Tore Renberg - See You Tomorrow

But soon they would have a big clear-out and everything would go. There was a skip in front of the house, and there was no point offering prayers up to old memories now.

Change.

They cleared the odds and ends off the centre of the lawn, where Jan Inge had decided that Tong would be laid to rest. Rudi remarked on that particular detail of the plan; why he should lie under the middle of the lawn and not in a corner, he didn’t get that, but he nodded as Jan Inge held forth about not sidelining old friends, the way we do here in this country. Look at Italy, said Jan Inge, they honour their old, while we, we’re embarrassed by them and their drooling, bingo and walking frames.

It was hard work digging such a deep hole. They counted themselves lucky that Thor B. Haraldsen had planted a hedge back in the day, a hedge nobody had trimmed for years, so at least no one had a clear view of all the hacking and digging they carried out that afternoon, because it took considerably longer than they had imagined. How hard can soil be, exclaimed Jan Inge in amazement, while being conscious that manual labour was something he did all too seldom, because the pounds were running off him at record speed.

After a few hours of hacking and digging, punctuated by some short breaks to drink and smoke, which saw Rudi actually crack and begin to smoke again, who knows why, perhaps because Cecilie smiled at him with such love; after a few hours’ work, Jan Inge stood at the side of the two-metre-deep hole and signalled that they could stop. He placed his feet apart and put his hands on his hips, which almost felt slimmer already to him. He looked down into the darkness of the hole beneath. Rudi came to join him from one side and Cecilie from the other. All three of them stood looking down into the soil.

‘Yes,’ Jan Inge said.

Rudi nodded. Cecilie nodded.

‘I think now we can say that Tong has got his temple.’

‘Temple, brother?’

‘Tomb, might be a better way of putting it.’

‘I’m getting a bit of an Egyptian vibe here,’ Rudi smiled.

‘Heh heh, indeed. I had such a crush on her, what was her name, the little one—’

‘Susanna Hoffs,’ Rudi nodded.

‘Yeah, Susanna Hoffs,’ Jan Inge said. ‘She was cute as a button, so she was. “Eternal Flame”. Was she small? Or were the other girls just really tall?’

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?’