Borderliners (30 page)

"I know what you
thought," said August. "You thought some
thing would probably turn
up."

I had a grip on
him, but he was calm. It was like he had given up.

"You thought,
well.
. .
there's always the family. I bet you have
an
uncle in some ministry or other who can just come and have a word with Biehl,
am I right? And after this school there'll be an
other, the one your cousins go to—Busse's or Classen's. But, d'you
wanna
know something? For us, for me, and for Daft Peter,
for us
there's . . ."

At first he could not get it out. It filled his body and
made it seize
up,
made it hard as stone. Then it relaxed, and he said it.

"For us
there's nothing," he said.
"Nothing but a black
hole."

Her expression did not change. Her eyes seemed to
darken, become almost black. Then the tears began to flow. No change in her
face, just tears streaming from
the dark hollows of her eyes.

The time had come
for me to take charge, to protect them.

"We're going
home," I said.

We got ready to leave. She was gathering up the papers. She noticed
at once.

"Where's
August's file?" she said.

"I've put it
back," I said.

It was impossible to explain it to her. For her it was
so important
to
know. You would never be able to make her understand that
sometimes it may be more of a
help not to know.

She said nothing.
Maybe she had understood after all.

We listened at the door until the last of the teachers
had let themselves in to the corridor, then we descended by the south
staircase.
We met no
one. The playground, too, was deserted. There was a
risk that we would be spotted
from Andersen's house. But luck was
on our side. We got all the way along the main building
and the main hall and out into the grounds without being challenged.

It had been snowing, and now the
fog had come down. We
walked
into the fog and were gone.

FOURTEEN

A
ugust kept
falling down. We held on to him,
one on
either side. My socks were no use against the snow, but
when I stopped feeling my feet, I did not feel the
bad foot—the one
that had gotten bigger—either.

We could see nothing but the whiteness. I lost my bearings
a
couple of times,
and then Humlum showed himself—just a
glimpse—to let us know we were on the right track.

From the very beginning it had been written that it would
be
thus. There would
be a journey through the wilderness, but it would
be easier to bear because those
you hold dear, the woman and the
child,
are by your side. At last you would reach the
promised land
.

Out of the fog it rose. The sign said
storehouse,
but we saw
now that this had always been to
keep people away. We had always
been meant to find our way to this place.

Everything was as
Katarina and I had left it.

I bolted the door and arranged
boxes around the table, to make
it homey.
The cold was a problem. I thought of lighting a fire, but
there was no flue and they would have been able to
see the light,

and
there were cans of
gasoline for the lawn mowers all over the place. But in one of the cabinets I
found some old copies of
World
of
Nature.
We stuffed these into
August's undershirt and down into
his
tights. He had got worse, but that would soon pass now that
we were able to care for him.

We
sat around the table. They were both tired and kept nodding
off. Soon they were asleep.

I kept watch over them. I had brought them here, they were my
responsibility now. August was propped up in the
corner,
Katarina had rested her head on the table. I could hear their breathing: Au
gust's was rapid, hers was
slower. I watched over them—the
woman and the child—that no evil should befall them.

Then I saw Oscar
Humlum, sort of in the background.

"Go to
sleep," he said, "I'll keep watch."

So
I dozed for a bit, but something woke me. Oscar was sitting looking at me.

"It's
the hunger," he said, "that's why you can't sleep. It comes in
waves. When it comes you have to feel it. Don't
think about anything
else, or about
food, but look upon it with the light of awareness."

I tried and the
hunger came and then departed from me.

"Where did you learn
that?" I said. "You didn't know about it
back then."

"I'm
bigger now, though," he said, "that's the chance that comes with the
passage of time and growing up. The pain doesn't get any
less. But you become better at dealing with
it."

I could see now
that he did look older, and more peaceful.

"You can stay here, with us," I said,
"always. No one's ever
going to expel anyone again."

He did not
answer,
he just motioned to me to go to sleep.

When I awoke, August had come around. He was sitting reading
the applications and the files.
Katarina had left them on the table.
He
was restless.

He wanted me to take the papers, I refused,
he
held them out to
Katarina.

"I read them
while you were sleeping," she said.

He started to
read aloud.

" 'To
the Department for Primary and
Lower-Secondary Educa
tion.
Biehl's Academy hereby requests the permission of the de
partment to proceed with the project, for which
provisional plans were submitted to the department at the meeting on November
11,
1969, and of which fuller details are
appended.' "

He lowered the
paper.

"This is the proof,"
he said.

He leafed through the pile, picking out papers at
random. When
he read, it was slowly and
with difficulty, his voice seemed to be
fumbling around among the words.

" 'As headmaster of Biehl's Academy I take the
liberty of applying
both for the Ministry
of Education's approval of the experimental
project
more fully detailed in the enclosed letter, and for a grant
from the ministry's appropriations fund for
experimental studies, to
cover the
costs of implementing the project.'

"It's a conspiracy," he
said. "They've got it all worked out.
They've rounded people up. Now they're to be
destroyed."

"Integrated," said
Katarina. "They want to take children from
the reform schools and reformatories and put them back into or
dinary schools.
Integration.
That's the plan."

Oscar signaled to me,
then
I
heard it.
Andersen's Rottweiler.
But
he gave me a reassuring wave.

August's voice went on and on, he was lost in the papers
now. " '. . . Following consultation with
educational and psycho
logical experts, additional
application is hereby made for the
defraying, by the Charity Schools
Foundation, of those costs incurred in the appointment of an inspector for
Biehl's Academy,
inasmuch as—''
He stopped.

"That's Flakkedam," he
said. "The experiment is supposed to
start here. And then it's to spread. Why is it secret? It
says here it
has to
be kept secret. What is this?"

They were the same transcripts
as had been in his folder in Biehl's
office.

"It's from the court
records," I said. "They must have had the sanction of the Ministry of
Justice, those are confidential."

"He writes that it's for the
children's sake," she said.
"So that
they can go on being children for as long as
possible.
And not be
encumbered with adult
responsibilities. That's what he's always
believed."

"Yes," I said. "He said the same thing
when he refused to set up a student council."

August was so restless now that he could no longer sit
still. He
had got
up,
he put his hands on the cabinets and kind of felt his
way along them. Oscar was no
longer looking at me but at
Katarina.

"
He
 
writes
that the experiment is ahead
 
of its
 
time,"
 
she said. "That it belongs to the future. That it is ahead of
public
opinion.
Therefore it would be better to carry it out discreetly. And not unveil it
until you could produce some convincing re
sults."

August had disappeared toward the back of the room, out of
sight. But you could
hear him pacing around in the darkness.

"But it all went wrong for them," she said.
"They must have
thought they could
help, turn the school into the 'Workshop of the
Sun,' like he said.
Into a laboratory where the
differences between those who were damaged and those who were normal would be
eliminated.
That's why you two were accepted. And it explains
Hes
sen and all those tests. That's why they appointed Flakkedam.
To
take care of security."

I could see his eyes now. In the darkness they absorbed
the last
of the
light, like those of a wild animal.

"But what about Karin ^Er0's
stars?"
I said.
"And the thrashings?
And the marks and the schedules?
There's still no explanation for
them."

"No," she said.
"Behind their plan there has to be another one.
One they know nothing about."

"So who knows
about it, then?" said August.

"Something
greater than them."

Suddenly he was right in front
of her, I would have done something but I did not have a chance. It had even
taken Humlum by
surprise,
he had not got to his feet either.

"There's
nothing above them," said August. "They've got it all
worked out. That's why they've got to go, one way
or another . . ."

That
was his strategy.
To hate.
But then it had to be
directed at someone, it could not just be there. And those you hated had to be
the ones who were responsible. Well, I mean
otherwise they, per
sonally, would not
be guilty.

"It's no good," she said. "There's
something greater behind
them."

She was very aware. Not just of him, but of something
else, some
thing that
surrounded us. She was close to something crucial.

"There's
nothing behind them but a black hole!"

He had screamed. He turned away,
pushed in a pane of glass in the cabinet with the flat of his hand, pressed his
palm against the
rim
of glass that was left and started to run it around. Only then did Humlum get
to him, and pull him back, then I took over.

Katarina stood there,
ramrod-straight, she had not moved. I kept
hold of him with one hand, while with the other I took
off my shirt,
ripped
off a sleeve, and bound it around his hand. Then he got
away from me.

He walked along the cabinets looking through the glass at
the
things on the shelves, the stuffed
animals. He had to lean against
them to stay
on his feet.

"It's like at home," he said.
"Twelve of everything from the good old days.
They're
locked up, too—no sticky fingers on them. I could
do with a smoke."

I handed him a pack, they were his own—the matches, too.
I had
tucked them away before they came
for his things, after he was
admitted to the
sickroom.

He lit it himself, but then it
slipped through his fingers, he bent
down and picked it up. He inhaled and broke into a bout of
coughing.

"Christ,
that's good," he said.

He had the cigarette caught in
at the bandage. It was already very
wet, once everything had been settled I would clean the
wound and
put on a
proper bandage.

"She has to take the bus now," he said.
"Mom, I mean, even
though she hates it. To stand and hold on to bars that people have
touched, even though she's
wearing net gloves. When I get back I'll
buy her a car."

He seemed to be talking in his sleep. Katarina led him
back to
the table and got him to sit
down. There was a coating of sweat on his forehead. She supported his head with
one hand, and with the
palm of the other she
wiped away the sweat.

"Nobody
touches me," he said.

But he let her do
it.

We sat around the table. August had slumped against Katarina. She
did not touch him. But she moved
closer, so he could sit
comfortably.

Outside, in the darkness, there
was some activity. I looked over
at Oscar Humlum. He shook his head. "Not yet,"
he said.

August and Katarina were sitting looking at me, it was
all okay. They did not assess me. Nor did they want me to achieve anything
further. I had brought them here
and everything was as it should
be.

I
saw how pure, in a way, they were—no matter what they had
done. Each in their own way, they had tried to
stay what they were.
Not like me, who had never been anything, and so
had been trying all my life to be someone else.
To come
inside.

I saw that they understood this, too. That they
understood it and
that it was okay.
That, even so, I mattered, no matter what.

And then time, too, faded away. I
saw how small August was,
like the child I would later have, even though he was older. In that
moment, those two became as one,
he and the child, and thus it
became
impossible ever again to separate them completely.