At the beginning of this year, a funeral took place in France. No one invited me to attend that funeral. Even if they had invited me, I wouldn’t have had the money to go, but I wish I could have been present at that burial ceremony, to see off a deceased teacher.

For more than ten years, Mr. François Parmentier taught French at our school, one of the remaining French high schools in Vietnam in the late 60s and early 70s. I hated Mr. Parmentier with all the hatred of a teenage boy.

He was an outstanding teacher, but his mouth was always ready with racist, brain-numbing insults that we yellow-skinned students did not dare to protest or argue with. In between lecturing about French poets, or grammar, he would sniff his nose and suddenly pronounce a judgment about the proper way to use a handkerchief. Or about the pleasure of eating cheese and pâté, things that ignorant, uncultured students like us could certainly never afford. He often said that when we grew up we would never amount to anything worthwhile. Boys would carry guns and shoot each other, girls at best would become secretaries.

At that time I was a fairly good student. Mr. Parmentier often brought out difficult questions to challenge me. He always paid special attention to picking on me. And he never missed a chance to tell me that my sister was a good student, while I was a stupid idiot. I, on the contrary, whenever I opened my mouth, praised the heavens and the earth for Western culture. But Mr. Parmentier knew perfectly well that I was not sincere at all.

The more sarcastic I became, the more bluntly I spoke in flowery language about France, the more he tormented me.

Every morning teacher and student glared at each other like two bulls competing to mount a cow. Neither of us pretended, neither of us hid our mutual hatred. I was determined to always have a proper answer whenever he asked me a tricky question. I never neglected my homework. I came to class every morning with my work ready to hand in. I became a student who could not be reproached: that was my way of taking revenge on a French teacher who kept boasting that we were ignorant creatures who needed to be taught in order to become civilized. Mr. Parmentier was a genuine colonialist. I knew that, but perhaps what I hated most about him at the time was that he kept singling me out. I thought that the matter between him and me would only end when I left the school.

Until one day, after three years of studying with him, Mr. Parmentier kicked me out to stand in the corner of the classroom as punishment for distributing a picture of topless women that I had gotten from an uncle. That year I was about fourteen or fifteen. I was angry, hurt, humiliated. Already in quatrième, troisième, and still being kicked into the corner to stand. Utter humiliation.

Standing in the corner, I fiddled with the maps propped up against the wall. After a while I saw the map of France. I gently pulled it out and placed it in front. Then I unzipped my pants and peed on it with great pleasure. From Calais all the way down to Marseille. I peed straight from Bordeaux to Lyon, from Brest to Dijon. That day, one could say the weather was bad: the entire territory of France was soaked.

Some classmates sitting in the back smelled the stench and started laughing. They whispered, discussed, turned around to look. After a while, some girls sitting in the front rows also found out, covering their mouths and laughing. Mr. Parmentier stopped lecturing.

I waited for him to come down to the corner to judge me. But he waved his hand and ordered me to stand on the platform next to his desk. I climbed up there, stood with my head bowed, looking serious, but at that moment I glanced at the sly eyes of a friend and couldn’t control myself. I burst out laughing in little giggles.

Mr. Parmentier threw the grade book at my head. Get out, he shouted.

Get out of the classroom immediately. He growled like a leopard facing a hunter.

Ill-mannered brat. Ignorant fool. Go, go!

I walked out of the classroom. Mr. Parmentier threw a ruler after my back. You think you’ll amount to anything? You’re a… a bastard… a…

I wandered around the schoolyard for a while, then went all the way out to the gate. I rummaged in my pocket, took out a few coins to buy a glass of iced lemonade, and sat down on the grass. At first I thought surely many classmates would admire my sneaky act of peeing on the map. But then I thought about the punishment and the consequences of my action. I thought aimlessly for a while and could only wait. Wait for what, I didn’t know. At that moment I only knew that what I was waiting for would be terrible. I sat like that for half an hour, then decided to go home and get it over with. Just as I stood up, I saw my mother driving in at full speed, passing through the school gate and heading straight to the principal’s office. I panicked, not knowing whether to run away or go in to face the consequences.

From the day that incident happened until now has been nearly thirty years. Thanks to a good report card, and thanks to my mother, I was not expelled that year. But the look of anger on my mother’s face has been etched in my mind to this day. My mother was angry with me for a whole month, not because of the peeing incident, but because the Frenchman had summoned her, forcing her to come to school and listen to him lecture about her godforsaken son.

My father was away on business at the time. When he later returned, he and my uncles would retell the story of the map of France reeking of Vietnamese urine and laugh.

Mr. Parmentier did not change his teaching style. He still passionately lectured about French poets and writers, about composition and French grammar. But he never again asked me a difficult question. He also stopped calling me an ignorant savage. I peed on his country’s map. He summoned my mother to school. Teacher and student teased each other like that—it was even, humiliating each other like that was enough.

Gradually, I became careless, no longer interested in French literature. And the teacher no longer concerned himself with me either. From time to time we would glare at each other, but teacher and student said nothing to each other.

Last month, when I received a letter from some old friends now living in Paris informing me that the teacher had died, I suddenly realized that I had stopped hating that teacher at some point without knowing when.

I only remember that when I was eighteen, I was walking on the street and saw him, and I bowed my head in greeting. That was all. Teacher went his way, student went his way. That was the last time I saw him.

Upon receiving the news, I wished that I had had the chance to attend the funeral of my old teacher.

Perhaps I still remember enough French to say a few final words to him. If I had not had the chance to urinate on the map of France in my youth, perhaps I would have continued to hate him. Who knows, I might even have been better at French literature.

I guess that at some point Mr. Parmentier had forgiven me, had forgotten my insult.

And I think I too have forgiven him. Forgiven that man full of prejudice. Now from time to time I read a French poem and find it enjoyable, and I like eating cheese and drinking red wine. But those things are nothing worth mentioning. That teenage boy thirty years ago actually has to be grateful to that teacher for the anger and humiliation of being kicked into the corner of the room. If he had not been sent to the corner, he would never have learned one of the most important lessons of his life. Those few minutes of standing angrily, resentfully in the corner of the classroom—those very minutes were when the teenager recognized the need to resist oppression and discrimination. That struggle has its own joy, it brings a private satisfaction, and it also has its exhausting consequences. But that teenager knew: that struggle is compulsory, it is necessary, it is inevitable.