Borderliners (26 page)

Against those people who are open and clear you have a chance of
protecting
yourself.
Biehl, for example, or Karin Æ
rø
—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 circum
stances 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 an
orexic 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 Chal
lenge
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 as 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 ev
erything
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, look
ing 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

T
he phone rang at half-past precisely. The secre
tary 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.