Borderliners (32 page)

They said nothing.
Maybe because it was obvious from the bruising that I was telling
the truth, maybe because they could not speak.

"We're
just leaving," August said to Biehl. "We're going home.
But before we go you have to confess."

No one said a word.

He went on, "I could have stayed at home. We
were
fine,
we
could have sat together in the evenings, like we'd just
been doing. Not too close together,
nobody
bothering
anybody else, no need to be all over one another. But you're together, quiet
and peaceful. If
anyone
feels like drawing they can just get some paper and a pencil,
nothing will be said about it. No
one goes on about your grades.
No one gets hit. But then you're dragged up here. You're tied down
at night, during the day Flakkedam sits behind you.
Tell Mom how
a thing like that can
happen."

Biehl was on his knees, so his face was
level with August's.

"We wanted to
do
good
," he said.

Another finger broke.

All of a sudden Biehl's lips were
like sandpaper. Gray and as though dusted with dried granules. He looked August
in the eye.

"We wanted to help," he said. "Not
just the children of the light.
We wanted to carry the rest of you along with us.
From the halls
of the dead to
the land of the living.
We wanted to bring all of you
together in the Danish Free
School. Even those who suffer hardships
have a right to the light."

August's body was now shaking badly, even his face was
out of
control,
it
looked like he was constantly making faces. Only the
hand encircling Biehl's fingers
did not move. It held the last of the
life
within him.

"What about
the darkness inside people?" said
Katarina.

"The light
will disperse it," said Biehl.

August
brought his face right down to Biehl's ear. They looked
like two people exchanging confidences.

"There's not
that much light in the whole world," he whispered.

He looked at Katarina. She was
standing less than two feet from him but it was obvious that his eyes were
failing him. He stretched
out a hand and felt her. With his left hand, the one holding the

bottle
and the cigar. He felt with the outer edge of the hand,
up
over her throat
and cheek. The cigar end, the smoke, and the bottle
hung in the air before her eyes.
She did not move.

"It'll be over soon,"
he said. "Then I'll come back to you. And
we can sit the way we did back there.
With Peter, too.
Is he with you now?"

"Yes," she said.

"Can I keep
the paper and pencils?"

"Yes," she said.

He stroked her
cheek.

"Will you wait
here for me?" he said.

She could not answer him.

"No
more taking the bus," he said. "I've bought you a car. It's
waiting down below."

He led Biehl over
to the door.

"August!" she said.

He stopped.

"They have
children," she said. "He's somebody's father."

To
this he made no reply. He simply led Biehl out through the
door, and then they were gone.

With that, Astrid Biehl turned and went out into the corridor. A door was
unlocked. We heard her going into the room with the
school clock. They must have had
the lock fixed. Every sound could
be heard quite plainly—her bare feet on the floor, the
soft crunch as she smashed the glass. Then the alarm went off.

It was the same signal as usual, sent over all the loudspeakers. But
this time it kept going on and off, on and off, the
noise was un
bearable. We went out into the
corridor and turned away from it, into the staff room.

It was
dark,
the only light was coming from outside—from the
grounds and the sky and, farther off, from Copenhagen. We stood by the
window.

They came pretty quickly. Astrid
Biehl must have met them in
the driveway, once the searchlights had been lit you saw her several
times, still in her nightgown.

They parked in a semicircle and
left the car headlights on, in
addition to switching on the searchlights. The storehouse sat there,
like a black bull's-eye in the
white snow. For a while, nothing hap
pened. Then more cars arrived, you saw Fredhøj, too, down
there
in the snow.
Then peace and quiet descended.
Very bright light, but
otherwise nothing.
Pause.

Then Biehl appeared. He came out
of the shed, alone, but still
bent double. His dressing gown had slipped half off him, he was
partly naked. And in that state
he ran toward the searchlights.

Then
came
the fire. Not an explosion, not really. Not anything
as violent as that.
Just a very speedy combustion.
First the flash from August's
bottle, then the blast, as the gasoline cans for the
lawn mowers caught fire. It blew
out the windows and doors first,
then it forced off the roof, letting in oxygen. It was all
over in
seconds.

Of course, where we were, so high up, we could not feel
the heat,
nor could
we hear very much.

It did not help, though. Even
though we held each other tight
and had our eyes closed, it did not help. The light
pierced the
eyelids—only
for the briefest of moments, but still, it burned into the brain. It hurt the
body, too. As if, even from way down there,
the fire had reached up and peeled away the top layer of
skin, leav
ing us
like two burn marks, two scorched fetuses supporting each
other.

I did not want to look. When,
despite myself, I did look, it was at Katarina's face. It was turned toward the
window, screwed up
like
the face of an incubator baby.
The pain of an abandoned, new
born baby on a far-too-old face.

And yet even then—I remember it now—deep down, but distinct:
awareness.
The need to understand.

ONE

F
irst they
transferred me to the Lars Olsen Memorial Home, Engbækgård,
2990
Nivå. There I prepared the first
draft of my
report.

Lars Olsen Memorial had the country's first secure unit for children
under fifteen years of
age—surrounding wall, no handles on the
inside, a small, barred window set high up, table and
bench screwed
to the
floor, and you had to ring for the duty officer when you
needed to go to the toilet.

Before you could be put there they had to have the
special per
mission
of the department, and you could stay there for two months
at the most, that was the law. However, dispensation
was given in
my case, since there was the
death of a schoolmate to be considered.
I spent six months and eleven
days there, in strict isolation. This, inevitably, did me considerable damage.

Back then they were not so reluctant to use solitary confinement. It
was considered to have a
powerfully educative effect, like waiting

outside
Biehl's office. The department's representative said
that now
I would
have plenty of time for reflection.

At Himmelbjerg House and at the Royal Orphanage you had
often been isolated and locked up in various
places—mostly the
cellars, but other places,
too. At the Orphanage the standard pun
ishment for being late three times
in a row was royal guard duty—
in an empty
broom closet under a picture of King Frederik and
Queen Ingrid. You
stood from eight in the morning until six in the
evening, but even though it was in the dark and standing to attention it
was of course nothing compared to six months and eleven
days.

Even so, you could have coped with it, others before you
had
coped. But when
they transferred me I must have been weakened
by what had happened, and by the fact that I had
got used to talking
to
Katarina and August.

If those
who listen, those who are your friends, are nevertheless to
be taken from you, then it would have been better
if you had never
gotten to know them.

Since then there has been something about closed doors, or being
in a room with several other
people. Many years later—after my
adoption
and when I had completed my education and been to the
university—I tried working. I taught at the Institute of Physical Ed
ucation at Odense University. I was there for a
year and a half,
then
it became overwhelming. It kept coming and going—the
fear
of
being alone like
back then. Just when you were faced with twenty
people, and all the responsibility, then came the
feeling that they
were going to
leave you and lock the door behind them, and there would not even be a button
so you could ring for the duty officer.
Furthermore, I worried about being late, so I used to get there hours
ahead of time. But still the fear was there. After
a year and a half I had to give it up.

If I had not been
led into the laboratory it would have been

difficult
, if not
impossible, to hold one's own in society, to find a
place in the outside world.

Here, too, the door is closed.
But the child and I have come to
an agreement. We both find closed doors difficult.
According to the
agreement,
if it gets too difficult, then it is permissible to knock on
the door and say so. And then the
other one has to open the door
to the one who is not feeling so good.

I was there for an indefinite period. Nevertheless, I found a way
out—through the books. I found
the books, and with their help I drew up the report, in the form of a speech. I
knew there would be a confrontation.

That was the way the department did things, by confrontation.
When violence or abuse had been
ascertained to have occurred in an institution, or if any other acts of
negligence were suspected,
where it was
the adults' word against the children's, then a con
frontation was arranged, this was a rule.

All doubt could thus be eliminated. Thus it would be possible
to
discover the
utter and definitive truth as to what had occurred. Then
the blame could be apportioned
and the guilty party be punished.

With this in mind I prepared the speech. I expected it
to be ad
dressed to Biehl and Fredhøj and
Karin
Ærø
,
and to the depart
ment's representatives,
and to Katarina.

In a way I also expected August to
be there.
Even though that was an insane thought.

As excuse, I just want to point out how things were while
the
work was in
progress. I could no longer really tell day from night.

Now, later on, you can see that we had in fact understood most of
it.

They had had a grand plan. Of bringing all
children together in the Danish public school system, including the mentally
defective