Stranger in the Dark

by Nielsen, Helen

  An elderly woman came toward them, her round face alive with the dancing wrinkles of a welcoming smile. She was red-cheeked, well fed, and as natural as a Grant Wood portrait come to life. She didn’t look at all like a person who would hide a hot refugee in her hayloft.

  “Maren, Valdemar!” she cried, pulling the cotton gardening gloves from her hands. “And Herre McDonald—”

  It must have been more than the trench coat after all. Larry winced, and the woman took a second look.

  “Oh, it isn’t Herre McDonald,” she said. “For a moment I thought it was your American friend, Maren. You know, the one who has come here with you before.”

  It was a shame to look so disappointed in the face of all that eager greeting, but unless the woman shared Valdemar’s profession it was beginning to look as if they’d just had a ride in the country. Maren recovered first.

  “Herre Willis is an American, too,” Maren said quickly. “He’s—he’s a friend of Ira McDonald. He’s just come to Copenhagen and wants to see Mac, but he isn’t at home. I thought he might have driven out here, Tante Gerda.”

  The older woman looked puzzled.

  “Out here?” she echoed. “Alone?”

  “Not exactly alone,” Valdemar said, but Maren silenced him with a glance.

  “Then you haven’t seen him?”

  Tante Gerda frowned. “No, not since the last time you were here together. Easter, wasn’t it? Much too long ago.”

  She was still puzzled. Three unexpected guests couldn’t drop in and start asking for an even more unexpected guest without putting questions in those bright blue eyes. Larry studied them for any sign of faltering or evasion, but all he could see was a slightly excited woman who was now remembering her happiness at the sight of familiar faces. The questions about Ira McDonald couldn’t be important; the important thing was that Maren and Valdemar had come home.

  “Such a long time between visits,” she reflected. “You’re thinner, Maren. You’ve been working too hard.”

  “I have to make a living,” Maren said.

  “A living? Is that what you call living? Sleeping all morning and working all night in that smoky, crowded place? You could have a good living here if it wasn’t for the nonsense that American puts in your head! … Forgive me, Herre Willis. It’s not your country or your countrymen that I object to; it’s just that your friend McDonald has such grand ideas. Paris, Rome, the Riviera—”

  “Tante Gerda!”

  Maren didn’t seem to approve of this secondhand character reading even if Larry did find it interesting. Her words brought back the woman’s smile in all its glory.

  “What good is it to be an old tante if I can’t scold a little,” she said. “And look at Valdemar, skin and bones! What are you doing with yourself, Valdemar? Why is it that you never come home any more?”

  “Copenhagen is my home,” Valdemar muttered.

  “Copenhagen! This is your home and you know it. What would you do with a pair like this, Herre Willis? All I have left and they never come to see me. Young people have no interest in the farm these days.”

  “I have,” Larry said. “I’m very much interested in farms. In fact, that’s my business.”

  “You’re a farmer?”

  It was a shame to spoil all that beaming approval, especially when it was the only approval Larry was getting since Valdemar’s back-seat insinuation; but he still had Prairie State to fall back on and with a result that couldn’t have been better if he’d written the dialogue himself. Of course Herre Willis’s company was known; of course he could be shown about the farm! Tante Gerda trotted off toward the barn calling for Chris, the old man with the pail, and Larry turned to his companions with a smug smile. A search for McDonald and friend wasn’t so difficult if a man knew his business.

  “Maybe we should split up,” Maren suggested. “We can cover more territory in less time that way.”

  “I’ll look in the kitchen,” Valdemar said.

  “Valdemar, be sensible!”

  “I am sensible. Isn’t everyone behind the iron curtain starving? The general may be looking for a snack…. Anyway, this is all foolishness. McDonald never came here.”

  “He might have come without Tante Gerda’s knowledge.”

  Valdemar lifted one eyebrow skeptically. “And without the knowledge of old Chris, or the house servants, or that yelping dog? It’s all nonsense, nothing but nonsense. You’ll never find him here.”

  “We can look,” Larry said, “and we can look together.”

  There was a finality in his tone that left no room for argument. Valdemar smiled crookedly. “So Herre Willis is getting suspicious, too,” he murmured. “See how easy it is. Just a word and everybody suspects everybody else.” But he followed the procession to the barn just the same. He dug his twisted hands deep into his trouser pockets and followed like a reluctant schoolboy answering the bell.

  It was a long time before Larry thought of Valdemar again. The search of the barn didn’t take long. He couldn’t very well grab a pitchfork and start stabbing at the hay, and he couldn’t go crawling through the cow stalls like a small boy playing hide and seek. But a barn was no place to keep a general anyway, not even a general with death dogging his heels. After the barn came the machine shed, and this was a matter that took somewhat longer. Tante Gerta was no fireside farmer. A war, an occupation—these were things that could take a middle-aged woman away from her embroidery and put her out in the fields. Larry found himself explaining equipment to a woman who knew what he was talking about, and even if it added nothing to the search he was glad of the chance. Perhaps now Maren would believe that L. O. Willis had come to Copenhagen just to attend a convention. What Valdemar believed didn’t matter.

  Tante Gerda believed in hospitality.

  “Here I am chattering away like an old gossip,” she said, breaking off in the midst of her unsolicited memoirs, “and I haven’t told Ulla to prepare for guests.”

  “Oh, no,” Maren cried. “We can’t stay. We’re driving back right away.”

  “Without supper?”

  “Without supper. I have to go to work.”

  The woman looked hurt. “I should have known. They rush in, and they rush out. Nobody ever stays. Just the same, I’ll see about sandwiches and coffee. What will Herre Willis think of us if we don’t even serve coffee?”

  There was no stopping her. Tante Gerda scurried off toward the kitchen, and Larry found himself standing alone with Maren. Old Chris had gone on about his chores. Valdemar was nowhere in sight. Across the felt-green pastures a line of black and white cows were wending their way toward the barn, and the world seemed strangely remote from anything like wars and occupations and a missing general without boots. Maren walked a little way toward the pasture, and Larry followed.

  “I’m afraid Valdemar was right,” she said hollowly. “Mac didn’t come here after all. Tante Gerda would know.”

  “Is there any other place nearby?” Larry suggested.

  “No, not any more.”

  Maren’s voice was far away. It matched the distance in her eyes.

  “There used to be a little house under the trees near the pond. It was a playhouse, and then Valdemar used it for a studio, but it’s gone now. So many things are gone now…. But it must bore you to hear all this talk about the war.”

  “Everybody talks about the war,” Larry said, “except me. I served my hitch in an ordnance depot and never got a hundred miles from home.”

  “You were lucky. I spent those years a long way from home.”

  The black and white cows walked slowly, their bulging sides swinging as they came. Maren leaned against a low fence and watched them, but her eyes didn’t seem to see what she was watching.

  “Six thousand miles away,” she added. “I wasn’t quite ten when my father sent me to relatives in California. He knew what was coming and wanted me to be safe. Arne was supposed to go too, but he was older and refused. I never saw either of them again….
/>   “For five years there was no word at all. Then the war was over, and I learned the reason. Arne was killed in the resistance, and my father died in a prison camp. It’s always the same, isn’t it? When ignorance mobilizes, it’s always the free minds it destroys first. Those who won’t conform are killed and imprisoned.”

  “But never all of them,” Larry said.

  “No, never all—”

  Maren turned and looked back toward the house. The late sun had turned the tile roofs to flame, and the whitewashed walls had soft evening shadows hanging from the eaves.

  “That’s why I came back, Larry. I couldn’t right away. I was in school, and after school I had to work to earn my passage. But I had to come back. I knew that Tante Gerda was here and Valdemar.”

  It must have been the pastoral influence that made the girl so talkative. Whatever it was, Larry didn’t want it to stop. Besides, Valdemar Brix was a gnawing curiosity, and she’d virtually given him a cue.

  “I’ve been wondering about Valdemar,” he said. “Is he a relative too?”

  “Valdemar?” Maren smiled, and it was a big improvement over the melancholy in her eyes. “Valdemar is a friend. A very dear, old friend.”

  “Of your father’s?”

  “Of us all, Arne mostly. He’s always been like another brother to me. He was one of Father’s pupils, you see. A brilliant pupil. He had no home, and so Father brought him here.”

  “Then your father was a teacher.”

  “Yes, a teacher. But you mustn’t let Valdemar upset you, Larry. He likes to sound cynical and mysterious, but he’s really very sweet.”

  Sweet didn’t seem the proper word for Valdemar. Acid, sour, bitter—anything but sweet. Maren read the story in Larry’s eyes and laughed.

  “Don’t tell me you’re suspicious of Valdemar!” she cried.

  “Why not? He’s suspicious of me.”

  “Nonsense! He only talks the way he does because—because he’s Valdemar! How could anyone be suspicious of you? I’ve never seen anyone who looked more like an American farm-implement salesman!”

  She didn’t have to be so emphatic. Larry didn’t know why the description angered him. What did he want to look like? A reckless adventurer who went about snatching political prisoners from under the noses of firing squads? The answer must have been yes because, sight unseen, he’d begun to hate Ira McDonald.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he muttered, “but if you’re referring to those hayseeds in my hair, I only wear them to remind me of home.”

  “Larry!”

  “But then, I’ve never been to gay places like Paris, Rome, or the Riviera.”

  “Larry Willis!”

  Blame it on the felt-green pastures. Blame it on the black and white cows and their long shadows bending across the grass. Something had to account for all this unpremeditated tongue loosening. But it was too late for apology. Too late to fall back on the feeble excuse of too much strain in too few hours. Maren was staring at him now and her words, when they came, were no more relevant to the mission that had brought them so far from Copenhagen than the cause of Larry’s outburst.

  “Who was Cathy?” she asked.

  “Cathy?”

  He spoke the name as if there had never been a Cathy.

  “She must have been important for you to be thinking of her five years after she married the plumber. And you were, you know. Last night—at the bar.”

  Larry had to take her word for it. His memory didn’t go back that far.

  “That was yesterday,” he said. “Today I can’t even remember what she was like.”

  Yes, blame it on the scenery and the sinking sun. The strange thing about Larry’s words was that they were true, but Maren didn’t look at him any more after they were spoken. She looked anywhere but at him. A whisper of wind came off the meadow, and she shivered, as if it carried something more than the promise of a soft summer night. Another day was drawing to a close with nothing answered, nothing solved. It was time to go back to the city and start searching for more broken threads because, even if Cathy was forgotten, Ira McDonald was a hard man to forget.

  But first there was an ancient ritual of hospitality to be observed. Tante Gerda met them at the door of the house with a touch of trouble in her eyes.

  “Isn’t Valdemar with you?” she queried. “He didn’t come back with me from the barn.”

  “Then he must still be out there,” Maren said. “I’ll run back and get him.”

  She seemed glad of the chance to get away, but she didn’t run far. Halfway across the courtyard she met old Chris, and the old man seemed to have all the answers. Larry couldn’t have understood the language even if he’d been within earshot, but he did see the gestures that went with a declamation long enough to cover at least three chapters of the old man’s autobiography. When Maren returned, she walked slowly, and a puzzled frown darkened her face.

  “Valdemar’s gone,” she reported. “Chris says that he left half an hour ago.”

  “Gone?” Larry echoed. “How could he go? The car’s still here.”

  But the car wasn’t important. What was important was the bicycle that had stood beside the barn and didn’t any more.

  “Valdemar took it,” Maren explained. “He told Chris that he was going back to Copenhagen, that he’d already wasted too much time in this uncultured atmosphere.”

  11.

  “IT’S THE FARM,” TANTE GERDA SAID. “THE FARM DEPRESSES Valdemar. It holds too many memories.”

  Tante Gerda could be charitable if she pleased, but two pairs of eyes were telling each other that this could be more than just another instance of Valdemar being Valdemar. No matter how many memories he might be fleeing, thirty kilometers was a long way for a man to peddle just to reach a destination he would have reached anyway with a lot less effort.

  “Is the old man sure he headed for Copenhagen?” Larry demanded. “There might be some other place he remembered. Some hide-out nearby.”

  “Hide-out?” echoed Tante Gerda. “What does Herre Willis mean?”

  Maren was frowning. She didn’t seem to hear her aunt at all. “If there is, I don’t know about it,” she said. “Of course, there may be places used by the resistance during the occupation. Valdemar would know about them because he was in it with Arne.”

  “But what about McDonald? Would he know?”

  “He might. He’s been here a long time. But I don’t understand you, Larry. If Valdemar thought of a place where Mac might be, why would he sneak off without telling us?”

  It was a question that could have a choice of answers, but Larry remained silent too long. His silence meant only one thing to Maren.

  “Oh, no, not that again!” she cried.

  “I didn’t say a word,” Larry protested.

  “You don’t have to say anything—it’s written all over your face. Larry, be reasonable. Valdemar can’t be mixed up in this thing. He’s been working with us all day. He was the one who got Hansen’s address from the police.”

  “So he says. Maybe he didn’t have to ask the police. Maybe he knew about that boat.”

  “Then why not come right out and say so? And why did he lead us to Otto Carlsberg if he’s trying to keep anything from us? No, I simply won’t listen to such ideas! It’s too fantastic!”

  Of course it was fantastic. A man was dead, and Larry Willis, who sold farm machinery and kept his nose clean, carried three hundred dollars he didn’t own. A man was missing, an automobile was smashed up, and a refugee with a V.I.P. rating had vanished right out of his boots! Fantastic was the word for it; but Maren’s eyes were blazing with a loyalty that didn’t lean on oaths, and Tante Gerda looked like a spectator at a tennis match who couldn’t even locate the ball.

  “Hide-out … police … boats,” she sputtered. “What are you two talking about? What has Valdemar done?”

  “Nothing, Tante Gerda,” Maren said.

  “Then what has Herre McDonald done?”

 
This time Maren hesitated. She looked a lot graver than Larry had seen her look before, even last night when he first told his tale of woe.

  “Nothing wrong,” she said at last. “It’s just that something has happened that we don’t understand, and we want to talk to him. If he should come here, have him phone me. Please, Tante Gerda.”

  “But if he needs a hide-out!”

  Maren glared at Larry and his big mouth. “That’s just an American expression,” she said. “It doesn’t mean what you think. Oh, I haven’t time to explain now. We’d better get started back, Larry. I’ll be late as it is.”

  “But the coffee—”

  “I’m sorry, Tante Gerda.”

  Maren was more than sorry; she was scared. Larry realized that when he caught the expression on her face as she started toward the car. But it wasn’t as easy as all that to get away. The honor of the house was being offended. A visitor all the way from America and they couldn’t even stay for coffee! Tante Gerda followed them to the car, protesting all the way. Then she sighed and accepted the inevitable.

  “Very well, I’ll do what you ask,” she said petulantly. “If Herre McDonald comes to the farm, I’ll have him call you, and I’ll ask no questions. But why should he come to me if he’s in trouble? Why not go to his important friends?”

  “Tante Gerda!”

  “Yes, his very important friends that he told me about himself—diplomats, millionaires, show people—”

  “We have to go now,” Maren said firmly.

  Larry was almost sorry that they had to go. He would have liked to hear some more about McDonald’s friends, but Tante Gerda’s pique faded at the moment of good-by. She caught Maren in an affectionate hug and smiled over her shoulder.

  “My little Maren doesn’t realize it yet,” she murmured, “but she was away from us too long. That’s why she’s so fond of Herre McDonald. He remembers the kind of life she remembers, not just old horrors and dead dreams.”