1993 - Borderliners by Peter Hoeg

Author:Peter Hoeg
Format: epub
Published: 1993-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

S I X

Second Year Secondary—Katarina’s class—stood two rows behind our class at assembly. Fredhøj checked the rows before Biehl came in and began. Although people had their set places, it had always been hard to maintain strict order on the perimeter, where one row bordered on the next. Those who came in last could not elbow their way through to their proper places; instead they stayed on the perimeter. Nine days after the total separation, Katarina came in at the last minute, though without actually being late. She managed to stand a little in front of me, almost next to Fredhøj. This blurred their awareness. It would never have occurred to them that she would try anything.

Each pupil brought their own songbook to assembly. Bound editions were compulsory, to save on wear and tear. She opened it in such a way that I could not help but see it, but shielded it from everyone but me. The writing was tiny, to reduce the risk of being caught, it took me the whole of assembly to read it. It said: “What’s the name of your guardian?”

For all orphans and all children who had been taken into care, whose parents had lost custody of them, a guardian was appointed. It was a rule.

Usually it was a lawyer from the Children’s Panel. I had seen mine once. When the Social Welfare Committee had given me an indefinite period at Himmelbjerg House she gave me the news. She had told me straight out that she was appointed as guardian to between two and three hundred children at a time. So, although technically she was my mother and father, there would be no possibility of us meeting again, unless I wanted to get married before I was eighteen, or had a fortune that had to be administered. I had not seen her since. This was too long-winded an explanation for Katarina. All I wrote in my songbook was ‘Johanna Buhl, Children’s Panel.’ Three days later I moved back a row and held the book up; no one noticed a thing.

The next day I was summoned to the telephone to take a call.

The school had two telephones which were accessible to pupils, both of them located in the annex—one in the boys’ wing and one in the girls’.

Both lines went through the school switchboard in Biehl’s secretary’s office, but they were pay phones, you were free to make calls from them and talk on them during the lunch period, from 11:40 to 12:30, and after close of the study period, from 8:15 to 8:50 a.m. The call for me was received at 12:05 a.m. I was in the playground, a kid from one of the lower grades came to get me. Flakkedam had sent him, he said my guardian was on the phone. The receiver was lying on the little table for the phone books. It was the first time that anyone had telephoned me at Biehl’s, apart from the two calls from the Health and Welfare representative.

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