Authors: Tore Renberg
Cecilie tapped the spade against the ground and inquired as to whether they were planning to discuss the Bangles all day or what, and that was certainly true, Jan Inge affirmed, they didn’t have a single minute to waste jabbering, before he looked towards the veranda door, a meaningful expression on his face that both Cecilie and Rudi understood: It was time to fetch Tong and lay him in the unhallowed ground.
‘Tempo, tempo,’ Jan Inge whispered as he and Rudi lifted the carpet with Tong, because speed was ‘of the essence’, as he put it, just hotfoot it across the veranda and heave him in the hole. With or without the carpet, Rudi wondered, and Jan Inge and Cecilie weighed up the pros and cons, but seeing as none of them could picture themselves using the carpet after Tong had lain dead in it for almost three days, they decided to bury it with him. Jan Inge was of the opinion there was a certain dignity about that, which Rudi agreed with, because if there was one thing in the world he held in high regard it was a sense of dignity.
Tong’s face, which they had not looked at since it was blown apart on Thursday night, had congealed into a decomposed mask. All three were struck by a feeling of detachment upon viewing it, because, as Rudi pointed out, it simply did not look real. It did not even resemble a face. If someone had shown this to him, Rudi said, and he didn’t know what it was, he would have guessed it was some sort of half-thawed minced meat. Or a heart, Cecilie said. Ironic, Jan Inge added.
Tong’s body resembled a puppet without a puppeteer as it
rolled out of the carpet and into the hole. There were no muscles, nothing in the arms or legs to take the fall, and it was both frightening and fascinating to see it collapse upon itself, joint by joint, as it slid down to meet the ground below.
‘Rudi, spade,’ Jan Inge whispered, and Rudi picked it up hurriedly and began shovelling earth, while Jan Inge moved a couple of steps away, took up position on the adjacent side of the grave and cleared his throat.
‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt,’ he said.
‘I think it’s dust to dust,’ Cecilie remarked.
‘We don’t have the time to be so particular,’ Jan Inge said, and while Rudi threw spadeful after spadeful of soil on top of Tong’s body, Jan Inge pondered how this must be how priests feel when they go to work. Day in, day out, carrying out their sombre duty.
When Rudi was finished patting down the earth, Jan Inge requested their attention. Cecilie nodded and took Rudi by the hand and together they looked like a navy-clad bride and groom.
‘I’ve spent the morning and afternoon in contemplation,’ Jan Inge said, in a solemn tone.
‘That’s not in the least bit surprising,’ Rudi said, blithely.
Jan Inge raised his hand, palm open, to indicate he had something important to add, and Rudi nodded without saying anything more.
‘I’ve been pondering,’ Jan Inge said, putting his hands into the pockets of the navy boiler suit, ‘what took place on Thursday. We have to face to it. Our plan was good. The Trojan horse worked. You, Cecilie, and you, Rudi, delivered. But our dead friend, he ran amok and exploded.’
‘Ran amok and exploded. You hear that, Chessi?’
She nodded.
‘I have to admit it took me by surprise,’ Jan Inge continued. ‘I’m no stranger to shocks or twists, I often feel I can see the glint of the blade before the knife leaves the hilt, but this time the surprise was genuine. I hadn’t foreseen any of this.’
‘We didn’t see it coming either, bruv,’ Cecilie said, consolingly.
‘No,’ nodded Jan Inge. ‘Tong was one tough nut, we knew that. We also knew that given certain circumstances, he was capable of
doing the unexpected. But this? After being such a model prisoner in Åna? After all that meditation?’
Rudi’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down visibly, but Cecilie assuaged any emotion by lifting his hand to her mouth and giving it a kiss.
‘No,’ Jan Inge repeated, ‘the conclusion I’ve reached, dear friends – dear Tong, if you can hear me – is that—’
Jan Inge broke off and cleared his throat. Cecilie and Rudi remained holding hands, Rudi with eyes narrowed and ears pricked.
‘That,’ Jan Inge attempted to continue, obviously moved by what he was thinking, ‘well, I’ll just say it straight out: Tong walked the earth with a cold heart.’
A gust of wind swept through the garden and clouds gathered above their heads.
‘It’s not a nice way to put it,’ Jan Inge said, slowly and deliberately. ‘I mean, is how I feel now the way the mother of a rapist feels, as she has to come to terms with the fact that her son, the boy whose nappies she once changed and has loved for so long, had a cold heart?’
Neither Cecilie nor Rudi had anything to say in the light of such a grave comparison.
‘I mean,’ Jan Inge said, bending down to the ground and picking up a rusty spanner, which he began to turn in his hand, ‘I mean, of all the people we know. Hansi, for instance. A prize idiot.’
‘Such an asshole,’ Rudi snorted.
‘But a cold heart?’ Jan Inge said, continuing to rotate the spanner. ‘No. Hansi has a stupid heart. And Melvin, for example, who went solo. A cold heart? No. An extreme heart, perhaps, but not a cold one. Buonanotte?’
‘No.’
‘No!’
‘Right. Buonanotte. An amusing heart. And Stegas?’
‘Ha ha.’
‘A wet heart,’ Jan Inge said in a fluty voice, laughing, and tossed the spanner away. ‘And Pål,’ he added, clipping the wings of the laughter he had spread, ‘what about Pål?’
‘I liked that Pål guy,’ Rudi said, promptly. ‘A good heart, I would’ve said.’
Jan Inge nodded in agreement. ‘And Cecilie, if I may ask – what would you say about Mum and Dad, if you’re able to talk about them without upsetting the child in your stomach?’
Cecilie let go of Rudi’s hand and lit up a cigarette. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you couldn’t say Dad had a cold heart, maybe more of a … I don’t know … a stuff-and-nonsense heart, I think? And Mum … it wasn’t hard, just weak. A fish heart.’
Cecilie turned to Rudi. ‘What about your people?’
‘Who do you mean,’ Rudi knitted his brows, ‘you mean … are you talkin’ about … do you mean my fami … is it my fam—’
‘You don’t need to say anything,’ Cecilie smiled, blowing out smoke before stretching up on her toes to kiss him.
‘Anyway,’ Jan Inge said, seizing the chance to speak as the sky above them grew more and more unsettled, ‘anyway, the way I see it, Tong had a cold heart. And it’s awful for me to have to say these things, because I don’t want to be seen as a racist or anything, and it’s unpleasant that having now broken one of my fundamental principles and shot someone, having taken my place in the murky ranks of the men of violence, it turned out to be an immigrant. It’s horrible for me to have to say these things, because standing here, I have difficulty thinking of anything positive to say about the man lying beneath us.’
It grew quiet in the garden.
‘And it pains me to say,’ Jan Inge said after a while.
Once again there was silence.
‘He had too little love in him,’ Jan Inge whispered, after another pause. ‘And that is the knowledge we can glean from this.’ He added, pensively, ‘That it’s all about love.’
Rudi nodded and looked at Cecilie. ‘That’s what I always say,’ he whispered. ‘He got that from me.’
‘What was that, Rudi?’
‘Nothing,’ Rudi said. ‘Well put, brother,’
It grew quiet around the grave as the first raindrops spattered on washing machines, VCRs and spades. They stood there and let it come down upon them, both the rain and the scary feeling
of having buried a person they had, or thought they had, known so well; a person who ate chocolate chip cookies and hardly ever spoke, and when it came down to it – they now understood – had never allowed anyone to get close to him or allowed himself to express too much. A person they had not known at all. About whom they could not think of anything good to say. And in this atmosphere, images began to float through Cecilie’s mind. She pictured the flashing intensity in Tong’s eyes as she sat astride him, the animalistic hunger and snapping of his mouth when she offered him hers to kiss, pictured Tong, smiling, pulling into their driveway years before, with the window rolled down and a cigarette dangling from his lips, proud of coming home with thirty-five thousand after a simple break-in in Eiganes. There was a Tong they were on the point of forgetting, Cecilie felt, and because of this she turned to Rudi, whose shoulder-length hair was damp and lined face wet, and to Jan Inge, and said: ‘But even though he didn’t have enough love inside him, either for us or for anyone else, that doesn’t mean we’re going to be just as bad.’
‘That’s beautifully put, baby,’ Rudi said.
Jan Inge stood beside them, conscious of a tear perched precariously in his eye.
They remained there, all three of them, as the rain grew heavier, in front of Tong’s grave, each wrapped in their own thoughts. Three people dressed in boiler suits by some freshly dug ground, surrounded by old junk. On impulse, Rudi began to stomp on the soil, bringing his large soles down on the grave as he walked, after a fashion. Having gone back and forth like this for a while, he turned and looked into Jan Inge’s tiny blueberry eyes.
‘If Tommy Pogo shows up again,’ Rudi said, ‘I wouldn’t like the thought of him coming out here into the garden.’
‘Calm down,’ Jan Inge said.
‘Easy for you to say,’ Rudi said, ‘you’re the laidback type.’
‘Should Pogo,’ Jan Inge said, ‘turn up, we’ll tell him we know who he is and what he’s trying to do, we’ll tell him we have nothing to hide, and if he, or any other investigators from Lagårdsveien 6, ask where we were on Thursday, we have an alibi, and we’ll
make sure to let them know that we think it’s a pretty lousy thing for Lagårdsveien to be harassing ordinary removal people and putting the frighteners on us or whatever it is he thinks he’s up to, and then we’ll point out the garden and the clear-up we’ve carried out—’
Rudi shook his head, flabbergasted.
‘Jesus, you are one hell of a managing director.’
‘And then,’ Jan Inge continued, ‘then we’ll make sure to tell him that from now on there’s going to be some changes out here in Hillevåg. Changes, Rudi, you hear me?’
Rudi clapped Jan Inge on the back. ‘Well said,’ he whispered.
Jan Inge filled his lungs with air and then exhaled.
‘I just don’t want any more grief,’ whispered Jan Inge.
‘There won’t be any more grief,’ Rudi replied, in a soft tone.
The rain grew heavier, turning the ground wet and muddy.
Jan Inge turned to Cecilie. He had broken out in a nervous rash, his eyes were red, the corners of his mouth were quivering and she saw him as she had seen him so many times before so very long ago.
‘Are the two of you moving out?’ he asked, trembling.
Cecilie looked at him askance. ‘Moving out?’
‘Moving?’ Rudi said, looking puzzled. ‘Wherethefuckdidyougetthatideafrom, brother of tears?’
Jan Inge sniffled. ‘I dunno,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Have you thought of any names for the baby yet?’
Cecilie and Rudi looked at one another, the way parents do when they ask each another, wordlessly, if they are going to reveal their secrets to the world, and Cecilie nodded to Rudi.
‘Steven,’ Rudi said, ‘if it’s a boy.’
‘Jambolena,’ Cecilie said, ‘if it’s a girl.’
‘Jambolena?’ Jan Inge whispered and cleared his throat. ‘Isn’t that … a tree?’
There was a sound in the distance.
‘It’s going to be fine,’ Cecilie whispered. ‘Changes, right? There’s a lot that’s going to happen soon and we’re going to be happy together. It begins now, Jani, you hear me?’
‘Yeah,’ Jan Inge said, ‘yeah, you’re right. A nursery. Mariero
Moving. Clear-up. We’re going to take everything up a notch. Everything is going to be good.’
The sound grew louder, came within earshot, and their eyes turned in the direction of the source. It was coming from the front of the house. It was the revving of an engine, a motorcycle, or moped perhaps on the street outside. They looked at one another.
‘Hm,’ Jan Inge said.
The sound ceased. Most likely the ignition being turned off.
‘Okay,’ Rudi said.
Cecilie cocked her head to the side. ‘Is that outside our place?’
Jan Inge exchanged looks with the others. They put down the spades and other tools, walked up on to the veranda, signalling silently to one another with seasoned expertise while removing their muddy footwear and slipping out of their boiler suits, before going into the living room. Cecilie gave the boys a quick once-over, fixing Rudi’s hair a little and wiping some dirt off Jan Inge’s face, and then they made their way into the kitchen. Jan Inge gave Cecilie and Rudi one last look before drawing the curtain carefully aside and peeking out.
There was a moped in front of the house. An old Suzuki, red with a black leather seat, the kind people drove when Jan Inge was small.
His attention shifted to the front door.
There was a boy standing there.
‘What is it?’ Cecilie whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ Jan Inge whispered back.
‘Who’s out there?’ Rudi said in a low voice.
‘I don’t know,’ Jan Inge replied in a hushed tone.
‘What does he want with us?’ whispered Cecilie.
Jan Inge shook his head resignedly. ‘More changes, maybe,’ he whispered.
‘Looks that way, headmaster,’ Rudi sighed, as the doorbell rang. The three of them walked slowly in line out into the hall. Jan Inge opened the door.
A beautiful boy with deep-set eyes, wearing a leather jacket, stood before them. He looked gaunt and tired. He did not look
like he had slept in several days. He held a black crash helmet in his hands.
‘Hi,’ the boy said, with a quick nod.
‘Hi,’ Jan Inge said. ‘What do you want?’
The boy looked at them, ‘I know who you lot are,’ he said.
Jan Inge cleared his throat. ‘Okay?’
Oh Jesus, he thought, are we going to have to open up the grave again?
The boy tossed the moped helmet from one hand to the other.
‘You have something I want,’ he said, ‘and I have something that none of you want.’