Nothing by Janne Teller

Author:Janne Teller [Teller, Janne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 2010-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

XIV

Jesus on the Cross wasn’t just Holy Karl’s God almighty, he was also the most sacred thing in Tæring Church, and Tæring Church was itself the most sacred thing there was in Tæring. And so Jesus on the Cross was the most sacred thing any of us could imagine — if any of us believed in all that. Perhaps he was anyway, regardless of what we believed.

Jesus on the Cross was a statue that hung on the wall just behind the altar and made the small kids scared and the old folks teary-eyed with its bowed head and its crown of thorns and the drops of blood that ran together in majestic streams down the sacred face that was twisted in pain and divinity, and the nails that fixed the hands and feet to the cross, which was made of rosewood and so very, very fine, according to what the priest said. Even I, who insisted that Jesus and Our Lord did not exist and therefore meant nothing, knew that Jesus on the Rosewood Cross meant a great deal. Especially to Holy Karl.

He was going to need help.

Help is thine. Help is ours. Help is us.

Once again I took my playing cards with me to the sawmill, this time the deck with the clowns on the reverse. And once again we drew lots.

This time it was Ursula-Marie, Jon-Johan, Richard, and Maiken who drew the highest cards and who therefore were going to help Holy Karl, regardless of Holy Karl maintaining that this was something we couldn’t and mustn’t do. He softened up some when Jon-Johan said that Karl had the code to the padlock and could come by and pray to his Jesus on the Cross anytime at the sawmill. And that we would of course be returning Jesus to the church as soon as we were done with him.

I wasn’t a part of it, but what Ursula-Marie without her six blue braids told me in a hushed voice on Monday morning during our music lesson, while the others were listening to Beethoven and nearly drowning her out, was that it hadn’t all worked out according to plan.

————

Holy Karl had hidden himself away in the church as agreed following the late Sunday service. And when the church had grown still and was locked up and everyone had gone, Ursula-Marie, Jon-Johan, Richard, and Maiken had come and given three short and three long knocks at the door, and Holy Karl had let them in. But then it all started going wrong.

First Holy Karl had started to cry.

It was when the others had crawled over the prie-dieu and gone behind the altar, and he sobbed and begged so much that they had to let him stay behind on the other side. And Maiken had to stay with him to make sure he didn’t run off. And it didn’t help, no matter how many times she told him she’d never yet seen Jesus or Our Lord in her telescope, even though she’d looked all over, and neither had any of the great astrophysicists in this entire world.

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