Of course, he had still not become a hero. Dashing into the toilet to put an end to the tobacco habit was not exactly an occupation of heroic proportions, even though it was fatiguing disciplinary work. Nor was charging up and down marble steps, even if he had done it on a splendid white stallion, a task that was heroic in its nature. He had simply behaved in a normal vocational schoolteacher manner, attending to the little tiresome details that sent vocational schoolteachers babbling incoherently to the nearest booby hatch. But he had done nothing heroic, and he was still not looking for trouble, and he was still resolved not to be a “goddamned hero.”
As he walked up to the third floor, having lingered a while to avoid the student rush, he congratulated himself upon what he considered almost perfect behavior thus far. He had made a few mistakes, true, but on the whole he had done well. He had shown a tough exterior to the kids, and whereas tough teachers were not always loved, they were always respected. He was not particularly interested in being loved. Mr. Chips was a nice enough old man, but Rick was not ready to say good-by yet. He was interested in doing his job, and that job was teaching. In a vocational school you had to be tough in order to teach. You had to be tough, or you never got the chance to teach. It was like administering a shot of penicillin to a squirming, protesting three-year-old. The three-year-old didn’t know the penicillin was good for him. The doctor simply had to ignore the squirming and the protesting and jab the needle directly into the quivering buttocks.
It was the same thing here. These kids didn’t know education was good for them. There would be squirming and protesting, but if the teacher ignored all that and shot the needle of education directly into all those adolescent behinds, things would turn out all right.
To do that, you had to present a tough exterior, no matter how you felt inside. There was the danger of becoming so goddamned tough, o£ course, that you forgot you were also supposed to be a teacher. Rick would never carry it quite that far. He intended to lay down the law, and then to relax, never letting discipline establish itself as a problem. Once discipline became a habit, there would be time for joking, time for a few laughs while he injected the educational needle. But not until discipline was an ingrained response.
Stanley had explained how the teacher’s lunchroom could be reached. You could go directly to a deserted staircase on the main floor, and take that up four flights. Or you could go to the gymnasium on the third floor, cut across and through that, and then climb one flight of steps to the lunchroom. Since Rick had not yet seen the gym, he chose the latter approach.
The gym was situated on the short side of the L, directly at the end of the corridor. Twin wooden doors were set side by side, and the inevitable gold lettering announced that they opened onto the gymnasium.
Rick opened one of the doors and stepped into the high-ceilinged, wire-mesh-windowed room. The floor was highly polished, and Rick noticed that all the boys lined up before the teacher’s platform were in their stocking feet. He imagined this was the teacher’s method of preserving his polished floor on this first day of school when the boys would not be carrying sneakers. The teacher was a tall red-headed man with muscles bulging under and around his white tee shirt. A whistle hung from a lanyard around his neck, and he stood on the platform with his hands on his hips, talking out over the heads of the lined-up boys.
Rick crossed the gym, his shoes clicking noisily on the polished wood floor. He passed between the teacher’s platform and the boys, smiling up at the teacher, who waved slightly and went on laying down the law to the kids. When he reached the door at the opposite end of the gym, he opened it and stepped onto a landing. He closed the door on the hollow, echoing voice of the gym teacher, and then started up the steps to the lunchroom.
He had formed no preconceived notion of what the teachers’ lunchroom would be like, so he had no reason to be surprised by what he found. He was, nonetheless, surprised. The lunchroom consisted of two rooms, actually. At the top of the steps there was an open doorway, and Rick stepped through it into the first room.
One wall of the room was lined with windows. The opposite wall was bare. A long table ran the length of the room. The table was bare. A refrigerator and a sink occupied the wall facing Rick. An old gas stove was on the other side of the doorway that divided that wall in half. A tea kettle was on the stove, a blue flame curling around its metal sides.
Rick stepped through the doorway, walking between the sink and the stove, and into the second, smaller room.
This room was occupied. This room was the dining room, as differentiated — he supposed — from the other room which could be classed as the galley or the kitchen.
A table was in the center of the room, and there were chairs around the table, and there were men sitting in the chairs, and each man had a sandwich in his hands. There were windows on two walls of the room. The third wall held the door through which Rick entered, and the fourth wall boasted a bulletin board and a cupboard. Rick saw cups hanging on hooks inside the cupboard, and saucers stacked in neat piles. Looking through the glass doors, he also saw a small tray with silverware stacked in it. A couch was against one of the windowed walls, and a leather lounge rested beneath the bulletin board. The lounge was occupied at this moment by a man who lay face down on the leather, his shirt-tail sticking out of his trousers, a bald patch at the back of his head.
A short stout man with a flat nose was standing near the bulletin board, looking over some of the notices there. He turned when Rick came in, and he smiled and said, “Sit down anyplace. The waiter will take your order shortly.”
“Thanks,” Rick said. The other men at the table glanced up, smiled, and then went back to demolishing their sandwiches. Rick pulled out a chair, dipped into his briefcase for the sandwiches Anne had prepared, and spread them on the table before him. The man at the bulletin board continued looking at him.
“My name is Solly Klein,” he said. “You’re one of the new English teachers, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Rick said. He wasn’t sure whether he should offer his hand to Klein. He decided against it. The man was on the opposite side of the table, much too distant for a handshake. “My name is Rick Dadier.”
“Welcome to the Forbidden City,” Solly said. “How’s it going so far?”
“Not too bad,” Rick said.
“Give it time,” Solly answered. “It’ll get worse.” He smiled, and then the smile vanished, and Rick wondered if he were joking or not. He slipped the rubber band from one of his sandwiches, and then began unwrapping the waxed paper. He spread the paper, and then lifted the top slice of bread, smiling at Anne’s thoughtfulness when he saw she’d given him ham, his favorite cold cut.
“Can I get anything to drink?” Rick asked.
“You mean non-alcoholic, I take it,” one of the men at the table said.
The man was small and wiry, with a curling crop of hair that hugged his head like a Navy watch cap. He had a long, hooked nose, and black-rimmed bop glasses behind which intense blue eyes sparkled. He held a sandwich in one hand, and an open history book in the other. Rick estimated his age at thirty-one or so.
Rick smiled. “I don’t suppose there’s beer available, is there?” he asked.
“You’re lucky if you can get the water tap to run,” Solly said, and the small wiry man with the history book chuckled.
“This your first teaching job?” the small, wiry man asked.
“Yes,” Rick said. He had somehow been put on the defensive, and he didn’t like the position at all. And simply because he’d asked if he could get anything to drink, which seemed like a normal, civilized question.