Nothing (2 page)

“It can’t go on like this,” his speech began, and that was how he ended it too, after briefly stating what each and every one of us knew, that we couldn’t go on making like things mattered as long as Pierre Anthon remained in his plum tree, yelling at us that nothing mattered.

We had just started seventh grade, and we were all so modern and so well-versed in life and being in the world that we knew that everything was more about how it appeared than how it was. The most important thing, in any circumstance, was to amount to something that really looked like it was something. And though that something as yet seemed rather vague and unclear to us, it certainly had nothing to do with sitting in a plum tree, pitching plums into the street.

If Pierre Anthon thought he could make us think any different, he had another thing coming.

“He’s bound to climb down when winter comes and there are no more plums,” said Pretty Rosa.

It didn’t help.

For one thing, the sun was still blazing away in the sky, and winter looked like it was a long way off. For another, there was no reason to believe that Pierre Anthon couldn’t stay in his plum tree winter or not, even if there were no plums. All he had to do was dress warmly.

“You’re going to have to beat up on him, then.” It was the boys I was talking to, for even though we girls could scratch some, it was obvious that it was the boys who would have to bear the brunt.

They looked around at one another.

They didn’t think it was a good idea. Pierre Anthon was solid and thickset, with a splash of freckles on the nose he’d broken one time in fifth grade when he’d butted some kid from ninth down in the town. Despite his broken nose, Pierre Anthon had won the fight. The kid from ninth had been sent to the hospital with a concussion.

“Fighting’s not a good idea,” said Jon-Johan, and the other boys nodded, ending the discussion there and then, even though we girls probably lost some degree of respect for them on that occasion.

“We should pray to God,” suggested Holy Karl, whose father was something big in the Inner Mission; his mother as well, for that matter.

“Shut up, Karl!” Otto hissed. He pinched Holy Karl until Holy Karl couldn’t possibly shut up, but
squealed like a hog with its head in a fire, and the rest of us had to get Otto to lay off so that all his squealing didn’t attract the janitor.

“We could make a complaint about him,” suggested Little Ingrid, who was so small we didn’t always remember she was there. Today, though, we remembered, and responded all at once, “Who to?”

“To Mr. Eskildsen.” Little Ingrid noted our astonished expressions. Eskildsen was our homeroom teacher, and he wore a black raincoat and a gold watch and didn’t care to deal with problems on any scale. “To the principal, then,” she went on.

“The principal!” Otto spluttered, and would have pinched Little Ingrid if Jon-Johan hadn’t quickly stepped in between them.

“We can’t complain to Eskildsen or to the principal or to any other grown-up, because if we complain about Pierre Anthon sitting in his plum tree, we’ll have to tell them why we’re
complaining. And then we’ll have to tell them what Pierre Anthon’s saying. Which we can’t, because the grown-ups won’t want to hear that we know that nothing matters and that everybody is just making like it does.” Jon-Johan threw up his arms, and we imagined all the experts, the educators and psychologists who would come and observe us and talk to us and reason with us until eventually we would give in and again start pretending that things really did matter. Jon-Johan was right: It was a waste of time that would get us nowhere.

————

For a while no one said anything. I screwed my eyes up at the sun, then stared at the white soccer goals without their nets, then behind me at the shot-put circle, the high-jump mattresses, and the running track. A gentle breeze was blowing through the beech hedge that ran round the soccer field, and suddenly it was all like a gym lesson
and a day like any other, and I almost forgot why we had to get Pierre Anthon out of his plum tree. For all I care he can sit up there and yell till he rots, I thought. I said nothing. The thought was true only at the moment it was thought.

“Let’s pelt him with stones,” Otto suggested, and now came a lengthy discussion about where to get hold of the stones and how big they should be and who was going to throw them, for the idea was good.

Good, better, best.

It was the only one we had.

One stone, two stones, many stones.

They were all piled up in the bike trailer Holy Karl used every Tuesday afternoon for delivering the local paper and the church newsletter the first Wednesday of the month. We’d gathered them down by the stream where they were big and round, and the trailer was heavy as a dead horse.

We were all going to throw.

“Two each, at the least,” Jon-Johan commanded.

Otto kept tally to make sure we each took our turn. Even Henrik, the little butter-up, had been summoned and duly delivered his two shots,
neither of which came even close. Maiken’s and Sofie’s were marginally better.

“So nothing’s got you all scared, then?” Pierre Anthon hollered as he followed Ursula-Marie’s pathetic shots and watched them land in the hedge.

“You’re only up there because your dad’s still stuck in ’68!” shouted Huge Hans, and hurled a stone into the tree. It smacked into a plum, which splattered in all directions.

We hooted.

I hooted with the rest of them, even though I knew neither claim was true. Pierre Anthon’s father and the rest of the commune grew organic vegetables and practiced exotic religions and were receptive to the spiritual world, alternative treatments, and their fellow human beings. But that wasn’t the reason it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true because Pierre Anthon’s father wore a buzz cut and worked for a computer company, and the whole thing was up-to-the-minute and had
nothing to do with either ’68 or Pierre Anthon in the slightest.

“My dad’s not stuck in anything, and neither am I!” Pierre Anthon yelled, wiping splatterings of plum from his arm. “I’m sitting here in nothing. And better to be sitting in nothing than in something that isn’t anything!”

It was early morning.

The sun was beating down from the east, directly into Pierre Anthon’s eyes. He had to shield them with his hand if he wanted to see us. We were standing with our backs to the sun around the trailer on the opposite side of the road. Out of range of Pierre Anthon’s plums.

We didn’t answer him.

It was Richard’s turn. And Richard hurled a stone that cracked hard against the trunk of the plum tree, and another that tore in among the leaves and plums and just missed Pierre Anthon’s left ear. Then it was my turn. I’ve never been good at throwing, but I was angry and determined, and
though my first shot ended up in the hedge next to Ursula-Marie’s, the second rattled right into the branch on which Pierre Anthon was sitting.

“Hey, Agnes,” Pierre Anthon shouted down at me. “You’re having such problems believing things matter?”

I flung a third stone, and this time I must have grazed him, because we heard a howl, and for a moment it was quiet up in the tree. Then Otto threw, but too high and too far, and Pierre Anthon began his hollering again.

“If you live to be eighty, you’ll have slept thirty years away, gone to school and sat with homework for nine, and worked for almost fourteen. Since you’ve already spent more than six years being little kids and playing, and you’re later going to be spending at least twelve cleaning house, cooking food, and looking after your own kids, it means you’ve got nine years at most to live.” Pierre Anthon tossed a plum into the air. It followed a gentle arc before plunging into the gutter. “And
you want to spend those nine years pretending you’ve amounted to something in a masquerade that means nothing, when instead you could start enjoying your nine years right away.” He pulled another plum off a branch, reclined contentedly in the fork of the tree, and appeared to be weighing the plum in his hand. He took a big bite and laughed. The Victorias were ripening.

“It’s not a masquerade!” Otto yelled, threatening Pierre Anthon with a fist.

“It’s not a masquerade!” Huge Hans joined in, and launched another stone.

“Then how come everyone’s making like everything that isn’t important is very important, all the while they’re so busy pretending what’s really important isn’t important at all?” Pierre Anthon laughed and drew an arm across his face to wipe away the plum juice from his chin. “How come it’s so important we learn to say please and thank you and the same to you and how do you do when soon none of us will be doing anything
anymore, and everybody knows that instead they could be sitting here eating plums, watching the world go by and getting used to being a part of nothing?”

Holy Karl’s two stones were sent off in quick succession.

“If nothing matters, then it’s better doing nothing than something. Especially if something is throwing stones because you haven’t the guts to climb trees.”

The stones rained in on the plum tree from all sides. The pitching order was forgotten. Everyone was throwing at once now, and soon Pierre Anthon let out a howl and fell out of the tree, landing with a thump on the grass behind the hedge. Which was just as well, because all our stones were used up and time was getting on. Holy Karl had to be off home with his trailer if he was going to make it to school before the bell.

————

The next morning it was quiet in the plum tree when we passed by on our way to school.

Otto was the first one to cross the street. Then followed Huge Hans, who jumped up heavily and yanked away two Victorias with a handful of leaves and a holler, and when there still was no reaction, the rest of us followed, jubilant.

We’d won!

Victory is sweet. Victory is. Victory.

————

Two days later Pierre Anthon was back in his plum tree with a Band-Aid across his forehead and a whole new range of repartee: “Even if you learn something and think you’re good at it, there’ll always be someone who’s better.”

“Pipe down!” I yelled back. “I’m going to be something worth being! And famous, too!”

“Sure you are, Agnes.” Pierre Anthon’s voice was kind, almost pitying. “You’ll be a fashion designer and teeter around in high heels and make
like you’re really something and make others think they are too, as long as they’re wearing your label.” He shook his head. “But you’ll find out you’re a clown in a trivial circus where everyone tries to convince each other how vital it is to have a certain look one year and another the next. And then you’ll find out that fame and the big wide world are outside of you, and that inside there’s nothing, and always will be, no matter what you do.”

I surveyed the ground; there were no stones anywhere.

“Shut up!” I screamed, but Pierre Anthon kept on.

“Why not admit from the outset that nothing matters and just enjoy the nothing that is?”

I gave him the finger.

Pierre Anthon just laughed.

Furious, I grabbed Ursula-Marie by the arm, because Ursula-Marie was my friend with blue hair and six thick braids, and that was definitely something. Blue, bluer, bluest. If my mother
hadn’t expressly forbidden it, my hair would have been blue too. As it was, I had to make do with the six braids, which weren’t particularly impressive given my fine, wispy hair, but at least it was something.

————

Only a few days passed before Jon-Johan again summoned us to the soccer field.

There were no good suggestions, but loads of poor ones. None of us was listening to Otto anymore, and if he hadn’t been the strongest in the class, at least since Pierre Anthon had left school, we all would have laid into him.

Just as we were about to break up and leave, not being able to come up with anything anyway, Sofie stepped forward.

“We have to prove to Pierre Anthon that something matters,” was all she said. Yet it was plenty, for we all knew right away what it was we had to do.

We set out the very next day.

Sofie lived at exactly the point where Tæring stopped being town and became countryside. Behind the yellow-washed house where Sofie lived with her parents was a large field with an abandoned sawmill at one end. The sawmill wasn’t used for anything anymore and was to be torn down to make room for a recreation facility the town dignitaries had been talking about for years. Even so, nobody was really counting on that recreation facility, and although the sawmill had gradually fallen into disrepair, with broken windows and holes in the roof, it
was still there and was exactly what we needed.

At lunch recess we all handed over our one- and two- and five-kroner coins to Jon-Johan, who ran the entire way to the hardware store, made our purchase, and ran all the way back again clutching a brand-new combination padlock.

There was some discussion about what code to choose, since everyone thought their own birthday provided the most suitable combination of figures. Eventually we agreed on the fifth of February, it being the day of Pierre Anthon’s birth. Five-zero-two were the numbers we all concentrated on committing to memory, so much so that we forgot about our homework and about paying attention in class, and Mr. Eskildsen started growing suspicious and asked if our heads were full of sparrows or whether we’d just lost whatever little it was that had been attached to our necks.

We didn’t reply. Not one of us. Five-zero-two!

We had the sawmill, we had the lock, and we knew what we had to do. Nevertheless, it was a lot
harder than we had reckoned. With Pierre Anthon being in some way right about nothing mattering, it was no easy thing to start collecting something that did.

Again, it was Sofie who saved the day.

“We just play along with the idea,” she said, and gradually we all found our own ploys to help us.

Elise remembered when she was six and had cried when an Alsatian dog had bitten the head off her doll, so she dug out the old doll and its chewed-off head from the boxes in her basement and brought them along with her to the sawmill. Holy Karl brought an old hymnbook that was missing its front and back and quite a number of its hymns, but nevertheless ran with no other defects from page 27 to page 389. Ursula-Marie delivered a pink ivory comb missing two teeth, and Jon-Johan chipped in with a Beatles tape that had lost all sound, but that he had never had the heart to throw out.