Chapter 18

“Nothing but a diamond can scratch or cut a diamond,” the children chorused. “Because a diamond is the hardest thing known.”

Vladek was silent; he sat in his thin, raglike clothes and stared at the book.

“Vladek, I don’t hear you.” The teacher, Mr. Kovec, was angry. “You don’t join the class. Do you understand?”

The boy lifted his head and stared back impassively.

“I understand perfectly, sir.”

“Then you are insolent.” Kovec couldn’t stand Vladek. Skinnier than most of these little brutes, he had those dark, brooding eyes that disturbed the older man. Most of the orphans were easy to manage; they cowered in fear, or fawned, in the hope of an extra scrap of food or clothing. They never answered back and knew their betters. In time they would grow up and be given jobs by the state—the boys, at least; the girls would try desperately to marry, or fall into begging and prostitution. And the orphanage was so poorly heated, at least a handful did not survive each winter.

Kovec, a Pole who had taught in this place for fourteen years, had initially felt some guilt. And then, to relieve himself of the guilt, he discovered anger—which was much easier to handle. And vodka. Now there was a bully’s casual cruelty in everything he did. Once a bright man with a future in Warsaw, he had crossed a party apparatchik and been exiled to this hellhole. Unable to take it out on anybody else, he made sure to share his misery with the children.

Vladek most of all. Firstly, someone had dared to give this little Russian bastard a good Polish name. Secondly, Vladek was strange. He could not be cowed. He seemed to live in a world of his own. There was a hard shell about him that no amount of physical pain could crack.

But Kovec liked to try.

“Get up here,” he snarled. “Put out your palm.”

Some of the children winced. One little girl whimpered—Kovec glared at her, and she subsided. A few of the larger boys jeered. Like any prison, there was a hierarchy in here, and the rules were strictly enforced. Yet Vladek refused to go along with them. He kept to himself, and the playground thugs, unsettled by his large eyes and fixed stare, left him alone.

Kovec reached behind him and took out the larger of his two rulers. He struck it menacingly hard, on the desk.

Vladek slipped out from his chair and came up to the front of the room. He didn’t say a word; he merely extended his little palm.

Kovec felt a momentary pang of shame. But he ignored it. He slammed the ruler down, hard, on the boy’s open hand. A white pressure mark appeared on the palm, to be replaced by a red welt. Viciously, Kovec hit him twice more.

He was about to tell Vladek to extend his other palm. But then his eyes met the boy’s.

Vladek was staring at him. The hate was to be expected. But there was something else in those eyes. Something so cold, so terrible, that Kovec physically flinched. The evil eye—that was something they still believed in, in the East, when the fires sunk low in the evenings.

“You may return to your seat,” Kovec blustered, to cover himself. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson,Vladek.”

The boy sat down again, but did not reply.

“Tell me about diamonds,” his teacher said.

“Nothing but a diamond can scratch or cut a diamond, because a diamond is the hardest thing known.”

“Yes. And what else do you know?”

Mother Russia was not very good at providing warmth, or food, or medicine. But knowledge—she offered that, and lots of it, to her children. And Kovec had an inkling that the boy Vladek was highly intelligent.

“They are made of carbon; coal, under great pressure. They are cut from rough. They are very beautiful.” The seven-year-old was solemn. Kovec glanced at his hand; it was swollen from the beating, yet the child acted as if nothing had happened; his young voice did not quiver or shake. “Rich people own them.”

“Yes.”

“And when I am grown I will have many diamonds,”Vladek said.

The class erupted with laughter and derision.

“Get something straight, boy. You’re a penniless orphan, a bastard. Your parents didn’t want you. Same as all the children in here. You need to get your head out of the clouds and understand reality. You’ll be a working man—if you’re lucky.” Kovec turned his head and spat into the wastepaper basket. “Most likely you’ll wind up a drunk or a beggar. With that attitude of yours.”

The boy gave him a contemptuous smile. Kovec pretended not to see it. He would beat Vladek another time. For now, he just wanted to move on.

The kid was a creep.