Feigning Illness to Sneak Out and Watch a Movie Re-Showing

Joachim(Jocki) turns a minor medical-cabinet discovery and a television schedule into an elaborate escape from school: by making himself appear ill, he gets home in time to watch a repeat of Der Seemann und die Nonne. The episode is at once a comic exercise in childhood ingenuity and a portrait of how intensely a forbidden film can be anticipated, watched, and remembered.

Discovery and Design

During an inspection of the family medicine cabinet, Joachim finds a circulation cream. Its leaflet explains that it warms deep muscle tissue and can cause harmless redness that soon fades. He tests a small dab on the back of his hand, feels the heat build, and sees the skin turn bright red. Further experiments establish that the cream can make red marks on his skin, though their temporary nature will matter to the scheme he eventually devises.

A separate discovery comes in the television listings. A feature film shown one evening will be repeated the next morning at the oddly precise time of 10:23. Joachim checks the rest of the week and finds two more repeats; an older television guide from more than three weeks earlier confirms that this is a regular pattern. The schedule offers a second chance at films that bedtime rules have repeatedly cut short. For several days he considers the cream and the repeats independently, trying the ointment on his legs in patterns, including a dotted face, while wondering how to miss school without arousing suspicion.

The opportunity arrives with Der Seemann und die Nonne, which the listing and a small picture make irresistible to him: it promises a distant island, Japanese attackers, a nun, air raids, and Robert Mitchum, one of his screen heroes. Joachim decides he will not let bedtime take this film away. He joins the two discoveries into a plan: feign illness that evening, go to bed without protest, then claim to be too unwell for school the next morning and return home before the repeat begins.

Performing Illness

That evening, after the family gathers to watch television, Joachim says he feels unwell and will go to bed. His brother immediately suspects the excuse because the film is about to start and Joachim knows Robert Mitchum is in it. Joachim stays vague about his supposed stomach trouble, and his father checks his forehead but finds no fever. The performance is persuasive partly because choosing to miss a film he badly wants to see seems to prove that he must truly feel ill.

His father, who also likes Mitchum, hurries him to bed. Joachim asks for a hot-water bottle for his stomach and falls asleep with warmth against his belly, the distant cries from the television room audible through the closed door, and the next morning’s scheme in mind. The family’s evening viewing proceeds without him, as intended.

At breakfast, he acts as though he has had a hard night, eats little, and lets his brothers’ teasing comments pass without answering. Their talk about how good the film was makes him furious, but he restrains himself. He announces that he must attend school for the English-test exercises, while his mother urges him to stay home if he feels too ill. He smiles reassuringly, then slips away to the bathroom and uses the moment alone to retrieve the large tube of cream from the medicine cabinet. He hides it in the narrow pocket of his jeans, takes his schoolbag, and leaves with his father’s permission to come home if necessary. His father even tells him to take a key and call if he cannot manage the day.

The School Excuse and the Walk Home

Joachim spends his first lesson calculating the available time. The first two periods leave enough room for the 10:23 repeat; a third would make the timing too tight. In English, where he has to sit in the front row under close supervision, he waits until the teacher is writing on the board, bends down as if searching his schoolbag, and dabs the circulation cream onto his face. He expects the redness to make the illness obvious. At first, however, the teacher remains absorbed in her English lesson and does not react.

To draw her attention, Joachim raises his hand insistently despite not knowing what question she has asked. When she finally looks at him, he sticks out his tongue as if to show that something is wrong. She comes close, notices the red spots, and orders him to stand by the brighter classroom window. Joachim adopts an exaggeratedly innocent expression and describes stomach discomfort and nausea, relying on the possibility that a sick pupil might vomit in class. Convinced enough to send him home, the teacher asks whether someone is there to receive him. Joachim says that his mother is home and his father will return at lunchtime.

No classmate volunteers to accompany him. The red marks have made him an object of avoidance, and the lack of an escort threatens the plan: if the school calls his father, the deception may be exposed. Eventually Björn is the only pupil who offers to take him. On the way, Björn stops at a kiosk and buys two oversized rolls with chocolate-coated marshmallow treats, including one specially made with two. Joachim, who loves them, accepts despite maintaining that he feels ill. They sit on a low wall and eat, while Björn doubts that the spots are chickenpox and predicts that Joachim will be better the next day.

At the house, Joachim lets Björn use the toilet but tries to end the visit quickly. Björn points out that Joachim had said his mother was home; Joachim claims she must have stepped out. As Björn notices that the red marks have already disappeared, Joachim looks in the hall mirror and sees a healthy-looking boy giving the appearance of someone near death. He thanks Björn at the door and waits until the other boy has gone. The cream has supplied convincing evidence only briefly, but by then it has done its job.

The Repeat and Its Afterimage

Alone, Joachim checks the time: 10:10. He carries his duvet and pillow from his bedroom to the television room, closes the curtains, and makes a bed on the couch. Even then, he worries that the plan might fail—through a power cut, insufficient cream, or some other mishap—and wonders what Björn meant by wishing him fun. A presenter appears, welcomes viewers, and introduces the film. The orchestra of Twentieth Century Fox announces its beginning with a swelling fanfare. For the next hundred minutes, Joachim is absorbed in the film as he has never been before.

By the time his mother returns around one o’clock, Joachim has moved back to his own bedroom. He wants to tell her about what he has seen, but presses his lips together to keep the story from spilling out. She touches his forehead and concludes that he should have stayed home from the beginning because he seems feverish. His brothers later bring his lunch to bed and try to cheer him up. Since the household rule forbids a child who has missed school because of illness from going out that afternoon, the price of the morning’s escape appears to be a boring day at home.

Instead, the film continues in memory. As Joachim closes his eyes to rest, scenes return with such clarity that he experiences them as a private replay, not merely as recollection: the nun’s wet hair exposed for the first time as she lies under a sheet on the floor of a cave, and Mitchum remaining motionless in a pantry while Japanese soldiers, having surprised him, play a strange board game through the night. The episode’s final reversal is that the repeat does not end when the television is switched off. The forbidden viewing gives Joachim a film he can watch again in his mind, making the enforced, uneventful afternoon a second kind of screening.