Borderliners (33 page)

and
delinquent, including the slow pupils—everyone right
down to the borderline with severe retardation. Biehl's Academy was to be
turned into the model for this unification. The school
was to have been a laboratory, a workshop for the study of how the unification
should be brought about.
Whatever
this would require in the way
of security
arrangements, psychological assistance, and extra
tuition.

The orderliness and precision of the school were to form
the firm,
secure
structure around this experiment.

Over the past couple of years I have gradually unearthed most of
the papers from that time. Some
of them are kept at the Department
for
Primary and Lower-Secondary Education, some at the Institute
of Education and at the Queen Caroline Amalie
Charity Schools Foundation, and at the Teacher Training College on Emdrup Road.

According to these, fifty-four major experiments
on the integra
tion of disadvantaged
pupils into Danish public schools were run
between
1964 and 1974.
Fifty-four.

But even today, when one looks back on it, the experiment
at Biehl's was something out of the ordinary.

When I read the applications they made back then, for money and
support for the project, I do not
understand them.

They are like Biehl's memoirs.
So eloquent.
So well intentioned.
But still somehow totally unrelated to what really
happened.
As
though they
have had a wonderful, visionary theory about time and
children and fellowship.

And then—strictly isolated from
this theory—there have been
their actions.

Gaining access to the archives has been so surprisingly easy. I have
been met with outright
helpfulness. Back when it happened, they did everything they could to keep it
hidden. At that time suppres-

sion
, discretion, was one of the school's fundamental
principles.
Now the
safeguarding of any information whatsoever no longer
seems to be important.

Maybe most people are of the
same mind as Oscar and August,
when they
come to me in the laboratory and say I should abandon
the work, because the seventies were so long ago, it is over, it is
too
late.

Often I have had
that thought: over and too late.

When such thoughts present themselves, I know that I am thinking
like an adult. Growing up means
first of all to forget, and thereafter
disown
what was important when you were a child. To this I have then raised
objections.

Even
if it was over and too late, and altogether pretty insignifi
cant, still it was your life. And around that
everything since then
has revolved.

But it was not
insignificant. Of that I have since become certain.

Their plan was directed at the entire universe, of that
I have be
come
certain. And such a plan cannot be disregarded.

In the applications they talk only about helping the
delinquents
and the
mildly retarded and mildly defective—those were the
words, in the applications for the
grants. But in their minds or at
the back of their minds, like a distant goal, they had
the whole
world.
"We work for future glory," wrote Biehl. They felt that time
was on their side, that they were
working with something that
would spread
and inspire first the entire public school system and
then the rest of the country. If it had to be put into words they only
mentioned groups of children. But their goal was
the universe.

Biehl, Fredhøj, Karin
Ærø
, Baunsbak-Kold, state inspector
Aage
H
å
rdrup, Hessen,
Flakkedam, the department representatives.
All
of them were certain that they
were defending eternal values. They
have not said it straight out, they may not have thought
it straight
out
either. But somewhere inside themselves and among themselves

they
have been absolutely and utterly certain that they were
right,
and that, with
future generations of children who grew up, their
ideas and thoughts could fly out
into the world and spread across the country and beyond, maybe as far as the
Moors. That it would
be
possible, sometime in the not too distant future, to have everyone
respect their ideal of diligence
and precision. And on that day, all
living things in the universe would live at peace with
one another.

I know this was their goal. It is not what you could call
run-of-
the-mill. You
would have to call it colossal.

This goal was the
subject of my report.

It went against common practice in the home and was also at variance
with the corrective effect of isolation to give me pencil and
paper. What I found out I
therefore had to commit to memory.

I was, however, given books. I based my speech upon what I read
in them. It was carefully planned,
with an introduction, a discourse,
and a conclusion. When the day dawned I went in and
presented
it, in a
clear, distinct voice. That was the last word. After that, there
was nothing more to be said.

This is not true. I see that I have written it. But it is a lie. When
the confrontation came, I said nothing of what had been in my
mind, not one word.

There was no speech. By the time
I had been at Lars Olsen Me
morial for a few weeks there was no memory left in which to store
it. By then there was nothing but
chaos.

I had a relapse, too, and hit a
male nurse, and a doctor—a
woman at that, I have nothing to say in my defense. During the
final months I was strapped down
at night and given medicine,
pretty much as though I had been severely retarded.

That is over and done with long
ago. There is no point in saying
any more about it.

But before that happened I had started to read. The bit about the books
really was true.

There was a visiting psychiatrist attached to the secure unit—a con
sultant, who had made a study of
the connection between children's perception of time and their intelligence, at
home and abroad. He
talked about children
in Ghana, where the people are Moors. How, even when they were in Primary Six
or Seven like me, they could
not tell the
length of a bus journey, whether it had taken ten minutes
or six hours.

It was because of him that I was given books, although,
strictly
speaking,
this ran counter to the treatment. What brought this
about was that I had said I would
like to read about time.

When Katarina had said that her mother and father had talked
about time, I had instinctively
known that there had to be books
about it, that it must be possible to write about it.

At Lars Olsen Memorial I saw and
read for the first time books,
given to me by the consultant, such as E. J. Bickerman's
Chronology
of the Ancient World,
Whitrow's
Natural Philosophy of Time,
and
Guide to the History of Chronology,
vols. 1-3.

Back then I could
not understand one word of what I read.

Reading did, however, give me heart. Even if you cannot
under
stand what you
are reading you can get something from books.

This was during the first weeks
of my time there. When I worked
on the speech, and felt that the work was progressing
well.

It was Katarina who gave me the idea of doing it. Even though she
was gone, she was still there.

Often she stood before me, even when I did not close
my eyes.
Her skin was so white—so
transparent, almost—her sweater was
too big and had belonged to her
father who had hung himself, her
hair was
caught in at the collar. She had lured Baunsbak-Kold to

the
school and caused him to forget himself. And she had
spoken to him. Unbidden, she had also spoken to Biehl and to Fredhøj.

Speaking is not easy. All your life you have listened, or looked as
if you were listening. The living
word came down to you, it was
not something you, personally, gave voice to. You spoke only after
having put up your hand, and when you had been asked a
question,
and you said what was certain and correct, what was beyond doubt.

With my speech the opposite was the case. It was full of
uncer
tainty, and it
was unbidden.

After a few weeks, I had to give up. Nor did I ever
present it. When the confrontation came I was silent.

I have kept quiet ever since.

It was the child
who made me aware that it was still not too late.

She was born in November 1990. In August 1991 I embarked
upon this series of experiments in the laboratory.
Now, as they
approach their provisional
conclusion, it is July 1993.

So she was not quite a year old when it began. Now, at
its close,
she is
more than two and a half years old.

I started reading aloud to her from the manuscript when
she was a year and a half. From the rest of the world I kept it strictly iso
lated. But I showed it to her. In
the afternoons, when we were alone,
I
would take out the papers and read bits and pieces to her. At one point she
then said that I ought to write the report, the unfinished
speech.

I know that this statement will render me suspect. It
will be as
serted that she is, after all,
just a little child and that what I am
claiming is all but insane.

But it was she who
suggested it.

There are many ways of suggesting something. It does
not actu
ally have to be put into words. You
can sit quietly and listen and
in
this way show the other that what he is saying is all right. That
he will not be judged.
That you
are his friend, no matter what.

One day she pointed out that it was not too late. After all, they
were all still alive. There was
still time to catch the boat.

Immediately, I understood. Biehl,
Ærø
,
and all the others who
were present back then, they are
still there,
it
is still not too late to
have a word with them.

Until she showed
me the way, I must have thought that it was over.
I knew, of course, about Fredhøj and the stroke. But I had given
up
on the others, too. It had seemed overwhelming, it was so long
ago. When we had the chance of doing something, of
saying some
thing to them, only Katarina had the courage, and now it was,
irrevocably, too late. In the laboratory I
might be able to show a
pale
reflection of what took place. But, over the twenty-two years
separating me from that time, I could not speak.

To this the child raised the objection
that all of them were still around. Each and every one of the sixteen people
who were present
at
the department's confrontation—Fredhøj excluded—are still
around, that
was
what she said.

That
the past is not over and done with.
But that it lives on.

And so I prepared
this.