Why We Took the Car by Wolfgang Herrndorf Read Free Book Online Page A

Tschichatschow. Tschick was sitting there chewing intently on strong peppermint gum. He didn’t look at Strahl. He just stopped chewing and breathing. Strahl bent down, wet his lips, and said, “Andrej.”
    There was practically no reaction. His head turned ever so slightly — like in a gangster film when somebody hears the click of the hammer when a gun is put to his head.
    â€œYour assignment. I don’t know what it is,” said Strahl, leaning a hand on Tschick’s desk. “I mean, if you didn’t have this at your old school, you’ll have to repeat math class. You didn’t even . . . you don’t seem to have even attempted to solve the problems. All the stuff written here” — Strahl leafed through the pages of Tschick’s assignment and lowered his voice, though you could still hear him fine — “these jokes . I mean, if you haven’t studied it before, I’ll take that into account, of course. I had to give you an F, but the grade is, shall we say, not written in stone. I would suggest that you turn to Kevin or Lukas. Have a look at their assignments. Go over their notes from the last two months. Ask them any questions you have. Because the way things are going now, there’s just no point.”
    Tschick nodded. He nodded in a very understanding kind of way, and then it happened. He fell off his chair, right at Strahl’s feet. Strahl flinched and Patrick and Julia jumped up. Tschick lay on the floor as if he were dead.
    We all figured the Russian was capable of a lot of things, but passing out because he was so sensitive about getting an F on his math homework was not one of them. But as it turned out, it had nothing to do with any sensitivity on his part. He hadn’t eaten anything all morning and had obviously drunk a lot of alcohol. In the school nurse’s office he filled the sink with puke and then was sent home.
    Still, it didn’t help his reputation much. Nobody ever found out what the jokes were that he put in his notebook instead of the math problems, and I can’t remember who ended up having the A. But what I do know and will probably never forget, is the look on Strahl’s face when the Russian keeled over at his feet. Holy crap.
    The annoying thing about the whole story, however, wasn’t that Tschick fell out of his seat or that he got an F. The annoying thing was that two weeks later he got a B. And then an E after that. And then another B. Strahl was going bananas. He said things like, “Your studying paid off,” and “Don’t let up now,” but even a blind person could see that his Bs had nothing to do with whether he was studying or not. All it had to do with was whether he was drunk or not.
    This slowly dawned on the teachers as well, and Tschick was reprimanded and sent home a few times. There were discussions with him behind closed doors too, but the school didn’t do much about it at first. Tschick had had a difficult time in life or whatever, and in the wake of recent education system scandals everyone wanted to prove that even a low-class, drunken Russian would be given a fair shake in the German school system. So there were no real consequences. And after a while, the situation got calmer. Nobody knew what had been bothering Tschick, but after a while he got by okay in most subjects. He chewed less and less peppermint gum in class. And he didn’t create any disturbances. If it wasn’t for his occasional bender, you might even have forgotten he was there.

CHAPTER 11
    â€œ A man who has not seen Herr K. in a long time greeted him with the words, ‘You haven’t changed at all.’ ‘Oh,’ said Herr K., turning pale . Now that was an agreeably short story.”
    Mr. Kaltwasser took off his jacket as he walked in and threw it over the back of his chair. Kaltwasser was our German teacher, and he always entered the class without saying hello. Or at least, you