The Tempest

by Steve Sem-Sandberg

  The Hand of God Helped Them!

  A Miracle Saved Them from the Fatal Plane Crash!

  There it is again: the name. True, Lehman is not the same as Leyman. There was no picture showing the couple because the page was dominated by a dramatic shot of the burning fuselage and the emergency fire crews trying to put the fire out, standing in a sea of ash. It would have been reasonable to ask myself why my parents, if they were so keen to collect us, did not continue their journey by another plane or, at least, by ferry and train? But I clung to the new strand of hope. After a lot of hassle, I got hold of the reporter, and he managed to locate an old notebook with a telephone number entered ten years earlier. The number turned out to belong to an address in Daly City, south of San Francisco. I took a taxi from the airport and was so sure I had found the right place that I even told the taxi not to wait, paid the driver and carried my case up to the front door of a Victorian-type house in blue-painted wood, one of a whole line of equally stylish houses along a steep street. A woman came to the door. She looked as if she might be of Asian origin. At first, she seemed not to understand what I was saying, but after I had repeated Leyman and Lehman a few more times, she went off to get a younger woman to talk to me. She said that her father, whose property it was, had been living in a private nursing home for the last three years. She was positive that he had never set foot in any Scandinavian country: the family’s only relative living outside the USA or China was a sister who had married some twenty years earlier and moved to Peru. I told Minna all this in the long letter I wrote to her from San Francisco the same evening.

  Throughout my fruitless hunt for our parents, I wrote her letters and added pictures taken at the many places I visited, from the Marines’ base in Pascagoula to the bungalow in Ocean Springs and the lovely blue wooden house on the sloping street in Daly City. Writing to Minna had become an obsession. My search was not real unless I knew that we were carrying it out together. The basic reason was, I think, that our past had no tangible existence beyond us two or, at least, beyond those enigmatic little photographs, glowing in Kodak shades of turquoise and red and pistachio green inside their white frames, which were kept by Johannes inside his magic Javanese bamboo box, and which connected us at a deeper level than anything else we were able to create or even understand on our own. When I came home, I tried to meet up with Minna a few times but did not succeed. I snooped around and eventually found out that Minna had ‘settled down’, as people used to say, and was living in a collective on Markveien, in the Grünerløkka district of Oslo, with a partner, a Chilean refugee whom she spoke of as Chico or Chicuelo. Since the left-wing daily The Class Struggle had moved out there, she had been working in the Duplotrykk building over in Bryn. But whenever I called at the flat on Markveien, it was always crammed with people whose jobs were as nebulous as their relationships to my sister, and Minna hardly let on that she knew me. When I asked why she didn’t want to see more pictures from the States, all she said was, did I have the slightest idea of the evil-doings of that murderous country and how its secret service treated democratic agencies worldwide? Her manners had changed not one iota; she was simply Minna. So instead I went to the island. I can understand now what a comical figure I must have been in Johannes’s eyes when I arrived with my rucksack packed with address books and maps and slides. I remember that he brewed coffee and that we drank it sitting at the kitchen table in the nook where he liked to be. He looked over the pictures I showed him and hummed, sounding quite interested. Outside on the Mains Farm Road, Mr Carsten and a couple of farm labourers were trying to transport a digger up to the farm. The digger was mounted on a truck that was far too wide for the narrow road, so the whole crew had come to a halt out in the field, and while the driver revved the engine, Mr Carsten stood some twenty metres up the road, trying to measure the width and issuing instructions with both arms raised. This would have been a perfect opportunity for Johannes to confess what he had kept silent about for a lifetime: why Frank had returned to Kaufmann and the island, and why they had actually stayed here in the NATO villa up the road. The material I had ferreted out covered what Frank and Elizabeth Lehman had done for almost a decade. Johannes must have realised that he was the only one who could fill me in about those essential times: before and after. There’s something I couldn’t tell you about until now, he might have said. He could have explained that Frank Lehman had been on the island before the war as well. As a wartime refugee. That Kaufmann had taken care of the boy. Even though he was a Jewish child. Nothing could have been more natural than telling me this. For one thing, it would have supported what Johannes always said about Kaufmann: that, despite the accusations thrown at him, he was innocent of being a Nazi sympathiser. But Johannes said nothing, only smiled benignly, as usual. Why did he not speak? Could it be that saying something would have meant telling me the whole story, that he could not explain why Frank Lehman had come back to the island all these years later, with wife and children in tow, without also going into what lay behind the scandalous poisoning attempt that had made the two of them leave again in such a frenzied hurry, while we – the children – stayed behind.

  It was Johannes who transported the children out to the colony. He picked them up at Holmen station and drove them in the grey van across the bridge and all the way to Horse Strait, where they had to board the cable ferry that was still running between the Main Island and West Island. Once on West Island, they were housed in the reopened phalanstery or in one of the two wings of the Sanatorium. After the war, there was much talk about how the stormtroopers of the Hird had come to the island and about the role of the Hirdmen in organising the children’s colony. But that was not true: if there had been any paramilitaries on the islands, which I doubt, they were not in contact with Kaufmann and the people on the Mains Farm. The children who came to stay in the summer colony were recruited through sports clubs and other charitable organisations that were permitted during the occupation. Steinar Brage was one such child. His father, who worked as treasurer in an orienteering club over on Nordstrand, was far from being a Nazi collaborator, at least if one goes by his son’s memoirs. What Brage fails to mention in his book is that many adults came to stay on the islands in the war years, in addition to the summer children. These ‘volunteers’, as Kaufmann calls them, were in the main young men and possibly also some of early middle age. Johannes must have gone to meet them too, either at Holmen station or possibly at the bus terminal down by the bridge. Every year, at the beginning of June, the volunteers were given a rather special reception. It is all there in the shopping lists from Kaufmann’s notebooks: exactly how many sandwiches with ham and egg and smoked salmon were ordered from Brekke’s grocery store, and the precise number of crates of beer and Farris mineral water. It gives you visions of long tables laid in the shade of the trees, platters of sandwiches covered by white linen cloths to keep the wasps off, while nurses from the Sanatorium, dressed in white, walk about ticking the new arrivals’ names off the lists. Then each man must sign a form stating that he consents of his own free will to the medical examination and subsequent treatment. The official verbiage does not make it clear exactly what kind of treatment is in store, and most of the new volunteers probably do not give it a second thought. If they worry about anything, it is more likely to be what their families and friends will think about this place and whether those who come to work here will be thought of as collaborators, since their employer is the old boy up at the Mains Farm (then again, most of them know no more about Kaufmann than his name). I can see them now, waiting to be called, restlessly striding around in the flickering shadows under the trees, overdoing an upright posture as guilty people always do and keeping as far away from the tempting spread as they feel propriety demands. And then, one by one, their names are called. A set of basement rooms has been especially equipped for them: their weight and height is measured and they provide blood and urine samples. Next they are asked to strip to the waist and step into a screened-off area to b
e X-rayed. Because they will be living at close quarters in lodgings and barracks, it is important to make sure that they are not afflicted by any infectious diseases, tuberculosis especially. At the X-ray stage of the examination, they are also subjected to a small dose of ionising radiation. The dosage is related to the weight of each volunteer as well as to his age and blood screening data, and eventually to other medical information recorded in his case notes, which are updated annually. The book collection that Sigrid Kaufmann left with Johannes after the end of the war includes handbooks in radiology and nuclear medicine, as well as several volumes of what were then standard textbooks in biological medicine, such as Über die Natur der Genmutation und der Genstruktur (‘On the Characteristics of Genetic Mutation and the Structure of Genes’) by N. W. Timoféeff-Ressovsky, K. G. Zimmer and M. Delbrück (1935). This work had been of particular interest to Kaufmann, who had underlined a great deal and made many notes in the margins. Delbrück and his colleagues hypothesised that ionising radiation could trigger chromosomal changes that might in turn become stable mutations. It is easy to understand why this idea would fascinate an agronomist like Kaufmann, who for decades had experimented with the artificial creation of hardier and more nutritious cereal crops. The development of human tissues is not fixed for all time by the genetic material in our cells. Genes and gene expression can be made to change. If so, it should surely be possible to direct such changes along predetermined lines. It follows that it is worth looking for cures for inherited conditions and malfunctions, even if these are usually classified as incurable, as in the case of the debilitating muscular atrophy that Kaufmann’s daughter Helga suffered from. Of course, Kaufmann’s notes are much less wide-ranging than this. He confines himself to factual records of the volunteers, such as information about their family relationships, marital status, number and gender of their children, if any, and whether they or any of their close relatives have symptoms of a known heritable condition. Their blood values and the exact radiation dose and its time of administration fill column after column. As far as I can judge, the doses were relatively small, but everyone was subjected to radiation. There were no exceptions. Most important of all: many of the names recur in the records, year after year. These are trustworthy men, experienced and faithful harvest labourers who return and each time submit to this thorough health check uncomplainingly and, above all, without questioning the routine. Going through the lists of names in Kaufmann’s diaries, my first impulse was to find out where these people live now and how they live – if, indeed, they are still alive. And, if they are not, to find out when they died and what was the cause of death. People, when all is said and done, are not like fruit flies or gut bacteria, with cell cycles that take minutes or hours. The changes in human tissues that Kaufmann wanted to observe might have taken years, perhaps generations to appear – and then might well have been impossible to analyse in clinical terms. So Kaufmann’s first premise when he started his experiments must have been that the present conditions would effectively never change: the war and the occupation and his own peculiar feudal control over his farm labourers would last forever. (It matters much less that Delbrück and his colleagues had not actually got a grip on how to manipulate human genetic change and that experimentation along their lines was hopeless by definition. If Delbrück had not existed, Kaufmann would have found some other theory to suit his purpose.) How widespread such interventions were – that is, if it was one series of experiments only, or if there were several centres of research in addition to the old Sanatorium and, above all, if the colony children were also experimental subjects – to such questions I have no answers. The fact that I have not found any case histories of children among Kaufmann’s papers is not sufficient proof that such trials were not carried out: the case notes might have been destroyed or stored somewhere else. If it were to be shown that the children were experimented on, something that is suggested by Steinar Brage’s remark that everyone had to be ‘vaccinated’, the reasonable assumption would be that young Franz was part of it. Might it not be the explanation as to why Kaufmann wanted to see this particular relative on the island? If, indeed, the plan behind his insane project was to investigate possible cures for Helga’s muscular atrophy, Kaufmann is likely to have been greatly interested in how a child distantly related to his own would respond to the radiation. (Spinal muscular atrophy is inherited as an autosomal recessive trait, which means that to show the full set of symptoms, both one’s parents, though apparently normal, have to be carriers of the gene.) However, the greatest mystery of all is how a project of this size and complexity could continue for several years without any information leaking out. Which raises the question of who knew, and later chose or, possibly, was forced to keep it secret. Johannes must of course have known from the start. After all, he picked up and drove the children and the adult volunteers. Sigrid Kaufmann would hardly have dared to leave all this information with him if she had not been certain of his loyal silence. But what about Mr Carsten? Before and during the war, more than a hundred workers were employed in farming on the Inner Islands. If the lists are correct, many of these men must have been experimental subjects over several years. Even if Mr Carsten was not directly involved in what was going on in the Sanatorium, there must have been many occasions for him to chat to people in the seasonal as well as the permanent workforce who had undergone the treatment. He, like most others, might well have had no idea what it was supposed to be in aid of, but would nonetheless have had his suspicions. As long as Kaufmann was alive, Mr Carsten had no choice other than to keep mum, but how did he react once Kaufmann had died? I still remember how he came and rang the bell that evening, standing, legs astride under his massive bulk, at the front door that no one entered. There I sat in my room, my blood-stained hands squeezed between my knees, imagining that he had come like an Angel of Judgement, ready to demand retribution for my evil deed. But I was a child and children always believe that they are the centre of the world. I now suppose that Mr Carsten’s visit had nothing whatsoever to do with Kaufmann. Indeed, Kaufmann’s passing must have been a great liberation for Mr Carsten. At a stroke, he was free to devote himself to the horses which had always been his first passion. If only the money was there, he would have wanted to do it full-time. Maybe he had thought of a plan to buy up the widow’s and her daughter’s holdings in the farm. I remember how intently I watched the two men strolling in the garden: the slightly built, bent figure of Johannes, the large bulk of Mr Carsten, though somehow sagging beneath his broad shoulders. In the innocent eyes of a child, it could look as if they were playing a kind of game in which you had to take turns to touch the tree trunks with one or both palms while alternating between talking to the other and wandering about, deep in your own thoughts. Now I have come to the conclusion that Mr Carsten raised the matter of the Sanatorium experiments with Johannes. He might well have felt that it was every citizen’s duty to speak up about the past, especially when Kaufmann was no longer with them. It would have helped to make up for all the injustices endured in the war. I imagine that Mr Carsten tried to be conciliatory at first. Much time has passed since then, he might have said, and besides, conditions were quite unusually precarious during the occupation. Yes, of course, Johannes knew that as well as anyone. But once the old boy had passed on, these things could no longer be kept under wraps. That’s how it always goes. Mr Carsten might have gone on to say that people were talking about how many of the wartime farm workers had fallen ill later in life. Cancer in most cases. And how would it look, Johannes, if all the men you drove down to collect at the bridge went and died, the lot of them? Perhaps just two, three years after the end of the war and, worse, died in the most dreadful agony? And them being ordinary folk like you and me, Johannes: reliable, decent people whose one aim had been to land a good job. And if that kind of story started doing the rounds now, it would be the very devil to deal with, wouldn’t it? Now, when it is all forgotten, or as near as damn it? And Johannes would have walked away a l
ittle, staring at the ground. And Mr Carsten let him alone for a while. Only to add this, slowly and with great emphasis on every word: And then there is this matter of that girl of yours, Wilhelmine. Mr Carsten had the grim cunning of the underdog, and knew all he needed about Johannes’s weak spots and how best to attack them: There’s no telling how much that girl has figured out. Who knows what she might take into her head to come out with? What if I think up a way to get her off the island so we finally get some peace and quiet? Though maybe you could see your way to contributing a little to her upkeep? When I hear him say this, it dawns on me that the decay of the islanders has been an outcome not so much of the inbreeding – of folks being all just as deep in it, as Mr Carsten had tried to persuade me earlier – but rather because everyone has been so self-regarding that keeping silent, refusing to admit anything, has finally blocked off every possible way out. Or it could be that silence has become unavoidable simply because everyone has lost the ability to speak, since, if what one knows was put into words, the consequence would be to concede one’s passive complicity in what happened and so declare oneself guilty of condoning it going on, without ever speaking up or even making an effort to leak information, and that prospect is just too much to cope with. So much better to let Kaufmann bear all responsibility, he wasn’t quite right in the head, after all. As for exactly what Minna might have known or seen, and what, if anything, Mr Carsten had feared would be made public knowledge, I have no idea. She never told me anything, except for childish stories, like the one about the white butterflies which she had seen rise in front of Kaufmann’s feet at night. But, whatever, it is obvious that Mr Carsten saw Minna as a walking, talking scandal, a source of mischief that would get out of control unless he put his mind to it. And that he is the new master of the island becomes clear to all when, later, Minna returns from the mainland. Before, she had made her way to the farm on the sly, along secret routes. Now she walks along the Mains Farm Road with her head held high, wearing clothes she has acquired from God knows where and full in the sight of everyone, including Johannes, who can do nothing other than what he and the rest of the islanders have always done: that is, look the other way and say nothing. And, up in the farmyard, Mr Carsten stands, waiting for her. He has got what he wanted. No need for him to come down to us any longer.