Shadow on the Mountain

by Margi Preus

  “Now, then, why don’t you tell us where your brother is?” the Gestapo officer said. He was no longer smiling.

  “I told you, I don’t know,” Ingrid said.

  “You were just with him.” The man slid his arm around her shoulders almost gently, then placed his hand on the back of her neck. Her skin prickled.

  She could see her parents’ faces: her mother’s hand to her mouth, her eyes welling with tears; her father’s teeth clenched in anger.

  The officer had moved so that he stood slightly behind her. “I’m quite sure if you think hard enough, you can come up with some idea,” he said.

  She shook her head. His fingers closed around the back of her neck and squeezed.

  “Perhaps now you remember?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said firmly.

  She felt both of his hands around her neck now, choking her.

  “I don’t know!” she cried, when he let up for a moment.

  His fingers squeezed tighter, choking her, then released. “I don’t know!” she gasped. Again and again he gripped her throat and then released it, long enough for her to cry out, “I don’t know! I don’t know!”

  et up! Go downstairs,” Solveig said, shaking Espen. “Hurry!”

  Espen leapt off the couch, gathered up his rucksack and his sleeping bag, and rushed down to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, he climbed into his pants and realized with horror that he had only one shoe. The other one must have fallen out of his rucksack. That meant that one of his shoes was lying out in plain sight. His stomach lurched; he raced to the storm door.

  Someone moved about at the top of the stairs.

  The latch jiggled noisily in Espen’s hand, but the door wouldn’t seem to open.

  “Espen,” he heard. He turned to see Mrs. Dahl standing there. “It’s all right. It’s your friends.”

  Espen climbed the stairs to find his neighbor Kari and her boyfriend, Nils, standing in the living room.

  “Oh, Espen!” Kari said, breathlessly. “We came to ask Solveig if she knew where you were.”

  “Well, here I am,” Espen said.

  “It’s lucky we found you,” Kari said, “because the Gestapo’s at your house. We think they’re waiting for you. We heard—” Kari stopped abruptly. Out of the corner of his eye, Espen caught a glimpse of Solveig shaking her head at Kari.

  “You heard what?” Espen said.

  “We heard … some noise,” Kari finished.

  Espen’s throat felt thick. “What kind of noise?”

  “Never mind about that,” Solveig said. “You have to get going—fast!”

  But Espen’s whole body, like the arrow on a compass, swung toward home. “I have to go home,” he said.

  Solveig grasped his arm. “You know that’s not a good idea. You’ve got to get away—now!” She held out his shoe. “Are these the only shoes you have?”

  Espen nodded dumbly, his head throbbing. “My boots are at home,” he said. “I changed into these for the party.”

  “Well, put them on,” she said. “It’s the best we can do for now.”

  Solveig helped Espen into his shoes while the others stood over him, giving instructions. “… Soria’s farm … safe for a short time … figure out what to do …”

  Espen watched Nils’s mouth moving. He imagined what was happening at home. It was all his fault! “My family …” he said.

  “Does Ingrid know where you are?” Kari asked.

  Espen nodded. Why had he told her? He had endangered her, and Solveig and Solveig’s family, too. Even Kari and Nils now.

  “She won’t say anything—I’m sure of it,” Espen said.

  Nils started to say, “You know the tactics of the Gestap—”

  But Solveig interrupted him, “Of course she won’t say anything! But, in any case, you have to go. It’s not safe here any longer.”

  “If I go home, the Gestapo will take me and leave my family alone.”

  “Will you stop talking and hurry up?” Solveig said, cramming Espen’s hat onto his head.

  Nils and Kari walked ahead of Espen to the edge of town to make sure the coast was clear. He thanked them numbly and stumbled across the fields to Soria’s farm. His shoes kept filling with snow, and he finally stopped and took them off. Then he trudged along in his stocking feet, across fields awash in moonlight, each step punching another dark hole into the snow, The snow was loud, chattering at him. Yakkity-yak-yak, like old ladies at a coffee party.

  “If you must talk so much, tell me what has happened at my house,” he said, in case the gossipy old ladies had news. “Tell me if my family is safe.”

  But the snow had nothing useful to say; it just whined and complained underfoot.

  ksel clenched the steering wheel in his hands and stared down the street in the direction of the house. He should have been in there, in the house. His superior had roughed up the girl, the sister. He’d known that’s how it would go. He had heard her yelling. With the window rolled down, he could hear her even from inside the car. The kid, Espen, wasn’t home. Aksel was supposed to keep an eye out for him, but he knew the rascal wasn’t going to show up. The Gestapo could wait there all night—and probably would. Those Gestapo men were going to botch it, and somehow or other Aksel would be blamed. He could see that coming.

  He was tired of being blamed for everything that went wrong, and tired of not having a chance to be the front man. This, for example: being made to sit in the car while someone else did the interrogating. Like the flunkie they’d dug up—some old scouting buddy of Espen’s—who was in there now, snooping around, while he, Aksel, had to sit in the car. Neither Mr. High-and-Mighty-Gestapo-Man nor that stupid Boy Scout was going to get a thing out of the sister—Aksel knew that much.

  In the meantime, Espen was probably hightailing it out of town. Where was he now? Aksel wondered. Crouched in the back of a truck, covered by a tarpaulin, bumping along winding country roads? Or on his way to the coast to catch a ride on a fishing trawler to the Shetland Islands? Or was he strapping on a pair of skis and starting over the mountains toward Sweden?

  Aksel closed his eyes, trying to picture the scene. Espen would probably be hiding somewhere until arrangements could be made. Where?

  As soon as he was released from this doomed endeavor, Aksel could get to work on really catching Espen, even if he didn’t have official orders. He would need some help. But he knew where to get it.

  t had been a long, uphill climb, and Espen paused to catch his breath. The undulating line of mountains ahead of him looked like waves rolling all the way to Sweden, a kind of ocean of white. Yet not white, exactly. Now, in the moonlight, the landscape was a luminous blue.

  The skiing was tough. His wax was bad, and a thin layer of ice had collected on the underside of his skis, which made gliding difficult. Every little while, he and his guide, code-named Haakon, had to stop and scrape the stuff off. They had stopped yet again when Espen looked back at their ski tracks unraveling behind them like endless purple ribbons.

  “Do you think we’re being followed?” he said.

  Haakon shrugged. “Who knows? Not much to do about it but keep going.” He had taken one ski all the way off and now scraped at the ice with his knife, cursing under his breath. When his arm was raised, his jacket inched up and caught on the butt of a Colt .32 sticking out of his belt. “If the Germans are following us,” he went on, throwing his ski down, then stepping into it, “they’re having the same trouble with their skis that we are, so I wouldn’t worry.”

  “I suppose they might have better wax,” Espen said.

  Haakon snorted. “Germans? Ha! I doubt it.” He slipped the straps of his poles over his mittens. “For all the years they’ve been occupying Norway, you’d think they could have gotten the hang of skiing.”

  “There are exceptions,” Espen said. “There are a few who can ski well.”

  “Phooey!” Haakon said. “They ski like Swedes! You can pretty well count on outrunning
them. And even if they do catch up with you, they still have to be able to shoot straight to hit you. Can you imagine how hard it is to shoot after skiing hard? Plus, up here in the mountains, the light is funny. It bends things.”

  Espen knew that. A faraway mountain could look like a nearby boulder. A nearby stump could look like a faraway person.

  “Do you always carry that?” Espen said, nodding at the pistol in Haakon’s belt.

  Haakon pulled his anorak down over the gun. “In case of emergency,” he said.

  “Doesn’t it endanger you? Wouldn’t it be a lot trickier pretending to be an innocent skier when you’re carrying an illegal weapon?”

  “Sometimes it’s a good thing to have,” Haakon replied, and he skied on.

  Good to have to shoot at the Germans? Espen wondered, as he pushed off with his poles. Or who?

  Espen had to force himself not to look behind him, even though he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Maybe it was the piercing glare of the moon, like a huge, all-seeing, all-knowing eye staring down at them. Finally, when the moon worked its way west, behind them, Espen took a moment to glance over his shoulder. There, silhouetted against its light, he saw something. A shape, a dark shape, moving along a ridge.

  “Haakon,” he said. “Look back.”

  Haakon stopped and turned. Squinted. Raised his binoculars to his eyes. “I guess there are a few of them,” he said.

  “A few!” Espen exclaimed.

  “Looks like four of them—maybe a kilometer behind us.”

  “Are they … ?” Espen began.

  “Chasing us?” Haakon finished. “I don’t know what else they’re doing out here in the middle of the night.”

  “Can they catch us?” Espen asked.

  “No,” Haakon said, slipping the straps of his poles over his mittens and pushing off. “Not if we don’t make any mistakes.”

  Espen knew that he and Haakon couldn’t ski endlessly without resting, especially not at this pace. But neither could their pursuers. Whoever could keep going the longest would win. The pursuers had an advantage, though. They would have tracks to follow, even after Espen and Haakon stopped. If they ever stopped.

  “I have an idea,” Haakon said between panting breaths.

  Good, Espen thought, because I don’t.

  How long could they keep going? Espen wondered. It had been many hours since he had left Soria’s farm, where he had hidden the previous night and all through the long day. Sometime during the day, Kari and Solveig had arrived, bringing him his skis, boots, and poles. Once inside, they emptied their pockets of ski wax and presented Espen with sandwiches and a thermos—and a plan. Things had been arranged, they said. He was going to Sweden.

  “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened at my house last night,” Espen had said when they all were gathered around the table. “How are my parents? Ingrid?”

  “Ingrid’s a bit hoarse after the throttling they gave her—”

  “Throttling!” Espen cried.

  “—but as feisty as ever,” Kari finished. “Of course, she wouldn’t say anything, and they had to give up.”

  “Oh!” Solveig said suddenly, rummaging in her backpack. “She gave me this to give to you.” She handed Espen one of Ingrid’s diaries. 1939, it said on the spine.

  “Why would she give me this?” Espen asked. He slid the book from its case, opened it, and immediately saw the money tucked between the pages—his escape money. He also saw that the entries were from recent days, not from 1939. “What about the others?”

  “She said, ‘They are buried in the cold, cold ground.’ Except,” Solveig added, “the diary labeled 1945. Apparently, the Gestapo took that one.”

  Espen smiled, realizing that his clever sister had switched the books in their cases. The Gestapo had taken the harmless diary from 1939, and he had gotten the incriminating one.

  Solveig nodded at the book. “She said you should burn that one.”

  “No,” Espen said. “I’ll take it with me.” He slid the diary into the back pocket of his rucksack. “And how are Mor and Far?”

  “Your mother is fine. Your father …” Solveig paused.

  “What?” Espen said, not wanting to hear the answer.

  “He’s been arrested. We think they’re taking him to Grini.”

  Grini, the concentration camp near Oslo.

  Espen closed his eyes against a kind of white pain that was pooling in his head.

  “It’s not the worst place the Nazis have to offer,” Mr. Soria said.

  “Not that it’s any picnic,” Kari added.

  And with his bad ulcer … Espen thought. “I should—” he started to say.

  “No, you should not.” Solveig reached across the table; he felt her warm hand on his. “You know he wouldn’t want you to come back on his account. And you know you—you just can’t!”

  But, now, as he skied farther and farther from home, he felt the tug of invisible strings, pulling him back. Then he remembered the shadowy figures in pursuit and he knew there was no possibility of turning back. Solveig had been right. And Tante Marie had been right when she’d said it was possible to know too much.

  Espen knew where radio transmissions occurred, where airdrops were made, and the locations of Milorg camps. He knew section heads, XU agents, and scores of people who played roles both large and small. He could read code and reveal invisible inks. Now he knew everything about the German compound, too.

  No, there was no possibility of turning back, not even stopping for a moment. Not to remove a layer of sweaty clothing, not to clear off steamy glasses, and not to scrape the ice off the bottom of their skis. They simply had to press on and try to make Haakon’s idea work.

  elow them lay what looked like a big patchwork quilt stitched together of scraps of gleaming black ice and bright patches of snow.

  “There it is,” Haakon said. “Head for the ice.”

  They plunged down the hill and onto the lake, steering for the black spots. The ice was slippery; it was hard to keep their skis under them. Weaving in between the snowy patches, making sure an errant ski or pole didn’t leave a mark in the snow, made for slow going.

  When the moon set behind the western mountains, the light faded, and their shadows dissolved. Haakon became a dim figure moving ahead of Espen. It would be hard for anyone to see them from a distance, Espen realized. Their scheme just might work.

  “We should get off the lake and out of sight before the sun rises,” Haakon said.

  Ah, yes, the sun, Espen remembered. That.

  “I think we’ve lost them, anyhow,” Haakon added.

  Espen doubted it, but he was too tired to disagree.

  When they reached the edge of the lake, Haakon said, “Now that we’re on snow, plant your poles in front of you.”

  Espen did as he was told, punching the sharp points of his poles into the snow ahead of him at a slant. This was a clever strategy, too. It would, he realized, make it look as if they had been skiing toward and onto the lake instead of off and away from it.

  They went along in this manner for some time until a dark shape appeared ahead of them: a small stone hut. Using the same backward pole plant, they continued to the hut. Mixed in among other, older tracks, theirs might be lost.

  “Do you think it’s safe to stop?” Espen asked as they stepped carefully out of their ski bindings. They picked up their skis and, walking backward, carried them into the hut.

  “We have to sleep,” Haakon said.

  Sleep? Espen wondered. It seemed unlikely.

  ometime during the day, while Espen dozed, his first guide left, and a second one arrived, then woke him to start their trek. The winter days were short, and his troubled slumber hadn’t felt like enough rest to Espen. The tin of sardines, hard biscuits, and thermos of warm currant juice hadn’t seemed like enough food, either. Nonetheless, just after twilight, he and his new guide set off.

  It was so cold that the snow snapped, whined, and
squeaked under their skis. If there had been an army of tanks following them, Espen doubted he could have heard it. All he could hear was the squeal and crunch of his skis and the steady clickity-clack of his poles breaking through the icy crust.

  Even though they hadn’t seen anyone, Espen still felt as if they were being followed, and he mentioned this to his new guide, who was also named Haakon. “We have no imagination when it comes to code names,” the guide had explained.

  Haakon II took out his binoculars and scanned the expanse of white. He turned this way and that, then shook his head. “Don’t see anything,” he said, and he offered the binoculars to Espen. “I think you lost them yesterday.”

  Espen did not think so. He felt as if he could see his pursuers in his mind’s eye, like dark, menacing shadows. As the moon rose, his own shadow appeared alongside him, matching him stride for stride.

  He kept his eyes on the tails of Haakon II’s skis and for a while thought of nothing but going faster. But there had been little sleep and even less food, and he was tired. They skied on and on until he was so tired, he wondered if it was possible to sleep while skiing. Perhaps he dozed, for he began to feel at times that he was not skiing at all but swimming—at nightfall, the water and sky bruised purple, the cool water peeling away from him like petals from a rose. He swam through dark air into a liquid sky.

  The air moved around him as if from the beating of large wings, and he felt something settle on his shoulder. Munin, he thought sleepily. Memory has come to whisper in my ear.

  He thought of when he’d left Soria’s farm—had it only been the previous night? After plans had been made, he and Solveig had waited out the daylight hours until evening fell. At last, they had stepped out of the bright kitchen into the cold darkness. Yet not dark, really. The moon was very bright, with only one edge gnawed away by a hungry sky.