The Body in the Fjord ff-8

by Katherine Hall Page

  Voices.

  “Do you mind if we smoke?” Anders asked the elderly woman sitting just where they’d left her.

  “No, not at all,” she replied.

  “Maybe we should open the window. It seems a little stuffy,” Sonja offered solicitously. Mrs. Rowe’s cheeks were red.

  “That would be very kind. Thank you.”

  “This church dates to only about one hundred years after the introduction of Christianity into Norway by King Olav. He was very convincing, offering a choice between adopting his religion or death. Still, people were not completely sure about this new religion, so they kept some of the old superstitions, like this circle with a cross in the middle. You had to have at least seven of these on the walls or the old gods might reclaim the church. There were no pews or seats in stave churches. Everyone stood, the women on the north side, to protect the men from evil spirits.”

  Pix wanted to ask the church’s guide whether this was

  because the women were thought to be powerful or expendable, but she was moving on to further details.

  “And you have seen the carved Viking ship dragon prows on the roof, another safeguard. Here inside if you look straight up, you will see the roof appears to be the underside of the hull of a Viking ship. These churches are called ‘stave’ churches because of these large pillars holding the roof up. All of the carving and paintings also exhibit the mixture of Christian symbolism and the older Viking traditions. Notice particularly the intricate design around the three doors. Men entered through the front door, women again through a door on the north side, and the priest through this one.” She gestured toward the door. “The exterior porch was used for processions and it was also where the lepers and pregnant women had to stay during the service.”

  “Lepers and pregnant women.” Jennifer nudged Pix. “Same ole, same ole.”

  “We are very lucky to have this church. Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, about nine hundred churches were built, but so many were destroyed that we have only around thirty complete ones today. At one time in our history, many people thought the stave churches should be taken down because of their association with the pagan Viking times. Other kinds of churches were built. Just before this one was going to be sold for the wood, an Englishman bought it and saved it. Unfortunately, the owner had already washed the walls to remove the paint, so it is hard to see what it once must have looked like. You have to imagine the bright colors.”

  Pix wandered out to the small cemetery. A huge copper beech stood in front, its top branches even with the carved dragon’s heads jutting out from the roof of the church. The spreading branches below cast feathery shadows on the red wood of the church and shaded the tombstones. Some of these had pitched forward, the weathered names faint; others were new and upright, their inhabitants known, the letters still sharply incised on the stone. Bright

  bunches of flowers were scattered about in small vases. She wondered how old the tree was, how many interments it had witnessed. In Aleford, antiquity meant 1775. Here, that was only yesterday.

  “Wasn’t that interesting? Especially about keeping the Viking ways. Viking is Old Norse for ‘pirate raid.’” It was Marge Brady speaking. She sat down under the tree and Pix joined her. Marge was madly scribbling away in her journal. “I don’t want to forget a thing. None of the guidebooks mentioned that business about the pastor having to take care of his predecessor’s widow. I can tell you that would not go over big at home.”

  Pix had missed this. “What was the custom? I was out here.”

  “Well, when one died, the new one had to support the widow, so it was easier just to marry her. The woman in that portrait on the wall was married to three pastors; then she died before the last one and he married a seventeen-year-old and it all started over again. I guess it was sort of a career for these women. Do you suppose they still do this in Norway today?”

  “I would doubt it. Women—and men—don’t have to worry about a steady income, health care, or old age. I think I’ll go back and have a closer look at that portrait, though.” Pix thought of the portraits of the priests she’d seen, with their wide starched ruffs encircling their throats above their somber black robes. Her friend Faith was married to a man of the cloth, but Tom Fairchild was neither starched nor somber. Nor could Pix see Faith transferred like the parish Bible and Communion silver to Tom’s successor. This old Norwegian custom—was it a reflection of their practicality, frugality, or concern for the widow? Perhaps all three—and besides, having someone around who knew the drill must have been a help to the new pastor.

  But she didn’t get a chance to gaze at the portrait after all. They were being urged gently but firmly to get on the buses for a quick ride to a scenic mountaintop viewpoint, then back to the boat.

  Sonja and Anders had been busy setting out things for lunch—a huge steaming vat of pea soup, boller—rolls—salad, and plenty of sliced meats and cheese. Ursula sat at a table near the galley and the three were chatting. Like Kari and Erik, these stewards were also students. Sonja had grown up in Undredal. “It is not so far from here. We are famous for our old church. It is the oldest one in Scandinavia still in use. Undredal is a very good place to live, but I will probably stay in Oslo. These villages are very small, you know.”

  Ursula did know. She had been to Undredal one spring with Marit and it was tiny—but beautiful. The cherry trees had been in blossom and the church, which only held thirty people, was indeed special. Twelfth-century paintings had been discovered beneath many layers of paint on the walls and restored. There was also an intricate wooden chandelier of stag’s heads, yet what she could still visualize most clearly, and with some amusement, was the pulpit with the inscription informing all who should pass by that it was painted by an Olsen, but above that proclaimed that it had been paid for by Peter Hansen. Marit had pointed it out and later teased her husband about the priorities of his forebearers.

  Now Ursula turned to her task as investigator and asked the two young people, “Are you enjoying your jobs? It seems like quite a bit of work, with very little time off.”

  “Oh, we don’t mind. The pay is good and we meet so many nice people?” Anders’ voice went up and down in the typical pattern, ending on that questioning note. He continued. “Sonja worked for the company last summer, and when I met her this winter, she convinced me to give it a try, and I’m glad I did. We are seeing more of each other now than we do all year.” He smiled expansively.

  “I heard there was some problem with the other stewards on this trip. Did you know them?”

  Sonja frowned. “I knew Erik from last summer and met Kari a few times. It’s a sad thing. I don’t know what they could have been thinking of. Erik was not the type to do something like this.”

  But Kari was? Ursula caught the unspoken thought and was about to ask, Like what? when the rest of the tour poured into the cabin, famished after a morning of sightseeing. Pix went over to her mother. “Everything all right?”

  “Better than that, dear.”

  Pix sighed. While she’d been sidetracked by pastors’ wives and carved acanthus leaves, Mother had probably figured everything out.

  “We’ll have time for a chat at the hotel,” Ursula said firmly.

  “How big do you think it is?” Pix asked. The two women were sitting in Pix’s room at Kvikne’s Hotel in Balestrand.

  “Hard to say—and I didn’t have much time to investigate. There were some rain jackets and other things hanging in the closet. I pushed them to the side and moved the Knapsacks. I’d already tapped on the walls of most of the boat—this cane is really remarkably useful—but everything felt very solid, except in the closet. The rear wall definitely sounded hollow, as if there was some sort of compartment behind it.”

  “But it could just be that the closet was put in later and fitted to an awkward space. Did you see any way of getting into it?”

  “No. There isn’t any light in the closet, and my old eyes aren’t what they used to
be. Besides, I’d have needed a flashlight.”

  Considering Ursula still did intricate counted cross-stitch without the aid of spectacles, her old eyes were holding up fine. Yet Pix knew what was coming next.

  “You’ll just have to get on the boat tonight and see if you can open it. It’s the only lead we have so far.”

  This was true. “What made you think there was some kind of hiding place on our fjord cruiser?” Pix also

  wanted to add, And why didn’t you tell me? But a mother’s mind often worked in strange and mysterious ways.

  “I didn’t think of it until after you all left,” Ursula confessed. Hearing that, Pix felt a bit better. “I stayed behind to have a look around—you probably guessed that—but when I asked myself what I was looking for, a hiding place was the only thing that made sense. What can boats be used for? Smuggling, of course, and Norway has its drug problems, the same as the rest of the world.”

  “So, it’s possible Erik and Kari discovered some scheme that involved using the boat to transfer drugs, or”—Pix recalled her mother’s earlier remarks about the Russians—“oil secrets.”

  Ursula nodded. Neither she nor Pix gave voice to the corollary—discovered it or were part of it.

  “We’d better go down to the lobby and pretend to meet Marit. She must surely be here by now,” Pix suggested.

  And she had a lot of questions for Kari’s grandmother.

  Kvikne’s Hotel occupied the most beautiful site for lodging that Pix had ever seen. Even the incongruity of the 1877 Swiss chalet style of the original building and the high-rise modern addition could not detract from the breathtaking splendor of the view. She’d begun to think in guidebook language—“breathtaking splendor”; it was hard to avoid superlatives. The hotel was set on a peninsula jutting out into the Sognefjord, and when one was sitting on the long porch in front, as she, Marit, and Ursula were now, one was surrounded on three sides by smooth waters and snowcapped mountains. Off in the distance, the glacier, the Jostedalsbreen, glistened. There were no bad seats in the house.

  It was a Swiss chalet by way of Bergen, though, and the gingerbread had a marked Viking flavor inside and out. Carl had announced before they left the boat at the small dock in Balestrand, a few steps from the hotel’s entrance, that dinner would be at 7:00 P.M. “And afterward we will take coffee in the Høiviksalen, famous for the

  carvings in the dragon style by Ivar Høivik. The hotel has many fine artworks and interesting objects. Be sure to see the chair where Kaiser Wilhelm was sitting when he got the news about World War One. I think he must have been quite annoyed to have his fishing interrupted. He was a well-known sight in the village here. He used to walk his six dogs, all with bells on their collars, every day himself. When you look at the fjord now, it seems so calm and peaceful, but imagine it in 1914 with the kaiser’s steamer accompanied by a flotilla of twenty-four warships—all just by the dock here.”

  Maybe Norway should have KAISER WILHELM FISHED HERE plaques. Pix hadn’t thought much about the kaiser since modern European history at Pembroke, yet his luxuriously mustached face seemed to be before her at every turn. And come to think of it, why were they called kaiser rolls? It was incredible to think of the fjord with all those warships.

  “I think we can assume if we talk softly, we will not be overheard out here,” Ursula was saying. They’d ordered coffee, of course. It was impossible to have a conversation in Norway without it, especially before the sun went over the yardarm.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much to tell you,” Marit replied. “The police haven’t turned up any new leads. The only thing they did find out was that a member of the maintenance crew found the knapsacks under the seats where Kari and Erik had been sitting when he was cleaning the train that night in Oslo. It had made the return trip. He turned them in to lost luggage.”

  “So, nothing there. Except who removed Kari’s things? Kari, or someone else?” Pix asked.

  Marit shrugged.

  Pix asked another question. “I know you said Kari was probably calling Annelise, her friend in Bergen, to find out how she was. But could there have been any other reason? Had Annelise ever worked for Scandie Sights?”

  “No. Annelise moved to Bergen to take a job at the Vestlandske Kunstindustrimuseum—the West Norway Museum of Decorative Arts. I’m sure if she’d worked for the tour group, Kari would have mentioned it.”

  The Museum of Decorative Arts—the one Helene Feld had been so eager to see, the one where she’d spent her time in Bergen instead of sticking to the tour’s itinerary. Pix filed the thought away.

  “But what about you?” Marit asked anxiously. “Have you found out anything at all? I feel at times I am going mad. That Kari will walk in the door and that this will be a bad dream.”

  Pix and Ursula told her the few facts they’d managed to ferret out—Pix’s conversation with the stationmaster in Voss, Helene’s account of the argument. Pix omitted Carol Peterson’s description of Kari, but she related their other attempts to get information from the guests. Ursula told of the possibility that there was some kind of secret compartment on the boat.

  “You have done so well.” Marit was impressed. “Now all Pix has to do is go see what’s in it.”

  Pix had been thinking of this very thing. It seemed so simple to her elders. Piece of cake. Let Pix do it. Pix the hund. But it was not simple at all. She’d have to wait until it got dark, which meant another sleepless night, and then she’d have to be sure there was no one else around or likely to come upon her. How could she possibly explain her presence on the boat? Sleepwalking?

  They finished with some more random impressions and an account of the intruder on Jennifer Olsen’s balcony at the Stalheim Hotel.

  “Oh, and last but not least, when we woke up this morning, someone had painted a giant red swastika on the lawn in front of the hotel, just before you get to the edge of the cliff,” Pix told her. She was amazed to see the powerful effect her words had on their old friend.

  Marit looked as if she’d seen a ghost.

  “A swastika?” she whispered. “At Stalheim?”

  “Yes.” Ursula reached for her friend’s hand. “What’s wrong? What does it mean?”

  “I can’t tell you here.” Marit seemed very close to tears. “Meet me in my room. It’s three oh seven.”

  Puzzled, Pix and Ursula waited five minutes before crossing the lobby to the elevator. A Japanese tour bus had arrived and the two women were forced to wait for the next elevator. As soon as one had arrived, the group rushed on and there had been no more room.

  “The Japanese are perhaps the most polite people on the planet, the most aware of social ceremonies. The only reason I’ve ever been able to come up with for their kind of lemming-like behavior abroad is that they’re terrified of getting separated—or, worse still, getting left behind forever.”

  “Like the North Dakota farmers.”

  “Precisely.”

  Neither woman had referred to Marit since she’d made her dramatic exit.

  They exited the elevator into a deserted hallway and quickly went to room 307. Marit opened the door at their knock. She must have been standing just inside.

  The room was spacious and had a comfortable sitting area. Ursula drew Marit next to her on the love seat. “Now, what is it?”

  “It’s so complicated and it was so long ago. Hans and I were going to tell you; then we thought it better to tell no one. We were trying to erase the past, and you can never do that.”

  “What are you talking about, Marit?” Ursula’s direct question hadn’t worked. Maybe a second one would do it, Pix thought.

  “The Stalheim Hotel was used in the war for something the Germans called a Lebensborn home. We had nine of them in Norway. They were breeding places for the world the Germans envisioned after the war. We Norwegian women were especially prized because of what they thought was our pure blood. That all the children we pro

  duced with their soldiers would be tall, stro
ng, and blond. After the Occupation, German soldiers were encouraged to father children with Norwegian women. It was their duty to the Reich. When they got pregnant, some of the women went to Germany. Some stayed where they were and had the children, yet that was very hard. You have to understand, I make no judgments of them, but others did, often their own parents, and it was terrible for them. Most went to have the babies in these homes.”

  “But what would happen to all these babies? Who would raise them?” Pix asked.

  “They were sent to Germany or in some cases adopted by parents here, people who were sympathetic to the Germans. We were not all in the Resistance, remember. Quisling had his supporters.”

  “Why are you telling us this?” Ursula asked quietly. She had taken her friend’s hand again when they had entered the room, and she still held it.

  “After the war, the children who remained in the homes were claimed by their mothers or adopted by Norwegian families. Some of the children who had been sent to Germany were traced by refugee organizations and brought back here for adoption if the mother did not want them, which was usually the case. The fathers, of course, were known only to the mothers, and mostly their names were not recorded. The children were given two names at birth, a Norwegian one and a German one. They used to have mass christenings, twenty-five babies at a time. The babies were well looked after, but it was horrible—the whole idea and raising them like so many prize sheep. There is a story that one of the women soldiers assigned to Stalheim refused to be there and ended up at the bottom of the canyon.” Marit stopped speaking and seemed to be gathering energy to go on. Pix was trying to blot out the image of a body spiraling down, down to the river that looked like a snake.

  “Hanna was a Lebensborn baby. She was born at Stalheim.”

  “Oh, Marit, you should have told me years ago. It wouldn’t have made any difference!” Ursula cried out.

  “I know that, yet Hans and I thought it was something we shouldn’t talk about. Nobody mentioned these children. Of course, our families knew we had adopted a baby. We knew when we got married that we couldn’t have children. The war years were so hard and Hanna seemed like our reward for getting through them. No one asked us where she had come from, and she looked just like us. Not a very large gene pool,” she said, glancing at Pix.