She walks into the centre of the frame and drops a stack of tests on the lectern. Imitating her resilient belly, the papers bounce once when they land. Today she is wearing a long, dark-red dress. He has seen this colour only in the slight turn of Dad's wineglass when he drinks to a superior, and on the stubborn half-neck of a pigeon outside the market. Her broad chest and at least equally broad abdomen push the dress outward, making her head appear mounted on a red truck travelling towards the ceiling. He cannot help wanting to look up. But no. He must not raise his head yet.

There is only the ceiling and the electric fan up there, he warns himself. Nothing remarkable. Even if he and the other sensitive pupils have long detected that the relationship between the fan and the ceiling, like that of their parents, is no longer intimate. The fan hangs in midair almost entirely by a single electric wire (the wire is his thin, inarticulate, money-saving-obsessed grandfather). On the day it breaks free, it will cut the throats of every pupil within a square metre. The bad students. The class officers. Her lackeys. The creatures who grew armpit hair first. The impartial electric fan will grant every one of them an eternal summer holiday. No. He must not raise his head yet. But he cannot help it.

He rapidly rolls his eyes upward, showing the whites, and confirms that for the moment he is safe. To produce this movement, he uses a fake cough to set his neck vibrating. The vibration sends a ripple through an ocean of black hair. He knows everyone is looking down, presenting her with the whorls on the crowns of their heads, like neatly ranked roof tiles. Sunflowers. Solar water heaters. The sea of hair surges towards her. She is at its foremost edge. Behind her: blackboard. Slogan. On the side wall: portraits of Bacon, Marx, Helen Keller, Chairman Mao. She braces her hands on the desk, forearms bent outward. The maxims form her halo.

One might say her face is expressionless. But her accomplished silence ensures that even the dullest pupil can sense the sneer within. An understanding of her travels through the class like a plague. First the girls are frightened. Then the boys with crew cuts, obliged to have their hair trimmed every week. Then the boys with fringes covering half their faces, one eye left free to locate the girls' reactions. Then the small, undeveloped children of uncertain sex. Then him.

She lowers her head and touches the tip of her tongue to her right index finger to turn the pages. It is a habit of hers. The same gesture she uses when counting money, trying to stick on a stamp, or smearing away a grease mark on her chest. Every test receives the imprint of her mouth. Garlic, chives, specially supplied lion's-head meatballs, and E. coli. And salt. Unless one washes one's hands, fingers are always salty.

She strokes her chin and catches the left side of her lip between yellow front teeth. He and his classmates thus receive the signal: she is about to call their names and announce their marks. One after another, they lift their heads. But before calling the first name, she clears her throat. He hears a mass of congealed phlegm come loose. For good measure, she blows her nose violently. They thus receive another signal: perhaps she has been weeping inwardly, shedding many tears for them inside her nostrils.

He had always thought only grown men had phlegm. Flower beds and lawns draw it from their mouths like magnets, the way tree roots entice urine from his family's dog.

Last night he ate vegetables. He picked up litter. He has not told a lie for nearly a week. Now he will wait devoutly for her to call his name.