by Lars Mytting
Francine had also been pregnant, by a German guard who gave her food. But this child was trampled to death shortly after his birth. Francine was better nourished than my grandmother and was able to give this new baby her milk.
A few weeks later, as the Russian army drew near, thousands of women were driven out of Ravensbrück with no more than the clothes on their back. It was a wretched and rainswept column. Barely a sound could be heard; they were too exhausted to whimper, and they did not know where they were going. My grandmother was wearing the same pair of shoes as she had worn at the beginning of the war. She had pneumonia and was coughing blood. Francine guessed that she weighed no more than forty kilos.
They took it in turns to carry Mamma. Two or three days after they left Ravensbrück, a group of women made a camp near a river and a German family gave them food. When Francine woke late in the morning, she saw Isabelle lying dead on the ground. She had wrapped Mamma in her prison uniform and she froze to death. Francine picked up the baby and felt that she was still breathing.
The farmer who had given them food dug a grave beneath a tree. The women began to sing a hymn, but most grew impatient after the first verse and trudged on. Francine took Isabelle’s prisoner identity card, stood with Mamma in her arms and sang to the last verse. The farmer wedged a stick under my grandmother’s back and rolled her into the grave. Francine caught up with the rest of the column.
She could vaguely remember them arriving at a village with a burned-out church, and meeting the white buses of the Red Cross which were to take them to Malmö to be registered. Francine said that the child was hers and Mamma was christened Thérèse Maurel. She grew up in a tiny flat in Reims, and in time she wondered why she did not look like any of her relatives. In a Christmas clear-up she found a stranger’s prisoner I.D. card, and Francine broke down and told her everything.
*
In January 1965 my mother travelled to Authuille and asked for directions to the Daireaux family home. The only thing she found was their memorial stone, and those who had appropriated the farm took her for a fraudster and told her to leave.
Mamma had nothing with which to prove her claim, and anyway, she was ten years too late. In France, 1955 had been the last year in which it was possible to demand the reparation of property forcibly abandoned during the war. She had no pictures to prove a family resemblance, and as she walked away her desire for revenge was irrevocably stirred. She commemorated the names on the gravestone and decided to change her name to Nicole Daireaux.
On her birth certificate was written FATHER UNKNOWN, and Francine repeated the theory that a German soldier had raped Isabelle. But another rumour had persisted over the post-war years: that there had been an informer, the one called Oscar Ribaut. Mamma talked to survivors of the resistance movement in Authuille, and met Gaston Robinette, the man who had seen Einar’s passport. This supported the story of his deception, and she discovered that Oscar Ribaut’s real name was Einar Hirifjell.
Mamma had not gone to Norway for a holiday.
She had gone there to settle a score. To show Einar her face, confront him with the fact that her family had been executed. On borrowed money she travelled to Norway and found her way to Saksum.
But she did not find Einar at the farm – only Sverre. And if there was one thing Sverre Hirifjell was good at – as good as his brother was at repairing shattered altarpieces – it was repairing the wounds of war. He kept up the story that Einar was dead, and said that a good life was yet a possibility for those who turned to working the black earth and to the comfort of Handel’s organ concertos.
Perhaps he became a father figure to her, a benign version of the unknown German soldier she had come to believe was her parent. Even Sverre was certain that Einar would never return to Hirifjell, and he maintained the more palatable untruth about him being dead, an untruth that protected both Einar and Mamma.
The strange French girl arrived in the middle of the lambing season. A busy time. She stayed and helped out, despite Alma’s scowls, and then Pappa came to visit. Someone her age, holding out his hand to others who had been born during the war.
Alma had seen Einar in the early years of the war, and perhaps now recognised something in her face. With growing unease she found the telephone number in Einar’s old letters. She sacrificed peace on the farm and rang Lerwick 118, to prevent two cousins from getting married.
But by then Mamma was already pregnant. Again, blood had taken precedence.
*
In the letters there was nothing about Einar being her father. But I sensed a great intimacy between them after her visit to Haaf Gruney. Perhaps a touch was enough, a knowing look.
In the last letters one word kept recurring: L’héritage. The inheritance.
It seemed that Einar was the first to broach the subject, and he tried to convince her that she ought to resolve the matter. From Mamma’s response it appeared that the items of value were in France. But she seemed to resist her right to claim them. For the first two years after I was born she seemed hardly to leave Hirifjell, except to visit Francine, who was ill and had not long to live.
Edvard is my life now, and I have no desire to see France again for a long time. Though perhaps it would be the right thing to do, to see it through. That is, if the other party is amenable.
Then came the turning point. It meant that I could no longer read the letters as a conversation between two dead people, but as the start of a story about myself, one that had led me here to Haaf Gruney, and one that would not end until I returned to France.
In July 1971 Mamma wrote:
Let’s do as you suggest. I sense that you will not find peace, and I myself feel it more and more, this unease. Yes, I suppose we will return to Authuille. Walter believes that September would be a good time, it fits in with the farm work. I told Sverre that we wanted to go on holiday. That was how I put it, you know how he has such a hard time dealing with the past. He told me I could borrow the car! The lovely black Mercedes.
We will give the one-armed man just one chance. If he does not accept, I will shake hands only with the hand he is missing.
Yours, Nicole.
10
“WHAT HAPPENED? AND HOW DID YOU GET OVER HERE?” she said.
The same scene as last time: the warmth drifting through the open door, me standing cold and uncertain on the front step. I had hitched a ride with a fisherman and was more windblown than ever, wearing a wrinkled shirt and trainers with wet grass stuck to them.
“What’s that?” she said pointing at the canvas bag I was carrying.
“Gwen,” I said. “Let’s stop pretending. Help me.”
“With what?”
“I need to work out what Duncan Winterfinch was looking for.”
“You want my help? Good grief! Out on the island you allowed me to think you were as ready as I was. But apparently not. You shed your skin and turned into a cold fish. In the morning you barely spoke, just wandered silently around. Now you dare to come here? Bang on the door looking like a creature from the bottom of the ocean?”
“I found this shotgun on Haaf Gruney,” I said, and held up the bag.
“A shotgun?”
“An old side-by-side. I have a feeling that it means something. It was . . . rather well hidden.”
*
The gun was lying stripped down on the table. The mechanism was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The wood enveloped the entire underside of the receiver, and formed a slender curve where there would be edged metal on any normal weapon. I held the barrels to the light of the window. They were coated not with rust, but with dust.
Gwen had a rag and was rubbing the grease off the locks. A deep engraving appeared. JOHN DICKSON & SON, EDINBURGH was etched above a cluster of rosettes. I picked up the stock and recognised the acrid smell of the wax coating the wood. The butt had criss-crossed grooves broken by an almost invisible pattern, like a face in shadow behind a grating.
A squirrel hiding its nose
in its tail. The handiwork of Einar Hirifjell.
Gwen reached for the grip of the stock, and for a second there were four hands on the wood. I let go, she dug her nail into the layer of wax and began to scrape it off.
What has happened to her? I thought. Something about this shotgun had made her mood shift sharply. I had said nothing about the coffin, even less about the letters or the dress.
Gwen opened a cupboard in which was a Hoover and some cleaning products. She took a metal tin of furniture polish and shoved a wad of cotton inside. But when she tried rubbing it on the stock, the cotton just got stuck and was torn into long threads, like ski wax in hot weather.
“This is what we have to use,” I said and took a cloth and a bottle of Fuller’s Turpentine. The last time I had felt the solvent burn my nostrils was when I removed the swastika from Bestefar’s car. This time it was a pattern emerging instead. The rag soaked it up greedily, I poured on more and kept rubbing.
By the time the stock was clean, I could scarcely believe it was wood. For a moment I had stopped rubbing, fearing that the pattern was painted on. But the harder I polished, the more became visible. It looked like a painting whose meaning is individual to each beholder. From a reddish-orange depth, blue and black lines spiralled outwards wildly, like a blazing fire. The pattern changed depending on where the light struck it. It glinted and new shades became visible whichever way I looked. It was like a viper’s nest slowly stirring to life after winter. In the centre of the wood there was a dark, craggy concentration, a maelstrom the colour of dried blood, with thin strands swirling around it. I had seen this in the flame-birch, but the scars of this wood carried something deeper and more impenetrable.
Gwen broke the silence. “Exquisite,” she said. “Divine! Walnut of the highest quality. The queen’s jewellery box could be made of this.”
I looked at her out of the corner of my eye.
“You don’t have to act so surprised,” she said. “All British servants learn to recognise the emblems of the upper class. We polish their furniture and clean their weapons.”
Did she think I was stupid? “The shotgun must be ancient,” I said. “The manufacturer has probably shut down.”
“This has never seen the inside of a factory,” she said, running a finger down the barrel. “It’s handmade. A sporting gun of the finest pedigree.”
“The mechanism looks rather . . .” I searched for a word. “Odd?”
“Old or odd? You really haven’t been in Old Blighty very long. Age and wear and tear are badges of honour. I would guess that this is seventy to eighty years old. That’s nothing for a British crown jewel. Dickson still exists, obviously. I’ve passed their shop many times. What’s the serial number?”
From the trigger guard, a narrow tongue of blued steel ran down the shaft. There were four digits. But the number was not engraved; the metal around the numbers was meticulously shaved away, and the number 5572 appeared raised. I mumbled it to myself.
“You ought to go to the gunmaker and ask them about the history of the weapon,” she said. “You were going to go to Edinburgh anyway.”
“Sure, but what could they tell us? It’s just a shotgun.”
“Just a shotgun? Everything as old as this has a story. Especially everything British, handmade and worth a fortune. They should be able to help you find out where this wood comes from. And how such an expensive gun fell into the hands of a coffin maker. Have you been to Edinburgh before?”
“Never.”
“To any big city?”
“Just Lerwick.”
“Now why does that not surprise me, Edward?” She shook her head. “In that case you should leave the car in Lerwick and go by ferry to Aberdeen. Take the train the rest of the way.”
She looked at her scratched-up wristwatch. “The ferry leaves in five hours. You’ll make it.”
*
“Why are you phoning here?” her father asked.
“I was just wondering if Hanne was around.”
“Are you pulling my leg?” he said, and hung up.
The coins rattled through the telephone box and landed in the little metal drawer. I counted the cost of a failed attempt.
An attempt which had got dangerously out of hand. Because even down the crackling telephone line I detected the surprising emphasis on “here”. Through the smeared pane of the telephone box I stood watching the sheep gathering on the slope. I caught a glimpse of the sea between two hills. A fishing boat drifted into view and was gone long before I managed to digest what Hanne must have done.
I felt both excited and nauseous as my fingers ran over the dial. A telephone number I knew better than any other, which all the same felt foreign.
I had never had to call home, to Hirifjell.
I could imagine it ringing at the other end, every single detail stood out; a chest of drawers in an empty house on an empty farm, a telephone next to the photograph of Mamma and Pappa.
There was a click, and I started when the crackling was broken by a “Hello”. For many years her voice had offered me promise, but now it filled me with despair.
“You’ve reached the Hirifjell residence,” she said.
“Is that you?”
“Haha, yes! It’s me!”
“I spoke to your father,” I said.
“Was he annoyed?”
“No more than usual.”
“Pay no attention, Edvard.”
“Listen,” I said, “have you just got to the farm?”
“I’ve been here for four days. Just dropped in to start with. I was quite cross, I have to admit. The potato plants are fine. I checked all the fields, not a speck of blight. I let myself in and had a look around. He left this behind, I thought, he left but he’s coming back. The next day this summer weather arrived. And maybe . . . well, we can take this up in bed when you get home, Edvard. I’m sorry I was upset with you when you left. You did the right thing, and I’m proud of you.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, I thought and felt the vipers crawling in my stomach.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes. Of course. I . . . I’m just surprised.”
“What are you up to?”
“I’m getting these buildings in order. He left them to me.”
“Wow! So now we have a holiday home in Shetland?”
I bit my lip. A seven-sided coin dropped into the silence between us.
“Where are you sleeping?” I said.
“Upstairs in the log house. Our old room. Took my books with me. It’s lovely to study in this peace and quiet. I can smoke here without anyone nagging me. And I’m trying to be a farmer. I mowed the lawn and weeded the vegetable beds at least. What should I be doing with the strawberries?”
I put my head in my hand.
“Are there a lot?”
“Enough for an army.”
“Just leave them.”
“But they’ll rot, won’t they? I was thinking about picking them and taking them to the old folk’s home. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Listen, Hanne. You don’t need to look after the farm. I’m coming back soon. Just leave it as it is.”
Another coin dropped.
“What’s going on, Edvard?”
“A lot.”
“Listen. I . . . I’ve always thought that you would end up here. Isolated and . . . locked away. Now I’ve been here and I’ve felt it myself. I’ve missed you. I like it that I’m here and you’re there, and that you’re coming home soon.”
I stared at the wet sheep beyond the stone walls and wished that my life was as simple as theirs. But maybe sheep were more complicated than I knew.
“Hanne, it’s not a good idea to have . . . expectations.”
“I’ve thought about it a lot,” she said. “What you’re doing now—”
“Don’t say anything else. Listen, Hanne. I can’t promise I’ll be the same when I get home.”
“What do you mean, not the same?”
“I’ll call in a fe
w days,” I said. “I’m out of coins.” Her voice was cut off and replaced by a short beep. I stepped outside, still with a fistful of twenty-pence coins.
*
The ferry set off from Holmsgarth, turned and passed Lerwick. The city fell into place in front of me: the thick smoke rising from the tall chimneys, the white, crossed cornerstones on the brick houses, the fishermen on the dock and the old cannon at Fort Charlotte.
Fifteen minutes later, I saw the craggy coastline drift past. Monotone, deserted. Black cliffs, everything else washed away by the sea.
A girl came out on the deck. She leaned over the railing a few metres away from me. She was wearing a tweed jacket that accentuated her backside.
I did not move, pretended I was not surprised, and we stood like that for a minute. Then two.
Suddenly, as if on a signal – or perhaps our attraction had developed simultaneously – we moved closer to each other. Her arm grazed mine.
“Are you going to Aberdeen?” I said.
“I have a little errand to take care of, yes. And you? Have you treated yourself to a cabin?”
“I took one of the cheap deck chairs.”
“And the shotgun?”
“It’s in the car.”
“So you ignored sound advice and took the car anyway?”
I suppressed a sheepish smile. “What’s that place over there?” I said.
“Must be Troswick. Why do you ask?”
“I just like speaking English. I need to improve. So I don’t sound like a foreign doctor.”
A breeze swept past us. She turned up her collar and looked at me.
“Would you like me to help you improve?”
“I think we’re well on our way,” I said.
“Just one thing: Were you planning to march into Dickson’s – like that?”
“What do you mean, ‘like that’?”
“You can’t – simple as that. It’s . . . oh, never mind.”
We passed the southern tip of the island. The breakers against the distant headland looked smaller and smaller.
