Free A Different Lifetime: Stepping Back in Time in the Former Yugoslavia by Martin Radford Page B

money.
    “We don’t understand,”
    “It’s too hard for us.”
    These are the same
complaints that filled the air exactly four weeks ago, or so Arkom tells me,
but who is saying this? Judging by comments that I would later hear from some
of the students it is more than likely that these accusations are being
manufactured by Arkom as yet another attempt to reduce my salary.
    And so while we continue
to pander to these dubious whims, and some students are not paying for next
month’s tuition, Arkom is not paying my salary for the past four weeks. It is
true, however, to say that around seventy-five percent of the students have
paid their bills without one single problem (Arkom never thinks to hide the
books); and of the remaining twenty-five percent, many are just late to pay;
but it is also true to say that the remainder, those who are accused of
complaining and placing ridiculous demands on the content of their classes, are
the same few people who did so on the last payment date. But the trickle of
money that I am receiving at irregular intervals has long passed my pay date in
the second week of November. We are now in December and one week away from the
next pay date and I am beginning to suspect that Arkom may not be paying me
because of his own and the school’s financial difficulties. After all, I have
learned from Trevor, the doctor who had been my chauffeur from the airport,
that Arkom is indeed having major money problems.
    When I do finally receive
my November salary, the news that accompanies it has quite a sting in its tail.
Arkom announces that again students are not happy receiving instruction in English
and that he wants to take over some of the adult students and teach a class in
their native language: Serbian; though how one learns one language from
speaking another is not entirely clear to me. He is emphasising that students
are leaving the school; however, only Lena has left, plus there is one other
student who never came at all. This student I have never met; she, in fact,
dropped out before I began teaching here, despite Arkom’s claims that she was
unhappy with having a teacher who wasn’t American. Turin and Verna – who don’t
pay for their classes anyway – have already by mutual consent moved into a
class of their own so they can take the class in Serbian and work at their own
pace. Lena’s exit from the school was for personal reasons, and there is just
one other student who is not always coming to class because she is often
working at that time. The crunch is, however, that I now know for sure that I
will not be needed to teach after the Christmas holidays. I never did receive a
contract of any kind that stated for sure how long I would be needed to work
here; the understanding was that I would cover for Lenna until she was able to
return to work, and Lenna is now ready to return.
    I have for some time
pondered Lena’s comment about the “cheaters” and “wanting people for only three
months,” and therefore, this news does not come entirely unexpected. However, I
now have only two weeks to make other arrangements and vacate the apartment.
And although Arkom has since mentioned, somewhat guiltily, that I can stay in
the apartment till the end of January if I need to, I have begun to firmly
believe that money is the real problem. Too many of my students are sorry to
hear that I’m leaving, which of course is not consistent with Arkom’s constant
stipulation that the students are all complaining. There seems to be more truth
in the fact that my salary was quoted as being €300 a month, a figure that I
have never received: the departure of Lena after only three weeks, together
with the loss of Turin and Verna, whom I was never paid for anyway as they do
not pay any fees, resulted in a loss of one-fifth of my salary.
    For the remaining students
I am told that many of them receive discounts on their fees – either for good
attendance or because of a family discount; these discounts I