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  Or maybe I was just starting to get a little rickety at the thought of digging up little Emil’s coffin.

  Up. Down. And bucketsful of something I didn’t want to think about.

  There were two options.

  Either I could remove a deuce and hide it away in my pocket and then somehow swap the card I drew tomorrow with the deuce. Or I could mark one of the deuces in such a way that I’d be able to pick it out when it was my turn to draw, and in a way no one else would notice.

  Even though I didn’t know how I was going to mark the card without it being noticeable, I chose the second option. If anyone decided to count the cards before drawing lots, I’d be found out there and then. The safest thing was to mark them.

  After long deliberation, I scraped away the gilt edge of all four corners of the two of spades. To be on the safe side, I then did the same on the three remaining deuces. It looked like random wear and tear. I was on the safe side now. It wouldn’t be me digging up Elise’s baby brother in the middle of the night.

  ————

  The next day there was an odd kind of suppressed restlessness about the class.

  There were no jokes being told, no one sending notes around, no one throwing paper planes. Not even when we had a substitute for math. Yet there was still a whole lot of noise. Chairs rocking backward and forward, tables being shoved first one way, then another, pens scratching at table edges, and pencils getting chewed at the ends.

  The lessons dragged on and went by too fast all at once.

  It was the afternoon we were nervous about. Everyone except me. I smiled calmly from behind my desk and gained a couple of merits for being the only one able to pull myself together to answer Eskildsen’s questions about weather, winds, and water in America, both North and South. Once in a while I let my finger run along the black, gilt-edged cards in my bag, just to be sure I could still make out the rough edges of four of them.

  ————

  When the bell rang for the end of the final lesson, we had already packed our bags, and we set out in threes in different directions. There were four different routes we could take to the sawmill, and we never went there in groups of more than a few at a time. We didn’t want any grown-ups getting suspicious and starting to nose around.

  It took only twenty minutes from the bell ringing until the last three arrived. I pulled out the black cards from my schoolbag and handed them to Jon-Johan. He studied them for a long while, and I had to look away so as not to stare too obviously at his hands as they seemingly felt for telltale marks. Yet I couldn’t help but smile as he eventually signaled his satisfaction and started to carefully shuffle the deck.

  Jon-Johan cut and placed the stack on a board laid across two sawhorses.

  “Right,” he said. “To avoid cheating, we all take the topmost card. Aces high, deuces low. Everybody in line …”

  Jon-Johan added something, but what it was I didn’t hear. Suddenly I had to pee badly. I was freezing and felt like I was about to get sick. If only I’d taken the other option and now had a deuce in my back pocket!

  There was nothing that could be done. I had to step in line somewhere in the middle behind Ursula-Marie and could only play along.

  Everyone was fidgety with nerves, and it was as if the line was moving even when it was standing still. Solely Otto and Elise looked unmoved as they stood there alongside us, watching and sniggering and making fun, unperturbed by the fact that no one was inclined to join in.

  Gerda drew the first card and looked neither relieved nor disappointed, just held it against her chest as soon as she’d noted what she had drawn. Huge Hans burst out laughing and held up a three so we all could see. Sebastian laughed too, but not quite as loud; he’d drawn the eight of diamonds. One by one, the line moved forward. Some were ecstatic, others turned silent, but most did the same as Gerda and held their cards close to their chests while the others drew.

  Then it was Ursula-Marie’s turn. She hesitated for a moment before lifting the uppermost card and heaving a sigh of relief. She had drawn a five. It was my turn.

  I knew straightaway it wasn’t a deuce on top. The first visible rough edge lay several cards down. For a moment I thought about toppling the stack like it was an accident, then gathering up the cards with the deuce just happening to be on top. But Richard was rushing me from behind, and all I could do was pick up the topmost card with its unblemished gilt edging shining at every corner.

  Ace of spades.

  Thirteen out of thirteen is thirteen.

  ————

  I didn’t faint.

  But the rest of the draw took place without me registering a thing. I didn’t come round until I found myself standing in a circle together with Otto, Elise, Jon-Johan, Richard, and Holy Karl. From now on, Otto was in charge.

  “We meet up at eleven by Richard’s bike shed. From there it’s only a short way to the churchyard.”

  “This is not a good idea,” Holy Karl stuttered. “And I can get expelled from the Mission.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea either.” Elise, too, was getting cold feet. “Isn’t there something else I can give up? My watch, for example.” Elise stretched out her arm so everyone could see the red wristwatch her father had bought her the time she moved in with her grandparents.

  Otto shook his head.

  “My Discman, then?” Elise patted her jacket pocket, where we knew she kept the little marvel no one else in class could match.

  I don’t think Elise was very sad about having to dig up her baby brother. I think Elise was afraid her parents would find out and send her away for good. For when Otto refused to yield, she didn’t insist, but merely said, “We have to remember exactly how the flowers were so we can put them back again afterward.”

  Otto now ordered Jon-Johan to bring a spade along; the other one we could borrow from Richard’s parents’ shed. Holy Karl was to bring his trailer, and Elise and I were to make sure we had flashlights with us. Otto himself would take a broom to brush away the dirt from the coffin.

  Holy Karl looked badly affected by the mention of the coffin, and I think he may even have cried had Otto not at that very moment concluded that it was all agreed: eleven o’clock at Richard’s bike shed.

  X

  I’d set my alarm to go off at ten thirty, but I needn’t have bothered. I never managed to fall asleep, just lay in bed with my eyes open for more than an hour and a half before it was time to get up. At exactly twenty-five past ten I climbed out of bed, turned off the alarm, and put on my jeans and a sweater. I stuck my feet into my rubber boots and grabbed the flashlight I’d put out ready on the desk. I could hear the faint sound of the television from inside the living room. Fortunately, ours was a single-story home. I was able to crawl out of the window in my room without being noticed. I jammed a book into place to stop the window from closing again, and then I was away.

  It was colder than I’d reckoned.

  I was freezing in my thin sweater and had to beat my arms to get warm. I’d considered staying in bed, but it wouldn’t have helped. Otto had sworn that if anyone failed to turn up at Richard’s, the others would simply return home and leave whoever it was to do the job alone the following evening. Just the thought of being alone in the churchyard after dark was enough to make me hurry. Running helped against the cold, too.

  It was only ten to eleven when I got to Richard’s bike shed. Jon-Johan and Holy Karl were already there. Before long, Elise turned up too, and only shortly afterward Richard appeared in the mudroom doorway of his house. Otto arrived on the stroke of eleven.

  “Let’s go,” he said as soon as he’d made sure everything was ready: two spades, flashlights, and Holy Karl’s trailer.

  None of us spoke as we crept our way through the streets to the church.

  The town was silent too.

  There was never much going on in the evenings in Tæring, and nothing at all late on a regular Tuesday. We stuck close to the garden hedges as we walked along
Richard’s street, turned down the street where Sebastian and Laura lived, ran past the bakery and ducked down the path behind Ursula-Marie’s house on Tæring Hovedgade, and arrived at the churchyard hill having encountered nothing but two amorous cats that Otto chased off with a kick.

  ————

  The churchyard hill was steep, and the path between the graves was covered with gravel. We had to leave the trailer at the iron gates. Holy Karl didn’t like it much, but Otto promised to beat up on him if he started acting up.

  The streets had been dimly and rather sinisterly illuminated by the yellow streetlamps. Tall fir trees sheltered the churchyard from the street, and although they may well have protected us from any inquisitive gaze, they also screened off the street lighting, which we suddenly found ourselves in want of. There was no more light than came from the new moon and the small hexagonal lamp at the entrance to the church. And of course the two beams our flashlights cut in the dark.

  Dark. Darker. Afraid of the dark.

  I didn’t like being in the churchyard to begin with. At this time of night it was quite beyond endurance. The gravel crunched sharply beneath our feet however carefully we tiptoed. I kept counting to a hundred over and over inside my head, first forward, then backward, then forward again, and so on, and so on, and then once more again.

  Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four …

  We had to search around in the dark before Elise got her bearings and was able to lead us to her baby brother’s grave. Seventy-seven, seventy-eight, seventy-nine … And there it was: EMIL JENSEN, DEARLY BELOVED SON AND BROTHER, JANUARY 3, 1990 – FEBRUARY 21, 1992, read the inscription on the headstone.

  I glanced at Elise and would have wagered she didn’t go in for the part about the dearly beloved brother. Nonetheless, I could easily see why he had to go on the heap. A baby brother was something special no matter what. Even if he may not have been all that loved.

  The stone was marble and very white and beautiful, with two doves on top and red, yellow, and violet flowers placed in front. I almost began to cry and had to look up at the sky and the stars and the new moon and think about what Pierre Anthon had said that same morning: that the moon took twenty-eight days to circle the Earth, whereas the Earth took a year to circle the sun.

  That made the tears go away, but I didn’t dare look at the stone and the doves again. Now Otto sent Elise and me off in separate directions to keep a lookout. He kept the flashlights. The boys would need them to see where they were digging, he said, and we had to find our way between the graves to the end of the church with only the light of the moon, which made everything seem ghostlike and almost blue. Elise stood guard at the rear entrance on the other side of the church, not far from the rectory, but very far from my own position. Talking to each other was obviously out of the question. We didn’t even have the comfort of being able to see each other.

  I tried to concentrate on studying the church. The stone walls were rough and white, there were carvings in the light-colored timber doors, and way up high were stained-glass windows, which at this time of night simply appeared dark. I started counting again. One, two, three …

  An odd, hollow sound came from the grave behind me every time one of the spades struck the earth. A thud, and then a whishing sound as the soil slid from the spade. Thud, whish, thud, whish. To begin with, the two spades worked quickly in succession. Then came a sharp clash. The boys had hit the coffin, and now work progressed more slowly. I knew they were edging close around the casket in order to dig as little as possible. The thought sent shivers down my spine. I shuddered and tried not to think about it again. Instead I looked across at the fir trees and set out to count them.

  There were eighteen tall ones and seven smaller ones lining the path from the street up to the church. Their branches waved slightly in a breeze I couldn’t feel. But then again I was standing sheltered behind the wall of the churchyard. I took two small steps forward, one to the side and two back. And again, this time to the other side. And once more, in a little dance made up inside my head. One, two, step to the side. One, two, back. One, two, step to the side …

  I halted abruptly.

  I’d heard something. Like gravel being pressed gently underfoot. I stared down the path but could see nothing. If only I had the flashlight. There it was again.

  Cruuuunch.

  It was coming from the bottom of the path, down by the gate. I felt an irresistible urge to pee and was just about to run back over to the boys. But then I remembered what Otto had said and knew he’d cuff me one if I came running all of a sudden. I took a deep breath, cupped my hands together, and made a deep, hooting sound by blowing air through the crack between my thumbs into the hollow of my palms.

  Uuuuuh, came the faint sound.

  The gravel crunched again, and I hooted as hard as I could.

  Uuuuuh. Uuuuuh.

  Otto appeared beside me.

  “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

  I was so scared I was unable to answer. I just lifted my arm and pointed down the path.

  “Come on,” Otto commanded, and since I was just as scared of not obeying Otto as I was of whatever it was that was making the noise, I followed him off behind the fir trees where the light was dimmest.

  We snuck a few steps, then Otto stopped and looked around. I stood behind him and couldn’t see a thing. There was nothing there, and Otto continued on. We moved slowly so as not to make the slightest sound. My heart was pounding, thumping in my ears, and it felt like we were stealing around there between the trunks of the fir trees for ages.

  Then Otto pushed aside the branches and stepped out onto the path.

  “Ha,” he scoffed. I peered over his shoulder and felt stupid.

  It was Cinderella, Sørensen’s old dog. After the old man had died, Cinderella had refused to reside anywhere else than on top of her master’s grave. The dog had grown inquisitive at the sound of the spades and had shuffled slowly and sedately up the hill on her arthritic old legs. Fortunately, she wasn’t one for barking. She just stared at us some and sniffed at my legs. I patted her on the head and returned to my post.

  ————

  Not long after, it was Otto who signaled.

  They were finished digging. The little coffin had been put out onto the gravel path and looked abandoned and so awfully sad, but there was no time to think about that — there was another problem. The boys had shoveled all the earth they’d dug up back into the grave, but the hole was still only three-quarters full.

  A law of physics we had never learned: When a physical body is removed from the ground, the level of earth at the place occupied by the body will diminish relative to the body’s volume.

  Anybody going anywhere near little Emil Jensen’s grave couldn’t help but notice that little Emil Jensen was no longer occupying it. Now Elise began to cry and wouldn’t stop, no matter how much Otto insisted.

  We stood awhile without knowing what to do. Then I figured we could roll a couple of headstones from the other graves into the hole and cover them up with earth. The church warden was going to wonder about the missing stones, but he was never going to guess they were at the bottom of Emil Jensen’s grave. All we had to do was make sure we put all the flowers back as they were before.

  It took us a good while and a whole lot of toil to get the stones loose and roll them over to little Emil’s grave. We left the ones closest by in case anyone noticed the earth had just been dug. But down they went eventually, with a good heap of earth on top, and gravel topmost of all, and then the flowers, which had suffered some underway, but which would just pass after we’d brushed them down a bit with Otto’s broom.

  The town hall clock struck midnight exactly as we finished up and turned toward the coffin.

  I stiffened, and even in the dark I could see the boys grow pale. The town hall clock had a deep, hollow resonance, and each stroke echoed through the graveyard like some ponderous, ghostly appeal.

  Come! Come! Come!

&nb
sp; None of us moved.

  I could neither look nor close my eyes and just stared stiffly at Jon-Johan like he was the only image I dared admit to my retina. I didn’t count the strokes, but it felt like there were many more than twelve. After an age the last one died away, and silence prevailed once more.

  We looked at one another nervously. Then Jon-Johan cleared his throat and pointed at the coffin.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. I noted his subtle avoidance of the word “coffin.”

  The coffin must have been very fine and white when Elise’s baby brother had been put into it. Now the white finish was blistered and cracked and no longer fine at all. There was a worm crawling in some earth at one of the corners, and Holy Karl refused to carry until Otto had brushed it away. Then they bore the coffin, the four of them: Otto and Holy Karl on one side, Richard and Jon-Johan on the other. Elise, who had stopped crying when the town hall clock had struck, walked ahead and lit the way with her flashlight, while I brought up the rear with mine.

  ————

  The coffin was heavier than they’d imagined, and the boys were panting and sweating, but Otto wouldn’t let them rest until we’d gotten all the way down to the street. It was no loss to me. I could see no reason to hang about in the churchyard more than was absolutely necessary.

  Behind me there was a crunching of gravel.

  Sørensen’s Cinderella plodded slowly along after us as if she were the mourner in the procession. To begin with it was comforting and kind of made us feel braver, but when we got down to the street and the coffin had been handled into place on the trailer, we were somewhat unnerved to see her still following on behind.

  It wouldn’t do for the church warden to discover the next morning that not only was he missing two gravestones, but Cinderella was gone too. There was nothing we could do about it, though. No sooner had one of us taken her back to the churchyard than she turned around and followed us again. After we had tried to shake her off four times, we gave up and decided she could come along until she turned back herself. Which she didn’t. When we arrived at the sawmill, turned the code on the padlock, and opened up, Cinderella slipped in ahead of us.