Borderliners by Peter Høeg Read Free Book Online Page B

hand.
    "She always
looked like a million dollars," he said.
    After a while his
hand fell open, but he was restless. So I shook him gently. That calmed him down a
bit.

The thought came to me that, if
you ever had a child, it might be like that. It was inconceivable that such a thing could happen, but still, if it did.
    Then you would watch over it. If it was restless you
would not sleep at night. I would cope without sleep. I would sit by its side, and now and again, when it moved
and sighed restlessly, like Au gust, you would stretch out a hand and shake it.
    There would be nothing personal in it. But if I was
assigned re sponsibility
for a child, I would keep watch.
    The room smelled of gas. The thought came to me that August was probably lost.
This thought grew as the night went on and finally
became too much to cope with. Around midnight I decided to talk to Katarina about it.
    The girls' wing was separated from the boys' by a glass door fitted with an alarm that was activated
by a sliding contact with con nectors. The duty room, where Flakkedam slept, was just above this. I could have deactivated
the alarm, but only if I had had tools. Instead I jumped from the window of the janitor's
storeroom. I had a
blanket with me, and a wire coat hanger, and a cardboard folder stuck to my stomach with a
Band-Aid.
    Not long after Flakkedam came to the school, and in connection with the
renovations, various things had been done to make the annex more homey . At this
juncture, a rose bed had been laid out. No one thought twice about it.
Flakkedam had a thing about flow ers. He had chosen the houseplants personally, and supplied all the posters that were used to brighten up the indoors. Most of those had had something to do with
flowers—a healthy and a sick tulip, that was
a warning against drug abuse.
    The bed was raked over every afternoon, between the
roses, too. It was one of the set chores.
One morning, when I had been sitting looking
out of the window, and had not slept at night, I saw Flak-

kedam . It was very early. He walked the length of the rose
bed, looking at the
soil. If there had been footprints he would have seen them immediately.
    The bed was nine feet wide, and
came right up against the house. It was difficult, if not impossible, to jump
from a window without leaving
a print in the soil, which was, of course, always freshly raked. It was a
brilliant setup.
    So
it was necessary to jump from the storeroom window. From there you could jump
at an angle onto the stairs leading up to the entrance.
It was not the easiest place to land, but it was the only alternative. The main door was locked.
    It was cold and very clear. There were only a few leaves on the trees, you could see stars and the
lights of Copenhagen.
    At Himmelbjerg House there had
been a plan for when you were to run away. It was strictly regulated: two at a time, with a two-week break between.
You took a car and saw who could get farthest away and stay out the longest. This was to put pressure on the grownups, but
also so you could bum around in freedom.
    The first few hours after you
had left the building, when it was night, had always felt good. Even after I realized that
it would, in the long run, lead to
perdition and had stopped, and then had trou ble
with the others and started working on being transferred to Crusty
House—even then I had missed it. The feeling of it being night; of the teacher on duty being asleep; of
the world being spread out at your
feet; of anything being possible, freedom—absolutely brilliant.
    Now it was different. The
feeling was there, but it was different. Somewhere above and behind me, August lay sleeping. It
made a difference. You knew he was lying
there, restless. It was as though a clock had
started ticking as I left him, and now the countdown had begun.
    You started wondering how people could ever abandon their
chil dren. How can you
abandon a child?

I climbed up the drainpipe. There was no risk, the outside of