This Shining Land

by Rosalind Laker

  “Are you warm enough?” she asked him anxiously.

  “Oh, yes,” he replied in his gentle manner, having taken obedient sips of the coffee.

  “It won’t be long now,” she said, tucking the covers closer about his face. “Try to sleep. Then when you wake up we’ll be in Sweden.”

  They were not far from the border when the guide halted, catching the sounds of some disturbance in the forest. Suddenly in the distance a rifle cracked and then another. More shots followed. Almost in the same instant, a Norwegian skier was upon them. He did not halt, although he took in their situation at a glance and gave warning as he went rushing by.

  “Get the hell out of here! The patrol is moving in.” Then he was gone.

  The Alsteens’ guide turned quickly to Johanna. “You and I must create a diversion. This woman with us is too exhausted to make enough speed.” He turned to Anna, slipping the straps of the sled off his shoulders and onto hers. “Listen to me. You have no more than a kilometre to go. You can do it easily if you take your time. Here’s a flashlight and a compass if you should need them. Keep going west. Don’t worry about the Germans. We’ll draw them away from you. Good luck!”

  There was no time for farewells. Johanna could only echo the guide’s words as she sped away with him. She had never thought she would end this expedition by encouraging enemy pursuit. The guide gave her instructions over his shoulder and they created a zigzag route, parting to cross and recross again, giving the illusion of moving in several directions and taking advantage of every dip and hollow. The patrol was drawn away from the escapees. Shots rang out, sometimes zinging perilously close, or so it seemed, but the firing was blind. Eventually the sounds of pursuit diminished and after a while she realised the hospital could not be far away. Then, stopping, the guide whose name she was never to know indicated the way she should take and parted from her without looking back.

  Johanna left her skis by the outbuilding, guessing that someone in the chain would find them and take them away. At a run she passed the hospital and went to the far side of it where Kristofer was waiting in the ambulance. He saw her coming and swung open the door on her side to haul her in. As she collapsed in exhaustion on the seat, the engine leapt into life and he swung the ambulance around to go belting out of the hospital gates.

  In the snow, Anna knew she had lost the way. At some point in her tiredness she had dropped the compass without realising it until the time came to consult it again. The straps of the sled had worn her shoulders sore through her ski jacket and her legs dragged as if weighted down. Mercifully Viktor slept and she was thankful that in the warmth of his covers he was being spared too much discomfort. Doggedly she pressed forward, sustained only by her will and determination to get her husband to the border. Her whole body was full of pain, every muscle and sinew creating its individual and agonising ache. Then abruptly her own strength went from her and she crumpled, falling awkwardly across her skis with her face going down into the snow. Some instinct to crawl to Viktor made her lift her head and as she blinked through the icy crystals on her eyelids, she focussed in total shock on looming military ski boots. She had gone straight into an enemy patrol! As she gave out a long, thin wail of utter desolation, one of the soldiers stooped down. His clean-shaven, boyish face came close to hers.

  “You’re safe, frue,” he said quickly in Swedish. “You entered Sweden three kilometres back.”

  She reached out and clung to him speechlessly. He helped her to sit up against him. When he looked over her shoulder he compressed his lips in a grimace of pity. Two of his comrades had gone to the passenger on the sled. He saw one shake his head while the other drew a blanket up over the old man’s peaceful face.

  When it became known to the German authorities that Viktor Alsteen had not been admitted to the hospital on the date set and that his whereabouts appeared to be unknown, rapid moves were taken. Since his wife, although not Jewish, appeared to have vanished with him on the same night, it was a likely guess that persons unknown had aided the couple across the border into Sweden. The evidence of witnesses pointed to it being a fact. Johanna was taken for questioning at No. 19 Møllergaten by the Quisling police. These were hated even more than the German soldiers. An army, after all, had to go where it was sent, but traitors made a free choice to betray the lives of their countrymen and side with the enemy.

  Johanna was confident of the story she had prepared, although a qualm quaked in her stomach as she mounted the stone steps of the police station and entered the large entrance hall, a quisling policeman as escort. In a side room she answered all the questions without hesitation. Firstly those about herself and then the Alsteens. Yes, she had accompanied them to the hospital. Why? Anna Alsteen had been worried about her husband’s condition and had wanted female company for moral support. No, she had not seen the couple since that night or known of their plans. She had returned with the ambulance to Grefsen. No, she had no idea from which depot the ambulance had come and the driver had not given his name, as far as she could remember. She had not been much interested in him; her concern had been for getting the patient into hospital.

  The sergeant gathered the papers of her statement together and summoned a policeman forward. “The preliminaries are done. Take her along for further questioning.” He snapped his right arm up in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler!”

  Johanna had whitened with apprehension. His order meant that she was to face German interrogation, something she had expected to avoid with her straightforward account. She was taken up to the next floor and along a corridor. There she was ushered into a well-equipped office. In a comfortable leather-upholstered swivel chair turned sideways to the desk, an officer sat reading the statement that had preceded her, his brown shirt and black uniform that of the S.S., the death’s head insignia on the collar, the scarlet armband with the swastika on his left arm. One jackbooted leg was crossed over the other and he swung himself slightly to and fro as he read. Without looking at her where she stood waiting, he indicated with a flick of his hand that she might occupy the hard wooden chair set directly in front of the desk. She sat down, her back very straight, her hands folded in her lap. The statement rustled as he turned one page over another to continue reading the section underneath. His profile was stern, arrogance in the thin mouth and heavy chin, the short clipped hair a tawny colour. Still with his eyes on the statement, he addressed her in fluent, but gutturally accented Norwegian.

  “You deny all knowledge of the Jew Alsteen’s flagrant disobedience of the law, I see. Yet you lived with him and his wife for over a year from the time you took up work in Oslo. You must have known them well enough to have had some inkling of what they intended.”

  “Had I still been living with them on a day-to-day basis that might have been so, but they kept their arrangements to themselves.”

  “Then the first you knew of their disappearance was when you were taken in for questioning by the police?”

  “I didn’t know what was wanted until the cross-questioning revealed to me that my friends seem to have disappeared during the night. I left them at the hospital.”

  “They were not alone. There was a guide.” Abruptly he swivelled around in his chair to face her. There was something sly in the calculating manner in which he studied her, his eyes a steely grey. “What would you say if I told you that you were seen in the forest near the Swedish border that night?”

  A great quaking fear swept through her, but she did not flinch and kept her voice steady, her gaze coldly alert and direct. “I would say it was a lie. In any case, how could I be a guide? I’m not a native of that district. The forest there is not known to me as the forests of home would be.”

  He continued to scrutinise her while she fought against the fear that was high in her. It seemed an eternity before he gave a laboured sigh and tossed the statement contemptuously down onto the desk blotter in front of him. “I must say that knowing the country as I do, I had already given that point some thought.” Sitt
ing back, he set his elbows on the polished wooden arms of his chair and placed the fingertips of both hands together in an arc. “Had it been Ryen Valley instead of that area, I would not have let the allegations rest. I have decided that nothing more shall be said about this case as far as you are concerned.”

  She was hard put not to close her eyes in her relief. To her surprise he held out a gold cigarette case and offered it to her. She shook her head. “No, thank you. I don’t smoke.”

  He put a cigarette between his lips and lit it from a pocket lighter. “Neither did you when we first met,” he said, “but at that time you were too young. Only four years old and I was a boy of twelve when I last saw you.” Seeing how she drew her head back, staring at him, he gave a nod. “Yes, I’m Axel Werner. Your parents took me into their home under the Fridtjof Nansen plan after the last war, in fact the year you were born.” He tapped the statement on the desk. “When I saw your name and your home address I took over your interrogation. With anyone else you would not have had such an easy time.”

  Nansen, one of her country’s most famous polar explorers, had instigated a plan after the 1914–18 war to bring hundreds of hungry and often destitute German children into Norwegian homes where they had been cared for as members of the family, restored to health and eventually repatriated. Johanna knew Axel Werner’s name and had one particularly vivid memory of him. He and Rolf had had a fight, rolling down the grassy slope in front of the farm into the summer dust of the lane, clouds going up all around them, both ending up with cut lips and black eyes.

  Axel had spent most of his time with her brothers, helping on the farm and climbing with them in the mountains. He had attended the local schoolhouse where now Rolf was trying to protect his twenty-two pupils of all ages from the Nazi philosophy that the Germans were attempting to impose. In her state of tension she had failed to detect the dialect of her own home valley beneath his guttural accent. She voiced what had come into her thoughts the moment he revealed his past association with her family.

  “At any other time you would have been welcomed back into my home and there could have been a renewal of friendship, but never in the uniform you are wearing.”

  His face tightened, yet he did not lose his temper and his tone remained even. “It is time you and others like you accepted our presence here in full understanding of the benefits that living under the Third Reich will bring you. In the first place we came to protect you from the English who, during their war against us, were laying mines in Norwegian waters to sink your shipping in preparation for their imperialistic occupation of your country.”

  “Those mines were laid against the German Navy a day or two before your invasion came and when your troops were already hidden in the holds of merchant ships in our harbours!”

  He regarded her almost pityingly. “For a seemingly intelligent girl you are being remarkedly stupid. We came in friendship and found ourselves rejected by a king who, with his government, cared nothing for the bloodshed of his people, which could have been avoided. Look at Denmark. King Christian accepted our presence in the spirit in which we came and no lives were lost. Do you know what our troops call a posting there? The ‘Whipped Cream Front!’ ” He laughed at that, well pleased. The smoke curled up from his cigarette as he pressed it out in an onyx ashtray.

  She swallowed. “From what I’ve heard many Danes have not accepted your regime.”

  He leaned forward and linked his fingers to set his arms on the desk, thrusting his face forward, his eyes narrowed. “Now where would you hear a false report like that, Johanna?” he inquired silkily.

  It was still a cat-and-mouse game. She had almost gone too far on the strength of their previous acquaintance. It was a mistake. Nothing had relaxed between them. He was still as watchful as ever and she must be as wary. “News of all kind travels fast by word of mouth these days.”

  He jerked his chin contemptuously, sitting back again. “Don’t be misled by idle talk. Much rubbish is circulated through lies and mangled facts to derogate our presence here.” He picked up a pencil and wagged it admonishingly at her. “You can best serve your country by becoming reconciled yourself and reconciling others to a thousand years of glorious rule.” A glint of fanaticism showed in his eyes. “Norway is remarkably homogeneous. Pure Norse blood down through the centuries bringing forth the fair skin and hair and blue eyes that are the mark of the true Aryan. You Norwegians and we Germans are fellow Aryans, the same type of people in every way, dedicated to a fit body and a sound mind. You shall be with us in creating a perfect race to populate the world and rid it forever of its scum.”

  She regarded him incredulously. Here was a man who had spent some boyhood years in her country, who had lived for a while a Norwegian life, had come to know a people who cared exceptionally for their mentally sick and their handicapped and to whom race, colour and creed presented no divisions, and yet inherent arrogance and later indoctrination had made him a rabid Nazi. He had been blinkered to the truth and blinded to his own experience.

  “May I go now?” she requested, keeping her voice under control.

  He considered, reversing the pencil with his fingers on the desk. “You’ll remember everything I’ve said to you today?”

  She gave a nod. He was no fool and knew she still opposed him but he chose to let the issue rest, inwardly convinced that the simplified summary of the facts he had given her would eventually take root. Until her meeting with him today she had been a victim of outdated attitudes, and his arguments would have been given impetus through his having known her family and her home. This in itself would arouse her trust. He did not entirely agree with the Führer’s attitude to women, believing they had potential for more than merely the kitchen and the bed, and he would include Johanna there. It was no fault of hers that her country had been too long on the outside of world affairs, which had made its people soft in their outlook. That could be remedied when the right men and women among them took up cudgels to stand with the Third Reich and make Norway of a like mind. He would like to see this girl among their number. Leisurely he picked up the statement again, tore it across and threw the pieces into the wastepaper basket.

  “There’s my absolute gesture of goodwill.” His smile was benign. He had not expected thanks and neither were they forthcoming. She remained silent. He was unperturbed. Everything was in its early stages for her as yet. He continued conversationally, “How are your parents these days? Well, I hope. I saw from your statement the careers your brothers are following.”

  She gave her reply succinctly. “My mother and brothers are well. My father was beaten up by your soldiers last summer and is still suffering from the after-effects.”

  He took her information unblinkingly. “I wish your father a speedy recovery from the effects of whatever trouble he brought upon himself. Please give your family my kindest regards when you are next writing to them. Edvard and Gina were most hospitable to me and I was a poor sight when I arrived at Ryen Farm in rags and suffering from malnutrition. Those conditions will never come to Germany again now that we have the New Order under our Führer. I must talk more about it to you sometime.” He rose to come around the desk and escort her to the door. There he clicked his heels together and bowed to her. “Until our next meeting, Johanna. Auf Wiedersehen.”

  She wanted to run from the building, breathing in the pure, uncontaminated air. Instead she walked quickly, keeping her gaze ahead until she was well away from Møllergaten.

  In March the Germans were put on alert all over the country. There had been a British and Norwegian raid on the Lofotens Islands off the coast. The Norwegians involved were British-trained under a Norwegian officer, Martin Linge, after whom the Linge Company was named. Made up of men who had already risked their lives to reach England, they were a powerful and courageous force. Other commando raids followed on the mainland. The jubilation felt by the population was stemmed by the savage reprisals of arrests and shootings meted out by the Germans on local people.
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  Johanna’s days at the fur shop were coming to an end. She had applied for, and been granted, a permit to travel home. A letter from her mother, enclosing a doctor’s endorsement that her father’s health had deteriorated over the past months, the original cause not being stated in order to avoid prejudice, had gained her, after considerable delay, the necessary permission to travel.

  Sonja was sorry to see her go. Leif’s wife was going to take over the book-keeping, so there would be no new girl to replace Johanna. Leif wanted it that way, having become deeply involved in the nationwide resistance movement that was evolving with some shape and form, with a hard military core known as the Milorg directing all major subversive activities. After telling Johanna she could have her secretarial post back at any time, Leif asked her if she would like her name put forward for resistance work in the Ålesund area.

  “Yes,” she had said with enthusiasm. “I want to do anything I can.”

  Then it was time to leave. At the Alsteens’ house she locked up everything securely and took a taxi to Østbane railway station. She hoped no harm would come to her friends’ home now that it was to be left unoccupied, and she had asked the neighbour to keep an eye on it. Unfortunately some Jewish property was being confiscated and the house’s future was uncertain. When she arrived at the railway station she had to take her place in a long line of waiting passengers. The military had priority in going aboard. Although it began to look as if there would be no room, she managed to get a seat, for which she was grateful. The journey ahead was a long one, and due to the inevitable joining and alighting of troops en route it would take several more hours than in peacetime.

  The train left on the stroke of seven o’clock. Due to the black-out regulations, the blinds had to be kept down over the windows and there was reduced lighting, making it difficult to read. There was no refreshment car and whenever the train stopped people jumped out and rushed to platform buffet rooms where unrationed hot soup was available. It was not that the mild evening demanded it, but food coupons had to be surrendered for any other victuals. Johanna did get out now and again for fresh air and a turn up and down the platform, but she had brought food and a flask of coffee with her and had no need to join the crush at the counters.