Don't Look Back (15 page)

"No," he said fervently. "Not for Ada's sake."

"Quite an eloquent man, wasn't he?"

Sejer started the car.

"Do you believe him?" Skarre asked, signaling for him to turn right at Rundingen.

"I don't know. But there was a lot of despair behind that gruff mask of his, and it seemed genuine. I'm sure there are mean and calculating women in the world. And women do have a kind of first claim to their children. It must be bitter to be slapped with something like that, accusations that it won't do any good to deny. Maybe it really does have to be that way," he said as he steered the car away from the streetcar tracks. "Perhaps it's a biological phenomenon that's supposed to protect the children. A real bond with the mother that is totally unbreakable."

"Jesus!" Skarre listened, shaking his head. "You've got a child—do you really believe what you're saying?"

"No, I'm just thinking out loud. What do you think?"

"I don't have any children!"

"But you have parents, don't you?"

"Yes, I have parents. And I'm afraid that I'm an incurable mama's boy."

"I am too," Sejer said.

Eddie Holland said a few words to his secretary and left the accounting offices. After driving for twenty minutes, he pulled the green Toyota into a large parking lot. He turned off the engine and sank back against the seat. After a moment, he closed his eyes and stayed like that, quite still, waiting for something that would make him turn around and drive back without completing his mission. Nothing happened.

After a while he opened his eyes and looked around. It was a beautiful place, of course. There was a good-sized building nestled in the landscape like a large flat rock, surrounded by shimmering, green lawns. He stared at the narrow pathways between the gravestones standing in symmetrical rows. Lush trees with drooping crowns. Solace. Silence. Not a soul, not a sound. He dragged himself reluctantly out of the car, slammed the door hard with the faint hope that someone might hear it and come out of the door to the crematorium to ask him what he wanted. Make it easy for him. But no one came.

He wandered along the paths, reading a few names, but mainly taking note of the dates, as if he were searching for someone who wasn't very old, who might have been only fifteen, like Annie. He found several. He realized after a while that lots of people had been through this before him; they had merely made it a little farther along in the process. They had made a series of decisions, for instance that their son or daughter should be cremated, and what kind of gravestone should be
placed over the urn and what kind of plants should be planted. They had brought flowers and music to the funeral and told the minister what their child had been like, so that the sermon would have as personal a ring as possible. His hands were shaking, and he stuffed them in his pockets. He was wearing an old coat with a tattered lining. In his right pocket he felt a button, and it occurred to him that it had been there for years.

The cemetery was quite large and at the far end, down by the road, he caught sight of a man wearing a dark blue nylon coat, walking around among the graves, perhaps someone who worked there. Without thinking, he headed in the man's direction, hoping he was the talkative type. He wasn't feeling very outgoing himself, but maybe the man would stop and say something about the weather. There was always the weather, thought Eddie. He looked up at the sky and saw that it was slightly overcast, mild and with a faint breeze.

"Hello!"

The dark blue coat did stop, after all.

Holland cleared his throat. "Do you work here?"

"Yes." He nodded toward the crematorium. "I'm what you call the superintendent here."

The man gave him a pleasant smile, as if he were not afraid of anything in the world and had seen what there was to see of human inadequacy.

"Been working here for twenty years. It's a beautiful place to spend your days, don't you think?"

He had a casual and friendly manner. Holland nodded.

"Yes, I do. And here I am walking around," he stammered, "thinking about the future and things like that." He laughed nervously. "Sooner or later we all end up in the ground. There's no getting away from it."

He clenched his hands in his pockets, and felt the button.

"You're right about that. Do you have family members here?"

"No, not here. They're buried in the cemetery back home. We don't have a tradition of cremation in my family. I don't really know what it is," he said. "To be cremated, I mean. I suppose there's not much difference when it comes right down to it, but a person has to make up his mind. Not that I'm so old, but I've been thinking that I ought to decide soon whether to be buried or cremated."

The other man wasn't smiling now. He stared intently at the stout man in the gray coat, and considered what it must have cost him in pride to say what was on his mind. People had all kinds of reasons for wandering around among the graves. He never risked making a blunder.

"It's an important decision, I think. Something to take your time over. Most people ought to think more than they do about their death."

"Yes, don't you think so?" Holland looked relieved. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and waved them around a little. "But a person might be reluctant to dig around in such topics." He gave a start at his choice of words. "He might be afraid of being considered strange, or not altogether sane ... if he wants to find out something about the cremation process, what goes on."

"Folks have the right to know," the superintendent said simply, moving off a few steps. "It's just that no one ever asks. Or they don't want to know. But if a few people do want to know, I can fully understand why. We could go inside and I could explain things, if you like?"

Holland nodded gratefully. He felt comfortable in the company of this friendly man. A man of his own age, of lean build, with thinning hair. They strolled up the paths together, the gravel crunching softly under their feet, and the breeze caressing Holland's head like a consoling hand.

"It's all quite simple, actually," the superintendent said. "But first I should tell you, for the sake of good order, that the
entire casket containing the deceased is put into the oven. We have special caskets for cremation. Everything is made of wood, including the handles and everything else. Just so you don't think that we lift out the deceased and place him or her in the oven without the casket. But maybe that's not what you thought. Most people have seen enough American movies to know," he said with a smile.

Holland nodded and clenched his fists again.

"The oven is quite large. We have two of them here. They run on electricity, and with the help of gas, they create a powerful furnace. The temperature reaches almost two thousand degrees Celsius."

He looked up and smiled, as if he wanted to catch a few faint rays of sun.

"Everything that the deceased is wearing in the casket ends up in the oven. Jewelry or things that don't burn are placed in the urn afterward. We remove pacemakers and surgical bolts or splints. When it comes to precious metals, you may have heard rumors that they end up elsewhere. But you mustn't believe that," he said firmly. "You really mustn't believe that."

They were approaching the door to the crematorium.

"Bones and teeth are ground up in a mill into a fine, almost sandlike, grayish powder."

The moment the man mentioned the part about the mill, Eddie thought about her fingers. Her delicate, slender fingers with the little silver ring. Horrified, he curled up his own fingers inside his pockets.

"We monitor the whole process, to check on how far along it has progressed. The oven has glass doors. After about two hours everything is swept out of the oven, forming a small heap of fine ash, a lot smaller than people might think."

Monitor the process? Through the glass door? Could they peek and look at what was inside—look at Annie as she burned?

"I can show you the ovens, if you like."

"No, no!"

He pressed his arms tight to his sides, trying desperately to hold them still.

"The ash is very clean, practically the cleanest thing that exists. Looks like fine sand. In the old days the ash was used for medicinal purposes. Did you know that? Among other things, it was applied to eczema with good results, or even ingested. It contains salts and minerals, but we filter it into an urn. I'll show you one so you can see how they look. You can select your urn, they come in many shapes. We prefer a standard urn, and that's what most people choose. It is closed and sealed and then placed in the grave through a small shaft. We call this ceremony the 'burial of the urn.'"

He held open the door for Holland, who stepped into the dimly lit building.

"In reality it's nothing more than a hastening of the natural process. Cleaner, in a way. We are all going to return to ashes, but with a traditional burial it's quite a lengthy process. It takes about twenty years, sometimes thirty or forty, depending on what kind of soil we're talking about. In this area there's a lot of sand and clay, so it takes longer."

"I like that," said Holland softly, '"return to ashes.'"

"It's true, isn't it? Some people want to be spread to the winds. Unfortunately, that's illegal in this country; we have very strict laws regarding the matter. According to law, each body must be placed in consecrated ground."

"Not a bad idea," Holland said, clearing his throat. "But it's so strange with all the images that go through your mind. When you try to imagine what it's like. If you're buried in the ground, your body decays. And that doesn't sound very nice. But then there's the idea of burning."

Decay or burning,
he thought.
What choice should he make for Annie?

He paused for a moment, feeling as though his knees were
about to buckle, but then he was able to continue, encouraged by the patience of the other man.

"There's something about burning that makes me think of_well, you know—of Hell. And when I picture my girl..."

He stopped abruptly, slowly turning red. The other man stood motionless for a long time, and then finally gave him a pat on the shoulder and said, "You have to make a decision for ... your daughter? Is that right?"

Holland bowed his head.

"I think you should take this very seriously. It's like having a double responsibility. It's not easy. No, it's not." He shook his lean face from side to side. "And you should take your time. But if you decide on cremation, you'll have to sign a statement that she never uttered a word of objection. Unless she's under eighteen, that is. Then you can make the decision for her."

"She's fifteen," he said.

The superintendent closed his eyes for a few seconds. Then he started walking again. "Come with me to the chapel," he said. "I'll show you an urn."

He led Holland down some steps. An invisible hand had been placed over them, shutting out the rest of the world. They leaned toward each other, the superintendent to lend support, Holland to receive warmth. Downstairs the walls were rough and whitewashed. At the bottom stood a red-and-white floral arrangement, and a suffering Christ stared down at them from the cross on the wall. Eddie pulled himself together. He sensed that his cheeks had regained their color, and he felt more at ease.

The urns stood on shelves along the walls. The superintendent lifted one down and handed it to Holland. "Go ahead and hold it. Nice, isn't it?"

He touched the urn and tried to envision what had been his daughter, that he was holding her in his arms. The urn
looked like metal, but he knew that it was a biodegradable material, and it felt warm in his hands.

"So now I've told you what happens. That's all there is to it, I haven't left anything out."

Eddie Holland ran his fingers over the gold-colored urn. It did feel good in his hand, with a solid weight to it.

"The urn is porous so that air from the earth can get in and speed up the process. The urn will disappear too. There's something mysterious and grand about the fact that everything disappears, don't you think?"

He smiled with reverence. "And we will too. Even this building, and the paved road outside. But all the same," he said, taking a firm grip on Eddie's arm, "I still like to believe that there's something greater in store for us. Something different and exciting. Why shouldn't there be?"

Holland looked at him, almost in surprise.

"On the outside we put a label with her name on it," he said in conclusion.

Holland nodded, realized that he was still on his feet. Time would go on passing, minute after minute. Now he had felt a small part of the pain, moved a little bit down the path, with Annie. Imagined the flames, and the roar of the oven.

"It should say Annie," he said. "Annie Sofie Holland."

When he got home, Ada was bending over the sink, listlessly washing some muddy red potatoes. Six potatoes. Two each. Not eight, like she was used to. It looked so paltry. Her face was still set in pain. It had set rigid the second she bent over the gurney at the hospital and the doctor drew back the sheet. Afterward the expression remained like a mask that she couldn't remove.

"Where have you been?" she asked tonelessly.

"I've been thinking about it," Holland said. "And I think we should have Annie cremated."

She dropped the potato and stared at him. "Cremated?"

"I've been thinking about it," he said. "The fact that someone ... assaulted her. And left a mark on her. I want it gone!"

He leaned heavily against the counter and gave her an imploring look. It was rare for him to ask for anything.

"What kind of mark?" she asked, as if she hardly cared, picking up the potato again. "We can't have Annie cremated."

"You just need time to get used to the idea," he said, a little louder than before. "It's a beautiful custom."

"We can't have Annie cremated," she repeated, as she continued to scrub. "They called from the prosecutor's office. They said we couldn't have her cremated."

"But why not?" he cried, wringing his hands.

"In case they need to dig her up again. When they find the man who did it."