Borderliners by Peter Høeg

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.
Sud denly 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 pro gressive 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 Fredhoj.
    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,
be cause 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