9
I couldn’t ignore Tschick from the very start. Nobody could. Tschick was an Asien, and he looked like it. Wagenbach dragged him into class after Easter, and when I say he dragged him, I mean it. First session after Easter: history. Everyone tacked on their chairs, because, if there’s an authentic asshole, it’s Wagenbach. But I would say asshole is an overstatement, actually, Wagenbach is ok. His classes are ok and at least not dumb like the most, for example Wolkow. You don’t need to concentrate on Wagenbach’s classes. And you can still do good on it, because, Wagenbach really can tear one apart. Everyone knows that. Even those who haven’t met him. Before a five-grader enters class, they already know: watch out for Wagenbach! With him, it’s total silence. With Schuermann, there will be at least five phone rings during one session. Patrick even managed to set a new ring tone on his class — that’s six, seven, eight tones one after another, until Schuermann asked for a little silence. And he didn’t do him either. But with Wagenbach, if a phone rings, the owner can’t reach recess alive. There are rumors that Wagenbach used to keep a hammer on his desk to smash phones. I don’t know if that’s true.
Wagenbach came in with his ugly suit on and his brown bag under his arm just as usual, and behind him dragged this boy, who reminded me of a coma. Wagenbach put his bag on the table and turned around. He waited with a frown, until the boy finally got in, and said: “We have a new classmate. His name is Andrej —”
And then he looked at his notepad, and then he looked at the boy again. It was clear that the new student should’ve said his name. But the boy stared at the middle aisle into nothingness and didn’t say a single word.
And maybe it’s not important to write about what I thought when I saw Tschick for the first time, but I’m gonna say it anyway. I had a really bad feeling when he stood beside Wagenbach there. Two assholes on a stage, I thought, even though I didn’t know him at all and didn’t know whether he was an asshole. He was Russian. He was middle height, wore a muddy white shirt which had a missing button, 10 euro jeans from Kick and brown, not in shape shoes that looked like dead rats. Other than that, he had high cheek bones and slits for eyes. These slits are the first thing you see about him. Looked like a Mongolian , and you never know where he’s looking. His mouth was slightly opened on one side, it looked as if an imaginary cigarette can be tucked in there. His arms were strong and had a huge scar. His legs relatively thin and his head rough-edged. Nobody giggled. Not when it’s Wagenbach’s class. But I had a feeling that without Wagenbach, still no one would giggle. The Russian simply stood there and looked somewhere with his Mongolian eyes. And he completely ignored Wagenbach. That was practically impossible.
“Andrej,” Wagenbach said, stared at his notepad and moved his lips silently. “Andrej Tsch … Tschicha … tschorff.”
The Russian mumbled something.
“Pardon?”
“Tschichatschow.” The Russian said without sparing a glance at Wagenbach.
Wagenbach fiddled his nostrils with the air. That was an iconic move of him. Nostrils in the air.
“Great, Tschischaroff, Andrej. Do you want to introduce yourself to us? Where you come from, what your previous school is?”
That was standard. When new students came into class, they had to say where they came from and things like that. And now, Tschick’s the first exception. He turned his head to the side, as if he’s just noticed Wagenbach at this moment. He scratched his throat a bit, turned himself back to the class and said: “No.” Somewhere, a needle dropped to the floor.
Wagenbach nodded stiffly and said: “You don’t want to say where you come from?”
“No.” Tschick said. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Okay then. Then I’m gonna do the favor, Andrej. I have to introduce you to the class out of politeness.”
He looked at Tschick. Tschick looked at the class.
“I take your silence as consent.” Wagenbach said.
And he said it in an ironic tone, just like every other teacher when they say something similar.
Tschick didn’t answer.
“Or do you oppose?” Wagenbach asked.
“You can start.” Tschick said and gestured with his hand.
Somewhere in the girl’s block, a giggle came out. You can start! Insane. He pronounced every syllable individually with a really strange accent. And he still stared at the back wall. Maybe he even shut his eyes. It was hard to tell. Wagenbach made a face that asked for silence. Though it was already completely quiet.
“So…” he said, “Our new classmate’s name is Andrej Tschicha…schoff. And we can tell from his name that our guest comes from the vast Russian land, which Napoleon robbed from the east — and soon returned, as we’ll see today. Just like Karl the seventh before him. And Hitler after him.”
Wagenbach fiddled with his nostrils again. The movement didn’t make any impression on Tschick. He didn’t react.
“Andrej came to Germany with his brother four years ago, and – don’t you want to say it yourself?”
The Russian made a sort of noise.
“Andrej, I’m speaking to you.” Wagenbach said.
“No.” Tschick said. “I don’t want to tell it.”
Giggles. Wagenbach nodded squarely.
“Ok then, I’ll say it if you don’t oppose, it’s strangely weird though.”
Tschick shook his head.
“You don’t think it’s unnormal?”
“No.”
“Well, I find it strange.” Wagenbach emphasized. “And also surprised. But to make it short – we’re gonna shorten it a bit here. Our friend Andrej comes from a German family, but his mother tongue is Russian. He is a formulator, as we can see, but he’s just learned German in Germany and should earn our understanding in certain…areas. He entered a special school four years ago. Then switched to a secondary school because his grades allowed him to do so, but he didn’t stay for long. Then another secondary school, and now he’s with us, and all that in just four years. So far all correct?”
Tschick rubbed his nose with his hand, then he fiddled a bit with them. “Ninety percent.” He said.
Wagenbach waited for more. But nothing more. The other ten percent remained unknown.
“Well then.” Wagenbach said, surprisingly friendly. “And we’re obviously very excited about what comes next…but you can’t stand here for a whole day, it was very nice to talk to you. I would suggest you sit at the desk at the back, because it’s the only free one. Right?”
Tschick went through the middle aisle like a robot. Everyone looked at him. Tatjana and Natalie had their heads together.
“Napoleon!” Wagenbach said and made a dramatic pause in order to take out a pack of paper tissues from his bag and blow his nose with it. Tschick was halfway, and on the trail he came, there was a smell that almost blew me away. An alcohol smell. I sat three seats from the aisle and still could put together his drink list for the last twenty-four hours. My mother smelled like that when she had a bad day, and I thought, maybe that was the reason why he didn’t look at Wagenbach the whole time and hardly opened his mouth, because of the smell. but Wagenbach caught a cold. He couldn’t smell anything whatsoever.
Tschick sat at the last free desk way back. Kallenbach sat here at the start of the year, the class bully. But when it became clear that he’s just gonna disturb everyone 24-7, Mrs. Pechstein switched him to the first row after a few days so she could have some control over him. And now, this Russian was sitting here, and I wasn’t the only one that had the feeling that Mrs. Pechstein wasn’t gonna approve of it. He was a different type of bully, that was obvious, so they constantly turn to him. After his meeting with Wagenbach, everyone knew: something’s gonna happen, and it’s getting intense.
But then nothing happened for the whole day. Tschick was greeted by every teacher and had to spell his name in every session, but other than that, total silence. Also the next few days, it was really a surprise. Tschick always came to school with his wrinkled shirt, doidn’t make any noise during class, always said “Yes” or “No” or “I don’t know” when he was called, and that was it. He didn’t make friends with anyone, and he didn’t even try to do so. He didn’t stink of drinking anymore, but still, whenever you looked into the back row, you always had the impression that he had somehow passed out. The way he sat there slumped over with his slit eyes, you never knew: was he sleeping, was he a bitch, or was he just very laid back?
But after then, it stinked once a week. Not so bad as the first time, but always once a week. There are some of us that have already drunk before - I don’t belong to that - , but stinking like that on the next day, that was new. Tschick would always chew mint gum, so you could always tell which phase he was in.
Other than that, we really didn’t know a lot about him. The fact that he had been in a special school and then came here was absurd enough. And then this clamot. But there are people that defend him, they said that at least he wasn’t dumb at the end of the day. “At least he’s not as stupid as Kallenbach”, I said sometime, because I was one of them. But I defended him, to be honest, only because Kallenbach was standing there and he got me on my nerves. You couldn’t really tell from Tschick’s speech, whether he was genius, or stupid, or something in between.
And obviously there were rumours about his past. From Siberia, from Moscow – everyone said something different. Kevin said Tschick lived in a camping car with his brother somewhere near Hellersdorf, and this brother of his was a weapon smuggler. Someone else knew that he was a raper, and they lived in a 40-room-villa which belonged to the Russian mafia, and also someone said he lives in a tall house facing the North See. But, to be honest, those were just rumours, and they only spread because Tschick hardly talked to anyone. And so he slowly got forgotten. Or at least as forgotten as you can be if you show up every day in the same bad shirt and cheap jeans and sit in the class idiot’s seat. The shoes made of dead animals were at least replaced by white Adidas, which someone immediately knew were freshly stolen. And maybe they were. But the number of rumors stopped increasing. They just invented the nickname Tschick, and for everyone who found that too easy, he was called the special needs student, and then the Russian topic was over for the time being. In our class, at least.
It took a little longer in the parking lot. In the mornings, the senior students stood in the parking lot in front of the school, and there were a few who already had cars, and they found this Mongolian incredibly interesting. Guys who had been stuck five times and leaned in the open driver’s door of their car so that everyone could see that they were the owners of these tuned junk cars, and they made fun of Tschick. “Are you scoundrels again, Ivan?” And that happened every morning. Especially one guy with a yellow Ford Fiesta. For a long time I didn’t know whether Tschick noticed that they were talking about him and that they were laughing at him, but at some point he stopped. I was busy locking up my bike and I heard them making bets loudly about whether Tschick would hit the door to the school building, the way he was swaying - they said: how the damn Mongol sways - and Tschick stopped and went back to the parking lot and towards the boys. All of them were a head taller and a few years older than him and they were grinning like crazy at the way the Russian arrived - and walked past them. He headed straight for the Ford guy, who was the loudest of all, put his hand on the driver’s door and spoke to him so quietly that no one else could hear him, and then the grin slowly disappeared from the Ford guy’s face and Tschick turned around and went into school. From that day on, they didn’t call after him anymore.
I wasn’t the only one who had seen this, of course, and after that the rumors that Tschick’s family was really the Russian mafia or something like that never died down, because no one could imagine how else he had managed to completely pull the plug on the Ford idiot in three sentences. But logically, that was nonsense. Mafia, utter nonsense. That’s what I thought, anyway.