‘Minnesota.’
‘So you live there? I’ve got family in Minnesota. Duluth.’
‘I live in Minneapolis.’
Sverre smiles at the pronunciation and intonation. ‘You talk like a born-and-bred American. What do you do there?’
‘I have a garage.’ He corrects himself: ‘Gas station – petrol station.’
‘But this isn’t the first time you’ve been to Norway in all these years, is it?’
‘In fact, it is. The first time.’
The gurgle of the bottle is all that can be heard as Sverre pours himself a refill. He looks at his guest’s glass. It is still full. He puts down the bottle. Swirls the brandy round in his glass and watches it. At length he raises his eyes. They look at each other.
Silence is allowed to reign for some tense seconds until Sverre takes a deep breath and steels himself: ‘Do you bear grudges, Gerhard?’
The other man looks down. ‘Grudges? What about?’
‘About how things turned out back then?’
‘You’re talking in riddles, Sverre.’
This time Sverre chooses his words with care. ‘We heard you died in battle. That you were a gunner and were killed during a raid over Germany.’ He pauses, then raises his head. ‘And your remains were never found. That’s the official story. But I happen to know this story was fabricated by the legation in Stockholm. I also read an unofficial report at the time. The kind of document that’s burned after reading. It said you’d died in a different way.’
Gerhard eyes him frostily.
‘We never questioned the reports,’ says Sverre.
The other man is still silent.
‘And now here you are, still alive and kicking, many years later.’
Sverre decides he has spoken for long enough.
It works. Gerhard finally clears his throat and says: ‘Do I bear a grudge? I’m not sure that’s the right expression.’
Sverre nods thoughtfully. Unable to find the words or an angle that could lighten the atmosphere or prompt his guest. Instead they stare at each other.
Sverre Fenstad turns the leather chair towards the coffee table and sits down. Points to the wing chair. ‘Don’t you want to sit down?’
Gerhard perches on the edge and looks at him.
Sverre searches for words, but gives up. And goes straight to the heart of the matter. ‘What actually happened?’
‘That day?’
Fenstad nods. ‘The day we thought you died.’
Gerhard smiles, eyes downcast. ‘That part of history stays with me, Sverre.’
Another silence.
‘But you must’ve travelled quite a bit that year, from Sweden all the way to America.’ Sverre pauses. He waits for his guest to answer. But the man looks back at him with an equally blank expression.
‘While all our people assumed you were dead.’
Not even now does Gerhard open his mouth.
‘And you stayed there, in America.’
Sverre looks away, composes himself and asks the question that has been on his mind the whole time. ‘May I ask what brought you here?’ He raises his eyes again and meets those of his guest. They are as hard as before.
‘I suppose neither of us would’ve believed,’ Gerhard says, ‘that after you helped me get to the Swedish border our reunion would be so cold?’
Sverre opts to remain silent.
‘Why don’t you say anything?’
‘What should I say? You’re the one who’s said this reunion is cold. I seem to remember I offered to shake hands with you.’
‘You’re wondering why I’ve come? I want to find out who killed Åse.’
Sverre takes a sip of his brandy. He doesn’t know what he expected. Not this anyway.
‘When she died I started a life I didn’t want, but couldn’t escape.’
‘Are you bitter?’
‘Not anymore. Not after accepting that things developed in the way they did.’
Sverre considers this answer and the period of time it covers. ‘The Nazis weren’t able to clear up the mystery. How are you planning to tackle it, so many years later?’
‘It must’ve been someone she knew well. Åse would never have let a stranger in. But the police wore blinders. They’d made up their minds I was the murderer. When I left for Sweden I wasn’t able to direct the police to who might’ve done it. So the case was never solved.’
‘And do you know who did it now?’
Gerhard doesn’t answer.
‘A lot of years have passed.’
‘So?’
‘The person who killed her could be dead.’
Gerhard’s mouth twitches, as if Sverre has made an involuntary witticism.
‘Have you had any contact with your daughter?’
‘Not yet. But that’s also my reason for coming here. I don’t want to burst in on her. I’d like to ask you a favour. To ask if you’d be my go-between. I’d like to have a chat with the couple who adopted her at that time. To fix it so I can meet her.’
‘Erik and Grete Heggen,’ Sverre says, feeling some surprise once again. Why is he asking me to do this? he thinks, and formulates another question for himself: why has the man come here at all?
Sverre continues: ‘Of course I can talk to them, but I can’t promise anything. You realise that, don’t you?’
Gerhard fixes him with a long stare, so long that Sverre wonders if he has said something wrong.
Gerhard gets up. ‘I’m staying at the Continental. The name’s Gary Larson and I’ll wait for a call from you there.’ He goes to the door.
Sverre makes a move to accompany him.
‘Don’t move,’ Gerhard says, stopping by the sitting-room door. He takes Sverre’s walking stick from the door frame. ‘Stuff has happened to you too since then,’ he says. ‘We all have our little secrets.’
‘This is no secret,’ Sverre says, sitting down again. ‘I was run over.’
‘Long time ago?’
‘During the war.’
Gerhard’s smile is chilly. ‘War injury: car accident. Was the enemy involved?’
Sverre says nothing. He has no wish to prolong Gerhard’s visit.
Gerhard puts the stick back, then leaves without another word.
As the front door clicks shut Sverre notices that his guest’s glass is untouched.
He stares into the middle distance. When he finally moves it is to reach forwards for his guest’s glass and pour the contents into his own.
2
Gerhard surveys the half-full auditorium of Saga cinema. He is sitting on his own in a box at the back of the room. It suits him to be alone, at a distance from the others. The voice of Bibi Andersson fills the room, and her face the screen. Gerhard doesn’t see her. He just looks at Turid’s shoulders and the back of her head. She is sitting in the third row, beside a slightly younger woman Gerhard assumes is her sister. When everyone was in the foyer, waiting to get in, he could see a likeness between the younger woman and the parents. The two sisters in the third row are doing the same as everyone else there: looking up at Bibi Andersson telling Liv Ullmann about an erotic experience. The audience is absolutely hushed. Not a single rustle of sweet papers, not a snigger, not a cough is heard, only Bibi Andersson’s voice talking about when she was first married and went to the beach with a girlfriend. They sunbathed in the nude. Two small boys spied on them. Bibi Andersson talks about her excitement at the boys’ desire and what she made one of the boys do to her.
Gerhard shifts his eyes to the screen. Bibi Andersson is drawing breath and Liv Ullmann’s face, behind her, is blurred.
He looks for the silhouettes of the two sisters again.
The two of them exchange glances and pull a face.
Gerhard sees this, and imagining he is sitting with them, he pulls a face too, and shares a secret pleasure in listening to these words that border on insanity.
Then something seems to be happening at the front. Something he has been waiting for. Tur
id has turned her head and is casting a glance over her shoulder. It makes him happy that she can feel the energy coming from him; and when she turns, he smiles. He doesn’t like the cinema darkness, though; doesn’t like sitting here and being invisible to her. Nevertheless, he is there. He waves, even though he knows that all Turid can see is darkened heads over the rows of seats and specks of dust dancing in a yellow beam of light from the projector room above them.
When the film has finished Gerhard waits in the darkness of the box until the two women pass him on their way out. Then he weaves his way forwards until he is walking behind them. He follows them out of the cinema.
Arna asks what Turid thinks.
Turid says she isn’t going to talk about what Arna wants her to talk about.
Arna grins. ‘But what do you think?’
Turid says she thinks the scene with the shard of glass was terrible.
‘Why’s that?’
Turid says that it’s the evil behind it that makes her feel nauseous.
The two women turn right towards the stairs down to Nasjonalteatret metro station. On their way they go into a kiosk. Gerhard does the same. It is packed with people. Gerhard stands behind them in the queue.
The man in front of the women has finished, and Arna steps back to let him through. She bumps into Gerhard and exclaims, ‘Oh, my god.’
He stops her from falling.
‘Sorry’, Arna almost shouts, and the two sisters look at each other and burst into laughter.
Gerhard beams back. He is still smiling as they both buy a hot dog from the assistant in the kiosk. Turid wants only mustard on hers. Arna has both ketchup and mustard. Gerhard moves aside to let them past. He watches them as they enter the metro station. He cranes his neck and doesn’t hear what the assistant says to him. A young boy in the queue behind Gerhard pushes to the front and says he wants two sausages in one roll. The assistant is polite and repeats his question to Gerhard. Does he want anything?
Gerhard doesn’t hear him. He is making his way out.
Outside, on the pavement, he stops and reflects. He has seen her. But is that enough? He lifts his hand and examines his fingers. They are not trembling. Focus, he tells himself, focus. No drinking now, no self-pity. Not yet. He feels a hot jet washing through his body. It isn’t enough.
3
Sverre Fenstad tells the taxi driver to wait, opens the door and climbs out. He straightens up and gazes across a chaotic building site. Between the wooden shuttering, from which reinforced-steel bars poke into the air, waiting for concrete to be poured, there is a big orange Brøyt digger working.
Sverre crosses the piles of earth, heading for the digger. He slips in the mud and uses his stick to prevent himself from falling. He stops. Looks around. Wearing a white shirt and tie under his coat, trousers with a crease in and galoshes over his black shoes, he looks out of place. He carries on. The stick is muddy now. The digger has a set of two metal wheels under one part and a set of smaller rubber wheels under the other. The engine is mounted in a huge box behind the driver’s cab, and is the same size. The bucket has teeth that at first seem to claw at the ground – apparently without meeting any resistance – before they tear up a massive rock and a tree stump, which vainly clings to the soil by its white roots. These are snapped like rotten twine and disappear in the mass of earth in the bucket, which rotates on its own axis and despatches the contents, with a noise like a thunderclap, onto the back of a Magirus Deutz truck, which sways under the weight of rocks and earth and tree stumps.
Sverre Fenstad stands watching the machine at work. When the lorry is full the digger driver signals to the man in the lorry. The engine roars into life and the lorry departs.
Sverre waves to the man in the digger cab. The machine stops. The cab door opens.
Erik Heggen jumps out. He is wearing a red-checked flannel shirt, grey work pants and high boots.
‘Fenstad?’ he shouts. ‘Damned if it isn’t you. How long has it been?’
‘Much too long, Erik.’
They shake hands heartily. Erik’s hair is thinning. His shirt is only half buttoned up and his boots are grey with caked mud.
Erik smiles. ‘I know where you’ve been. Not exactly my circles though.’
Sverre smiles back.
They stand side by side, surveying the site.
Erik takes a yellow packet of chewing gum from his breast pocket. Juicy Fruit. Peels off the paper with coarse fingers.
He offers the packet to Sverre, who declines. Instead Sverre takes out a red-and-grey pouch of tobacco. Asbjørnsen’s mix. ‘What’s it going to be here?’
‘Housing blocks,’ Erik says, folding the flat stick of chewing gum and putting it into his mouth. ‘High rises, the kind where folk live in tiny boxes and chuck their rubbish down a chute.’
Sverre licks the glue on the cigarette paper and looks around. Some distance away a cement lorry pumps its load into the jagged shuttering. In their line of vision there are walls of yellow wooden shutters and reinforced steel mesh. ‘Take a few years, won’t it?
‘Nah, it’s quick, this is.’ Erik smiles and chews. He waves to a lorry driver, who waves back.
Sverre takes a lighter from his pocket and puffs life into his roll-up. He blows some smoke through his nose and has to shout over the racket made by a passing lorry. ‘I’m always impressed by building sites like this. By what is possible. By what hard work…’ He lowers his voice as the engine noise stops. ‘What hard work produces in terms of houses, roads, schools, shops and so on. It must be good to be part of this. Forming the landscape, seeing the forest and fields turn into town.’
Erik nods. ‘We’re born with it,’ he says. ‘Just watch kids in the sandpit. They’re lost in their own worlds as soon as they flatten out a road between two mounds of sand.’ His lips part in a wry smile, then he blows a bubble with the chewing gum.
Silence reigns. The man in work clothes waits to hear the reason for the visit, and the man in office clothing struggles to find the words to explain.
‘Actually this visit is to do with your daughter, Turid.’
‘What about her?’
Sverre points to a metal wheel that has no muck or soil on. ‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down, Erik.’
‘Why?’
‘You adopted her in 1943, didn’t you?’
‘Forty-four. When her grandmother died and it was clear Gerhard Falkum had been shot down over Germany.’
‘That’s the point, Erik. Turns out Falkum’s alive.’
Erik looks at him without speaking. His eyes look not so much shocked as distant.
‘He’s here in Oslo and wants to meet his daughter.’
Slowly Erik’s shoulders droop and he sits down on the metal wheel. His jaws churn. He swallows. ‘Well, I’m damned,’ he says softly.
Sverre remains quiet. He has said the same several times to himself.
‘In Oslo? Where in Oslo?’
‘He’s staying at a hotel. I’ve spoken to him. It’s Gerhard alright. No doubt about it.’
Erik chews thoughtfully. Blows a bubble, which bursts.
Sverre clears his throat.
Erik looks up. ‘Yes?’
‘Does Turid know the Nazis suspected Gerhard of killing Åse?’
Erik shakes his head. ‘It was bad enough losing her mother. The story we told her about Gerhard Falkum is that he had to escape to Sweden long before Åse was killed.’
Sverre gazes at the machines working. A tipper truck on its way down a slope is tilting so far over it looks as if it is going to topple.
‘Then he died in battle.’
The truck straightens up and trundles along on an even keel across the ridge.
‘Anyway, some parts of that story will have to be rewritten now.’ Erik gets up. ‘But do you think he could’ve done it?’
‘Done what?’ Sverre takes the roll-up from his mouth and glares at the end of it. He flicks off the ash and takes another puff.
‘Do you thi
nk Gerhard killed her?’
Sverre shakes his head.
Erik looks away. Sverre follows his gaze. A lorry is climbing the mound of earth. The back and the cab are rocking from side to side, as if it were a toy being pushed by a rough, invisible hand.
‘I think he did,’ Erik says, clambering back into his cab.
Sverre smiles patronisingly. ‘You think he killed the mother of his own child?’
Erik grasps the ignition switch with his right hand and looks through the steel frame that constitutes the machine’s windscreen, lost in a distant memory.
‘While their baby was in the flat? And then he left her there with the corpse?’
‘Who else could it have been?’
‘Gerhard thinks he knows who it was. At least that was how it seemed.’
Erik sends him a morose look.
Sverre shrugs. ‘Our theory at the time was that it must’ve been a German officer or some high-ranking Norwegian Nazi. Someone she knew, more or less. He brought some goodies for a woman who barely owned a button in the world. Perhaps he went there because he suspected her or Gerhard.’ Sverre flicks the half-smoked roll-up into a ditch. He has to shout to be heard over the din of an approaching lorry. ‘Or he was just drooling over her,’ he shouts. ‘Åse was quite a looker. Everyone could see that. That night she was on her own. Which means he could do as he pleased. Once inside the door he headed for the bedroom. Afterwards he killed her to hide the crime. The police were blinkered in their search for Gerhard so the real murderer couldn’t be caught – they never looked for him.’
The last words are drowned in the roar of the digger starting up. Erik holds both hands on the levers. Sverre Fenstad almost has to jump clear as the bucket swings towards him. The two of them exchange glances. Erik waves and is once again concentrated on his work.
Stockholm, December 1942
1
The typewriter roller grips the paper. She twists it until a white strip is visible above the keys. It is crooked. She straightens the paper and takes out the cards with the names on and starts typing. She hears footsteps on the stairs. She recognises them. It is Markus with the post. Ester can visualise him – in his uniform with the Norwegian flag on his sleeve. The short hair and the pointed nose; the angular body and the legs that bound up the stairs in long strides. She likes Markus. The door opens.
The Courier Page 7
