Borderliners by Peter Høeg Page A

People are selected accord ing
to the laws of nature. The school is an instrument dedicated to elevation. It works like this. If you achieve in
the way you're sup posed to, time
raises you up. That's why the classrooms are ar ranged as they are. From Primary One to Three you're on the ground floor, then you move up to the second
floor, then the third, then to
Secondary on the fourth, until at last—at the very top, in the assembly hall—you receive your certificate
from Biehl. And then you can fly out
into the world."
    There, I had said
it. We were nearing the conclusion.
    "I've been wondering why it is so hard for them, why
there are so many
rules. And it occurred to me that it is because they have to keep the outside world out.
Because it's not everywhere out there that it raises up. There are lots of
places out there where time drags you down toward destruction. That is what they must keep
out. You must be
left in no doubt that the world raises you up, otherwise it would be impossible to cope
with the expectations. Coping is something
you do best when you believe in time. If you believe that the whole
world is an instrument through which you become elevated, just so long as you
do your best—that is the metaphor the school
presents. It's brilliant."
    She moved her face until her lips were
close beside my ear.
    "What about
you?" she said.
    Her voice was husky
with sleep. Well, I had woken her up.
    It was not absolutely clear what it was she was asking,
but I answered
anyway.
    I said that, as far as I was concerned, special
circumstances came into
play, since I was ill but at the same time had a personal insight into my
illness—according to my record. I brought it out. That was what I had had stuck to my
stomach. If she felt like it, she could read it. It was the bit I had been given a copy of at
Nødebogärd Treatment
Home. So it was not complete. You did not get to see the confidential bit, but even so it was enlightening.
This made it quite clear, I said, that if
you were to have any chance after having grown up in a children's home,
there had to have been one particular grownup to whom you had formed an attachment. In my case,

there had not been. For various reasons, within the first ten
years of my life, I
had been in four different institutions. So I was dam aged. It said so, in so many words—that it was
difficult, if not impossible, for me to
establish stable emotional relationships—in other words, to have any deep
feelings. There was nothing personal in
my coming here tonight. She could tell that from the record. I had come
because of August.
    "He sniffs
gas," I said.
    That is not what I meant to say. I meant to say that he
was like a wild
animal that has been cooped up; a bird of prey that keeps flying into the
invisible, polished glass; but I could not get it out, I had done too much
talking. Even so, it was as if she had understood.
    "He drinks from the gas tap in the kitchen so he can
sleep," I said,
"he doesn't fit in at the school, he'll never be able to cope with it,
what can be done?"
    She did not answer me. Nor had I expected an answer. It
was not clear what
it was I was asking. There was August, back in our room, I had to leave. And I was
very close to her.
    She caught up with
me halfway across the floor.
    "There's
something I don't understand," she said.
    She was right behind me, she
had forgotten herself and had spo ken out loud.
    "He is chaos," she said. "If their plan is
order, why have they taken him?"
    Order.
    When the child was about one year
old she started talking. At first it was just single words, but pretty soon they formed into strings. Into
lists.
    She would come and sit close
beside me. You had the feeling that there was something she wanted to explain. I said nothing.
    Then she would start reciting
all the words she knew. First the objects around us, but, after that, things she had seen
and heard the names
of, some of them just the once.

Very rarely did she ask a
question. It was