Borderliners by Peter Høeg Page A

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 sensitive, 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 af fliction 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 labora tory 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.
    Jesus had been asked about eternity. And he