… will arrive at the château at the behest of the school superintendent who is fully aware of the drone’s limited effectiveness.
Orhtn’tu is the Kommune’s bogie woman, trailing (sickly sweet) pear perfume in her wake. She is confrontational, engaging Calculus in futile arguments. Futile, that is, for Calculus. For her they generate salaried work.
Self-schooling is a practice Josef A grudgingly permits, providing the student submits to monthly examinations.
Orhtn’tu: If he won’t submit to examinations, he must attend a proper school.
Calculus (her main interlocutor) : He does.
Orhtn’tu: I mean an actual school.
Calculus: It is.
Typically the exchange continues in this fashion until she is goaded into issuing her verbal trump card: sending me into state care. A threat verging on being empty. i am very nearly of an age – sixteen – at which the question of my guardianship became an irrelevancy.
With that thin pinched face of hers, swathed in thickly lacquered hair, Orhtn’tu gives me the creeps, but Calculus tells me that social workers haven’t always been Josef A’s professional little helpers. They once worked for little pecuniary gain, motivated by a genuine social conscience.