‘Then along came Åse with food and a set of clothes for me. So I had something to change into. Even though everything was rationed, she shared what she had. Your mother was a good person.’
Ester talks about her own mother and father and grandmother, who were killed in Auschwitz. Gassed to death. ‘Mum and Gran were killed the day they arrived at the concentration camp. Apparently my father almost held out until liberation. He was one of the last to be killed.’
When the war ended Ester felt she had nothing to return to. All her family was dead. Åse was dead too, of course.
They look at each other. Ester can see that Turid’s eyes are moist as she blinks. She is moved. That surprises Ester. She reflects on everything she has said. She told it mechanically. As a case officer might have done. The bare details. Unemotionally. It shouldn’t be like that. Mustn’t be like that.
‘What’s the matter?’ Turid asks sympathetically.
Ester looks down. And decides to dismiss this self-reproach.
‘There are things happening right now,’ she says, ‘things that are bringing back memories of your mother. Someone I know, who also knows your parents, told me you were studying law. That’s why I’ve come here. I hope that’s alright.’
‘Of course. You said things were happening. What?’
Ester mounts a little smile. ‘For example, I saw your mother’s grave a few days ago.’
‘My father’s been there too, in Valdres. Did you know him too – Gerhard?’
Ester nods.
‘He sent me a photo of Åse.’ She puts a hand in the breast pocket of her military jacket and passes the picture to Ester.
She studies it. Åse looks very alive. Ester recognises the mountain farm and the barn, even if the land around it is barer than when she was there a few days ago. It makes her feel solemn to see a photo of the past. She has no photos of her own, not of Åse or anyone else from the pre-war days.
‘I changed my hairstyle when I received the photo,’ Turid says, holding her plait.
Ester passes back the photo. ‘As I said, you’re the spitting image of your mother.’
Turid says: ‘And a couple of days ago my father contacted me. We’d always thought he was dead, but he’s been alive the whole time, in America.’
‘And now he’s here?’
Turid nods.
‘That must’ve been quite an experience.’
Turid nods again.
‘Not a single sign of life for all those years?’
‘He’s suffered psychologically. He spent many years getting over my mother’s death, and the way she died.’
Ester feels a rush of fury when she hears Gerhard’s lies being served up in this way. She motions to Turid to carry on:
‘First of all he had to escape to Sweden, then to America.’ Turid looks up. ‘That’s why he’s not been in touch.’
Ester nods again. ‘What did you think when you realised it was your father standing there, here in Norway, and alive?’
Turid fills her lungs with air. ‘It was very, very…’ she searches for the words. ‘Very odd,’ she says.
‘You weren’t angry? Or fed up?’
‘Why would I be?’
Turid laughs and Ester smiles.
‘What do your mum and dad say?’
‘Only my mother knows. And she’s concerned for me, as always. Dad gets angry whenever I talk about Åse or my real father.’ Turid says Erik is still struggling with his memories of the war. ‘He was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured. He was told he was going to be shot, and then they didn’t shoot him.’
‘When was this?’
‘February forty-five. Just before the end of the war. They shot someone else. They’d threatened to shoot Dad if he didn’t talk. But he kept his mouth shut, so they shot the man in front of his eyes. He feels guilty. He still wakes up in the middle of the night. Thinking he can hear shots.’
Ester registers this. She closes her eyes and tries to let her sympathy for Erik Heggen overshadow her inner fury. She fails and again is uneasy about herself. She opens her eyes. Her gaze is drawn to Turid’s wrist.
Turid asks if she can tell Erik and Grete that she has met Ester.
‘Of course you can. I knew your mother, but not your foster parents.’
They sit in silence, and again Ester looks at Turid’s wrist, but the bracelet is covered by the sleeve of her jacket now.
Turid asks Ester again why she has contacted her now.
Ester concocts a lie; she says she met Gerhard again and her memories of Åse came flooding back.
But she can’t square lying to Åse’s daughter with her conscience. She decides to be honest. ‘I’ve been thinking about this for so long. About seeing you. But I really believe Åse would approve. I think she would’ve liked us to meet.’
The swing doors open. A group of students go to the counter. Ester watches them, wondering if Åse ever imagined that her daughter would study law. ‘I’m sure your mother would’ve been really proud of you.’
Turid smiles.
‘I should’ve contacted you before, but I only came to Norway on short trips after the war. I didn’t move back here until 1960.’
‘Where from?’
Ester lowers her eyes. ‘Israel.’
‘Why did you come back in 1960?’
‘Because of a grand piano. During the war all the Jews in Norway had their possessions confiscated. All my family’s things were taken too. Some were sent to Germany, some were shared out among Nazis. I don’t know a lot about that. But seven or eight years ago I received a letter. The only item the authorities had managed to trace was the grand piano. They asked me what I wanted to do with it.’ She breathes in. ‘Dad wanted me to become a pianist.’
‘What a terrible story.’
There is nothing Ester can say to that.
‘Can you play well?’
‘The war came between me and a career. Now I make a living from music lessons. When I came here, seven years ago, I bought a flat for me and the piano. I was lucky and found a tiny shoebox place in the district I grew up in, not far from the street where I lived, in fact.’ She goes quiet as Turid pulls up the sleeve of her jacket and raises her glass of Coke.
Ester stares stiffly at the bracelet around Turid’s wrist.
Turid notices and says something.
Ester doesn’t hear her words. They are drowned by an inner rush of sound she can’t control. All Ester can do is stretch her hand across the table. When her fingers touch the metal the rush fades and she can feel she is perfectly calm. She says it is a special bracelet.
‘It’s all I have from my mother. I wear it now and then.’
‘Can I see it?’
Turid undoes the clasp and passes it across the table.
The bracelet is heavy. A round, patinated piece of gold with an inset stone attached to it, a thick ring covered with inscriptions.
Ester avoids looking Turid in the eye as she asks: ‘What do you know about this piece of jewellery?’
‘Nothing, except that it was my mother’s.’ Turid points to an engraving on the ring: AL. ‘Åse Lajord,’ she says.
Again this situation overwhelms Ester and she has to stare at the ceiling to regain her composure.
Turid asks: ‘Is there anything the matter?’
Ester gulps. She points to the symbols engraved on the outside of the thick ring. ‘Do you know what they mean?’
Turid shakes her head. ‘Do you?’
Instead of answering, she looks at the bracelet. She manages a smile and says: ‘I have to be off now, Turid. It was really lovely talking to you.’
Turid fastens the bracelet around her arm. ‘I hope we can meet again.’
Ester gets up and looks at her. ‘Of course we can.’
Ester turns. When she goes out it is as if she is walking blindly. She closes the portico door a little too hard. The plaster on the wall reverberates. She doesn’t notice. Nor is she aware of the two Japanese tourists st
anding behind a pillar and waving as she steams past.
2
Ester walks to the City Hall quays, stands by the edge of the middle pier. Gazes at the sky while the noise from Akers Mekaniske Verksted shipyard mingles with the gurgling of the water below her. She tries to stay calm, tries to think clearly. When she hears someone cough directly behind her she is startled and almost falls into the water. There is a man sitting with his back to the shed on the pier. He is wearing a roll-neck jumper and a cap. His trousers are wet and filthy, and the sole has come off one boot. He lowers a bottle of export beer and raises a trembling hand with the butt of a cigarette between his fingers. He asks her if she has a light. Ester doesn’t answer. She walks back to her car. She knows what she has to do. She has to talk to someone who actually cares about what she and her family were subjected to.
After unlocking the door to her flat, she doesn’t even kick off her shoes or remove her coat. She lifts the phone and calls Markus Rebowitz. It takes time to transfer her. But finally she has his voice in her ears.
‘It’s Ester. I have to ask you another favour. I need access to the Liquidation Office papers. I want a copy of all the ones relevant to my family.’
‘Don’t you have those papers already?’
‘No. All I have is a letter sent to my kibbutz. It’s about my grand piano. A walnut Steinway. It turned up in 1960. A collaborator died and one of the heirs had demanded a public division of goods. Then the papers pertaining to the piano were produced. This man had been given the piano as payment for some work he did for that Nazi, Hagelin in 1944. Now there’s something I need to check.’
‘You’ve whetted my curiosity. Has this anything to do with Gary Larson?’
After some hesitation she decides to tell him the truth. ‘I’ve just seen some of my mother’s most valuable jewellery. It hasn’t been seen since the Nazis confiscated my childhood home.’
At first Markus is absolutely silent. Then he coughs quietly. ‘Oh? Where?’ His tone is a little excited, which is positive.
She decides not to answer. She needs his interest; she will have to exploit it.
‘They confiscated the shop, too,’ she says. ‘So they took goods from the flat in Eckersbergs gate 10 and Paschal Lemkov’s jewellery shop in Kirkeristen.’
She puts down the telephone. A second later there is a ring at the door.
3
She goes to the front door. Takes the revolver from the bag hanging on the hook. Holds the weapon in her right hand while opening the door. Goes out onto the step and over to the balustrade. Peers down. Recognises the figure of Sverre Fenstad and his heavy gait. Backs inside, puts the gun into her bag and waits.
‘You again,’ she says, holding the door open. ‘Hungry?’ She walks ahead of him into the kitchen. Opens the fridge. Puts out a plate of gefilte fish, grated horseradish and beetroot.
He sits down and inclines his head with interest.
‘You can use your fingers.’ She shows him how to do it.
He takes too much horseradish. But she says nothing. He gasps for air and holds his nose.
‘You get used to it.’
‘Lovely,’ he assures her. ‘Bit special, but fine.’
She sits watching him until he is breathing more normally.
He primes himself to say something.
She waits.
‘You and Gerhard drove here all the way from Fagernes?’
‘Yes.’
He eyes her. He is formulating a question, she thinks, and decides to put her oar in first. ‘I didn’t meet Gerhard Falkum until after the outbreak of war. Did you know him before the war?’
Sverre’s eyes widen. And he shakes his head. ‘When we met he was one of the many keen, young ones who wanted to throw his cap in the ring. He joined up early, as far back as April 1940. We didn’t know each other very well, but he seemed like a solid patriot. I know he was from Porsgrunn. At least that was where he grew up. His mother died prematurely, from Spanish flu. He’s a couple of years younger than me. I was born in 1911, so he can’t have been very old when she died – four or five maybe. I think he lived with his father for many years. His father was a factory worker. Gerhard went to sea. Don’t know when. But I do know he was on a Wilhelmsen boat in the mid-thirties. Must’ve been twenty-odd when he enrolled for the International Brigade in Spain. They were a pretty radical lot in the Seamen’s Union in those days. I’d guess he was, if not a communist, then definitely red. Jonas Lie, the chief constable, had Gerhard’s name in his private archives. I didn’t know anything about that side of his past. It was only when we tried to get Gerhard into Sweden that I found out he’d fought in Spain. And it was actually his political activities that made the resistance ambivalent about him while he was in hiding in Sweden.’
‘Not so easy to imagine – Gerhard as a red-hot socialist.’
‘I wouldn’t’ve believed it, either. But what do we know about anyone? Only six months ago Stalin’s daughter applied for asylum in the United States.’ Sverre helps himself to another fish cake. He manages better this time. He chews and nods his approval. ‘Politics and ideology are transient entities,’ he says, licking his fingers. ‘What some people say they believe one moment is forgotten the next. And for some it becomes a kind of disease. They start out hoping for a better world, but are poisoned by their own rhetoric and ultimately refuse to acknowledge it’s flawed.’
‘It? The rhetoric?’
‘The politics.’ Sverre smiles wryly, but becomes serious at the sight of her expression. ‘What is it?’
‘I’d like to know if it was you personally who ordered Gerhard’s liquidation.’
He freezes, and for a moment the world stands still. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Because that order also included my death.’
I am being too brutal, she thinks, when he is unable to meet her eyes and studies the table. I am beginning to be mean, she thinks. That is not good. I have to remember that I am a mother. My soul should be running over with charity, compassion and forgiveness.
He takes a deep breath. ‘You mustn’t get this out of proportion, Ester. You’d lost your family. You were an agent in training. No one would’ve done anything to hurt you.’
‘I was instructed to go to a house where a man was waiting with a weapon, and no one told me what was going to happen.’
‘It was Kolstad who ran the show, and he decided who should know what. But you were off limits, Ester. Nothing would have happened to you. I really hope you understand that.’
‘Shouldn’t I have been informed?’
‘The fewer in the know, the better. If you’d known, Gerhard would’ve smelt a rat.’
‘He smelt a rat anyway.’
‘We acted in the way we considered best.’
‘I was an investment and a decoy?’
‘It was war.’
‘But it isn’t war anymore. You’ve been steering the ship the whole time. Was that why you planned the break-in at the hotel? Have you been scared the whole time about what Gerhard knows and what plans he has – for you?’
‘There’s no point trivialising things that have happened. If I could live my life anew, there’s a lot I would do differently.’
‘You could’ve sent him to England back then.’
Sverre shakes his head. ‘The Germans used the same strategy in this case as in everything else during the war. And they succeeded. They won the propaganda war. We had very little we could strike back with. The Gestapo stayed low and left the dirty work to the police. There was no search for a resistance man. People in Oslo – those pro-and anti-the Nazis – went around thinking Gerhard Falkum was a perverted criminal who’d murdered the mother of his own child. The police used the child. They painted a picture of an evil bastard. What you say is right. We didn’t want him back in Norway. Had he crossed the border, he would’ve been reported to the police before he could blink. The torturers at Victoria terrasse would’ve taken turns to batter all the information out of h
im.’
‘You could’ve sent Gerhard to England,’ she repeats. ‘Was it a defeat for you to give Gerhard “the communist” a chance?’
‘Chance? You’re saying things you know nothing about. As I said, the Germans won the propaganda war. Gerhard was portrayed as a sewer rat. Our people in England wouldn’t touch a man like that with a barge pole.’
‘So his life became a calculation. Why should I believe that you didn’t calculate the price on my head at the same time?’
He heaves a sigh, as though she were a child. ‘Ester, the decision was reached. Action was taken. The consequences were what they were. And here we are.’
She goes to the cupboard for the bottle of brandy. Puts it on the table in front of him. ‘Here you are.’ She also fetches a half-full bottle of Chianti. The cork is stuck. She locks her teeth into it and twists the bottle until the cork comes out. Pours herself a glass. Knocks it back and pours another. She lifts the glass and rotates the liquid slowly, fascinated by how the wine sticks to the inside.
‘What did you and Gerhard talk about when you were driving here from Fagernes?’ he says.
‘You already know. Nothing. There’s one more thing I need to know, and now I demand that you’re straight with me.’ She puts down the glass and searches his eyes.
He doesn’t flinch.
‘Did you find or see a knife or some sort of stabbing weapon when you were in his hotel room?’
Sverre Fenstad’s facial expression is answer enough.
‘And you’ve kept that quiet the whole time. Why?’
‘I didn’t want to unsettle you.’
She takes a deep breath.
Sverre raises his hands in defence. ‘It was a kind of knife, yes. Considering his and my pasts, of course you’ll understand that I’d like to know what his agenda is.’
They sit eyeballing each other in silence.
‘Did you find anything else?’ Ester says at length. ‘Anything else you want to spare me?’
He looks away this time. ‘Believe it or not, he’s got rid of that weapon. The police didn’t find anything in his room. Two men went through his room with a fine-tooth comb when he was brought in for questioning. They found nothing.’
The Courier Page 29