Az ötödik osztály

In a sun-splattered provincial classroom where chalk dust hangs like incense, the fifth form becomes a microcosm of a nation teetering between Habsburg rigidity and the first whispers of modernity. A gaggle of eleven-year-olds—ink-smudged, knee-scabbed, eyes wide as porcelain saucers—navigate a labyrinth of scholastic absurdities: a headmaster who recites Latin verbs as if they were papal bulls, a janitor who doubles as the town’s clandestine matchmaker, and a visiting inspector who arrives with a pince-nez and the scent of Vienna bureaucracy. When a prized imperial portrait vanishes from the vestibule, blame ricochets like a squash ball, landing on the class scapegoat, a shy boy whose only crime is sketching caricatures of the emperor in his spelling book. What follows is a carnival of half-baked detective work, midnight attic séances, and a clandestine trial beneath the school’s stage curtains—part commedia dell’arte, part juvenile Kafka. Amid slapstick inkwell explosions and whispered oaths of eternal friendship, the children discover that authority is stitched together with the same fragile thread as their paper boats floating in a puddle. By the time the real culprit—a lovesick geography teacher who stole the portrait to frame his romantic rival—is unmasked, the fifth grade has already rewritten the rules of loyalty, laughter, and the bittersweet alchemy of growing up.