Borderliners (7 page)

SEVEN

               
F
or the first week August slept in
the sickroom,
then
he was moved into my room. Since Jes Jessen had been
ex
pelled I had had it to myself.

At Crusty House, for a few months, they had had a fox.
Lent by
Svinninge Wildlife Park
as part of the nature study program.
Some
times Humlum and I would stand in front of its cage.
It never saw us. It looked straight through us and out at the world as it paced
relentlessly back and forth behind the bars. We knew how it felt.
How all its mortal despair at being cooped up had
been compressed
into an endless,
steady, rhythmic
monotony.

August was like
that fox.

He got his
medicine at nine
o'clock,
Flakkedam came with two
Mogadon and watched him wash them down with a
glass of water,
and then checked with a finger to see that he had not
hidden them
under his tongue.

It usually took about three-quarters of an hour for
them to work.
During that time he was very
restless. He paced along the walls and
did
not hear you if you spoke to him. Gradually he slowed down;

finally
he had to lie down, and he would fall asleep without
saying
anything.

I got through to him because I
discovered that the key to him lay in his movements.

On the third day I began pacing beside him, brushing past
the
bed and the door
and the other bed and under the washbasin and
the window and past the closet and then around again, and I kept
going even after he had tried to shake me off, and
even though he
looked past me, as
the fox had done. At one point, just before he
collapsed, I got through
to him. By then I had absorbed his rest
lessness
and he had gotten used to me, and the medicine had taken
the edge off
his nerves.

For my part, there was nothing personal in this. I did
not owe
him
anything. But he had been entrusted into my care. Not that it
had been said in so many words,
but he had been linked with me.
If he survived and was allowed to stay at the school, at
least for a
while, it
would be to the benefit of us both.

At the start of the sixth night, in the last minutes
before he fell asleep, he showed me his drawing. He had it tucked in against
his
stomach. You
could not help but see it, but I had not asked about it. Now he showed it to me
all by himself.

He
brought it out and unfolded it—a drawing, on a large white
sheet of paper, of the kind that was not to be
removed from the art
room.

It was done in pencil. It was a story. Two little men
moved from
picture to
picture like in a cartoon. It was a chain of violence.

In the drawing, several people got
shot, among them a man and
a woman in a room. It could have been a living room, or maybe a
classroom.

It was hard to look at but, incredible as it seemed, it
was better
than the
real thing. So he was not useless at everything.

He would have started along the walls again, but the
Mogadon
were beginning to get to him.

"I didn't get
any stars," he said.

Karin Ærø stuck gold paper stars on our artwork according to
merit. Some people got no stars. A
lot got one, some got two. A
very few managed three. If you got three stars three times in a row
you also received the honor of a
brown paper bag full of fruit. In
the two years for which this system had been running,
only Regnar Grasten, who went on to become a film producer and very famous,
ever got fruit, and only once.

August
was now lying down. He was shaking. I tried to under
stand him—why was it so important?—but it was inexplicable.

"I'm a
habitual liar," he said, "the police said so."

"They always say that,"
I said, "it's absolutely normal, that's
what they've always said about me, too."

I did not inquire
into what it was he had lied about.

"But the
psychologists say I can't remember," he said.

I asked him what
he himself thought, but he did not answer.

"You should try to fill in the background," I said.
"Karin
Ærø
doesn't like blank backgrounds.
By the time you're finished, there
should not be too much white paper showing."

EIGHT

  
T
he school was laid out in such a
way that the
main building—five floors,
plus attic apartments—stood between
two
asphalt playgrounds. The north playground was where you
spent recess.
On the other side
of that stood the annex.
Pupils were
not allowed in the south
playground, which was used as a parking lot by teachers, visitors, and delivery
vans.

The school was surrounded by the grounds, on the edge of
which
were the
teachers' residences. To the south, beyond the gate, was
where Copenhagen began.

Across the north playground ran two red lines, one marking
thirty feet around
the main door and one dividing the playground
in two.

The latter was used in the marking
out of areas for sports, and
also served to separate those pupils who had been forbidden to talk
to each other. To prevent them
from meeting during recess, each was assigned to one side of the playground.
This made it easy for
the
teacher on playground duty to make sure that they stayed apart.

The thirty-foot zone ensured a
clear area in front of the only exit
from the playground. Leaving the playground during recess
was

prohibited
. Anyone who tried anyway had to cross an empty area
and could not help but be noticed by the teacher
on duty.

The school building separated the two playgrounds.
Staying in
the building
during recess was prohibited. Leaving the north play
ground at that time was also
prohibited.

The day after August had shown
me his
drawing,
Katarina came
over to me during recess. Until then we had avoided
each other in the playground, where so many could see us. Now she came right
over to me. "Come down to the gym at
half-past," she said, "I
want
to show you something in the south playground."

"That's in the
middle of a period," I said.

"The gym will
be empty."

She was standing sideways to me, so nobody could see we
were
talking.

"The door to
the ground floor," I said. "It's locked."

"They deliver
the milk next period. It'll be open."

The bell rang. Flage Biehl—he
was Biehl's brother—was on play
ground duty. He was looking
around,
we had to
get away from
each other.

She had been wearing a blue sweater. Her hair disappeared
into
its collar.
You have to imagine that she has pulled it over her head,
and that her hair has been caught
in under the fabric. And she has
not
pulled it free, just loosened it. Between the fabric and her hair
was her neck.
Very white.
It was a cold day.

Over those two weeks when I had not seen her, except for
that
time on the
stairs, I had had a dream. At night, but when I was
awake.

It began just after August became calm and before I fell
asleep.
There was a
forest: pretty dark, very cold, absolutely desolate, noth
ing to eat. Even so, I knew that everything would
probably be all right. I had a sleeping bag and a waterproof groundsheet, or
more
like an oilskin cape. It was getting
late,
I spread out the oilskin
cape.

Then a girl appeared. She was
alone, and cold. I waved to her, keeping my distance so as not to scare her.
She was quite distinct,

but
yet she was no one in particular. It would have been too
much if she had been someone in particular.

I offered to let her sleep in the sleeping bag while I
kept watch.
I said it straight out so she
would understand that I meant her no
harm.
She lay down. And then she asked me to lie down beside her.
So
that we could keep warm.
And I did. I lay down beside her, and
laced the bag up around our shoulders. Outside,
the night was cold
and very dark. But
we were not cold.

The dream ended there. There was no more to it. Nothing
else
happened. It surfaced while I was
separated from her; I had never
had it
before. Since then it has never left me. I have never told a
soul about it before.

Under normal circumstances I could not have left the class. From
Primary Three up, leaving the
room during a class was not per
mitted. But with August's coming, things were a bit different. Even
the teachers were affected by it. We had Flage Biehl
for arithmetic.
I put up my hand and asked
leave to go to the toilet, and was given
permission without any further ado.

Usually, during a period, you were never anywhere but in
a class
room. The
building was unfamiliar then—it seemed deserted, the
sound on the stairs was
different, one could be heard from a long
way off.

The
doors between the staircase and the corridors leading to the
classrooms were always locked, but the one on the
ground floor was open. She had been right. From the ground floor three steps
ran down to the milk cellar, which held the
refrigerators for the
milk
distributed during the lunch period.

The gym was empty, as she had said. She was waiting
behind the
apparatus.
There was a door out onto the south playground. She had it standing ajar.

She was edgy. At first I thought
it was from fear of being discov
ered. But it was not. She had something on her mind.

I asked her about the bit with the
milk, and the gym being
empty—how had she known?

She showed me a piece of paper. It was a sheet like the
one August had taken from the art room.

"I've
written down the timetables for every class in the school,"
she said. "There is a schedule for every
pupil."

She looked out the
door.

"Whose car is
it?" she said.

Fredhøj's Rover, Biehl's Volvo,
and some other teachers' cars
were parked in the playground. Beside the school secretary's red
Mascot sat a gray Taunus—not a
teacher's car. That was the one
she
meant.

"Our class has windows
looking out onto here," she said. "He
comes every Wednesday. I've seen him in the
corridor with Biehl.
They
walk side by side."

Biehl had a particular way of walking. He let people
walk ahead
of him—pupils far ahead, teachers
closer.
Flakkedam closer still.
The only one he walked alongside was
Fredhøj ,
and even then it was not exactly abreast.

"It's
probably one of the school inspectors," I said.

Now and again they came to sit in on a class and listen.
After
ward
Fredhøj
 
would
mention
that they had, as always, been pleased
by the standard of teaching.

"This is the seventh Wednesday in a row," she
said, "I've seen him coming out of the clinic. He talks to both Biehl and
Hessen
every
time."

Just at that moment he emerged from the south staircase.
He got
into the
Taunus and drove away at once. We only saw him from
the back.

I tried to get out of it, but she leaned toward me, there
was no
way around
it.

"I've seen him once," I said, "at
Gladsaxe Stadium, when we beat
the Catholic school 3-2. I scored the winning goal. He presented
the trophy. His name's
Baunsbak-Kold. He's the director of edu
cation for Copenhagen."

She looked at me, unseeing.

"Could you get
into that car without a key?"

I did not answer
right away, my mouth was dry. A person who