Borderliners Read Online Free PDF

August's third week at the school she
came up beside me on the stairs. Once she
had passed, there was a letter in my pocket.
    It
was the first letter I had ever received. There had been others but they had been printed.
    It did not say who it was to, or who it was from. There
was just a question: "Why were their children removed?"
    A prohibition had been imposed on August—in the playground he was not to go any farther away from the wall than
where he could touch it with an
outstretched arm. The first week, Flakkedam had walked on his outside, then the teacher on
playground duty had taken over. Now
it was no longer necessary, he kept to the wall by himself. No one said much to him either.
    The only time he was allowed to leave it was to go to the toilet, and then I had to go with him and wait outside
until he was fin-

ished . That day I went in with him. There was barely room. We stood on either side of the toilet
bowl while he smoked.
    "I've had a
letter," I said.
    I showed it to him. He did not ask
how I could be sure it was for me. He believed me. If I said it, it must be true.
    Nor did he ask who it was from. He probably thought that
would have been
prying. All he said was "What does she mean?"
    In April 1971 all those pupils who were related to teachers were taken out of the school. Before
that, Vera Hofstætter, who taught German, had had two boys in Primary Two and
Primary Four and Biehl had had two
grandchildren in Primary One, and Stuus, who taught Latin, had a daughter in
Third Year Secondary and Jerlang had two
children in First Year Secondary and Primary Seven and a girl, Anne, in our
class. And then of course there was Fredhøj 's son, Axel.
Nine pupils altogether. They did not come back after
the Easter vacation, nothing was said
about it. Everyone assumed it was because
of what had happened to Axel Fredhøj .
    Fredhøj was the deputy head, and well liked. His easy sense of humor made people open up, even
those who had broken school rules. In
this pleasant atmosphere they tended to give themselves away. After which Fredhøj was always ready with a remark—some thing good and quick—then the incident was
forgotten. A couple of days later
those who had forgotten themselves were summoned to Biehl's office, or their parents were summoned to an interview, or suddenly they were no longer in the class. They never saw what hit them.
    Not
once did I ever see him punish someone himself, all he did was pass the buck. It was
brilliant.
    It was hard, if not impossible,
to see how Axel could be his son. You never saw them talking to each other,
particularly not after the incident in the engineering access tunnels. Axel was in the class

below us. Generally speaking, you never heard him say a word except if a teacher asked him a question, and even
then only what was absolutely necessary.
    Fredhøj taught physics and
chemistry. He used a number of charts:
the periodic table, Bohr's atomic theory, means of propul sion from the steam engine to the V6 engine, the
major scientific developments. They were kept in the chart lockers—boxes of
white- painted wood five feet high, five feet long, and fairly shallow,
with a puny furniture lock.
    Fredhøj always went around with his keys in full view,
hanging from the ring finger of his left hand on a good-sized key ring. The
keys lay across the back of his hand. The keys to the chart lockers were on this ring.
    It came out of the blue. It was a
period no different from any other; the
unfortunate incident in the engineering tunnels lay six months back.
    Fredhøj asked one of the bright girls, Anne-Dorthe
Feldslev, who was physics monitor, to
fetch the periodic table. The class had its own
ordinary monitor, who fetched the milk. It was something you took turns at, it
was nothing special. But then there was a physics monitor who helped with the setting up of
experiments and the like, whom Fredhøj selected from among the mathematically
gifted. Just then it was Anne-Dorthe. She was not