The Sixteen Trees of the Somme

by Lars Mytting

  “I’d better get some more peat then,” I said. “While it’s still possible to walk upright. And I’ll fasten that door.”

  “Let’s get going,” she said, and with quick strides she walked down to the boathouse to check on Zetland.

  I suspected that the cards I was holding were terrible, not least because the weather was on her side. I began to realise that the conduct of families long ago was not controlled by kind thoughts and considerate words, but by stone against wind. By cold steel against foes. By dry floors against flood. By the attraction of the frightened to the fearless.

  *

  In the outbuilding I filled the metal bucket with peat, hurried back and emptied it into the woodbox by the kitchen stove. The storm was building again. The sea grew higher and the howling increased. I ran back for more, to fill the tub by the fireplace, and passed the small shed near the main building. A thought struck me and I stopped, water running through my hair.

  At home we had the woodshed near the houses, to avoid having to walk far in minus thirty degrees. So why had Einar stored his peat in the outbuilding that was furthest away? And stacked at the very back too? He would have had to squeeze between the tools and the generator every time he needed it.

  “That should be enough now,” Gwen said when I came back in. She had lit a row of candles and sat in front of the fire wearing a thin grey-and-white-striped jumper. Through the material I could see the fastener of her bra.

  “A little more,” I said. “This storm could last.”

  She gave me the same languorous look that I had almost succumbed to before. “That,” she said, “could easily happen.”

  I replenished the fire and went back to the outbuilding. The peat blocks were greasy and had a pungent smell. I dug down in the pile, moving them across the floor, and came to an older layer. The blocks were cut more evenly and the surface was grey and dry. Eventually I reached the floor, then kneeled down and swept my hand carefully across some wooden boards.

  The floor? There was no wooden flooring in this outbuilding.

  I remembered I was to “spend at least one cold week on the island”. So I would get through enough peat to reach the bottom.

  *

  “What took you so long?” she yelled.

  “The door came off its hinges,” I hollered. “Had to screw a board over the door frame.”

  We shouted even though we were indoors, because now the wind was bellowing down the chimney, like a giant blowing across the top of a bottle.

  “Did you screw the door shut?” she said.

  “It would have blown away otherwise.”

  I pulled off my soaked sweater and stood there bare-chested. “We have enough for two or three days now.”

  Gwen walked towards me, her body in silhouette against the glow from the fire. My jeans clung to my thighs.

  “What is going on with you, really?” she said. “Did you see a ghost out there?”

  The house began to creak. The squalls dashed it with waves, as she had predicted. Water began to run from the windowsills.

  “This house is more than a hundred years old,” she said, laying a hand on my chest. She took my sweater and hung it over the back of a chair.

  “So if it hasn’t already blown into the sea, it won’t happen now?”

  “Exactly. Great Britain’s most powerful gust of wind was measured on Unst. At Muckle Flugga, in fact.”

  “Was it worse than this?”

  “173 miles an hour.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said and wiped the moisture from my forehead. I had to get closer to hear her.

  “The meteorologists said the same,” Gwen said. “The measurements went off the scale. Then there came a squall that was even stronger, and it blew the measuring instrument out to sea.”

  The shutters rattled. We stood in the half-dark, in the warmth of the peat fire. She took a step towards me and bit her lip.

  “But this house is still standing,” she said.

  She wanted me to take the next step, so that she could open up and let me in. I could smell her, her hair and the wool of her undergarments, the smell of the sea and wet animal.

  *

  In the morning the island was damp and scrubbed clean. The sun broke through and the ground steamed, a strange combination of salt and earth, of rain and rot.

  Further inland there were black strips of earth where the storm had torn up the turf. Floating in the sea were clumps of grass and seaweed. Driftwood had washed up and lay flecked with foam. Yellowish-white wood shone where the bark had been scraped off. It was mostly pine, Norwegian probably, but there were also some rough trunks that I did not recognise. They could have drifted from any of the seven seas.

  There was Gwen. She took no notice of the fair weather, walked right past me down to the boathouse. Scorned and angry.

  I had nearly given in last night, nearly given in to desire and curiosity, both for who she was and for what Winterfinch had been so keen to find – two questions that met at one and the same point. I had wanted to as well. To see her naked shoulders, tear off the rest of her clothes and take her on the floor.

  But a cynical, almost wicked common sense had stopped me. There was something under the boards in the outbuilding, so well hidden that Einar must have had good reason to hide it. Something Gwen was probably searching for too.

  Now she was marching down to the edge of the sea.

  “What’s wrong?” I said when I caught up with her.

  She did not respond. I saw a dead sheep bobbing not far from the shore, its legs stiff. Now and then the waves took hold of it and turned it over, so that its hooves stuck out of the water like burned matches. Its head flopped loosely and its tongue dangled out of its mouth.

  I waded in and grabbed it by the hind legs. Its fleece swayed in the water, first following the movements of the sea, and then mine as I dragged it ashore.

  “What are you going to do with it?” she said.

  “Do with it?”

  It was a sheep. A farm animal. When I brought it ashore, I felt as if I were bringing ashore a piece of my life on Hirifjell. Heavy, exacting. The weight of my own ties to the farm. The sheep had a yellow clip in its ear, the same colour we used back home.

  I pulled the carcass up onto a large, flat stone. The water ran slowly from its wool. Gwen strode off towards the boathouse, as ill-tempered as the after-effects of a “furious gale”.

  I expected to hear the sound of the metal bolt and the creak of hinges, but instead there came a loud, coarse “What the hell . . .?”

  The storm had torn open the gate of the boathouse, battering Zetland. Part of the stern had been shattered, the wood was splintered like an old broken ski. But it had not taken on water and still floated as it should. There was a small rainbow-coloured slick of oil in the water.

  She hopped on board. The motor started at the first attempt and she reversed out. I walked along the rocks to where I could climb on board and wondered if the boathouse on Unst – where Patna was moored – had survived.

  But she did not bring the boat towards me. She revved the motor with the boat pitching a few metres out, studied me as Winterfinch must have studied Einar, and said “Goodbye, you—”

  The rest of her words were eaten up by the roar of the engine. Zetland levelled out and she disappeared around the island towards Unst, leaving only her wake.

  *

  I left the sheep where it was. I unscrewed the boards that covered the door of the outbuilding and pulled away more of the peat. My hands were filthy. Soon the pile was so tall that it blocked the fresh air from the open door, but now I had dug down to a long, black object.

  A coffin.

  Outside, gulls were beginning to venture forth after the storm. They circled above the island, and through the open door I could see the bravest of them nipping at the sheep. I found a knife and went out to skin and gut the animal. The blood washed the black peat off my hands. I hung the carcass in the outbuilding and threw the entrai
ls into the sea. Gulls swooped and squabbled.

  I listened for Zetland. Nothing. The screeching of the gulls grew louder, then died down when there was nothing left to eat.

  I went back inside to examine the coffin. In the light of a paraffin lamp I wiped the surface clean. Lilies appeared, gently looping lilies carved into polished black wood. The corollas and the stalks were made of glimmering, white mother of pearl. Light played on the ornamentation, like a low sun on a landscape, and further patterns appeared. The long sides depicted a forest. Not some flamboyant motif, just elegant, delicate etching of large solitary trees, peaceful and strong, among clusters of small ones. Blades of grass on the forest floor appeared to have been drawn freehand, impossible even for an artist with a sharp pencil. And Einar had used a gouge.

  The coffin now stood free before me, surrounded by clumps of peat, like a casting mould that had crumbled away.

  The truth. Once he buried the truth here. I grasped the lid, but it seemed to be stuck. I readjusted my grip and pulled so hard that the entire coffin lifted with a groan. Then I felt something give, the lid of the coffin creaked and came loose.

  I kneeled with the lantern in my hand. Relieved, and at the same time disappointed.

  Inside there were two objects.

  An old, slender shotgun. At close range it looked almost hairy; the long barrels had been treated with grease and were covered with thick fuzzy dust. The woodwork was coated with a sticky wax that turned the stock grey.

  The second object was a chest made of polished flame-birch. It appeared to have been cut from a single piece of wood; only when I took it into the workshop and turned on the electric light could I see the thin line of the opening. The chest was so tightly constructed that I had to use a screw clamp to get purchase, and when it creaked open, a puff of air nearly knocked me over.

  It smelled secure. The smell of home. Of Mamma.

  Inside was a soft package covered in grey tissue paper, and beneath it some letters. Addressed to Einar Hirifjell, postmarked between 1967 and 1971.

  The handwriting was Mamma’s. Thin airmail envelopes with ninety øre stamps, posted in Saksum.

  As I picked up the package, the wrapping paper slipped off. The contents had been neatly folded and were now spread over my arm.

  A dress of a deep navy blue, with white edging at the collar. A scintillating colour and a material of real quality, just as delicate after all these years in an air-tight chest.

  It was like receiving an electrical signal from far away. Was I remembering correctly? I sensed a closeness and a warmth, and I recalled movements in a blue colour, but I could not be certain. I put my nose to the fabric, tried to recover the fragrance. Held it up in front of me.

  Was this my mother’s summer dress? The cut looked foreign, but I really could not tell.

  Because it did not contain Mamma.

  *

  Everything around me had disappeared. Sounds which before would have been warnings did not trouble me now. The weather did not exist. I was sitting on a flat rock staring at nothing. The rain came, I got wet and dried again where I sat.

  I wanted to get away. The sea was no longer merely a shield from the outside world, now it held me prisoner on Haaf Gruney too. Einar himself had become a ghost wandering aimlessly ahead of me.

  The coffin. A slender, octagonal design. More beautiful and more bleak than anything I had ever seen.

  He must have made it for my grandmother, for Isabelle Daireaux. In the hope that her remains would one day be found. The trees were the front line, the lilies a bridal veil. The woods in Authuille, presumably.

  I looked at the shotgun again. Beneath the dusty wax I saw that the stock was made of walnut, as was often the case with Einar’s gifts.

  The evening was approaching. I went down to the workshop and sat with the dress across my knees. A faint recollection stirred, but it would not emerge. It was like standing in front of a locked door, with the memory making a racket inside, while both the memory and I searched for the keys.

  I closed my eyes and lifted the dress. Ran my fingertips over the fabric and the seams. Noticed that its texture was stored inside me.

  A vision of Mamma emerged, with me hiding behind her legs. I came to just above her knee and pressed myself against her. I could smell suntanned skin, a bright sun shone and dappled me with blue. I saw some large trees and heard voices I didn’t recognise, and I realised that one of the voices talking was me, it was summer and I said something to my mother in French.

  I opened the first letter.

  9

  HE IS A RESTLESS CHILD, ENERGETIC AS A PUPPY, AWAKE AT first light. And then all he wants to do is hide behind the apple trees. And no matter how tired I am, I join in, because every time it is as if we rediscover each other, it is a reminder that life has meaning now. I speak to him in French, Walter in Norwegian. We wonder what his first word will be. Bet two kroner on it being French.

  Mamma and Einar had exchanged letters in French. Her handwriting was uneven and twisting.

  My dream was to become a glass-blower, she wrote. I was not particularly good in school, but I was skilled with my hands, and I had good prospects of working as an apprentice.

  If only she had become that, I thought. A glass-blower. Left behind something permanent, evidence of a skill to create objects of beauty, something to remember her by.

  I felt a cold shiver down my spine, followed by an uneasy kind of affection. She described me as la lumière forte et belle – the bright, beautiful light of her life. Who had saved her from the darkness.

  The darkness? I put the letter back into the envelope, sorted them by date and began with the first. In it she mentioned, in somewhat abashed words, her first meeting with Einar in Norway. It seemed she had insulted him, called him something nasty, and she referred to this as a “misunderstanding” which she was now apologising for.

  You have to understand that I came to the farm with thoughts of revenge. Strange to think about it now. Instead I found a home. The traitor was not there. Just his brother, who said that you were dead. I forgive him for lying, because it was his way of giving me strength. I soon understood that he too had been hard hit by the war. It was strange to be telling my story to a man who had worn the German uniform. Recount every detail my adoptive mother had been through in Ravensbrück. Tell him that my true mother had died because of his brother.

  Sverre told me that you were a dreamer who was not aware when you upset the lives of others, or put someone in danger. Alma was and is ill-tempered, uncommunicative, for reasons I do not understand. She is content with the practical things in life. Sverre himself said that I brought a new light when for him all light had faded. Then you came and threw a spanner in the works.

  It ended there. She did not even sign her name. Einar must have sent her a reply straight away, because only twelve days later there came another letter from Shetland, stamped at the post office in Saksum.

  From then on her tone was calmer, more familiar, and she began to talk about her childhood. I wondered what Einar had written that had put her mind at ease, and it struck me that his letters might still be somewhere at Hirifjell.

  I would like to visit you, she wrote. Has to be soon, if so. I am in my fifth month. Later it will be difficult to travel.

  In January 1968, a postcard was sent from Lillehammer hospital: Beautiful baby boy! The name has to be Edvard, after my grandfather, but the “E” you can consider yours.

  Mamma’s words both stung and consoled me. I read the letters several times, learned how she expressed herself, perceived what was hidden in what she did not say. She had written everything that Francine Maurel had told her about the women’s camp. In this way I could piece together the stories of my mother’s and grandmother’s lives and, finally, the reason we went to France in the autumn of 1971.

  *

  In 1941, having seen her family hanged, my grandmother, Isabelle Daireaux, was crammed into a goods train and sent to Ravensbrück. Her fi
fteen-year-old sister, Pauline, died on that train. Isabelle had held her thin corpse until rigor mortis set in. The guards forced her to leave her sister in a pile with the rest of the dead.

  In the camp she got to know Francine Maurel, who had arrived a few months earlier, and gradually found her own ways of surviving in this moonscape of cruelty and suffering. My grandmother must have been strong, but she broke down when she witnessed humanity reaching rock bottom in this place. Most of the children born in the camp died within hours of their birth; some were killed by the guards, others died in the gas chambers or as a result of enforced abortions. If after all this the guards heard a child’s cry, they had a new candidate for their medical experiments.

  Since my grandmother had been a member of the resistance, she was a Nacht und Nebel prisoner. One who would disappear and die. She was denied aid parcels, and was assigned to heavy labour in the laundry. Their meals consisted of a foul, brown gloop that was supposed to represent soup, and she soon became very thin.

  It was a shock for her to discover that she was pregnant. Not the thought of having a child, but of the kind of world this child would die in.

  The older children, the ones who had accompanied their mothers at the time of their arrest were now five or six years old. The children understood what was going on, and adapted their games; instead of cops and robbers they played S.S. guards and prisoners. They ordered one another to do forced labour, and did not hesitate to inflict a blow if the tasks were not properly carried out. Later they began to set up cardboard boxes, to pretend they were sending their playmates to the gas chamber.

  All the while the rumours spread. More women from the resistance movement in Authuille arrived, and passed on the story about a certain Oscar Ribaut who had informed on them.

  Perhaps my grandmother did not want to admit that she had been with him. In any case nobody knew who the father was early in 1945 when she gave birth to a baby girl in a corner of the laundry. Francine Maurel stuffed a towel in her mouth to stop her screams, and the two managed to wrap the baby in dirty clothes and hide her from the S.S. guards.