It’ll be so good to get outside, get some fresh air. She doesn’t know where she’ll go, but right now anywhere is better than the claustrophobic, cramped little apartment where everything is such a tangled mess. She won’t go back until evening, she’ll just walk and walk through the whole city, her mother can sit there and fret for all she cares.
Just as she opens the door to step outside she sees that the snow has started to fall, a fine layer now covering the backyard. The pervasive rotten stench that had lingered earlier that day has gone. Now it smells, well, what is that smell, actually? Ilse inhales deeply. It smells like snow, she thinks.
She jumps when she catches sight of Hermann standing in the passageway. He’s leaning against a wall with his back to her as she rushes around the corner. He turns around. He’s wearing his blue anorak, the same that he’d been wearing when she’d seen him last, and a light gray hat pulled down low over his ears. He gives her a vacant stare, a smile forming on his lips, but his eyes don’t follow suit, they look tired and weary; what’s happening with Hermann?
“Back from work already?” she asks.
It can’t be much past eleven o’clock. He says nothing in response, instead scratching his cheek, trying to come up with a new topic of conversation.
“Did you notice that it’s started snowing?” he asks her. He’s smiling now, a real, proper smile.
She nods.
“What do you say to taking a little ski trip, Ilse Stern?”
She faces him, silent. What is this all about? Does he really mean now, today? Why isn’t he at work? Why is he standing there, raising his eyebrows at her? There’s hardly any snow to speak of.
“There’s barely any snow on the ground,” she says, aware that she has to start somewhere.
“What about Maridalen, then,” Hermann continues. “We can take the tram up to Kjelsås and head out from there.”
This was definitely odd. Tempting, though, she couldn’t deny it. She and Hermann in Maridalen, she’s imagined it, in fact she’s basically planned the whole thing, and it’s only now that she begins to realize it. She ought to have been sitting and waiting for him, she ought to have been ready, lipstick applied in preparation; it shouldn’t be happening like this. Nothing should happen like this.
“Well, I’m not exactly dressed for it,” she says, shrugging in a slightly resigned manner.
“Can’t you just go up and change?” Hermann suggests.
Ilse shakes her head. Up to her mother, her wailing and her nightdress and her demands and her complaints? Definitely not.
“But your skis are stored in the cellar, aren’t they?”
They are, of course. Her pitch-seam boots too. She and Sonja shared a pair of skis and boots. Their father hadn’t had the money to buy several pairs, so she and Sonja couldn’t ever go out skiing together, but if she knew one thing it was that taking a ski trip would be the last thing on Sonja’s mind today.
Hermann makes it sound so simple. Maybe it is simple, after all? Maybe it’s just a case of going downstairs, picking up her skis and boots, and hopping on the tram? Getting away from everything. Maybe this is the best suggestion she’s ever heard? A Wednesday morning. Ski and snow and fresh, crisp air. The thought brings a smile to her face. Even so, something isn’t quite right about the whole situation.
“Hermann, why aren’t you at work?”
He hesitates. But then he opens his mouth and answers her. He sounds cold and matter-of-fact, as if he were reciting his own address.
“They fired me.”
SNOW. FINALLY. THERE IS SO MUCH SPACE out here. White and quiet, far from the city, just the two of them, Ilse Stern and Hermann Rød. It is just as he had imagined it. Ilse has been so quiet lately, and he’s been quiet too, reflective; he has to say something soon, has to say the words out loud, there is so much he’s been meaning to talk to her about. Like the fact that she might have to leave, cross the border, she and the rest of the family, that they might not have long to think things over. He has to be quick and straightforward, he can’t drag it out, he can’t frighten her; he just has to go over things slowly and calmly. But now that the time has come he can’t quite remember how he’d planned to broach the subject, the words he’d decided to use; suddenly everything feels like a jigsaw puzzle and he’s sitting with a thousand pieces in his lap and no idea where to place any of them. He can’t even find a corner piece.
Ilse takes a fish cake and chews it slowly as he watches her, the movement of her temples; he can’t face a single bite of his own.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” he begins, gently.
She looks at him. He has to keep going now, he has to explain everything, everything that’s been going through his mind.
“Well, you know I’ve been spending a lot of time over in Frogner,” he says, without knowing quite why he has chosen to begin in such a way.
“Is that why, do you think?” She takes another bite. “They must have given you a reason. Can’t your father do anything?”
“What?”
“Can’t your father help you?”
It’s a mess, the pieces, they’re all mixed up yet again. He doesn’t answer; what can he possibly say? She holds his gaze.
“My father doesn’t know about it,” Hermann says after a slight pause. “Not yet. Anyway, there’s not much he can do. It’s the foreman’s decision.”
“But did he tell you why?”
He shakes his head.
“It must be because of your art, then. Don’t you think, Hermann? That it might be the art thing?” She munches on her fish cake, her eyes wide and inquisitive as they look up at him from beneath her wool hat.
Art. He can’t call it that, not really. He can’t say it because it’s not true. He’s so tired of lying, making excuses, standing with a painting in hand as he waffles about perspective and color selection, things he hasn’t the first idea about. Soon the entire room will be filled with watercolors. An abundance of alibis, evidence to offer up to his disinterested parents. Einar has even ensured that the paintings demonstrate a certain sense of progression, painting badly on purpose as he laughs at himself and the meaningless landscapes he creates. And Hermann stores the paintings behind the sofa in the living room, enthusiastically sharing everything he’s been learning about over on Frederik Stangs gate. But no. That’s exactly what he never does. He tells them nothing. He lies. He hasn’t said a word about the yellow room, about how well-isolated it is with its blacked-out window. He hasn’t said a word about the typewriter, or the wireless that Einar hides in a box, or the way they sit with their necks craned forward over the machinery, or just how quickly his fingers fly over the keys. He hasn’t said a word about the distributors, the codes, the agreements that are never written down, the leaflets that change hands; circulating, filled with text, with news, printed on poor-quality paper. He hasn’t said a word about his nerves, the feeling that pounds through his body, the alcohol that he consumes in worrying quantities, the prickling sensation in his hands, the dreams that follow him into sleep. He can’t say a thing. They’ve introduced the death penalty. The police have already been to the door once. The newspaper could be discovered any day now.
That Saturday that he was supposed to meet Ilse at Olaf Ryes Square. The thing he can’t tell her about. He and Einar had worked until quarter past four. He had put on his jacket and was ready to leave when he heard a sudden knock at the door, urgent, insistent, a voice in the stairwell.
“This is the police.”
They had stood where they were, both motionless. Einar had looked at the floor and Hermann’s fingers had clutched at the tickets in his pocket. Two voices in hushed conversation: We should wait, he has to come back sooner or later. Then more knocking, the sound of a match being lit, the smell of tobacco.
Hermann and Einar made their way deeper into the apartment, creeping along the long hallway and into the red room before closing the door softly behind them.
“How lo
ng will we have to wait here, do you think?” Hermann whispered.
Einar shook his head.
“They’ll have to give up eventually.”
Quarter to five, he would never make it; if only he had left a little earlier, he thought to himself, looking over at Einar, his forehead wrinkled.
They stood in the pitch-dark red room and peered out through a gap in the curtains. It had started to rain outside. It drummed against the asphalt.
It was just past nine when they saw two figures exit the front door of the building. He had spotted one of them again, that day he had been on the tram.
He can’t say it’s because of the art. He can’t say anything. He just looks at her, smiling without moving his lips. He knows he has to talk to her, but no words come to him. Nothing. He only knows that he feels like getting up and walking, walking and walking and walking, far out into the snowy landscape, leaving everything behind. He’s gone over it so many times in his head. He can breathe out here, and there’s no pain, everything is so far away, the city, the yellow room, Einar, Biermanns gate; out here he can breathe. He places his hand on his knee, it edges toward Ilse’s, he strokes his little finger against her thumb. It’s afternoon, the sky is white with snow, and soon it will be dark. They can’t get stuck out here, they need to turn around. He doesn’t have a watch, doesn’t quite know exactly where they are either, and their tracks have all but disappeared now, covered up by the heavy snow that’s falling around them. All he wants to do is escape, never to return to the city. Just leave. Disappear into the snow. He turns and faces Ilse.
THAT NIGHT, SONJA DREAMS OF A BATHTUB. All of a sudden it’s there, at the side of a road, a large white tub at a slight angle on the sloping ground. There’s a girl inside, she could be thirteen; the murky water makes the contours of her body difficult to distinguish. Her hair ripples like jellyfish tentacles. Her eyes are closed, her skin transparent, her hands and feet swollen as if they belong to the body of someone much older, her nails long and yellowed, like pieces of apple peel. Sonja reaches a hand into the water; it’s cold, like burying her hand in snow. The girl in the bathtub opens her eyes, just slightly, revealing a dark cleft as her eyelids slowly open; her eyes are black, her lips move, forming something close to a smile, or is it a call for help? She says something but it’s impossible to hear, only the sound of gurgling can be made out. And it rains, large droplets, everything is wet, the water streaming down the road. The water in the bathtub is still, the rain doesn’t touch the surface, but there are noises reverberating from within, words, louder now, clearer, everything is disappearing, everything is disappearing.
She wakes up at the kitchen table, her head resting against the hard tabletop. Her mouth is half open, a thin dribble running over the hand that had been propped beneath her head, her neck twisted to the left.
The apartment is silent. Their mother has finally fallen asleep. Sonja tries to look up at the clock on the shelf over the kitchen table. In the pitch-darkness she has to walk over, screw her eyes up, and tilt the face in order to make out the hour. Half-past two. No sign of Ilse.
Sonja had done her best to remain calm for as long as Miriam had been awake. Ilse will be back soon, she had said, she’ll be back soon, just go to bed, it’ll be fine. She had recited an evening prayer with Miriam in her bedroom, had heard the sound of her own voice, her tone, the words flowing out of her much quicker than usual and melting into one another, hard to make out.
Their mother whispered to herself in the living room. Round and round the table, over to the window, into the kitchen, out into the hallway, always moving, permanently accompanied by the never-ending sound of her own muttering.
Sonja cleared the kitchen table after Miriam had gone to bed, carefully laying a yellow tablecloth with a white trim, fetching some side plates from the cupboard for breakfast the next day, giving herself something to do. Her mother came over, moved the side plates from the kitchen worktop, and started to lay the table, her hands shaking, the plates clinking together. It was a long time since her mother had laid the table, several weeks now. She tried to set the plates in neat symmetry, two on each side of the table.
“Do you think she’s with Hermann?”
Her mother smoothed the tablecloth.
“She must be, don’t you think?”
She hunched over the kitchen worktop. Sonja placed her hand on her mother’s back, feeling her shallow gasps for air, her ribs jutting through her cardigan.
“I’ll go over and ask the neighbors,” she said. “Maybe they know something.”
Her mother straightened up, stroking Sonja’s hair.
“Go on, then,” she mumbled, disappearing out into the living room.
It was past ten o’clock when Sonja knocked at the neighbors’ door. Ingeborg opened up. Behind her, from inside the living room, she could hear Tinius’s thundering voice.
“Shut the door, there’s a draft.”
Tinius was sitting in a green armchair in the farthest corner of the living room. There was a faint scent of cod-liver oil in the air, mixed with the smell of something fried, burnt.
“Ilse hasn’t come home this evening,” Sonja began. “She left this morning and didn’t say where she would be going. Is Hermann at home?”
Tinius shook his head.
“So he could be out with Ilse, then?” Sonja ventured, half-questioning.
“You never know where Hermann is concerned,” Tinius said. “He’s here, there, and everywhere in the evenings. We guessed that he was with that snooty artist friend of his. He has a habit of staying over there. We can’t tell him anything these days. He does what he wants.”
Tinius glanced over at Ingeborg, who nodded slowly.
“But he didn’t actually say he’d be with Ilse today?”
Sonja looked at Ingeborg.
“We haven’t heard anything,” she said quietly. “But we’ve both been at work all day and didn’t get home until after six. There was nobody here when we got home. We’re used to that, mind.”
Tinius heaved himself up, a creaking sound coming from his chair.
“I hope Ilse comes back tonight,” he said, placing a hand on Sonja’s shoulder. “I really do. Young girls shouldn’t be out in the middle of the night.”
Ingeborg followed Sonja out into the hallway. She closed the door leading to the living room and moved in closer to Sonja.
“There were two fish cakes missing when we came home. Tinius doesn’t know; he gets so irritated and you know what it’s like with food these days. I just had to find something else for our dinner.”
She hesitated for a moment.
“But maybe Hermann took one for Ilse,” she continued. “He never usually takes more than he needs.”
She looked long and hard at Sonja before closing the apartment door.
Sonja sits at the kitchen table hearing the ticking of the clock. Her neck aches, her mouth is dry, she feels uneasy after her dream. It’s so dark in the apartment that she has to feel her way forward to avoid bumping into the furniture. She fumbles, hands outstretched, into the room where the sound of her mother’s breathing is calm and easy, deep in sleep. Her hands find the edge of the bookcase that stands beside the door into the bedroom. She opens the door carefully, sneaking past Miriam’s bed and lying down, still wearing all of her clothing. Her eyes stare out into the darkness of the room and she folds her hands, pressing them together firmly.
“Dear God, let Ilse come home tomorrow. Please God, don’t let anything happen to her. Amen.”
OLE RUSTAD IS NOT A MAN WHO LIKES getting up early. If he were in charge, he’d never start work earlier than ten; he needs time to get out of his bed and feel as if his body is holding together and his mind is clear, to make sure that the first words to come out of his mouth won’t be the expletives he’s been known to opt for after an all-too-short night’s sleep. Things would be very different if Ole Rustad were in charge. If it were up to him, he’d have turned down the whole job, made it clear t
hat meeting up on the opposite side of the city before the crack of dawn just wasn’t right, that he didn’t like being pushed around and told what to do as if he were a child. But Ole Rustad hadn’t said anything of the sort. He had nodded at taxi chief Jørgensen, assured him that he’d be there, the taxi chief could count on him, he wouldn’t go against an order, not an order like this. Plus, there was the money in it. They’d be paid well, that was for sure.
Ole Rustad turns off his alarm clock and peers out into the dark room. Anna is lying on her side; she’s kicked off the eiderdown and her large stomach spills out toward the edge of the bed. He’s told her that he needs to leave early, his taxi has been requisitioned for a job he doesn’t know much about, but he’ll be home again just after three, the job will probably be done by then. He’s kept the rest to himself. Anna had fired a barrage of questions at him in a worried tone; was he getting himself involved in something, just before the baby was due? He had done his best to allay her fears, told her not to be afraid, promised that he would buy a new cradle with the money he expected to receive—a cradle and some clothes for the baby, maybe a coat for Anna and something for the girls too, some new dresses. She had smiled.
As he rolls out of the bed he can feel the blood pumping, his body feels like a pressure cooker, his vision goes black, and he has to sit for a few seconds on the edge of the bed until balance is restored. He feels queasy. His stomach grumbles.
He picks up the clothes lying on the chair by the side of the bed and gets dressed. His shirt smells sweaty, but he doesn’t want to open the wardrobe to fetch a new one; doesn’t want to wake the others, just wants to slip out of the house unnoticed and do what he has to until three o’clock, when he can return home once again.
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