Nothing (8 page)

He’d got us. Pretty Rosa couldn’t bear the sight of blood, so separating Cinderella from her head was going to mean a great deal for her especially. Discussion over.

This time there were two who cried.

Pretty Rosa cried and begged for mercy and said she couldn’t and that she’d just pass out in the middle of it all and maybe have an epileptic fit and have to be taken to the hospital and never be normal again. Elise cried like she’d never cried over her baby brother’s coffin.

We didn’t pay either of them any heed.

The first thing was for Pretty Rosa to pull herself together. Cinderella’s head was a considerably smaller sacrifice than the ones many of the rest of us had been forced to make. The second thing was that we’d all suspected Elise had gotten off too lightly and had actually been happy about her brother’s coffin being dug up. Holy Karl had found two sacrifices with one prayer.

————

Jon-Johan’s father was a butcher and had a shop out front of the house where they lived. One early morning, after a couple of aborted attempts, Jon-Johan succeeded in sneaking away a long, newly sharpened carving knife, which he took with him out to the sawmill and thrust into a wooden post, where it remained glinting and waiting for Pretty Rosa to pull herself together.

Which turned out to be sooner rather than later.

When we got to the sawmill on a cold and stormy afternoon in the late fall, Cinderella was no more; her head lay gaping resentfully at us on top of the heap, while her carcass lay draped across little Emil’s coffin, that was now more red than crackled white.

White. Pink. Red is dead.

Pretty Rosa had looked oddly unmoved all day at school. Later she kept claiming she’d almost fainted and that it had been worse than horrifying
and that she’d turned off the lights in the sawmill so as not to see the blood.

The thing about the lights had doubtless been for the better, because seeing the coffin now with all the blood and Cinderella’s head without its body, Pretty Rosa passed out without a hint of warning. Huge Hans and Otto carried her over to the other end of the sawmill and piled up some boards to block the sight of both the coffin and Cinderella. Taking her outside was out of the question, in case anyone happened by.

Jon-Johan examined the knife, which had been stuck back into the post, now all begrimed with dried blood.

“Who would have thought Pretty Rosa had a butcher inside her!” he exclaimed, and laughed loudly.

Maybe he wouldn’t have laughed so much had he known what more Pretty Rosa could bring to pass.

There was something devious about it.

Not the matter of Pretty Rosa being able to cut Cinderella’s throat without flinching and then pass out at the mere sight of blood on the coffin, even if that was pretty odd in itself.

No, the deviousness became apparent when Pretty Rosa demanded the index finger of Jon-Johan’s right hand.

————

It was a Tuesday afternoon shortly after we’d all arrived at the sawmill, drenched to the bone by an incessant, pouring rain that also found its way through the holes in the sawmill roof and made pools in the sawdust that we still weren’t too old to paddle in.

Ursula-Marie said that was something that couldn’t be asked for, especially not when it was Jon-Johan who played guitar and sang Beatles songs so it sounded almost like them, and he wouldn’t be able to anymore without his finger and so Pretty Rosa couldn’t ask for it.

“Yes, I can,” said Pretty Rosa, without explaining why.

“No, you can’t,” said Ursula-Marie, and the rest of us backed her up; a line had to be drawn somewhere.

“Yes, I can,” said Pretty Rosa.

“No, you can’t,” we all said again.

And then, when it had all gone on long enough, it was like there was no strength left in Pretty Rosa, and our refusal was met by a weary silence that made us think we’d won.

At least until Sofie chipped in, “What? Like Jon-Johan’s finger doesn’t matter?”

On that point we obviously couldn’t disagree with her, but a finger was still something you couldn’t just ask someone to hand over. But Sofie persisted and couldn’t see why there should be any discussion.

“Everyone else has gotten what they wanted. And if Pretty Rosa wants Jon-Johan’s finger, then she should have Jon-Johan’s finger.”

Eventually we agreed, since no one was going to be able to bring themselves to cut off Jon-Johan’s finger anyway.

“I will,” said Sofie matter-of-factly.

We stared at her, mute, every one of us.

Something cold had come over Sofie ever since the thing about the innocence.

Cold. Colder. Frost, ice, and snow.

All of a sudden I remembered that Jon-Johan had been there that evening at the sawmill, and I didn’t want to start imagining what he’d used his finger to do. But now I knew who had separated poor Cinderella’s head from her body.

Sofie was a sly one.

I didn’t tell anyone what I was thinking. Firstly, because I wasn’t sure the finger didn’t match up rather well with what Sofie had been made to deliver. And secondly, because I wasn’t comfortable anymore with the thought of what else Sofie might be capable of.

————

I wasn’t alone in feeling relieved that the heap of meaning was almost done.

Jon-Johan couldn’t care less. For all he cared, it could have been the beginning or the end of
the heap; there was no way he was giving up his index finger.

If Jon-Johan hadn’t been the last of us, we might have let him off. For who could know what might be next? Or perhaps that isn’t quite true. The truth is more likely that if Jon-Johan hadn’t been the class leader, who decided everything and played guitar and sang Beatles songs whenever he felt like it, we would have let him off. As it was, there was no way out.

It would happen Saturday afternoon.

First Sofie would cut off the finger, then we’d quickly apply a makeshift bandage, and then Holy Karl would run Jon-Johan home to Jon-Johan’s parents in his trailer so they could get him to the emergency room, where he could be bandaged up properly.

————

On Sunday we were going to go fetch Pierre Anthon.

We spent Friday afternoon getting the sawmill straightened up.

It was December 14. There weren’t many days until Christmas, but we weren’t thinking about it. We had more important things to do.

We’d been hanging out at the old sawmill for more than four months, and it showed. The sawdust was trodden up with dirt, candy wrappers, and other garbage, and was no longer spread evenly over the concrete floor, but formed hills and peaks between pieces of lumber we’d dumped around the place for playing off-ground
tag and sitting on. The spiders didn’t seem to have reduced their activity on account of our presence. Rather, it was as if we’d increased their chances of a haul, and there were cobwebs in every nook and cranny. The windows, those that were still intact, were if possible even grimier than when we’d started.

After some arguing about who was to do what, we finally got going.

Frederik and Holy Karl picked up candy wrappers. Sebastian, Otto, and Huge Hans gathered all the lumber at the back of the mill. And Maiken, Elise, and Gerda clambered around, brushing away cobwebs. Lady William, Laura, Anna-Li, and Henrik Butter-up washed as much dirt off the windows as would come away, while Dennis knocked out the remainder of the broken windowpanes so there no longer were any jagged fragments to spoil the view out. Ursula-Marie and I took turns raking the sawdust out neatly, using a rake we’d borrowed from Sofie. The
old sawmill ended up looking almost decent.

One thing, though, we could do nothing about: The heap of meaning had started to smell less than pleasant.

Less than pleasant. Unpleasant. Sickening.

Part of it was down to Cinderella’s etceteras on and around Jesus on the Rosewood Cross, and part of it was down to the flies that were now swarming around Cinderella’s head and carcass. An extremely unpleasant odor issued too from the coffin with little Emil inside.

It made me think of something Pierre Anthon had said some days before.

“A bad smell is as good as a good smell!” He hadn’t any plums to throw at us, and instead he slapped the palm of his hand against the branch he was sitting on, like he was accompanying his words. “What smells is decay. But when something starts decaying, it’s on its way to becoming a part of something new. And the new that’s created smells good. So it makes no difference whether
something smells good or bad, it’s all just a part of life’s eternal round dance.”

I hadn’t answered him, and neither had Ursula-Marie or Maiken, who I was walking with. We just ducked our heads ever so slightly and hurried on to school without mentioning what Pierre Anthon had yelled.

Now I was standing here in the straightened-up sawmill, holding my nose in the sudden knowledge that Pierre Anthon was right: Something that smelled good would soon be something that smelled bad. And something that smelled bad was itself on its way to becoming something that smelled good. But I also knew that I preferred things to smell good rather than bad. What I didn’t know was how I was ever going to be able to explain it to Pierre Anthon!

It was high time we got done with the meaning.

Time! High time! Very last call!

It wasn’t as much fun as it had been either.

Certainly not for Jon-Johan.

————

He was whining already on Friday while we were clearing up, and Otto telling him to shut up didn’t help.

“I’ll snitch,” Jon-Johan replied.

Everything went quiet.

“You’re not going to snitch,” Sofie said coldly, but Jon-Johan was having none of it.

“I’ll snitch,” he repeated. “I’ll snitch! I’ll snitch! I’ll snitch!” he kept saying, like a song with no tune.

Jon-Johan was going to snitch and say that the story we’d worked out for him to tell his parents was all lies. That it wasn’t true at all that he’d just found his father’s missing knife and happened to cut his finger off when he yanked the knife out of the wooden post it had been stuck in.

All his whining was more than anyone could stand, so Otto yelled that Jon-Johan could shut his trap or else get beaten up on. Not even that helped. So Otto was forced to beat up on Jon-Johan, but
that just turned his whining into a loud bawling, until Richard and Dennis took hold of Otto and said enough was enough. So we sent Jon-Johan off home and told him to come back the next day at one o’clock.

“If you don’t turn up, we’ll beat you up all over again!” Otto hollered after him.

“No,” said Sofie, shaking her head. “If you don’t turn up, we’re going to take the whole hand.”

We glanced around at one another. None of us was in any doubt that Sofie meant what she was saying. Not least Jon-Johan. He bowed his head and ran as fast as he could down the road and away from the sawmill.

————

Saturday, at ten minutes before one, Jon-Johan came back.

This time he wasn’t running. He came walking, slowly, staggering almost, in the direction of the sawmill. I know because Otto and I were
standing at the end of the road, waiting, shivering in an icy wind, with our hands buried deep in our pockets. Ready to go fetch him if he didn’t show up of his own accord.

Jon-Johan began whining as soon as he saw us. I recalled Sofie’s thin-lipped silence back then with the innocence and told Jon-Johan to shut his mouth and pull himself together. Crybaby!

Crybaby! Scaredy-cat! Jonna-Johanna!

It didn’t help.

Jon-Johan’s whining only got worse when we got back to the sawmill and he saw the knife sticking up out of the plank that had been laid across the sawhorses where his finger was going to be
guillotined
. It was lady William who had provided us with this magnificent word for what was going to happen. Jon-Johan couldn’t care less. He was howling absurdly at the top of his voice, and it was impossible to understand the sounds that were stopping short of becoming words in his mouth. One thing we did comprehend, though:

“Mom, Mom!” he wailed. “Mommy!” Jon-Johan threw himself down into the sawdust and rolled around with his hands in between his legs, and it hadn’t even started yet.

It was pathetic.

Crybaby! Scaredy-cat! Jonna-Johanna!

No, it was worse than pathetic, because Jon-Johan was the class leader and could play guitar and sing Beatles songs, but all of a sudden he’d become a howling little baby you just wanted to kick. One Jon-Johan had become another Jon-Johan, and we didn’t care for this one. I thought maybe it had been this one Sofie had seen that night with the innocence, except that time it had been him on top, and suddenly I got shivers down my spine thinking about how many different people one and the same person can be.

Strong and feeble. Noble and mean. Brave and cowardly.

There was no fathoming it.

“It’s one o’clock,” Sofie announced, interrupting my train of thought. Probably just as well, because I no longer felt sure where we were headed.

Jon-Johan let out a long wailing sound and started rolling around in the sawdust with no thought for Ursula-Marie and me having raked it all so neat.

“Elise, Rosa, and Frederik, go outside and keep watch, and make sure no one comes close enough to hear anything,” Sofie continued, unmoved.

The door closed behind the three of them, and Sofie turned to Otto and Huge Hans.

“Now it’s your turn.”

Jon-Johan leaped to his feet and threw his arms around a post, and Otto and Huge Hans had to work hard to make him let go again. And then Richard and Holy Karl had to help drag him away with him thrashing about so.

“Ugh, he’s pissing himself!” Richard exclaimed suddenly, and it was true.

Gerda giggled. The rest of us watched in disgust as a dark, uneven stream appeared in the sawdust.

Jon-Johan was still twisting and writhing when they got him over to the sawhorses. Huge Hans had to sit right down on top of his stomach. That helped, but Jon-Johan’s fists were still clenched and he was refusing to open them despite the rather convincing physical arguments put forward by Otto and Huge Hans.

“If you don’t put your finger on the block, we’re just going to have to cut it off where you are,” said Sofie calmly.