To Sleep With Reindeer

by Justine Saracen

  “It’s just us now, eh?” Lars snickered, though his voice gurgled slightly, as if he breathed through a layer of blood. He coughed. “So what’s your story? Why are you working for the enemy? You Jewish or something?”

  “In fact, I’m Sami.” The minute she spoke, she was sorry. It was as if she’d offered her identity to him for abuse, and it wasn’t long in coming.

  “Oh, that’s a good one. I thought you all squatted around your fires eating raw meat and shitting on the ground.” He chuckled, though it was more of a croak, and coughed again. “I’ve seen the Germans shoot a couple of your sort, and good riddance. I hope you savages all die out.” His voice was weak now, but he managed to growl, “Norway’s for Norwegians.”

  She couldn’t bear the thought that she and Will would die and that bastard would live, then realized she still had her pistol in her hand, but it was on the side where she was shot. All she had to do was pull the trigger and rid the world of one more quisling. She strained to raise her head to fire, but lifting it made her dizzy, and everything quickly grew dark. She couldn’t tell whether the dull bang she heard was her gunfire or the impact of her head on the floor.

  * * *

  The sensation of being lifted awakened her, and she jerked in reflex against the hands that held her.

  “It’s all right. No one will hurt you. We heard the shooting and knew something terrible had happened.”

  “Who…are you?” She groaned, in a stupor of pain as he touched her shoulder.

  “Pastor Angeltveit. This is my church. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you.”

  Befuddled, all she could say was, “What? Be careful…the others…”

  “They’re dead, and my men will bury them outside so no one finds them. You’re in pretty bad shape, so we’ve called a doctor.”

  “No. Too dangerous. Have to contact Iver…” she muttered and lost consciousness again.

  She awakened a second time on a cot in the church basement, with a circle of men around her. One of them, presumably a doctor, was just finishing a bandage around her arm and shoulder. “Ah, you’re awake. I’ve stopped the bleeding and tried to clean the wound, but you need a surgeon to remove the bullet.”

  It was a slight comfort to know she was still alive, but the pain hadn’t subsided, and she was too weak to sit up. “Can’t stay here,” she muttered. “Have to get back to Trondheim.”

  “Yes, we know,” the man standing behind the doctor said. It seemed to be the same one who’d said he was the pastor. “One of our people will take you to the hospital there. A woman who’s been shot will arouse suspicion on the road, so you have to travel hidden. He’s a carpenter who has a pass to travel, so no one should inspect his wagon, but you’ll have to lie in his saw box.”

  “A box? No…no. Please.” She was conscious enough to refuse. She had no fear of small spaces, but the thought of lying in a sort of coffin that she would be too weak to climb out of horrified her.

  “It’ll only be for about two hours. We’ll wrap you up warmly, and the box has holes in it for air. It’s the only safe way to get you to Trondheim.”

  She neither consented nor refused, but simply went limp as they slid her good arm back into her coat and lifted her from the bed. As they carried her outside, it was full night, but she could see the wagon by the dull light emanating from the church.

  She moaned in fear as they laid her in the wooden chest and draped burlap over her.

  “Don’t worry. It’s only a couple of hours,” the carpenter repeated as he lowered the lid of the box and cast her into complete darkness.

  Immediately she drew her good hand out from under the burlap to feel around her. She hit the wood cover a few inches from her face and pushed against it, relieved to find she could raise it if necessary. Even better, her fingers detected several holes that someone had drilled to let in air.

  The wagon started immediately, and a wave of panic made her forget the pain in her side. She had to have something to fill her mind to keep from going mad from terror. Two hours, they’d said. How much better it would be if she could pass out again, but the pounding of her heart kept her alert and in torment.

  All right. She’d count it out. Sixty beats to each minute, each minute noted until she’d reached an hour. Then she’d begin again. She tested the lid once more to reassure herself she could still raise it.

  The system calmed her as the wagon bumped and rattled along the road. Once or twice she lost count but then backtracked deliberately. It would be a pleasant surprise to arrive before she reached 120 minutes.

  Diligently, she drummed out sixty beats with one finger, then whispered “one” and began the next count, slowly accumulating minutes. She lost track somewhere in the middle forties but started again at forty-one. By the time she reached sixty minutes, the satisfaction of reaching the halfway mark had mitigated her fear somewhat. All she had to do was repeat the process, and the journey would all be over.

  At ten minutes into the next hour, the wagon stopped. What did that mean? Men’s voices, aggressive and loud, then the thump of boots on the wagon floor. Her box rocked as someone kicked it. Was it a guard demanding inspection? She braced herself for exposure and violent seizure. But instead, she felt the dull thuds of additional boxes piled on top of her.

  Dear God. Now she was helpless. Blind, bleeding, and helpless. She wanted to cry but was too weak. If only she knew what was happening outside over her head.

  The wagon started again, and the added weight on the saw box caused it to creak as it rocked from side to side. If that had been an inspection, it appeared they had passed it, and even though she was trapped, she had only to hold out another hour. She began counting again.

  But some thirty minutes later, by her reckoning, the wagon stopped once more. Worse than the sound of men climbing on the wagon was the silence that followed. What had happened? Were they stopped again? The driver arrested? Would he reveal his human freight, or would he abandon her, sealed in a box?

  Even worse, she had to take ever deeper breaths to get enough air, and she realized the additional crates that imprisoned her also covered the holes above her head. How much air did she have left? Panic set in again, and she began to sob, then call out in German and Norwegian. It didn’t matter who heard her. She preferred dying quickly in the open air to slowly suffocating in darkness.

  “Please. Help me. Help me,” she called.

  A thud on the side of the box startled her. Someone had kicked her, signaling that she wasn’t abandoned. A German guard would have opened the crate, so it had to be one of the carpenters. But did he know her air was cut off?

  She was dizzy now from the lack of oxygen and tapped out a rhythm. Three quick knocks—three slow ones, three quick ones. Would he realize she was tapping out SOS? Would he care?

  All he did was kick her again. It must have been a trap to kill her after all. Dear God, she didn’t want to die, not this way. She began to sob again. The lack of air and the loss of blood together drained all her strength, and she began fading out. She fought to stay awake, knowing that once she succumbed, she would never awaken again, but now even her pounding heart couldn’t bring her enough oxygen. With a final sob, she lost consciousness.

  * * *

  A rush of cold air revived her, though she gasped and struggled to waken from her stupor as she was lifted out of the box and laid on a stretcher. She swam in semiconsciousness while she was jostled from darkness into light, and around corners, and finally laid onto a gurney.

  She awakened fully in a brightly lit room, hearing the low hum of activity, and turned her head. A ward, obviously, with beds on all sides of her. It was difficult to breathe, and her whole left side hurt, but it wasn’t the hellish pain she’d felt before. A careful touch with her hand told her she was bandaged tightly. Someone had tended to her wound. She glanced around again, recognizing the room. Trondheim hospital.

  Her outer clothing had been removed, and she wore a cotton hospital smock. A single b
lanket covered her, though in the cold room, it wasn’t sufficient to warm her feet. Where were her shoes?

  With increasing clarity came a new anxiety. This was the hospital where she’d been expelled two years before. Did anyone recognize her? Had someone reported her and her suspicious gunshot wound to the Gestapo? It almost didn’t matter, as long as she was out of that coffin. They could do with her what they wished. She was too weak to fight any longer.

  “Ah, you’re awake,” a friendly voice said. She turned her head in the other direction to see a young man in a white smock. He was slender and blond, very blond, even his eyebrows, the sort of look the Germans seemed to love. Almost certainly a new staff member, for she didn’t recognize him, and more importantly, he didn’t seem to recognize her.

  “How are you feeling? And while you’re at it, you might tell me who you are. Some men in a wagon dropped you off, but as soon as we brought you inside, they disappeared. Odd behavior, but then, these days, nothing’s normal.”

  She stalled for time. “Sorry. I don’t remember much myself. I was walking along and was suddenly shot. Hunters, I guess. But it looks like someone treated my…uh…injury?”

  “Two injuries. You had a concussion, which would account for your being unconscious when we brought you in, but also the surgeon removed a bullet lodged in your scapula. You were lucky it struck high enough to miss your lung. In any case, we’re supposed to inform the authorities of injuries of that sort, but we’ve held off until we learned your name.”

  Name. Any name. The first one that came to mind. “Kirsten,” she said. “Kirsten Johannsen.” It was the most common family name she could think of.

  “Well, Kirsten Johannsen, we’ve patched you up, and we can keep you a few days, but we’re swamped and understaffed since the war. Can your family take care of you while you recover?”

  Her mind raced, desperate. She had no one. Iver might know one of the Milorg people in Trondheim who could take her in. But that wasn’t so easy to organize. How could she even contact him without exposing him?

  “My family is…uh…well, I just have an aunt. In Tuddal. She lives alone, with a cat.” She knew she was babbling, but she had to gain time until she could get back on her feet. “You said I can stay a few days? That will give me time to get word to her.”

  “Yes. You can send out a note as soon as you’re able. In the meantime, let me take a look here.” He untied her sling and made a cursory exam of the bandage. “Everything seems normal,” he said, and with a gentle pat on her hand, he moved to the next bed.

  She glanced around the ward, nervous. Surprising that no one on the staff had recognized her, but it was just a matter of time. Once that happened, the quislings who had expelled her in the first place would rush to report her and her gunshot wound. She had to have an explanation or an escape plan.

  The chill in her feet also told her she needed to find her socks and shoes. Holding her breath, she pulled herself up with her good arm to a sitting position, then swung her legs over the side. As she recalled, patient belongings were stored either in lockers or under their beds. Carefully, she bent forward and, to her relief, spotted a cardboard box under the foot of the bed.

  With slow, painful movements, she knelt and managed to slide the box out to retrieve her footwear. The woolen socks were filthy but warmed her immediately, and with sock-covered feet, she nudged her shoes toward a spot where she could put them on quickly if she needed to.

  When she lay back in the bed, she caught sight of a man watching her. He stood near the door with a mop and seemed to study her, and slowly it dawned on her that she knew him.

  A simple, good-natured fellow, he’d been the janitor when she was a student at the hospital. She’d chatted once or twice with him, enough to know he was half-Sami, like her, though from a village in the far north she’d never heard of. He was stocky, with a Slavic face and bad teeth, and looked more Sami than she did. Nonetheless, he’d kept his job through the racial purge, she presumed because of its menial nature. She couldn’t remember his name.

  Catching her eye, he leaned his mop against the wall and approached. She cringed but then remembered their grumbling together about the quisling government. He wouldn’t denounce her.

  “Excuse me,” he said, reaching the foot of her bed. “You’re Maarit, aren’t you? I’m sure I remember you. I’m Olet. Do you remember me?”

  She beckoned him closer, to speak in an undertone. “Yes. I remember you. But please, don’t tell anyone I’m here. You’ll get me arrested, maybe killed.”

  “Oh, my gosh. Okay. How’d you get hurt? Oh, sorry, I guess I shouldn’t ask.”

  His appearance was a straw in a flood, and she clutched at it. “Can you help me?”

  “Um, how?” He was hesitant, and she knew she could push him only so far.

  “Just get a message to someone. At the Institute of Technology. It’s not even very far away. Get word to someone named Iver and tell him I’m here. That’s all.”

  It was a lot to ask. Iver was surely a code name, and not known to his colleagues. “Ask for him, and if no one recognizes that name, leave immediately. Don’t endanger yourself.”

  “Uh, all right. Tomorrow’s my day off. I’ll try then.”

  “Thank you. In the meantime, can you help me with my shoes? I need to go to the toilet, and it takes two hands to get them on.”

  “Of course.” He knelt down and slid her feet into the boots and laced them up, then offered his arm to help her stand. Together they shuffled through the door into a long corridor. She recognized this wing of the hospital, with a spiral staircase at one end, a series of six-bed rooms along both sides of a corridor, and a twelve-bed ward at the opposite end. Midway along the corridor was a toilet for the use of ambulatory patients.

  As they edged their way forward, he spoke soothingly. “Don’t you have friends in Trondheim who can help you?”

  She shook her head. “No one here. Only Iver, if you can locate him.”

  They arrived at the door of the toilet. “All right, then. I’ll take your message to him tomorrow, if I can find him. I’ll do my best and tell you what happened the next day, when I’m on duty again.” He glanced back at the ward where he was supposed to be working. “Can you make it back to your bed without help?”

  “Thank you. Yes. I’m sure I can.” She squeezed his arm wearily, her hopes undermined by the pain in her shoulder, and staggered inside to relieve herself.

  * * *

  Sunday passed without event, and she discovered that removing her boots with one hand was possible, though tying them was not. So she simply shuffled around in them unlaced.

  The nice doctor stopped by to examine her bandages again, and a nurse brought her some of the fish broth the hospital provided as food. But until word came from Olet, she was in limbo, anguishing over the near certainty that he wouldn’t be able to find Iver at the Institute. And if he couldn’t, she was trapped.

  Monday brought matters to a head. In the morning, an orderly had changed her bandage and sprinkled another dusting of sulfa powder on the wound, though Maarit noted it seemed no better. She lay back and stared at the ceiling, fervently willing Olet to walk into the ward.

  Instead, a nurse arrived on some duty or other, and Maarit froze. The nurse was about to pass the foot of the bed, when she stopped. Her eyes narrowed for a moment before she pivoted around and strode to the bedside.

  “Maarit Ragnar. Whatever are you doing here, and as a patient, no less?” Without waiting for a reply, she took up the board that hung on the foot rail of the bed and read. “Ballistic trauma: gunshot.” She glanced up, scowling. “So you’ve been shot. While you were out wandering with your reindeer? I thought the Sami took care of their own.”

  It was not a real question, simply derision.

  Maarit had no reply, so remained silent, which seemed to irritate the nurse more.

  “Who shot you? Has the admitting doctor reported this gunshot to the authorities?”

 
“Of course he has,” Maarit lied. “It was an accident.”

  The nurse inspected the bandage, as if doing so would provide damning information of some sort. When it didn’t, she stepped back. “I didn’t care for it when the likes of you took a study place away from a Norwegian, and I don’t like it, when you lie there taking up space a sick Norwegian might need. I’m going to look into this.” She marched back through the door, postponing whatever she had come to do in the first place.

  Maarit instinctively sat up. But to what end? She still couldn’t run—only shuffle. And no one ever escaped anything by shuffling. Beaten, she dropped back onto the bed and lay there, resigned.

  She lay for a good two hours, and her nemesis didn’t reappear. Perhaps she was bluffing, or realized the rule of the Germans over Norway had become precarious, and had decided to leave well enough alone. It was a faint hope.

  Where the hell was Olet?

  As if in response to her fervent thoughts, the familiar soft swish of a mop wafted toward her, and she turned to see him at the other side of the ward. He worked with concentration, mopping between the beds and along the center aisle, ignoring her while medics and nurses came and went. Just a normal workday. She glanced away from him as well, waiting for him to arrive on her side of the room.

  Finally, he did and spoke in a low voice while he mopped under her bed. “Couldn’t find your friend at the institute. No one knew the name.”

  She closed her eyes in despair and barely heard his next words.

  “But I told a couple of my Sami friends that a Sami woman was in the hospital and needed a place to stay. You’d be surprised who knows who around here. I ended up meeting someone who could help.”

  “Who? I don’t know any of the Sami in Trondheim,” she whispered.

  “Well, he knows you, and he promised to come.” That was all Olet was able to say, for at that moment, one of the doctors came through the door. Keeping his head down, Olet proceeded to mop a path from her bed through the doorway to the corridor.