Borderliners (5 page)

been
firm enough, and that you now had to keep within.
With precision and accuracy.
This was the last and only
chance.

Like looking things up
accurately.
We had had exercises in using
telephone directories; that was in Valsang's classes.

I tried to
look it up, I really tried. Even though I knew it was just
something he had said, I really tried. Even though
he had opened
his fly and had his
cock out, and the tension inside the booth grew
and the cramps started.

One cannot keep running away. There seemed to be nothing
else
for it but to
try to hold him off, while turning the pages with the
other hand, as one had been
asked.

The door of the booth was of frosted glass in a steel
frame. Val-
sang held it closed with his
free hand. Humlum smashed it with a
fire
extinguisher. They were topped up with water once a
year,
they
held ten gallons, plus the weight
of the metal.

It was safety
glass,
it
sort of disintegrated and covered us in gritty
dust.

There were a fair number of pupils outside, maybe thirty
or forty.
A couple
of the bigger ones were damaged. They had refused to
come because it was something to
do with Valsang. Humlum had
forced them, so that there would be witnesses. They did not want
to look, they tried to look away.
Still, they had to look at us.

They stood absolutely
still,
there
was a narrow space between
them and the
booth which we came out through, first Valsang and
me, then Humlum with the fire extinguisher. Slowly they followed
us. We went into the office.

In the ordinary
time, that of a watch, one understands certain, spe
cific things. When one lets go of time one understands certain other
things.

This was the alternative illness
offered. When something impor
tant was happening, one could let go, and achieve a rich moment,
full of understanding. It is like
moving in on a black hole. If one

gets
too close, one gets sucked in. But if one comes up
alongside it,
there
is understanding.

While we were still on our way to the office, the thought
occurred
that we
ought to be able to use this, to get something in return.
That we could
bring pressure to bear upon them, and get away.

This I told
Katarina.
While we were all alone on the stairs.

"So why
didn't he come with you?" she asked.

"He didn't want to," I said. "When
it came right down to it, he
just said, 'Save yourself.''

She asked if I still saw him.

"He comes to
visit me," I said. "But in secret."

FIVE

I
n class we sat, split up into three rows, facing the
teacher's desk. Farthest away,
in the window row, in the light, there
were just girls, in the middle row both girls and boys,
in the door row just boys.

Here
they had cleared three desks. The middle one was for Au
gust and me.

In
front of us and behind us there were empty desks. Flakkedam
sat down at the empty desk behind us.

A number of rules had been imposed on August. It took me a
while to work out
what they were. He was forbidden to get to his
feet without permission, or to make any sudden
movements. On those occasions when he did so anyway, Flakkedam was on him
like a shot.

So we sat, on our own, with
empty desks in front and behind us,
right over against the wall. He was also forbidden to
move. You
could not
help but think that he had, at one and the same time,
both less and more space than
anyone else in the school.

No explanation was given.

Biehl's Academy was a private,
fee-paying school.

It was common knowledge that they
were very particular about
the appointment of new teachers. There were always a lot of applicants,
each and every one of whom was called in for an exhaus
tive interview. But
Fredhøj
, who was deputy head, had told
us
during one class
that certain applicants had been rejected before the
interview, while still in the
secretary's office, because they had
looked
unkempt, or had not been there at the appointed time. After a series of
interviews, one individual was chosen for the vacant position. This was
important for the school.
That the teachers were
highly qualified and carefully selected.

Something similar held true for the pupils. Something
that was
mentioned
pretty often was the waiting lists.

For every single class the school had a waiting list. It
was so long
that at any given time they
could have doubled the number of pu
pils.
This did not happen. It was part of Grundtvig's philosophy
that schools should be kept pretty small. Besides
which, it was a
prerequisite for the
high academic standard.

What happened with the waiting lists was that they were
just
there. Then, when it was necessary
to request a pupil's parents to
remove the
person concerned from the school, or if something else
happened, that place was filled from the list.

Up to eighteen.
Where, in an ordinary public school, there could be as many as
thirty-six pupils in each class, at Biehl's there were
only eighteen. It was a prerequisite for the standard.

The waiting lists meant that the school did not have
to keep any
pupil. This was something
everyone knew, that there was no reason
for the school to keep anyone. Regarding the fact that it was a
fee-paying school, Fredhøj had said this ensured that it was those par
ents
with a special and more serious interest in their children who
placed them at the school. But to ensure that it
was also open to
poor families with
academically gifted children, there was the pos
sibility of applying for a full or partial scholarship.

So the pupils were selected by
way of their parents' loving care. And outside each class, on the lists, at
least eighteen others were
waiting to take their places—we all knew that.

After that one was put in a
children's home. Both Humlum and I had been with the Christian Foundation. I
was at the home on
Peter
Bang Road, between Copenhagen Ball Club's soccer fields and
Flintholm Church, Humlum was in
Esbjerg. One feels as though
one ought to
have remembered quite a bit about that time, but the
only thing one remembered was the storytelling, and the punish
ment for soiling one's mouth with swear words—the
matron, Sister
Ragna, pushed one's
head down into the toilet after she had used
it.

One ought to have remembered more. But that was the only
thing
that had
stuck.

They kept you for as long as they could at the children's home.
Only if they came to the
conclusion that there was no alternative
were
you moved. There was only one kind of place to go to from
there. That was to a residential assessment center,
for a limited
period. I went to
Brogärdsvænge in
Gentofte, that
was in '66. I remember
nothing about why, in the file, the matron, Sister Ragna,
had written: "
Willful,
refuses to wear knickerbockers."

That is what it
says, but one remembers nothing.

One time I showed it to Humlum. It was winter, at night.
We
were sitting on
the toilets, up against the radiator. "I remember
them," he said, "baggy
pants and long, checked socks. The rest of them at the school wore desert boots
and Icelandic sweaters. You didn't have anything else, it was like your skin,
it got to the stage
where
you wanted to rip it off, rip your skin off, or something."

He did not say
whether he, too, had refused.

It was all
downhill from the assessment center. Because one was
older, there were more places they could send one. I was put into
a
boarding school for children whose development does not mea
sure up to the norm, and from there to N
ø
debogard
Treatment
Home.
That was in '67, I must have been ten years old.
By then there

had
been various offenses, mostly running away and
break-ins, but
other
things, too, that I will not mention, also assault.

At that point one was allowed to see bits of one's
file, it was all
part of the new trend in
education at that time. The man from the
Department of Health and Welfare showed it to me. It was the first time
I saw it. There it said exactly how things stood: "behavioral
disturbances," "problems with adjustment to school,"
"conduct dis
orders,"
"antisocial," "truancy." "What are we to do?" he
said.
"You will be sent to
Nødebogård
until a place becomes vacant at
a
reform school in Jutland."

"Reform
school" was not an official term. Unofficially, though,
the meaning was absolutely clear. It meant those
schools and homes
where the staff kept a tight grip on things, and had
the experience
and the resources for taking
on even very young offenders. I had
been
at Nødebogård for two months when a place became vacant
at Himmelbjerg House and I was transferred.
Humlum and I talked
sometimes about
how it would have been if he had been transferred
at the same time, so we would have met each other
at Himmelbjerg
House instead of a
year later at Crusty House.

But that did not happen, since he had, two years
earlier, stopped
talking.

In my case they
always knew that I was not backward. No one
suspected
that I might be academically gifted, but no one had ever actually thought that
I was retarded. Apparently, in Humlum's case, they had not been so sure. Added
to which, he had stopped talking.
For
a year and a half he said nothing, not one word.

He never did say that much, not even later, not even
about why
he had
stopped talking. All he told me was that his mouth had hurt.

It was true, one could tell just by looking at him.
Talking for any
length
of time hurt. So there came a point when he stopped
altogether.

First
of all they sent him to an assessment center, and then to
Copenhagen, where the child psychiatry clinics
were. First he was
sent to the
Juvenile Clinic in Læss
ø
es Street—to ambulatory assess-