The Body in the Fjord ff-8

by Katherine Hall Page

  She started down the path and was surprised to hear voices ahead—loud voices, Norwegian voices. Two men were shouting at each other. That much was certain, but as to the nature of the dispute, Pix didn’t have a clue. Not knowing the language made everything so difficult. Who was it? Oscar Melling and one of the farmers who had caught him cheating at cards? She was determined to find out who it was, yet she didn’t care to be seen snooping herself. She climbed down closer, staying in the woods, well away from the path. But the trees were so dense, she still couldn’t make out who it was, although the voices were much closer now. Another problem with eavesdropping on a totally foreign language was that one couldn’t recognize voices. If they had been speaking English, she would be able to guess who it was from their accents, but all she was able to determine in native speakers was gender and some idea of age. Well, these were not children.

  The argument was heated and she stopped suddenly. It didn’t sound like cheating at cards—or if it was, a lot of money had been lost. One man was doing most of the talking now. His words came so rapidly, he seemed not to draw a breath. Words, words flung out like a barrage of machine-gun fire. She thought if she could get down the next incline, she’d be able to see through some birches

  growing not too far from the path. She started down and stumbled, her leg doubling under her. She almost cried out. That’s all she needed to do, twist an ankle. As she fell, she grabbed instinctively and her hand hit a pile of Hardanger roof tiles, sending them tumbling down. The moss cushioned her fall, but the tiles kept going, crashing against one another and the trees. The voices stopped. The fallen tiles were silent now. A bird cried. It was the only sound, then a muffled voice. Then nothing. Her heart was beating rapidly. She stood up. This is absurd, she told herself. She was not far from the hotel. If she screamed, someone was sure to hear her, and why would she scream? Two men were having some sort of disagreement. That was all. She climbed back up to the path and resolutely started back the way she had come. She tried to shake the feeling she was being watched. She wished Jan had never told them about the hotel’s past. This was what was producing all these fearful thoughts.

  At the hotel, there was no sign of anyone. She crossed the parking lot, full of empty tour buses, like so many beached whales, dwarfing the few cars in between. A door slammed and an engine started. She stood to one side to let the car pass. It was going fast. She tried to see the driver but glimpsed only a profile—a dark profile with a beard.

  Ursula hadn’t said anything when Pix woke her up from a sound sleep asking for the scotch. Pix didn’t say anything, either. What was there to say? I went for a walk behind the hotel in the folk museum and got scared by an argument?

  And the scotch wasn’t really what she wanted, either. What she wanted was her husband, Sam, in bed with her, his familiar shape curved to hers. They were like puzzle pieces after all these years. Her eyes closed and she slept.

  Pix sat up, wide-awake. It wasn’t even five o’clock. She wondered what the dawn light looked like and got out of bed, drawing back the heavy curtains. She opened the door and stepped out onto the balcony. It was cold and suddenly the warmth she’d just left seemed very attractive. She could get another hour’s sleep. The mountains had an even more intense lavender cast at this time of day, especially the largest at the end of the valley. It had been rounded by the melting snows of time, older than the rough peaks to its side. The timberline was jagged, a lush green, that slender birches growing farther down interrupted in exclamation points. The Norwegian flag at the front of the hotel was fluttering in the early-morning breeze. Her eyes moved across the picture-postcard scene, lingering over the view just beneath her window—a view that turned her gaze to stone as surely as if she had been a troll, caught by the sun’s first rays, an incarnation of those early pagan evil spirits, not the latter-day gift-shop item. Her stomach turned and she started to cry out.

  For there had been an addition since last night—an addition to the lawn, smooth as velvet, shimmering with dew, stretching from the front of the hotel to the edge of the cliff. The addition was a swastika. A huge bloodred swastika right in the middle.

  Four

  For an instant, Pix thought the swastika had been painted in blood, but as she dashed for the phone to call the desk, she realized it was extremely unlikely. Of course it was spray paint. She didn’t even want to think about a possible alternative. Her call was answered on the first ring, and from the sound of the excited voices in the background—spoken Norwegian played at 45 instead of 33 1/3—she assumed she was not the first to see the gruesome graffiti.

  “Hello, this is Pix Miller in room one oh seven. I’ve just noticed a large swastika painted on the front lawn.”

  The clerk interrupted her. “Ja, ja, Mrs. Miller. A terrible thing. We are trying to think how to remove it now. Thank you for telling us.” The woman hung up abruptly, obviously very disturbed.

  How to remove it? Pix slipped on a sweater and went to the balcony. A knot of people stared at the symbol, some bending down and touching the paint. Then someone on one of those riding mowers came around the corner of the hotel and they all stepped back. The grass was short, but not that short. Mowing removed all but the faintest traces. Afterward another crew raked and removed the grisly grass clippings. Then three people came out with some sort of solution in large pails that they proceeded to slosh on the paint that was left and then scrub with cloths.

  Everyone moved rapidly. Guests would be making their way to breakfast soon and people like Jennifer Olsen were probably already up and about for their morning run. Fortunately, the road was behind the hotel—the main entrance was at the opposite end from the large picture windows, as was the dining room.

  The phone rang. Pix was surprised and went in quickly. It was the six o’clock wake-up call, the clerk’s voice cheerful. Everything back to normal. Before Pix jumped in the shower, she took a last look outside. Not exactly a bright golden haze on the meadow—there was definitely a reddish cast to the lawn, which nature would soon obliterate.

  While she let the warm water hit her full force, Pix tried to think what the act meant and who could have done it. The Germans had used the hotel during the war for some sort of eugenics experiment. This was the most obvious connection. Yet why the protest now? Or had it happened before? Other swastikas? Other reminders? She would ask at the desk. Since she had seen it, she thought she was entitled to ask some questions. As for the who, there was a hotel full of guests and it wouldn’t have been too difficult to slip out when it finally did get dark. Spray-painting the symbol wouldn’t have taken long.

  She packed quickly and went across the hall to knock on her mother’s door, noting that Ursula’s bags were already outside.

  “Good morning, dear. Did you sleep well?” Her mother looked concerned. She hadn’t asked why her daughter had awakened her the night before in search of the flask, but clearly she hoped for an explanation now.

  “Things seem to be happening, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out what any of them have to do with Kari and Erik—or anything else,” Pix said. She told her mother about overhearing the argument while walking among the buildings in the folk museum and the uneasy feelings she’d experienced.

  “Then early this morning, when I pulled back my curtains, I saw a bright red swastika painted on the front lawn.”

  Ursula gasped. “How strange? Because of Stalheim being used as a Lebensborn home? But if you wanted to make a statement, why deface this beautiful place, and now, after so many years? It seems crazy.”

  “Exactly. They’ve managed to get rid of it. I mean, unless you knew it was there, you wouldn’t see it. Well, why don’t we have breakfast. I have the feeling we may need all the sustenance we can get.”

  Her mother gave her a slightly sardonic smile. “Don’t wish for things. They might happen.”

  After another ample smorgåsbord, Scandie Sights boarded the two buses at 8:15 and proceeded straight down the Stalheim Canyon by way of a serie
s of breathtaking hairpin turns.

  “What could this be like in the winter?” Pix wondered.

  “Or years ago. This is the new road,” her mother reminded her. They were on Carl’s tourbuss and he had much the same style as Jan, a few well-chosen comments rather than an obnoxious stream of chatter. The Petersons were on the bus, but surprisingly Carol did not bombard the guide with questions as Pix had expected. Carol looked a bit somber, or angry, Pix noticed. A run-in with her new daughter-inlaw? Or had she seen the swastika and been upset? There was no question that word of something untoward had leaked out, and the group was not quite as jovial as it had been the day before.

  Pix had asked discreetly at the desk if there had ever been an incident like this before, and, looking shocked at the suggestion, the clerk had replied, “Absolutely not!”

  Carl was trying hard to lighten the mood, though. His voice was determinedly upbeat and he smiled with every word.

  “Now that we have come down Norway’s steepest road, it is just a short ride through the Nærøy Valley to Gudvangen, where we will meet our fjord cruiser. The tallest mountain you see is called Jordalsnuten. Today with the

  sun, it is looking particularly fine, and we have heard a weather report promising several more days of this good weather. We are very lucky, so relax and enjoy the views!”

  “We are lucky,” a woman across the aisle said to Pix. “Friends of ours did this very same trip and the moment they hit the west coast, it rained every day.”

  Pix had noticed her. She and a man, probably her husband, appeared to be traveling with another couple. They ate all their meals together, sat together, and had been playing cards when Pix had left for her walk the night before.

  “My name is Pix Miller and this is my mother, Ursula Rowe.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Eloise Harding. The man with the video camera glued to the window is my husband, Sidney, and”—she gestured over her shoulder to the seat behind her—“these are our friends, Paula and Marvin Golub.”

  She sank back into her seat. Having taken care of the social amenities, she did not appear eager to strike up a lifelong friendship. Pix had more friends than she had time to see, so it was no loss, but she planned to get to know Eloise better. Sidney Harding, she remembered, was the man working for the Norwegian oil company.

  The viking fjord cruiser was a nice little boat, not one of the behemoths that provided a maximum amount of tourists with a minimum of fjord exposure. The boat had an upper deck with a small lounge, then on the lower deck, open areas at the bow and stern, separated by a large cabin with a galley and tables and chairs. The group immediately rushed forward to stake out their territories. Carol Peterson commandeered a bunch of chairs on the upper deck; the Golubs and Hardings situated themselves at a table in the middle of the large cabin and started playing bridge. The farmers stood in an uneasy clump at the stern. The Dahl sisters sat in the smaller cabin and took out their handwork. The Bradys went into the large

  cabin and grabbed the first table with windows to the side and front. The French cousins made several forays from the top to lower decks before choosing the top, liberally applying sun lotion, closing their eyes to the view, and lifting their faces to the sky. Pix settled Ursula next to a window in the large cabin and then went out to the bow. The only other person there was Jennifer, who was perched like a figurehead, leaning over the water and staring into its depths. Carl had just told them that at this point the Nærøyfjord was four thousand feet deep—and it was by no means the deepest fjord. Pix resisted the impulse to grab the waistband of Jennifer’s jeans. She is not my child, she told herself firmly. She’s an adult. My age.

  “You’d never be able to find anything—anything you dropped overboard, that is,” Jennifer commented to Pix.

  Pix transferred her camera from her shoulder to around her neck and changed the subject. There was something definitely odd in the way Jennifer had spoken—dreamy, not her usual straightforward speech.

  “I knew it would be beautiful, but this is far beyond that,” Pix said. “The water is so green, and look at that waterfall!” She was tempted to go on and on. The mountains were so steep, screeching to a halt at the water’s edge, it was almost as if a line had been drawn, beyond which the land could not go. The same with the sky. The densely wooded mountains soared toward the heavens; then there was a sudden break and the peaks became clouds. The air was so clear that everything was in sharp focus, intensifying the effect. The Nærøyfjord was the narrowest fjord in Europe, and if Jennifer had not been there, Pix would have stretched her arms wide, sure her fingertips would not touch the sides, but still needing to make the gesture.

  “Azure.” Jennifer had spoken again and Pix wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. She moved to the prow and sat down on the deck, next to the woman.

  “Excuse me, I didn’t quite hear what you said.”

  “Azure—that’s the color of the fjord. It comes from the Jostedal glacier. I’m going there after the tour. The glacial ice is supposed to look blue, but the deposits color the water green. It’s moving, faster than they thought. I read that the little gift shop and restaurant at the foot of it won’t be there in ten years. It’s the largest glacier in Europe, so I thought I should see it. There’s a new glacier center in Fjærland and it’s supposed to be worth seeing, too.”

  “It sounds as if you’re enjoying Norway.” And what was not to like? Pix thought as the boat slowly made its way down the center of the fjord, a few tiny farms clinging to the mountainsides, docks and sheds close to the water, all the buildings painted bright red and yellow—most with that typical up-and-down siding, so upright, so vertical. Cows and goats grazed nimbly on the inclines, defying gravity.

  “I assume from your name that you are of Scandinavian descent?” she asked after Jennifer had merely nodded to Pix’s previous conversational opener.

  “You ask a lot of questions.” Jennifer’s tone was not antagonistic, but back to her normal matter-of-fact way of speaking. Still, it was slightly aggressive.

  “I’ve always been interested in people, where they’re from, what they think, what they do.” This was true—and on this trip, more than true—absolutely essential.

  “I grew up in New Jersey, but both my parents were born here.” She sat cross-legged opposite Pix. The landscape glided behind her head, a slowly moving backdrop. She picked at a coil of heavy rope on the deck, then turned her gaze full force on Pix. “Like I said yesterday, life’s a bitch. My father was in the Resistance and had the dumb luck to get captured. The Nazis shot him and the rest of the men he was with right where they caught them, in the woods. So much for the Geneva Convention. Then they came for my mother, who was pregnant with me. The Resistance got to her first and smuggled her out of the country. She skied across to Sweden and went by boat to England, eventually ending up in the States, where she

  had some relatives. His mother was not so lucky. The Nazis put her in Grini—that was the concentration camp outside Oslo. She died there.”

  “I’m so sorry.” The words sounded hollow and inadequate. Pix put her hand on Jennifer’s arm.

  “I never wanted to come back here, although my mother was homesick every day of her life. I should have come with her, but I didn’t, and it’s too late now.” Jennifer shaded her brow and looked up. “That must be our captain.”

  Pix followed her gaze. She hadn’t stopped to wonder who might be piloting the boat so expertly, but of course there had to be somebody at the helm. He was staring straight ahead, a tall man—a tall man with a bushy black beard. She looked at Jennifer. Her face was wiped of all expression. Jennifer Olsen had cause to hate the Nazis, had cause to want people to remember the atrocities they’d committed. Had she done some artwork last night?

  And what was it with all these dark beards?

  “I think I’ll stay on board, if that’s all right. I’m a bit tired and I’ve seen a stave church in the museum in Oslo,” Ursula said to Carl. She didn’t mention that she
had also seen this very stave church, the Hopperstad stave church, here in Vik, as well as every other one Marit had thought worth a detour.

  “No problem, Mrs. Rowe. We will not be too long, and the crew will be back after they pick up some things that have been left here for us.”

  Ursula Rowe smiled serenely and watched the group board two buses for the ride to the church. She also watched the two stewards, Sonja and Anders, leave. Then the captain left, too. Immediately, she went to work, starting with the small upstairs lounge. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for. Something out of the ordinary. Something that would mean the tour was not simply a tour. Nothing. She worked her way downstairs, hurrying in case the crew came back early, even though she doubted they

  would. Time off was precious, and Sonja and Anders seemed as attached to each other as Kari and Erik—as Kari and Erik had been.

  The galley yielded nothing other than the fact that there would be vafler in the tour’s future—a large waffle iron that made the heart shapes was stored in one of the cupboards. There was a small room off the galley with a table and chairs, a place for the crew to relax. Apparently nothing. A few paperbacks lay on one shelf next to a coffee mug. There was a box of brochures and maps. She opened the closet opposite the door. Knapsacks. The guides’ and the stewards’, according to the name tags. Kari’s and Erik’s would have been here. Kari’s and Erik’s knapsacks, which unaccountably turned up in Oslo. She pushed the bags to one side and searched the rest of the small closet. She emerged beaming. So there was something after all. But Pix would have to do the rest.