lash.

Laszlo stood wheezing, no taller than the diminutive Markham, though considerably more rotund, the lone streak of sweat that greeted our arrival now mixed with a stream that pooled at his collar, an unedifying slide of moisture staining its descent. The effort exaggerated his taciturnity, “Go,” he said.

We left ahead of Markham, taking stairs with caution, each step igniting our wounds, the innocent carrying the scars of a known transgressor. We passed into a courtyard, feet grinding across the gravel, a slow march to minimise our pain.

“Guys,” Markham called from the uppermost step of the building, his tiny form framed by the imposing arch of the entrance. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. We know.”

#

It was Jankovic that removed Markham’s eyebrows, and Jankovic who encouraged him, with the aid of a relentless squeeze on Markham’s testicles, to incriminate Paulson and me.

We humiliated Jankovic on the rugby pitch, a place where his considerable Slavic proportions afforded him intimidatory privileges. I inadvertently removed his shorts and underwear in a house match, clinging to both as he surged forward, bringing both him and them down as he drove into our half. As he scrambled to restore his dignity, Paulson observed that Jankovic wasn’t entirely in proportion. On the touchline, Markham, too small to be anything more than a desperation only substitute, made the mistake of laughing.

Jankovic’s acuity was similarly scaled to his genitalia. Sluggish in speech, he compensated for a lack of mental faculty with a propensity for the destructive. If laughed at, he meted pain. When challenged, he developed grudges that festered until resolved, resolution invariably stemming from violence. There were three of us that he needed to grapple and rather than confronting us all, for perhaps the first time in his life he exercised his imagination.

A first-class scholar, Markham represented an easy mark. When he wasn’t pretending to be a useful addition to the rugby team, his preferred form of exercise was cerebral, with a dependable focus on matters chemical. To locate him, a visit to the library or his dormitory yielded results, at both, his hunched frame settled over textbooks that his peers considered incomprehensible. When challenged, his retort was always the same. “When you’re as small as I am, knowing how to poison someone may come in handy.”

When he opened his door to a faint tap, little light entered the room past the figure that stood before him. Jankovic held a Bic razor, dried soap around the shaft indicated considerable use, his advanced puberty and hirsute disposition guaranteeing a dulled edge.

Markham assessed the futility of an escape, bracing for the inevitable, as Jankovic entered the room, locking the door behind him. Placing a slab hand on the smaller boy’s head, pulling him close, Jankovic lowered his frame, his eyes level with Markham’s. Little wit shone from them as he stared at his prey, giving no voice to his plans. He elevated the razor, holding it between them, then tightening his grip on Markham to prevent his wriggling, he gently removed the boy’s eyebrows. Maintaining his hold on Markham, he tossed the razor into a corner, before clamping his now free hand on Markham’s groin where he outlined his plan and explained what miseries awaited if he failed to follow his instructions.

#

The chemistry master noticed the absence of brows from his star pupil. He invited an explanation which Markham reluctantly provided, leading to Paulson and me standing alongside him before Laszlo. We guessed that Jankovic provided the motivation for Markham’s accusation, knowing that fear of the brute overwhelmed the shame he felt at his betrayal; we understood his plight. In the courtyard, Markham promised to make it up to us. “How,” I asked.

“I have an idea.”

#

At our next games session, Markham slipped unnoticed from the bench during the match. Gray, our coach, was unlikely to draw his smallest player into the fray, we were leading, marginally, no advantage would accrue from his introduction. Gone for little more than ten minutes, he returned wielding an enigmatic expression that neither Paulson nor I could interpret. “It’s done,” was all he said as we walked with him to the changing rooms.

We now knew why Jankovic waited to shower. Before entering, he dispensed thuggery, indiscriminate aggression aimed at the unexpectant, occupying the void between our ablutions and his privacy, when he could skulk unobserved into the shower block.

His first roar came as we dressed, closely followed by another, a more plaintive, incongruous wail, dissociated from Jankovic the colossus. Forgetting his pride, he emerged, standing naked, holding clumps of hair, remnants remaining on his head, his thick fuzz of pubic hair gone. “Who the fuck did this?”

An unlikely voice answered, reedy, yet bold. “I did,” said Markham.

Jankovic gave an incredulous look, unable to reconcile the absence of his hair with the amiable mite before him. “What did you do?”

“Switched your shampoo for a little thioglycolic acid, potassium hydroxide and an accelerant of my own devising.”

“What the fuck’s that?”

Markham smiled, a radiant, almost beatific look. “This,” he said, producing an empty bottle of Veet.

#

We protected Markham from Jankovic, several of us wrestling him away. Laszlo was a different matter. Gray witnessed Jankovic’s undoing, escalating the incident to the Headmaster, who summonsed Jankovic to his office and had no difficulty extracting the declaration that inculpated Markham.

The two of them stood before the principal, waiting for the administration of justice.

“Speak now.”

“Magnus homo. Penis minimus.”

Jankovic looked bemused, Laszlo suppressed a grin. He had to hand it to the wee lad, he had courage.

“Over. Drop them. Look at him.”

Markham didn’t cry. He held Jankovic’s eye, taking each swipe with a stoicism that belied his size, smiling every time the switch landed.