These were the thoughts he tried to communicate to the principal, who himself had only a Lower Proficiency in English, and from decades earlier, meaning that he had a sum total of about two hundred words of English at his disposal. The principal immediately sent for Soukiouroglou. When everyone else was drowning in a spoonful of water, Soukiouroglou always found a way out. True, the principal thought he was antisocial, bad luck, and a snob, and generally kept him at arm’s length. Yet he didn’t hesitate to call on him when circumstances demanded.
Soukiouroglou and the German shook hands and started to talk. Soukiouroglou never boasted about his language skills, the way some of the jokers on the faculty did. The principal had even gotten annoyed with stubborn, mule-headed Soukiouroglou for not turning in a résumé, as he’d asked all the school’s personnel to do. What he really wanted was a list of skills that would make it easier for him to distribute extracurricular responsibilities, so he could get them all running around working on projects funded by the European Union, making him look good in the eyes of his superiors — or so his adversaries said behind his back. At any rate, most teachers turned in their résumés as he had requested. These were tricky times, and no one was willing to risk his job.
Soukiouroglou, however, wanted nothing to do with it.
— I choose not to be judged by you. I’ve been judged enough in my life, he said, and walked off.
The principal decided not to push the issue. It was a decision he had congratulated himself on ever since. He’d heard about Soukiouroglou long before he assumed duties as the principal of this school. A good civil servant, that’s what they told him at the Ministry. Some might have considered that an insult, or at least an ironic put-down. For most, being a civil servant meant leading a lazy life of responsible irresponsibility, sitting pretty without having to work all that hard. People offered anecdotal evidence of the worst kinds of abuses, and came to easily digested conclusions.
The civil war between the public and private sectors had been simmering for years. Now that belts were being tightened all over, the situation had erupted into open conflict. These days it was each man for himself, all against all. The first in the crosshairs were the teachers and the university professors. Furious parents and journalists who thought they had the truth in their pockets made sarcastic remarks about the easy hours and long vacations. None of those people really knew what it meant to be a teacher. They just found a scapegoat and loaded it up.
A few days earlier one mother had come to the school to try and get her child’s absences excused. She had on a T-shirt printed with the words, THREE REASONS I WANT TO BE A TEACHER: JUNE, JULY, AND AUGUST. While this fine specimen of motherhood had her back turned, Soukiouroglou said, loud enough that she would hear:
— Some parents are as uncultured as their children. They have plenty of time to paint their nails, but never manage to make it to parent-teacher night. They think the school is there to babysit their children. Meanwhile, they settle in at the hair salon and boast about how they could do the job better. But if you threw them into a classroom for even five minutes, they’d put down their revolutionary banners and run the other way as fast as they could. They can’t even manage their own kids, so how could they ever control an entire class of them?
The mother blushed and turned to leave. The previous year, when her child had been in Soukiouroglou’s class, he asked her to come to the school eight separate times. She was always busy. Her child’s situation was discussed at faculty meetings, and they even ordered an external review of the case, but no solution was ever settled upon. The mother was always absent, never had time to talk to the school psychologist, kept offering excuses and putting up obstacles. At the end of the day, she just wanted the experts to deal with her child. People with degrees who were paid for their time and effort. People whose job it was to shape children’s souls.
In other words, the mother palmed her problem off on the child’s teachers. She expected a solution to drop down from the sky, without her lifting a finger. Her attitude was understandable — even excusable. Most teachers were used to listening patiently to despairing parents singing sad songs about their lot. Soukiouroglou went a step further: he tackled the problem. He tried to move forward toward a solution.
A good civil servant. It wasn’t ironic, and it wasn’t an insult. What it meant was, a person who assumed responsibility. Who finished the job on time. Who gave for free what others sold at a high price. Who taught his class with intellectual propriety and sound pedagogical methods. Students at the school — or rather, their parents — paid out the nose to evening cram schools for services the school provided for free during the day. Soukiouroglou tried to make his students realize how nonsensical that was. Some of them were convinced. They stopped going to cram schools, quit their private lessons, and studied under his tutelage. And in the end they got into university, just like the rest. They saved time and money. Their brains didn’t rot from too many worksheets and mnemonic devices.
The principal never found out what Soukiouroglou said to the German tourist on that fateful first day of the sit-in. The foreigner smiled, jotted down some notes, and headed off with a clearly marked map, courtesy of Soukiouroglou, who went back to the teachers’ office, and to the task of tallying student absences.
Everyone came to the concert. Spiros greeted them at the main entrance, handing out a photocopied program along with a little slip of paper printed with slogans. They had spent all afternoon trying to decide what to write, since they wanted their school to make a good impression. At some point Spiros realized that talking wasn’t going to get them anywhere, threw democratic procedure out the window, and just wrote what he wanted.
The band was tuning up in the schoolyard, testing the distortion. The neighbors were in despair, since they could tell it was gearing up to be a long night. None of the fifty-somethings sitting on the surrounding balconies had any desire to listen to the songs of enraged adolescents late into the night — after all, music had died with their youth. The real revolution had taken place decades ago — or so they believed, these adults who had dedicated years of their lives to demonstrations and occupations. The political activities of their children struck them as a washed-out repetition of an earlier era, which they themselves had lived through in its full glory: the era when they had been building a world, which they’d now cut and sown to their measurements.
Of course they recognized these students’ need to raise fists and banners, to blow off some steam with a slogan or two. But they also thought these underage revolutionaries required supervision and guidance — that it was their responsibility to impart their knowledge and experience, to instruct their children in the ways of civil disobedience.
And then there were other parents whose lives revolved primarily around the workplace, where they tried to be as tractable as they could, and who shuddered at their opponents’ views. Thus parents and students alike split into two camps: those who believed that an occupation could teach an important political lesson, and those who considered the loss of class hours a serious obstacle to the students’ progress.