This Shining Land

by Rosalind Laker

  “I know. I can see it in your face and I don’t think I have the strength to bear it.”

  “The Gestapo have Steffen.”

  She sank down on the top tread as if the power to stand had deserted her. Her head bowed to her knees, her arms encompassing them. He went up the stairs to sit beside her. She wasn’t crying. She was shuddering violently.

  “Don’t,” he muttered helplessly, putting his big hand on her shoulder. She did not hear him, locked in anguish and despair. He sat with her in silent commiseration and did not leave her side until he remembered the elderberry tea and went to fetch a cup of it. He pulled her head up to put it to her lips. It quieted her.

  “Thank you for coming to tell me,” she said in little more than a whisper.

  “I don’t know when I’ll see you again. As you’ll remember, the rules are for freedom fighters to go to ground when a close contact is captured. As for you, don’t go down to the cellar any more. I’ve smashed the table to make it appear as if it’s been in disuse for years and brought the lamp, matches and a few other odds and ends into the cupboard under the stairs. Disperse them around the house tomorrow. It’s simply a precaution.”

  “Before you go I must ask you if you still have that paper from Axel Werner’s folder.” She explained why, her voice sounding stilted to her own ears, her face stiff and dry.

  “A copy was made and the original paper should have been returned to you by now with the suggestion it should be found in a gutter as if it had fallen out of Ryen’s window while he and Werner were watching events below, but the agent bringing it was forced into hiding when almost trapped by the increased security forces. Then Werner’s death made its return appear less urgent. The paper was invaluable to Intelligence as it refers to other matters besides the ration book ruse. They were listed on the same sheet and will need the Resistance’s investigation and disruption. I can guess at the furore its disappearance caused in the German military department. You are bound to be questioned, although it will be simply routine in your case. I know you’ll keep your head. If you want to help Ryen—well, that’s up to you. Be vague about thinking you saw Werner sorting out papers and discarding them. You mustn’t be pinned down. If you are, you won’t do Ryen or yourself any good.”

  She nodded that she understood. He gripped her shoulder again in sympathy and encouragement before leaving her. How long she was there on the stairs she did not know. With her head leaning against the bannisters she finally slept in exhaustion and awoke in the morning to find the nightmare of what had happened still with her. Astrid, courageous as always, strengthened her by example.

  She went to work as usual. The golden rule of the Resistance was always to carry on a normal routine. It was often the best protection. At midmorning two S.S. security guards in their hated black uniforms marched into her office.

  “S.S. Oberführer Richter wants to see you at headquarters. If you have a coat here, bring it.”

  It was Axel’s successor who had summoned her, a man new to the district whom she had yet to meet. The instruction to take a coat was not a good sign. It was always an indication that the questioning would be long. For those with no hope it was always the first announcement that their fate was sealed. She put on her coat, the weather having turned cooler the previous day, and went with the guards downstairs and outside to a waiting vehicle. At the headquarters where she had first attended a Wehrmacht party with Tom she was taken to Richter’s office. He was not alone. A bald-headed, middle-aged man in civilian clothes stood by the window smoking a cigarette. She knew him for what he was. Gestapo. Richter was a sharp-faced man with closely cropped grey hair and gold-rimmed spectacles. He did not rise when she entered, merely indicating that she take the chair set before his desk.

  “Guten Morgen, Fräulein Ryen. I’m informed that your German is fluent. Therefore I shall address you in my own language. You will answer my questions truthfully and without deviousness. You were well acquainted with the late Axel Werner, I believe.”

  “We knew each other as children.”

  “How would you define your relationship with him?”

  “It was an acquaintanceship with roots in the past.”

  “Were you lovers?”

  “No!” The suggestion was so objectionably ludicrous that the answer burst from her.

  “Major Ryen has suggested to me that you were.”

  She stared incredulously. “You must have misunderstood him. He knows there was never anything between Axel Werner and me.”

  “You arranged to have some silver fox skins acquired by Werner made up into a coat. I put it to you that he wished you to be the recipient of the finished garment, but due to an error of measurements the coat didn’t fit and so he sent it to his wife instead.”

  “I’ve never heard anything more absurd. His wife was as short as I am tall. No furrier of repute would make that sort of error.”

  Richter cleared his throat, changing his line of questioning. “You and Werner were often together at Major Ryen’s weekend parties. Do you remember the night a neighbouring village was the scene of a hunt for two wanted men?”

  “I do.” She was deeply alarmed at the way the interview was going. Tom’s treachery was getting through to her. Unable to shift the blame for the missing paper onto anyone else through the report that Axel had made on its disappearance, he was trying to cast doubts on Axel’s integrity as a Nazi and had used her name to further that end. It was a cunning defence, for the case of the rebel generals was still in everybody’s mind, suspicions swift to flare at any hint of insubordination. When unable to trust each other, the Nazis could be as ruthless to their own kind as to any beneath their heel. Tom had used his wits to the full.

  “One of the wanted men was killed attempting to escape. The second was never found, although believed to have been wounded. He must have been given shelter, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Not if he was able to reach the mountains.”

  “That did not happen. He came to Major Ryen’s house. You let him in and nursed him until he was fit to leave.”

  She bluffed fiercely, determined to fight Tom’s betrayal. “You can’t be in possession of the facts of the situation that night. No fugitive in his right mind would have come to a house full of Wehrmacht officers with soldiers thick as ants over the whole area.”

  “Let us have no more pretence, fräulein. You took that man in. Major Ryen discovered you and reported to Werner, whose infatuation for you stopped him from making an arrest.” His accusing finger shot out at her across the desk. “You were Werner’s downfall! He threatened Major Ryen with immediate imprisonment on a trumped-up charge if he gave you away. His last act was to make Major Ryen a scapegoat for his own carelessness in mislaying an important document.” He thrust his face towards her, his spectacles glinting. “Now I’ll have from you the name of the wounded man you took into the house that night!”

  The time had come for the stock answer she had been instructed to use if ever finding herself in such a situation. “I know nothing.”

  She was to repeat those words all the time she had the physical strength to say them. Fainting gave her some respite from pain. They burned her breasts with cigarettes and pulled out her fingernails. “I know nothing,” became her litany. They extracted nothing from her.

  Chapter 14

  In Grini concentration camp a grapevine kept the several thousand prisoners informed of outside affairs. Johanna, in the women’s section, had been in the camp for over seven months by April 1945 when she heard of the death of President Roosevelt. It saddened her. He had been a good friend to Norway. When the Crown Princess and the royal children had taken refuge in Sweden at the time of the Occupation, he had sent a warship specially to transport them to the safety of American soil. Later he had held up Norway as an example to the world of what human courage could do in the face of adversity. She wished he could have lived to see the end of the war.

  Although almost every other occupied country had bee
n liberated in the Allies’ advance towards Berlin, Russians to the east, the British and Americans to the west, Norway was still as isolated as ever within the Nazi grip. In the far north the Russians had crossed Finland to break through the German defences in northern Norway. In the retreat, during the bitter Arctic winter, the Germans had put the whole area to the torch, leaving people without food and shelter. Their plight had been disastrous and many had died of exposure. It was still the boast of the Nazis in Norway that they were equipped to fight on indefinitely, no matter how many other annexed territories were lost.

  Every morning Johanna took her mop, scrubbing brush and bucket to carry out the domestic chores allotted to her and other women in her group. There were twenty-five long grey accommodation huts in the camp, plus administrative buildings, the commandant’s quarters, the guards’ barracks and eight watch-towers with searchlights and machine-guns set above the high encompassing barbed-wire fence, which in turn was surrounded by an electrified fence and a minefield. Whenever it was possible, Johanna stood by the fence to gaze out at the wooded countryside backed by rolling hills. Beyond that undulating horizon lay Oslo and life that was normal, despite all the hazards of Occupation, in comparison with the wretched existence of those imprisoned within Grini’s confines. The commandant was a cruel and brutal man who ruled the camp with an iron fist. The women were not spared through physical weakness or any ailment that did not take them off their feet from the many hard tasks to which they were set. They wore wooden shoes that were made by the male prisoners, and throughout the camp in both the men’s and women’s sections the rattle of this footwear was a constant sound.

  Johanna’s nails had grown again and her burns healed, although the scars remained, flawing flesh that had always been smooth and blemish-free. Without doubt she had escaped further torture through convincing her interrogators by her silence that although she might have sheltered a secret agent, she simply had not known his name. That was perfectly logical to the Germans, since they knew that Resistance fighters kept their names to themselves. Clearly Richter and his Gestapo colleague had not believed it possible for her not to confess what she knew during all they had done to her. After it was over she had been herded into a cattle truck with other prisoners and taken south to Oslo and to Grini.

  She was always hungry. Her stomach had curved inward between her hip-bones. The food was abysmal, often the smell of it so revolting that in spite of hunger she would barter her small bowl of victuals if someone had a needle and a length of thread to exchange for it. Sewing helped to pass the time and any small scrap of material could be utilised. Small toys were a favourite product with many of the women, some of whom had children they had not seen for a long time. Sometimes Johanna bartered a finished article for a stub of pencil or a sheet of paper on which to write her continuous love-letter to Steffen. Through it she felt in constant touch with him. At times he filled her dreams to such an extent that when she awoke with a start to the loneliness of her threadbare blanket, she was unable to believe for a few moments that she was not in his arms. Although she chose to keep her distress at these times to herself, it was a common sight in the mornings to see women weeping after dreams of home and those they loved. On a more mundane level many were plagued by dreams of food, particularly when rations were worse than usual.

  Even if Johanna had known where Steffen was she could not have sent a letter to him. Mail was not allowed to be sent or received. She simply knew in her heart that he was alive and she set down her loving thoughts on the paper that she kept hidden behind a loose board at the side of her bunk, which was the top one in a tier of four in one of the long rows that stretched the length of the hut.

  Her fellow internees were mostly Norwegian. There were half a dozen French prostitutes who had rebelled against working on one of the coastal brothel ships, for they had been seasick all the time, even in harbour, and had staged a strike. As a result, they found themselves in Grini. Although they were a lively lot, they were also slovenly in their habits. There was conflict when they met the national trait of Scandinavians for cleanliness of almost fetish proportions, but after a while they conformed and followed the example set for them by airing their blankets outside every day and taking their turn in scrubbing the hut to keep it as spotless as possible.

  All the huts were locked by the guards at night and on one occasion the youngest of the Frenchwomen, having forgotten her blanket was still on the line, slipped out of the window to retrieve it. She had to dodge the searchlight fanning the compound and upon returning to the hut she threw in her blanket and then found the window too high for her to climb back, although Johanna and two more inmates tried to haul her up. The searchlight was approaching. If she was seen there would be an immediate burst of machine-gun fire from the nearest watch-tower. She was completely panic-stricken.

  “Take a dive through the door panel!” Johanna cried. The girl obeyed the authority in her voice and sprang up the steps to dive head first through the glass. The others caught her. Seconds later the searchlight reached the broken pane. The sirens began to wail and guards appeared at a run. Within the hut, everyone dived for her bed and pulled the blanket over her head. Johanna stayed just long enough to throw a few pieces of glass outside to confuse the issue. The guards did not investigate the hut until they had searched the compound in vain for whoever had broken out of the locked quarters. Only then did they count the inmates and find that nobody was missing. The broken pane remained a mystery. It never occurred to them that someone had broken in instead of out. When the guards were out of hearing everyone became nearly hysterical with mirth.

  It was not often that there was cause for laughter. Sorrow was more the order of the day. Women fell sick and died. Under the commandant’s direction the guards also played a horrible trick of occasionally bringing a white sock into the hut and throwing it to a woman to put on. At a roll-call later she would be called out and led away. No one knew what happened to those women. They were never seen again. The white sock became the most dreaded sight in the camp.

  The women were divided off from the men’s section and although contact was strictly forbidden, at times they could see them through the fencing, black-jacketed, stripe-trousered figures, some with specially marked triangles on their jackets so that they could be picked out by the guards for harsher treatment. Occasionally work parties passed nearby. Then the Frenchwomen would try to dodge past the guards to shout volubly to them in French, never having mastered the Norwegian language. Even those men who did not understand what was being said could comprehend the meaning and were cheered by the cheeky encounter, grins on their emaciated faces.

  If life was bleak for the women it was worse for the men, who suffered the most merciless punishment drills and were driven to the limit of their endurance. The saddest task for Johanna was when she had to clean out the hut with its iron-barred windows in which those condemned to death spent their last hours. The walls were tragically covered with last messages, sometimes in pencil, more often scratched with the point of a fragment of sharp rock or the edge of a tin food bowl. Please tell my wife … Let my parents know … My loving thoughts are with … Last greetings to …

  From the first she decided to do what she could to help fulfil those last requests. Each time she went there she recorded messages and names on whatever paper came into her possession either by barter or from sympathetic inmates who wanted to help. There were always means by which messages could be smuggled out of a camp, even though it sometimes meant waiting weeks before it could be done. By the time she heard of the passing of President Roosevelt, she had smuggled over forty last messages out of the camp. They were concealed in cavities in the corner parts of a fish crate during the regular delivery of fish to the kitchens, one of the ways in which communications were passed in and out of Grini.

  Now everything in the camp began to change. The guards were restless, some making overtures of friendship, others more aggressive in the resolve that a last stand should b
e made in Norway. Rumours circulated as much between the Germans in the camp as among the internees, but the truth emerged strongly that the Wehrmacht in Europe had turned into a retreating rabble, surrendering at all points. On the first day of May, word flew around the camp that Hitler was dead. Upon the news being confirmed, one of the guards committed suicide and the next day another followed suit.

  The vicious hold of Grini’s commandant did not lessen. If anything, punishments became more frequent and too often for scarcely any reason at all. Dread, unspoken, was in everyone as to how the commandant would deal with them when a total German defeat was secured by the Allies.

  Johanna was sent again to the condemned cell where the previous night a man had been held before being taken at dawn to his place of execution. Upon entering she set down her mop and bucket to look for his signature. Each wall was like a familiar map to her and she could usually spot a new message straight away. It was the same with this one, except that it sent waves of shock washing over her, his name going straight to her heart. She went stumbling towards it with hands outstretched, reading what was there. To Johanna of Ryendal my love into eternity. Steffen Larsen. 5th May, 1945.

  She uttered a sharp cry on the grief that burst agonisingly within her and threw herself against the wall, pressing her cheek against the writing while the huge and terrible sobs tore out of her body in her utter desolation. He had been in Grini all this time and she had not known. He had been in this hut and breathed this air and walked this floor and she had not known. Everything he must have suffered over the past months had not saved him. In the end the Nazis had murdered him.

  One of the Frenchwomen found her there. Although not knowing the reason for Johanna’s terrible grief she managed to get her away before any questions could be asked by the guard. It was the Frenchwoman’s opinion that the Germans in their present nervous state were likely to see rebellion even in a weeping woman’s failure to mop a floor. She had always hated the Boche.