First Cycle - Spring

by Sarah Kassem

  “You won’t have to eat today’s food. You’ll get something fresh.”

  “What about the sandwiches from today?”

  “Andala will just throw them away.”

  Viktor was horrified. “You can’t just throw them away! You can’t throw away food”

  “Then we’ll give them to Kennedy,” his father said as he turned onto the big main road to D9.

  “This is the wrong way,” Viktor said.

  “What?”

  “This is the wrong way. The school is the other way.”

  “No, when we go this way, we only need to turn at the end of the main road and then your school is already there.”

  “No,” Viktor said firmly. “Oded always drives the other way.”

  “He may well do,” sighed his father. “After all there are a lot of roads and so you can have a lot of options.”

  “We’ll get lost,” said Viktor.

  “Don’t worry. I promise you we’ll get to school without getting lost.”

  “But it takes too long and if I’m late I’ll get into trouble!”

  “Don’t worry, this is actually the shortest way.”

  “But you don’t know where my school is! We’ll get lost,” Viktor said nervously.

  They stopped at a red light and Immanuel Abies lowered his head, put it on the steering wheel and sighed.

  “Here,” his father said after they had driven a bit further. He pulled into a parking spot and stopped the car.

  “But this isn’t my school,” Viktor said.

  His father laughed. “I know. Over there’s a bakery. I’ll get you something for your lunch and then we’ll continue. Stay here.”

  His father got out and while he was away, Viktor wondered if he should just take his bag and walk the rest of the way to school by himself. But he was scared because he didn’t know exactly where his school was. If his father had driven down the normal route, the way Oded always drove, then he would know the way and could go by foot, he thought angrily.

  When his father returned, he had a large brown paper bag in his hand and put it in Viktor’s lap. Viktor looked inside. Five sandwiches in cling film lay there along with two chocolate bars, an apple, a tangerine and a large bottle of orange juice.

  “That’s not my lunch,” Viktor said.

  “I know, but it’ll do you for today. There’s a whole range of different things so you can have a look through and see what you fancy.”

  Viktor took out a sandwich and looked at it. “But this one’s with cheese. I don’t eat cheese,” he said.

  “What do you mean you don’t eat cheese?”

  “I don’t like it!”

  “We had pizza in the cafeteria the other day. There was a lot of cheese on that and you didn’t mind.”

  “Cheese on pizza is ok. But if it’s cold like this then it’s no good, it stinks.”

  “Then you can just swap it with one of your friends. There’s one with chicken as well.”

  “But I don’t eat chicken either.”

  “Then you can just eat the bread.”

  “But I don’t like this kind of bread!”

  His father braked the car in the middle of the street and turned to look at his son as cars honked and drove around them.

  He stared at Viktor for a few seconds, before Viktor lowered his head and looked down ashamed. He took his wallet out of his pocket, pulled out a few bills and put them in Viktor’s lunch bag. “Here, now you can just buy yourself whatever you want at your school kiosk.” He drove off again.

  Viktor said nothing anymore. When they arrived at school his father parked the car and got out. He unbuckled Viktor and helped him put his backpack over his shoulders.

  “Ok Viktor, have a nice day. I’m sorry if it was all a bit chaotic today with your food.”

  Viktor hesitated, then hugged his father’s leg and pressed his face against the black pinstripe fabric.

  His father crouched down, hugged him and gave him a kiss on the neck.

  “I love you, Daddy,” Viktor said, and then ran through the school gate. As he ran up the stairs and looked back, his father was still sitting in the same place, looking toward him.

  Viktor waved, his father waved back, put his fingers to his mouth, kissed them, and threw the kiss as if he were a pitcher in baseball game. Viktor dropped the bag with his lunch in it, took an imaginary baseball bat in hand, aimed at an imaginary point which flew towards him and then struck. His father acted as if he were wearing a baseball glove and looked toward the imaginary kiss as it flew through the air. He stepped here and there and then caught the kiss with much dramatics. He held the imaginary glove and the imaginary kiss to his heart and waved to his son.

  Viktor smiled and kissed his hand. This time he pretended that his kiss was a basketball and as such bounced it in front of himself. He did this a few times before he pretended his father was the basket and threw a three pointer. His father waited, poised, caught the ball and pretend to slam dunk the kiss.

  The school bell rang and Viktor picked up his lunch, waved to his father and thought his heart would explode into a thousand pieces and rain down like confetti in the final of the World Cup.

  Perisperm

  “Karate begins and ends with...?” Angh Park called out.

  “Respect,” cried the boys as they ran their warm up laps around the hall.

  Angh Park had steadily been increasing the amount of warm up laps they did and, though the starting amount of ten had already been increased to twenty, it now went up even more to thirty laps.

  “What doesn’t exist in karate?” cried Angh Park.

  No one replied. Finally, Viktor gasped: “Punching?”

  “Yes, karate is not punching. But: In karate there is no first...?”

  “Attack!” Cried the boys.

  “Very good! What is there not in karate?”

  “A first attack!”

  “Now we run faster,” cried Angh Park before he increased the pace.

  “Karate is a helper of ...?”

  “Justice!” Cried the boys.

  “You are men of ...?”

  “Dō,” cried the boys.

  “Ossu!” Angh Park called out and the boys all replied: “Ossu!”

  “Now faster,” called Angh Park and the group of red-faced, sweating, panting boys ran after him.

  “Who is the Great Sensei?” Angh Park asked.

  “Master Funakoshi Gichin,” the boys replied, panting and gasping for air.

  The boys stopped and huffed and staggered as Angh Park picked up a big bag and started distributing skipping ropes.

  One boy said, “Haha, those are for girls!” And everyone laughed and no one wanted to take one of the skipping ropes. Angh Park told them that Rocky uses a skipping rope as it was one of the most important exercises in boxing. He then took one of the ropes and preformed a dizzying combination of step-variations, the rope rotating so fast that it was almost invisible. After this short display the ropes became interesting again and all the boys clamored to have one.

  The ropes were soon employed in their warm up as they had to do a few jumps with them to further loosen up, then they had to lie down on the floor and stretch their legs.

  They lay on their sides and had to raise one leg up and down twenty times. They then turned around and lifted the other leg up and down twenty times. Finally, they had to bend their legs while lying on their head and hold that pose for a minute before they had to sit down and stretch their inner thigh muscles.

  Once this was done Angh Park picked up his kicking shield and reminded them of the kick exercise that he had taught them last lesson. He added that as they had been given the task of practicing the exercise at home, he wanted to see who had managed to master it by having a competition.

  Everyone grew nervous.

  They boys had to stand in a neat row toward the back of the hall. Angh Park stood in the middle and explained the rules. Every boy was to stand when it was his turn, balance himself on
one leg and kick the kicking shield with the other. The winner would then be the one with not only the most kicks and the best balance, but also the smoothest performance.

  The first boy in the series, Leon, looked both excited and pale and he went to Angh Park and stood on one leg.

  “Yoi,” exclaimed Angh Park, a word they had learnt the week before which meant ‘Caution.’ Leon looked at his karate teacher with a mix of fear and confusion.

  “Leon! What is the first rule of karate?”

  Leon put his leg down and said, “Karate begins and ends with respect.”

  “Correct. So what did you forget?”

  Leon looked at him with his mouth open.

  “Karate begins and ends with ...?” Repeated Angh Park.

  “Respect,” Leon said.

  “So,” asked Angh Park.

  Leon cried “Oh!” He ran back to his position at the beginning of the line, formed the welcome position, said “Ossu”, went forward to Angh Park and bowed. Angh Park also bowed, and then said, “Yoi!” Leon stood on one leg and performed four kicks before he lost his balance and fell over. He stood up and was just about to return to his place with the waiting boys when Angh Park told him to stop.

  “Karate begins and ends with…?” The teacher asked him.

  “Karate begins and ends with respect!” Leon said. He bowed, said “Ossu”, waited until Angh Park also bowed, and only then did he return to his place.

  In turn each boy performed the same ritual, bowing to Angh Park before they performed the kicks until they lost their balance, gave Angh Park a final bow, and then returned to their place in the line.

  Even though Viktor managed seven kicks, he didn’t win. A stocky boy named Mahbub, who looked exactly like Gerald van den Berg, managed fifteen kicks before he fell over. Viktor decided that he needed to eat more so he could have bigger legs to stand and kick on.

  In the evening Viktor found he was too tired to practice. His back was sore and so were his legs, so sore in fact that he could only perform a laborious Sun Salutation before he sat down cross-legged and tried to control his mind.

  He could hear his parents talking in the living room. When Viktor had come home after karate, he had found his father sitting at the living room table with vast quantities of paper and folders before him. He was in the midst of typing something into a calculator when Helena’s voice called out from the kitchen: “I’ll kill him!”

  “Who’s she talking about?” Viktor asked his father after he had given him a big hug.

  “Oded,” his father answered.

  “Why is she going to kill Oded?” Viktor asked, horrified.

  “Because he didn’t take care of the receipts and now we’ve lost some,” his father answered.

  “We’re missing twenty-four receipts!” his mother said as she came into the room. “Twenty-four! Could you go upstairs and see if he’s in his apartment, Viktor?”

  Viktor ran up, shouting as he looked for Oded that Helena wants to kill him so he better hurry up. Oded looked worried but he went upstairs anyway, Viktor excitedly following behind him.

  Oded stood in the living room in front of the table, Helena scolded him and jabbered on about boring stuff with boring words like ‘accounting’, ‘receipt’, ‘debt’ and ‘transaction’. When it became apparent that Oded was in fact not going to be killed, and as such nothing exciting was actually going to happen, Viktor grew bored and so headed to his room.

  Later, after his Sun Salutation and with his stiff legs not being helped by his cross-legged position on the floor, there was a knock at his window and Viktor hurried to open it.

  Cristobal flew in and threw himself on the bed.

  “Oh my God, oh Phoenix!” He cried, panting. “We won! We won!”

  Viktor was excited and nervous at the same time. “What?” He cried.

  Cristobal was panting and gasping for air so Viktor waited until the little bird had caught his breath. He then gave him a candy bar and some orange juice and waited until Cristobal had gobbled it all up greedily.

  “We’ve done it, Viktor,” Cristobal exclaimed before he performed a few excited, happy circles around the room.

  “What have we done?” Viktor asked, equally excited but perplexed by the whole affair.

  “We won!”

  “Won what?”

  “We won the war!” Shouted Cristobal, turning pirouettes with joy.

  “Cool,” Viktor yelled out before he jumped up and down on his bed.

  Cristobal performed some funny bouncing motions in the air as his tail feathers hummed loudly

  Viktor flopped on the bed and Cristobal fell onto the pillow next to him, exhausted. “That’s great,” Viktor said. “Does that mean that everything’s over and now everything’s ok?”

  “Yes,” cried Cristobal.

  “Cool,” said Viktor.

  “We killed Charles,” announced Cristobal.

  Viktor felt an icy coldness come over him and take away his breath. He sat up and blinked.

  “What?” he asked.

  “We killed Charles,” Cristobal exclaimed, grinning.

  “Charles the turtle?” Asked Viktor.

  “Charles the Galapagos turtle. Chairman of the Reptiles Association Against Sola Fide for 190 years,” confirmed Cristobal. “We killed him! We finally did it! It’s a miracle! It’s a happy day! It’s the most wonderful day we’ve had in soooo many centuries!”

  Viktor stared at Cristobal as goose bumps prickled all over his skin.

  “What is it Viktor? Why aren’t you rejoicing?” Cristobal cried out.

  Viktor tried to say something. He opened his mouth, closed it again and felt like his head was completely empty.

  “Charles is dead?” he asked.

  “Yes! Didn’t I just tell you! Isn’t it amazing?”

  Viktor tried to speak but only managed a few quiet mumbles before he finally formed the word, “Why?”

  Cristobal looked at him aghast. “Why what?”

  “Why did you kill him?” Viktor pressed out.

  Cristobal slapped his forehead. “Didn’t you listen to a thing I’ve said? I explained everything to you before, about how evil he was!”

  “But... but...,” stammered Viktor. “But he wasn’t that bad! What happened wasn’t that bad. You killed him because he offended you?”

  Cristobal stood petrified, staring at Viktor. He finally began to speak, slowly and with an icy coldness in his little voice: “He didn’t just insult us. He offended our king. And he offended Phoenix. He tried to say we were the same, to ridicule us with his lies. On top of all that he represented Phoenix as a liar. And he insulted us. Abused, humiliated, degraded, defiled, vilified, insulted and hurt us.”

  He was staring at Viktor with open horror as he explained this. “A judgment was made and written into an executive order in Abramskaya. The Grand Inquisitor of the Emperor Penguins himself, his Eminence the Campo XII, residing in the Holy Office, he ordered that the harpies were free to enact vengeance for this case of heresy.”

  “I thought that birds couldn’t fight against reptiles, because birds can fly and reptiles are much too strong,” said Viktor.

  “Yes! But sometimes there are happy exceptions. Charles was old and weak and very slow! In addition, Charles was always careless with his escort, he wouldn’t have alligators and crocodiles as protection, he said that it was too childish. Now he knows how childish it is!” Cristobal laughed and flew a few laps around the room.

  Then he sat down again on the bed. “The harpies visited him last night, very late at around 3am when he was already sleeping. They quickly overwhelmed him and tore off the underside of his shell and then torn him to pieces! They wanted to eat him as well but that was banned. They are not allowed to feed on garbage. In addition, the punished should remain visible to the other heretics, so that the other reptiles can see what happens when they insult us and get scared.”

  Viktor looked horrified.

  “Poor Charles,” he sa
id.

  Cristobal almost fainted. “What did you say?” He shouted.

  “I said, ‘poor Charles’. He was nice and friendly and very old. He definitely didn’t mean to insult you. Perhaps he would have apologized if you’d asked him.”

  Cristobal shook his head vigorously. “Viktor, the reptiles aren’t always so kind, don’t be fooled into thinking that! They have crocodiles! And alligators! And caimans! And poisonous snakes that bite you and then you die horribly! Then they swallow you!”

  “But Charles didn’t look as if he would do that,” Viktor said.

  “But Charles was their leader,” shouted Cristobal. “Charles was the chairman, he always told the crocodiles and alligators and snakes that they should kill us!”

  “So what happens now?” Asked Viktor.

  “Nothing. They’re scared now and so will stay away from us and our areas of responsibility.”

  “Aren’t you afraid that they’ll take revenge?”

  Cristobal laughed. “Oh no, what can they do? We are now in a period of exterme alert, so we’re already prepared. In addition, we can fly and they can’t. Have you ever seen a flying crocodile?”

  Viktor thought about it and was relieved when he couldn’t remember any flying crocodiles.

  “We’re sure that they will kill a few flightless birds: kiwis and rheas and cassowaries, but that doesn’t matter, they’re not really important. And there are other flightless birds, like ostriches. They can defend themselves and run very fast.”

  “So it’s all over now and all is well again?” Asked Viktor.

  “Yes,” cried Cristobal. “Everything is great! We finally have our peace!”

  “Who’s the new boss of the reptiles?”

  “The new chairman of the Reptiles Association Against Sola Fide will be Edison as he’s the vice-chairman. But you’ve seen him, he’s small, smaller than a pigeon. How ridiculous! And now he won’t dare to do anything because he knows for sure what will happen if he does and he’s not stupid.”

  Viktor thought about it for a while, sighed and said. “Ok.”

  When Cristobal finally had to leave because he had an important appointment, Viktor went to his parents, said good night, went to his room, turned off his light, turned on his goldfish lamp and went to bed.