The Klipfish Code

by Mary Casanova

  A full twenty-four hours later, they'd covered over three hundred kilometers to Shetland, the islands off the northern tip of Scotland. Out of the vast darkness, a few lights flickered in the distance, and Bestefar steered straight for the British base in Scalloway. At his direction, Marit opened the hatch, and one by one, everyone came up on deck. The pregnant woman was pale and unsteady with sickness. Lars held fast to Aunt Ingeborg's hand.

  As they entered the harbor, Bestefar slowed the engine and sounded the siren several times.

  "A message in code?" Marit asked.

  "Morse code," he said. "The letter V, for victory."

  Like gathering fireflies, lights flickered on in the harbor. Soon, a growing crowd of men—and a few women—gathered at the wharf, waiting to greet them.

  Marit stepped to the stern, gripped the rail from the back of the trawler, and gazed out.

  Beyond the black ocean, her parents waited.

  Her country waited.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Homecoming

  Three Years Later

  "Will all the Germans be gone?" Marit asked as the fishing trawler neared the humpback island of Godøy. The city of Ålesund lay beyond, framed by mountains crowned white.

  "That's our hope," Bestefar replied.

  She worried, along with everyone, that with 350,000 Germans lingering on Norwegian soil, they might try for a last stand and leave the country in ruins. Over the radio, the king and Resistance leaders kept advising Norwegians not to take revenge, but to be patient—and wait.

  Marit stood outside the wheelhouse, its door ajar as Bestefar steered the fishing trawler into the familiar wharf. Lars, Aunt Ingeborg, and several other passengers stood watching from the bow. Morning sunlight danced off the sea as the boat rode its gentle swells. As they passed island farms, Norwegian flags flew proudly from every flagpole. Marit breathed in the saltwater air. They were actually returning home.

  When the news had come to the world—and to the village of Scalloway on Shetland—Marit was in the dining hall gathered with others around the radio. It was May 8, 1945, and Winston Churchill officially declared that peace had come at last to Europe. The room filled with cheering, then singing and dancing that went on for hours. Marit danced with Resistance soldiers, with Lars, with Aunt Ingeborg and Bestefar. She felt herself return to a semblance of who she once was: a girl without fear. But she was hardly the same. She was ten when the first bombs had fallen. Now she was fifteen.

  For the last three years, thousands of refugees—including the men and women who had journeyed with them on the trawler—passed through Scalloway and on to England, the United States, and other Allied countries. Some went where they had relatives, some had no family left and decided to start over, some received special training and returned to Norway to help the Resistance. Some stayed on in Scalloway, a compact village of a thousand people, including Marit, Lars, and Aunt Ingeborg, who helped in the base's kitchen and boarded with a blind, elderly woman at a nearby farm. Bestefar made numerous trips with his trawler between Shetland and Norway's treacherous coast, and each time he returned to Scalloway, Marit hugged him fiercely. Now, with the news of peace, the German occupation of Norway—five long and bitter years—had finally come to an end!

  As soon as they could ready the trawler, they once again made the long crossing. Seagulls circled the trawler, expecting scraps from a regular fishing voyage. Marit's stomach fluttered. She longed to touch shore. The engine slowed, its reassuring tonk-tonk-tonk reminding her that some things had not changed.

  She studied the crowd, bracing herself for the sight of grayish green uniforms. But she didn't see a single German soldier anywhere. Friends cheered as their boat docked in the harbor. She could see tall Mr. Larsen, Mrs. Brottem, and a young woman with dark hair held back in a scarf who cried out, "Marit! You're back!"

  "Hanna!" Marit raced across the deck and didn't wait for the plank. She squeezed under a rail and jumped onto the dock. Hanna's face was thin, and when Marit hugged her, knobby shoulders spoke of food shortages. But the slice of air between Hanna's front teeth was still the same, and her smile belied the years of hardship. "There's so much we need to talk about," Hanna said, then she turned. "Miss Halversen!"

  Beyond the crowd, Marit caught sight of a new large sign on Mr. Larsen's general store that read "Closed for joy!" She smiled.

  Soon after, when they neared the farm, Marit stopped abruptly. Above the door of the goldenrod farmhouse hung a red and black swastika flag. What if a few Germans remained? She couldn't move. But Bestefar didn't falter. He strode ahead, ripped down the flag, threw it to the ground, and spat on it.

  Then he searched the house, chicken coop, and barn. Though the Nazis had taken over their farmhouse, they were gone now. "At least," Bestefar said, "they didn't burn everything to the ground in their retreat."

  That day, Marit helped scrub every room from top to bottom. On her hands and knees Aunt Ingeborg declared, her face red from scouring, "I want every trace, every scent of them gone forever!"

  Marit happily ripped down the paper that had covered the windows and blackened the landscape. Despite the long summer hours of evening light, she lit candles on every windowsill—along with the rest of the islanders. No more darkness. No more occupation.

  ***

  With each day that followed, Marit waited for news of her parents. While in Scotland, they'd heard rumors from others working for the Resistance. Someone saw them arrested by the Nazis. Another said they were living in Oslo. But with no letters or messages, she could not know if they were alive or dead, and in her memory, their faces had dimmed. But from her time at the base, she'd come to better understand the workings of the Resistance. They had waged war against the Germans by slipping soldiers and ammunitions into Norway; by blowing up German ships, trains, and supply trucks; and by helping countless refugees—teachers, pastors, dislocated families, Jews and non-Jews—anyone, adults or children, escape.

  One morning in late May, when raindrops fell sideways, Marit and Lars waited for the mail boat to arrive. Not only did new supplies arrive daily, but each boatload brought returning islanders—some who had escaped, others who had joined the underground militia, and still others who had simply disappeared.

  In a light rain, Marit and Lars took shelter under a boathouse eave. Once the mail boat docked, a thin couple made their way down the plank. The man limped badly and used a cane, and the woman, whose hair was shorn, carried a small rucksack. They were like leafless trees, angular in form, their limbs unsteady in the breeze. But when they glanced out at the crowd, Marit recognized their eyes immediately. Her throat closed and she couldn't find her voice. She thought her heart would explode.

  Finally, she screamed, "Mama! Papa!"

  In a few long strides—in one fierce embrace—they were reunited. Laughing, crying, hugging, examining one another.

  ***

  On their slow walk to the farmhouse, Papa explained that they needed to build up their strength before—or if—they returned to Isfjorden. Their home there had been bombed again, this time to splinters. For now, Papa would help Bestefar fish and Mama would help at the school in the fall.

  "We met there for school," Lars explained, with a nod in the direction of the church. The wind caught his sandy hair, and for a second, with his growing frame, he reminded Marit of a fjord horse—sturdy and dependable. "But this fall," he continued, "the schoolhouse is ours again." He spoke as if the island had always been his home. "Aunt Ingeborg made us study while we were at Scalloway so we wouldn't fall behind. I'll be in grade six this year."

  That day at the table, everyone had stories.

  Mama told how she worked as a translator from their hytte in the mountains. She worked alongside a Briton and a Norwegian—both radio operators. "But the British soldier," she said, shaking her head, "turned out to be German. His accent was so good he fooled even me. Many died because of him. Dozens of us were arrested."

  "Papa," Lars said. "What di
d you do?"

  Papa stirred his kaffe slowly, seemingly lost in his thoughts. At first Marit wondered if he'd heard Lars's question. Finally, he spoke. "I mapped out bridges, train trestles, tunnels, and highways for destruction—the very things I helped design and build, I helped blow up. We had to handicap the Nazis, whatever way we could."

  Marit told about Henrik, and how she'd delivered his coded message about klipfish and his compass by rowboat with Lars, to the north side of the island.

  "We'll never know for sure," Aunt Ingeborg added, "but the compass Marit delivered just might have been the same compass our host received as a signal to move us on. All I know is that we were sent from our basement shelter to take the Shetland Bus. I thought it was going to be a real bus."

  ***

  In the rhubarb patch, Marit worked alongside Mama and Aunt Ingeborg, harvesting the sturdy, bittersweet red stalks. Now that the first Allied food shipments were arriving, they could count on sugar and flour, and they planned to make jams, jellies, pies, and sauces to store, sell, and trade. Since she'd returned to Godøy Island, chores had never felt so good.

  As Marit pulled out the tender pink stems from the moist, rich earth, she spotted a few slimy gray slugs clinging to them. Disgusted, she flicked them off, one by one. But rhubarb was hearty. It endured droughts and heavy rains, bitter winters—and war. What were a few slugs? Before moving to the next plant with its massive green leaves, she stood up, stretched out the knot in the small of her back, and gazed toward the pasture and sea.

  Papa and Lars worked at repairing the fence. Sweat marked a V on Papa's shirt between his jutting shoulder blades as he dropped a cedar beam into the ground. Then Lars tapped dirt around the new fence pole. She hated to think about how Papa and Mama had been held at the Grini concentration camps outside Oslo. Papa refused to discuss the treatment he was subjected to, but when they'd all gone swimming, the pale scars on his legs and back made Marit wince. Separated at a men's camp and women's camp, her parents had each done hard labor, and the food portions were, according to Mama, "never, never enough."

  "Mama?" Marit asked, glancing over at her mother, who was bent over a rhubarb plant. "Do you want to take a rest?"

  Mama looked up, her eyes still bright as crystal blue fjord waters. "Rest? Why would I want to rest? This is play!" She laughed, but that started up the cough that she'd brought back from the camp. Sometimes she coughed up blood. Her face, gaunt and sunken, barely resembled that of the woman who had smoothed Marit's hair and had said goodbye five years earlier at the ferry.

  Her parents' work in the Resistance had come at a high price. Did they feel their efforts had been worth the sacrifice? Marit wondered. And her own efforts of delivering the compass and the klipfish code, even though her role had been small—had she made any difference at all? She remembered her aunt's words: You must do what you feel is right, and so must I. And so had poor Henrik, at such a terrible price. Would she do the same if she had the chance to do it all over again?

  She expected so.

  "I'm surprised the Germans left this rhubarb patch," Mama said between coughs. "They certainly didn't leave anything else."

  "From the bottles we found in the barn," Aunt Ingeborg said, her long braid hanging over her shoulder, "they were probably drinking more than eating these last months. They must have sensed the end was coming."

  The goats and chickens were gone. Only Olga remained. Earlier, Olaf had come by to explain how he'd asked the German soldiers if he could milk Olga for them, and in return he was allowed a weekly pail of milk for his family. It was his way, he'd told Marit, to help out until Olga's real owners returned. Unfortunately, only days after their return, locals asked Olaf's parents to leave the island. They sold their home and left to start over somewhere else. Marit never had a chance to say goodbye to Olaf.

  Across the pasture, no soldiers flanked the lighthouse. Only seagulls, oystercatchers, and terns frequented its nearby shore. Now that Hitler was dead and the Nazis had lost, now that Germany was in ruins, she wondered about her lighthouse soldier—the one who gave her two chocolates in exchange for her dyne. Did he question the teachings of Hitler and the Nazi propaganda now? How had the war changed young men like him?

  Marit turned back to gathering rhubarb. The sun pressed its warmth along her bare arms. A sea breeze cooled her back and neck. Her family was together again. The war was truly over. A deep joy coursed through her from head to toes. She was only picking rhubarb behind a barn. A simple thing. She was only doing chores on a piano key of farmland off the western coast of Norway.

  On Godøy Island.

  She was home.

  * * *

  Author's Note

  My research for this book included a trip to Norway, a country rich in history, landscape, and the character of its people (some of whom I proudly call my ancestors). With my husband, Charlie, and our son, Eric, we visited several World War II museums and combed the region where this story is set. The more I learned about the Resistance efforts, the more in awe I was of the bravery of ordinary Norwegians.

  The Nazi occupation of Norway lasted five years. All major events of this story are historically true.

  When I asked my friend Johanne Moe about her experience growing up in Nazi-occupied Norway, she replied, "I lived in constant fear." She also told me about a bomb that was wedged under the floorboards of her house, and also how Nazi soldiers would enter the house unannounced anytime of day or night, taking what they wished, including the last piece of her mother's precious soap.

  Two months after the Nazis bombed Norway on April 9, 1940, they effectively defeated the Norwegian army, which had known peace for 125 years. The Nazis attempted a "friendly" occupation, regarding Norwegians as a kindred people that should preferably be led into the fold ... through persuasion, eventually to side with the Germans. When Nazi propaganda, however, failed to win over the hearts and minds of the Norwegian people, the Nazis resorted to harsher tactics, including house raids, interrogation, and torture by the Gestapo. As a way of coping, Norwegians resorted to humor and Resistance symbols, such as wearing red hats and paper clips. German-run concentration camps existed in Norway, too, and many Norwegians eventually were sent to these camps. Who was sent? Anyone who openly opposed the Nazi occupation or was caught helping with Resistance efforts.

  Though this story focuses on life under Nazi occupation, it is important to note that throughout Europe the Jewish population was treated most severely. In Norway, the property of Jewish citizens was the first to be confiscated, and all Jewish males over the age of fifteen were sent to the brutal concentration camps in Germany, never to return. According to one author, the "Norwegian Jewish community suffered the greatest losses of all Scandinavian countries."

  Despite the Nazis' terrorizing presence and demands, Norway's pastors and teachers rallied together and took bold stands. Lutheran pastors refused to stay in their churches under the new banner of Nazi authority and preach as they were instructed. Instead, most left their pulpits and took risks by meeting with church members in private homes, much as Pastor Ecklund chose to do.

  When Quisling's new government passed laws to establish a Nazi teachers' association, as well as a national youth organization, similar to the Nazi Youth in Germany, both were met with great protests. The Nazi Youth organizations in Germany had been highly successful in molding young minds toward a Nazi philosophy. By making every Norwegian boy and girl between the ages of ten and eighteen attend such meetings and activities, the Nazis hoped to have similar success in Norway. The Church of Norway objected. More than 200,000 parents wrote letters refusing to allow their children to participate in the "Nazi Youth" organizations. The teachers, too, rallied together in this struggle to protect the freedoms of teachers and students. In short, when the Nazi leadership ordered teachers across Norway to instruct students in "the new spirit" of Nazi philosophy, the teachers refused.

  The retaliation toward teachers was severe.

  One out of eve
ry ten teachers—just like Miss Halversen—was rounded up and sent to a concentration camp. To make an example of them, the Nazis crammed five hundred of these teachers in a ship in nightmarish, slavelike conditions and shipped them sixteen hundred miles up the frigid northern coast to a concentration camp. Some did not survive the voyage.

  Despite such harsh tactics against teachers, the teachers who remained behind stood firm and refused to give in to the Nazis' demands. Eventually, the Nazi leadership relented and said the teachers had "misunderstood" their earlier demands. Though I do not know of any individual teachers who escaped en route to the camps or from them, it is certainly plausible that a teacher such as Miss Halversen might have been helped by the Resistance. In the end, the teachers won this battle against the Nazis and were left to teach according to their conscience.

  Roughly 50,000 Norwegians were arrested by Nazis during the occupation. Of these, some 9,000 were sent to Nazi concentration camps in Norway that offered woeful living conditions: lack of decent food and drinking water, and hard labor. Some died and many became sick. About 9,000 Norwegians were sent to German concentration camps in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria, France, and Germany, where conditions were inhuman. Fourteen hundred Norwegians died at these camps—half of them of Jewish ancestry, and of these, most perished in gas chambers.

  "The Shetland Bus" was the term used to describe the efforts of fishermen and boat captains who ferried refugees out of the country. The term "refugee" could have included almost anyone fleeing for safety: families whose homes might have been bombed in a Nazi reprisal, individuals suspected of aiding the Allies, Jews and non-Jews, or anyone who went against the Germans in any way. The bus also helped bring Allied weapons, supplies, and agents into Norway. Scotland's Shetland Islands lay roughly two hundred miles away from the middle of Norway's western coast, and boats traveled these waters at great risk in the dark arctic months. Ålesund and its surrounding islands, including Godøy, harbored numerous Shetland Bus operations.