Shadow on the Mountain

by Margi Preus

He stopped and tried to look around, but it was as if the world had disappeared. There were no mountains, no trees, no sky. The wind seemed to have swept away the very ground. He cleaned the ice and snow off his glasses, but it made no difference. Now even Haakon IV was gone, swallowed by blowing snow. Espen tried to listen for a voice, or anything, but all he could hear was the thrashing wind.

  He made out a dark shape nearby—a large boulder—and he moved over to it, took off his skis, and crouched behind it. Maybe the wind would let up, and he could find his guide again. He would just close his eyes for a moment—he wouldn’t let himself sleep. He knew the danger of that. No, he would just close his eyes against the stinging snow.

  spen felt a presence, and he opened his eyes, expecting to see Haakon IV next to him. But it was not Haakon.

  “Kjell?” he shouted into the wind. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hiding behind this rock. Same as you,” Kjell shouted back.

  “Did you shoot at me?” Espen said. “I’d punch you in the face right now if I had enough energy.”

  “That was Aksel,” Kjell said. “What happened, anyway? You ski devilishly well for someone with a bullet in him.”

  Espen reached for his rucksack. “I used to complain that Ingrid’s writing habit was endangering our whole family, but it turns out …” He dug around and pulled out Ingrid’s diary and then showed Kjell the hole bored into the leather case and nearly through the entire book. “It turns out, her diary saved my life.”

  Kjell took the book from him and turned it over in his hands. He shook his head. “I think even Aksel was surprised that he hit you. It’s a good thing he was so far away, or …”

  “Where is Aksel?” Espen said. “If he were here, we’d have a real party.”

  “Ja.” Kjell laughed. “Too bad he couldn’t come. He got mad, shot off all his ammunition, and went home.”

  “Ha,” Espen said. “So, how about something to eat?”

  “Thank you.” Kjell looked at Espen expectantly, then finally asked, “Well, what do you have?”

  “I was hoping you had something,” Espen said.

  Kjell shook his head.

  Espen contemplated his empty belly for a few moments. “You didn’t go home with Aksel,” he said.

  “Seems there’s a holdup with Bestemor’s medicine. Aksel says he can remedy that just as soon as I get back to Lilleby—with you.”

  “I see,” Espen said.

  Kjell dug into his waistband and pulled out a revolver. “Uncomfortable,” he said, slipping the gun into his jacket pocket.

  “Very,” Espen agreed.

  The wind gusted suddenly and sent a blast of icy crystals at their faces.

  “I don’t want to have to take you back,” Kjell told him.

  “I don’t particularly want to go,” Espen replied.

  There was a period of thrashing wind, and they were silent. Finally, Kjell said, “You haven’t anything in a thermos, even?”

  Espen noticed now that Kjell’s lips were cracked and swollen. There was dried blood on his chin and anorak from where they had bled. He pulled his thermos from his rucksack and poured the last bit of juice into the cup and handed it to Kjell.

  Espen watched Kjell tip the cup and drain the last bit of liquid, and thought of Tante Marie telling him about Odin drinking from the well of wisdom. When Odin drank, she’d said, the future was revealed to him. Odin saw all the sorrow and despair that would befall the human race, and he saw how people could bear and even conquer the evil that brought grief and desolation to the world. How? Espen wondered now. He wished he could remember how it was that humankind could overcome all this.

  He also wished that he could see the future, so that he could know what would be the right thing to do. If he went back with Kjell, maybe he could get his father out of prison. Maybe he could save his mother and Ingrid from any further retaliation. He could help Kjell’s grandmother and, of course, Kjell.

  In a sudden burst of memory, Espen recalled that he had once vowed to save Kjell from the Nazis. But had he ever even tried? Here was his chance to do it, to really save him. He could save Kjell from whatever punishment Aksel or the Gestapo might have in store for him if he returned without Espen. Clearly, he could help a lot of people by going back. Perhaps that was the right thing to do.

  Espen knew he would be arrested, and the Gestapo would torture him. Although he would never intend to, he might give away the names of others. Many others. Of course he should not go back.

  At some point, this storm was going to let up. Espen wondered, in a kind of distant, unemotional way, what would happen then. The issue of whether he would return with Kjell or not might be decided for them, he thought, if they were both frozen stiff by morning.

  Which seemed possible. The wind howled, and the cold turned even more savage, taking huge, wolflike bites at their flesh. They pulled their hoods tighter, tucked their heads and stayed crouched behind the rock so long, it seemed as if all the seasons might have passed by. Spring might have come and gone and summer arrived.

  Behind his closed eyes, the image of the draug appeared, just as it had that summer day when he and Kjell and Ingrid had been out on the fjord in the rowboat.

  The sun had settled in the sky between two mountain peaks and shone down on them, infusing everything with a beautiful, golden tone.

  Espen was teasing Ingrid about a draug coming up and snatching her right out of the boat.

  “Look, though,” Kjell said. He was leaning over the boat, gazing into the black water. “There is a draug.”

  Espen looked past his reflection into the darkness. Somewhere, far below the surface, a thing began to take shape, a huge gray beast, slowly swimming around and around below them, its great bulging eyes staring up at them.

  Had he seen a draug that day? Had it been real? And now, was Kjell really real, or was he only imagining him?

  Before Espen opened his eyes, the draug disappeared with a flip of its tail, leaving only a bright flickering on the surface of the water. And suddenly, Espen thought of how he could save Kjell—really save him. Not just from retribution when he returned home but from the wrath of the whole country once the war was over.

  “Why don’t you come to Sweden with me?” he asked.

  Kjell shook his head. “Bestemor…,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about your grandmother,” Espen told him. “I have connections. I can make sure she gets the care she needs. Really, Kjell. Just come with me. You can … start over.”

  “No,” Kjell said. “I chose my path; I’ll stick to it.”

  “Why, Kjell?” Espen asked. “Why did you join them, anyway?”

  “My bestemor—”

  “No.” Espen stopped him. “Why did you, really?”

  “I wanted to put the world right.”

  Espen’s head jerked up, and he stared at Kjell. “That’s what I wanted to do,” he said.

  “See?” Kjell said. “We’re not so different, you and I.”

  Weren’t they? Espen wondered. He remembered thinking that Kjell had caught a troll splinter in his eye, making everything right seem wrong, everything wrong seem right.

  Who was right? And what was the right thing to do? If only the wind would let up, Espen thought, so he could think.

  All he knew, as the storm raged around them, tore at their clothing, rattled their bones, and scoured their faces raw, was that he had been on a journey. He was still on a journey; he had set himself on this path, and he couldn’t turn back now because the going was difficult or because the stakes were high or for any reason at all. He believed in what he was doing, even if it was only a small thing. A tiny part of the whole effort was still a part—maybe even a key part. Who could know until it was all over? And the important thing was to do what you believed in your heart to be the right thing—no, not believed, what you knew to be the right thing.

  His father had said once that people could become snow-blind to what was just basic human decency, but
behind that temporary blindness, they could see; they knew perfectly well what was the right thing to do.

  Espen was not going to be one of those people. He was going to watch with both eyes. He should probably be watching Kjell with both eyes right now, since Kjell had a gun and he did not, but he could not keep his eyes open against the needle-sharp snow. He could not keep his head up, could no longer speak, could, in fact, barely think.

  They hunkered down, shielding their heads and faces with their arms. Kjell’s hood had blown back, and Espen pulled it up for him, then left his arm covering his old friend’s head.

  When the storm at last abated, Espen lifted his head, and Kjell was gone. Espen’s arm rested on the rock. The space where Kjell had been had filled in with snow. There were no ski tracks to mark which way he’d gone, but there wouldn’t be. The wind had scoured and polished the world, so the whole of it gleamed, shiny and fragile as a china plate.

  eading east, Espen squinted against the bright sun. A short time later, he found his guide sitting on the lee side of the mountain behind a pile of rocks.

  “Where have you been?” Haakon IV asked.

  “I checked into the Ritz,” Espen said.

  Haakon IV grunted. “Hope you had a lovely stay.”

  The two of them skied together for a while before meeting with Espen’s fifth and final guide. Espen and Haakon V traveled mostly downhill, it seemed, and were soon among the trees. A damp fog swirled around them, becoming thicker and thicker as they went on, until finally it obscured even the nearest tree trunks. Still, Haakon V strode confidently forward.

  “Not long now,” he said. “Almost there.”

  Espen ached with the desire to be there, to be done skiing, to stop. But it felt like a long time went by. A very long time. And in the meantime, the fog grew thicker.

  “Now,” Haakon V said, “you can almost smell it.”

  Espen could not smell anything, and when they came upon a double set of ski tracks, he began to suspect they had been skiing in circles. Finally, he asked, “Are we lost?”

  “How should I know?” Haakon V threw up his hands. “I’ve no idea where we are, so I can’t say whether we’re lost or not! We should be almost to Sweden. Or we could have been in Sweden already and are now back in Norway.”

  “Are we at least going in the right direction?” Espen asked.

  Haakon V scratched his beard and peered off into the fog. “How can anyone tell?” he said finally.

  “Haven’t you got a compass?”

  Haakon V admitted that he didn’t.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t have one?” Espen slipped off his rucksack and produced the compass Tante Marie had given him.

  Haakon V looked down at it. He pursed his lips as if giving it serious consideration. At last he handed it back and admitted he didn’t know how to use it.

  Espen showed him how to take a bearing, and they skied on, headed, Espen knew for sure, east.

  Not long after, Espen began to smell something. Sweden? he wondered. It smelled like wood smoke. Soon a cabin loomed out of the fog.

  “Ha!” said Haakon V. “Looks like Hjalmar’s place. That compass you got there? That works real swell. We’ll be safe and snug here tonight. Just a short walk to Sweden in the morning.”

  Hjalmar was a big, gentle man with large hands that seemed to gather them in. Those hands had gathered plenty of other people in, too. And dogs. He gave the two travelers space on the floor near the fireplace while he, his wife, his grandfather, several children, and three dogs squeezed into the other room and, apparently, the one bed in it.

  Curled up in his sleeping bag, gazing into the gently crackling fire, Espen tried to stay awake to savor the feeling of being dry, warm, and almost in Sweden. He tried to stay awake long enough to say a prayer for his family, for Solveig, and for those whose work went on in Norway. But somewhere in the midst of Haakon V’s snoring, the snapping and popping of the fire, the groans of the dogs as they were pushed aside by little feet in the next room, and the sighing and breathing of a houseful of people, he fell fast asleep.

  They were all up the next morning before the sun rose. Haakon V waved good-bye and skied back to wherever he had come from, one compass richer, and Espen, at Hjalmar’s request, left his skis in the barn.

  Without his skis, without a guide, and without even a compass, Espen felt light, almost weightless, as he walked on alone.

  At the top of a hill, he emerged from the forest as the sun peeped up over the horizon. From this place, he could look back at the broad sweep of Norway. The sun was just rising, and the light struck the snow-covered mountain peaks, making them glint and gleam like jeweled turbans. Below, the valleys were still shrouded in darkness.

  In one of those dark valleys, he had left his family, his friends, and Solveig. Back there somewhere was his childhood. That was something he would never see again. Who was he now? he wondered. Would he walk out of Norway and into the man he would become?

  For a few moments, Espen watched as the light crept down the mountainsides, illuminating the forests. He ached with loneliness already, an ache as deep and dark as those valleys, yet he felt a kind of shimmering joy, too, bright as the far peaks he was leaving behind, bright as the sunshine he turned toward.

  he historical events in this story are true: The refusal of parents, students, and teachers to join Nazi organizations or sign oaths of allegiance to the Nazi Party; the letter read by the clergy and their subsequent resignations; the arrests of 1,300 teachers all over Norway; the beatings, torture, and executions; the prohibition of scouting and the confiscation of radios and many other items; the rationing of almost everything; the extreme hunger; the death penalty for radio listening or for possessing anti-German literature; the compulsory Labor Service and the attempt to force young men and women into it by withholding their ration cards; and the 760 Norwegian Jews sent to Auschwitz. All these things really happened.

  With the exception of major historical figures, the characters in this story are fictional, including Espen. The town of Lilleby and the fjord on which it is situated are also fictional. However, many of Espen’s experiences are based on the real-life experiences of Erling Storrusten, who was a teenager in the town of Lillehammer in central Norway during the years of the Occupation, 1940–1945.

  Like the fictional Espen, the real Erling Storrusten got his start in the Resistance by delivering underground newspapers. He then became a courier, transporting documents by bicycle or on skis. As a courier, he (as a test) retrieved a revolver from a cabin near a large encampment of Germans and delivered letters by train and ski (without official travel permits) to the clergy and Milorg units up and down the Gudbrandsdalen Valley. He also made many trips to a fox farm on his bicycle or on skis. One night, he stopped to watch a group of capercaillies (black grouse) tranquilly pecking gravel by the side of the road, a reminder of peace in the turmoil of the war years.

  When his section head died, Erling had to take over the job himself. When the Labor Service was instituted, he was given a diagnosis of consumption (tuberculosis) by a sympathetic doctor so he could continue his work. Eventually, he became a spy for XU, the intelligence branch of the Resistance, and he did, indeed, make a detailed map of the German headquarters for the 360,000 soldiers in Festung Norwegen (Fortress Norway). Erling accomplished this by following what he called “the Gudbrandsdal Method,” or the simplest way: pretending to trade potatoes for trinkets with the starving prisoners of war.

  He and his girlfriend, Aase-Berit (whose family’s home he stayed in to avoid capture) sometimes went on missions together, during which she served as a kind of “camouflage” for him. She also helped the Red Cross feed refugees from northern Norway.

  The events in the chapter entitled “‘It’s Full of Gestapo in There’” occurred in a similar way for Erling. One evening, while he was delivering “the post,” three Gestapo officers rushed toward him—and then past him—as he wheeled his bike to the street. (The cake bo
x episode, however, is fiction.) Later, Erling’s family was held hostage by the Gestapo, and his sister, Inger, was choked by one of them, who demanded to know where Erling was hiding. (He was at Aase-Berit’s house.) Their neighbor Kiri and her boyfriend were taking wash off the line when they heard Inger screaming; they went to warn Erling, who left immediately—events unfolding in ways somewhat parallel to those in Espen’s story. Earlier, Erling’s father had told him, “If I should be taken hostage for you, the worst thing you could do for me is to come out of hiding to get me free.” He was indeed taken as a hostage and imprisoned at Grini, a concentration camp near Oslo, where he underwent primitive stomach surgery for an ulcer by a fellow inmate. He survived the ordeal and returned home after the war.

  After someone revealed his name, Erling escaped to neutral Sweden on skis, traveling at night to avoid detection. The journey took him five days, with five different guides. Erling and one of the guides used the ruse of planting their ski poles in such a way as to make it look as if they had been skiing in the opposite direction. Erling also had to use one guide’s identification card to get through a checkpoint—which required him to learn the names and birthdays of the guide’s closest relatives, should he be interrogated. When another of his guides got lost in the fog, Erling gave him his own compass, after teaching him how to use it. Years later, one of his guides confessed that he had been given orders to shoot Erling if they were threatened with capture, because Erling knew too much!

  From Sweden, Erling made his way to England. He agreed to parachute back into Norway as a spy, but the war came to an end before he had the chance. He made it back to Oslo in time for the celebration of freedom on June 6, 1945. In Oslo, he bumped into Kiri. Perhaps they each enjoyed a big piece of cake, with real whipped cream!

  After the war, Erling and Aase-Berit were married. As a boy, Erling had spent a lot of time on bicycles and skis, so perhaps it was not surprising that he went into the transportation industry, working in civil aviation (SAS) and, later, as the director of the Norwegian Automobile Federation (NAF). He also wrote two popular books, The Most Beautiful Sea Voyage, about the coastal trip from Bergen to Kirkenes, and The NAF Road Book. The Storrustens traveled a lot, but when they lived in Norway, Aase-Berit taught high school. Today they are retired and live near Oslo. They have two children, seven grandchildren, and one greatgrandchild.