Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašic

Author:Lana Bastašic
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

[You recognized numbers on the high-school blackboard as if they were family photographs. Those trails of digits were impenetrable to me; I wanted letters to scoop them into words and make sentences. Our Serbian teacher asked me to write an essay for the school magazine. The subject was ‘What I Dream Of’. None of what I wrote was true, but the teacher loved the writing. Dad tore the page out later, framed it, and hung it on the dining-room wall. But to you words had long lost their meaning, like empty jars in the pantry. They followed unfair, human laws; their nature changed with each new dictionary. Next to your eternal, unchangeable digits, words were nothing but toothless whores standing before Greek goddesses. So the deal was obvious: you would do two math tests, one under your name and the other under mine, whereas I would write two Serbian compositions. ‘Autumn in My Town’. We would change our handwriting to do this properly – you would add serifs and big round bellies to my numbers, and I would tilt your letters, lengthen their limbs, draw fine lines which my own letters didn’t have. I imagined I was you as I wrote essays for Lela Beric´. It was during those rare, precious moments that your story really belonged to me and my pencil alone.

‘All right. Let’s see what we’ve got now,’ our math teacher says. ‘Anything interesting here?’

He sat on the table, looking at the blackboard. He’s one of those young teachers who try hard to be our friends. He’s sitting on the desk thinking we like that. Wears a red sports cap. Winks at us.

‘What’s interesting about that,’ I whisper.

‘Later you’re gonna bother me because you’re not listening.’

‘Seriously, Lejla. What’s interesting? I don’t get it.’

‘The common factor is a+1. See how it’s repeated three times? It means you can put it outside the brackets.’

‘But then there’s only one, and there were three. That doesn’t make sense,’ I say, confused, and you roll your eyes. I said something stupid, I can tell by your face. And yet I still can’t grasp a law that can turn three letters into one. And nobody gives a damn.

The teacher turns around and sighs. ‘You two again . . . Come on, which one’s coming to the blackboard?’

While I am muttering in defense, you have already got up. You go to the board, glance at the last line of numbers, and add the result in your tiny handwriting.

‘That’s . . . correct. And now can we see how you got there? So we actually learn something today.’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ you ask seriously, twisting your foot. Two girls in front of my desk exchange mean glances.

‘OK, but . . . We haven’t seen the process.’

‘Do we have to see everything?’

‘Indulge me,’ the teacher asks, and you roll your eyes, trying not to laugh. You wipe the result and add the four lines you had skipped before, launching thirty mad pencils behind you.

He praises the work and you come back and sit next to me.

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