Chapter 3

A Catholic Education

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TOCAYO
Part 1
Prologue
Playa Norte
Charly the American
A Catholic Education
Cold Showers
A Peruvian Name...
Tossing Armando...
Bob Cousey's Shorts
Inside Immaculada
Warming the Bench...
A Little Socrates...
Running From Lola
Ping Pong Politics
A Perfect Basketball Day
A Man Needs His Friends
A Pig In a Hole
Condors Over Ticlio
Wrestling in the Plaza
Handcuffs and Curfews
Rochabus
A Hero Hiding
Hitting A Brick Wall
Part 2

I had to stop, my well-chosen words trailing off into the realm of the unuttered. Pezespada had shut his eyes and was shaking his head. As usual, in my zest for confounding the professor, I had gone too far. When Pezespada opened his eyes, he was looking straight at me with the pained squint of a man suffering from a headache who is suddenly forced to stare at daylight.

While we stared at each other in silence, my classmates who had stopped writing to watch the exchange realized they were trapped. It was obvious that they, like me, had not prepared for the test, because those who had studied for the test had ignored the entire discussion and had continued filling up their paper with the knowledge they had acquired. If the guilty students who had stopped to listen now returned to their writing, it would be obvious that they had chosen to fill their pages with empty words. Of course, if they turned in their tests now, to demonstrate they had chosen honesty over deceit, they would get a bad grade. What could they do? They scratched their heads, they hid behind their forearms, they pulled out extra pieces of paper, they pretended to have jammed pens, they coughed, and as one by one they returned to their inventive prose, they hoped the professor would not be able to remember them all.

The professor needed to find a way out of the dilemma. The Catholic Church trusted him to develop a conscience in the boys, but it also expected him to teach them respect for authority. Sometimes the two aims were in conflict. In those cases, the Catholic Church trusted the professor to use good judgement. He juggled the pen between his fingers, then dismissed me with a few curt words. "You should save your philosophical debates for Professor Rivera's class, Señor Gamarra. You are disrupting the class during an important test." With that, he put my paper face down on the corner of the desk and returned to his book.

Without anyone admitting it, without anyone exchanging incriminating glances, the issue was resolved and an important lesson in the ways of the world was taught. The students would pretend that they really had applied themselves to their studies and the professor would pretend not to notice that they had not.

Thus die most revolutions, I concluded, resuming my repose for the final 15 minutes of class. It was a pleasant repose. The lawn outside the classroom was a deep green under the low gray overcast, and the brick wall on the perimeter had faded behind a faint fog flowing across the lawn.