Holy Karl went completely hysterical and said that it was blasphemy to break the legs of Jesus, and now they couldn’t give Jesus on the Rosewood Cross back to the church after they’d convinced Pierre Anthon that Jesus was part of the meaning, and Holy Karl would never be able to show his face in church ever again. Then Jon-Johan barked at Holy Karl and told him to shut his mouth, for wasn’t it Jesus himself who said that all sinners would be forgiven if only they believed in him? And this actually made Holy Karl shut up and almost smile again, and then they got the lock to work, since they’d just remembered the code wrong.
But now a new problem arose.
When they lugged Jesus on the Rosewood Cross into the sawmill, Sørensen’s Cinderella went amok.
Amok. More amok. Amokker-fokker, stupid dog!
Cinderella started barking like crazy and snapping at them every time they tried to carry Jesus over to the heap of meaning. And eventually they had to go home and leave Jesus lying in the moldy sawdust in the middle of the floor.
————
It was a real problem, the matter of Jesus and the rosewood cross in the sawdust.
There were others besides Holy Karl who didn’t think it proper. Cinderella, however, didn’t care whether it was proper or not and refused to let Jesus anywhere near the heap of meaning. It didn’t matter what we did.
Did. Diddle. Diddly-dog!
No amount of coaxing or tidbits made any impression on her, and none of us wanted to get on the wrong side of those snapping jaws. After several hours we were feeling like giving up and going home. It was getting close to suppertime. But then I remembered the night we’d taken the coffin with little Emil Jensen inside.
“Maybe she thinks it’s Jesus who took Sørensen away from her,” I suggested.
“So it was, too,” Otto said, laughing.
“No, seriously,” I persisted.
“Yeah, seriously.” Otto laughed, and I got mad.
Elise broke in and said I was right, and that we’d never get Jesus and the rosewood cross onto the heap of meaning as long as Cinderella was keeping guard of it.
We thought about what she said for a long while, for Jesus on the Cross somehow wasn’t going to matter much in the final count if he didn’t get onto the heap.
“We’ll just chop him up into smaller pieces,” Huge Hans suggested.
“No!” exclaimed Holy Karl.
And even though none of us could care less about Holy Karl as far as this was concerned, neither did any of us think it was a good idea. It was like the meaning would go out of Jesus if we chopped him up into pieces.
“Then we’ll paint him black, so Cinderella won’t recognize him,” Sebastian suggested.
“No, it won’t be the same,” Jon-Johan protested, and all of us agreed with him: A black Jesus wasn’t quite the same.
“What if we put Jesus on the heap while I’m out walking Cinderella?” suggested Elise, and now no one had any objections.
The same evening after supper we went back to the sawmill.
————
Elise put Cinderella on the leash, and as soon as they were out the door, Jon-Johan and Huge Hans took a hold of Jesus and lugged him over to the heap of meaning. Jesus was too heavy to be put on top, so instead they placed him so he stood leaned up against the heap. The Dannebrog was aloft, a boxing glove slid down and disappeared from sight, the snake in formaldehyde rolled ominously, and Oscarlittle squealed.
Jesus on the Rosewood Cross was a part of the heap of meaning!
Out of consideration for Cinderella’s feelings, we’d placed Jesus as far from little Emil’s coffin as he could get, way over on the opposite side of the heap. Not that I think it made any difference where Jesus was put for what Cinderella did next.
Elise gave her three short and three long knocks at the door of the sawmill.
We all moved well away from the heap of meaning. Jon-Johan opened the door and Elise walked in, with Cinderella plodding slowly along behind her. The dog was puffing and panting like a boiled-out kettle and looked like she was going to collapse any minute. But no sooner was the leash removed than she lifted her head, nosed the air like a sprightly young pup, and trotted elegantly and without effort, her tail aloft, over to the heap of meaning, where she sniffed a moment at Jesus on the Rosewood Cross, before squatting halfway up the cross and peeing on Jesus right about the midriff.
Pee-pee. Piddly-piss. Oh, my Lord!
Gerda giggled. The rest of us uttered not a sound.
————
The consequences of Cinderella’s behavior were quite incalculable. We would never be able to return a pissed-on Jesus statue to the church.
Nevertheless, one by one we all began to laugh. All that piety was just too comical with Cinderella’s yellow fluid running down the sides and onto the broken stumps that had been legs, then dripping on down into the sawdust. And anyway, with two broken legs, Jesus wasn’t doing too good to begin with.
We laughed and laughed, and there was a good feeling now, and after a while Sofie went and got her stereo tape deck so we could have some music. And we sang and screeched and had a real time for ourselves until we realized it was past nine o’clock.
The tape was turned off and we flew off home in all directions. Imagine if some of the grown-ups had gone out looking for us and heard the noise from the old sawmill.
XV
We weren’t expecting much of Holy Karl, but this time he surprised us: He wanted Cinderella’s head.
Weird.
Especially because Cinderella didn’t belong to anyone.
To be sure, the dog meant most to Elise, but Elise had already given up her baby brother’s coffin. Otherwise, only Pretty Rosa and Jon-Johan were left, and why should giving up Cinderella’s head mean more to either of them than to the rest of us?
Holy Karl insisted.
“Oh, come on, Karl,” said Otto.
“Cinderella’s head,” Holy Karl demanded.
“Get serious, Karl!” said Elise.
“Cinderella’s head,” Holy Karl demanded.
“Quit fooling around, Karl,” said Maiken.
“Cinderella’s head!” Holy Karl demanded, and continued demanding regardless of what the rest of us were saying.
Truth be told, we knew why.
Ever since Jesus had been dragged onto the heap of meaning, five days ago now, Cinderella had been using the rosewood cross as her personal toilet, both for one thing and another. Jesus on the Rosewood Cross had already lost a good deal of his sacredness with the broken legs and all, and now with the dogged efforts of Cinderella there surely wasn’t much hope left for Jesus. But still!
In the end we told Holy Karl that he had to choose something that mattered especially to either Pretty Rosa or Jon-Johan.
“Okay,” he said. “Then Pretty Rosa’s going to cut Cinderella’s throat.”
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 shar
pened 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.
XVI
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.
XVII
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 k
new 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.