I make notes: this is the fifteenth evening since I arrived, the tenth since I started on the inventory. I have continued to go through Johannes’s old papers. I have sorted his piled-up
receipts and accounts ledgers into separate stacks around me. On the top shelf of the wardrobe in the hall, there are six or more old shoeboxes, all stuffed with paperwork and cuttings. He seems not to have thrown away a single thing in his life. In the main, the papers are perfectly innocent. Like the invoice for a new oil pump, or the order of tin for new downpipes; or a newspaper subscription, cancelled soon afterwards. The receipts that still confuse me are the ones I tried to ask Mr Carsten about. All are marked Received from Johannes Lindalen for services (various) in irregularly formed letters; next, the sum in numbers and in letters and, below, Mr Carsten’s signature. Generally speaking, none of the sums is very large, even for the time, but for Johannes they must have been significant. Was it a matter of paying off old gambling debts or, as Simonsen thought, part of a deal to own one of Mr Carsten’s racehorses? I check through the dates again: two are from August and October 1973 respectively, two from March 1974 and another one (for 1,500 kroner) from May the same year. But in May 1974, Minna returned to the island and got a job in the supermarket down by King’s Road. It cannot be a coincidence that the payments were made just then, I tell myself, in the period immediately after Kaufmann’s death. There must be a connection. Could it have been that Carsten knew that I had attacked and hurt Kaufmann and demanded money from Johannes in return for his silence? I had of course met Mr Kaufmann on the farm only a few weeks before I tried to murder him down by the lake and, at the time of that visit, Kaufmann had clearly recognised me. You must be Johannes’s boy, he had said. Later, he might easily have said the same thing to Mr Carsten. It was Johannes’s boy, he might have said, that boy was the one who attacked me. Mr Carsten had waited until after Kaufmann’s death, then come to see Johannes and told him, if you don’t pay me, I’ll make sure the whole island knows it was your little bastard who killed the old man. Then Minna had to serve as a kind of hostage; that is to say, she was placed somewhere away from the island and out of Johannes’s reach until the debt was paid. At least, this scenario explains why Johannes behaved so oddly when Mr Carsten called at the front door and why Mr Carsten never stepped inside like other visitors. Instead, the two of them talked standing in the doorway or pottering about in the garden like two restless pheasants. Still, it is not all that likely. Why, in that case, would Minna have walked up to the farm of her own volition once she was back home? Where did all those clothes come from, the ones Minna wore every time she went to the farm? I am sitting in the sidecar pondering this when, once more, I hear people stomping about outside the house. Fucking Nazi! two of them shout at the same time, almost as if on cue. Then they start throwing stones again; it makes a sound like a minor rock-fall when the stones hit the wall. I clamber back down the attic steps, crawl on all fours in the hall so as not to be seen through the windows, move from room to room, turning the lights off, and then get the gun out from the wardrobe in the bedroom. That the whole house has gone dark seems to have surprised the attackers. There is a brief silence and then I hear footsteps again, now in the cellar corridor, where voices speak quickly, anxiously. They have got into the house. As I throw myself almost recklessly down the stairs, a voice calls out, he’s coming! he’s coming! Unthinkingly, I raise the gun and shoot into the dark. The recoil of the rifle almost knocks me over. A whistling sound just above my head; it must be the ricochet. Heavy objects, chairs or tables, fall over in the dark, then the sounds of running again. Holding on to the rifle, I follow in the dark and keep bumping against the walls like a drunk. The cellar door is still locked, so they must have climbed in through the window. I turn the key in the lock and kick the door open. They are of course all over me in an instant: most have the agile bodies of half-grown boys, but at least one of them is older, heavily built, and seems enormously tough. He is the one who clings to my back and tries to twist the rifle barrel from my hands while the others are in full flight. We wrestle in the dark in front of the garage door. Finally, I manage to get a grip around his neck and meet his frightened, staring eyes. I recognise him: the thick nose and half-open mouth belong to Skakland junior, the newspaper delivery driver who showed me the finger the other day. That he and his mates have dared to enter my house fires me up. Enraged, I try to force the mindless creep to the ground. He seems about to give in for a moment, but then he unexpectedly twists his body and bites my hand. I scream and let go and just have time to feel something greasy and sticky slide across my arm before he hauls himself upright and stands there, heavy and panting, right next to me. And I briefly look him straight in his young face: it looks wild; his forehead and cheeks are painted with broad, black lines. War paint. Then he, too, runs away, and I am left in front of the garage with the stinging pain in the back of my hand.
A first for this visit to the island: a morning without rain. The dawn sky arches over the forest like a bowl of pale blue enamel but the trees are still black and threatening on the horizon. I walk around the house to inspect the damage. All the ground-floor windows have been knocked in, including the ones in the hall; even the milky glass in the high, narrow window by the front door has been shattered. At the back of the house, the glass has been broken in the two windows that lead to the terrace, as well as the other sitting-room windows and the single one in the small space that was Johannes’s television room. When they ran out of edging stones from the drive, the lads moved on to throwing hefty logs. I pick up quite a few of these lying scattered around the rooms. On the hall floor and everywhere in the cellar, there are trails of soil and mud and dead leaves from last night’s break-in. I measure up the windows and set out for Langmark’s, the carpenter’s workshop-cum-timber yard, which I know is still in the old place, by Horse Strait. During that long, hot, insect-humming summer when Johannes refurbished the kitchen, it was to Langmark’s I went with the measurements; I was to see the boss himself, and waited by the planer among the sweet-smelling slivers of wood while Langmark, whom I remember as a slight but strong and sinewy man, always walking about with an unlit cigarette stuck behind his ear, measured up, cut and planed the planks. When he had finished, I loaded the planks on Johannes’s wheelbarrow and wheeled it back home. It took many turns, and I remember, too, how the sun burnt my sweaty boy’s back like a hot iron. This time, a man I have never seen before serves behind the folding counter in the carpentry shop’s office. He is middle-aged, with a round, flabby face disfigured by a bulging tumour on the left cheek. The swelling is about the size of a golf ball, almost black at the base and somehow infiltrated by a network of thin blood vessels. The man looks at me with an expression that is at the same time dismissive and anxious, which could be something to do with his tumour or possibly with the rifle, which I have put down on the counter next to a piece of paper with notes of what I need. At the top of that list: sheets of board to stop the rain from coming in through the broken windows. His first reaction is to ask if I have contacted the house insurers. Fair enough, so how can I explain to him that Johannes never took out house insurance, just as he never signed agreements of any kind? His distrust of the world went too deep. I had better cover up the whole bloody mess for the duration, is all I say. They’ll do it again anyway. He eyes the gun. Seems to me it’s you who’d do anything, he says next. You’ve always been like that in your family. Utter fury at this fatuous assertion makes my knees suddenly start to shake. Our family! What’s that supposed to mean? And from him! I ask him what he would do if his kids vandalised other people’s property. Punish them, naturally, he replies. But my kids weren’t involved, he adds hurriedly. They’d never do anything of the sort. He is lying, of course. As everyone on the island has done, always. Lying is deeply ingrained here, like blight. I place the order and he promises that the cut boards will be delivered in a few hours, so I cross King’s Road, take a shortcut over the meadows and start walking along
the path up to Bird Hill. Minna and I often took this way home in the summer when we had been swimming off the Horse Strait beach. You got back to the farm and the Yellow Villa faster than by any other route, even if it was steep and you had to clamber a bit. It was up there, at the top of Bird Hill, that Mr Carsten told us about the plane crash and how the passengers had hung like burning torches in the trees, still strapped into torn-off seats. I lie down flat on my front in the grass, lift the binoculars and, after sweeping past the Yellow Villa, focus on the farm. In the old days, the yard used to be crowded with people, with cars parked wherever there was a space, while old tractors and ploughs used for clearing snow were lined up against the stable wall. Now the yard lies completely empty and bare, apart from Mr Carsten’s Volvo, parked in front of the farm manager’s house next to the trailer that has been standing in the same spot for as long as I can remember. At the far end, beyond the stables, no horse is to be seen behind the white-painted fence around the paddock that Mr Carsten laid out just before Kaufmann’s death, nor is there any trace of the man himself. Even the dog’s long running lead lies slack and abandoned in the grass near where it is usually tethered. I take aim with the rifle to find out what I could hope to shoot from up here. But it is meaningless to take aim without any visible target. I turn the binoculars towards the Yellow Villa and, inevitably, they are back. The children: now, in a loose cluster of four or five, rambling in an apparently desultory way along the verge of the field. Some of them look no older than schoolboys, others are already lanky teenagers, but all of them have stuck grass and twigs in their hair and painted their faces black and green. I should have thought of it: the procession – tomorrow is Procession Day. That explains why old Skakland’s son had paint all over his face. I cannot tell if the boys are on their way to the house, but it does not matter. The van from Langmark’s has been bumping along the Mains Farm Road and overtakes the boys before they reach the drive. It drives all the way to Johannes’s garage and two men in blue overalls climb out. I hurry on down to meet them.
From now on, I take no risks. I bring the rifle with me when I sit in the sidecar and leave the attic hatch open to make sure at least to hear, and preferably see, any intruders in good time. Thus prepared, I carry on reading Kaufmann’s diaries. The man’s transformation from a brittle-boned aesthete into an assured, adroit politician and diplomat is remarkable and I cannot stop marvelling at it. Here he is, with the protective carapace of a dark suit in place, standing with his guests on the long wooden veranda of the Mains Farm house. Next to him, his wife Sigrid, who smiles discreetly towards the photographer and leans a little against her husband; the couple are surrounded by a skilfully arranged group of thirty or so mainly older men, some stiff and awkward, others visibly pleased and relaxed, holding cigars or glasses of brandy and water. The photograph was kept in the 1943 guestbook, another item that Sigrid Kaufmann thought it wise to leave with Johannes. A seating plan for that notorious dinner was sketched out on adjacent pages in the guestbook. There were ninety-odd guests to be found seats at three separate tables placed around the table of honour. However, neither guest list nor seating plan gives any clue as to whether Vidkun Quisling was present or not. (It could be because he was the kind of prominent guest who always arrives late and without warning, if at all.) It is also impossible to work out from the guest list alone who joined the guided tour of the islands that preceded the dinner. Not even the photographs taken on the long veranda can be used to find out who went and who did not, since the pictures could just as easily have been taken before as after the tour. Several books have been written about the so-called ‘second colony’, most of them by people whose long wartime summers were transformed thanks to Kaufmann. When we were little, Johannes read aloud to us from one of these books, called Memoirs of a Wartime Child. It was written by Steinar Brage, about whom I know nothing except that much later he presented a TV quiz show called Jeopardy, in which Brekke’s grandson went on to participate for several years. It could be that since Brage had not tried to atone for his presence in the colony by adding his voice to the standard hate demonstrations against that Nazi Kaufmann, Johannes felt more sympathetic towards him than most of the others. Steinar Brage seems to have only happy memories of his time on the Inner Islands and speaks about the friendships between the boys and the work on the land with childish, enthusiastic eagerness. He describes at length the foreign delegation that came for a visit in 1943 and illustrates the passage with a large group photograph that must have been taken in the park on West Island, just below the Sanatorium and with the jetty and the sea as a backdrop. The caption is ‘The Vaccination’ and the text comments on the visit:
On the morning of the day before the vaccination, we had been forewarned that the colony could expect some very special guests coming on a visit and so we were not allowed to go swimming as we normally would. That afternoon, a group of people came strolling along from the jetty where the ferry moored. They all looked tremendously elegant. Most of them were men but there were also ladies present, wearing plumed hats and long white gloves. We were told to line up on the lawn and they asked us questions. They spoke German and, as soon as a question had been put, an interpreter stepped forward to translate it. We had to say how old we were and if we ‘enjoyed it there’. I recall being asked what I liked best and answering that I liked Old Abraham best. We had four goats – one of them, the ram, looked like a very old man and we thought he should be named Old Abraham – it made quite a few people laugh, although others shook their heads and looked uncomfortable. I think the interpreter did not translate just that part.
The photograph: the first row is formed by ten or so young boys who seem to find it really hard to keep their restless bodies still; behind them stand several older children, boys and girls, and the latter all stare into the camera with earnest faces. The boys are dressed in shorts and shirts, some wear little kerchiefs tied around their necks; the girls have their hair in plaits and are wearing dresses and neatly ironed aprons with large patch pockets. I have seen that photo many times and it always struck me as dull and nondescript because it is so blatantly prearranged. This time, I scrutinise it much more attentively but honestly cannot explain why. Perhaps it is because of the man I met down at the joinery earlier today, the chap with the cheek tumour: I cannot recall having met him before in my life but, all the same, he felt at liberty to opine about how I and my family always behaved. Could one of the man’s relatives, perhaps even Langmark himself, of whom I have only vague memories (that cigarette behind his ear!), have been among the children who are smiling obediently at the camera on the photographer’s command? In that moment, I see him. Not Langmark, but Frank Lehman, my father! He is in the upper row, furthest to the left, half a head shorter than the two boys next to him but with his face fully in the picture, above the shoulders of the blond girl in front of him. At first, I cannot believe that it is really him. I ask myself if this is not some kind of optical illusion. After all, I have been spending years absorbed in efforts to find my father, and even travelled to the USA in search of him. Could it not be that I have started to read his features into the faces of strangers? I run downstairs to the kitchen to get the Javanese box with the photographs of our parents and also the cuttings about the plane crash, which Johannes stored at the bottom of the pile of newspapers as if they were relics of some kind. When I compare the boy in the group photo with the man in the small, white-framed Kodak snapshots taken more than twenty years later, the similarities between them stand out, not only the wide, somewhat flat face with slightly protruding ears but the posture, the easy assurance of the boy in the upper row, who is relatively short but stands tall with his straight back and broad shoulders. But why was he there at all? As early as that, with the war still going on? Only Norwegian children were supposed to be recruited to the colony. On the other hand, if that boy really is Frank, it would explain a lot. Like this: the matter of why an American, as he was, would ever think of settling on this distant island.
Or why he spoke reasonably good Norwegian, as Johannes always claimed. Frank must have learnt the language somewhere. It would also explain that actual or imaginary third visit Johannes told us about, when our father and mother planned to be reunited with the two of us, the two bastard kids, as Mr Carsten had it, a journey that was interrupted by a fatal accident. No one who has been orphaned, or just been uncertain of where or even who his (or her) parents are, can fail to understand my mixed feelings of terror and awe as I unfolded the newspaper pages that Johannes had put aside. Two large photographs share the double-page spread. To the left, a picture of a group of agitated, gesticulating men, some wearing helmets and holding thick hoses. The picture to the right only shows a field of grey ash with a sprinkling of either snow or fire-retardant foam, with some indeterminate things sticking out, perhaps parts of the wrecked plane, or just crushed or scorched vegetation. The headline running above both photographs is dramatically black:
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