He looks worn out, pale, tired, his face ashen. For a brief second she almost feels a pang of sympathy.
“Ilse Stern,” he says, just as he always does when he sees her. He looks at her, smiling cautiously, apologetically, but it isn’t his smile, it doesn’t really seem to be him standing before her.
“Hermann Rød,” she replies, gazing right past him, long and hard.
They linger by the bins. A bitter draft rushes into the passageway, picking up the smell of the rubbish.
Ilse hasn’t seen Hermann for twenty-one days. It has been exactly twenty-one days since he stood her up, and she has painstakingly counted each and every one of them. There has been only one exception to their separation: She felt his gaze pierce the darkness of the underground cellar on the night the air raid sirens had gone off, but she had taken cover behind her book, only very occasionally peering over the top, eyes flickering before looking down once again.
“Where are you going?” Hermann asks her.
“Out for a walk,” she says, looking at the door.
“Is everything okay?”
“What?”
“Is everything okay, Ilse?”
“Everything is great, Hermann.”
Ole Rustad appears from around the corner.
“Well well well, this is where the young people spend their time nowadays, is it?” he says, smiling at them both. “Dressed more appropriately for the weather today, I see,” he says to Ilse. He doffs his cap at the pair and disappears through the front gate. It clangs loudly as it closes again. Silence descends once more.
She’s gone over this in her head, this exact moment, all the many possible versions of the same event. She’s imagined Hermann begging for her forgiveness, stroking her hair from her face, her own annoyance, delight, cool distance, warmth, understanding, she’s covered every base. Apart from this one, that is, as she stands before him, unmoving, timid.
“Hey, Ilse?” Hermann’s voice is soft; he fiddles with his key ring. “I’m so sorry.” He’s still not looking at her. The keys slip from his grasp and he bends over to pick them up, placing them in his pocket. She can hear him continuing to fidget with them.
“That I didn’t come, I mean.”
She says nothing, opening her mouth and closing it again; she can’t allow everything that has been swirling around inside her head to pour out now.
“Did you wait for long?”
“No.”
She answers almost before he has asked the question, shaking her head.
“I’m glad,” he replies. “I don’t know what to say. I had a good reason for not being there.”
She nods. Silence. Ole Rustad drives past in his taxi, beeping his horn and waving at them. Hermann scratches his cheek with his slim fingers, she’s always liked his hands; he raises his eyebrows, his eyes the same piercing blue.
“It won’t be long before the snow starts,” he says after a while. “Promise me that we’ll take a ski trip together after the first snowfall, Ilse? Just you and me?”
He looks at her, properly now, directly in the eye as if everything were back to normal between them. She doesn’t answer him, why doesn’t she say anything, anything at all, but then there is something else, something she can’t let him see, a tickle in her throat, something brimming over, reopening the wound, threatening to unravel. She walks past him, toward the gate, pushes it open and runs across Biermanns gate as she hears the resounding clang of the gate closing behind her.
The Akerselva River rushes past the bridge. It’s been raining for days now. She leans against the railing, watching the way the torrent cascades over the stones, working its way down and away. Everything starts this autumn, she suddenly thinks. So stupid. Does anything ever start with autumn, really? Autumn brings darkness, quiet, rest, death, trees lose their leaves and the earth grows hard. In a week it will be November. She draws the fresh air deep into her lungs, tastes it, bitter and tinged with something, a scent, a rupture, winter. Maybe the snow will come soon. She feels herself smile. And maybe, just maybe, things are different from what she had thought. Maybe everything starts with the first snow.
ISAK HAD BEEN AWAKE FOR ONLY A FEW moments before he heard the knock at the door. As was his habit every morning, he had been sitting on the edge of the bed and thinking about the day ahead of him. His sense of fatigue was more pronounced than usual this morning. The air raid siren had blared throughout the city the previous night, and he can’t have caught all that many hours of sleep. He had been thinking about the order he needed to complete that day, due for collection at noon.
Hanna sits up in bed with an abrupt lurch. She turns to face him, her hair disheveled. Her nightdress slips to reveal a bony shoulder protruding from the garment’s neckline.
“There was a knock at the door, Isak.”
He hears Miriam in the bedroom stirring in her bed, mumbling to herself. Another knock. Isak lights the lamps, slips his feet into his slippers, and shuffles toward the front door.
He turns the latch and opens the door just wide enough that he can peer through the gap.
“Isak Stern?”
Two men are standing outside. One is large and muscular, wearing a light-colored coat, while the other is tall and slim with round spectacles; the lenses have steamed up, and in his hands he holds a sheaf of papers, the cold air of the stairwell seeping into the apartment.
“Yes,” Isak replies.
“We have an order for your arrest.”
He hears Hanna’s footsteps as she crosses the room. She enters the hallway where he stands. She has pulled her dressing gown on over her nightdress, tightly knotting it around her waist as she glances from side to side.
“What’s going on?”
The men push their way into the narrow hallway, closing the door behind them. The man wearing the spectacles passes a sheet of paper to Isak before taking a handkerchief from his coat pocket and removing his glasses to polish the lenses.
All males over the age of fifteen years in possession of identification cards stamped with the letter J are to be arrested, with no upper age limit. Arrestees will be transported to Kirkeveien 23, Oslo.
Hanna remains close, leaning in to read the document in Isak’s hands.
“But he hasn’t done anything wrong.”
Nobody responds.
Arrests will be carried out on Monday 26 October at 06:00. The document is a mass of words, they blend and flow and blur into one another; crooked symbols, letters, commas, and periods, line after line after line. His eyes flicker over the page, he reads the top section, the bottom section, he understands and yet still he fails to, Monday, it’s Monday—the paper is stiff, he holds it in both hands, too many words all at once, he hasn’t properly woken yet, and he’s hungry. Terribly, terribly hungry.
“Bring clothing, your ration card, and all of your identification documents.” The other man speaks now, the man in the light-colored coat; he points at the sheet of paper where everything he has just said is written down.
“But when will he be allowed to come home again?” Hanna asks. “I don’t understand.”
“Mrs. Stern,” he continues, “you are under strict instructions to report daily to the police station.”
Your financial assets are to be seized. Your bank account will be closed and your safety deposit boxes emptied. He has to tell Hanna, he has to catch her alone. The cigar tin. The money would last them a while. At least until he’s back with them; until then they can live on what he had hidden in the chest of drawers.
The girls have wandered into the living room. Wide-eyed and standing in nothing but their nightdresses, Sonja lifts Miriam into her arms and holds her close.
He was too late. It is the only thought that runs through his head. Too late. If only he had made a decision, if only he had known just how little time he had at his disposal, he would have done what was needed. They could have crossed the border to neutral Sweden by now, if only he had followed through on his plans. He even had a nam
e; for days he had contemplated contacting a man by the name of E. Vindju in Frogner. But he hadn’t, and now it was too late, they had gotten to him first.
He turns to face them, his girls, their feet bare on the cold floor.
“You need to pack your things now,” said the man in the light-colored coat.
It is cold outside. Isak turns and looks up at the windows on the third floor. They stand at the living room window, four dark shapes, watching him. He had pulled each of them close before leaving, one after the other, had held on to Hanna, buried his face into her dark hair, brought his lips to her ear and then, so quietly that nobody else could hear, he had whispered just three words. He could have said so much more. I’ll be back. Look after yourselves. God bless you. He didn’t say any of those things, he wasn’t thinking about those things. The cigar tin. The cigar tin in the drawer. He spoke as softly as he could.
They walk toward Vogts gate. He can hear the shrill screeching of the tram as it trundles by, footsteps on asphalt, his shallow breathing, his rumbling stomach. The cold air smarts within his chest; soon there will be snow, he has never much liked the snow.
EVERYTHING IS SO QUIET IN THE DAYS that follow. The slightest of sounds creates an echo. A cup against the kitchen sink. The creak of a cupboard door. Colored pencils against a piece of paper.
They navigate their way around one another, hushed, cautious; there’s a gaping hole in the apartment, it expands to fill the rooms, makes it difficult to breathe.
Ilse stands in the doorway between the hallway and the living room, rooted to the spot and staring into the room. She can see her father’s gray wool slippers beneath the divan, one resting slightly on top of the other. Mum hasn’t tidied up today, either, she hasn’t folded the divan back in its place and the duvet is still curled at the end of the mattress, the sheets wrinkled, strands of her mother’s dark hair visible on the white pillowcase.
Her mother sits in the armchair by the window. Her eyes are closed; perhaps she’s sleeping again. Miriam lies beneath the table, drawing. She’s almost stopped speaking altogether, only gives yes or no answers, she’s preoccupied, doesn’t listen properly to anything that anyone says to her. Sonja washes up in the kitchen.
The sunlight cuts through the living room windows at an angle. Her mother’s face is bathed in light. Her hair is pinned up yet untidy, her skin taut over her cheekbones, a shell that could crack and break at a moment’s notice. She turns around, away from the dazzling sunlight, rests her head against the back of the chair.
They hadn’t moved an inch for a good long while after their father disappeared that day. They had all just stood there, as if waiting for him to reappear on the street any minute, to wave up at them, shrug his shoulders to let them know it had all been a gross misunderstanding, that they had the wrong man.
Their mother was the first to move. She crossed the room, tearing each drawer from the dresser and pulling out item after item. Her hands moved quickly. The pile on the floor grew and grew, underwear, shirts, balls of yarn and unfinished needlework, knitting needles, scraps of fabric, their father’s undershirts. Then she stood up. She was holding a cigar tin in her hands.
“What is it, Mum?” Sonja asked.
Their mother carried the tin over to the table and removed the lid.
“Isak,” she whispered softly, “Isak, what have you done?”
Sonja took care of the money, sorting it into small piles, carefully counting it every night. It was all they had to live on, and they had no idea for how long that would be the case.
Their mother reported to the police station every day. She left the apartment after breakfast and would be gone for several hours before returning home, washed out and withdrawn. Often she would go to sleep as soon as she came back, either on the divan or sitting in the armchair by the window. She didn’t care much for making meals, couldn’t face keeping the house in order. Her hair became lank and flat; she no longer set it in rollers, instead simply pinning it up with a few clasps. One day she had worn her skirt back to front, and when Ilse had pointed it out, her mother had looked at her, her gaze vacant, then opened the door and left.
She didn’t sleep at night. Ilse could hear her tossing and turning, whispering to herself. One night Ilse had awoken to find her mother standing in the bedroom. She had been breathing heavily, her eyes darting around the room as if she suddenly didn’t recognize her surroundings.
“Why are you standing there?” Ilse murmured, sitting up in her bed.
Her mother said nothing. In her white nightdress she looked almost transparent.
“Mum?”
“Are you talking to me? Don’t talk to me, Sonja.”
“It’s Ilse, Mum. You need to go back to bed.”
Her mother didn’t move.
“Can you come with me?” she whispered after a moment.
Ilse had followed her into the living room, tucking the eiderdown in around her. Her mother had stared into the dark room, her body slender and delicate, her face all that was visible where the eiderdown ended; helpless and heavy with anxiety, she had looked so small.
At the police station, their mother had met other Jewish women in the same position. They weren’t regulars at the synagogue, but the community was small and their mother knew many of them. All of the men had been taken, all on that same morning, and none of the women knew where they had gone, though there were rumors that they had been sent to a work camp in northern Norway.
On Friday, their mother hadn’t emerged from her bed again after returning home from the police station; she had simply refused. Ilse and Sonja had set the table just like their mother used to every Friday afternoon. The white tablecloth was stiff, the candles ready. Their mother lay facing the wall, utterly silent.
“Don’t you want to light the candles, Mum? Everything’s ready. Don’t you want to bless the candles?”
Their mother gave no response. Sonja crouched down by the divan, stroking her back, trying to encourage her to get up. She bristled at Sonja’s touch, pinched tight like a set of forceps where she lay, her arms wrapped around her legs. They had eaten their dinner that Friday, Ilse, Sonja, and Miriam, the white candles on the table beside them, unlit. Ilse couldn’t remember that ever happening before.
Miriam shifts position beneath the table, her head poking out from one side.
“Do you know what I’m going to be when I grow up, Ilse?” she whispers. “I’m going to be a flower lady.”
“Oh really? And what does a flower lady do?”
“Well, they stand in shops. And they sell bunches of flowers.”
She holds out a drawing: a girl in a red dress, flowers in her hands, and at the top of the sheet of paper is a yellow orb, Miriam’s trademark, a large, golden sun sending long beams in all directions.
“The sun is always shining in your pictures, Miriam.”
“Yes, because it’s easy to draw. It’s just a yellow circle with lines coming out of it.”
She disappears back under the table.
Ilse hasn’t seen any more of Hermann. It’s been two weeks since her father disappeared; she hasn’t been able to talk to him about it yet. Every time she took out the rubbish she’d hoped that she might bump into him. She’d linger there much longer than necessary, fumbling by the rubbish bins, enveloped by the brisk, bitter, cold air pocket of the passageway. Why didn’t he ever come?
It was chilly outside; it would be snowing any day now. Then they’d go skiing. He’d said so himself. For a moment the thought gives her a tiny thrill. She walks into the kitchen, crosses the room to the window, carefully opens it, and sticks a hand out into the open air. It is cold. It’s just a case of waiting. Waiting for her father. Waiting for the snow. Just waiting.
SONJA UNHOOKS HER WINTER COAT FROM the peg in the hallway, laces her boots, pulls on her red hat, and pokes her head into the living room.
“I’ll be off, then,” she says.
Ilse sits in her father’s armchair with Miriam on her lap. T
he two of them are reading fairy tales together. Their mother has gone to bed. Again. Sonja can just make out the contour of her curved spine beneath the crumpled eiderdown.
“I won’t be long. A few hours, maybe.”
Ilse smiles at her, nods.
“Say hi from me,” she says.
A bracing November gust rounds the corner of the building, a thin veil of frost over the grass in the backyard.
Sonja crosses Vogts gate and walks toward the river, on her way to St. Hanshaugen to visit a friend. Well, perhaps visit isn’t quite the right word; it isn’t exactly as if anybody is expecting her, there is no table set ready for her arrival.
A week ago she and Ilse had bumped into Marie, an old classmate. Marie was from a Jewish family and told a familiar story: The police had come to their home on that Monday morning and had taken her father and two brothers. Now it was just Marie and her mother left, the pair of them alone in an apartment on Bjerregaards gate. Pop by one day, she’d told Sonja. At first Sonja had thought it was just something Marie had said to be polite, but then she’d started to think about it some more. Maybe they knew something, Sonja thought, maybe they’d heard from their own loved ones.
On the day their father had been taken, Ilse and Sonja had taken the tram into the city center. Their mother had found a blanket, a pair of boots, and a wool sweater and had packed them inside a brown paper bag; they should take it to Kirkeveien 23, she said, see if they could see their father. The tram was full, it was an ordinary Monday in Oslo, people were going about their ordinary lives, talking, laughing, and then there they were, Sonja and Ilse, perched at the back of the carriage with the paper bag between them.
There were guards stationed outside Kirkeveien 23.
“What do we do now?” Sonja asked.
“We’ll tell them we want to speak to Isak Stern,” Ilse said. “Let’s just go over.”
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