XI

Martin entered the high school.

Here everything was strange and cold. Gray walls, long corridors. The school yard was like the desert of Sahara. When the bell rang for the first recess, Martin slipped off by himself so as to escape his new comrades. But the next recess they gathered around him in a ring, surveying him for a while in silence, till finally a little red-haired boy with a broad pate opened his mouth to ask, “What sort of devil are you?”

At these words Martin had a dark premonition that a new stage of his life was beginning. He had been as happy as a plant in the earth, as is every little child with kind parents and a good home. Now the doors were opened upon an entirely new world, a world where one could not get on by the same simple means that his father and mother had shown him: i.e., by being polite and friendly towards all he met and never taking advantage of others. Here the thing was to decide quickly and firmly in what case one should use one’s fists, in what one should take to one’s heels, and under what circumstances one could benefit by cunning and deceit. It was not long, either, before Martin got the way of things. He suddenly remembered various curses and ugly words that he had heard from the bridge-tender’s assistant in the country, and he missed no opportunity of fitting them in here and there in conversation with his associates wherever he thought they would go. In this way he became sooner acquainted with the other boys, and they in return enlightened him in much that a newcomer might find useful: e.g., which of the teachers flogged and which only gave bad marks; that the worst of all was Director Sundell, who had mirrors in his spectacles so that he saw what was done behind his back and always wore galoshes so that he couldn’t be heard in the corridors; that “Sausages” was decent, though he marked hard, but that “The Flea” was a damned sneak.