Borderliners (18 page)

He could have marched us out right then and there, but he did not.
Instead we were put in the pews
and the service went ahead as though nothing had happened.

While one sat there
knowing that it was all over.

Fredhøj had known that now he would have us hit by
Ragnarok.
Still he had strength enough to
sit down as though nothing had happened and let the service begin.
Strength enough to make this
eloquent
pause.

So now one could sit there, looking around at everybody
else.
One could
think about how, if one had respected the school rules
and not abused the trust placed
in one, one could have been singing
away
like them right now. Then one could still have been on the
borderline instead of, as now, being lost.

One could sit and think like that. That was the intention
behind
the pause.

There was another reason, too. They could afford to wait,
be
cause the harm had
already been done, and we had been localized.
It so happened that somewhere there was
an anger
,
an aversion,
toward us so great that it
could afford to wait. This anger was not
Fredhøj's, not even Biehl's. They were, when all was said and done,
human and capable of letting bygones
be
bygones—one
had seen
several instances of it.
This anger was different. It was the anger of
the very school itself,
greater than anything human. It did not forget, it would remember forever.

I came close to giving up.

It was impossible to think straight. Surrender gripped
one like an
illness
one could not, personally, do anything about.

I thought about what would happen
to me and Katarina. But
mostly I thought
about August. I could see now that he had been
given a trial period, not just at Biehl's but in the world. He had been
given a trial period just to go on living. He was like a very

small
and very sick wild animal that was only just managing to
keep going. If he
was sent back to a place like Sandbjerggård it
would be the end of him. They would shut him up so
tightly that he would be crushed to death.

A hymn was
sung—"Sometimes a Light Surprises." Biehl himself
led the singing, before the minister took over.

You had always been able to sense that this hymn held some
special meaning for
him. When he sang it he came very close to
something crucial. He had expounded upon it.

. . .
Who gives
the lilies clothing
Will clothe
his people, too:
Beneath the spreading
heavens
No creature but is fed;
And
he who feeds the ravens
Will give his children bread.

Referring to this verse, he had said that when biology and science
were powerless, then God prevailed.

It was like being in a little cage, with the walls closing in and all
the doors shut. Humlum and Axel
Fredhøj had given up long ago, along with many others one had known. And there had
been many times when one had almost done so. And yet I had held out, longer
than most, I had done my best. At
the Orphanage, the first time I
was made to jump from the willow tree, just after I came
there—
when they
waited a long time before bringing me up—I had come close to going along with
it and letting the water fill my lungs. But
back then I believed that in the end one would come up
into the
light. One
no longer had that feeling of certainty.
I looked around, for one last time to consign my thoughts
to the

air
. That is when I saw August, he was sitting next to
Fredhøj, all
hunched up.

It was still too early to let go.
One still had to help him. When
one is
bigger than someone else, and not so sensitive, and can take
a beating, and has discerned the grand plan, then
one has to help
someone who is smaller than oneself.

I looked around the cage. All the doors were locked. In
my af
fliction my
thoughts turned to Jesus.

One had always imagined God as being like Biehl. As a rule he was
distant. As a rule he concerned
himself with the greatest and the
smallest. Like the heavens, or a lily. Only rarely did
he ever address
himself
to you in person. And then, as a rule, it was in order to
punish.

Until now I had thought of Jesus as being like Fredhøj.
Standing
between you
and the supreme power, Biehl and God, there had to be some kind of a middleman,
an informer.
Fredhøj and Jesus.

It had been the same everywhere.
At the
top the headmaster or
the superintendent,
between him and the rest of the school a deputy.
It was a law, maybe even a law of nature.

Then another
thought occurred.

You had always learned the prayers and hymns by heart. It had
been like memorizing dates, like
the Battle of Poitiers, only easier,
because they rhymed and there was a tune.

As a rule you did not make much
sense of the words. However,
Biehl had
been known, out of the blue, to conduct a test on one of the hymns. If he then
detected a lack of understanding he became
very
dangerous. As a rule he would then explain certain things, like
the bit about clothing the lilies. But there were
too many prayers and hymns for them all to be explained. So you learned them by
heart, without making much sense of them.

Even so it could
happen that you suddenly understood, all by

yourself
. That the words you had learned
by heart became a door,
opening up.
That
happened now.

God was too close to Biehl. Nor could you consult Jesus about your
personal problems, there was no
reason to believe that you would
be given help. In fact, there were really no instances
of anyone being given help.

And yet my thoughts turned to
Jesus. Well, you had learned it
by heart and been made to recite it, albeit without
making much
sense of
it. There were two things I remembered. Jesus had talked
about time. People had asked him whether he could
promise them
eternal life, in other words
freedom from time. He had not really
answered that. Like Katarina, when
I had asked her in the labora
tory whether I
could be sure of being cured and she had not given
a straight answer. Instead he had told the young
man who had asked the question what he should do if he wanted to enter into
life,
here and now.

Jesus had been asked about eternity. And he had
pointed to the here and now. It had never been explained, the Bible was full of
things like that.
Biehl read from it at assembly, but it was never
explained.

What should you do if you want
to enter into life, here and
now.
This was what Jesus had answered.
That was one of the things I thought about.

The other was that maybe Jesus had
also tried to touch time,
maybe that had
been his plan. In his laboratory, not in the manger but later on, he had
gathered his thoughts to understand the plan
behind
it all. Then he had told those who followed him that they
must go forth into the world and reveal this plan,
even though the
natural aversion of
the people would be roused against them, so
that they would be persecuted and isolated. This they should do so
that everything that was covered should be
revealed. Then he had
descended into the underworld.

Descent
into the underworld.
And so I made up my mind.

Fredhøj sat in
front and a little to the side of me, his hands resting
on the ledge for the hymnbook in
front of him. One hand lay across
the other, you could smell his after-shave. All in all,
the sense of
him
was overwhelming.
Across
his left hand lay his key ring.
As always.

All the
locks in the school were linked to a comprehensive master
key system. A Ruko system—back then there was
nothing else.

The keys were in order of precedence. At the top, a master
key —held by Biehl alone—which opened every door in the school.
Then came the sub-master keys
held by Fredhøj and Flakkedam and
the new
inspector; beneath them came the departmental keys, and,
at the bottom, the keys held by the ordinary
teachers.

It was a good system, with only one flaw. At its lower
levels, for
example, with the main door
and the doors to the corridors, it was
necessary
that a number of different keys could open each lock. The
more keys that have to fit a lock, the weaker it
is, the more receptive
to strange keys.

I could not have done it today. Apart from the fact that today I
would never have wanted to, still, it could not have
been done. Advances in technology have made it impossible.

Back then, they were ordinary five-pin keys, the cuts of
the key fitted into the lock and pushed five bottom pins into place, then the
cylinder could move freely.
Nowadays, with the modern systems
that time and technology have produced, there are also
side pins.
In
addition to which the keys are patented and the designs re
stricted. I could not have done it
today.

I looked at
Fredhøj's keys.

Of course, I had known they were
there. But I had purposely
avoided taking a closer look at them.

On the bunch were
some standard keys, as well as several smaller

keys
to the locks of the
physics closets. Then there were the Yale
keys
to his home.
And his car keys.
The school key was
lying awk
wardly, but I just waited.
There came a moment when he shifted
position
and it was brought into full view.

I concentrated on the depth of the cuts—nothing else.
Afterward
I closed my
eyes.
And sort of tested myself on the key.
As though
I had been up at the
blackboard.

At last I had it.

None of us
were expelled. There was absolutely no accounting for
it.

That very evening they moved August out of the dining
room and
served him
his food in his room, in the sickroom. The next day they
moved him down a grade and put
Flakkedam on permanent watch
over him. To begin with, Katarina was absent—I thought forever —but a few
days later I saw her in the playground, sitting on a
bench, looking down at the
asphalt. As for me, I was summoned
to the
secretary's office. Fredhøj and Karin
Ær
ø
were there, and
Stuus—in his capacity as chairman of the board of
teachers. They
advised me that I had been reported to the Children's
Panel and to
the Child Welfare Services,
since I was on a scholarship and had been given special permission to attend
the school. There would
now be a
pause. When the reply from my guardian and from the
Department of Health
and Welfare was available, they would review the situation.

Karin
Ærø
did the talking. She was our class
teacher. Fredhøj
stayed absolutely still. I
tried to sense him, the situation was abso
lutely inexplicable. Even though I had been given my final warning,
they had still not kicked me out. There was no
understanding it.