The Courier

by Kjell Ola Dahl

  She leans against the wall bearing the poster case and continues to wait. Then she notices two drunks on the opposite pavement staring at her. She turns to the wall and looks straight into the face of a scantily dressed woman. The photograph in the case. She looks at the picture to avoid being chatted up by the two men. That is the disadvantage of leaning against a wall on a dark October evening in Oslo. Despite the fact that she is dressed in trousers and an anorak, they take her for the sort whose services are for sale. How drunk can you be?

  Under the photograph of the stripper is the picture of a black drummer. The name: Pete Brown. The poster says he plays with three other men. Arild Bjørk on tenor sax, Lulle Kristoffersen on piano and Hein Paulsen on trumpet. Ester has read the poster probably twenty times and is still wondering why the group doesn’t have a bass player. The rhythm section of a jazz band usually has drums and a bass.

  A couple walk past her. They stop outside the entrance. The doorman comes out and holds the door open. They go in. Before disappearing behind the door they both look at her.

  I am attracting attention, Ester thinks, and moves back a few metres, to the street corner.

  2

  Gerhard is sitting alone with an almost empty cup of coffee on the table in front of him when a couple come down the stairs and go to the cloakroom.

  The lady coming in searches for some eye contact.

  Gerhard is looking at the stage. A slightly plump woman is doing a striptease number. She is accompanied by the jazz band. Soon she starts moving wildly to the sound of a vigorous drum roll. A few of the men in the crowd whistle. The dancer turns her back on the audience and fumbles with the hook of her bra while furiously waggling her hips. Finally she manages to undo it. Then she spins round, holds the bra up like a trophy and she is done.

  Scattered applause as she trips across the floor on her high heels.

  A man from the back shouts: ‘Get yer knickers off. Don’t be a coward.’

  A drunken customer bursts into loud laughter.

  The jazz band performs a fanfare.

  A spotlight falls onto the stage. Into the light steps an overweight revue artist wearing long underpants, a raffia skirt and a straw hat.

  Gerhard sits up.

  A heavily made-up woman has stopped by his table. She asks if she can join him.

  He shakes his head.

  Then she sees he is drinking coffee, rolls her eyes and goes to the next table, where there is another solitary male customer.

  The pianist plays the opening to a tune the audience seems to know. There is sporadic clapping.

  Gerhard looks at his watch. Gets up, takes his coat from the back of the chair and leaves. As he reaches the stairs the revue artist starts singing. The audience cheers at something on the stage. Gerhard can’t be bothered to turn round to look. He shrugs his coat on as he walks up the stairs. The cracked voice of the singer carries up after him, but more and more faintly: it is a pre-war Einar Rose hit.

  The doorman steps aside and holds the door open. Gerhard is out. The door slides to behind him. He buttons up his coat. Composes himself before walking down to the crossroads by Håkon VIIs gate and turns right towards Vikaterrassen.

  Slowly he walks up the stairs to the 7th June square. Here he stands for a few seconds studying the building housing the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The windows by the entrance are large and reflect the grounds behind him. Gerhard studies the reflection for any movement before continuing to Drammensveien by Abel Hill. He pauses on the pavement and waits for a taxi to pass, then crosses the road and walks among the elm trees in the Palace Gardens.

  After he has walked through them he steers right, to the Nisseberget area. Slows his pace and glances over his shoulder. Then he jogs down the steps between the lilac bushes, which still have dense green foliage. He is completely alone. He stops just before the street lamp at the bottom.

  He listens for footsteps. But there are none. Then he continues along the pavement in the Palace Gardens. He stops and looks up at the royal palace. His eyes sweep the terrain. He turns and walks on.

  Ester has found a bench by the path on top of Abel Hill. From here she has a good view of Nisseberget, the university and Karl Johans gate. She watches Gerhard as he crosses the university square to go into the gardens there. She doesn’t move.

  He hasn’t changed much. Not quite as slim as before – age has played its part. He is still lithe though. The way he walks. Gerhard is in good condition. Spying on him feels strange. Shadowing him and not making her presence known.

  But Gerhard has paid a call on Sverre Fenstad. So he must have done some research, skimmed through a telephone directory. Ester refuses to believe that the man down there hasn’t searched for her name. He has to know she is alive, lives in Thomas Heftyes gate and has a phone.

  Yet he hasn’t contacted her.

  So what do you want, Ester? she says to herself. Now you have seen him. Now you have rolled back the years. Is that why you are doing this? For your own sake? What do you want to know?

  She has no other answer than that there is something wrong if this particular man is avoiding her.

  She stands up and cranes her neck to follow his movements. If Gerhard decides to walk through the gardens, he will come out on the other side and she can make a quick dash and catch him up. The other possibility is that the walk in the gardens is another ploy to check that he is not being followed. If that is the case he will turn round. She guesses he will and watches carefully.

  Then she sees movement by the entrance to the gardens. A shadow flits back across the university square.

  She gives him a good head start, then goes to the steps, runs down and sets off in pursuit.

  The night is damp. As Gerhard strolls up Ullevålsveien, there is lowlying mist. He walks along the wall towards the Cemetery of Our Saviour. The wall is succeeded by a fence made of vertical iron spikes. He carries on a few metres. Stops by a narrow gate in the fence. Looks around. Silence. The few illuminated windows in the house on the opposite side of the street tell him how late it is. He opens the gate and the hinges squeal. He slips inside. Stands still and listens for footsteps. When he is sure he is alone, he moves on. Darkness is no obstacle here. He knows the way.

  Ester stops and looks up into the darkness. She can see neither Gerhard nor his shadow. Slowly she crosses Ullevålsveien and treads warily alongside the cemetery fence. Gerhard is still nowhere to be seen. No shadows ahead of her. She passes the wrought-iron gate, but then she reflects on the fact that it wasn’t closed and stops. The street is empty and quiet, and behind her there is an open gate. She turns and walks back. She slips inside. Stands utterly still, listening. Hears nothing. The obelisks and gravestones look like frozen shadows in the darkness. She takes two paces forwards. The gravel crunches under her shoes. She steps to the side, off the gravel path and onto the grass. She moves forwards again, parallel with the gravel path, slowly, without making a sound. Visibility is barely a metre. She stops. Looks back. She can no longer see the gate. She wonders whether she has made a mistake by entering the cemetery. If he has come in here, it might be a diversionary tactic.

  Perhaps he has tricked her.

  Perhaps he is waiting for her.

  She listens, but hears nothing.

  She walks on. The mist hangs between the trees and the tall gravestones, which appear suddenly from the gloom. Busts of the deceased stare blindly into space.

  She hears some low, muffled sounds, and stops. Then it is quiet again. But the noises are confirmation that he is here.

  She moves in the direction of the sounds. The moisture on the grass soaks into her shoes. The terrain rises. She seems to be in an older part of the cemetery. The gravestones are taller and closer together, the trees are older. She hears a loud scraping sound. She stops. It came from close by. Motionless, she listens. Now there is total silence. Then there is the sound again. And it is gone. It was close enough for her to decide not to move. She waits. There
is a crunch of gravel. Footsteps. They are coming closer. Ester is paralysed as a shadow takes form in the darkness. It is a man. It is Gerhard. He passes her less than a metre away. But then he comes to an abrupt halt and listens.

  Ester holds her breath and stands as still as he does.

  They are not far from each other. Two silhouettes. Both stationary. He takes a step forwards.

  Ester quickly crouches down, hides behind a gravestone. The material of her anorak rustles.

  Gerhard jerks his head round.

  Slowly he rotates on his own axis, searching the darkness.

  Ester hugs her knees, breathing soundlessly through an open mouth.

  Soon her thighs begin to ache.

  At last he starts walking.

  She stays in a squat position until she can no longer hear footsteps. Her joints and muscles are stiff, but she forces herself to wait a little longer before she slowly stands up. His shadow is no longer to be seen. She goes back to the entrance, treading carefully, so as not to stumble. The gate is closed. She opens it gently, but the hinges squeal anyway.

  Stockholm, December 1942

  1

  In the darkness, the bedroom door is framed by a yellow rectangle. Ester lies in bed, waiting for him to switch off the light. But he never does. She falls asleep and wakes with a start. The light is still on. Now she is awake. Knowing that Gerhard is on the sofa in the sitting room, only a few metres away, is having an effect on her. She struggles to fall asleep, hears a creak in the floor and imagines she sees the door handle moving. But it doesn’t. The door is still closed. She almost drops off, then comes to and thinks he is standing in the doorway. Again, it is her imagination. She dreams that he comes in and lies next to her. She rolls lazily against his warm body, but wakes when she realises no one is there. She is sweating and ashamed of her own fantasies. Now the light in the sitting room is finally off, and she wonders whether he is also lying awake. Wonders whether he is waiting, listening for the door to open, for the patter of her footsteps across the floor.

  She tries to count sheep, but can’t concentrate. Gets up, opens the window and draws the icy air down into her lungs, closes the window and goes back to bed. She talks to Åse and is even more ashamed. Åse doesn’t answer. She just looks at Ester with a serious expression. Ester now realises she is finally asleep and can feel herself looking forward to being with Åse in her dream. But when she looks for Åse, it is her grandmother and mother she sees. She asks where her father is, but they don’t answer.

  Gerhard wakes up to the knocking of the radiator under the window. The sofa he is lying on is not a good bed. The base slopes down to the wall. Nevertheless it feels pleasant to lie on your side and doze. He doesn’t have the morning-after-the-night-before feeling. This is different from how he usually feels after a long bender. His mind goes back over events. Soon it will be twenty-four hours since he blacked out. That is probably why. In fact, he feels refreshed. After a while he hears floorboards creaking in Ester’s bedroom and the door opens. He observes her though lowered eyelids. Ester tiptoes from her bedroom. Wearing a dressing gown. She rushes through the sitting room into the kitchen. Soon the tap is running. He hears her light the gas and put on a kettle. Then a chair scrapes as she sits at the table. After a while there is another sound, a softer scraping. He wonders what it could be. Of course – a pen on paper. She is writing a letter. The sound of the kettle, a hum that grows louder as the water begins to boil. The click as she puts the pen down on the table. The scraping of the chair as she gets up to stop the kettle boiling over. He lies with his eyes closed, imagining the lid on the kettle rising. Waits for the smell of ersatz coffee. Nothing. Why not? She turns off the gas. A cupboard door. The clink of cups on saucers. A pot filling with a liquid. Of course. Ester drinks tea.

  Gerhard opens his eyes. The kitchen door is ajar. He watches her. Every so often she puts down the pen and sips her tea. The low winter sun makes her hair glow.

  She licks the envelope and seals it. Gets up. The sunlight outlines her body through the material of her dressing gown. He is happy to lie there looking at her.

  But then she opens the kitchen door fully.

  He closes his eyes.

  Hears her tiptoe into the bathroom. When the door closes he sits up. Puts his feet on the floor.

  Gerhard strokes the hair from his forehead. He has to get hold of some hair oil. Runs a hand over the stubble on his chin. It rasps. His razor is in the bedsit. He pulls on his trousers. Letting the braces hang loose. Stands by the window and looks out. The flat has a view of the canal the Swedes call the Klara Sjø. Judging by the height of the sun, it will soon be morning proper. Small clouds float across the sky. They are pink with a yellow aura. The edge of the ice flashes a gleaming gold. The canal is slowly disappearing under the frosty mist sweeping in. The buildings are wreathed in a steaming bank of cloud that drifts on and disappears. As though the remains of the night are being shown the door by the morning sun, he thinks.

  He takes a cigarette from the packet on the table and rummages in his pocket for matches. As he pulls them out, the ring he was given by Ester comes too.

  First you play at living some sort of life during the German occupation, he thinks, and then the pretence continues here. A ring, a prop – like a ridiculous mask. He slides the ring onto his little finger and lights the cigarette.

  The bathroom door opens. Ester comes out with a towel wrapped around her body, like a dark-haired beauty in a daring film.

  He turns.

  She heads towards her bedroom.

  ‘Ester,’ he says. His voice is hoarse.

  She turns in the doorway. Her skin is so white and fresh that he instinctively holds his breath. Then she smiles. One of her front teeth is slightly longer than the other.

  ‘Good morning, Gerhard. I’ve made some tea. It’s on the kitchen table. Don’t have any coffee, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You’re very beautiful, Ester.’

  She looks back at him.

  He has to clear his throat for his voice to carry. ‘I say this because you deserve to hear it. But most of all it’s important you understand I’m truly sorry I was so unpleasant to you yesterday. I behaved badly and unreasonably. Such behaviour is unforgivable.’

  She stares at him, still not moving.

  ‘Nevertheless, I hope you’ll forgive me.’

  ‘You were forgiven ages ago.’ She cast her eyes down, slips into her bedroom and closes the door after her.

  She can sense it, he thinks. She can feel the desire that has taken root in my heart.

  Gerhard rolls the ring between his fingers while listening to the sounds from Ester’s bedroom, guessing what she is doing and how she does it.

  Oslo, November 1967

  1

  Sverre can’t concentrate on sewing. He presses the needle with the thimble, grips the pliers and pulls it through. He is too heavy-handed. The leather seam tears. He curses. He puts down the pelt and screws the top onto the tube of glue. The music doesn’t help either. Energetic violins. The scraping is stressing him. He gets up and turns off the radio. Stands in front of the stereo system thinking, then makes a decision and goes upstairs to the telephone. He rings Ester’s number without success. Looks at his watch. It is quite late. But he thinks it is worth a try and calls Hotel Continental. He asks to be put through to Gary Larson’s room. He doesn’t get an answer this time either. When he puts down the receiver he is even more restless than before he called. It strikes him that it can’t be a coincidence that neither Ester nor Gerhard is close to the phone. He goes into the sitting room. Sits beside the television. Switches it on. While it is warming up, he looks at his watch. The news finished a long time ago. The picture appears. It is the test card and there is a hiss. He switches it off. Puts on the radio instead. Waits impatiently for the sound. Then he searches long wave until he finds some muted jazz. Leans back in the chair. But he can’t relax even now. He gets up, goes to the phone and rings Hotel Continental again.
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  Again he is put through to Gary Larson’s room. There is a ringing tone. When Gerhard answers, at first Sverre doesn’t know what to say.

  ‘Hello?’ Gerhard repeats.

  ‘Sverre here. I’ve been talking to Erik Heggen. By the time he and his wife, Grete, adopted your daughter after the girl’s grandmother passed away, Milorg had issued a statement to say that you’d died. The news that you were alive came as a shock to Erik.’

  Gerhard says nothing.

  He’s worried how Turid will take it. I think it’d be best if you and he met without her being present.’

  Gerhard is still silent.

  ‘To prepare for the meeting – for where and how you and Turid should meet.’

  Sverre decides to wait for a response this time.

  When Gerhard speaks his voice seems to come from far away. ‘Listen carefully to what I tell you. My daughter’s of age. She doesn’t need to take any account of either Erik or you. Or indeed anyone.’

  ‘I’d still like you to work with us.’

  Gerhard is quiet, and Sverre senses an opening. ‘Especially with regard to the old murder case,’ he says. ‘You’ll need access to police papers and information if you want to find out who killed Åse. In that connection I may be able to help.’

  ‘Sverre, there’s an expression they use in the States for what you’re doing: you’re barking up the wrong tree.’

  ‘Well, I have a certain influence, and what I can offer will make it possible for—’ Before Sverre can finish the sentence Gerhard rings off.

  Sverre sits looking at the receiver, then sighs and cradles it.

  2

  The water is boiling hot. It burns her ankles and then up her calves. Ester hesitates. Holds a hand on each side of the bathtub and lowers her body slowly. The heat rises over her knees, thighs, stomach and to her breasts. Finally she lets go and slides under the water. Enjoys the heat as it spreads. Looks up at the ceiling, where the shadows from the flickering candle flit around. She raises a wet hand and lets the water run off before she takes the wine glass from the stool beside the bathtub. Tastes the white wine, beads of condensation pearling on the glass. Nothing is better than this, lying in the bath oblivious of time or place, just enjoying the heat of the water and the taste of grapes and minerals.