HOLY CLAY
I have to admit that the pupil who claimed that he had made the priest agree that humans are apes used quite a feline trick. In the religion lesson he said (probably falsely) that Polish archeologists in Iraq had discovered the clay out of which God had created the Australian platypus.
It’s easy to guess that the reactions of the participants, including the priest, were just what the pupil expected. When the class (or maybe just part of the class— it was not precisely described) started to laugh, the priest exclaimed that they were a bunch of apes!
One of the girls on the jury said that the pupil who proposed the bet won because the priest confirmed that humans, or at least pupils, were apes, while another argued that the priest didn’t mean it literally but only metaphorically.
It is possible that the Polish teacher favored the verdict that it was a metaphor rather than admitting that science was right, but the reader gets the impression that she wanted to make a monkey out of the headmaster (as it were) because she was somehow related to him. (I will not tell you how, because that would spoil the fun.)
Whichever way you look at it this, one pat with my paw has cost me dearly because once I started reading I couldn’t stop until I found out who did it. (Of course, I’m not going to tell you and give away the plot, because if I did Marcin wouldn’t pet me for a month.)
I will tell Marcin myself what I think of him, because he should never play a trick like that on a cat.