Chekhov noted that if, early in a story, mention was made of a rifle hanging on the wall, it would eventually have to go off. Hanging on the window frame of the schoolhouse in Machado de Assis's "A School Story" is not a rifle, but a paddle, complete with five holes drilled in it.

Genre: short story
Length: 3,450 words
Translated from Portuguese (Brazil) by Juan LePuen

Brazil's Machado de Assis, the greatest Latin American novelist of the nineteenth century (1839-1908), also excelled in the short story.