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out onto the south
staircase— which was out of bounds. Then the door was locked behind
you and you ascended to the fifth floor, and then farther up a narrower staircase, to the school psychologist's clinic. And there was Hessen.

The first time she asked me if I often thought about Humlum. "Do you often think about
Oscar?" she said.
    Normally
people just remembered your name, and often not even that. Hessen talked about
Himmelbjerg House and the Royal Or phanage
and the time the judge ratified an indefinite period at a reform school, and Humlum, as if we had met before.
    And I came close to telling her everything. Even so, I
decided to wait.
    Normally, you did not talk to her about where all this was supposed to lead. You talked about other things, and you took
some tests— Rorschach, projected perception
tests, and lots of IQ tests.
    There
was nothing in the room except a table and some chairs. Nothing ever lay on the table in front of her, not so much as a pencil.
    And yet she was always prepared, and could remember years
and dates. Better
than you remembered them yourself.
    Together, every
quarter, you took stock. You compared your own impressions with hers and the school's, and
whatever supplemen tary
information was available. This was where I began to understand her.
    It was her
questions that gave it away. They were so precise. In all the time I was referred to her she only committed
one inaccuracy, and that was when she
mentioned Katarina. Apart from that, she was utterly faultless.
    I wondered about
how she could know all the things she knew.

Finally there was only one possible explanation. She must have had all
of the papers, that was it, she was the first person I
had met who was in
possession of almost all the facts.
    The counselor at Crusty House had known a fair bit, and
your class teacher, Willy Øhrskov, had
known a fair bit, before his car crash, and
at the office especially they had a lot of papers. But nowhere had they had all of them gathered together.
    Hessen had all the statements and
all the grades and all of the bad conduct reports from the time at Crusty House. Besides which, she had the file—not just the
ordinary one but also the supplements from the child psychiatry clinic at the University
Hospital, which I had
never seen. Not to mention the district medical officer's remarks and those from the dental clinic
at Nyboder School. Also most of the documents from the Children's Panel, and a
list of all the times I
had been late, when I had been monitor, and what chores I had been given, and whether I had
performed them satisfactorily.
    In time it became clear that she also knew something
about those times
when I had been brought in for questioning. To begin with, I could not figure this out. If
you were under fifteen you could not have
a criminal record. This was a rule. So I could not understand how she knew about that. Later on, when I looked
into August's trial period, I did understand it. Back then I could not
figure it out, she just knew.
    A vast amount of information. In many ways she knew more than you did yourself.
    i
    She was the first
to realize that I had difficulties with time.
    It was when we were taking stock
after the third quarter. She must have added up all the times I had been late, or not handed things in on time. She had seen
what Flage Biehl had written on my report
card, namely, that I did my best but had difficulty in con centrating and organizing my time. And then she
had our test results.
    She told me that there were people who
were born fast, and peo-

pie who were not so fast, but that there was no point in
being unduly slow, what could we do about
that? We agreed that I would try to pull myself together. After that she
returned to it every time.
    When I visited her toward the end of October, after August had been at the school for three
weeks, I expected her to bring up my lack of precision again. Granted, only I knew how bad
things were, but
there had been no sign of