Borderliners

  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 finger 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

  At Himmelbjerg House, the second time I refused 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 become 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 instead 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 Ærø 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.

  * * *

  Against those people who are open and clear you have a chance of protecting yourself. Biehl, for example, or Karin Ærø—for them you could feel pure fear.

  With Fredhøj it was more difficult, if not impossible. He radiated kindness. This caused you somehow to draw near and lean toward him. It seemed like he wanted to protect you, so—even though you knew better—you leaned forward.

  Then you sensed that something was very wrong.

  * * *

  Five minutes before the class, I swallowed the copper sulfate. The timing was very important. When I put it in my mouth my body remembered it and did not want it, but I forced it down.

  Twenty minutes later it took effect. Much later, therefore, than the first time. The reaction was violent, under any other circumstances you would have been shaken, but now I had experience.

  This was not your usual vomiting, there was no steadily building nausea. It was like a sudden attack, everything swam in front of your eyes and you broke into a cold sweat. Fredhøj spotted me straight away, I could tell by his face how bad I must look and that he entertained no suspicions. Then my stomach contracted five or six times in rapid succession and threw up its entire contents. I made it to the sink, there was nothing to mop up.

  With that, it was all over. I knew from the time before that I would now be weak but otherwise perfectly all right.

  But I still did not look well, Fredhøj had the monitor see me to my room. When we were down on the stairs I sent her back. Then I put on Katarina’s watch and ascended to the fifth floor.

  * * *

  The door to the infirmary was not locked. August was lying in the bed nearest the door, with a quilt over him. I took it off, they had him strapped down. He was so thin, I had never seen anything like it. Apart from that, everything was as you would expect, the anorexic girls at Nødebogård had been given the same treatment: two drips, saline solution and glucose, and a tube down the nose for force feeding. Besides the straps across arms and chest they had also bound one across his forehead to stop him from shaking out the tube. He was very far away, they must have given him something strong to make him sleep.

  His eyes were half-open but he was asleep. I closed his eyelids and, even though he could not hear me, I whispered to him that he was to take it very easy. Then I had to leave him, there was no more time.

  There was a little window in the office door. I jumped up, even though I was weak from the copper sulfate, the office was empty. I tried the door, it was locked, but it was a standard one-lever Chubb lock.

  I positioned myself outside Biehl’s office, I had no idea whether he was in there or not.

  Katarina’s directions had been as follows: the phone would ring between twenty-five past and half-past. At that time the office would be closed, the secretary would be at the Queen Caroline Amalie Charity Schools Foundation, where she had meetings every Wednesday and Thursday. The foundation paid a proportion of the school’s running costs and had also donated the new Challenge Cup. When the phone rang I was to let myself in and put whoever was calling through to the pupils’ telephone in the girls’ wing.

  Until then I was to wait in the corridor.

  This was Katarina’s plan. She did not know any better, she herself had never done much waiting about on the fifth floor.

  Because the staff room was at the end of the corridor, people were constantly coming and going. Besides which, August was now in the infirmary, there was bound to be someone watching him, probably the school nurse or Flakkedam. There were bound to be regular checks. I had no lawful business in the corridor and was very exposed. I would be seen and an explanation demanded of me.

  So I put myself outside Biehl’s office, it was the worst possible place, but it was the only thing to do. I stood up straight so a
s not to touch the wall, with my hands behind my back and my head bowed. Quite a few teachers came past, I did not look up at them, they did not stop. They assumed that I was waiting to see Biehl, to be punished.

  The phone never rang. I stayed there until twenty-five to, and even a bit longer. Then it was necessary to leave, or else I would get caught in the stream of teachers who would turn up when the lunch bell rang.

  Going down the stairs, I saw Flakkedam.

  To be on the safe side, I peered down through the shaft formed by the banisters. I saw his hand, far below. I managed to let myself in to the fourth floor and positioned myself in the weaving room until he had passed.

  Maybe he was on his way up to check on August. I had only seen one of his hands, that was enough to identify him. Although there was something different, the two outer fingers were in plaster. So, in spite of everything, they must have lost control of August for an instant.

  * * *

  I did not sleep that night either. Because of the copper sulfate it had not been possible to eat anything. All night long I sat, looking out at the grounds and across at the school, thinking of August. Whether I should go over to him, and remove the tubes and the straps and sit with him so that he could see we had not forgotten him, and then he could sleep. But it had been snowing, Flakkedam would have seen the tracks, and it would have been the end of everything.

  I would have gone anyway. If I had not been stopped by what Katarina had said.

  I had not seen her since she told me about the plan, in the storehouse. Not so much as a glimpse. But before we split up she had given me the watch and had personally fastened the strap around my wrist. Then she had held on to me and looked straight at me through the darkness and then she had said, “Twice, we’ll try twice.”

  * * *

  The darkness began to close in, then the thought struck that everything we were doing was for nothing, then I came close to giving up.

  I wanted to go home.

  At Himmelbjerg House and Crusty House the setup in the showers had been the same: three showers in a row—the first was warm, the last two were cold. You lined up, soaped yourself at the washbasins, and then passed through the showers, pretty fast. There was a window in the wall. That was where Valsang stood, where he could both keep an eye on you and stay dry.

  But occasionally you might be last in line and the others would have gone off. Then you could just stand under the warm water. And that was like coming home.

  Now I sat in the dark and wished for that. I purposely avoided the thought of Katarina and August. If I had not been weak I would have tried to get into the showers. I thought that since nothing had been of any use anyway, then it might have helped to stand under the warm water, just like at Crusty House, and sense your own body, even your groin, totally without even a hint of cramps, and let go of time and give up.

  * * *

  At one point, in the morning, the light began to grow. It did not come from any particular spot, it spread out from the surface of things, on the trees and the stonework of the school—like a coating, still very faint, but clear nevertheless. Like a passive resistance against the dark.

  Then, too, came Oscar Humlum.

  He swung himself in through the window, still on the same rope as back then, and jumped down onto the floor, heavily agile.

  “How come you’re here?” I said.

  He did not answer, so then I said it for him, the way he had always wanted me to do. In spite of everything, I was better with words than he was.

  “It’s because time has been put on hold,” I said.

  I could tell by looking at him that this was the case.

  He placed himself a little behind me, together we looked out at the light, then I remembered something that had long been forgotten.

  We were going to shower. We were last. Valsang was standing on his side of the window. Humlum went in ahead of me. He walked straight through the warm shower as though it did not exist and in under the first of the cold ones. And there he stayed. He did not move, he just stood there, while his skin went first red and then white. He looked at his feet, I knew he stayed there so that I could stay in the warm shower and not be made to get a move on. I had shut my eyes, the warm water closed up, like a wall. I had never stood for as long before.

  I looked at Humlum. He was standing in the semidarkness, looking at his feet, as he had done back then. I could not help but think of August in the sickroom and of Katarina lying next to the new inspector, and then it was not possible to give up and just let things slide. Back then, too, I had eventually pushed him on and gone into the first and then the second cold shower and then out.

  TWELVE

  The phone rang at half-past precisely. The secretary was in the office at the time, disaster came close.

  * * *

  We had had Fredhøj again from 10:50 to 11:40. That is, at the time when, according to the plan, I was supposed to leave the class. It was unfortunate, but unavoidable, that science subjects took up more of the timetable than anything else.

  But luck was on my side. Because I had neither eaten nor slept and still showed the effects of the copper sulfate, I looked pretty ill. When I went up to Fredhøj and told him straight out that I was feeling unwell, he let me go.

  “This is the second day in a row,” he said, “I’ll have a word with you after class.”

  There would not be any “after class,” I thought. Even though it was not clear what would happen, after class, school time would no longer exist.

  * * *

  I ascended to the fifth floor, I did not see a soul. I walked past the infirmary without looking in.

  The office door was open. From inside, I could hear the secretary talking.

  The plan had not anticipated this. Katarina had pointed to the timetable. “On Wednesdays and Thursdays, between eleven and twelve,” she’s out.

  At first I stopped dead. You had gotten used to the school timetable being infallible. In all my time, changes had hardly ever been made to classes. Faced with an alteration, you became helpless.

  So I went into the infirmary. I still had a few minutes. August was lying sleeping, but this time I had to wake him. I shook him very hard, he woke up pretty fast. Because of the tube up his nose he could not speak.

  “I’ve come,” I said, “you’ll need to help me.”

  There was no time to explain. I loosened one of his hands and handed him a bottle for peeing into.

  “The phone’s going to ring in a minute,” I said. “Count to three slowly, then make some noise, but not too much.”

  I stepped into the corridor at half-past precisely. There was not a soul in sight. We were moving along narrow tunnels in time and space that only existed at this moment. In a few minutes the bell would ring and people would come out and everything would collapse. But just at this moment we had created a space for ourselves in the stream of time—in between the seconds.

  Then the telephone rang. I entered the office.

  “Biehl’s Academy,” she said.

  “I think he’s choking,” I said.

  The secretary had been at the school for some years, it was said that she was a distant relative of Biehl’s. Under other circumstances she would have finished the telephone conversation and not forgotten herself in front of a pupil, but things were different now. Everything at the school was a bit out of joint, everyone had the feeling that something was up. She heard me and stopped short.

  At that moment there was a sound from the infirmary, he had thrown the bottle on the floor. It sounded alarming, without being too loud. Quite precisely administered.

  I sensed her panic. Although she was self-possessed enough to say, “One moment,” into the receiver. Then she ran out.

  I picked up the phone. It was a man.

  “Put me through to Hessen,” he said.

  Katarina had described the switchboard to me. It was to the left of the desk. She had said that everything was quite clearly marked, so you did not have to
think, and she was right. If you had had to think I would have been lost.

  There were three incoming lines. I had no idea which one he was on, so I pulled out all three. At the third pull he was cut off, so I stuck that plug into the socket marked “Pupil Telephone.” Katarina had said that it would ring automatically, and that I was to listen in over the headphones. Although she had not anticipated that I would have the secretary just outside the door.

  I heard the telephone ring, I heard it being picked up. Then someone said, “School psychologist’s clinic.”

  It was Katarina’s voice.

  “Baunsbak-Kold,” he said. “Is Hessen there?”

  She answered as though she had not heard the question.

  “As we have already stated,” she said, “we have a serious problem. We would like you to come over at once.”

  “That is quite out of the question,” he said.

  “It’s about August Joon, as we said, there’s violence.”

  “Let me speak to Hessen,” he said.

  I remembered him from the presentation at Gladsaxe Stadium, he had had a chauffeur-driven car. Well dressed and brilliant. He might have been sitting in the office.

  What made it worse was that I could hear something else. I had my back to Biehl’s office door. I heard Biehl’s voice coming from there. According to the plan, he should not have been there but, nevertheless, there he was.

  Now I was very exposed, caught between the secretary and Biehl and the director of education.

  “We can no longer be held responsible,” said Katarina. “It’s all starting to fall apart.”

  He had asked for Hessen, and she had not given him an answer. It was Katarina’s voice, and yet it was not her. One of the people living inside her, whom I would never understand, had taken over.

  I could hear his breathing.

  “I’m on my way,” he said. “Put me through to the office.”

  I moved the plug back to where it had come from.

  “Office,” I said.

  “Let me talk to Biehl.”

  He would not take her word for it. Now he wanted confirmation.