Don't Look Back

'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 left the accounting offices, said a few words to his secretary, and left. After driving for 20 minutes, he pulled the green Toyota into a large car park. 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 where the gravestones stood 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 15, like Annie. He found several. He realised after a while that lots of people had been through this before him, they had merely made it a little further 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 towards 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 20 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 any more. He stared intently at the stout man in the grey 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. Also jewellery or things that don't burn but are placed in the urn afterwards. We remove pacemakers and surgical bolts or splints. When it comes to precious metals, you may have heard rumours 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 sand-like, greyish 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 inside 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 20 years, sometimes 30 or 40, 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.'