Sweef | Die brief – Pieter Strauss | English Summary

Sweef en ander Verhale

Die brief – Pieter Strauss

Peter Putter-Bollaert is a high school student who gets an earful from his teacher (and a blackboard duster thrown at him) because he did the entire year’s worth of homework in a single night. His teacher thinks he got his parents to do it for him and she decides she’ll write them a letter to bring his lack of participation in class to their attention. Mrs Hoefnagel wants him to return the letter, signed. In reality, he just had so much fun doing the word sums that he couldn’t put the book down. Three weeks in his new school and he’s already in a lot of trouble. Hearing all the other kids talk about what they got up to over the weekend, he thinks about how going home for him doesn’t necessarily mean freedom.

On his way home, his friend, Gert Williams, rides over on his bicycle and they chat about the events that transpired in the classroom. Gert jokes that Mrs Hoefnagel’s accuracy with the duster shows that she should’ve become a jukskei player rather than a teacher. He asks if he can visit Peter, but Peter tells him that he’ll come over to his house later. Peter arrives home, and the first thing his mother does is whisper to him that his father is in the house and that he should change out of his uniform. He says to his mother is that he’s starving and wants something to eat since there’s hardly anything worth eating. He hates being mean to his mother, but lately, he’s found it hard to contain his fury and frustration. Peter’s father appears in the doorway, already very drunk – so drunk that Peter thinks to himself that the weekend is going to be quite the wartime for him and his mother.

He stammers through asking his dad to sign the letter he got from school. Come Monday, Hoefnagel comments on his black eye, asking if he went out to bully other kids in town over the weekend. She hides no shred of contempt as she assumes that he left the letter at home, but no, it’s in his bag and ready to be returned. He lies about the black eye and says he fell. She sees the brown ring on the otherwise white envelope and whispers to Peter that the world would be a better place without delinquents like him. She tears the envelope to shreds and lets the pieces fall into the rubbish basket, like dead butterflies.

SummariesKeroshan PillayComment