This Shining Land

by Rosalind Laker

  “It’s done!” one of the men had reported to him.

  “Good. Now comes the worst part. We have to wait. If the ferry blows up as planned, we remove the charges to save unnecessary loss of life.”

  Strapping on his skis again, he set off to reach a vantage point that gave him a view of the greater part of the lake. There he settled to watch with binoculars for first sight of the ferry with its dangerous cargo, his white camouflage clothing making him blend with his snowy surroundings. It was a long wait before he finally detected the distant speck that was the ferry. On and on it came, making steady and untroubled progress. Had the two Resistance fighters detailed to set the delayed action charges been caught before they could carry out their work? If the charges did not work now, it would be too late. He could hear the engines quietly chugging in the still air. Nothing was happening. Nothing.

  The explosion came with a force and a roar that sent echoes far and wide. Holding his breath, he saw the bow dip. People had been thrown from the deck into the icy water. Down and down went the ferry, the lake churning around and over it as the waters bore the container of heavy water down to the dark, deep depths from which it could never be retrieved.

  He lowered his binoculars and still gazed towards the place where the ferry had vanished. Row-boats were pulling out from the shore to rescue those struggling to keep afloat. He hoped the loss of life was small. The tragedy was that there had been ordinary people aboard going about their daily business, getting to work or to the shops. To have forewarned them would have jeopardized the whole success of the mission. They had died that countless others might live. It did not ease their sacrifice for him.

  With a thrust of his ski sticks Steffen crossed to a place where he could signal success to the next man, who was a mere speck on the white landscape. There was an enthusiastic wave in return before the man disappeared to alert others along the track that the job was done and the explosives could be removed.

  Although he kept a sharp lookout automatically as he skied down to his own section of the line, his thoughts were already turning to Johanna. Now that this present project was completed he would get back to the Ålesund area. He was hoping there would be a brief respite from duty that he could spend entirely with her. Swiftly he removed the charges and explosives, replacing them in his knapsack. He felt that this had been one of the greatest days for the Resistance. Free people everywhere had been saved from a Nazi atom bomb.

  Axel Werner was not a frequent visitor at Tom’s office, but he did call in occasionally, usually when visiting the building from his own headquarters to oversee some security matter in the military section. “I see you’re hard at work,” he greeted Johanna. “I’ll not disturb you because it’s Major Ryen I’ve come to see. However, I received your message about the surplus silver fox skins and I’m prepared to sell them at their market value. Major von Clausen and Oberleutnant Hendrich are both interested. Perhaps you would like to discuss the matter of design with them at some time.”

  “I will.” Johanna smiled to herself. It was extremely satisfying that Axel’s greed should aid her Resistance work.

  While he was in with Tom and after she had served them coffee, she returned to her task at hand, which was copying a letter that had reached Tom from Oslo that day. It was from one of the most treacherous and dangerous ministers in the Quisling government, and gave instructions for a special registration for labour service by all males between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. Tom was to be in charge of it in his area. She was puzzled as to why only those of a prime age group should be required to register, and decided to pass on the information for what it was worth to Gunnar without delay. It suddenly occurred to her that perhaps this was what Axel was talking over with Tom at that very moment. He had had a leather folder under his arm, but then he usually did when he came. Many a time she had wished she could get access to it.

  The copy finished, she folded it and slipped it into the secret pocket under the waistband of her skirt. She had sewn these secret pockets into all her office clothes. The door of the inner office opened and Tom escorted Axel out as he always did. Again Axel paused at her desk.

  “My wife’s letters are full of this fur coat she’s going to receive. Can you give me a progress report to pass on to her when I write later today?”

  “All I know is that it is in the fur shop’s sewing room and the lining is to be of heavy satin, some left from a prewar stock. Her initials will be embroidered on an inside pocket.”

  “Splendid!” He strolled towards the outer door which Tom opened for him. “Auf Wiedersehen, Major Ryen.” His right hand came up smartly in the Nazi salute. “Heil Hitler.”

  “Heil Hitler,” Tom replied, sheeplike.

  Johanna had no chance to discuss the copy of the minister’s letter with Gunnar, simply leaving it for him under a loose slab of stone in the cellar floor, after letting him know by secret message that something important would be there. His arrival late at night coincided with Steffen’s return from Telemark. Gunnar made a gleeful fist of victory upon hearing how thoroughly successful the sinking of the ferry had been.

  “There’s new and urgent work for us here,” he said, banishing Steffen’s hopes of a day or two alone in Johanna’s company. “Before I go into details, I’ll see what has been left for me.” He took the paper from under the stone and read it through in the lamplight. With satisfaction he gave a low whistle and slapped the sheet of paper with the back of his fingers. “Here’s something. It couldn’t have come at a better time. Intelligence was notified by a vigilant woman typist in the Ministry of Justice as to what was in the wind some weeks ago. Now Johanna has given us a detailed report on the local moves that will be taken in a compulsory registration. It’s what I was going to tell you about. Everything has accelerated in your absence.”

  “What registration is this?” Steffen took the paper and perused it, resting his weight on the edge of the table.

  “Officially it’s for labour service. In reality it’s Quisling’s camouflage for conscription. He has offered the Third Reich seventy-five thousand young Norwegians in an allotted age group as cannon-fodder for the Russian Front.”

  Steffen’s eyes narrowed incredulously. Then he derided the idea. “He can offer them, but how does he imagine he will get them to fight for Nazism?”

  “They are not to know what is expected of them until after they have registered.”

  “It still won’t work. Weapons are what they have been wanting. Put guns into their hands and they’ll turn against the Germans.”

  “That flaw must have been pointed out. So no arms will be issued to them until they reach the front. Then they’ll have to face the full force of the Russians bearing down on them, with the Germans ready to shoot them from the back if they fail to make a stand. Coded instructions came through only an hour ago on the BBC from London. Nobody is to register for labour service.”

  Steffen moved restlessly away from the table. “We must get to work at once. Warnings must not be delayed. The men concerned must disappear into the mountains and the forests, get into Sweden or across to England. It’s the only way. For us there’ll be the sabotage of offices where registration is to take place, which Johanna’s paper gives us, and we must destroy the punch-card machines and generally foil this scheme from every angle.”

  The next half hour was taken up in drafting plans and alloting tasks to those who would be awaiting orders. Then Gunnar left to start putting the operations in motion, Steffen’s part to begin at dawn. Alone, he went through the panel and into the quiet house that had been his home from boyhood. Silently he went up the stairs and opened the door into Johanna’s room. She had drawn the black-out curtains before getting into bed and the white moonlight shone through the canopy of icicles outside the window, turning them to crystal. He could see her form moulded by the quilt and looked down on her sleeping face. Without a sound he undressed. Then he remembered to turn the key in the lock. The click disturbed her. She stir
red and rolled over without waking. He spoke her name softly, sitting down on the bed to lean over her and smooth a strand of hair back from her brow. “My love. I’m here.”

  She opened her eyes lazily and smiled without the least surprise as though he were a natural extension of her dream. She reached out her arms to him. He turned back the quilt and slid in beside her, drawing her warmth to him in passionate tenderness.

  Chapter 13

  On the morning of June 6 Johanna was returning to Tom’s office after mailing a batch of letters when she overheard a conversation between two German naval officers going down the stairs.

  “It happened early this morning. An Allied invasion of Normandy. Didn’t you hear the news?”

  “No. I only came ashore ten minutes ago. Normandy! That’s crazy. They’ll never gain a foothold. They’ll be back in the sea by now.”

  “We’re strafing them right and left, by all accounts. A Norwegian battleship has been sunk already. The beaches are thick with bodies.”

  “There you are. What did I say?” Their voices faded as they went out of the building.

  Johanna went into her office and sat down at her desk in a daze. After more than four years of brutal occupation, of fear and persecution, a sense of isolation had been dispelled. At last there was light at the end of the tunnel. Her heart went out to those fighting on the beaches. Did they have any inkling of what their courage was doing for people like herself, of the hopes they were raising, of the never-ending gratitude they were bringing upon themselves? She would never forget this moment, or this day, or those men, particularly those who had already given their lives and would never know the outcome. Something splashed down on her hands folded in her lap and she saw it was a tear. Her face was wet with tears and she had not realised it.

  By the time she arrived home that evening Astrid had a copy of Eisenhower’s message to the people of occupied lands. It had been rushed out by the underground press. “Be patient. Don’t take up arms until a given time. Liberation is on its way!”

  “I think it’s going to be harder to be patient now than ever before,” Astrid remarked with a sigh. “The advice is most apt. My first instinct was to take a stick and drive those hussies beyond the dividing door out of my house.”

  “Wait till the day of liberation,” Johanna said with a chuckle, enjoying the image that Astrid had conjured up. “It’s a sight I wouldn’t want to miss.”

  The following Saturday she went home to stay overnight. All the time she had been travelling to and fro from Oslo during the making of the fur garments she had had no chance and, as she had once said to Leif Moen, it was better in any case for her parents if she stayed away. She had completed several courier missions before the excuse for her journeys came to an end. During that time she twice saw Germans in an uproar over acts of sabotage, armoured cars racing through the streets. She had heard from Gunnar of the “Oslo gang,” a daring group of Resistance fighters who operated in that area and had put out of action several important factories and other sites vital to the German war machine. As she sometimes collected a sealed paper instead of delivering one, she had wondered if she carried reports of these exploits through to Intelligence. She was almost certain that at one time she had taken to Oslo a special message concerning those still evading registration for service at the Russian Front. Thanks to the Resistance, which had now amalgamated its branches into the new name of “Home Front,” thousands of young men had escaped that fate. They were camping out in many isolated mountain hiding places, often in great hardship, surviving on such food as could be got through to them and whatever wildlife could be trapped. The few who had registered, either not heeding the warning or receiving it too late, had been shipped out immediately. Nobody knew how they had fared before the Russian advance.

  “I’ve missed you,” Edvard greeted her warmly upon her arrival at the farmstead. He was remarkably fit and, in spite of some stiffness remaining in his hip and knee joints, a seemingly permanent after-state of his illness, he was able to do a full day’s work on his land, of which he was justly proud. No other house helper had taken Karen’s place. Instead a widow from the hamlet came daily to assist with the chores. She did, however, refuse to come when her employers’ daughter was at home, not wanting to associate with a collaborator. So Johanna, who had always known her, never saw her on these occasions.

  Gina was waiting with the Red Cross letter from Durban, South Africa, that had brought about this visit. It had come from someone unknown to them and upon receiving it she had gone flying to the telephone to ask Johanna to come home and see it for herself. “Here it is. Read it. Then tell us what you think.”

  Johanna, although it had been read twice to her over the telephone, obediently read through the pencilled message on the Red Cross letter form, which had stringently kept to the limit of words allowed. All Well. Rolf and Wendy married. Greetings to everyone.

  “Well?” Gina was hovering eagerly. “Give us your opinion. The address is definitely ours, so there’s no mistake there, but why should Rolf—if it is our Rolf—be as far away as South Africa?”

  Johanna smiled at her parents in turn. “I don’t think he’s anywhere near that country. He was too set on being a fighter pilot in the heat of battle when he left Norway. My guess is that he devised a clever way of letting you know about his marriage without putting you in danger by it. For all the Germans know, this message has come from a Norwegian relative in South Africa. He could never have sent this letter from England, and if he had been in Durban he would have sent it himself. That’s proof enough. Perhaps the sender is a relative of his wife who lives there.” She took hold of her mother by the shoulders and smiled wider. “Wendy … she must be English. You and Father have an English daughter-in-law. Congratulations!”

  Gina clasped a hand to her brow. “Great world! An English girl. I won’t be able to talk to her.”

  Johanna and Edvard exchanged a smiling glance. He patted his wife on the shoulder. “When the day comes, just say ‘Velkommen’ to her as you do to anyone else you welcome to our home. It has the same sound in every language.”

  That evening the three of them listened to the news in Norwegian from the BBC. Progress was being made by the Allies in Normandy and the heaviest fighting was around Caen. More details were given about the actual invasion day, and the magnitude of the operation almost defied comprehension. It was impossible not to worry as to whether Erik had been on the Norwegian ship that had been sunk on D-Day.

  Before leaving home again after her brief visit, Johanna helped her mother fill in the Red Cross reply form that had been attached to the letter. They tried to get as much family goodwill as possible into the few words permitted in a message that would travel many thousands of miles in a roundabout route before it reached the newly married couple for whom it was intended.

  It was not long before Tom’s weekend parties all but faded out. Restricted rations could no longer be subsidised freely for him from army quarters, and the only drink easily available was beer and a raw German wine bottled too soon and dispatched hastily to meet the vast thirst of a quarter of a million men in a land that produced no wine of its own. Duties had also been extended. Hitler had been caught off guard in Normandy, but he still retained his quirky determination not to be similarly surprised in Norway. The iron fist had never been tighter on the Norwegians than it was in the summer of 1944. The least diversion resulted in arrest. The firing squad took up its position almost daily in the small courtyard of Akershus Castle in Oslo. Often the condemned patriots, broken physically and mentally by the Gestapo, could not walk unaided, or stand for their last moments. Erik did manage to shuffle ahead of his guards, although his whole body was a mass of pain. He no longer thought about it. Before coming out into the sun for the last time he had had Karen to dwell on, childhood memories of the farm and his parents, the good times he had had in his life and throughout his years at sea. In his mind he was at peace. He had given nothing away. In spite of all they had d
one to him he had told them nothing of value.

  He came to a standstill. The seafaring sounds of the harbour reached him in the clear early morning air. His last sight was of a sea gull wheeling against the Oslo sky.

  Daily the Germans received news of the Allied advance on the continent, and equally worrying for them was the relentless pressure of the Russians to the east of their homeland. The news was not all black—they were cheered when battles went in their favour and were jubilant over the devastating effect that their V-1 and V-2 flying bombs were having on London, where the damage and loss of life were enormous. Ironically, lying like a cloud over them all, officers and ranks alike, was anxiety about their own families exposed to the heavy Allied bombing raids, and they scanned their own army press and the newspapers sent from home for whatever they could glean of situations local to them. When the soldiers marched they still sang lustily, but “We March Against England” was no longer the prime favourite. They met with too much derision from civilian bystanders.

  Those who did still visit Tom were as arrogant and confident as ever about their own position in Norway. They had made it into a stronghold fit to withstand any onslaught, defences burrowed deep into the mountains and new roads built for the swift deployment of troops and armed vehicles. Among themselves, they were highly critical of their own forces that had fallen back before the Allies. “It won’t happen here” was the confident opinion voiced many times over.

  To Johanna it was like a minor liberation not to have to associate socially with the Wehrmacht any more. Some still dropped in to see her in the office when they were in town and she kept up a surface appearance for the sake of any future subversive work, but the relief of weekends free to do as she wished was enormous. She swam in a small cove and sunbathed at every available opportunity, rolling her swimsuit down to her hips when she knew she was alone and there was no chance of intrusion. Her body and limbs became golden brown. The sensuous basking frequently aroused memories of another kind of warmth.