by Margi Preus
ou’re coming along nicely,” the doctor said when Espen saw him next, “and you are ready to be discharged from the hospital. Before you leave, your friend in room 121 would like to see you again.”
Espen hurried to Tante Marie’s room and opened the door. A man he didn’t know stood up from a chair.
“I’m sorry,” Espen said, backing out. “I didn’t realize you had a visitor.”
“Come in,” the man said, coming over and closing the door behind Espen.
Espen edged into the room.
“Don’t look so worried,” Tante Marie said. “This is Taraldsen. He’s a good Norwegian.”
The man extended a hand, and Espen shook it. “I’m a city engineer here in Lilleby,” he said. “Please sit.” He gestured to the chair near Tante Marie’s bed.
“Good disguise, Odin,” Tante Marie croaked. “You look terrible.”
“What disguise?” Espen said.
Tante Marie managed a weak chuckle. “Taraldsen is here to discuss a little job for you.”
Mr. Taraldsen picked up a cylindrical leather case—Espen recognized it as a case for a fishing rod—and worked at loosening the fasteners as he spoke.
“As you are aware,” he said, “we don’t expect the war to last much longer. The Allies have won some major victories. Here, in Norway, though, things are a little different.”
“Even if or when the Germans surrender elsewhere,” Tante Marie said softly, “they might not surrender here.”
Taraldsen nodded. “The German army in Norway has been described as ‘undefeated and in possession of their full strength,’” he said. “Even if the Wehrmacht in Germany capitulates, will the undefeated army in Norway follow suit? Reichskommissar Terboven has vowed to fight to the last man, and he has nearly four hundred thousand of them on our soil. In addition, there is reason to fear that the Nazis in Berlin will flee to Festung Norwegen—‘Fortress Norway’—as they call it, and make Norway their bastion. The Allies have indicated they have ‘no troops to spare,’ and we have about thirty-five to forty thousand Milorg men training in the mountains. You can see the issue, I think. So …”
After a moment, Taraldsen pulled the sections of a fishing rod out of the case and continued. “We can only prepare for the worst and do what we can.”
“And …?” Espen said, a little puzzled. The hospital was an odd place to assemble a fishing pole.
“As you probably realize, the headquarters for Fortress Norway is right here in Lilleby.” Taraldsen pulled a tightly rolled sheet of paper from the leather case. “Our sources tell us that this garrison is in direct communication with Hitler.”
He unrolled the paper and spread it on the bed. Espen saw immediately that it was a map of Lilleby. “Sorry, Tante Marie, do you mind?” Taraldsen said.
“Not at all,” she replied. “I’ll think of it as practice.”
“Practice?” Espen asked.
“Soon I really will be under Lilleby,” she said, chuckling.
Espen didn’t care for the joke, and he told her so; then he helped her sit up so she could see the map that draped over her bedcover.
“Here is the area.” Taraldsen traced the area with his finger. “They have requisitioned the tourist hotel and the houses that surround it, rudely expelling the families that live in them.”
Espen nodded. He had heard this.
“These three sides are completely surrounded with barbed wire,” the engineer went on, “and the whole area is patrolled by armed guards, of course. This fourth side, which is heavily wooded, steep, and rugged, has not been fenced. This may be a way you can enter.”
“Enter?” Espen squeaked.
“Oh, did I forget to say that? You’re to make a map of the compound, as detailed a map as possible. For that, you will have to get inside.”
The problem, as Espen saw it, was not getting inside but getting back outside.
“We need you,” Taraldsen went on, “to gather every speck of information you can: the location of the barracks, officers’ quarters, POW camp, weapons depots, bunkers, guardhouses, pipelines, and electrical generators. Most especially the communications bunker. You will bring all this information to my office in the post office building, and we will set it all down on this map.”
There was silence in the room as Espen absorbed all he had been told. Finally, he asked, “Any suggestions about how to go about it?”
“That is up to you,” the engineer said.
“Up to me!” Espen cried. “But I have no idea!”
Tante Marie coughed out a little laugh. “You just got a disguise. Use it.”
“It’s not like I’m suddenly invisible!” Espen said.
“You’ll come up with something.” Tante Marie tipped her head to indicate the table next to her bed. “Now, reach into that drawer. There’s something in there for you.”
Espen opened the drawer, immediately noticing the roll of bills. Tentatively, he picked it up.
“That,” she said, “is escape money, should you need it. Two hundred and fifty kroner—fifty kroner for each of the five guides you’ll require to get to Sweden. Should you have to flee, give the entire amount to the first guide. He’ll distribute the rest to the others.”
Espen stared at the money in his hand. How could Tante Marie still be thinking of his welfare? He glanced out the window, where the sky was steel gray. The wind must be strong, he thought, because the bare branches of the trees rocked and swayed.
“To live is no necessity,” Johan Scharffenberg had said, if it meant living under Nazi rule. Norwegians had embraced the sentiment, risking their lives every day to undermine the Nazis in any way they could. And they kept on no matter how bad it got; they hung on until there was sometimes nothing left but the will to hang on. Why?
Hope, he supposed. Hope, like the glimmer of sun that breaks through the shadow on the mountain. Hope and courage and will. Or perhaps it was just sheer will.
He looked back at Tante Marie. “I’m glad the Gestapo didn’t get you,” he said.
She managed a weak smile. “Something else in there for you, too,” she said.
Espen looked in the drawer. “The false teeth or the compass?” he asked.
“Whichever will be most useful to you,” she whispered.
“I’ll take the compass, then,” he said. “And, Tante Marie, thank you for everything.”
She turned her head and looked at him. The fire in her eyes had died to embers. “You have a good compass already,” she said. “Right here.” She laid her hand on her chest, over her heart. And closed her eyes.
ig a tunnel? Steal a Wehrmacht uniform? Dress in black and sneak in at night?
They were all bad ideas, doomed to failure. It seemed impossible, this mission he’d just been given. It felt like a sure prison sentence or, more likely, a death sentence. He would manage to get inside only to be arrested, taken to a Gestapo prison, and shot. Or, worse, tortured until he revealed the names of his contacts. And then shot. In any case, the inevitable outcome was good-bye. Good-bye, Solveig. Good-bye, Mor and Far. Goodbye, Ingrid.
He felt he could deal with the fear, but he became so sad, he could hardly bear it. Well, he decided, if that’s the way it is to be, I’m not about to die without going home one last time. Just to breathe in the smell of home, of family, of happier days, of ordinariness. He wanted to smell the pipe smoke on his father’s coat as he passed the hall closet, hear the steady ticking of the living room clock and the comforting creak of the wood floor as he walked through to the kitchen … The kitchen! Maybe it would be filled with baking. His mother might have gotten hold of some real cream and would be whipping it into soft peaks when he walked in. She would hand Espen the beater to lick. Oh! For just one piece of cream cake before he died! Was that too much to ask?
He found himself on his own doorstep; the window was open. He was touched that his mother still did this, even though it had been weeks since he’d last been home. He stepped into the quiet of an empty house.<
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He walked past the closet—the smell of pipe smoke only a memory, tobacco also only a memory—and then he was in the kitchen.
There was no cake cooling on the counter, no bowl of whipped cream, real or otherwise, standing at the ready, and nothing to smell or eat, either, from the looks of it. Just a note on the counter—Ingrid, please scrub the potatoes for supper—and a sinkful of potatoes in need of scrubbing.
Well, Espen thought, he had wanted ordinariness. What was more ordinary than scrubbing potatoes?
He rolled up his sleeves and began his task, with only the ticking of the grandfather clock to accompany him. Solemnly, it had ticked away the years of the Occupation, years that should have been filled with parties and holidays, Christmas cookies and birthday cakes. He should have been a kid just growing up, worrying about girls and soccer games and about the grade he’d gotten on his latest exam. Instead, he worried about getting arrested and tortured or having the Gestapo come to his house in the middle of the night.
He heard the door slam and the thud of a bag being plunked down in the entryway, then the click of heels in the hall.
Some things about these years he wouldn’t replace, he thought. Even ordinary, everyday moments like this one seemed distilled—distinct, concentrated, somehow. The afternoon sun streaming in through the kitchen window, the red of the potatoes, their skins glistening, the white flesh beneath so bright—colors were more vibrant, sweetness more sweet, feelings so much more intense. He did, he had to admit, feel intensely alive.
He’d learned a lot in these nearly five years, but the most important thing he’d realized was that of all the feelings that could course through his being in a single afternoon—anger, bitterness, sorrow, fear, longing, hunger (of course), and hate—love was the one that had the most power; it was the one feeling he hoped to cling to through his life, even if his life was to last only one day longer. He loved Solveig, his parents, his beautiful country, freedom, cream cake, and, right now, his sister, who was standing in the doorway, her cheeks flushed with cold, her eyes wide with surprise.
“Espen!” she said. “You look terrible!”
“Thank you,” Espen said. “Same to you.”
She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Tuberculosis,” he said.
Her hand sprang away from him.
“Not really,” he added. “It’s a sort of disguise.”
“Ohhh,” she said. “What are you doing now?”
“Scrubbing potatoes,” he said.
“I can see that,” she said. “I mean, what are you up to now?”
“Nothing much,” he answered. “Avoiding the Labor Service.”
Ingrid opened the icebox and stared inside for a few moments, then shut the door and sat down at the kitchen table. She cocked her head and looked at him sideways. “I don’t believe you.”
Espen made a face at her.
“That completes the look!” she said. “You’ve always had a talent for looking a little foolish. Now you look like a half-wit. Is that your coat in the hall?”
Espen nodded. Solveig had given him a raggedy old coat. She said it made him look even more bedraggled.
Ingrid laughed. “With that coat on, I bet you look like a quarter-wit!”
He looked at her over his shoulder and waggled his eyebrows.
“So …,” Ingrid said, nibbling at her fingernails. “What are you up to, really?”
Espen hesitated, then said, “I have an assignment that I’m a little boggled by. I’m not quite sure how to go about it.”
“Well,” she said, “you know what Far would say.”
“Use the Gudbrandsdal Method,” Espen replied. In the window’s reflection, he could see Ingrid nodding.
Espen looked at the potato in his hand. He thought about the potatoes in a box in the basement and more potatoes under the coverlet of snow in the garden. He remembered how Ingrid had fed the prisoners some years before. Those thoughts brought him back to the Gudbrandsdal Method: the simplest way.
spen made a wide circle through the woods around the compound so he could come in from the forested hillside—the one side without barbed wire. He reached into his pocket and touched the doctor’s certificate he carried there as if it were a magic talisman.
He was ready. He had practiced making his stride exactly one meter long. Ingrid had used a tape measure as he strode around the backyard. She coached him on looking idiotic, stupid, and very, very ill. And then she had cooked up a big batch of potatoes, drained them, and put them in a paper bag, which he now carried under his arm.
“Look confident,” she’d said. “No—not confident. Look sick. And idiotic. Above all, idiotic.”
Now, as if diving off the high board, he launched himself out of the woods and plunged into the compound, snuffling, sneezing, and coughing out little snatches of folk tunes.
Were there guards watching? he wondered as he stumbled (one meter per stumble) into the main part of the camp. He didn’t know. In order to maintain his disguise, he needed to seem unconcerned about such things. If he appeared to be looking for danger, he would look suspicious.
He scuttled close enough to several buildings to read the names of the officers residing there. He repeated the names in his head over and over until he was sure to remember them, so he could write them down later, along with the numbers and the locations of the buildings.
Espen stood and watched a crew of prisoners digging a trench. How they could work at all was a wonder—they were as fragile as skeletons. He was wondering what the trench was for when one of them looked up, saw him and the sack he was holding, and nudged the fellow next to him. They and some others left their work and walked up to him, their hands outstretched. Others followed.
Espen reached into his sack and put a still-warm potato into each hand. He knew he should be looking over their shoulders at the compound or watching for guards, but instead he found himself thinking of Ingrid and how she had fed sandwiches to the prisoners. Her act of kindness, he realized now, had been a powerful act of resistance. It contradicted everything the Nazis stood for. Perhaps, over time, ordinary acts of kindness could turn the Nazi ideology to dust. For this moment, anyway, it had.
Then, out of filthy pockets came offerings from the prisoners, beautifully carved trinkets of all shapes and sizes: wooden crosses, animal figurines, spoons, toys, a wondrous bird with delicately carved wings.
Then he saw the guard. A guard with a machine gun, who, for a moment, stared at him.
Now we’re all done for, Espen thought. He held his breath, waiting for a shouted “Achtung!” or the thumping of boots or even the sudden rattle of machine-gun fire.
He gazed down at the carved bird, its fragile wings outstretched, ready to take flight. This is the image I will take with me to heaven, he thought.
But the guard did something Espen was not expecting: he turned his back.
Espen set the sack of potatoes onto the ground and disappeared into the forest.
Hurrying down the hill toward town, he remembered when Ingrid had said that most of the German soldiers were just boys—like Norwegian boys, decent kids caught up in an unhappy world. Confused or conscripted, what did it matter? They didn’t really want to shoot anyone. Maybe she was right. At least about this particular soldier.
Espen returned to the compound several more days, each time with potatoes, and each time he came back to town with more and more of the compound etched into his mind. Later, everything he saw was put down on paper, including the names of the officers, their living quarters, the layout and the purpose of all the buildings. There was just one thing he hadn’t found yet: the exact location of the communications center. The most important piece of information.
Each day, Ingrid helped Espen scrub and cook another batch of potatoes. “How long are you going to keep doing this?” she asked. She didn’t look at him but stared into the pot of boiling water. “You might be pushing your luck.”
; “Today is the last time. I promise,” he said.
“Good,” she answered, turning to him. “Let’s celebrate, then. There’s a party tonight. Will you go with me?”
A party, Espen thought. How long had it been since he’d been to a party?
“Please?” Ingrid said.
If all went well today, he’d be finished with his task. It would be nice to celebrate. “All right,” he said. “Sounds like fun.”
It was a cold, crisp day. The sky was as blue as a Danish plate, and new snow covered the ground like a freshly ironed tablecloth. Espen made his way through the birch grove below the compound, gradually assuming his coughing-sputtering-mumbling-stumbling disguise.
He sang a little folk tune, and by the time he reached the camp, he was so transformed, he wondered if even his mother would recognize him.
A few prisoners working in the yard lifted their heads when he came in. They recognized him. He felt a knot develop in his stomach. He was too recognizable; he realized it, but it was too late. He was here now.
“Paul let his chickens run out on the hillside,” he coughed and sang, “Over the hill they went tripping along.”
He bumbled his way around the back of the main buildings. “Paul understood by the way they were acting; he sensed a warning that something was wrong.” Espen glanced behind him. “Cluck, cluck, cluck! The chickens are cackling.”
Suddenly, his surroundings came into sharp focus. The moment, and everything around him, seemed to condense into a small pinprick of light in his head: Danger. He could feel it.
Then he heard it.
“Halt!” a voice barked.
“Paul made a rush for the top of the hillside,” Espen sang quietly. “There was a fox with a hen in his paw.”
Footsteps crunched on the gravel behind him.
“Paul took a rock, and with madness he threw it, Striking directly the fox in the jaw.” He considered turning and flinging a potato at whoever was behind him, but throwing a rock at a fox and throwing a potato at a German soldier were two rather different offenses.