This Shining Land

by Rosalind Laker

  “How long have you been there?” she exclaimed, revealing involuntarily the anxiety that had seized her.

  “Long enough to see that Edvard Ryen is back on his feet.”

  “Stop spying on him! It’s ghoulish. Why can’t you go away and forget all about us?”

  He came slowly across to the stone steps, looking up at her. “I told you before, I mean nobody here any harm. I can see for myself that the listed hostage is still convalescent. I didn’t take him when he was sick in bed and I’ll not take him while he is still obviously far from well.”

  She clutched the shawl to her in desperation. “Why do you have to take him at all?”

  “That depends on you. Let’s talk about it, shall we?” He held out a hand as if to take hers.

  Frightened and distressed, she returned the shawl to the chair and went down the steps. When he offered his hand the last time they met she had ignored it. This time he did not intend to be rejected. He kept his hand thrust out to her like a threat, compelling her to fall in with his wishes, and because she saw this stubborn change of attitude in him, she reluctantly gave him hers. He seized it with pleasure, closing their palms together with fingers linked. Again he exerted his advantage over her when he diverted her steps from the head of the valley where there were no farmsteads.

  “We’ll go in the other direction today, I think.” He was beaming at her. “I’m proud to be seen with you, Karen. I’d like the whole world to know that we’re friends.”

  Her face was stark. “You wanted to talk. I’d like to get it over as quickly as possible.”

  “There’s no hurry. I got a lift on a truck coming to the hamlet and I don’t have to go back with it again for a couple of hours. I thought we could have something to eat together in the café by the inlet. I managed to get hold of some civilian ration coupons for you.”

  “I don’t want them!”

  “Are there no shortages at Ryen Farm then?”

  She halted, jerking her hand from his clasp. “I won’t be mocked, bribed or blackmailed into being friendly with you! Say what you have to say and be done with it!”

  He realised he had pressured her too hard and too soon. His aim to show his power from the start had misfired. “Calm down,” he said affably. “Don’t misconstrue everything I say. I’m here for one reason only and I’ll be completely honest with you. Seeing you again a while ago meant a great deal to me. I know we’ve both changed since the days when we were kids and in love. Naturally I don’t expect you to feel anything for me from that time, but as the weeks have gone by I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. I’m not claiming anything from the past. I’m just telling you that you’ve begun to mean something new and important to me.” Because there was truth in what he said with regard to his feelings for her, it came through in his voice and in his expression. “If I have to bargain my silence about Edvard Ryen’s recovery against your going out with me, I’ll do it. Then, with time, I hope you’ll come of your own free will.”

  Dismay spasmed her face. She looked as if she would have run from him if there had been anywhere she might escape the ultimatum he had put to her. He stood watching her, waiting for her to break. Her eyes went dark, reaching sapphire depths, and every vestige of colour drained from her face. Then the moment came. Her gaze shattered as if life had gone from her.

  “I’ll go out with you.” She scarcely recognised the hollow voice as her own.

  He was triumphant and full of hope. With time he’d win her around. Once more he held out his hand to her and received her limp fingers fondly. “It will be like it used to be between us before long. We’ll both forget differences caused by others. This is the happiest day for me in this country since I was last here.”

  As they walked down the lane she saw people pause in their work to look towards her in disbelief. They had heard with censure that Johanna had gone to work for a Quisling cousin and now there was a second girl from the same household parading with an enemy soldier.

  To Karen the lane had never seemed longer. In the hamlet the same astonished looks followed her. To her relief Carl did not try to push his luck by taking her into the café where other soldiers were to be seen, perhaps because he was not entirely certain yet that she wouldn’t bolt from him. Instead he took her to the grassy slope overlooking the fjord. It was the kind of day she loved best, when the balmy air was so still that the water reflected the rising banks of the fjord like a mirror, every house and tree inverted, every rowing boat and anchored fishing boat floating on its own image. They sat down side by side, he with his arms resting on updrawn knees, she with her legs tucked under her. She pulled a buttercup from the grass and twisted it between her fingers, saying nothing. He did all the talking, telling her news from his home and where he had been and what he had done since the time he had last seen her. It was not until she saw he was becoming irritated by her lack of response that she made an effort to overcome her choking despair and began to utter a comment now and again. There was little chance that he would keep his side of the bargain if he failed to get any pleasure from her company.

  “I don’t want anyone else to know about the bond we’ve made,” he impressed upon her. “Will you promise me that?”

  “I think Gina Ryen will guess.”

  “Then let her guess, but don’t confirm it. This is only an intermediary time for us, Karen. The day will come when we’ll look back on it and laugh.”

  She saw he really believed what he was saying. In spite of what he had said about not expecting her to have retained the love she had had for him in the past, he was confident that much of what there had been before would revive to aid the new beginning he had conjured up. She considered, and rejected, the idea of telling him she was in love with Erik, who was the indirect cause of their meeting again in the first place. If he became jealous he might revert to arresting Edvard. The authority he had gained since their adolescent days had changed him completely. She saw him as being dangerously unpredictable.

  Fortunately for her they stayed by the fjord too long for him to have time to walk her home again. She accompanied him to the truck where he climbed in beside the driver and looped an elbow over the lowered window to say goodbye to her, his grin happy, his ego boosted by other soldiers nearby seeing this lovely girl looking up at him.

  “We’ll go to the cinema on Friday then. It’s a German film. Plenty of action. Auf Wiedersehen!”

  When she re-entered the farmhouse Gina was waiting, a thin hand spread across her chest as though anxiety had become a physical pain centred there. “Has he come back for Edvard?”

  Karen swallowed. “No. It’s my company he wants. I suppose it’s not surprising. We were friends not so long ago.”

  Gina stared at her wordlessly, comprehension dawning. It was as if once again the solid ground shifted beneath her feet. Her family—and she thought of Karen as a future daughter-in-law—was disintegrating: her sons scattered, her daughter employed by a quisling and her husband still on a knife-edge of life or death, for he could not exist without the necessary medication that would be denied him in a camp. She stood motionless as the desolate girl went past her up the stairs to shut herself away in her room.

  Johanna liked living in Astrid’s house. They had their meals together, sometimes played cards in the evening and generally shared much of their time. Yet there was a freedom to come and go that made it different from living at home where normal family conditions of farm life almost compelled an accounting of one’s time. She was enjoying the same companionship with Astrid that she had known with the Alsteens, whom she often thought about, praying they had made the last few kilometres into Sweden, particularly since it had become apparent that the Nazis intended to remove every Jew from Norway into the concentration camps in Poland and Germany. Many had been shipped out already and protests from the Church had been ignored, one of the factors that had led to the clergy’s final break with the Quisling government. The only good news regarding prisoners was that t
he sick among the teachers still held captive in the Arctic were being allowed to come home. Rolf was not among them, which at least meant he was well.

  Her bedroom on the upper floor was little more than a box-room. Astrid had taken out the items stored there from the commandeered part of the house to let Johanna have whatever space was available. Its size did not bother her, for the window gave light and air as well as a view out over the sea where the distant islands lay like half-submerged giants and from where a Viking warrior had once left to found a dynasty in Normandy. It was lucky she was a good sleeper, for at times the noises from the neighbouring room on the other side of the division would have disturbed her rest. Astrid, who slept lightly and had been subjected to the indignity of this intrusion upon her hearing since the violation of her home, had somehow made herself deaf to it all. It was only when a party was in progress that she sometimes paled at the drunken roistering that penetrated the walls.

  “I don’t care what goes on in there,” she stated with dignity, twisting her graceful hands together. “That’s their business. It’s my dear house I worry about. I’m afraid it will never be the same.”

  Johanna was sympathetic. She did not think it would be. “We can be thankful that this part of it has escaped damage.”

  “I console myself with that thought.” Astrid moved about her beautiful room like an exotic goldfish in her floating silk skirt, touching her treasures with delicate fingertips, her gaze lingering on her Munch paintings.

  In spite of Tom’s inherent laziness, Johanna found him an easy man to work for, he being thoroughly even-tempered and jovial. It was rare for him to be out of sorts with anyone. He liked the good things of life, but whereas Astrid appreciated the aesthetic side his taste was more basic. He was subject to the authority of the German gauleiter, who occupied a suite of offices in another building, and every now and again he had to report there on various matters. Johanna typed all the material to be discussed and felt she had her finger on everything that was going in and out of the office. Whenever she came across an item she thought would be of use to the Resistance, she made contact and delivered what she had noted at the appointed time and place. Gunnar was the one she met, Steffen being absent again. The Resistance was still suffering from being decimated by the Gestapo some months before, and those leaders who were free and active were shouldering far more than they would otherwise have been expected to do. Venues for meeting Gunnar, and occasionally Steffen, were changed constantly, varying from a cellar to crowded cafés and to the cabin by the lake, the place where Delia had landed by parachute. There was a specially coded message for when she had something of urgent importance in hand. As yet she had had no cause to use it.

  After a few weeks Johanna went home for a weekend. It was harvest time and as she walked up the lane with an overnight bag slung over one shoulder everyone was busy in the fields, the valley having a rich look as if the corn had absorbed the colour of the sun itself. At the first farmstead she had waved to those she knew there. When there was no answering wave she thought they were too busy and slightly too far away to have spotted her. When the same thing happened at the next farmstead on the other side of the lane, she felt the first chill of ostracism reach her. It was the only time in her life that she had walked the paths of home without a friendly word or a smile from someone. Neighbours she had visited since childhood, almost as one of the family, did not appear to see her go by. Some of Rolf’s pupils, climbing over a stationary wagon, silenced a younger child who answered her greeting. When she had gone past, one of the boys sprang down to shout after her, “We don’t want collaborators here in Ryendal!”

  So that was it. Everybody knew now that she was working at the German headquarters and had drawn their own conclusions. She did not blame them. Their hostility was hard to bear and it would get worse as time went on. As she continued up the lane she sensed cold stares, and when she passed the schoolhouse where another teacher had been appointed in Rolf’s enforced absence, she guessed that the fact she had two brothers who had risked their lives for freedom made all in the valley more bitter towards her.

  Edvard, leaning heavily on his walking-stick, came unaided onto the porch to meet her. She flew up the steps and they hugged each other. “You’re looking so well!” she exclaimed, standing back as she held him by the arms. His face, weathered over the years, had had its tan revived by hours of sitting in the sun, giving him a far healthier look than his general condition warranted.

  “Only through being lazy, I’m afraid. As yet I can only do some paperwork. Your mother runs everything like clockwork, and young Karen is her right hand.” He moved with some difficulty to sink down weakly on the slatted porch seat, and she sat beside him. “That doesn’t mean things are fine here. Far from it.” After the initial pleasure of seeing her again he was becoming once again the querulous convalescent, which her mother had warned her about on the telephone. “I should be out in the fields, not skulking here uselessly. Your mother is out there in my place, and as if that were not enough a German is helping to bring in the harvest. My harvest!” He thumped his chest in outrage. “I’ve forbidden it, but neither she nor Karen will listen to me.”

  Johanna raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know about that. Is it the sergeant Karen knew in her schooldays?”

  “That’s him. They’re walking out together—have been all the summer. I always thought she and Erik would make a match of it one day, but that’s gone by the board.” He shook his head irritably. “It’s come to a poor state of affairs when a young woman can’t keep true any more. When I was young the women waited years while their men established themselves in America before sending for them, and there was never a case of one breaking faith.”

  She turned her head to look down the valley. “I had a cold reception on my way up here. Now I know why. Karen has been stamped as a collaborator, too. I can see it hasn’t been easy for you and Mother to have two of the household tainted in everyone’s eyes.”

  “It damn well isn’t,” he agreed forcibly, “particularly when you could give up your job tomorrow and Karen has the power to send that German packing.”

  She could see there was going to be a strain throughout the weekend. As she stood up she patted his shoulder, almost in a reflex action of reassurance, trusting it would be hint enough that she had good reason. Maybe Karen had an equal cause. “I think I’ll change my clothes and go out into the fields to give a hand.”

  Edvard attempted to shake off his angry despondency. “Try to make your mother and Karen see sense about letting an enemy onto my land. Apart from my personal feelings about it, there’s the danger involved that if he should suspect I’ve more cattle and sheep in the high pastures than I’ve listed, then the whole farm could be confiscated.”

  “I should think they’re being very wary. Don’t worry. I’ll talk to them both later.”

  In her room she found a thin cotton dress in the clothes closet and put it on. From a drawer she took a flowered kerchief and put it over her hair to keep out the corn dust, knotting it at the back of her neck. Downstairs again, she went out the back door to avoid a further confrontation with her father and set off across the bridged stream to where she could see the others working. On the way she passed a German army jacket hanging on a post, and with the forage cap stuck on the top it looked like a curious scarecrow. It was the third harvest of the Occupation—to which there was no end in sight. She wondered how many more summers must go by before those uniforms were swept into the sea.

  Drawing near, she saw Carl Müller in his shirtsleeves working at a fast pace, taking sheaves from the ropes on which they had dried and tossing them into the wagon where a hired hand was stacking it. Karen and Gina were wielding rakes over the ground, drawing together the dropped and scattered blades in a gleaning against the winter ahead. They all looked in her direction and greeted her as she came within hailing distance. Only Carl paused in his work, wiping his brow with his forearm, his hair fronded by sweat. He looked to
tally happy and appeared to be as much at home as if he had been born amid the peaks and crags that soared up around him on all sides.

  “We meet again,” he said amiably to her, leaning on his pitchfork. “I’ve made myself one of the work force.”

  “So I heard from my father.” She noticed Gina avert her eyes and seemingly concentrate even more on the task in hand.

  Over the weekend Johanna had plenty of chances to assess the situation. Karen had changed more than anyone. She had lost weight and there was a brittle look to her as if she might easily snap. Outwardly, at least, she was her usual calm and gentle self, helpful and capable and quick to run any errand for Edvard, who once again sat for meals in his place at the head of the table. On Saturday evening, Carl returned to take Karen to a dance somewhere. She left the house in a light-coloured dress, almost sprite-like with her pale hair aswirl and her bone-slim figure. From the window Johanna saw Carl put his arm around her waist possessively. Karen neither responded nor drew away. She seemed resigned.

  Johanna turned away from the window, pushing her hands into the pockets of her skirt. “Why do you allow that sergeant to come here?” she asked Gina, who was darning a sock on a wooden mushroom. Edvard had fallen asleep while reading a newspaper and was breathing heavily, his head back against a velvet cushion.

  Her mother did not look up. “He doesn’t come into the house.”

  “That’s not the point. You must be inviting trouble from friends and neighbours by appearing to condone the liaison. I’ve discovered I’m out of favour with them, but at least you can’t be blamed for the work I do away from here.”

  “We’ve been asked to send Karen back to her own village. I told them our home is her home for as long as she pleases.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Johanna perched on the arm of a chair, looking at her mother’s head bent over the darning. “What is this collusion between you and Karen? You’re in it together, I can tell. What hold has that German gained over the two of you?”