by Margi Preus
Espen tossed his skis onto the snow and stared at them. Did he really have to go? Solveig held his poles for him just steps away. He could feel the warmth of her from where he was.
“It’s bright tonight,” she said.
“Ja,” Espen agreed.
“Should make for good traveling,” she added.
Espen looked out at the expanse of snow, glittering in the moonlight.
“It will be a lot of uphill,” Solveig said.
Espen nodded, and they both looked for a moment at the rising hills and the distant mountain peaks glinting like knife blades.
“Take care,” Solveig said.
Espen nodded again. Solveig was so calm and strong. He couldn’t speak. He quickly stepped into the bindings of his skis and pulled the straps tight.
“I’ll check on your family, Espen,” Solveig said, “and somehow get word to you.”
He thought he heard her voice quaver a little, but when he turned to her, she simply held out his poles. He took them, then tossed them down and pulled her to him in an embrace. If only …, he thought. If only I could hold her to me all the long way to Sweden.
“Your friends are back,” Haakon II said.
“What?” Espen swam out of his memory and back to the cold, windswept plateau.
“Two of them, anyway,” Haakon II added.
Espen glanced behind him and saw two figures, barely visible against the snow. There was not much in the landscape to shield Espen and his guide from view. Sometimes they were briefly separated by a hill, or once in a while a low, dark cloud would scud by, veiling the moon. Their pursuers were close enough, and the moon offered so much light that he could tell they were wearing the white camouflage suits of one of the mountain divisions. He and Haakon II didn’t have that advantage; they had been trying to pass as civilians. Their dark clothing made them stand out like two black bull’s-eyes on an all-white target.
hey were nearly within shooting distance now, Aksel thought. It had taken longer than he’d hoped to catch up with them. The two Germans who had started out with them had dropped out of the chase sometime the previous night and had not been seen since.
Aksel and Kjell had argued about which direction the tracks led and had wasted a lot of time on that lake. They were hungry and tired, so they had stopped, eaten some sandwiches, and slept for a few hours. By some lucky break, they came upon the trail again. And they had done well. They had begun to close the gap.
“I think I could hit him,” Aksel said. He stopped and raised his binoculars, eyeing the two dots moving on the snow in the distance. From his perch on the top of a hill, Aksel observed their progress for a moment—there was one small hill separating them, but the skiers would soon move out of its shadow.
“You think you can, but you won’t,” Kjell said. “For one thing, they must be at least a half kilometer away.” He took the binoculars and glanced through them. “For another, they’re moving. Plus, you’re tired. Look at you—you’re dripping sweat. You’ll have sweat in your eyes. Your muscles are fatigued; you won’t be steady. It’ll be a lot harder to shoot straight than you think.”
“If I miss, so what?” Aksel said. “It’ll be worth it to make them nervous.”
“The amount of time you take to shoot will make you lose more ground than it’s worth,” Kjell said. “It’s better to keep skiing and gain on them.”
Kjell skied on, but Aksel stayed where he was. He watched Kjell moving ahead of him, the gap between them widening. If Espen and the others maintained this pace, Aksel didn’t think he’d be able to keep up much longer. He might never get another chance as good as this one.
Aksel dropped his poles and slipped the rifle from his back. He was in a good position. Kjell had moved on ahead but wasn’t in the line of fire. Aksel raised the rifle to his shoulder, pulled back the bolt, let his breath out in a long, slow exhale, took aim, and pulled the trigger.
Espen heard the distant crack of the gun and the high zing of a bullet. Ahead of him, Haakon II cursed a blue streak.
“Keep moving!” the guide shouted. “It’s harder to hit a moving target.”
Espen had no intention of stopping—he sprinted. He heard another crack and the ping of a bullet hitting rock, and then another crack. Should he swerve? Move an inch to the left or to the right? Duck? While he wondered, two or possibly three more shots were fired, and then he felt the impact, felt himself being lifted off his feet and pitching forward—as if someone had given him a shove from behind. He thought, If I can just keep my footing … if I can just keep on skiing … but he felt the wind whistling past his ears and saw the ground rushing up toward him …
Aksel had five rounds and was just getting the fourth shot off when he saw Kjell skiing back toward him. He tried to get one more shot off, but Kjell reached him before he had a chance and wrested the rifle out of his hands.
“You stupid ass!” Kjell said. “You could kill him!”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” Aksel said. “He’s a criminal.”
“That would be about the stupidest thing you’ve ever done,” Kjell said, “and you’ve done a lot of them.”
“You may have become accustomed to speaking to me in those terms back in our school days,” Aksel said, “but may I remind you that you are my subordinate—”
“Listen to me, you idiot. Do you realize that his guide is probably carrying a revolver?”
“So what? He can’t hit us with that thing at this distance.”
“It isn’t for shooting us. It’s for shooting Espen.”
“What?” Aksel said. “Why?”
“Good grief, you’re thick,” Kjell said. “Better dead than captured, that’s why. Do you have any idea how much information Espen has? How many people he knows? XU can’t risk him being taken alive. Listen, Aksel, I don’t even know why I’m bothering to explain this to you, but if you want to make your superiors angry—again—go ahead, shoot Espen. But if you intend to impress anyone, you have to bring him back alive. Maybe then you could rectify your whole sorry situation back in Lilleby.”
Aksel shot him a dirty look.
“But you know what?” Kjell went on. “That’s never going to happen. You’re never going to get him. Why? Because you’re too bloody slow. You’re not a good enough skier to catch up to him. Maybe I could catch him—without you along—but you—”
“Why are you telling me this now?” Aksel gestured out at the distant scene, where Espen lay sprawled in the snow. “I hit him. He’s dead.”
t had started to snow, in earnest this time, like a heavy dusting of powdered sugar that collected rapidly on Aksel’s skis and clothing and obscured his vision, especially as he and Kjell sped down the hill. It was inconvenient, Aksel thought, but nothing that would prevent them from finding a body lying out in the open.
At the foot of the slope, there was still one smaller hill to go. Aksel tried to work through the possibilities as he started up the hill. Perhaps Espen was only wounded, and they could still bring him back with them, alive. Espen’s guide, Aksel supposed, would be long gone. Of course, the guide might have finished Espen off before he could be reached. The snow had been so loud a little earlier that Aksel might not have heard the gunshot. Now, though, enough snow had fallen that it was like skiing on butter—smooth and quiet—so quiet, he could hear the tiny flakes tapping against his anorak. One way or another, Aksel had to assume Espen was dead, and he was, he had to admit, relieved that the chase was over. Of course, there would be the body to deal with, Aksel thought.
But as he crested the hill, he looked down and saw that there wasn’t a body.
There was nothing. No body. No guide. No blood, even. Kjell stood at the bottom of the hill, where the body should have been, surveying the scene.
“Maybe it wasn’t here,” Aksel said when he reached Kjell. “Maybe it was a little farther along—over the next rise.”
Kjell shook his head. “No,” he said, “it was here.” He laughed.
; “I don’t see what’s so funny,” Aksel said.
“You wouldn’t,” Kjell said, still laughing.
Aksel didn’t feel like laughing. In frustration, he fired his gun into the air. This made Kjell hoot with laughter.
“Now what?” Aksel asked.
“That was your last shot!” Kjell said. “You’re out of ammunition.”
ying facedown in the snow, Espen thought of a joke he had forgotten to tell his sister. A farmer, so the joke went, had gotten a threatening letter from the occupying regime about his inability to keep them supplied with enough eggs. The farmer sent this reply: Have submitted your document to the individuals concerned (the hens), but inasmuch as they refused to comply, they have been court-martialed, placed before a firing squad, and executed.
Now he knew how the chickens felt.
“Can you get up? Can you move?”
Espen turned his head to see Haakon II standing over him. “What just happened?” he asked, getting to his knees.
Haakon II helped him to his feet. “Never mind. Can you ski?”
Yes, Espen thought he could ski, and they started off, with him once again following in Haakon II’s tracks.
Haakon II glanced back at Espen. “You’re OK?” he said.
Espen nodded. He’d been hit; he’d felt it, yet he was skiing now. He felt fine. He didn’t feel any pain. He wasn’t dead—or maybe, it occurred to him, he just wasn’t dead yet. There must be a hole in him somewhere. And if there was a hole in him, he must be bleeding. He would have liked to check himself for bullet holes, but he knew they had to move as fast as they could, away.
He felt strangely energized, as if he hadn’t been skiing as hard as he could for hours on end. As if he hadn’t been hit by a bullet. Things were good now: the moon had disappeared behind dark clouds, and snow flew around them, thick and fast, the flakes as big as handkerchiefs. It would be too bad to let their pursuers catch up now, just when they had a decent chance of losing them. And it really would be too bad to be dying, Espen thought. The skiing was so good, and he felt like he could go on forever. And it was quiet. So quiet, he could hear the world breathing, in and out, in and out. Or perhaps that was just the sound of his skis whispering against the snow.
ou’re a lucky fellow,” said Espen’s third guide—also named Haakon—after hearing about his brush with death. Espen and his previous guide, Haakon II, had spent most of the day “sleeping” in a snowbank. After establishing that Espen was not bleeding anywhere, they had climbed into their sleeping bags and let the snow drift over them. At some point, Haakon II had gone away and Haakon III had arrived.
“Ja, you’re a lucky one,” his new guide commented, skiing alongside him.
“I suppose I am,” Espen said.
“Still feeling lucky?” Haakon III said.
“Why?” Espen asked.
“Up ahead you will have to cross a road—the road that goes over the pass—and there is a control point there,” Haakon III said.
“What?”
“A control point,” Haakon III repeated. “A checkpoint. Two Germans were shot around here somewhere, and the Gestapo have set up a roadblock.”
“I can’t go through a checkpoint!” Espen said. “That’ll be the end of me. Can’t we avoid it?”
“Did you bring mountain climbing equipment with you?”
“No.” Espen looked at the steep mountain peaks that rose on either side of the trail that led through the pass. “What about going around?” he asked hopefully.
“How about adding another twenty-four hours to your trip?” Haakon III said. “Without a guide, and”—he nodded at the sky behind them, churning with dark clouds—“with a storm brewing.”
“Well, I can’t go through a checkpoint!” Espen said.
“You don’t have fake identification papers?”
“No, I only have a real ID with a fake medical exemption.”
Haakon III squinted at Espen and pulled at the icicles that clung to his beard. “You and I,” he said, “we’re quite alike, don’t you think?”
“No, not really,” Espen replied.
“Yes, I think so,” Haakon III insisted. “Do you have a good memory?”
“Nothing wrong with it,” Espen said, irritated at the guide’s sidetracks.
“Look at this now.” Haakon III pulled out his ID and showed it to Espen. “That’s me, clean-shaven.” He pointed to the photo, which was wrinkled, creased, and dirty. If he squinted at it just so, Espen supposed they could be mistaken for each other.
“I can’t take your ID!” Espen said. “What will you use?”
“Oof!” Haakon III exclaimed. “I’ve got a dozen of them! So, now pay attention. You will have to learn my parents’ names and birthdays and also my grandparents’ names and birthdays. Those Germans will ask you about all of them, and if there is the slightest discrepancy”—he paused for a moment to wipe his nose with the back of his sleeve—“it’s straight into an interrogation room with you. Do you understand?” He drilled Espen on his “relatives” and then said, “OK, I leave you here, and on the other side of the checkpoint, you’ll meet your next guide.”
Espen took Haakon III’s identification card and said good-bye. Then he skied on alone, trying to transform himself into Jens Christiansen, lumberman, whose parents were Arne Jakob Christiansen and Ruth Ragnhild, whose birthdays were June 11, 1899, and November 17, 1900.
The rhythm of his skiing became the rhythm of the names of his “parents” and “grandparents,” their birthdays and ages. Kick and glide, kick and glide.
“Arne Jakob Christiansen” (kick) “born June 11” (glide) “1899, father,” Espen recited. His poles punctuated his poetry with their chick-chocking. “Ruth Ragnhild” (chick) “born November 17, 1900” (chock) “mother. Johan Trygve Christiansen” (kick) “born April 12, 1862” (glide) “grandfather” (chick) …
As he approached the checkpoint, Espen took a look over his shoulder. He hadn’t seen his pursuers since before they’d fired at him, but he still felt their presence.
The patrol came out of his shelter. “Your skis, bitte,” he said. “Take them off.”
Espen slipped out of his bindings and dropped his poles onto the snow.
He imagined the distant skiers behind him growing closer and larger and more real. At the same time, he had to concentrate on the questions and on providing the right answers. He answered the first few questions correctly and then lost his concentration and said, “Johan Trygve Christiansen.”
“Is your grandmother?” the patrol asked.
“Ha-ha!” Espen tried to laugh. “No, of course not. That’s my grandfather. My grandmother is …” Espen’s mind raced through his list—now it was all out of order and jumbled in his brain.
“Your grandmother?” the patrol prompted him again.
The names had fled. Without the rhythm of the skiing, the words didn’t come back to him.
The patrol shifted his weight, lifting one foot, then the other; he shook his arms and hands as if to get the blood flowing. He was cold; Espen could see that he didn’t want to stand outside any longer than necessary.
“Here’s something funny about my grandmother,” Espen said. “My grandmother started skiing ten kilometers a day when she was sixty.”
“Uh-huh,” the patrol said.
“She’s ninety-five today,” Espen said, “and we don’t know where the devil she is!”
The patrol didn’t laugh.
“See, it’s a joke,” Espen said. He started to explain it, but the soldier just said, “Fine,” and handed the paper back.
Espen took one glance behind him before leaping back onto his skis. Nothing. He cinched his bindings tightly to his boots, pushed off with his poles, and headed east to meet his next guide.
ow, by Espen’s reckoning, it was the fourth night. He was traveling with Haakon IV. The snow whipped about them in gusts and stung his face like clouds of angry wasps.
He curled his hands into fists inside
his mittens to try to warm his numb fingers. The wind sliced through every layer of his wool clothing, mincing his flesh and piercing his very core. He closed his eyes against it and tried to imagine warmth. He tried to call back the feeling of Solveig’s warm arms encircling him as they’d stood together outside the Soria farm. Tried to conjure back the warmth of that kitchen, the fragrance of the food, the sight of Solveig’s face, bright as sunlight …
“I’ll be here when you get back,” she’d said. “I won’t forget you.”
How long would he be gone? Would Munin find him wherever he went, to bring him memories of her, of Ingrid and his parents?
“I fear for Thought, yet more anxious am I for Memory,” Odin had said.
Would he remember these years? He felt he would never—could never—forget this time under the Nazi fist, but he wasn’t sure. Would it be better to forget?
The wind kicked up the snow in smokelike swirls of white that blotted out the landmarks, the trail ahead, and, often, his guide. Sometimes Espen glimpsed the tails of Haakon IV’s skis; other times just his guide’s upper body appeared to float above the swirling snow. But more and more, Haakon IV was becoming more invisible than visible. Even his tracks were filling in with snow.
Our tracks, Espen realized, are filling in with snow!
There was a lull in the wind, and Espen glanced back. Did he only imagine that he saw someone moving behind him? If there really was someone, he could not call up any anger—not even fear, really. It was as if this was just the way it had to be, and all he felt was admiration for his pursuer’s elegant stride.
Sometime in the night, wind and snow and darkness all became one thing and the only thing. He would suddenly feel himself plunging down a hill or hurtling around a curve, but sometimes he could not tell if he was skiing on snow or sky. Was he skiing at all or adrift on an ocean of air?