HURRAH, THE GRAVEYARD’S COMING!
Jan Hlavička

There was just a math esson.Little Zálesný was standing at the blackboard trying to divide forty-seven by five.I can’t say he did well. Rather not but I wanted to give him a chance.Otherwise it would have already been the third E that week.I prefer giving good marks.But I am not here just to give marks.I want to teach those country children something.They are growing up here so wildly and their parents do not care.
       Zálesný came to the result.Well it was eight and the modulo was bigger than the divisor.I was just about to refer him about it when the door opened and Venca came in.
       He walked in very quietly.Silently.He self-consciously closed the door behind him and remained standing at the waste-paper basket.He is a poor fellow.I gave him a smile and told Zálesný about the incongruity in the calculation:“Don’t you find anything strange there?”Hurrah,he did!All yet he is not incipient.He successfully finished the example,got A for encouragement and all happy he walked to sit down.I asked Dolejš to sponge the blackboard.Instead of him Venca came with a sponge in his hand.He cleaned the blackboard carefully.I thanked him and he came to me and took a chalk from my hand.I was so surprised that I could not say a word.I can’t say I was afraid.Venca has never hurt anybody,after all,he can’t,but I did not feel ike laughing.The children become quiet waiting for what would come.He turned to them and asked them:
       “I wonder if you know the Shuster’s formula!”
       There was such silence that you would hear a pin fall down on the floor. I have to admit I had never heard of such a formula.I dread he could ask me as well and I would feel embarrassed even with those five years spent at the Institute For Teachers.
       “As you don’t know it,you have to learn it.Watch me,it is quite easy.”
He wrote: (E +K/2)S =x 100
       Maybe I should tell him that children haven’t learned fractions yet,not even parenthesised numbers,to say nothing of equations.came across my mind but I said nothing.I said to myself I would let him say what he wanted to say and then he would leave.Let him have some enjoyment in that life of his.
       “Well,children,this is the Shuster’s formula.”he said proudly as if he himself was that unknown Shuster.“E stands for adults,”he explained.“K stands for children,S annual mortality,x area annually needed for graves.
       One grave makes about four square meters,for a child up to the age of ten it’s half the size ...”
       “Venca,stop it right away!”I pulled myself together but Venca did not obey.And yet he should have obey.Blindly.I started to be a bit afraid.It could have struck me that something was wrong.
       “...of course we have to include in paths and space between graves but it is sufficient for a rough idea like that.When the average mortality makes 33 per mill (We haven’t gone through per mill!)and there’s 54 adults and 46 children out of a hundred dead and providing that our settlement makes about three hundred citizens,we can easily come to the result,”he nimbly installed,“that we need about 7.62 (Decimal numbers!) grave a year.Of course we can’t forget about the rot time ...”he spoke up and it rumbled as if he spoke from a sheet-metal barrel.
       I stood up.I don’t know how it came that I summoned up courage, simply I was fed up wit that and I pushed him out of the classroom.That time he obeyed.The esson was over.I don’t think the children minded. Orthography esson was to come.I prepared a wonderful sentence for them:— — — — — — — —
       But then I preferred singing.I shooed away the unpleasant feeling that Venca had left in me with bright little voices.
       It is sad but here in this country every village has its communal fool. They do not hurt him.They respect him.You would almost say they do it for luck.But there is no other Venca in any of them.
       Venca is a former communal bierobot.He lived on the hill beyond the village.At the graveyard.Even today you can see there a ruined wall, foundations of the charnel-house and one single grave.
       He took perfect care of the graveyard.Flowerbeds were weeded, flowers watered,the lawn mowed,paths swept,marble polished,signs renewed,simply magnificence.When there came someone’s last hour he went down to the village and waited.Then he immediately took due care of the lich.You could not say he was busy but you just said the word and he attached himself to a hydrant and watered a garden or extinguished fire,weeded strawberries,burned rubbish.When water-main burst he joined the other robots and helped with digging.His reach was up to two meters.They say he even wreathed anadems from dandelions for little girls but he was even better in making wreaths from needle and artificial flowers.He was so famous about them that even near-by villages ordered them from him.He even had a certain sense of humour he did not protest when swains took lime and painted a skeleton on him and put a scythe in his tentacle.The village was just model,a specimen...........

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