To Sleep With Reindeer

by Justine Saracen

  Poulsson laid a hand on the shoulder of the man standing next to him. “This is where we spread out before the German command realizes what we’ve done and mobilizes across the whole territory. Haugland, Kjelstrup, and I will go to headquarters near Lake Skrykken to report in, then head down to Oslo. Does everyone else know their route?”

  “Sweden, for us.” Rønneberg nodded toward Idland, Kayser, and Strömsheim.

  “What about you, Brun?” Poulsson looked toward her, but his question obviously included Maarit. “The Germans won’t be looking for women.”

  “I think you’re right. We’ll go back to Rjukan, to dry out. Birgit can pass on the message of our success. After that, I don’t know.”

  “Then we’re going back together to my village,” Maarit added firmly, ignoring Kirsten’s surprise. “No one will connect the sabotage with the Sami, and we’ll be safe there.”

  “All right, then. The men will come with me along the cable-car road up to the plateau. Godspeed to you.” Poulsson gave her and Maarit a brief hug and turned away, while the other men waved and fell in behind him.

  Kirsten watched them, dark forms moving amongst the low foliage of the path until they disappeared. Good men, and true, striking a blow with no blood shed. This was the way to fight a war.

  Chapter Ten

  It was early morning and not yet light when they arrived at the rear of Birgit’s café.

  “You two are a sorry sight,” she said as she closed the storeroom door behind them.

  “Yes, but we did the job, and we’re still alive. So is everyone else. That’s all that counts.” Maarit threw off her mittens, dropped onto the bench, and labored with stiff fingers to unlace her boots. Beside her, Kirsten did the same and together they slid off their drenched socks.

  “You can hang them over the woodstove,” Birgit said begrudgingly. “So, everyone’s gotten away safely?”

  “Everything went off more or less as planned. We just hadn’t reckoned with the river thawing. That’s why we’re so wet.”

  “The Germans have every man out searching houses, cabins, and storehouses. They’ve already been here this morning, so we’re safe for today.”

  “We should be safe anyhow, if we can make up a good reason to be here. They won’t be looking for any women. Only two workers saw my face, and I’m sure no one recognized I was female. Maarit was hidden with the team outside.”

  Maarit massaged her toes, trying to bring sensation back. “Least of all, two Sami women.” She dragged the bench closer to the heat and placed their boots on the stove to dry.

  Standing in the doorway, Birgit seemed unconvinced. “What do you want me to report to Milorg?”

  “Just that the operation was a success, with no fatalities on either side. Skinnarland will contact London with the details. In the meantime, can we rest here for a while?”

  Birgit glanced toward the café. “I suppose so, but people will be coming and going all day. I’ll lock the storeroom door, but you must stay quiet. You know where the blankets are.” She nodded toward the table and the sack underneath it. “I’ll check on you in a few hours.”

  Kirsten nodded gratefully. “We’ll be out of your way as soon as we can. Thanks for your help.”

  Birgit smiled faintly. “Thanks for your sabotage.”

  * * *

  The hot soup and the woodstove had warmed them nicely, and after they’d spread out the blankets, Kirsten lay on her back in what seemed like luxury.

  “I’m sorry we had to give up our gaktis. I know that Karrel’s was precious to your family.”

  “It’s not important compared to the operation we just accomplished.”

  Kirsten rolled onto her side and rested her head on one hand. With the other, she tapped Maarit’s shoulder through the blanket. “And we did it together.”

  “Yes. This feels very good. Though a bath would feel even better. One of the things I missed during winter herding with the Sami—being in a place warm and safe enough to take off all my clothes and lie in hot, soapy water.”

  “Mmm. It would be luxurious. First a thorough shampoo, to wash weeks of grit off my scalp. Then a good scrub of everything else from the chin down. Then, finally, my feet.”

  “Yes. Feet. Between every toe. And afterward, I’d just want to fall asleep that way—clean, damp, naked.”

  “That’s not the first thing that comes to mind if I were clean, damp, and naked.” Kirsten lay back down to avoid looking directly at Maarit.

  “What would you do? Dance?”

  “No. I would make love to you.”

  Maarit was silent.

  Kirsten’s face warmed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” Her throat felt tight.

  Maarit looked away. “No. It’s a nice thing to say. Just not possible. Anyhow, I’m really tired. We should go to sleep.”

  “Yes, of course. Sure.” Kirsten stared at the dark ceiling and couldn’t fall asleep. Maarit, too, seemed to lie awake, silent, though at some point, both succumbed to exhaustion.

  In the evening, after Birgit brought them a final meal and they pulled on dry socks, they prepared to leave. The subjects of bathing, or nudity, or lovemaking didn’t come up.

  * * *

  Nor did they come up during the three days it took them to reach the Sami settlement. During the two nights they camped on the snow, wrapped again in their reindeer skins, they slept back-to-back, without reminiscing.

  They arrived at the settlement during the long afternoon dusk, to both welcome and agitation. “Germans,” Gaiju complained, his grimace revealing the wide gap where his front lower teeth were missing. He spoke a mix of Sami and Norwegian, which she’d learned he understood but rarely used. “Patrols, little planes flying low over the plateau.”

  “Reconnaissance planes?” Kirsten frowned. “Odd. Did they land?”

  “No, nothing. But men came this morning. With guns, watching us.” He mimed them hunched over, clutching their rifles, scowling.

  Jova had joined them, and Gaiju backed up a step, leaving her to make explanations.

  “How many were there?” Maarit asked.

  “About twenty, but only two of them talked. An officer and an ugly man with a big mouth. They spoke bad Norwegian, but we understood. We told them ‘No British! No British. Only Sami.’ They took a couple of our deer and then left.”

  “Did they seem satisfied?”

  “What does a satisfied German look like?” Jova said bitterly. “I have never seen one.”

  Comforted by the fact that the Germans had already been to the settlement and found nothing, Kirsten sat down to one of Jova’s reindeer-stew suppers and rested from the long ski-march. The subject of Karrel’s missing gakti didn’t arise, though Jova’s disappointment was obvious.

  Otherwise none of Maarit’s family inquired as to their whereabouts for the last ten days. Was it diplomacy and the suspicion that they engaged in resistance, or simply general Sami indifference to political events? She’d have to ask Maarit later.

  “How is the herd?” Maarit asked between chews.

  “Well enough. We had to slaughter a lame calf.”

  “Oh, no. Not Lykke!”

  “No. She’s still with the others,” Alof reported between puffs.

  “That’s a relief.” Kirsten wanted to ask to see the calf, but everyone was already settling in for the night. Alof had thrown a final block of wood on the fire, and she became aware of her own sore muscles. Maarit, as she had the past few nights, lay down and turned her back, signaling it was time to sleep. Kirsten lay down next to her and relaxed into the springy cushion of soft twigs under her deerskin.

  She couldn’t tell how long she’d slept, but it couldn’t have been more than an hour, for the embers still glowed. The sound of boots kicking on the goahti door woke them all. Alof, who was closest to the door, pushed it open.

  Befuddled, Kirsten saw a hand snatch him by his shoulder and haul him outside. She was on her knees when the muzzle of a rifle poked th
rough the door opening, and she heard the command “Alle ’raus!”

  Fully awake, Maarit leapt out in front of her, then Gaiju. Alarmed, Kirsten followed, noting briefly that Jova hadn’t stirred. Was she sleeping so deeply she didn’t hear, or simply petrified?

  Outside she faced two German soldiers and a slowly growing number of Sami neighbors. Both soldiers held rifles, and the one in front spoke to her directly. “I knew you were here and everyone was lying,” he said in his clumsy Norwegian. “All I had to do was come back and force one to point you out.” It was the Goebbels-head with the wide mouth they’d faced in the café in Rjukan. She even remembered his name. Debus. His colleague held a terrified young boy by his collar, obviously the poor lad they’d forced to identify her goahti.

  “Why are you looking for us? We haven’t done anything.”

  He spat onto the snow. “Shut up and put on your shoes.”

  Her mind buzzing with thoughts of how to argue their way free, Kirsten bent down through the hut opening to fetch out her and Maarit’s boots. Strangely, Jova still slumped, immobile, eyes closed, at the back of the hut, barely visible in the murky darkness of the last embers.

  Kirsten handed Maarit her boots and knelt to tie on her own. Their Sami neighbors murmured among themselves, anger and helplessness in their voices. When Kirsten stood up again, the two soldiers grasped them by the arms and urged them forward.

  The Sami stepped to both sides, creating a wide alley for the four to march past them, and the soldiers, smug in their success, lowered their rifles.

  Kirsten glanced to the side at Maarit, searching for some sign of what they should do, but she had nothing to offer.

  “We haven’t done anything,” she repeated, helplessly.

  “They told us to look for anything that wasn’t normal. And two Sami women showing up in Rjukan just before the attack. That wasn’t normal. And with that hair…” He pointed to Kirsten’s exposed red hair. “That’s not normal for a Sami.”

  He was right, of course. They were trapped. How was she going to get them away from the village?

  A shot rang out, and Debus’s hand suddenly dropped from her arm. The second soldier spun around just as another shot sounded, and then both men lay at her feet. She turned to see Jova standing at the entrance of their goahti with her hunting rifle. “That’s for my daughter and my grandson,” she said.

  Alof stepped beside her as the murmurs of fear among the other Samis grew louder. He raised his hands and spoke to his neighbors in Sami, clearly to reassure them everything would be all right. The men and women nodded in apparent agreement, and two men approached him. She recognized Paaval and Aavik. “Don’t worry,” Paaval said to her in passing. “We’ve seen nothing. Now let’s move their bodies.”

  Alof touched Jova’s arm reassuringly and turned to Maarit. “Prepare the sled.”

  Laying aside the rifles they’d seized from the dead men, Maarit and Kirsten set off to fetch one of the tame härks and hitch him to a sled. When they arrived at the front of the goahti, the two men grasped the bodies of Debus and his nameless comrade and laid them on the sled.

  “Should we bury them in the snow?” Maarit asked, sliding their rifles beside them. “They’ll be invisible until spring.”

  “No. The Germans have dogs, and they’ll smell them.”

  Now clearly in charge of the disposal mission, Alof thanked the men for their help, then turned to Kirsten and his family. “Fetch your skis and the ice axes,” he commanded with quiet authority. Everyone obeyed and skied alongside the sled together for some two hours. The vidda landscape never appeared to change, but Alof, who had spent his life there, seemed to know exactly where they were.

  Finally, the rocky undulating terrain changed abruptly to smooth ice. Since, by her reckoning, they had traveled almost due south, she was pretty sure she recognized the lake. “This is Lake Skrykken, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “That’s what the Norwegians call it,” Alof answered. “It’s deep in the center, and the ice will be thinner.”

  Kirsten grasped now what he intended to do with the bodies. But just how thin was the ice in February? The river below Rjukan was melting, but Skryrkken was farther north, and the wind kept it frigid. At least in theory.

  They halted, and without further explanation, Alof handed one of the two axes to Maarit. Stepping away from the sled, he marked out a circle about a meter and a half in diameter with the tip of his axe and began to hack.

  Maarit chipped along the other side of the circumference, handing the axe over to Kirsten when she tired. Gaiju relieved Alof until they heard the satisfying sound of the disk of ice breaking away. The two men hooked it with the sharp corners of the axes and slid it up to the side, like a lid, exposing a circle of black water.

  In the meantime, Jova had dragged the bodies from the sled to the edge of the ring, and, at a signal from Alof, shoved the first one—it was Debus—into the hole. Though Kirsten knew the man was already dead, the sight of him sliding headfirst into the icy blackness slightly horrified her. This final act seemed somehow more barbaric than simply burying him.

  With the man’s shoulders already underwater, Gaiju fetched stones from the sled and slid them into his pocket. Smart, she thought. They would keep the body submerged even as it decomposed and became gaseous. Then, from both sides, they stuffed him in completely. Finally, only the bottoms of his boots were visible, and Gaiju poked those to the side under the ice to make room for the next one.

  The nameless soldier followed more quickly, since all were impatient now to finish the job. Kirsten gave the final shove to his boot, propelling it downward, and when it bobbed up again, they shoved him sideways under the uncut ice.

  All that remained was to dispose of the rifles. Jova lifted them from the sled and dropped them into the hole, and Alof slid the ice disk back into place. All stood for a moment of grim satisfaction, before turning back to the sled for the return journey. They followed the ski tracks they’d left, and Kirsten worried. “Won’t the Germans simply track us down the same way?”

  “Yes. They will start to look tomorrow,” Alof said. “But in a few hours, the hole will freeze closed, and tomorrow, our tracks will be covered.” He tilted his head upward and smiled at the flakes of snow that had begun falling. “Maybe sooner.”

  It had grown dark, but as they came within about a kilometer of the settlement, they could see a tiny spark of light in the distance. Someone had made a beacon fire for them.

  “Hahtezan, goddess of dark things, is helping us tonight,” Gaiju said, and for once, Kirsten was inclined to believe him.

  Chapter Eleven

  For the first few days, though no one spoke of it, the entire village was apprehensive. If the Germans returned demanding to know what happened to their men, not all could remain silent. And if the truth was revealed, the reprisals would be grave.

  But the Sami gods did indeed seem to be looking after them, for no new patrol came, and the reconnaissance flights overhead suggested the Germans were searching for a large British force rather than two or three saboteurs. It began to look like Debus and his comrade, who’d arrived in the middle of the night, had been acting on their own.

  A week passed, then two, filled with the normal winter labors. Knowing SOE had put her on standby for an indefinite period, Kirsten enjoyed a sort of vacation from the war.

  The gradual return to normalcy, such as it was for the Alof family, also meant a change in Maarit. She was once again the amiable person who had saved Kirsten. Her glance was open, warm, and at night, when they slept side by side in the goahti, her embrace was spontaneous. Whether that meant sisterly affection or the reopening of negotiations wasn’t clear.

  With Karrel’s gakti lying still in Skinnarland’s cabin, Kirsten reclaimed one of the two British coats she’d worn when she was first rescued. Jova had kept both, though, as she pointed out sheepishly, she had remade the larger one into trousers for Alof.

  On the last day of February, when K
irsten was just beginning to waken, and Jova was stirring up the embers, someone rapped on their door. Alof opened to the leaders of the three other herding families—Tuovo, Paaval, and Aavik. Standing at the front, Paaval announced, “It’s time for the separation.”

  “Why do you separate them?” Kirsten asked Maarit. “I thought they remained together all the time.”

  Maarit tied on her shoes. “At the moment, all four herds are scattered throughout the valley. Reindeer don’t know who they belong to, so we have to collect them in the corral from time to time.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “To identify them and to mark the ears of any of the calves who slipped by last time. Sometimes they only have a spot of paint on them that’s beginning to wear off. But we also have to check them for sickness, especially the vajas who are carrying this year’s calves. If they show signs of malnourishment, we supplement with fodder we’ve collected ourselves. Best of all, or worst of all, if you’re sentimental, each family slaughters a couple of fat ox-deer to stock up for the next few months.”

  “I see. So, how can I help?”

  “You can either stay with the women and help shore up the corral and the side pens to hold the separated deer, or you can join the men who are rounding them up.”

  “Oh, the roundup sounds much more exciting. Count me in for that.”

  * * *

  The roundup team, which amounted to most of the able-bodied men and their dogs, was already setting out. They marched in a long line, with Alof and Gaiju close to the end and Maarit and Kirsten following at a distance behind them. After about two hours of hiking, they’d made a wide loop around the entire range. When the loose—very loose—circle was completed, Kirsten heard the whistles signaling that everyone should move inward.