She poured water from a pitcher full of melting ice and then cut a lemon in half, squeezing the juice into both glasses.
‘You remind me of your mother,’ she said.
‘I hope not.’
She smiled, and the room became lighter.
‘How is she?’
‘Dying.’
‘Yes, Erik told me. I’m very sorry.’
‘I think you should be sorry for a lot of things.’
The remark was meant to wound her but she didn’t even flinch.
‘I read a lot about you,’ I said, taking the water from her, ‘in Silje’s diaries.’
Her glass stopped, poised close to her mouth, and she appeared to look straight into my eyes. ‘Then you know things that very few are privy to.’
‘You and her…’
‘Yes,’ she said, sipping at her glass, ‘her and me.’
‘Did you love her?’
Her eyelids started twitching; she was consumed by memories that had burst free from wherever she kept them imprisoned. ‘You have no idea,’ she said. A tear escaped her right eye; she quickly wiped it away.
‘You never married.’
‘No.’
She fell silent so I asked her about the orchid fields that surrounded her home.
‘Silje’s father taught me,’ she said, brightening slightly. ‘She never seemed interested. He bred an orchid in memory of his late wife, you know.’ She pointed through the window. ‘The acre closest to the house.’
I’d seen them as I’d approached. They were a deep cream colour with a single black spot at the bottom of the cup. The wind brought the smell of vanilla into the room.
‘I think there is something else you want to ask me.’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
She placed the glass on a table and seated herself in a wicker chair. She folded one leg under the other. The muscles in her neck tensed.
‘I’ve pieced things together. I know that your mother was Gruetzmacher’s housekeeper before the war began. I know that he—’ The words locked in my throat. It was fine talking to Bergström about it; then it was remote, flat words typed on a plain sheet of paper. And now I was standing in a room with her, the woman whom this had happened to, the woman I was already growing fond of no matter how hard I tried not to… The flat, clinical words suddenly sprang into life.
‘He raped me,’ she said. ‘From when I was seven years old. Every three months, on the third day of that month. You could mark a calendar by him.’ She shivered. ‘It felt like he was testing me; seeing what had changed in me every quarter year. And between the attacks, I couldn’t breathe, just waiting for the day to come around when it would happen again.’
‘Didn’t you tell anyone?’
Freya shook her head. ‘I should have done. Easy to say now I suppose. But it was 1936. The Germans had been persecuting Jews for years by then. My father’s millinery business had burnt to the ground, and my mother had to give up being a cellist and take whatever work she could get. She cleaned houses for some of the party members, but as Hitler’s influence spread, the work disappeared. In the end, the only employment she could find was with him.’
‘Gruetzmacher.’
‘Yes, and I was the reason why.’
She picked up a box of cigarettes from the dresser and lit one. She offered one to me, but the heat was punishing; I didn’t want to smoke.
‘His wife found us in the end. She was a member of Nationalsozialistische Frauenschaft and attended meetings almost every day. But she was taken ill on that third day of the third month, so she was driven home. He didn’t hear her enter the house, or walk upstairs, or open the bedroom door. I heard her though, and I didn’t warn him because I thought that if he was discovered then it would stop. She reported her husband for having carnal relations with a Jew. He lost everything: his position, his home, his family. My mother lost her job, but at least I was free.
‘But then he came back, a year later, restored, aside from his sanity. He found us living in the ghetto. He beat my father within an inch of his life and took my mother and me. He said we were going to be part of a grand plan that would help Germany win a war that hadn’t begun.’
‘Iscariot.’
‘I think it was called Odin back then. After a year and six days, I could dismantle and assemble a machine gun without light. I could build a radio from scratch. I became fluent in three languages. I could run five miles in sub-zero temperatures carrying a field pack that weighed more than I did. I could kill a man twice my size with my bare hands. They forged us into murderers during the day and then returned us to our faith at night. It sounds like you need more water.’
I said I could get it myself, wondering what ‘needing more water’ sounded like to a blind woman.
‘And then, after a year and six days, came the final test of loyalty,’ she said matter-of-factly, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘We were taken to an old aerodrome and each child was ordered to shoot its mother. Two of the children shot themselves. One shot someone else’s mother. I don’t know if he didn’t understand the instructions or hoped that it would be enough. Anyway, he failed the test, so the guards killed him.’
She stopped, uncertain if she was remembering it correctly.
‘Yes, one shot three guards, before she was cut down.’ She smiled distantly. ‘I don’t think Gruetzmacher saw that coming.’
I didn’t doubt it.
‘Ivan and Sol were the bravest of us. They didn’t cry, they didn’t beg. They stood up straight and held each other as they were executed.’ Again, she offered me a cigarette. I took it, too numb to do otherwise.
‘Three did as they were asked, one without hesitation. I think Aliza hated her mother though I cannot think why. She’d always been kind to me.’
‘But you survived,’ I said.
‘I was spared,’ she replied. ‘I couldn’t do it. No matter how much my mother begged me, I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. She shouted at me, told me I was weak, a godless daughter; then she told me she loved me more than anything else on earth and if I loved her then I would do this one simple thing: I would grow old. And I failed her. In the end she put the gun in her own mouth and put her finger over mine to pull the trigger. It was the last thing I ever saw.’
She straightened her legs and flexed her toes.
‘Gruetzmacher let me go. I don’t know why. He argued with another scientist and then had me taken back to the ghetto. I never told my father what had happened, and he never asked me what became of my mother. But I think he knew I had done something terrible. He was just happy to see me again.’
‘And then Norway.’
‘Yes, with help. A lot of help from people who gave up their own chance of escape so we could make the journey. We wouldn’t have survived in Berlin, not a penniless hat-maker and his blind daughter.’
She rose from her chair and settled her eyes on my right shoulder.
‘But that isn’t what you wanted to ask me, is it?’
I said no, it wasn’t.
Freya sighed, and looked for all the world as though she were watching me. She turned and walked from the room. ‘Bring the water and the glasses,’ she said. ‘It’s very hot outside.’
I picked up the tray and followed her to the rear of the house, to a large garden that grew wild with thorns and roses. Bamboo plants grew crookedly from two corners, and bindweeds threatened to choke the life from the orchids growing in an uneven square of dry grass that hadn’t been cut in months.
She’d had gone to considerable effort to make her personal garden as grotesque as humanly possible.
Freya smiled and apologised for the heat. ‘There are microphones in the house,’ she said. ‘I can hear them.’
I put down the tray and sat next to her on a love seat wrought from iron gargoyles. I wondered if my father had made it for her. I doubted it; according to Silje’s diary, Erik Brenna was incapable of making anything that wouldn’t be loved.
‘Th
is garden,’ I said. ‘This is how you punish yourself.’
Freya inclined her head towards me, and for a moment, in her eyes, I could see someone else. I slid away from her.
‘Iscariot took my sight but left dreams in its place. I remember when they started, two nights after I met Silje for the first time, I dreamt I betrayed my father to the Nazis. Every night, the same dream. And when I was rescued and taken to Fólkvangr, I dreamt of messages to the enemy hidden in the stones of the Ohnstad Monument. I thought it was just the guilt because I’d let them torture my father and take him away from me. ’
‘You were young. There is nothing you could have done.’
She smiled again, but not at me. ‘That’s exactly what Silje used to say.’ She poured out two glasses, and didn’t drink until I’d finished mine.
‘There was an old man called Josef. Josef Kleppe. He was a widower, a lovely, tragic man who lit the street lamps around the village when night fell. I used to walk with him every second night of his rounds. I wasn’t much use to him, but he liked my company. He was lighting the lamps closest to the Monument, the night after one of the dreams. I could hear him breathing, singing, facing away from me, and I was so close to the Monument… I didn’t expect to find anything, not really.’ She closed her eyes. ‘But the dreams were driving me mad, and I thought if I just searched the flagstones then I’d know I was imagining it, and I’d be free of them.’ She covered her mouth with her hands, and her shoulders began to shake. But she held herself together and her composure returned after three deep breaths. Like me, she could cry quickly and silently. I wondered if this was something Iscariot had taught her, as Monica had taught me.
‘There were scores of them,’ she whispered. ‘I couldn’t see them, but I could feel their shape, their weight. The paper was from the supply the Germans had given to Silje, torn into quarters and then folded in half. I could taste the charcoal in the air. I didn’t remember writing them, but the touch felt so familiar. That’s when I knew. The dreams about the message drops, about betraying my father… They weren’t dreams at all.
‘And then Josef found me weeping on the ground, trying to hide the notes in my dress. He saw what I was doing, and he started crying too. He said I’d betrayed the village. He didn’t understand I was hiding them. I was going to burn them. I thought he would tell the villagers, and Silje would find out, and she’d be so ashamed of me. I would lose her, and that’s when I lost myself… I just disappeared. I thought I was buried for days, trapped in the darkness. And when I came back, I was still at the Monument, with a flagstone in my hand and Josef Kleppe dead at my feet.’
I realised Freya was sitting closer to me now, and I hadn’t seen her move.
She raised an eyebrow and turned her head towards the house. ‘Jesper is coming – with… six… seven men.’
‘Does he know any of this?’
‘No.’
‘Then why tell me?’
‘Because you remind me of her. Because if I had your courage I would have told her what I’d done. I would have saved her life, and Magnus’s, and Mr Ohnstad’s, and all the others.’ She leaned across and gently stroked my ear between her finger and thumb. ‘Tell Bergström if you must.’
Bergström pounded on the front door.
‘What’ll happen to you?’
‘Oh, they won’t hurt me. They’ll make sure I never hold office. They’ll use Iscariot to mount a witchhunt and sweep away their enemies. They’ll say the information came from elsewhere so they don’t look like the secret police force they are. And thanks to them, you, dear Brigit, will become an Israeli national hero.’
I told her I didn’t want to be a hero of anything.
‘That is MOSSAD outside, my darling. You’ll be what they tell you to be.’
Chapter 63
The Ohnstads lay flat with the rubble of The Mottled Goat pressed against their chests. Silje turned to look at the other survivors less than ten yards away, hiding behind whatever cover remained. Gunther Braithwaite licked his lips with a tongue that Silje was sure was as dry as her own. He caught her eye and gave her a thumbs-up.
The tremors became unbearable, and Jon Ohnstad turned to whisper to his children, ‘I want you to go. Both of you.’
‘No,’ they both said.
‘I am your father. You will do as I say!’
Neither Silje or Magnus moved, so he tried something else, something brutal in its truth: ‘I do not want the Ohnstad name to die here.’
‘Then send Magnus away,’ Silje said. ‘It is with him the family name will endure.’
‘And leave you?’ Magnus shot back. ‘Even with one eye, I shoot a hundred times better than you.’
‘You lie or jest or you are mad. I have not decided which.’
‘Ah, yes! You are right, Dear Sister. I am lying!’
‘I am glad you see it.’
‘Yes, I shoot a thousand times better than you!’
‘Father! Tell him to stop!’
Jon Ohnstad chuckled and ruffled their hair.
‘I fail to see what you find amusing,’ said Silje.
‘I am simply thinking, My Daughter, how proud your mother would be of you both; of all of us.’
The rumbling halted, and Silje realised how much the vibrations had been hurting her chest. ‘What is going on?’
‘The armoured cars have stopped.’ Magnus raised his head over the wall, only to have his father pull him back down.
Gunther was signalling.
‘They have stopped advancing.’ Jon Ohnstad scowled at his son. ‘At what point in your life did I raise you to do something so stupid?’
Silje chuckled.
‘And your mother is growing less proud by the moment, Silje.’
‘They have stopped,’ Gunther shouted, ‘about twenty yards from the arch.’
‘Can you hear that?’ Silje turned her head so her good ear pointed to the sky. ‘What is that?’
‘I cannot see anything,’ said Magnus.
The sound grew louder, a thrum and low drone, like a million angry wasps.
‘There!’ Magnus pointed at what looked to all the world like a giant bat flying out of the sun.
‘Luftwaffe!’ Gunther cried and opened fire.
And then the ground erupted around them. Silje covered her head with her hands and searched her memory desperately for the word Luftwaffe.
The dust began to clear, and in the silence, she saw Gunther and his company lying shredded across the rubble.
Luftwaffe, she thought. Death from the skies.
‘The coward,’ Jon Ohnstad said through his teeth. ‘Gruetzmacher has called for air support! The spineless—!’
‘We are too exposed here,’ Silje cried. ‘We have to move!’
Beyond the square, every shop, cottage and stall suddenly erupted in fire and stone.
The Ohnstads ran from their hiding place and joined the survivors who had left doorways, crumbling walls and teetering homes that would surely have been their tombs.
‘We must run for the copse,’ Jon Ohnstad shouted. ‘We will find cover there!’
And so they ran, beneath the steady hum of an aircraft engine.
‘I cannot see it!’ Magnus cried.
‘It’ll come from behind us!’ Barthold shouted. ‘Hiding in the sun!’
They could hear it now, low and so very close.
And the copse, Silje thought. It is so very far away.
She heard her brother say, ‘It is too far. We’re not going to make it.’ And so she grabbed her father’s arm and pulled him to a halt.
‘Father…’
He looked at her and then at the sun, the aircraft’s wings stretched across its breadth. He nodded, and raised his machine gun. As he opened fire, his comrades-at-arms stopped, turned, and did the same.
‘Keep running!’ Magnus shouted, his gun crackling into life. ‘Keep running! We will give you time!’
Silje fired too, aiming at the beast bearing down from the sky.
But the others did not run. They stood their ground, shoulder to shoulder with the Ohnstads.
She heard her father cry out ‘Ohnstad!’ again and again, so she cried out too, joining her voice to his.
And there were other voices. Names Silje had known all her life.
‘Soren!’
‘Kolsberg!’
‘Von der Lippe!’
‘Staffe!’
‘Nilsen!’
So many names, she thought; so many brave friends.
‘Ohnstad!’ Magnus cried, and was cut to the earth.
‘Ohnstad!’ her father roared, and vanished inside a storm of hellfire.
She whispered Freya’s name, and when she closed her eyes the young Jewess once more wandered blindly into her heart.
And Silje Ohnstad could not have been happier.
Chapter 64
MOSSAD moved quickly; the following morning every Israeli newspaper covered the story of a young Norwegian woman who had unmasked Nazi spies wielding power within the new Israeli state. Aliza Dantzig was arrested straight away, so I guessed she was a particularly uncomfortable thorn in MOSSAD’s side. The other two, Irwin Gantz and Chaim Schultz, were rising politicos, though they served on opposite sides. They stepped down; there was no need for arrests. Gantz shot himself a week later, leaving a note addressed to his dead mother.
Freya had been right. She was far too popular to be dealt with harshly. She confessed that she had been conditioned as a Nazi spy. She admitted to the blackouts that left spaces in her memory in which, she admitted, she was capable of anything. She even said that she may have unknowingly brought about the tragedy at Fólkvangr.
Yes, it was no longer a massacre; it was a ‘tragedy’.
But Freya was a national hero. She’d aided refugees during the war and continued to help survivors of the camp when the war ended. She’d worked hard to secure medical aid for Jewish veterans who came into the country.
If not for MOSSAD and me she could have been Prime Minister one day.
Instead, she announced her retirement from public life and returned to her orchid farm, under the watchful eye of her nation’s security forces.
The Quisling Orchid Page 54
