The Dream

By W. Somerset Maugham
It chanced that in August, 1917, the work upon which I was then engaged obliged
me to go from New York to Petrograd and I was instructed for safety's sake to travel
by way of Vladivostok. I landed there in the morning and passed an idle day as best I
could. The Trans-Siberian train was due to start, so far as I remember, at about nine
in the evening. I dined at the station restaurant by myself. It was crowded and I
shared a small table with a man whose appearance entertained me. He was a
Russian, a tall fellow, but amazingly stout, and he had so vast a paunch that he was
obliged to sit well away from the table. His hands, small for his size, were buried in
rolls of fat. His hair, long, dark and thin, was brushed carefully across his crown in
order to conceal his baldness, and his huge sallow face, with its enormous double
chin, clean-shaven, gave you an impression of indecent nakedness. His nose was
small, a funny little button upon that mass of flesh, and his black shining eyes were
small too. But he had a large, red and sensual mouth. He was dressed neatly
enough in a black suit. It was not worn but shabby; it looked as if it had been neither
pressed nor brushed since he had had it.

The service was bad and it was almost impossible to attract the attention of a waiter.
We soon got into conversation. The Russian spoke good and fluent English. His
accent was marked but not tiresome. He asked me many questions about myself
and my plans, which--my occupation at the time making caution necessary--I
answered with a show of frankness but with dissimulation. I told him I was a
journalist. He asked me whether I wrote fiction and when I confessed that in my
leisure moments I did, he began to talk of the later Russian novelists. He spoke
intelligently. It was plain that he was a man of education.

By this time we had persuaded the waiter to bring us some cabbage soup, and my
acquaintance pulled a small bottle of vodka from his pocket which he invited me to
share. I do not know whether it was the vodka or the natural loquaciousness of his
race that made him communicative, but presently he told me, unasked, a good deal
about himself. He was of noble birth, it appeared, a lawyer by profession, and a
radical. Some trouble with the authorities had made it necessary for him to be much
abroad, but now he was on his way home. Business had detained him at

1
Vladivostok, but he expected to start for Moscow in a week and if I went there he
would be charmed to see me.

"Are you married?" he asked me.

I did not see what business it was of his, but I told him that I was. He sighed a little.

"I am a widower," he said. "My wife was a Swiss, a native of Geneva. She was a
very cultivated woman. She spoke English, German and Italian perfectly. French, of
course, was her native tongue. Her Russian was much above the average for a
foreigner. She had scarcely the trace of an accent."

He called a waiter who was passing with a tray full of dishes and asked him, I
suppose--for then I knew hardly any Russian--how much longer we were going to
wait for the next course. The waiter, with a rapid but presumably reassuring
exclamation, hurried on, and my friend sighed.

"Since the revolution the waiting in restaurants has become abominable."

He lighted his twentieth cigarette and I, looking at my watch, wondered whether I

should get a square meal before it was time for me to start.

"My wife was a very remarkable woman," he continued. "She taught languages at
one of the best schools for the daughters of noblemen in Petrograd. For a good
many years we lived together on perfectly friendly terms. She was, however, of a
jealous temperament and unfortunately she loved me to distraction."
It was difficult for me to keep a straight face. He was one of the ugliest men I had
ever seen. There is sometimes a certain charm in the rubicund and jovial fat man,
but this saturnine obesity was repulsive.

"I do not pretend that I was faithful to her. She was not young when I married her and
we had been married for ten years. She was small and thin, and she had a bad
complexion. She had a bitter tongue. She was a woman who suffered from a fury of
possession, and she could not bear me to be attracted to anyone but her. She was

2
jealous not only of the women I knew, but of my friends, my cat and my books. On
one occasion in my absence she gave away a coat of mine merely because I liked
none of my coats so well. But I am of an equable temperament. I will not deny that
she bored me, but I accepted her acrimonious disposition as an act of God and no
more thought of rebelling against it than I would against bad weather or a cold in the
head. I denied her accusations as long as it was possible to deny them, and when it
was impossible I shrugged my shoulders and smoked a cigarette.

"The constant scenes she made me did not very much affect me. I led my own life.
Sometimes, indeed, I wondered whether it was passionate love she felt for me or
passionate hate. It seemed to me that love and hate were very near allied.

"So we might have continued to the end of the chapter if one night a very curious
thing had not happened. I was awakened by a piercing scream from my wife.
Startled, I asked her what was the matter. She told me that she had had a fearful
nightmare; she had dreamt that I was trying to kill her. We lived at the top of a large
house and the well round which the stairs climbed was broad. She had dreamt that
just as we had arrived at our own floor I had caught hold of her and attempted to
throw her over the balusters. It was six storeys to the stone floor at the bottom and it
meant certain death.

"She was much shaken. I did my best to soothe her. But next morning, and for two or
three days after, she referred to the subject again and, notwithstanding my laughter,
I saw that it dwelt in her mind. I could not help thinking of it either, for this dream
showed me something that I had never suspected. She thought I hated her, she
thought I would gladly be rid of her; she knew of course that she was insufferable,
and at some time or other the idea had evidently occurred to her that I was capable
of murdering her. The thoughts of men are incalculable and ideas enter our minds
that we should be ashamed to confess. Sometimes I had wished that she might run
away with a lover, sometimes that a painless and sudden death might give me my
freedom; but never, never had the idea come to me that I might deliberately rid
myself of an intolerable burden.

3
"The dream made an extraordinary impression upon both of us. It frightened my wife,
and she became for a little less bitter and more tolerant. But when I walked up the
stairs to our apartment it was impossible for me not to look over the balusters and
reflect how easy it would be to do what she had dreamt. The balusters were
dangerously low. A quick gesture and the thing was done. It was hard to put the
thought out of my mind. Then some months later my wife awakened me one night. I
was very tired and I was exasperated. She was white and trembling. She had had
the dream again. She burst into tears and asked me if I hated her. I swore by all the
saints of the Russian calendar that I loved her. At last she went to sleep again. It was
more than I could do. I lay awake. I seemed to see her falling down the well of the
stairs, and I heard her shriek and the thud as she struck the stone floor. I could not
help shivering."

The Russian stopped and beads of sweat stood on his forehead. He had told the
story well and fluently so that I had listened with attention. There was still some
vodka in the bottle; he poured it out and swallowed it at a gulp.

"And how did your wife eventually die?" I asked after a pause.

He took out a dirty handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

"By an extraordinary coincidence she was found late one night at the bottom of the
stairs with her neck broken."

"Who found her?"

"She was found by one of the lodgers who came in shortly after the catastrophe."

"And where were you?"

I cannot describe the look he gave me of malicious cunning. His little black eyes
sparkled.

"I was spending the evening with a friend of mine. I did not come in till an hour later."

4
At that moment the waiter brought us the dish of meat that we had ordered, and the
Russian fell upon it with good appetite. He shovelled the food into his mouth in
enormous mouthfuls.

I was taken aback. Had he really been telling me in this hardly veiled manner that he
had murdered his wife? That obese and sluggish man did not look like a murderer; I
could not believe that he would have had the courage. Or was he making a sardonic
joke at my expense?

In a few minutes it was time for me to go and catch my train. I left him and I have not
seen him since. But I have never been able to make up my mind whether he was
serious or jesting.

The Open Window

by H. H. Munro (Saki)

"My aunt will be down presently, Mr. Nuttel," said a very self-possessed young lady
of fifteen; "in the meantime you must try and put up with me."

Framton Nuttel endeavoured to say the correct something which should duly flatter
the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come.
Privately he doubted more than ever whether these formal visits on a succession of
total strangers would do much towards helping the nerve cure which he was
supposed to be undergoing.

"I know how it will be," his sister had said when he was preparing to migrate to this
rural retreat; "you will bury yourself down there and not speak to a living soul, and
your nerves will be worse than ever from moping. I shall just give you letters of
introduction to all the people I know there. Some of them, as far as I can remember,
were quite nice." Framton wondered whether Mrs. Sappleton, the lady to whom he
was presenting one of the letters of introduction, came into the nice division.

5
"Do you know many of the people round here?" asked the niece, when she judged
that they had had sufficient silent communion.

"Hardly a soul," said Framton. "My sister was staying here, at the rectory, you know,
some four years ago, and she gave me letters of introduction to some of the people
here." He made the last statement in a tone of distinct regret.

"Then you know practically nothing about my aunt?" pursued the self-possessed
young lady.

"Only her name and address," admitted the caller. He was wondering whether Mrs.
Sappleton was in the married or widowed state. An undefinable something about the
room seemed to suggest masculine habitation.
"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be
since your sister's time."

"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies
seemed out of place.

"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon,"
said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

"It is quite warm for the time of the year," said Framton; "but has that window got
anything to do with the tragedy?"

"Out through that window, three years ago to a day, her husband and her two young
brothers went off for their day's shooting. They never came back. In crossing the
moor to their favourite snipeshooting ground they were all three engulfed in a
treacherous piece of bog. It had been that dreadful wet summer, you know, and
places that were safe in other years gave way suddenly without warning. Their
bodies were never recovered. That was the dreadful part of it." Here the child's voice
lost its self-possessed note and became falteringly human. "Poor aunt always thinks
that they will come back some day, they and the little brown spaniel that was lost

6
with them, and walk in at that window just as they used to do. That is why the
window is kept open every evening till it is quite dusk. Poor dear aunt, she has often
told me how they went out, her husband with his white waterproof coat over his arm,
and Ronnie, her youngest brother, singing 'Bertie, why do you bound?' as he always
did to tease her, because she said it got on her nerves. Do you know, sometimes on
still, quiet evenings like this, I almost get a creepy feeling that they will all walk in
through that window - "

She broke off with a little shudder. It was a relief to Framton when the aunt bustled
into the room with a whirl of apologies for being late in making her appearance.
"I hope Vera has been amusing you?" she said.
"She has been very interesting," said Framton.

"I hope you don't mind the open window," said Mrs. Sappleton briskly; "my husband
and brothers will be home directly from shooting, and they always come in this way.
They've been out for snipe in the marshes to-day, so they'll make a fine mess over
my poor carpets. So like you men-folk, isn't it?"

She rattled on cheerfully about the shooting and the scarcity of birds, and the
prospects for duck in the winter. To Framton it was all purely horrible. He made a
desperate but only partially successful effort to turn the talk on to a less ghastly topic;
he was conscious that his hostess was giving him only a fragment of her attention,
and her eyes were constantly straying past him to the open window and the lawn
beyond. It was certainly an unfortunate coincidence that he should have
paid his visit on this tragic anniversary.

"The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement,

and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced
Framton, who laboured under the tolerably wide-spread delusion that total strangers
and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and
infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in
agreement," he continued.

7
"No?" said Mrs. Sappleton, in a voice which only replaced a yawn at the last
moment. Then she suddenly brightened into alert attention - but not to what Framton
was saying.

"Here they are at last!" she cried. "Just in time for tea, and don't they look as if they
were muddy up to the eyes!"

Framton shivered slightly and turned towards the niece with a look intended to
convey sympathetic comprehension. The child was staring out through the open
window with dazed horror in her eyes. In a chill shock of nameless fear Framton
swung round in his seat and looked in the same direction. In the deepening twilight
three figures were walking across the lawn towards the window; they all carried guns
under their arms, and one of them was additionally burdened with a white coat hung
over his shoulders. A tired brown spaniel kept close at their heels. Noiselessly they
neared the house, and then a hoarse young voice chanted out of the dusk: "I said,
Bertie, why do you bound?"

Framton grabbed wildly at his stick and hat; the hall-door, the gravel-drive, and the
front gate were dimly-noted stages in his headlong retreat. A cyclist coming along
the road had to run into the hedge to avoid an imminent collision.
"Here we are, my dear," said the bearer of the white mackintosh, coming in through
the window; "fairly muddy, but most of it's dry. Who was that who bolted out as we
came up?"

"A most extraordinary man, a Mr. Nuttel," said Mrs. Sappleton; "could only talk about
his illnesses, and dashed off without a word of good-bye or apology when you
arrived. One would think he had seen a ghost."

"I expect it was the spaniel," said the niece calmly; "he told me he had a horror of
dogs. He was once hunted into a cemetery somewhere on the banks of the Ganges
by a pack of pariah dogs, and had to spend the night in a newly dug grave with the
creatures snarling and grinning and foaming just above him. Enough to make
anyone their nerve."

8
Romance at short notice was her speciality.

The Chaser
by John Collier

Alan Austen, as nervous as a kitten, went up certain dark and creaky stairs in the
neighborhood of Pell Street, and peered about for a long time on the dime landing
before he found the name he wanted written obscurely on one of the doors.

He pushed open this door, as he had been told to do, and found himself in a tiny
room, which contained no furniture but a plain kitchen table, a rocking-chair, and an
ordinary chair. On one of the dirty buff-colored walls were a couple of shelves,
containing in all perhaps a dozen bottles and jars. An old man sat in the rocking-
chair, reading a newspaper. Alan, without a word, handed him the card he had been
given.

"Sit down, Mr. Austen," said the old man very politely.

"I am glad to make your acquaintance."

"Is it true," asked Alan, "that you have a certain mixture that has-er-quite
extraordinary effects?"

"My dear sir," replied the old man, "my stock in trade is not very large-I don't deal in
laxatives and teething mixtures-but such as it is, it is varied. I think nothing I sell has
effects which could be precisely described as ordinary."

"Well, the fact is. . ." began Alan.

"Here, for example, "interrupted the old man, reaching for a bottle from the shelf.

9
"Here is a liquid as colorless as water, almost tasteless, quite imperceptible in coffee,
wine, or any other beverage. It is also quite imperceptible to any known method of
autopsy."

"Do you mean it is a poison?" cried Alan, very much horrified.

"Call it a glove-cleaner if you like," said the old man indifferently. "Maybe it will clean
gloves. I have never tried. One might call it a life-cleaner. Lives need cleaning
sometimes."

"I want nothing of that sort," said Alan.

"Probably it is just as well," said the old man. "Do you know the price of this? For one
teaspoonful, which is sufficient, I ask five thousand dollars. Never less. Not a penny
less."
"I hope all your mixtures are not as expensive," said Alan apprehensively.

"Oh dear, no," said the old man. "It would be no good charging that sort of price for a
love potion, for example. Young people who need a love potion very seldom have
five thousand dollars. Otherwise they would not need a love potion."

"I am glad to hear that," said Alan.

"I look at it like this," said the old man. "Please a customer with one article, and he
will come back when he needs another. Even if it is more costly. He will save up for
it, if necessary."

"So," said Alan, "you really do sell love potions?"

"If I did not sell love potions," said the old man, reaching for another bottle, "I should
not have mentioned the other matter to you. It is only when one is in a position to
oblige that one can afford to be so confidential."

"And these potions," said Alan. "They are not just-just-er-"

10
"Oh, no," said the old man. "Their effects are permanent, and extend far beyond the
mere casual impulse. But they include it. Oh, yes they include it. Bountifully,
insistently. Everlastingly."

"Dear me!" said Alan, attempting a look of scientific detachment. "How very
interesting!"

"But consider the spiritual side," said the old man.

"I do, indeed," said Alan.

"For indifference," said the old man, they substitute devotion. For scorn, adoration.
Give one tiny measure of this to the young lady-its flavour is imperceptible in orange
juice, soup, or cocktails-and however gay and giddy she is, she will change
altogether. She will want nothing but solitude and you."

"I can hardly believe it," said Alan. "She is so fond of parties."

"She will not like them anymore," said the old man. "She will be afraid of the pretty
girls you may meet."

"She will actually be jealous?" cried Alan in a rapture. "Of me?"

"Yes, she will want to be everything to you."

"She is, already. Only she doesn't care about it."

"She will, when she has taken this. She will care intensely. You will be her sole
interest in life."

"Wonderful!" cried Alan.

11
"She will want to know all you do," said the old man. "All that has happened to you
during the day. Every word of it. She will want to know what you are thinking about,
why you smile suddenly, why you are looking sad."

"That is love!" cried Alan.

"Yes," said the old man. "How carefully she will look after you! She will never allow
you to be tired, to sit in a draught, to neglect your food. If you are an hour late, she
will be terrified. She will think you are killed, or that some siren has caught you."

"I can hardly imagine Diana like that!" cried Alan, overwhelmed with joy.

"You will not have to use your imagination," said the old man. "And, by the way,
since there are always sirens, if by any chance you should, later on, slip a little, you
need not worry. She will forgive you, in the end. She will be terribly hurt, of course,
but she will forgive you-in the end."

"That will not happen," said Alan fervently.

"Of course not," said the old man. "But, if it did, you need not worry. She would never
divorce you. Oh, no! And, of course, she will never give you the least, the very least,
grounds for-uneasiness."

"And how much," said Alan, "is this wonderful mixture?"

"It is not as dear," said the old man, "as the glove-cleaner, or life-cleaner, as I
sometimes call it. No. That is five thousand dollars, never a penny less. One has to
be older than you are, to indulge in that sort of thing. One has to save up for it."

"But the love potion?" said Alan.

"Oh, that," said the old man, opening the drawer in the kitchen table, and taking out a
tiny, rather dirty-looking phial. "That is just a dollar."

"I can't tell you how grateful I am," said Alan, watching him fill it.

12
"I like to oblige," said the old man. "Then customers come back, later in life, when
they are better off, and want more expensive things. Here you are. You will find it
very effective."

"Thank you again," said Alan. "Good-bye."

"Au revoir," said the man.

The Rainbow Troops: Ten New Students

By Andrea Hirata

THAT morning, when I was just a boy, I sat on a long bench outside of a school. The
branch of an old filicium tree sha-ded me. My father sat beside me, hugging my
shoulders with both of his arms as he nodded and smiled to each parent and child
sitting side by side on the bench in front of us.

It was an important day: the first day of elementary school. At the end of those long
benches was an open door, and inside was an empty classroom. The door frame
was
crooked. The entire school, in fact, leaned as if it would collapse at any moment. In
the doorway stood two teachers, like hosts welcoming guests to a party. There was

13
an old man with a patient face, Bapak K.A. Harfan Efendy Noor, or Pak Harfan—the
school principal—and a young woman wearing a jilbab, or headscarf, Ibu N.A.
Muslimah Hafsari, or Bu Mus for short. Like my father, they also were smiling.

Yet Bu Mus’ smile was a forced smile: she was apprehensive. Her face was tense
and twitching nervously. She kept counting the number of children sitting on the long
benches, so worried that she didn’t even care about the sweat pouring down onto
her eyelids. The sweat beading around her nose smudged her powder makeup,
streaking her face and making her look like the queen’s servant in Dul Muluk, an
ancient play in our village.

“Nine people, just nine people, Pamanda Gu-ru, still short one,” she said anxiously to
the principal. Pak Harfan stared at her with an empty look in his eyes.

I too felt anxious. Anxious because of the restless Bu Mus, and because of the
sensation of my father’s burden spreading over my entire body. Although he seemed
friendly and at ease this morning, his rough arm hanging around my neck gave away
his quick heartbeat. I knew he was nervous, and I was aware that it wasn’t easy for a
47-year-old miner with a lot of children and a small salary to send his son to school.
It would have been much easier to send me to work as a helper for a Chinese
grocery stall owner at the morning market, or to the coast to work as a coolie to help
ease the family’s financial burdens. Sending a child to school meant tying oneself to
years of costs, and that was no easy matter for our family.

My poor father. I didn’t have the heart to look him in the eye. It would probably be
better if I just went home, forgot about school, followed in the footsteps of some of
my older brothers and cousins, and became a coolie ...

My father wasn’t the only one trembling. The face of each parent showed that they
weren’t really sitting on those long benches. Their thoughts, like my father’s, were
drifting off to the morning market as they imagined their sons better off as workers.
These parents weren’t convinced that their children’s education, which they could
only afford up to junior high, would brighten their families’ futures. This morning they

14
were forced to be at this school, either to avoid reproach from government officials
for not sending their children to school, or to submit to modern demands
to free their children from illiteracy.

I knew all of the parents and children sitting in front of me—except for one small,
dirty boy with curly, red hair, trying to wriggle free from his father’s grasp. His father
wasn’t wearing shoes and had on cheap, cotton pants. I didn’t know them.

The rest of them were my good friends. Like Trapani sitting on his mother’s lap, or
Kucai sitting next to his father, or Sahara, who earlier had gotten very angry at her
mother because she wanted to go into the classroom quickly, or Syahdan, who
wasn’t accompanied by anyone. We were neighbors, and we were Belitong-Malays
from the poorest community on the island. As for this school, Muhammadiyah
Elementary School, it too was the poorest village school in Belitong. There were only
three reasons why parents enrolled their children here. The first, Muhammadiyah
Elementary didn’t require any fees, and pa-rents could contribute whatever they
could afford whenever they could do so. The second, the parents feared that their
children had weak character and could easily be led astray by the Devil, so they
wanted them to have strong Islamic guidance from a young age. The third, their child
wasn’t accepted at any other school.

Bu Mus, who was growing increasingly fretful, stared at the main road, hoping there
would still be another new student. Seeing her empty hope scared us. So unlike
other elementary schools that were full of happiness when welcoming the students of
their newest class, the atmosphere on the first day at Muhammadiyah Elementary
School was full of concern, and the most concerned of all were Bu Mus and Pak
Harfan.

Those humble teachers were in this nerve-wracking situation because of a warning

issued by the School Superintendent from the South Sumatra Department of
Education and Culture: If Muhammadiyah Elementary School had fewer than ten
new students, then the oldest school in Belitong would be shut down. Therefore Bu
Mus and Pak Harfan were worried about being shut down, while the parents were

15
worried about expenses, and we—the nine small children caught in the
middle—were worried we may not get to go to school at all.

Last year Muhammadiyah Elementary School only had eleven students. Pak Harfan
was pessimistic that they would meet the target of ten this year, so he secretly
prepared a school-closing speech. The fact that he only needed one more student
would make this speech even more painful to give.

“We will wait until eleven o’clock,” Pak Harfan said to Bu Mus and the already
hopeless parents. The atmosphere was silent.

Bu Mus’ face was puffy from holding back tears. I understood how she felt, because
her hope to teach was as great as our hope to go to school. Today was Bu Mus’ first
day as a teacher, a moment she had been dreaming of for a very long time. She had
just graduated the week before from Sekolah Kepandaian Putri (Vocational Girls’
School), a junior high school in the capital of the regency, Tanjong Pandan. She was
only fifteen years old. Sadly, her fiery spirit to be a teacher was about to be doused
by a bitter reality—the threat of her school closing because they were short by just
one student.

Bu Mus stood like a statue under the bell, staring out at the wide schoolyard and the
main road. No one appeared. The sun rose higher to meet the middle of the day.
Waiting for one more student was like trying to catch the wind.

In the meantime, the parents probably took the shortage of one student as a sign for
their children—it would be better if they sent them to work. The other children and I
felt heartbroken: heartbroken to face our disadvantaged parents, heartbroken to
witness the final moments before the old school closed on the very day we were
supposed to start, and heartbroken to know that our strong desire to study would be
crushed just because we were lacking one student. Our heads hung low.

It was five till eleven. Bu Mus could no longer hide her dejection. Her big dreams for
this poor school were about to fall apart before they could even take off, and thirty-

16
two faithful years of Pak Harfan’s unrewarded service were about to come to a close
on this tragic morning.

“Just nine people Pamanda Guru,” Bu Mus uttered shakily once again. She had
already reached the point where she wasn’t thinking clearly, repeating the same
thing everyone already knew. Her voice was grave, normal for someone with a
sinking heart.

Finally, time was up. It was already five after eleven and the total number of students
still did not equal ten. My overwhelming enthusiasm for school dwindled away. I took
my father’s arms off of my shoulders. Sahara sobbed in her mother’s embrace
because she really wanted to go to Muhammadiyah Elementary School. She wore
socks and shoes, a jilbab, a blouse, and she also had books, a water bottle and a
backpack—all were new.

Pak Harfan went up to the parents and greeted them one by one. It was devastating.
The parents patted him on the back to console him, and Bu Mus’ eyes glistened as
they filled to the brim with tears. Pak Harfan stood in front of the parents. He looked
devastated as he prepared to give his final speech. However, when he went to utter
his first words, ‘Assalamu’-alaikum, Peace be upon you’, Trapani yelled and pointed
to the edge of the schoolyard, startling everyone.

“Harun!”

Immediately, we all turned to look, and off in the distance was a tall, skinny boy,
clumsily headed our way. His clothes and hairstyle were very neat. He wore a long-
sleeved white shirt tucked into his shorts. His knees knocked together when he
moved, forming an x as his body wobbled along. A plump, middle-aged woman was
trying with great difficulty to hold onto him. That boy was Harun, a funny boy and a
good friend of ours. He was already 15 years old, the same age as Bu Mus, but was
a bit behind mentally. He was extremely happy and moving quickly, half running, as
if he couldn’t wait to get to us. He paid no attention to his mother, who stumbled after
him, trying to hold onto his hand. They were both nearly out of breath when they
arrived in front of Pak Harfan.

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“Bapak Guru,” said his mother, gasping for breath.

“Please accept Harun. The Special Needs School is all the way on Bangka Island.
We don’t have the money to send him there.”

Harun folded his arms over his chest, beaming happily. His mother continued.

“And more importantly, it’s better that he’s here at this school rather than at home,
where he just chases my chicks around.”

Harun smiled widely, showing his long, yellow teeth. Pak Harfan was smiling too. He
looked over to Bu Mus and shrugged his shoulders.

“It makes ten,” he said.

Harun had saved us! We clapped and cheered. Sahara, who couldn’t sit any longer,
stood up straight to fix the folds on her jilbab and firmly threw on her backpack. Bu
Mus blushed. The young teacher’s tears subsided, and she wiped the sweat from
her powder-smudged face.

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