Borderliners (25 page)

But, while we were standing together, they thought they were deal
ing with an adult.

Wrong. They had
been speaking to a child.

Confronted by them, I had no skin, nothing to shield me.
I noted
their every change in tone, every
flicker of the eye; I sensed their
need to
be getting on, their politeness and distraction and indiffer
ence. They forgot me five minutes after I was
gone, I will remember
them always.

Crossing
the threshold of a school, I stepped inward and downward into the child I was
twenty-two years ago, and in this form I
met
the adults.

They were protected. Time had wrapped a membrane around
them. They were jovial and pressed for time and
totally unaffected by our meeting.

That is how it was back then, when I was at Biehl's.
That is how
it is now, that is how it will
always be. Time has wrapped itself
around the adults—with its haste, its
dread, its ambitions, its bit
terness, and
its long-term goals. They no longer see us properly, and
what they do see they have forgotten five minutes
later.

While we, we have
no skin. And we remember them forever.

That is how it was at the school. We remembered every
facial
expression,
every insult and word of encouragement, every casual
remark, every expression of
power and weakness. To them we were
everyday, to us they were timeless, cosmic, and
overwhelmingly powerful.

This thought has crossed my mind: that when you feel
pain, when
you feel
that this thing growing, here, in the laboratory, is all for
nothing, you could counteract it
with the thought that now this is
perhaps the only way of telling how the world seemed to
you back then.

Things adult.
Precise, accurate things.
Of those there is
no short
age. In fact, everything else
around us is comprised of them. But to
sense without skin is something
that can perhaps only be done un
der
conditions such as those in the laboratory.

I
did not let myself into August's room. I could

not
risk getting caught. Instead I went up to the door and
called to him, it was just before
he was due to have his medicine.
We lay down and talked through the gap at the bottom of
the
door.
Which meant that I could not see him and I could only just
hear him.
I said no more than was
absolutely vital—that I was
going to report him for having gone without eating for a long
time.

"It'll mean Sandbjerggård," he said,
"they've got a clinic there,
then
it's all over."

"No," I said. "You'll be admitted to the
infirmary, on a yellow
form, or a red one. It's all worked out."

The infirmary was
on the fifth floor, diagonally opposite the assem
bly hall, next to the district medical officer's
clinic. It was bigger
than
the sickroom, with two beds instead of just an examining table,
and a locked closet for
instruments.
The
sickroom was for people suffering from minor ailments or

those
who had to
be
kept in isolation for a while. The infirmary
was for real accidents.

After
Axel Fredhøj's second accident he was taken there, while
they waited for the ambulance. And Werner
Petersen, who had been
the PE teacher before Klastersen, was taken
there, too. He had always been tough and yet, at the same time, nervous. He had
never
been able to cope with people leaving
a room before he
did,
a strict
prohibition had been in force against leaving the
gym during his
classes.
Which was not easy, since the place was not heated in win
ter and you could easily find yourself needing to go
to the toilet,
which was why one day Kåre Frymand had peed in the
wastepaper
basket in the changing room.
It was done out of desperation and with the best
of intentions, not to have to go all the way up to the
toilets. He was very scared of Werner Petersen.
Being wicker, the
wastepaper basket was not watertight. It leaked and
Werner Peter-sen set about punishing him. You had sensed that this was not like
the other
times,
he went off his head and screamed like a madman.
Someone had gone to get other teachers, who had overpowered him
and
locked him up in the infirmary. It had been done on the quiet,
the rest of the school would never have found out
about it if
Kåre
Frymand had not turned out to be damaged
and an explanation demanded of the school. It was said that it was a breakdown.
Spe
cial circumstances had been in play in
Werner Petersen's family for
some time, and he never returned to the
school. Klastersen was
appointed in his
place.

From
then on, it was obvious what the infirmary was used for.
Because it was close to the staff room and the
office and had direct
access to the
south staircase, it was ideal for things that were not
to be spoken of.

Never before had I heard of anyone at Biehl's suffering from an
eating disorder. But at the
Royal Orphanage and especially at Him
melbjerg House it had been common. The management there
knew
that it was not
dangerous if people were caught in time. Even so,
they had not wanted it discussed. People were put to
bed and the
doctor was called and an
admittance slip was filled out—yellow if

they
were only a danger to themselves, red if they were also
a dan
ger to their
surroundings. This was a strictly regulated
procedure,
I had explained this to Katarina in the storehouse.

There was no time, and no chance, to tell August this. I
hoped it
would work the same way here at
the school—that was our plan.
Although I could not be sure.
But, in any case, neither August nor
I had more than a few days left. I mean, we had come to the point
where there really was not much to discuss.

"I can't stay
on my own at night," he said.

I comforted him by saying that they would have someone
watching him.

"It'll be
Flakkedam," he said.

You knew what he meant.
That that was worse than being alone.

"Don't
swallow the medicine," I said.

I would have told him just to swallow the tablets, so
there would
be nothing to feel when
Flakkedam checked, but not to drink the
water
afterward. When Flakkedam had gone he could stick his fin
ger down his throat and they would come up.

I had no chance to explain this. He had started making
noises,
like an
animal,
then
everything went quiet.

"It's a
conspiracy," he said, "you're in it, too."

I could hear him dragging himself away from the gap. I
placed
my lips right
down against the floor.

"One
night," I said, "two at the most."

He was moving
away.

"We won't go
without you," I said.

I reported him to Flakkedam that same evening. I said it straight
out: he had not eaten in two
weeks, he had just pretended to eat at
dinnertime,
I just thought I ought to let them know, to protect a
schoolmate, so that something could be done about it.

Flakkedam wasted no time in calling for Biehl to come
down. I
saw them going into the sickroom,
then they carried August straight
across
to the main building, you could see them going up the stairs,

it
did not look as though August
offered any resistance. Not long
afterward
a car drove up and parked in the south playground. You
heard it, you did not see it—but it was not an ambulance. I guessed
it must be the district medical officer.
I did not sleep that night.

ELEVEN

A
t
Himmelbjerg House, the second
time I re
fused to run away, the others
made me drink Solignum, which was
a wood
preservative used for creosoting the storehouses and so
readily available. It contained various
fungicides, so I had soon be
come
unwell and the management had found out about it. They
had wanted to contain it within the school walls.
They would have
pumped my stomach,
but there was no equipment for this, so in
stead the nurse gave me copper
sulfate. No explanation was
given,
it was just a
matter of getting it down. This and the effect I had
remembered.

Blue
crystals, that
was copper
sulfate. I took about a spoonful
from the art room closet, while Karin
Æ
rø
was in the room, but with her back
turned.

The closet held various
chemicals, fixative spray, benzene, refill
bottles of ink—and copper sulfate. It was used, along
with salt
crystals, in painting on silk
to get the paint to form patterns. I had
seen
it and recognized it long before, but had not given it a second
thought.

Although the closet was usually
locked, during class it was left
open. No one saw me, even though the room was full of
people.

You could understand why. When I put in my hand and opened
the little jar I sensed that both
the time and the place were so far
out of bounds, so far beyond imagining, that I became as
if invisible.
Later
on in the period I also took a white coat from the closet. It was one of Karin
Ærø's,
it was a bit paint-spattered. This was
not difficult either. She did
not seem to see me. Everyone knew I
would be leaving and so, in a way, I had ceased to exist.

What I had to do needed to take place during Fredhøj's class, a
double period of physics.

With
regard to the pupils, Fredhøj had insight. Biehl was in all
ways greater, but Fredhøj was more dangerous.
Because he was as
quiet and
jovial and intelligent as though he was on the pupils' side.
And yet
still saw and understood everything. He was deadly.

Faced with any other teacher, you could have come up
with an excuse or made a show of feeling sick and been permitted to leave
the room. With Fredhøj this was
impossible.

He is dead now, he died some years ago. He had already been dead for
some time when I heard about it. They said it was a
stroke.

In
a way you knew it had to have been. You had always sensed
that there was some kind of enormous pressure
inside him.

For me he lives on. Often he has come to me, in the
laboratory,
when I have been sitting
there, writing. On these occasions he is always kindly, accurate, amusing,
impeccably dressed, and wise.

Then you feel like bowing down to him, and
thanking him for what he gave to you, for the book learning and the humor and
something else, something
confidence-inspiring. And I have done it.
I
have bowed down to him and thanked him and remembered his
kindness.

And then the fear
has come.