The Lifeline

by Deborah Swift

  For Falk, his survival depended on him being in the right place at the right time, and ready to offer something the other person wanted. At parties, he’d get invited because he had a bottle of good wine, or because he drove a car. He knew he had to buy his invitations, because once at the party he was roundly ignored. He saw other men his age were the life and soul of the party with no extra effort on their part whatsoever, just because of their looks. He remembered that awful feeling of exclusion, of sitting in the corner alone, nursing a drink and pretending it didn’t matter.

  But now, with the Nazis in power, he saw that his bargaining skills could be useful. Good looks wouldn’t help you if you were on the wrong side, and Falk had learnt early that being on the right side was essential for survival in this new Norway.

  He took his Swiss lighter from his pocket and lit it to warm his fingers, cupping one hand in turn around the flame until the metal case got too hot to hold. The street was beginning to come to life now. At number seventeen a housewife let out a small yappy dog into the garden, and a man further up the road set off in overcoat and cap in the direction of the fish canning factory. Blinds came up, and he saw a couple of Wehrmaht men come out of their lodgings and stomp off towards their car.

  After another hour he was getting agitated and cold, despite his fur-lined gloves and the earflaps on his hat. He rubbed at his nose which was crystalline with his frozen breath. Clapping his hands together in his gloves he stamped his feet in the well of the car, before rubbing another clear patch into the steamed-up window.

  He looked at his watch. Seven thirty, and the postman was just making his way along the street with his heavy sack. He watched him drop off the letters, glad to have something to watch. He swung the binoculars up and down the street and adjusted them. The door to number fourteen had opened and Astrid Dahl was outside on the path. Tall and slim, she had the blonde, willowy good looks favoured by the Nazis. She was dressed in a skirt and tight-fitting knitted jersey in the local style. She unlocked the mail box and took out a letter. Then she paused, took out something else and stared at it. Something in her sudden stillness was odd.

  Falk adjusted the binoculars, trying to bring them into closer focus. From here, the object looked like a stone. Maybe something to hold the letters down. Whatever it was, it made her scan the street and look up and down as if searching for something. Her glance came his way and her face looked straight at him. He dropped the binoculars down, feeling guilty.

  Foolish! Of course she couldn’t see him, not all the way up here. But her expression had been worried. After another half an hour he spied her leave the house, dressed in hat, coat and boots, with a briefcase in her hand. She would be going to the school. The dossier on his front seat told him she was an elementary school teacher. She was one of those bluestockings who’d studied languages at university, including English and German. He decided to go down to the house; it was just too cold to sit here any longer. She would soon be out of a job anyway. More schools in Oslo were to close because of the shortage of coal, and the premises taken over as billets for the army, or as hospitals for Nazi wounded.

  With a cough and a splutter, the engine turned over, and he drove down the hill until he could turn into her street.

  Astrid was unaware of the man with binoculars as she reached into the mail box for the letters.

  What was this? Her hand touched something cold. She curled her hand around it and withdrew it.

  Her father’s brass compass.

  Its presence made her heart leap because there was only one explanation. Jørgen must have left it there. Was he still somewhere close by?

  She glanced up and down the street before locking the box. The compass had belonged to her father. He used to keep it as a paperweight on his desk and she had given it to Jørgen as a gift about a month ago. He knew it had great sentimental value to her, and the fact that he hadn’t knocked at the door, or come inside to return it in person tugged at her heart. Did it mean he no longer wanted to see her? Or did it mean something had happened and he was trying to tell her something? The fact he was in the Milorg still hadn’t quite sunk in, and the very thought of it made adrenaline race round her veins.

  She gave an involuntary shiver, aware of a prickling sensation; a feeling, as if someone was watching her. It could be Jørgen, or it could be … she ran back up the path and in through the front door, shutting it firmly behind her. Jørgen had said his work was dangerous.

  No time to think too much, or she’d be late for the tram. She put on her coat and buttoned it up to the neck, jammed on her hat, and slipped the compass into her pocket. Negotiating the ruts of ice, she speeded her step, following some other women with shopping bags who were headed towards the city.

  Mondays. Always the worst for crowded trams. She clambered aboard, stamping the snow off her boots, and looking round for an empty seat. She swayed down the carriage as it moved off, and sat down, well away from the men in dark blue uniforms that had taken most of the seats at the back. They were the quisling police, the Norwegian supporters of the fascist government that had sprung into action the minute the king evacuated to England. And they were everywhere.

  From the outside, they looked like every other Norwegian, but they were Nazis in their hearts. She had learnt to ignore them if she wanted a quiet life.

  She stood her briefcase by her feet and rubbed the misty windowpane for a better view, still mulling over the mystery of the compass. As usual, the streets were full of people queuing in front of almost empty shop windows. Norway had been under German occupation for more than eighteen months, and every now and then she’d pass a building with a slash of red and black, the Nazi flag — the only garish colour in the leached out streets.

  The bell dinged as another passenger got on, a tall, muscular man in German Wehrmacht uniform. He saw the empty seat next to her and swung down the moving aisle. Automatically, she stood up, ready to move. Norwegians had a tacit agreement that they would not share a seat with these interlopers, the German occupying forces, or with their supporters, the quislings.

  ‘No need to move for me,’ the man said smiling disarmingly. His accent was thick, but his Norwegian practised.

  ‘I’m getting off anyway at the next stop,’ she said, anxious to avoid a direct confrontation.

  ‘Keep your seat until then,’ he said, still smiling, but a steely determination in his voice. ‘I’ll stand for you when it’s necessary.’

  ‘No, really,’ she protested. The arrogance of the man. She thrust the briefcase ahead of her along the bench to prevent him sitting, then struggled out of the narrow seat and into the aisle.

  The man shrugged and sat down. ‘Your loss,’ he said.

  She gave a tight-lipped smile back. Of course she wasn’t getting off at the next stop. Instead she clung to the metal pole, her face going pinker as he continued to stare, and the stops came and went. Ignore him, she thought. But she couldn’t help but watch him from the side of her eyes as she kept her eyes open for her stop. He was straight-nosed, with light sandy-coloured hair under his peaked cap, and the sort of chiselled jaw favoured by movie stars.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he called.

  She pretended not to hear. The tram slowed and she hurried to the door, desperate to get off. At the next stop she jumped out, staggering slightly as the tram hadn’t quite stopped.

  Damn him. Damn them all. Now she’d have a long walk, because it wasn’t her stop.

  As the tram sped by, throwing up slush, his face was still staring at her from the window. How did it feel to be him; to be able to intimidate just on the basis of his uniform? So certain, so self-satisfied. So convinced that the Norwegians were just like him under the skin, simply more Aryans who just needed to see the light of the Nazi ideals.

  At the school gates she bumped into her friend Sonja, who taught at the same elementary school. Her round pink face and her big grin, instantly dispelled the morning’s awkwardness.

  ‘Who’ve you got thi
s morning?’ Sonja asked, as they crowded in through the main door. The building was cold and dilapidated; the new school with its spacious rooms and special facilities for woodwork and chemistry had been taken over by the Germans for billeting their forces. So they were back in this old draughty barn of a place.

  ‘4B,’ Astrid answered. ‘You?’

  Sonja shook her long fair plait from her knitted hood. ‘Geography with the first form. But I’ve got to teach them all about German rivers. Ugh.’ She unclipped a paperclip from her coat lapel. Paperclips were worn by Norwegians as a symbol of unity against the Occupation. ‘Better take this off. Mr Pedersen’s more quisling than Quisling himself.’ Sonja said. ‘I wish we still had Mr Kristiansen.’

  ‘I never wear my paperclip now,’ Astrid replied, ‘it’s just asking for trouble.’ She thought of the man on the tram. ‘Mrs Bakke got stopped just for wearing a red knitted bobble hat. They told her wearing such Norwegian folk-art was banned. Poor woman was only trying to keep warm.’

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ Sonja whispered. Mrs Bakke, a short, stout woman with her hair in a hairnet marched by, ringing a hand-bell. The clanging stopped their conversation and the corridors instantly filled with rushing children.

  ‘See you later,’ Astrid called, as she followed the stream of jostling children down the corridor.

  Later that day Astrid shrugged her way into her fur-lined coat and put on her knitted hat before picking up the pile of exercise books from the staffroom table and pushing them into her briefcase. Twenty-five essays to mark tonight, but she’d still make time to stop off with Sonja. Sonja had taken her under her wing when she was new to the school and made her feel like she belonged. And after a day at the chalkboard, a hot chocolate in the little café on Drammensveien always hit the spot. Though these days it was more water than chocolate, and sugar was something she could only dream of. Besides, it was always better to walk together; some women on their own had been the victims of what people euphemistically called ‘Nazi Chivalry’. The sort of chivalry that couldn’t be refused.

  As she stood on the threshold of the school turning up her collar against the biting cold, the children rushed past — all flapping coats and earflaps, satchels slung over their shoulders, excited smiles lighting up their faces, the smiles that had been mysteriously absent in her arithmetic lessons.

  ‘Hey!’ Sonja’s hand came on her shoulder. ‘Café?”

  ‘You bet,’ Astrid said.

  They walked briskly down the pavement in their winter boots avoiding the edges where the snow was heaped and set solid into ridges. As they approached the turn off, they had to dodge a tram rattling around the corner, but as they did so they saw the little street off Drammensveien was already full of people.

  They stopped abruptly at the sight of the uniforms, immediately wary. So many grey-green Wehrmacht uniforms always spelled trouble. A second glance showed them that many of the Germans were armed and moving people forward down the road. Two men were being hustled from the café, their hands on their heads, by quisling police.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Astrid whispered, tugging hard at Sonja’s sleeve., ‘It’s not worth it.’ She turned to walk away.

  ‘Halt!’

  Astrid felt Sonja stop and stiffen. She turned and looked back to see what the hold-up was.

  A German soldier holding a rifle was right in front of her, and with him, the German from the tram.

  ‘So you lied to me,’ the man from the tram said, his eyes finding Astrid’s. ‘You said you were only going one more stop.’ He grabbed her by her coat lapel, then pulled, trying to drag her away.

  Wait!’ Sonja protested. ‘What are you doing? This is crazy! What’s she supposed to have done?’ The words came out as a torrent. Astrid could feel Sonja’s fingers clutching her arm.

  ‘She insulted me,’ he said.

  ‘Let go,’ his soldier friend said, in thickly-accented Norwegian, pushing Sonja away. ‘Let go, or I take you too.’

  But Sonja didn’t let go. Astrid was dragged by the collar, stumbling, down the street, with Sonja still clinging to her elbow.

  ‘Leave me,’ Astrid tried to call to Sonja. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Quick, walk.’ The man from the tram dragged her forward as you might a dog, determination in the set of his mouth. The snow had begun to fall again, and her boots skidded on the slippery surface.

  ‘Let her go! Where are you taking her?’ Sonja was still following, objecting,

  ‘Jezt, ein mehr!’ shouted another German Wehrmaht officer, a shorter man with a face raw and ruddy from cold. He waved his rifle, corralling people into the cul-de-sac at the end of the road.

  One more. Astrid’s German was good enough to understand, and it struck dread into her.

  In an instant, the red-faced Wehrmacht man grabbed Sonja roughly by her long plait and pulled her away.

  ‘No! Not her. This one,’ said the German from the tram, trying to stop him and pushing Astrid forward.

  ‘What’s it matter, Schmitt? Any woman will do,’ the red-faced man said.

  ‘Stop!’ Astrid cried. But she had no time to ponder further because a blinding blow hit her across the eyes as he swiped hard at her face with a gloved hand. The shock was enough to make her let go, and bend double, clutching at the smarting pain.

  When she stood, cheek throbbing, eyes streaming, she found she was holding Sonja’s school bag that had been over her shoulder. Through eyes blurred with water, ice already forming on her lashes, she saw the soldier drag Sonja to the wooden palisade at the end of the street that fronted the railway line behind. A crowd of people were already there, ashen-faced, held there by a rank of men with machine guns. Sonja looked dazed, eyes fixed on the men in front. As Astrid watched, she started to tuck her fair plait back inside her hat in a familiar nervous gesture

  Before Sonja’s hand could drop, the men opened fire.

  The noise ricocheted over and over around the walls as if it would go on forever.

  Astrid’s mouth opened, and a gasp of cold air entered her lungs, choking her. She couldn’t even blink.

  In the moments afterwards there was not a single sound. If there was birdsong, their ears couldn’t hear it. The whole city seemed to have stopped.

  An older, heavy-set German in a long leather greatcoat and peaked cap stepped forward. Some big noise in the Wehrmacht, bristling with gold buttons and insignia. He ignored the crumpled people, slumped on top of one another like sandbags against the red-spattered wall.

  ‘Forty Norwegians will be shot for every German man lost,’ he said. His Norwegian was understandable, but guttural. ‘You knew that. Better you tell your comrades to behave themselves, hey?’

  As he went, the rest of the Germans followed. One of the last to go was Schmitt, the man from the tram. He turned and looked over his shoulder at her. His slight smile was knowing and triumphant. Then he walked away towards a parked truck filled with other Germans. His long rangy stride was leisurely, as if he were taking an afternoon stroll.

  A lorry came, and some prisoners of war climbed out, in their thin ragged clothes. They piled the bodies in the lorry and drove away. Still nobody moved. She had the impression that somehow Sonja and the other people were still there, ghostly presences still waiting by the wall.

  An elderly woman in a fur hat began to whisper the words to the Norwegian anthem, ‘Ja, vi elsker dette landet.’

  ‘Yes, we love this country, and the saga-night that lays dreams upon our earth.’

  Astrid joined in with of the rest of the Norwegians on the street, as the snow fell thicker now from a leaden sky. Nobody sang, just this low mutter under the breath. When it was done, they were reluctant to leave, the feeling of being a witness to the atrocity was so strong. But finally the piercing blast of a train whistle behind the wall broke the spell.

  It had been so quick. One minute she was about to enjoy hot chocolate with Sonja; the next Sonja was dead and no trace of her remained, except the red stain, which even now, was b
eing covered by the gently falling snow.

  She turned to a man behind her. ‘What was it about? Why did they do this?’

  He stabbed at a newspaper. ‘The Resistance. It’s their fault. Bastards. They blew up a German train. A German was killed.’

  Astrid shook her head, thought of Jørgen. ‘They’re just good Norwegians, who want Norway back. Just like us.’

  ‘Not like us,’ he said bitterly. ‘Those scum are not like us. They risk our lives, good Norwegian lives, for their own glory. What good does it do, I ask you? What good?’

  Jørgen used to be so popular at university. Now he was reviled; one of these Resistance men in the Milorg that they were blaming for this.

  It could have been Jørgen who’d blown up the train.

  No. No use to blame anyone. Only herself. That German, Schmitt, was going to take her, because she hadn’t sat next to him on the tram. But somehow they’d taken Sonja instead, and she should have stopped them.

  When Astrid got home the shock had set in and she was shaking. The winter cold had numbed her feet through the soles of her boots, but inside she was frozen, as if her emotions too had become encased in ice. So it was, she thought, with all the citizens of Norway, who had seen their country torn from them and their king exiled. But worst of all was that they had to just walk away from atrocities like these and go home as if nothing had happened.

  She still had Sonja’s school bag. She didn’t open it; she couldn’t bear to; she knew what it would contain — 4B’s Geography homework books and the tin which Sonja had taken with her containing her matpakke for lunch. Instead she warmed her fingers over the gas, and when the kettle hissed on the hob, she turned it off and went to the window. It should have been her against that wall. Schmitt had chosen her because she’d refused to sit next to him on the tram; he’d have put her to death for something so small. It seemed unbelievable. She remembered the feeling of Sonja clinging to her arm, sticking by her side as she always did.