This Land is no Stranger

by Sarah Hollister

  Moro had informed her that Dollar Boy had gotten his pink-haired head fatally split open, but there seemed to be no mention of that in news reports, either. Nor of Hammar or Brand. The furious knife-fight in the hospital room at Sveg had likewise somehow been kept off the media radar. What was going on?

  Twenty-nine hours into her stay, Sandri the Quiet Minder knocked and entered. The windows showed dark, with an overcast sky reflecting the city lights. Brand had just woken up, luxuriating in bed despite needing to pee. She lazily felt another nap coming on.

  “Mademoiselle,” Sandri said, addressing her in accented French. He handed over an iPhone, then discreetly withdrew to his post out in the hall.

  A FaceTime convo was already in progress on the cell phone’s screen. Some poor mook totally swaddled in gauze moved a pair of parched-looking lips in a failed attempt at speech.

  Veronika couldn’t speak, she was so relieved. A sob of relief rose in her throat. Finally she mastered herself. “You’re awake.”

  “Awake but dreaming,” Krister Hammar whispered, his first words to her since coming out of an eighteen-hour coma.

  “Wow,” Brand said. “You look terrible. You look like Santa Claus on the day after Christmas.”

  “My head hurts, but I’m in a lovely morphine haze,” he said, twisting his mouth into a horrible approximation of a smile. “How do you feel?”

  “Jesus, a lot better than you look.” Brand felt an enormous tenderness toward him.

  “Do you know the Arctic explorer…”

  “Don’t talk. Talking looks as though it hurts you.”

  “There was a man,” Hammar told her, “a Dane named Peter Freuchen, an— an—an arctic explorer…”

  He seemed to be having difficulty forming words, and Brand tried to shush him again. She didn’t care about any Dane explorer, so relieved and happy was she to find Hammar living, breathing, and speaking.

  He would not be shushed. “So Freuchen got buried when a snow bank collapsed on top of him. No way out. Slowly freezing to death. Know what—what—what he did?”

  “No,” Brand said, indulging him, tearing up. “What did Peter Freuchen do?”

  “Took a crap, formed his poop into the shape of a trowel, let it freeze solid, then dug his way out with that. That’s— that’s— how I feel. Like I just dug my way out of a coma with a shovel of frozen shit.”

  Hammar and Brand both laughed, but his laughter passed into a spasm of coughing.

  “Krister…I…I’m so…” Brand said, then stopped, unsure of her feelings or what words might pop out. “I’m glad, just…glad, that’s all.”

  “How did you—?” He trailed off, his lips moving spasmodically.

  “How did I…what?”

  “How did you save me? Was I under— beneath— the water…?”

  “Well, no poop was involved,” Brand said. “Although I could well have shat myself from sheer terror.”

  “Where are you? No, wait, you better not say.” He lowered his voice. “There are polis here.”

  “Here, too—in fact, you’re looking at one. Your friend in blue, always on duty.”

  “No.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Hang up and rest, okay? You need to get better. I foresee some sauna therapy in your future.”

  Even trying for a smile caused Hammar to wheeze. “You are trying to— to—”

  “Kill you, I know.”

  “Varzha Luna?” he asked. “No one has told me…”

  “Sleep now. She’s fine, I’m fine, everything else is total crap.”

  A long wordless pause. She wondered if the man had fallen back asleep. “Krister?”

  “Yes?”

  “I can trust Moro, right?”

  “No,” he said.

  Brand punched the red screen button to end the call, then began to cry. Exhaustion, apprehension, and sadness swirled within her. For the first time since coming to Sweden she fully gave in to tears. Sandri, her caretaker and guard, stuck his head into the room, as always arriving softly. She handed the iPhone back to him, and he wordlessly gave her a colorful embroidered linen handkerchief to dry her tears.

  54.

  By the morning of the third day sequestered in her hotel room Brand felt the first twinges of cabin fever. What, am I a prisoner here? She would pose the question if only she had someone to ask. Sandri, her near-mute minder might only smile and shrug. Moro Part would be the one to supply the answer. The big man had promised to visit but never did. So when there came a knock Brand thought it could be him, coming to liberate her.

  “Yes?”

  Sandri stuck his head through the half open door. “A visitor,” he said, stepping aside to allow a slight, brilliantly dressed woman to enter the room.

  Varzha Luna. A wave of sentiment hit Brand that took her by surprise. Perhaps she hadn’t fully recovered her emotional equilibrium after all. Here was the young woman who had somehow become the focus of Brand’s sojourn in Sweden. She appeared impossibly young, impossibly vulnerable. Brand rushed to embrace the girl.

  Varzha submitted to the hug. “Veronika Brand,” she said softly. Her English wasn’t equal to the situation, and Brand’s Swedish wasn’t, either. They made do.

  “Hello!” Brand exclaimed. “How are you? I am so happy to finally meet!”

  “I want to come thank you,” Varzha said haltingly.

  “Thank me? You were the brave one!”

  Varzha smiled shyly. Brand took a step back to examine her.

  The girl had left off her usual heavy white makeup. Clear-faced, she appeared a delicate, ethereal beauty. She wore an ankle-length skirt of many colors, a beautiful embroidered tunic, three lovely silk scarves, each setting off in complementary hues the rest of the ensemble. Over it all went a warm woolen monkey jacket with elaborate brocade, a gorgeous number that would fetch thousands of dollars in any Madison Avenue boutique. A little round Astrakhan cap topped off the outfit.

  Varzha performed an odd, formal half bow. “I would to…” She stumbled over the words. Sandri lurked in the background, feeding her the English in a whisper.

  “I would like to invite you…to my engagement blessing ceremony.”

  Brand beamed a smile. “Oh, yes, congratulations! But you are too young to marry!” she blurted out.

  Varzha looked to Sandri. “No, no!” Brand said to him. “Don’t translate that last part! Just tell her I am happy for her.”

  Drawing Varzha into the suite, Brand gestured to an arrangement of chairs pulled up next to a couch. They sat, communicating in smiles, nods, and sign language. The girl knew the words, “New York City,” and two of them repeated that to each other a few times.

  Sandri interposed. “She can’t stay,” he said.

  “Get me to the church on time, right?” Brand said brightly. She felt strangely flustered, not wholly in total control of her thoughts or feelings. She wanted to tell Varzha…what?

  “I have to say—” She broke off. “I am a police.”

  “Polis,” Varzha repeated, nodding.

  The words came out in a spill. “I have to say how much I admire you. I’ve done what you did, I mean, in my job as a police officer, I’ve served as a decoy in prostitution stings, and it was the most dangerous work I’ve ever done.”

  Sandri appeared baffled. Brand waved him off. “That’s okay, that’s okay—you don’t have to translate all that… Just say I admire her, all right?”

  Again, Varzha responded with a shy smile. She resembled a girl one minute, a ninja warrior the next, like a gem with many varied facets. She wore a string of small gold coins around her neck, the kind of adornment Brand had often seen in Lehtonen’s photos of Romani women. In a graceful move, Varzha bent her head, removed the necklace and presented it to Brand, along with a beautiful multi-colored scarf.

  “Oh, no, no, no, I can’t accept!” Brand said. But a glance at Sandri’s stern expression prompted her to take the gifts.

  “Thank you!”

  Varzha stood. “M
oro? Moro Part?”

  “Yes?” Brand rose also. “Of course I know Moro.”

  “You go to him now,” Varzha said, managing the sentence in clear English.

  “Um, okay, yes,” Brand said, looking over at Sandri, who nodded.

  “You must,” Varzha said, showing a flash of stern authority. She floated toward the door, a Romani princess putting to shame the insipid environment of the suite, with its modern, mass-produced furnishings.

  She stopped before leaving, turned, and impulsively hugged Brand. “I will see you…?”

  “Oh, yes. I would be delighted to come to your engagement ceremony. Sandri knows, right? Where it is, where I should go?”

  Varzha nodded. “Sandri knows,” she said.

  Brand laid a hand on Varzha’s arm. “This…this vendetta is over. Is it over? Someone has to say it’s over. Otherwise it’s just bitterness.”

  Varzha remained expressionless. “Go to Moro. Important.”

  Then she left, taking most of the magic out of the room when she did.

  Sandri returned to the suite an hour later, giving Brand time to bathe. She wondered how one dressed for a Romani engagement ceremony. When she emerged from the bathroom she found Sandri had entered the suite and left behind, on a hanger hooked to the mirrored door of the suite’s bedroom closet, a simple burgundy frock, quite stylish. She would have gladly worn it to a cocktail party in New York.

  On a side table was a small pouch full of cosmetics. Not her particular choice of war paint, but in a pinch… When Sandri came for her she was more or less as ready as she was ever going to be. She wore the coin necklace given to her by Varzha.

  “He says you should come and I will show you where you meet.” Whenever Sandri said “he,” it referred to his boss, Moro Part.

  “Okay,” Brand said. “Then we’ll go to this… I don’t know, what is an engagement ceremony, anyway?”

  “The blessing of the union foretold,” Sandri said soberly.

  “Do I look all right? Presentable?”

  Sandri made a motion to her hair. “You must cover.”

  This was the reason for Varzha’s gift of the scarf. Brand hated to give in to what she considered a sour stricture on female behavior, but figured, when in Rome… She put on the headscarf and followed Sandri out the door of the suite.

  He conducted Brand down the long corridor to the elevator, punched the button to take them to the basement, and led her across the cavernous parking garage to the parked Mercedes sedan. They met no one on the way.

  Brand could see Sandri struggle with himself as he opened the driver’s side door for her. “He said you drive.” A frown of doubt showed in his face that was almost laughable. Clearly, for him, the natural order of things was being disrupted.

  Never a passenger, always the driver.

  “Thanks,” Brand said, and slipped in behind the wheel. “You tell me where to go.” Sandri went around to the other side of the vehicle and climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Gamla Stan,” he said. “To Stortorget, the Great Square.”

  He directed her out onto the busy streets of the capital. The day was 3 March. The bright, unseasonably warm pre-noon held a tantalizing hint of spring. The clear expanse of the sky shone bright blue. Everywhere on the streets and in the parks Swedes shamelessly shed their heavy clothes, faces raised to capture the copious onslaught of Vitamin D. They passed a good number of people leaning up against buildings, basking in the intense rays of old Sol pouring down on them.

  Had they gone mad? But no, it was a communal coming out party, a poke in the eye of the long unending winter.

  Traffic was severely restricted in the narrow streets of the Old Town. Sandri had to guide her on a circuitous route, passing the island on something like a belt highway, exiting, then approaching the central square from the south.

  “Here,” he said, pointing to a truck-loading space along an impossibly clogged street. Brand could feel the man itching to get back into the driver’s seat. She was being kicked to the curb.

  “Moro will be in the café, voila,” Sandri said, indicating a coffee house a few doors away. Brand left the car, yielding the wheel to her minder. Heading toward the open square, she passed another line of flagrant sun worshipers soaking in heat reflected off a bank building’s stone façade.

  The café was as crowded as the sidewalks. The mood on the street and inside the restaurant was giddy with sunlight. Brand saw Moro Part before he saw her. He sat alone at a table, reading a newspaper. Examining him, she recalled the enormous portraits in Aino Lehtonen’s studio. The photographer had caught a very different version of the man.

  That Moro had been dressed in a shabby brown overcoat. As he trudged his collection route, visiting each member of his street cadre in turn, Lehtonen had followed along. He carried a black cloth bag and accepted money from Roma street beggars, children, men and women both. Lehtonen’s camera caught a great shot of Moro’s mitt-like hand, reaching out with the black bag to receive the mendicant’s kronor coins and crumpled Euros.

  In the café the man wore an entirely different guise, that of a sophisticated businessman, with an expensive tailored three-piece suit in pinstripe gray. There was not a hint of Fagin about him. She was surprised to see he was reading Svenska dagbladet, the conservative daily.

  She approached. Moro’s face lit up. Setting aside his newspaper, he heaved his massive body to standing.

  “Magnificent,” he pronounced, examining her outfit. He gave a practiced kiss on both cheeks.

  “I feel pampered by you,” Brand said.

  “Sit, sit! I will pamper you still. I’ve ordered coffee and pastries.” His enthusiasm felt designed to be contagious, but Brand was immune to the man’s charms. She didn’t feel she could cozy up to him. The civilized, well-dressed gent beside her was also the brutal strongman who engineered the violence that went down on the banks of the Hede River. And the Manor House, and the blizzard attack at Västvall. She felt like seizing his hands and examining them, see if they still had blood on them.

  The server arrived, a young woman carrying a pair of porcelain cups steaming with coffee so black it looked like tar.

  “Doppio espresso, fair-trade, shade-grown, French roast,” Moro said in a sardonic tone.

  “Yes, that’s right,” the server said. “So, who called this meeting?” she added, chirping out a riffy question from a popular television show.

  “I did,” Brand and Moro both answered simultaneously, dutifully completing the joke. But Brand got the idea that although she was familiar with the pop-culture reference, Moro might have taken the line seriously. At least, he didn’t laugh along with them. She saw his eyes narrow and once again caught a glimpse of the sinister Moro, but just for a moment, before being replaced by the benign Moro. It was enough to scare the server into a quick retreat.

  “Despite the rumors, I am not the King of the Roma,” Moro said mournfully.

  “And yet here you sit with a gentile in a Swedish café.”

  “Far away from the blue skies of the land where I was born.” Moro drained his double-shot espresso in the European way, with one throat-searing gulp.

  His whole mien was sorrowful, which was puzzling in a person about to preside over a happy occasion like a marriage engagement. Then again, Brand thought, what would be the appearance of someone who had recently set about committing a series of ruthless murders, as vicious as any she had seen?

  “I honor you,” Moro said, “in recognition of your efforts on the part of my people.”

  “Thank you, although I fear I’ve caused you more trouble than I’m worth,” Brand said. She sat back to display the gold necklace that Varzha had given her. “Do I make for a convincing gypsy?”

  “No,” Moro said. “You could maybe fool the gadje, but never the Romani. You are only guilty of the serious crime of cultural appropriation.”

  Brand laughed. “Do we go now?” she asked. “Your man Sandri told me the cathedral will be busy today.
Lots of different services.”

  “Not quite yet. I too have a gift for you. But first I must tell you a story.”

  Ah, yes, Brand thought. With Moro, there will always be a story.

  “I wonder if you know that Gustav Dalgren was a hero among the Roma. From your puzzled look I see that you do not. But in the years before the fascists targeted our people he acted as a great supporter. He idolized Ivar Lo Johansson’s novel on the Roma, Zigenare, and set out to follow the author’s footsteps. Gustav spent ‘a summer on the homeless people’s hiking trails.’ I never met the man myself, but his name is still pronounced among Romani. He foresaw the genocide, the slaughter of the pharrajimos, what you in the West label the Holokosto.”

  Brand had a vague awareness that during WWII a half million Roma perished in Nazi death camps. But she wondered where Moro was going with all this. Gustav a gypsy hero? Really? Part of her was becoming weary of the past. Events of more than a half century ago kept erupting into the present. At the moment the whole business struck her as tiresome and annoying.

  “The Romani still maintain the legend of Gustav Dalgren. I will tell you a story of your grandparents during those years, Gustav and Klara, a terrible story that has come down to me.”

  Brand almost interrupted Moro with a “please don’t.” The man bulled forward.

  “A gentleman named Loke Voss led the brownshirts in Härjedalen. They loved to smash Romani skulls. The only one who stood up for us was Gustav Dalgren. He would not back down. He spoke out all the time, for Roma, for the workers, for the poor and powerless. His newspaper Nordic Light was like a poke in Hitler’s eye. Everyone knew Gustav walked around with a big fat target on his back. Voss and his troops were out to execute him.”

  “I know all this,” Brand said. “I mean, I know about the newspaper arson.”

  “You know, but you do not know,” Moro responded.

  “I have come to suspect that I am somehow here in Sweden to confront Loke Voss,” Brand said, her tone a little snappish.