Borderliners Read Free

something."
    After he said that, it was three years before anyone talked about time. That was in the laboratory, when Katarina said
that we were going to study it.
    By
then it was a year since Biehl had given the signal, and re vealed the plan for helping the borderliners.
    It came at a time
when it had become hard to see any way out.
    At Crusty House there had been compulsory home visits
every third weekend, on these occasions they
sent me to Høve, to the vacation
home for underprivileged children. That did not work out very well. The place was used for the assessment
of children from

Copenhagen who had been in gangs that had been
split up. At
the home they
formed new gangs—they were used to working like that. When I left there the last time
they had knocked out four of my bottom teeth and I had been abused sexually. I was given
silver teeth. I refused to go back there.
    At Biehl’s I saw a chance to get out of it. I went for
it in a lunch period. I wrote a letter to myself from my guardian on one of the typewriters they
used for teaching starting in the school-leaving cer tificate class. It said that I
was invited to visit her at her home. I presented
it and was given permission. I left for Copenhagen on Friday evening, after we
had eaten. You could do whatever you wanted—follow
people or just walk the streets unhindered—it was brilliant. At night you just went back to the
school.
    Still, I could not sleep. I do
not know why, I just could not. Sometimes a whole weekend would go by without my getting a wink of sleep. On Monday morning one was
very tired and it af fected the rest of the
week.
    It is not true, what I said about those weekends. Often one did not go
into town. Often one just stood there, down at the gate, watch ing the cars driving past. The
school and the annex were deserted, people were home, I was the only
one left. That was not so good.
    The next week one was unprepared and numb inside.
    Then came the signal.
    It came in biology class. Biehl explained about Darwinism—the sur vival of the fittest. It still
applies, he said, even in our society, but it
is mitigated because we alleviate its consequences.
    After he had said
that, there was a pause. It was a rich moment.
    He had not looked at anyone in particular. He never
addressed himself, as it were, to
individuals. Still, maybe I was the one, at that moment, who understood him best.
    Those who were on
the inside, the majority, that is, found it hard

to get his point, mostly they were just pleased that they were on the inside, that they were the
fittest.
    For those on the outside, the fear and the abandonment
amount to almost everything, everybody knows that.
    Understanding is something one does best when one is on
the borderline.
    It was a law, that was what one understood. It
selected some, and some
it tumbled into perdition. But for those on the borderline, work was being done to alleviate
the consequences. For them there was a chance. Biehl's Academy was that chance.
    Understanding that is something one does best when one
is des ignated a
borderline case.
    Biehl very rarely came to a halt. But
when he had said this, he had
    come to a halt. It had not been
planned. It was an involuntary
    stoppage . We were close to something crucial.
    "Listen to my
pauses. They speak louder than my words." The covert Darwinism. The plan behind time was
selection. Time
    was a tool that made the selection.
One experienced a great sense
    of relief because everything had been cleared up.
    Only much later, when I met Katarina,
did the thought strike me
    that something had been left
unexplained.

S    I     X
     
         w hat is
time? I shall have to try to say, but not yet.
It is too overwhelming for that. You have to begin more simply. What does it mean—to measure time? What is a
timepiece?
    Fredhøj had
a watch, and looked at it often. Biehl had a fob watch, I never saw him look at it, not once.
    Katarina did not have a watch, neither did August, nor
did I