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Blue café awnings winter square Paris trees gray buildings green shutters and Rimbaud in a tightjeaned boy with curls and broad shoulders. Order is freedom, order is grace. The centurion’s child (Günther Zuntz’s essay, Stanley Spencer’s painting). Cock upslant warped bell flare to glans. Deep slick. In the park Mariana leaned an ear for a whisper in birdy sibilances from Franklin, shifty of eye and grin. My word’s my word, she said. He won’t bat an eye. He’s for gosh sakes a scoutmaster and knows all about boys, understands boys. He even likes them. Franklin, dubious, heel to toe, deepened his pockets.
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Headmaster Eglund, Kim’s father, a Latinist who had written about Cicero and Seneca, was an authority on classical weights and measures. Or, as Kim’s mother the gardener always said, amounts. My dear husband studies Grecian amounts. He had welcomed young Tvemunding after choosing him from among many applicants, and bragged about him to colleagues at other schools. And here was a beautiful essay by Tvemunding on Virgil and St. Paul, their ideals of magnanimity and courage. He called him in. Do you, he said over tea, think there is enough rascal in my Kim? His sister, did Hugo know, was married and with children of her own, his brothers were an engineer in the navy, exec. officer on a submarine, and a graduate student in chemistry. Kim, our Eros, was an afterthought on a second honeymoon in Italy, begotten on a sunny afternoon in a village inn from the windows of which they could see a hill slope with shepherds and goats, an olive grove and a farm that seemed, as it might be, Horace’s. Life does beautiful things once in a while, what? O decidedly, Hugo said. But, said Eglund, he’s in love, as he calls it, with dear Anders, a gentle boy and a bright one. We know from psychology that this is all properly inevitable, and it has done wonders for Kim. He feels so good about it, and he has been so manly and honest. You work with Scouts and run a well-disciplined and effective classroom. What do you think? It’s beautiful, Hugo said. Quite, what I say, said Eglund. I try not to be puritanical. They’ve started this club, and have put you down as faculty sponsor, and have renovated the old boathouse. Should I look in on it, give it my blessing, do you think? Not without announcing when you’re coming, Hugo said, believe me. What would I see? Eglund asked. Come in, dear, he said to his wife pulling off gardening gloves. Classics Master Tvemunding, she said, how delightful.
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Green world. They’d come through deep ferns from the country road, and then up to a ledge of flat rock velvety with moss, hefting their bikes on their shoulders. Lemuel’s hair, as blond as Kim’s, spiked out in warps from under his racing cap, which he still wore after putting every other stitch neatly rolled in his rucksack, its provender unpacked and lined just as neatly by his bicycle: thermos of cold milk, apples, blue cheese and onion sandwiches, chocolate bars, and a tin of oysters in their liquor. Oysters, Anders said. Oysters, said Tom. To make us hornier, so they say. You swallow them whole, very sexy, with some of the juice. Raw, said Kim. Raw. What an absolutely lovely place. Anders squatted to undo Kim’s shoes and pants. You undress him? Lemuel said. Neat. Hejsa! the kid has no more public hair than an infant. I do too, Kim said, some. He comes, Anders said, and I love him. You’re kissing, Kim said to Lemuel and Tom, like a boy and a girl.
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Kim was a wolf, weight on four paws like a table, ears cupped and keen. A green frog, hopping. Anders, creeping up from behind, flopped on him, pinning his arms. His nose, a wolf’s could savor the grassy suet odor of a rabbit’s spoor, the hairy stink of a dog, the fermented turnip reek of a bear, all the mellow pollen green turpentine bitterbutter acorn smells of the woods, dark smells of punk lichen leafmold. In bed, sleep taking him, he could be a hedgehog, a badger.
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Lizard, the Greeks called it, Hugo said, flipping Kim’s penis with a nonchalant finger. We didn’t think, Anders said, you’d come up when we weren’t having a formal meeting. But Tom asked me, Hugo said. I’ve seen everything anyhow. I wanted, said Tom, to see if you’d come. I don’t see anything but some bare boys such as I see thrice weekly with my Scouts, Hugo said. Officially I’m not here. And I must skedaddle in a bit, to meet my Mariana. Kim’s the lucky one here, jumping the gun by several years. You met Anders last summer? His folks’ summer place is near ours, Kim said. The first time we undressed together to swim, he asked if I knew how to jack off, and I said O yes! And did I? O yes! Lots? O yes! Then, Anders said, he did a stomp dance, snapped his fingers, and whistled, and flopped his hair about. He had seen me throwing my javelin and jogging and reading under a tree and had come over and said he was Kim, eleven, soon to be twelve. I think he thought I was generous to notice him at all. Fifteen is pretty scary, Kim said. So after all the things you do to make friends, we found a sunny old barnloft across a field of sunflowers, where we proposed to do some serious jacking off. I remember that my dick was hard as a bone when I took off my swimslip and had a thrum of benevolence in it. Veins and knots all over it, Kim said. And juice beading out. Bulbourethral secretion, Hugo said, to be coolly pedantic. What an afternoon, Kim said. And all the ones since.
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Rutger’s slow eyes’ sliding look at Meg makes her hold her breasts with squeezing fingers, red snicks in grass halms fusing their green with mauves and browns. Rutger’s quick eyes’ bolting look at Meg makes her caress her breasts with fingertips, blue glints in grass halms fusing their green with yellows and blues. Rutger’s slitted eyes’ satyr’s look at Meg makes her knead her breasts with tight fingers, green tones on grass halms fusing their pale straw with tan and cream. Rutger’s sly eyes’ longing look at Meg makes her pinch her nipples, yellow bosses on grass halms fusing their cedar green with dusk and dew.
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A slope of daffodils down to the river. Old trees. One of those days when Kim was full of himself. Spin and stomp! Spin on your left foot, stomp on your right. He was, he said, into imagination soak. He could be a rabbit, a fox, a mouflon, a cow. Rimbaud’s rabbit, Anders said, looking through a spiderweb strung with dew in a meadow. Dürer’s handsome Belgian hare, Peter Rabbit in his red jacket and blue slippers, and what’s imagination soak? When you see what was always there for the first time, Kim said, you know? The way you see it is to imagine you’re something else, like a dog. A dog sees up, and low, and when I’m dogminded I look at the ground, and at the undersides of things, bike seats, chairs, to see how a dog sees it. And, really hard, to do imagination soak and try to be, say, Master Tvemunding, who knows the history of everything, and would see people completely different. He must see me as a squirt with lots of blond hair, and his girlfriend Mariana looks at me and wonders if my diapers are wet. Do you know Mendelssohn’s Reformation Symphony? When it’s raining, but the sun’s shining, and you see the sun through chestnut leaves, and you’re walking along wet flagstones, doesn’t a shiver tickle up your neck? Tell me about Sven Asgarsen again, huh? Anders a freshman at NFS Grundtvig had fallen in love with Sven Asgarsen a quiet muddleheaded sophomore who loved animals, spoke in riddles, and was out of it. Who are you? he said one day to Anders, who had hitherto studied Sven’s good looks from afar and who answered with his name. No no! Names won’t do. Science or books? City or farm? Anders said: Books, city, though I’ve milked a cow and slopped pigs. So Anders learned how to talk with Sven. Pigs, their breeds and who raised them and how and why, flop or stand of ear, curl of tail, rake of trotters. Then goats, bantams, cows. You didn’t do anything? Kim asked. I just worshipped, Anders said. And one day he went home. Folks came for him, just like that. I’d never been so lonely in my life.
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Friend of mine from way back is on shore leave, Mariana said on the phone. I really ought to be nice to him. Will you understand? I’ll try, Hugo said. The other thing, she said, is that Franklin needs a place to sleep tonight. He shouldn’t be by himself. Mommy’s off somewhere. Bring him over, Hugo said. Better still, I’ll come get him. I won’t be replaced? she said. Can’t promise, Hugo said. If Franklin looks at me with those big eyes, I may kiss him black and blue. Wi
ggle his toes, she said, he likes that better.
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Going to fetch Franklin, he remembered at the foot of the stairs the evening he’d come out for a breath of fresh air and found the rider drawing in colored chalk on the concrete terrace. An apple, a snake. He’d lettered around it, The Apple that Ate the Serpant. That, said Hugo, is not the way to spell serpent. The rider said, I was going to draw it and go away. For you to find. And, said Hugo, what does it mean? Don’t you know? the rider asked, all charming smile and handsome eyes.
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Hugo, having graded a set of Greek papers (conditionals, optatives) and a set of Latin (ablatives and datives), written his father (Schillebeeckx, a promise to visit with Mariana while the hollyhocks were at their best, Scouts), washed bowl plate glass and tableware, realizing that it was no effort to be generous toward Mariana, her generosity being enough for them both, set out to meet her and Franklin. No Apple that Ate the Serpant on the terrace at the foot of the outside steps, only clean concrete with a cricket in a corner, a beech leaf in the center. The friend from way back was a sailor with a neat wide box of a nose, flat cheeks, good looking, trim. Seems, he said in his handshake, I’m lucky to see Mariana without knowing six languages. Glad to know ya, fella. The same, said Hugo. Franklin and I are going to dare each other to eat a banana split on the way back, the deluxe extraordinaire with everything on it, topped with Chantilly and the Danish flag. Then we’re going to have a wild evening of dissipation playing checkers. And we intend to have silly dreams.
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Franklin, full of banana split, was going to be a Scout, both a Cub (Dyb! Dyb! Dyb!) in a blue uniform with yellow neckerchief, and the mascot to Hugo’s troop going with them on all hikes and campings-out. Moreover, he and Hugo were going to sleep together, like buddies, no pyjamas. In the morning they were going to run four kilometers before breakfast. Hugo was his big friend.
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They were asleep, Franklin’s head on Hugo’s shoulder, arm across his chest, when a steady tapping at the door woke Hugo. Mariana, would you believe. O wow, she said, naked and all. O, I’m here because sacking out with Hjalmar all night seemed wrong. He has changed, people do. He’s as good a lover as always, proved it twice, to be friends. His feelings aren’t hurt. Sailors are tough. I belong here. The bed will be sort of crowded, Hugo said. Don’t mind, she said, he can be between us. The phone. Who in the name of God is calling at this hour of the night?
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He was chalk white from messy hair to toes, no pink anywhere, so that the shallow definition of muscle in the chest, abdomen, and quadriceps seemed sculptural, a young Hermes by a sentimental follower of Thorvaldsen working in alabaster. The eyes were open and blank, the mouth peaceful. Both hands were curled as if in anxious preparation for catching some object about to fall. A student of yours? the policeman asked. He had a letter from you in his jeans pocket, wadded up. That’s why we called you. Last session, Hugo said, at NFS Grundtvig, day student, lived on the warehouse end of Kalksten. He’d dropped out of school. Cocaine, the policeman said, OD. They’re doing it all over the world, and why? I don’t know, Hugo said, needing to cry but knowing that he couldn’t. Do you?
WO ES WAR, SOLL ICH WERDEN
I
—See? Pascal said, handing Housemaster Sigurjonsson a bunch of chicory and red valerian, they’re flowers, for you, because Franklin brings them to Hugo Tvemunding, who puts them in a jar of water and says he likes them. They’re sort of from the edge of fru Eglund’s garden.
—So will I put them in a vase, Holger said, if I have such an article. Which I absolutely don’t.
—The marmalade, Pascal said, is down to just about enough to go on a slice of bread, with some butter, and then you’d have that to put the flowers in. Hugo keeps pencils in a marmalade jar.
—Ingenious solution, Holger said. And who do we know fossicking for tucker to finish off the marmalade with a cup of tea, perhaps?
—Milk, a big glass of cold milk. There’s half a bottle and one not opened yet. You’ve been grading papers, all done, with the rollbook on top and a rubber band around the lot. And reading. Saw you at the gym.
—Danish grasses and wildflowers, the papers, Holger said. And what in the name of God is that?
Pascal, eyes as wide as kroner, was wiping marmalade out of the jar with his fingers.
—Sounds like somebody’s mad at somebody, he said.
His sandwich built of wedges of butter and runnels of marmalade, Pascal took as large a bite as he could, for the comedy of it, accepting a tumbler of milk from Holger.
—One of ’em’s Franklin, he said, cocking an ear.
His smile gilded with marmalade and wet with a chevron of milk, Pascal eased down the zipper of his fly: his accompanying Holger on bed-check rounds every evening was always in night attire, pert briefs with a snug pitch to the cup.
The ruckus down the hall became fiercer. What Holger saw when he whipped open his door and sprinted out was Franklin Landarbejder and Adam Hegn, whose tenor insults and shoulder punches had exploded into a locked scuffle, pounding each other in white hate. Falling in a flailing crash to the floor, they were rolling, kicking, caterwauling, elbowing and biting along the corridor floor like a bearcub attacked by a hive of bees, trying all at once to tuck itself into a ball while thrashing out at its stinging tormentors.
The first out of his room was Asgar with a yellow pencil between his teeth.
—Knee him in the balls, he said. Buggering Jesus, there’s blood.
Tom, pulling on shorts that snagged on his erection, poked a bare foot into the grunting ferocity, trying to pry Franklin’s elbow away from Adam’s throat.
Edvard with a calculator, Olaf in a white sweatshirt with ungdomsfrihedskæmper in blue lettering vertical from waist to collar, Bo stark naked.
—Go it, Franklin, Bo said. Go it, Adam.
—Back! Holger shouted, straddling the fighters and pulling them apart. Pascal, from nowhere, got Adam in an armhold and rolled him smack against the wall. Holger had pinned Franklin’s arms, walking him backward. Adam was promising Pascal that he would kick the shit out of him as soon as he got the chance. Franklin shouted that Adam was the lover of his mother. Adam bled from his nose, Franklin from a cut lip.
—Tom, Holger said, get Matron. Pascal, fetch Hugo Tvemunding. Edvard and Olaf, take these outlaws to the infirmary. Where’s Rutger? Jos?
Matron, in a bathrobe suggestive of the last imperial court in Peking and with hair improbably crisp for the time of day, lifted Adam and Franklin onto the examining table, side by side, where they sat glaring straight ahead. Adam she gave an ice cube in a twist of gauze to hold under his nose. Franklin she dabbed on the lip with a swab of iodine, commanding him to keep his mouth well open. Then she stripped them, had a thorough prodding look at their mouths, ears, eyes.
—No loose teeth, she said. Lucky, that. There will be bruises. I want to see you both again tomorrow afternoon. Animals, she added under her breath.
—Animal, Adam said to Franklin.
—You’d better believe it, Franklin said.
Adam, green, said he was going to barf. And did, into the gleaming stainless-steel basin Matron held under his chin with a magic pass.
—What precisely the fuck is all this? Hugo asked. Beg pardon, Matron.
—Fine example, Matron said, I must say. Onto your elbows and knees, Adam. Yes, on the table. Move down, Franklin. Breathe deep, relax.
—These two, Holger said, were mixing it in the hall. No great matter.
—End of the world, Mariana said. Look at them. I’m the blond rat’s big sister, first certificate in nursing, St. Olaf’s Day Care.
Matron smiled viciously.
—Ever so pleased.
Pascal, peeping around the door, got the full blast of a stare from Matron and disintegrated.
—Gotcha! Jos shouted, blocking, scooping up, heaving over his head, and catching Pascal hammocked knees and nape in his arms.
�
�Hoo! Pascal said, scare me out of a year’s growth, huh?
—So look where you’re going. What’s in the nursery, shrimp?
Jos, Apollo in dirty white sweatpants rolled low on his narrow hips, hefted Pascal onto his shoulders.
—Franklin, Adam. They had a fight. Nosebleed, cut lip. Boy, do you stink. Hugo and Mariana have come over. Matron shot me with one of her looks.
—Working out. Adam’s never even seen somebody like Franklin. To be beautiful. Is that your peter poking the back of my neck?
—Hugo’s barefoot, fly’s open and no underpants, and his sweater’s on backward.
—Canarying in the bed with frøken Landarbejder, wouldn’t you say, weasel?
—Look neither left nor right, Hugo said. Holger’s rooms are at the far end.
—But if you look straight ahead, Mariana said, you see Tarzan in sweatpants held up by faith alone and with Pascal on his shoulders.
—Girl in the hallway! Bo called out.
Hugo guiding Franklin, Holger Adam, Mariana sorting and inspecting their clothes, deployed themselves around Holger’s sitting room.
—Pascal! Holger called.
Mariana introduced herself to Adam.
—And just because I’m his sister doesn’t mean that I’ll take his side.
Pascal, wet and hugging a towel, said that here he was.
—I’m having a shower with Jos.
—Go get your dressing gown, for Franklin, would you, and Adam’s, and be slippy, back here before I count ten.
—The things I’m learning, Mariana said.
The phone rang: the Headmaster.
—Tempest in a kettle, Holger said. We have the combatants, Tvemunding and I, here now. I’ll give you a report. And a good evening to you, sir.
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