The Quisling Orchid

by Dominic Ossiah

  ‘I will sleep on the floor if that is what you want.’

  ‘That will not work, Silje. It never works. We always…’

  Silje waited for her to finish, soon realising she could not. ‘Make love?’

  Freya nodded.

  ‘I remember when it was I who could not bring myself to say those words. It is odd how things change.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I will not touch you. You have my word.’

  Freya sighed and for all the world looked as though she was looking for the stars. ‘It is not you I am concerned about.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Silje, feeling her chest swell. ‘Well, then I shall have the will for both of us.’

  Freya looked doubtful but continued to walk beside her. The streets already seemed desolate. The stalls were closed and folded back into the cottages; the shops drew their shutters and the villagers began to make their way home. Silje thought it odd that Fólkvangr clung so graciously to the Germans’ curfew. After all, the Nazis came to the village so rarely these days and when they did come it was often to see her.

  If not for the moon they would have been in darkness when they reached the cottage. Jon Ohnstad’s truck was not there. Silje thought he must still be in Bergen, selling his flowers to the few shopkeepers that remained.

  Or perhaps he was still with her – the woman who is not my mother.

  Freya went inside and upstairs. She waited at Magnus’s door until Silje joined her, and then, for the first time that Silje could remember, she knocked.

  ‘If that is you, Silje, I am not in the mood for company.’

  ‘It is me, Magnus,’ said Freya.

  He was silent for a moment. Then he asked, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I wish to speak to you. Can we come in?’

  ‘“We”? Who is with you?’

  ‘I am with her, Magnus.’

  ‘Silje.’ He sounded disappointed.

  ‘We have come to see you.’

  Again, silence. They could hear him rummaging through his bedding.

  ‘His eyepatch,’ Silje whispered.

  Freya nodded, and pushed open the door.

  ‘Freya!’

  There came a cry of rage. Silje saw a malnourished wraith stumble towards the door, too weak to prevent Freya pushing her way inside.

  He turned away from them, his shaking hands trying to tie the eyepatch about his head. ‘Leave me alone!’

  Freya took hold of his hand and twisted it back towards his wrist. Then she snatched the eyepatch away from him and pushed him down onto the bed.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I am inviting you to your sister’s wedding.’ Freya leapt on top of him, pinning his shoulders to the bed with her knees. She held his head firmly in place, while his legs kicked and thrashed uselessly.

  ‘Hold his legs, Silje.’

  Silje remained rooted to the floor.

  ‘Silje!’

  She stepped inside to do as she was told, pressing her hands heavily on his ankles. He was stronger than she imagined he would be; she pressed her weight down further, holding him fast.

  ‘I will kill you both for this!’

  It hadn’t been so long since she’d seen him without his eyepatch. She wondered if she’d be less repulsed if she saw him like this more often. She turned her head away.

  ‘You will break my legs, you fat goat!’

  ‘I am not fat!’

  ‘I would know what you look like, Magnus.’

  ‘I am ugly, Freya, now get off me!’

  She did not listen, which came as no surprise to Silje. Instead, she ran her thumbs across his forehead where his thinning hair met his scalp. She traced every line above his brow, working down either side of his nose.

  ‘What are you doing? No! Don’t—’

  Her right thumb pressed against his left eye, and her left thumb slipped into his ruined eye socket.

  Magnus howled and Silje vomited into her mouth. She ran downstairs and outside into the trees where she spat the contents of her stomach onto the ground.

  ‘Dear Christ,’ she whispered to herself, ‘that damned girl.’

  She doubled over and retched again, emptying the rest of her gullet. The mountain chill froze her throat, making her gasp and cough. She wiped her mouth and stared up at Magnus’s window. He was so angry, more angry than she had ever seen him. Freya could not hope to pin down such unbridled rage for more than a few moments. And when he had freed himself from her then what would he do? He would beat her, definitely; kill her, perhaps.

  I must go back, she thought. But her legs would not move. It was fear, and the horror at having abandoned him, her brother – and her, the love of her life.

  But then another thought came to her, piercing the base of her skull and then burning its way through until it had captured her entirely: Freya, alone with him and in the darkness, astride him, her knees crushing his shoulders, her haunches pushed against his chest, her thumb inside his skull…

  And so in the end it was jealousy that drove her back inside the cottage. She took the stairs two at a time and arrived at Magnus’s doorway to find them both lying on his bed, Freya curved around his back, her arms wrapped tightly around him.

  She raised a finger to her lips. ‘He is asleep.’

  Silje, her blood boiling, watched the steady fill of his lungs accompanied by his soft weeping. Freya unravelled herself from him in a fluid unfolding of her limbs and rose from the bed without causing his body to stir. ‘I think he may begin to heal now.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘I said nothing. I just held him until his hatred fled.’

  ‘I could have done that. I should have done that.’

  ‘It does not matter who did it, Silje. It is done.’ Freya slipped past her without making a ripple in the air. Silje followed her downstairs, and when they reached the kitchen, she took hold of her arm. Freya shook it free.

  ‘What is it, Silje? What is it you wish to ask me? And before you do, think carefully. I suspect your question will say such terrible things about you.’

  Silje clenched her fists.

  ‘You were gone for just a few moments. Even at our most passionate we were never so quick.’

  ‘Please do not make fun of me, Freya.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘You wanted to though, didn’t you? You wanted to have him. You always have!’ For the first time in her life Silje realised what it must be like to be with her. Poor Erik, she thought sourly, grateful for his devotion, despising his weakness.

  ‘For the love of Christ, Silje, listen to yourse—’

  Silje crushed her lips against her mouth and felt her soul flowing into her, melding two halves of one heart. Freya’s fingers crept around her throat and the heat of her broke the sweat from Silje’s skin. The smell of cinnamon filled her nostrils.

  ‘We can go to the orchid barn,’ she said, searching desperately for the hem of Freya’s skirt. ‘We can be alone there. It will be like before, except I will not shout at you or make you feel sad. I swear I will devote my life to your happiness.’

  She slipped her hand between Freya’s thighs, and Freya buried her teeth into her shoulder, clawing at the back of her neck. Even as Freya whispered ‘No’, Silje knew she had won. She had seized her heart’s desire and would die before letting it go. Freya’s hand pushed deep and turned inside her, lifting her to her toes. Silje caught her breath and closed her eyes. God help me, she thought. I have won.

  Chapter 43

  After the massacre, the General was posted back to Berlin, where he received the kind of muted reception given to fallen heroes. The Führer kissed his cheeks then stripped him of his command. He had put down a village rebellion and birthed a national uprising. After Fólkvangr, the Norwegians met force with fire. Airfields were bombed; fuel dumps and munitions depots were raided and set alight. Collaborators were murdered in their sleep and their corpses burned in the streets.

  But Gruetzma
cher saw none of this; he was reassigned to a small logistics unit based in Telemark, where he rubber-stamped medical supply orders and organised the transportation of officers’ uniforms to the Russian front.

  I thought of him in his small dark basement, seething.

  When Berlin fell he took what little money he had and escaped, travelling through Italy and Spain. Klein's notes were unclear as to how he made it across the Atlantic to Argentina, but when he arrived there, ten years and six identities later, he found the cream of the Nazi high command huddled there like ‘pheasants at a country shoot’, to use his own words. He was smart enough to leave before the Israeli kill squads arrived…

  He pleaded with the Americans, offering his knowledge of the Iscariot Programme in exchange for sanctuary. But the Israelis were friends now, and the allies felt something akin to shame for throwing Norway to the wolves during the war. The little country that could deserved better, so they refused, and Gruetzmacher ran again.

  Two years later, he arrived in New Zealand, exhausted and destitute. He made his way to the interior and built a small holding where he grew vegetables and raised, ironically enough, goats and llamas. His medical skills were revered by the locals, and though he never became wealthy he lived in modest comfort, spending his days tending his livestock, and his evenings…

  Yes, it was the evenings that were his problem. ‘Medical research’, Mr Klein’s notes said, which as a pastime for a goat farmer was going to stick out like a broken thumb.

  Gruetzmacher had left a trail of shattered children from Berlin to Auckland. He’d kept himself hidden; travelled by night; slipped into new names and new lives with the ease of a seasoned actor. He’d walked across continents with his hat pulled low and his eyes to the ground, and for the most part he’d moved through the world without making waves. But there was a sickness in him, a hunger for pre-adolescent flesh that he could neither sate or control. And so his trail ended in New Zealand, at a mountain of silent, damaged children that stretched for five miles in all directions from his farm.

  I wondered if he was surprised when he was disturbed one evening with a thumping at his door.

  ‘Auckland Constabulary, Mr Szachmanowicz’, he would have heard.

  ‘Yes? Why are you here?’ he would have replied, running through a checklist of alibis and lies, and if it came to it, excuses.

  ‘I wish to ask you some questions. There have been allegations made against you, Mr Szachmanowicz. Serious allegations.’

  Gruetzmacher would have put on his dressing gown, told the borrowed child to be quiet and locked her in his cellar. He would have licked the sweat from his upper lip, smoothed down the remains of his hair and opened the door with a smile.

  And he would have answered the officer’s questions, and he would have kept smiling and offered him refreshments, because he wouldn’t have known it was Jesper Bergström drinking his tea…

  I stopped reading and exhaled loudly. I’d been holding my breath, which is something I’d been doing a lot during the flight, every time the plane hit turbulence. I’d vomited three times and was grateful that the last was little more than dry heaving. I think the flight attendants were glad too. It was my first time flying but I understood the principle: several hundred tonnes of metal, plastic and wires are hurled into the air, propelled by a mixture of things that explode; it all stays aloft for several hours and then drops out of the sky under the control of one or two people who may or may not be having a lucky day.

  Yes, I understood it; I just didn’t believe it worked, and it was only the threat of a slow and painful end that had convinced me to take the tickets and passport and make the flight to Germany.

  I slipped the papers back into their wallet. A flight attendant, the tall pretty one with grey eyes and a sharp, upturned nose, spoke my name, or rather the name given to me by Bergström. It was a strange name, one that I found hard to remember.

  ‘Mrs Hart?’ she said again.

  I jumped in my seat and shouted, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I just wanted to make sure you’re feeling better,’ she said, with a pained smile chiselled across her dark red lips. ‘We’ll be landing in just a few minutes. Do you think you’ll need another bag?’

  I looked at the pocket in front of my seat; I’d used them all up in the first twenty minutes of the flight.

  I nodded, and showed her two fingers.

  She looked alarmed and hurried away to fetch them.

  I was the only soul in first class. The flight attendant said short hauls were usually empty up front. I guess Bergström wanted to keep me away from the eyes of the other passengers. I wondered if I’d have a better chance at the front or the back if the plane crashed.

  ‘We won’t crash.’ The sparkling flight attendant responded, a little too quickly for comfort.

  ‘What if we do.’

  ‘We won’t.’

  ‘But if we do…’

  ‘Then,’ she replied without letting the rictus of a smile slip from her face, ‘where you sit will make very little difference.’

  * * *

  There was a woman waiting for me at Dresden’s small and parochial airport. She held up a sign that said ‘Mrs Hart’, so I walked up and down the arrival lounge several times without realising she was waiting for me. Arrivals was not particularly crowded – business types mainly, with perhaps a sprinkling of tourists and couples snatching a brief getaway. I was on my third circuit when a policeman gently took my elbow and asked me if I was all right.

  ‘Yes,’ I said dumbly, ‘I think so.’

  ‘You appear to be lost.’

  I said that I was waiting for someone.

  ‘You appear to have been waiting for quite some time.’

  I asked him if he’d been watching me, which on reflection was the most stupid thing I could have said. He pressed the radio fastened to his shoulder. Before he could utter a word, a hand reached between us and thrust an ID card under his nose.

  ‘She’s with me.’ The accent was soft, German, musical in a shrill kind of way. The officer took his time reading the ID card and then looked at me as though he’d found me stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

  ‘I appear to have been mistaken,’ he said, though he didn’t say what he’d mistaken me for. He tapped the brim of his cap and was on his way. My saviour turned out to be a tall, dark-haired woman who reminded me of my mother when she’d been younger. She had a firm, almost masculine jaw and her pale skin was layered with a thin covering of foundation applied as a social courtesy and nothing more. She wore a slim-fitting skirt suit and heavy, flat shoes. Her lips were slightly puckered with age and her eyebrows met above a wide, broken nose. She’d chosen not to do anything about it so I knew I was dealing with someone who’d break me in two if I stepped out of line.

  I said ‘Thank you’ and she waved the sign under my nose.

  ‘Didn’t you see it?’ she demanded. ‘I thought Bergström had briefed you.’

  ‘He has, he did. I just forgot. Who are you?’

  She glanced at her watch. ‘We’re late. We’ll skip the hotel and go straight to the meeting place.’

  ‘What meeting?

  ‘Follow me.’

  She set off at a near-march.

  ‘I have luggage.’

  ‘It’ll be taken care of.’ She walked in a perfectly straight line, forcing other people to hop awkwardly out of her way.

  ‘My name is Brigit.’

  ‘I don’t need to know that.’

  ‘Well, I thought I’d tell you anyway.’

  ‘That is your choice.’

  ‘And do you have a name?’

  ‘Yes, of course I do.’ She glanced again at her watch and left the terminal; the sliding doors barely had time to open. Her car, a BMW I think, was parked in a police bay just outside. She opened the rear door and tossed the sign onto the seat before beckoning me to get in. I hesitated for a moment, realising that for the past three weeks I’d been nothing more than a pinball: ricocheted between t
rain stations, hotels and airports. I was back against the springs, ready to be launched again.

  Dresden was an old, small town; quite pretty, with a wide river that ran alongside ancient stone buildings and evergreen trees. It was getting on for early evening, so the town was lit from beneath its spires and domes. I would have liked to have opened the window and taken in the smell of the water, but when I tried the handle it didn’t work.

  ‘Do you live in Dresden?’

  She drove the way she walked – with little regard for anyone else. ‘I’ve been stationed here for twelve years.’

  ‘So you are with the police?’

  She replied with a terse ‘No’.

  ‘The secret service, then.’

  ‘No more questions.’

  So I stayed quiet while she slipped from lane to lane, making the rush-hour traffic seem stationary.

  We crossed the river and headed south. The buildings grew older and greyer. They huddled together with only narrow cobbled streets to keep them from falling into each other. The sky became a latticework of blue lines edged by grey stone.

  She stopped so sharply that I was thrown forward against the headrest.

  ‘Here,’ she said by way of an apology and pulled the handbrake as though she were breaking someone’s neck. ‘The narrow apartment building to the left of the fish restaurant. Head for the third floor, apartment two. He is expecting you.’

  I was happy to be out of the car, and if the speed she drove away at was anything to go by, then she was just as glad to have seen the last of me.

  The building’s interior was fairly understated though it still managed to radiate a sense of 1920s opulence; the corridors were a pale cream colour with carpets to match, and there was a tall potted plant stationed between every door. The door of apartment 3-2 was no different to all the others: a thick sheaf of solid oak in a slightly lighter cream than the walls and carpets, presumably so you could see it. I rang the bell and settled back on my heels to wait. The door opened, so quickly that I jumped away from it. A small, stout man answered. He had large, protruding eyes and there were only a few wisps of white hair left on his head. Small moles covered his neck and his nose was a bulbous mass of broken veins. He looked at me and then looked down the corridor where I’d come from.