The Quisling Orchid

by Dominic Ossiah

  ‘I have loved having you here.’ She meant it; she wiped her eyes with one of the napkins she always put out at mealtimes. ‘I wish you could stay. I want you to stay.’

  I realised she was a stationary version of my mother, or perhaps I was just being cruel because she had taken me in and then snapped me in two. ‘I should be going anyway,’ I said, which was true enough. As much as I wanted it to be otherwise, there was nothing to keep me here. Monica had vanished and there had been a plan, several lifetimes ago, to see Fólkvangr for myself.

  Doctor Nese – Dagrun – slid a palm full of coins across the table and withdrew her hand. ‘I want you to call me,’ she said. ‘Every day, if you can.’

  ‘I won’t be able to pay you back,’ I said flatly. I wanted her to feel this as badly as I did.

  ‘It’s not a loan.’

  ‘I won’t be able to pay you back.’

  She gave up and sat back in her chair. ‘Can I call you?’

  ‘I don’t know where I’m going.’

  ‘I need some time. Having you here, it made me think of things. Things long past. I thought I’d forgotten them; I really did. I need to speak to someone. I will call you. I promise.’

  I said I didn’t see how. ‘I’ll go get my things.’

  ‘You don’t have to go right now!’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  She followed me around the apartment which now seemed suffocatingly small. I gathered the scraps of my life and pushed them into my rucksack while she desperately tried to explain. She whispered something about Camp Belsen, but the words swelled in her throat until she looked like she was choking. I folded Klein’s notes and wrapped them in tin foil to keep them dry.

  ‘I’ll have to leave some things here if that’s okay.’ My stomach felt tight; I leaned against the cooker, feeling my knees start to give way. I didn’t want to leave. ‘I’ll come back for them, or I’ll have Mr Bergström pick them up if that works better for you.’

  ‘Of course it wouldn’t!’ Dagrun closed her eyes. ‘Brigit, listen—’

  ‘Is it because you want something more from me?’ It sounded arrogant and desperate, even as I was saying it. ‘If you want… I mean I don’t know, but I guess it’s something we could try.’

  She looked at me as though I were pointing a knife at her.

  ‘You invite me into your home; you make me feel like I’m part of something safe. You don’t ask me for anything, you don’t tell me anything. And now you’re telling me to fuck off out of your life. I don’t know how these things work so… is it me you want?’

  Her silence left me hoping – hoping that in exchange for something far from disagreeable she’d let me stay. She closed her eyes and I thought that I should do something: touch her face, kiss her, maybe.

  ‘I’m going to work now,’ she said. ‘Please don’t be here when I get back.’

  She walked away without looking at me, picking up her briefcase and coat on her way out. She slammed the door and I was alone.

  I finished packing my rucksack and then I cried solidly for a whole hour – something I’d never done before.

  I cleaned myself up, brushed my teeth for the second time that morning, stole all the cash I could find, and then completely wrecked her apartment before walking out the front door, leaving it wide open.

  Chapter 32

  I could have flown from Trondheim to Bergen in about an hour; instead I took the train. Four hundred miles in half a day, through forested mountains and plains of trees and rock. I’d crossed this country about six times and I think this was the first time I’d ever seen it; Monica and me mostly run at night.

  I arrived in Bergen at around eight o’clock and got something to eat at a small café a few feet from the edge of the quay. There were a half-dozen tall ships anchored in the harbour, streams of tiny lights wrapped around their masts. The harbour was crowded, noisy; people were singing, celebrating. It all felt distant, as if I was watching it from behind glass. I wasn’t enjoying it so I left a few of Dagrun’s coins on the table and headed back towards the train station, making a detour into a supermarket for hair-dye and toothpaste.

  There were three hotels and a youth hostel behind the station. I picked the youth hostel as I figured it would be much cheaper and the clientele a lot less likely to recognise me.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ said the jaundiced stick-thin man behind the counter. ‘We’ve had a party of six who haven’t shown up. Take your pick.’

  I chose a room facing away from the trains, and asked about tours to Fólkvangr. He gave me an oddly sour look. Bergen sees the Fólkvangr Massacre as its own intimate tragedy. The townspeople aren’t keen on gawkers coming to see what’s left of it.

  ‘There’s not much there,’ he said. ‘Just a house and rubble, more or less.’

  I asked him again for tour information, and seeing that I’d made up my mind he slid three folded pamphlets across the counter.

  ‘If you go early then you can get back and have the rest of your afternoon.’

  I thanked him and headed up to my room.

  ‘When you go,’ he called after me, ‘think about what happened there. I mean, really think.’

  The room was large enough to hold about eight people and their rucksacks. I picked the bed closest to the window, another of Monica’s ingrained habits that I couldn’t shake. I checked the distance down to the street below; yes, I could make the jump if I had to. I ate a chocolate bar and started the slow process of dying my hair. I’d picked out a dull red colour, sort of hiding in broad daylight; that was my thinking anyway. The stench made my eyes water. The phone in the hallway started ringing and then stopped after three bells.

  I wrapped my head in a towel and lay on the bed with one of Mr Klein’s notebooks. In it he talked about his admiration for his commanding officer, even after the man developed an alcohol problem, which apparently got worse after he met Silje Ohnstad.

  The phone in the hallway rang again.

  Over the next few pages Klein described the dichotomy of the General’s convictions: a scientist who believed in Jewish witchcraft. But did he really believe that Jewish women were witches, or was that simply a way for him to excuse his own lack of self-control? I’d already made up my mind by the time I reached the end of the page.

  The phone in the hallway rang again.

  I was the only one staying on this floor, so I thought perhaps it was Dagrun, that she’d somehow tracked me down. I ran from my room and snatched the receiver from the wall.

  ‘Hello, Doctor Nese?’ I thought about apologising for smashing up her home, except I wasn’t sorry and she knew me well enough to realise that.

  ‘It’s not, I’m afraid.’

  Jesper Bergström. I almost wet myself.

  ‘How are you, Miss Fossen?’

  I looked out of the hall window, down into the street. It was crowded with people making their way to and from the station. Heads down, collars pulled up against the harbour chill. I don’t know what I was expecting: to see him standing under a lamppost, wearing a trench coat and picking dirt from his fingernails with a kitchen knife. He wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t; he didn’t need to be. ‘How did you get this number?’

  ‘That’s not important,’ he said. ‘I was just calling to see how you’re getting on.’

  When I didn’t say anything, he asked, ‘So… how’re you getting on?’

  ‘Fine. What do you want?’

  ‘I want what we both want: to find your father. I was very sorry to hear about your mother by the way. How is she? Ah! Forgive me. You don’t know how she is, do you?’

  He was trying to scare me, to show me that he had eyes everywhere. It was working.

  ‘You stopped moving. I became concerned.’

  ‘I was staying with someone.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Have you hurt her?’

  The line went silent; he appeared to be thinking about it.

  ‘She’s quite safe,’ he said finally. ‘B
ut it is you I am concerned about. I fear that your dedication to our cause – to finding your father – is beginning to falter.’

  ‘I’ll find him. I just needed some time to get my head straight, that’s all.’

  ‘And your head; is it straight now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good! Excellent! So there’ll be no more delays.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why are you in Bergen? He is unlikely to be twenty miles away from the scene of the crime.’

  ‘I’m heading for Fólkvangr. There are people still living in the mountains. They may be able to tell me something.’

  ‘About your father’s whereabouts?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He sighed, very theatrically. ‘Why don’t you tell me what you are really doing in Bergen, Miss Fossen? It would be so much easier than me travelling there to ask you in person.’

  I didn’t want that. ‘Look, I’ve been reading a lot about him, about the village.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well… I’m not sure he did it. What they say he did; I don’t think it was him.’

  He stayed silent, weighing what I just said against what he knew, what he’d assumed his entire life. Or maybe he was sharpening knives and looking at the bus times to Bergen.

  ‘There were almost two hundred people living in Fólkvangr at the time; any one of them could have been the traitor.’

  ‘True,’ he said, choosing to indulge me for a minute, ‘but out of the two hundred, he was the only one who confessed.’

  Minute over.

  ‘I will call you again tomorrow, Miss Fossen. I expect to hear that you are working towards fulfilling your side of the bargain.’

  I guessed his side of the bargain was to let me live. He hung up the phone, and I stood by the window, trembling. I went back to the room and dragged the bed around so I could see the door; then I climbed in and pulled the covers up to my chin. I didn’t sleep at all that night.

  * * *

  The following morning I hid myself behind a pair of large sunglasses and took a bus to Fólkvangr. It was the cheapest tour I could find, and I didn’t even have to book a seat. I could stay in the village for as long as I liked, and just jump on a return bus when I wanted to head back to Bergen.

  I took a seat right at the back, and wedged myself into a corner. The bus filled quickly and I found myself trapped between the window and a large middle-aged woman who was wearing just a t-shirt, slacks and a large straw hat. I wondered what country she thought she was in. She smiled and nodded; I smiled back and shrank into my corner, putting my head down.

  She fanned herself, even though it was around minus one outside, and gave me a gentle nudge. ‘Canadian,’ she said, as if it was an instruction. I nodded and answered: ‘Norwegian.’

  She whooped so loudly that it made my ears hurt. Everyone on the bus looked around, and I thought about getting off and waiting for the next one. Too late now; the engine had started, and with a few indifferent pushes on the horn, the driver got us under way.

  I enjoyed the silence for just a few minutes and then as soon as we cleared the town limits, the tour guide sprang from her seat. She was around my age, perhaps older, with blonde hair she’d painstakingly styled to appear much thicker than it was. She was wearing a cap announcing she was a Friend of Fólkvangr.

  I tried to make myself even smaller.

  She wielded the microphone like a weapon, demanding that a few unlucky people near her tell the whole bus where they’d come from.

  ‘Welcome to you all,’ she bubbled. ‘My name is Liv, and your driver for today is Tobias.’

  Tobias raised his hand and the bus chorused an enthusiastic ‘Hello’.

  Without waiting for the greeting to fade, Liv pressed on with the house rules: do not distract Tobias (Tobias raised his hand again, expecting us to have forgotten him); do not leave litter on the coach; do not make rude gestures to other road users; and most importantly do not take anything from Fólkvangr that you didn’t find in a gift shop.

  All clear enough so there were no questions. Liv nodded and continued with a well-rehearsed history of Fólkvangr, starting with its founding in 1793, and ending with its destruction in the autumn of 1941. Along the way, she rolled through population statistics, and named a number of its more famous occupants, including Silje Ohnstad, whom she described as ‘misunderstood’.

  She said Fólkvangr was famous for its orchids, which I didn’t know.

  And of course she spoke at great length about my father.

  ‘Erik Brenna,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘What can I say about Erik Brenna that you have not already heard?’

  ‘Everything,’ shrieked the woman next to me. ‘I’ve never heard of the guy!’

  This rated a muted laugh from the rest of the coach. She nudged me playfully. ‘Canadian.’

  ‘I know. You said.’

  ‘Only took this tour because the concierge recommended it.’

  I wanted to say the concierge probably got some kind of kickback from the operator. In the end I just smiled and huddled in my corner.

  ‘Well, for the benefit of our guests from overseas, let me tell you about Erik Brenna, the coward of Fólkvangr.’

  And she spent the next ten minutes describing a hideous cross between Goebbels and a mountain troll; I hardly recognised it as human. When she was done she took a deep breath and Tobias handed her a handkerchief. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘My family was also touched by this tragedy.’

  She said her mother used to live in Fólkvangr. When she was very young, her family moved to Bergen so her father could work at the harbour. They returned to the village every year before the Germans invaded, to see old friends.

  ‘Had my father not moved us away,’ she said, ‘then I would not be standing before you now.’

  The bus cooed in sympathy. To be honest, I’d heard better survivor stories.

  There was a thriving trade in Fólkvangr tours; we passed about six buses along the way, not to mention twenty or thirty cars. I counted them, facing the window to prevent an outbreak of conversation. My travelling companion took the hint and spent the whole trip reading a two-page brochure.

  Tobias pulled into Fólkvangr about half an hour later. There was a level area near an old cottage sitting conspicuously next to a gift shop and a public convenience. We disembarked and Liv repeated that nothing was to be taken from this most sacred of places, then she pointed out the small gift shop.

  ‘Is that the cottage?’ I asked her.

  She nodded. ‘The Ohnstads’ home, yes.’

  ‘It’s larger than I thought.’ From the stories I’d heard, it sounded as though they’d lived in a potting shed.

  ‘Everyone says that,’ Liv replied. ‘My father used to say the villagers were an odd lot; they took a sort of quiet pride in their poverty. Making do was all the rage here apparently.’

  Aside from the cottage there wasn’t much else to see. Liv said there was a monument less than a mile along the orchid paths, and a small museum about three hundred yards beyond that.

  ‘The museum’s well worth a visit,’ she said. ‘Lots of souvenirs.’

  I took the orchid path down to the village where scores of people wandered back and forth trying to feel a sense of tragedy.

  What remains of Fólkvangr is an oddly serene place. Even without the devotion of old Mr Ohnstad, the orchids have flourished.

  Near an archway of pine trees there’s a monument left by the village’s first family. It’s little more than a turret of stones with an inscription carved around its base. The orchids have grown in the monument since before the war, and left untended they spilled out onto the ruined cobblestones. Years later, Fólkvangr’s high street was a sea of orchids over which the mountain dwellers have laid wooden paths. It’s an unspoken rule that no one steps on the orchids. Even the fastidious Liv didn’t see the point in mentioning it.

  The tour guide said the monument was built by Jon Ohnstad in memory of his se
cond wife who is now known – according to the guide book – to have died of a rare form of skin cancer.

  I felt myself shudder.

  There were framed photographs resting against the stone circle. Some showed the monument as it would have been during the war, set in a busy street with the locals walking, running or driving carts around it. Some of the figures shown were German soldiers. A shadow crossed the picture and I felt someone breathing at my neck.

  ‘So, you made it.’

  My first instinct was to run; it was what he expected so he took hold of my arm, pressing his finger and thumb into the elbow joint. I could feel the bones separating.

  ‘You’re not going to leave, are you.’

  It wasn’t a question but I shook my head all the same. Bergström slowly released my arm.

  ‘What do you think of the monument?’

  ‘What am I supposed to think.’

  ‘Many believe it’s a work of art despite its rural simplicity. I didn’t think much of it myself when I was a child.’

  I thought about screaming for help.

  ‘Old Mr Ohnstad could turn his hand to anything, much like your father.’

  ‘Are you watching me?’

  ‘I prefer to think of it as looking out for you.’

  ‘Really.’

  He smiled, as an indulgence. ‘You should walk around a little; take it all in.’

  ‘There isn’t that much to see.’

  ‘There’s a sense of history, of tragedy. Stay a few hours.’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to find my father. He’s not going to be here.’

  ‘Take your time, Miss Fossen. It’ll help you to understand why you’re doing this.’

  ‘I understand why I’m doing this,’ I said, and knelt down to look closely at one of the photographs. There was nothing special about it except that it had a brand-new frame, and I recognised the name on the small plaque set into it. ‘I’m doing this so you don’t kill me.’

  ‘A pity,’ Bergström said. ‘I was hoping you were doing it because it is the right thing to do.’

  The photograph had been donated recently by Mr Klein. Probably something he’d dug up during his research for the Resistance Museum. It was the same monument, though you could see little of it due to the crowd gathered around it. The plaque said the picture was taken after the sudden death of Mr Josef Kleppe, the village lamp-lighter. I could make out a pair of boots on the ground, toes pointing to the sky; the rest of the body was hidden by the people standing over him or kneeling at his side.