Borderliners

by Peter Høeg

  I thought about August and the kitchen, even though he had been taken from me and so was no longer my responsibility. One night I went across to the sickroom. The door was locked. Not a sound to be heard. During classes there was no chance of talking to him, they kept a close eye on us.

  * * *

  A letter came from her. It was not in her own words, it was a quote straight out of Binet-Simon. She must have learned it by heart, just by reading it. “There was once a grasshopper, who had sung merrily all summer long. Now it was winter and he was starving. So he went to see some ants who lived nearby and asked them to lend him some of the stores they had laid up for the winter. ‘What have you been doing all summer?’ they asked. ‘I have sung day and night,’ replied the grasshopper. ‘Ah, so you have sung,’ said the ants. ‘Well, now you can dance.’”

  Beneath this she had written: “What is the moral?”

  It was so deep. It showed how she had figured out that this was a problem from the “fourteen years” level and that I must have had it. She had, therefore, used what I had written to her and discovered the system behind Binet-Simon.

  At the time when I had been given this story, I had come close to answering that the moral was ants were not helpful. But this would not have fitted in very well with the other problems. Instead I had sensed Hessen, and then I had said the moral was that one must seize the moment.

  I had been able to see from her face that this was the correct answer.

  Reading between the lines of Katarina’s letter, I understood that she, too, had been about to give the wrong answer. That was why she sent it to me. She knew that we had both been about to give the wrong answer.

  I knew that our letters were part of her experiment with time. That she was trying to understand. That, in a way, we were in the laboratory when we wrote. Even though we were prevented from talking to each other.

  * * *

  It was easier to get up in the morning when you had received a letter and had to reply. Writing to her, I understood things I had not previously understood. You were surprised by your own replies.

  In a way that is what I have been trying to do ever since.

  * * *

  Later on, Binet-Simon did become available to me. I borrowed it from the Danish Teacher Training College at 101 Emdrup Road where they have it in their collection of tests. It is still in use.

  It says in the foreword that “if every case of mild retardation were recognized in time, and the child or young person treated in accordance with the result produced by the psychological examination, the number of mental defectives committing offenses would rapidly be reduced.”

  Still, even today, quoting from it is prohibited. Nevertheless I am doing so. There is no harm intended.

  * * *

  They wanted to help. It is down there in black-and-white, in the foreword to Binet-Simon, but this was something you already knew, back then. They wanted to help children and society. By pinpointing those who were mildly retarded, or downright defective, in order that they could be sent to residential schools or homes where they could be given the necessary care. That was the idea. They wanted to help the victims of evolution. They waited, just like Biehl, under the archway. So that they could single out those who were on the borderline, who could not finish the tests in time, and help them up. They wanted to take people under their wings.

  They were also the ravens.

  This is a contradiction. I have no explanation.

  * * *

  They believed that it was of great help to children to be assessed.

  I suppose they still believe that. In our society it is a pretty widespread belief. That assessment is a good thing.

  * * *

  I was at the playground with the child. These days I am more often alone with her, usually we go out.

  When you are moving, or at a playground, then you feel that you are achieving something for her. When you are at home, just sitting with her and not knowing what to do, then comes the fear; then you have a clear sense of your own inadequacy.

  We were at the playground, she had climbed up onto some railroad ties. She was maybe about three feet off the ground. She called to me from there.

  “Look! Look!”

  I did not get the answer out. I had no time. It came from a strange woman, also there with her child.

  “Aren’t you clever,” she said.

  I had no time to think. I was on my feet and on my way over to bite her head off. Then I remembered that she was the mother of a small child and that she was a woman. I realized that I was having a relapse.

  I sat down, but it was a long time before I stopped shaking.

  * * *

  The child had wanted attention. She had just asked to be noticed. But she was given an assessment: “Aren’t you clever.”

  * * *

  When you assess others, no harm is ever intended. It is just that you yourself have been tested so often. In the end it is impossible to think any other way.

  Maybe it is not so easy to see if you have always been able to achieve more or less what has been required of you. Maybe you see it best if you know that, all through your life, you will always be on the borderline.

  * * *

  Katarina’s last letter had to do with Raven’s progressive matrices. Those I could not help her with, they were for highly intelligent children and beyond. I had heard rumors about them, but never seen them.

  I managed to receive this letter, but not to reply to it. It happened in church. Where we were found out, and where the letter was confiscated. After that, the separation became absolute.

  THREE

  There were four compulsory church services a year—Advent, Christmas, Easter, and Ascension Day. You were escorted to the church by the teacher you had had just before. We had had Flage Biehl for arithmetic.

  Usually you were allowed just to get on with it by yourself, doing problems from your book. They were quiet classes.

  Nevertheless, it was important that your work was neat, and that you held the paper steady when you were rubbing out, so it didn’t get creased. That was his weak spot.

  He had the reputation of being a sensitive soul. Often, when he had hit someone because of a messy notebook, he was unable to proceed—despite the fact that he had been in the middle of a lesson. Instead he would remain at his desk, sitting there with his head bowed for the rest of the period.

  Before we became separated I had tried to explain to August the importance of being neat. Then he had become very hard.

  “A pigsty,” he said, “that’s what she says. When I’m at home I sleep in the living room, on a cot. I draw when they’re asleep. Sometimes the crayons are crumbly. If she finds even the tiniest speck she starts to cry and says it’s a pigsty. All for a tiny fleck of crayon. Apart from that, no one has ever seen her cry.”

  I had not referred to it again. I did not want to pry. But I think he tried to do better. Just as he had filled in the background.

  Even so, it had not been good enough. When Flage came into the classroom his face was bright red. He was carrying a bundle of notebooks which he had corrected. He dropped them onto the desk and picked up the top one. Then he came over to our desk.

  He must have been warned about keeping a safe distance from August, but he was so angry that he had forgotten himself.

  “Trash,” he said, he was having trouble talking.

  He hit August with the notebook, from right to left, knocking August’s head sideways. Then he hit it from the other side, knocking it back again. He kept this up for some time. He never touched people, he always hit them with their own notebook, wherein lay the untidiness.

  His blows were not in the same class as Biehl’s or Karin Ærø’s. Nevertheless they were effective, because the notebook lengthened his reach, as it were. And, at the same time, the humiliation was greater because he would not touch people.

  Afterward he threw the notebook on the floor.

  This was the first time August ha
d been hit at the school. The minute the notebook hit the floor he was on his feet, very fast.

  Some people never learned how to take a beating. It was not so much a case of whether you had been brought up in an institution or with a family, but more whether you had been getting knocked around from when you were pretty small, and had learned that the best strategy was just to bear in mind that you take it and then it is over and done with.

  August would never learn, that I already knew. When Flage hit him that first time, he seized up; the head moved from side to side, but the body was rigid. I came up behind him, I sensed what was going to happen.

  He went for Flage’s fingers, which had remained in midair after he had thrown the notebook. He grabbed hold of the outer two on his left hand, but did not get the chance to break them. I stuck a thumb over each of his eyes and pulled him back. He did not utter a sound, he was hard as wood. Then I set him down on his chair. Flage was looking at his fingers, he had no idea what had happened.

  This brought the lesson to a halt. Flage left the classroom. It had happened before. It was unlikely that he would go up to the office and report August. He was new in class, Flage must have known he had gone too far. But he was compelled to leave, because of his sensitivity.

  I took August out into the corridor. It was deserted, all the other classes were in the middle of a lesson. I let him pace along the walls.

  “You’ve stopped eating,” I said.

  I had noticed this a while before but had said nothing.

  “It’s a trial period,” he said, “here at the school. I’m here on trial, I’m not going to make it.”

  Of this there had been no previous mention.

  How long was the trial period, I asked him.

  “They haven’t said,” he said. “Some decisions have been taken about me, they’ve told me that much, but they haven’t said what.”

  We had not spoken to each other in two weeks. I felt that we had better seize the moment while there was time, and the corridor was deserted. What had they said they were after, I asked him, what was he supposed to do?

  “Make a go of it,” he said. “They said it was a trial period, it would give me a chance to prove that I can make a go of it.”

  “Where will they send you if it goes wrong?” I said.

  “Back to Sandbjerggård.”

  There was no chance to ask about anything else. The new inspector came to get us and walked us down to the church. Flage must have sent for her.

  * * *

  Two weeks earlier, they had taken over an empty room in the girls’ section, and workmen had been called in. She had arrived a few days later, and was bidden welcome at assembly. It was said that, among other things, she would be put in temporary charge of the girls’ section in the annex, just as Flakkedam was in charge of the boys’. It was the first time mention had been made of Flakkedam’s supervisory post being temporary.

  No more had been said.

  * * *

  The church was just outside the grounds.

  We were on our way up the aisle. Katarina came up to us. Suddenly she was at August’s side. She reached behind him and put something in my pocket. It was the letter. I would not have read it there and then, but it was some days since I had heard from her, and, with so many people around, you felt hidden. I unfolded it right away. It was quite short, she was asking about Raven’s progressive matrices.

  I looked up at her.

  “August is here on trial,” I said. “He doesn’t know for how long, he doesn’t know what they have decided about him, he’s not going to make it. It’s getting worse day by day, what can be done?”

  “His file,” she said.

  We were squashed up against each other, by everybody else, so that no one could see us.

  “Any decisions they’ve taken have to be entered in it,” she said.

  Just as she said it, there was Fredhøj.

  * * *

  I was the one who should have been on the lookout. I was the only one who really knew him. But I had forgotten myself, and he had always been very quick—invisible and yet, all of a sudden, right there.

  He took the letter from me. Then he took me and Katarina and put us in separate pews. Then he fetched August. He did not come at him from the front, but went around behind him, pinned his wrists, and brought him down to the row in front of me, and sat him down next to himself. No one had sensed anything. It had all been as smooth and casual as if he was showing people to their seats.

  * * *

  He could have marched us out right then and there, but he did not. Instead we were put in the pews and the service went ahead as though nothing had happened.

  While one sat there knowing that it was all over.

  Fredhøj had known that now he would have us hit by Ragnarok. Still he had strength enough to sit down as though nothing had happened and let the service begin. Strength enough to make this eloquent pause.

  So now one could sit there, looking around at everybody else. One could think about how, if one had respected the school rules and not abused the trust placed in one, one could have been singing away like them right now. Then one could still have been on the borderline instead of, as now, being lost.

  One could sit and think like that. That was the intention behind the pause.

  There was another reason, too. They could afford to wait, because the harm had already been done, and we had been localized. It so happened that somewhere there was an anger, an aversion, toward us so great that it could afford to wait. This anger was not Fredhøj’s, not even Biehl’s. They were, when all was said and done, human and capable of letting bygones be bygones—one had seen several instances of it. This anger was different. It was the anger of the very school itself, greater than anything human. It did not forget, it would remember forever.

  * * *

  I came close to giving up.

  It was impossible to think straight. Surrender gripped one like an illness one could not, personally, do anything about.

  I thought about what would happen to me and Katarina. But mostly I thought about August. I could see now that he had been given a trial period, not just at Biehl’s but in the world. He had been given a trial period just to go on living. He was like a very small and very sick wild animal that was only just managing to keep going. If he was sent back to a place like Sandbjerggård it would be the end of him. They would shut him up so tightly that he would be crushed to death.

  * * *

  A hymn was sung—”Sometimes a Light Surprises.” Biehl himself led the singing, before the minister took over.

  You had always been able to sense that this hymn held some special meaning for him. When he sang it he came very close to something crucial. He had expounded upon it.

  … Who gives the lilies clothing

  Will clothe his people, too:

  Beneath the spreading heavens

  No creature but is fed;

  And he who feeds the ravens

  Will give his children bread.

  Referring to this verse, he had said that when biology and science were powerless, then God prevailed.

  * * *

  It was like being in a little cage, with the walls closing in and all the doors shut. Humlum and Axel Fredhøj had given up long ago, along with many others one had known. And there had been many times when one had almost done so. And yet I had held out, longer than most, I had done my best. At the Orphanage, the first time I was made to jump from the willow tree, just after I came there—when they waited a long time before bringing me up—I had come close to going along with it and letting the water fill my lungs. But back then I believed that in the end one would come up into the light. One no longer had that feeling of certainty.

  I looked around, for one last time to consign my thoughts to the air. That is when I saw August, he was sitting next to Fredhøj, all hunched up.

  It was still too early to let go. One still had to help him. When one is bigger than someone else, and not so sensitiv
e, and can take a beating, and has discerned the grand plan, then one has to help someone who is smaller than oneself.

  I looked around the cage. All the doors were locked. In my affliction my thoughts turned to Jesus.

  * * *

  One had always imagined God as being like Biehl. As a rule he was distant. As a rule he concerned himself with the greatest and the smallest. Like the heavens, or a lily. Only rarely did he ever address himself to you in person. And then, as a rule, it was in order to punish.

  Until now I had thought of Jesus as being like Fredhøj. Standing between you and the supreme power, Biehl and God, there had to be some kind of a middleman, an informer. Fredhøj and Jesus.

  It had been the same everywhere. At the top the headmaster or the superintendent, between him and the rest of the school a deputy. It was a law, maybe even a law of nature.

  Then another thought occurred.

  * * *

  You had always learned the prayers and hymns by heart. It had been like memorizing dates, like the Battle of Poitiers, only easier, because they rhymed and there was a tune.

  As a rule you did not make much sense of the words. However, Biehl had been known, out of the blue, to conduct a test on one of the hymns. If he then detected a lack of understanding he became very dangerous. As a rule he would then explain certain things, like the bit about clothing the lilies. But there were too many prayers and hymns for them all to be explained. So you learned them by heart, without making much sense of them.

  Even so it could happen that you suddenly understood, all by yourself. That the words you had learned by heart became a door, opening up.

  That happened now.

  * * *

  God was too close to Biehl. Nor could you consult Jesus about your personal problems, there was no reason to believe that you would be given help. In fact, there were really no instances of anyone being given help.

  And yet my thoughts turned to Jesus. Well, you had learned it by heart and been made to recite it, albeit without making much sense of it. There were two things I remembered. Jesus had talked about time. People had asked him whether he could promise them eternal life, in other words freedom from time. He had not really answered that. Like Katarina, when I had asked her in the laboratory whether I could be sure of being cured and she had not given a straight answer. Instead he had told the young man who had asked the question what he should do if he wanted to enter into life, here and now.