Literary Digest LITERARY DIGEST MAY 2020 | Page 12

COMPLY
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Mehar Sandhu
Student of Class XI
FirstSteps IB World School,
Chandigarh
“Hannah, darling, come here and sit
down.” Mr. Bates pat down the cushion
on the seat next to him in his office. He
took a sip from his cup of coffee, with his
fingers moulding themselves around the
helms of the cup. He never once looked
up from his book while he did all this.
Hannah dropped her bag at the
door and rushed over to the seat next to
him with a notebook and pen in hand. As
she sat, her knees were knocked together
and shaking. She felt blood rush up to her
face and the heat around her ears was
intense.
“Where were we?” Mr. Bates
spoke, fingers still wrapped around the
coffee cup, and eyes still locked on the
words in his book. “Um, well Mr Bates,
we did the beginning of the Russian
revolution yesterday, so I suppose we
should continue with, um with that.”
Hannah stuttered as she flipped the pages
with her lanky fingers, trying to find the
right topic.
“Thank you, Hannah. You help
me out quite a bit – I mean, I would have
certainly been unable to remember where
we would have to start from.” Mr. Bates
finally looked up from his book and
looked at his eager student with those dark
and endearing eyes of his. Hannah's gaze
was glued to the book and her right foot
robotically tapping on the carpet floor. He
smiled.
As Hannah read out the passages
from the lesson, Mr. Bates' world seemed
to slow down and all he could hear was his
heart thumping from his chest harder and
harder with every word Hannah spoke.
In his head, he could do all he wanted, say
anything he liked and she would comply
and not complain. She did that anyway,
but he had never really tried to ask her to
do what he actually wanted her to. What
if she told someone? What if he hurt her?
No, he couldn't afford to lose her – but
what if he didn't lose her? “Mr Bates?”
Hannah's voice broke him out of his
reverie.
“Yes Hannah?” “I don't
understand why the Bolsheviks couldn't
just stay put – why couldn't they stop
themselves? I mean, they should've known
better. They couldn't have let their feelings
come in the way of the basic moral laws of
their country.”
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LITERARY DIGEST / May 2020