"Marek," turning to the young man said Katarzhina, "behave yourself or I'll complain to your aunt! Don't try to kiss me. And don't let your hands go. Remember, we are just friends."
"Katarzhina…"
"Marek, I have a groom," Katarzhina said and the sunny morning faded.
"The groom?"
Marek stopped on the path. He couldn't believe it.
"His name is Zdenek," Katarzhina said. "He's an officer. Zdenek is currently in the regiment on training but he should be back soon. We're getting married at the end of the summer… Marek, what's wrong with you?… Such a face…"
"It's nothing. Just a toothache," the boy lied.
He started to kick the pine cones on the path.
"Have you come to stay with Pani Felicia for all summer?" Katarzhina asked to break the long silence.
"That's right," Marek frowned. "My aunt has offered me to live with her but I have decided to return to Torun in the autumn."
"I heard that Pani Felicia has found a physics teacher for you. His name is Pan Kazimir. He teaches at our village high school…"
"Damn it! My aunt told me not to be late for dinner. What time is it?"
"You'd better run," Katarzhina laughed, "or you'll get the belt again."
And Marek ran.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Marek, you promised to be home for dinner," Pani Felicia was reproaching to the young man. "Pan Kazimir has already come and what about you? Where are you hanging around? Take the trouble to answer for your words."
Marek was leaning on the desk of the counter. His hands were gripping the edge of the desk. His trousers slid down his legs and lowered to the floor and his underpants were down to his knees.
"Pani Felicia! Do forgive me! I've forgotten all about it."
Pan Kazimir was sitting at the table and eating solyanka soup. He was a solid man of about fifty, in a brown coat and white shirt. Pan Kazimir had a shaved head, red mustache and beard. A monocle glittered in his eye. There was a red-checked bow tie his neck.
The aunt pushed back her bangs to keep them out of her eyes. Pursing her lips firmly, she pulled back the hand, paused for few moments then slapped Marek's buttocks.
"And be nice to count!"
She whipped the boy again with her belt. Again the pain burned his buttocks. Marek moaned, gritting his teeth. The young man imagined the wide crimson stripes of the belt marks appearing one after the other on his pale ass.
"Two!" began to count Marek, "Three!… Four! Aunt Felicia, I'm sorry! I am to blame… Five!"
While his aunt was whipping Marek with a belt pan Kazimir calmly sipped the solyanka. Gracia, the maid, sat on the edge of the table, her chin propped on her fist. She was smiling softly and looking out the window thoughtfully.
After counting out a dozen strokes pani Felicia hung the belt on a nail in the wall and sat down at the table. Marek sobbed softly and wiped the tears from his eyes. The young man winced and pulled on his underpants. He bent down and picked up the trousers that had fallen off his legs, then straightened his clothes and sat down at the table. The maid placed a plate of solyanka in front of Marek. His buttocks burned from the flogging, and the young man squirmed in his chair.
"I love the countryside," said Pan Kazimir turning in his fingers a glass of plum brandy, "I teach physics at a local school almost a quarter of a century. Yes, a quarter of a century…"
And pan downed his glass.
"Tell me," said the aunt, "do you think it is possible to teach a young man the sciences without being whipped?"
"I believe that nothing can be taught without rods," replied Pan Kazimir gravely, looking at Marek from under his bushy brows. "Yes, sir, it is absolutely necessary … and you yourself, young man, what do you think?"
Marek didn't know what to say.
After dinner, the aunt led Pan Kazimir and Marek to the back of a large country house.
"There was a sort of schoolroom here when I was a child," said the aunt, "and I didn't go to high school. My parents hired tutors for me. This room hasn't been used for many years. I told the maids to clean it up."
Pani Felicia pushed the door to a spacious room with a large window overgrown with green ivy on the street side. There were a desk and a chair for a teacher, and there was a blackboard near the window. Marek felt awkward when he saw the whipping box in the corner of the room. Pan Kazimir also saw the box and smiled at Pani Felicia.
"Absolutely necessary thing for studying physics," the teacher joked.
"I ordered them to cut up some fresh rods."
Pan Kazimir looked around and noticed a bucket with birch rods standing near the door.
"Great!" said Pan Kazimir, smiling through his moustache. "Well, I guess we can start the lesson."
CHAPTER FIVE
Marek did not succeed with physics that time. Pan Kazimir's words came in one ear and out the other so he understood nothing at all. In front of his eyes there was Katarzhina's smiling face and her laughter kept ringing in his ears. In the end pan Kazimir lost his temper.
"You, young man, do not want to learn at all," he said to Marek, "You are in the clouds! Exactly for dreamers like you were invented rods! Take off your clothes right now and lie down on the box!"
Marek obediently removed his shirt and trousers, pulled down his underpants to his knees, and lay down. The whipping box was made so that the young man's buttocks were higher than his head. When Marek was lying on the box, his ass was unprotected. The young man's buttocks were slightly spread and exposed for blows of the rod. And this only thing made Marek frightened to death.
Pan Kazimir deftly fastened Marek to the box. Two belts under the knees, one belt at the waist and two more belts for the hands. The sun shone through the ivy-covered window of the schoolroom. The teacher took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He pulled a long rod from the bucket, passed it through his fist and whipped the air.
"Good rods," said Pan Kazimir, "let's try to remember Newton's second law."
He went to the box, stood behind it and whipped Marek on the buttocks with the rod. Then he whipped the second time and the third. Each time Pan Kazimir struck harder. The pain from the rods was so bright and sharp that the young man could not bear the whipping at all. He began to shout in a voice from the first blows.
"Don't get your head in the clouds in class! Listen to the teacher!"
And painfully whipped the rod on Marek's thin boyish ass. Soon Pani Felicia came running to answer Marek's screaming. The aunt stopped in the doorway and clasping her hands to her chest watched in dismay Pan Kazimir whipping the young man on the buttocks with salt rods. Marek was twisting his body on the box and screeching.
"Oh no, you can't beat him so, Pan Kazimir," said the aunt and went into the classroom.
"For pity's sake, Pani Felicia, it's only a flogging," replied the teacher wiping his sweating forehead with a handkerchief.
They were standing by the box. The aunt looked with the tears in her eyes at Marek's buttocks which were streaked with thin purple stripes.
"Poor boy," Pani Felicia sighed, "you must have pity on him!"