Into the kitchen. The man in the kitchen is sitting on a chair, leaning against the wall. The table is set and he sits at his place like an uninvited guest. Sonja finds a pan; they have eggs, four of them, she fills the pan with water and puts it on the stove, takes some bread from the bread box, places it on the kitchen bench, opens the cupboard door, takes out everything stacked inside. It’s not much, certainly not enough to last them four days.
Out into the hallway. Coats, scarves, they’ve been told to dress warmly, she piles everything up on the living room floor. Back to the hallway, she fetches their boots, adds them to the pile. She works like a machine, automatic in her movements. Her arms and feet move instinctively, her mind planning her next move as if she’s doing everyday household chores, washing, drying, moving, tidying. Packing.
“Something’s boiling over here.”
The man in the kitchen calls out to her in the hallway. Back into the kitchen, Sonja doesn’t look at him; she finds the eggs, fetches a spoon, carefully lowers them one by one into the steaming water. She glances at the clock over the kitchen table, makes a mental note of the time, ten minutes, hard-boiled.
Into the bedroom. She has to find something they can pack their things in. They have a suitcase, the brown leather one, isn’t it down in the cellar? Back into the kitchen. Steam rises from the stove; she can hear the eggs tumbling around inside the pan.
“Sorry, but I need to fetch our suitcase. It’s down in the cellar.”
She looks at the man seated at the end of the table, stares at him, questioning; it almost seems as if he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, he simply stares back at her, his eyes vacant, his mouth half open.
“May I go down to the cellar and fetch it?”
He closes his mouth. Furrows his brows. Looks long and hard at Sonja, as if considering her request, contemplating his response.
“No,” he replies after a few moments. “You can’t.” He draws breath. “You’ll need to find something else to pack your things in. You can’t take much with you.”
He reaches out to shift one of the side plates on the table, makes room for his elbow.
“Look, aren’t those eggs done yet?”
Sonja glances at the clock. They’ve had fifteen minutes; she fishes them out of the water. She can feel him watching her, his eyes on her back. She works quickly, wants to get away from him, out of the room.
Their clothes are strewn over the bedroom floor, the mattresses cast aside. She opens the wardrobe door to find something to pack everything inside. Ilse’s dress hangs there, the white one with the red spots; she lets her hand glide briefly over the thin fabric. On the floor of the wardrobe is something curled in a heap, a sack made of a coarse woolen fabric; she hasn’t seen it in years. Sonja pulls it out and unfurls it.
Then she hears a sound from the bed.
“Miriam?”
She had forgotten about her, so preoccupied with getting everything in order, gathering their clothes and food, sorting things out when it seemed that nobody else would. Miriam is sitting on the bed. Has she been there all along?
“It’ll be okay, Miriam,” Sonja says.
Her tone is gentle. She sounds unconvincing even to herself, insincere.
“Really?”
Sonja nods, smiling at her.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Miriam asks.
“I don’t know.”
Miriam looks at her long and hard.
“Maybe we’re going on a holiday?” she says.
“Yes. It’ll be a sort of holiday.”
“Do you think we’ll take the train?”
“Maybe.”
“I want to sit by the window.”
Sonja strokes Miriam’s hair, tucking it behind her ears.
“You can. But for now you need to get yourself dressed.”
Miriam hops off the bed and looks at the pile on the floor. She crouches down, finds her underwear and tights, and takes off her nightdress.
Sonja looks at her, her slender frame being gradually bundled up in layer after layer. She hasn’t the time to watch Miriam now, they’re leaving, but they don’t know where they’re going, Ilse isn’t here, there’s a strange man in a gray coat and heavy boots in their kitchen watching them as if they’ve broken the law. And Mum won’t get up. Mum.
Out in the living room. Her mother’s rapid, shallow breathing beneath the eiderdown.
“Mum?”
No reaction.
“Mum! You have to get up!”
And then he’s there, swooping in without warning, the man from the kitchen. He lumbers into the room, stamping his boots, tearing away the eiderdown and throwing it on the floor.
“Get up!” he growls.
Her body is curled up in the fetal position, her arms wrapped around her legs.
“Move, you old bag! I’ve had more than enough of this, get up right now!”
Miriam emerges at the doorway, a sweater half pulled on.
“Go back to your room!”
Sonja’s outburst is strict. She doesn’t want Miriam to see this. But it’s too late. Everything happens so quickly. The man grabs their mother with both hands and roughly pulls her up. Their mother is like a little girl in his huge arms, a mollusk. He sets her down on a chair, staring at her. She collapses, her body folding itself in two, her head falling forward.
“Move!” he says, before disappearing back out into the kitchen.
It is as if her mother is suddenly awake, as if she’s been lying in a coma and is suddenly back with them. She sits straight-backed, glancing at Miriam and then at Sonja. She spits on the floor, a sizable gob, then stands up. Without making a sound or uttering a single word, she takes her clothes into the bedroom, pulls her nightdress over her head, and quickly dresses. When she’s fully clothed she comes back into the living room. Her hands are back at work, her eyes alive; she moves around the room fetching things, placing them on the table, no longer whispering as she glides from one thing to the next. She stops by the bookshelf. Lingers there for a moment. She takes a picture frame, opens the back, removes the glass, and coaxes forth a photograph. All five of them smile in the picture, Ilse, a white ribbon in her hair.
Her mother disappears into the kitchen, where the man is sitting. Sonja can hear her speaking to him, her voice low; she can’t hear what they’re talking about, but the conversation doesn’t last long. When she returns to the living room she places the photograph on the table, staring blankly into the distance.
Sonja crams everything into the coarse woolen sack. In the kitchen she finds a string bag, which she fills with everything she’s placed on the kitchen worktop. The eggs have cooled slightly. She wraps them in brown paper and lays them carefully on top.
“The taxi’s here.”
The man with the boots is standing by the kitchen window. His tone is no longer angry; he’s calmed down. They hear the sound of the front door and the policeman with the high-pitched voice appears once again. The man who has been keeping watch steps out into the hallway to greet him.
“Has everything gone to plan?” the policeman asks.
“Yes.”
“And the woman? No longer laughing, I presume?”
“I made sure of it.”
“Good,” the high-pitched voice snarls.
Her mother and Miriam have put on their coats and hats and Miriam is clutching her doll close to her. They stand in the doorway between the living room and hallway.
“You are to hand your key to me,” the policeman says. “The apartment will be locked up until further notice.”
He paces quickly around the living room and bedroom, checking everything is in order.
“Leave as quickly and as quietly as possible,” he says, opening the door.
It is cold in the stairwell. The policeman locks the door behind them. Sonja hears the click as he turns the key. As they walk down the stairs, she slides her hand down the cold railing. A door bangs closed downstairs, snow covering the bac
kyard. In the passageway it smells like winter. A black taxi is parked directly outside. The policeman opens the back door. Sonja turns around. The apartment block is dark and still. Behind the curtains on the third floor stands Ingeborg, barely visible.
They sit in the backseat with the sack and string bag between them. Their mother looks out the window while Miriam gazes at the driver. Straight-backed in the front seat, his hat is pulled down snugly over his head. He starts the engine, releases the hand brake, turns the steering wheel to the left, and the car rolls out onto the street.
HE CAN’T TURN AROUND. HE CAN’T HIDE either. He is sure they’ve seen him, they must have, he can feel their gazes on the back of his head, he can sense the questions that hover in the air between them. His right hand has started to tremble. As long as he keeps a decent grip on the steering wheel, it doesn’t bother him, but as soon as he moves his hand to the gear stick, as soon as he is required to do anything other than steer, that’s when it starts. He feels it travel all the way from his shoulder and down through his arm, an engine he can’t switch off; he’s shaking like an old man, like a patient with some kind of critical illness.
Ole Rustad drives his car down Toftes gate, changes gear, stops at the crossroad at Birkelunden Park, where a woman in a green coat is crossing the road. Bloody hell, she’s taking her time, does it really take all day to cross the road? He longs to use his horn, to blare it with all his might, to roll down his window and bellow at her.
He drives on. The same route he had driven only a short while ago.
It had been bad enough with the old folks down on Seilduksgata. He had driven the elderly couple down to Vippetangen not long ago while the Stern family had packed their things. They had sat in his car, man and wife, could have been in their seventies; the man had a walking stick and had been in real pain when he’d had to bend over and climb into the taxi. His wife had helped him, taking one of his legs and maneuvering it into place in the backseat before placing the stick on the floor of the vehicle and sitting next to him, wheezing slightly with each breath that she took. He had heard them speaking to each other, their voices low, whispering in a language he didn’t understand; could it have been Russian? He hadn’t turned around, hadn’t spoken to them, but he had seen them in the mirror, both holding hands.
He tries to avoid looking in the mirror now, staring instead at the road in front of him. It’s quiet in the car. He can hear his own breathing, short pants, like an animal. His shirt clings to his back, his hat strains at his temples. Why the hell is it just the three of them? He can’t ask. He can’t mention Ilse, can’t let on to the policeman that he knows the passengers. So bloody queasy. Steering, changing gear, braking, stopping, that’s all there is to it, that’s all he can do, just transport his passengers from A to B.
They approach Vippetangen, quay number 1. He stops by the fence and turns off the engine. There are more people now than there were before, lines of them, the ship looming a few hundred meters away, towering and gray.
The passengers exit through the back doors of the car. They’re carrying a thick woolen sack of some kind and a string bag, and they gather by the vehicle for a moment. He doesn’t move a muscle. Can’t turn around. Can’t speak. What could he possibly say? What should he do? Pull them back inside the vehicle and drive off at full speed, past the men in the German uniforms? They would fire at his car, maybe even kill him in the process, or Mrs. Stern, or Sonja, maybe even Miriam. They wouldn’t hesitate, not for a second; they’d use their weapons. He had seen what had happened with the walking stick, the way that one of the men in a German uniform had mocked the old man, laughed at him, taken his stick, snapped it in two and hurled it into the water. The old man had hobbled onward, leaning on his wife for support as a few of the guards whooped and called out to them. No, this wasn’t the place to make a scene. Anyway, where would they have gone? Out of Oslo, into the countryside? He didn’t know anyone who lived in the countryside, and they’d have been discovered sooner or later. Lilly and Karin would lose a father, plus Anna, and the baby on the way, he’s thinking of them too, could he really leave them to fend for themselves? Where are they going, where are all of these people going? There must be a plan. It might not exactly be a holiday they were embarking on, but maybe it was better for them to take this ship wherever it was going than it would be to live as fugitives? They’re probably being taken to a work camp somewhere; he’s heard about these places. And they’ll all be back, just as soon as things have calmed down a little.
A knock at his window. Miriam is standing outside. He sees her out of the corner of his eye, her red coat, her scarf, her hair. He sits in silence, staring straight ahead. His muscles are tense, but that bloody tremble, he can feel it in his legs now too. He can’t turn around, can’t roll down his window, can’t wish her a safe journey. God-awful nausea.
“Drive on,” says the policeman. “There are more names on this list.”
Ole Rustad drives his car away from Quay 1. In his mirror he can see Miriam, Sonja, and Mrs. Stern as they make their way along the quay. His stomach rumbles, swirling like a drum rotating on its axis, the sweaty odor making him feel sick; he can’t shake the question, it’s all he can think about. Where the hell is Ilse?
THEY’VE ARRIVED, AND THE SHIP BOBS on the waves in the harbor basin, slowly up and down, a floating gray block, letters on the prow: Donau.
“Are we going by boat, Sonja?”
Miriam’s voice is quiet, almost a whisper. She holds Sonja’s hand, clutching her doll close to her with her free hand.
“I think so.”
“But you said we’d be taking the train. You said I could sit by the window.”
“And you can. If we take the train.”
“Sonja?”
“Yes?”
“How long will we be on the boat for?”
“I don’t know, Miriam.”
“Sonja?”
“Yes?”
“Will Ilse be here soon?”
Sonja hesitates, thinks things over; how can she answer that question? She has always tried to answer Miriam’s questions, even when she knows very little herself, tried to be calm, to act as if nothing is going to harm them, that everything will be just fine. But now. Here. The quayside is packed with people, coats, hats, caps, kids—many are crying, two old people cling to each other, a woman in a fur coat holds a baby in her arms wearing a little red hat. Suitcases, bags—people’s belongings strewn everywhere, some people sitting on their luggage—the noises, loud, scraping.
A little boy in a blue woolly hat turns around and looks at Miriam. He’s holding hands with a woman in a white shawl standing with her back to them, but when she turns around Sonja can see that her belly protrudes from her open coat. She says something to the boy, pointing at the suitcase that lies next to them. The boy looks down, disappears for a moment in the throng of people, and then reappears. He looks at them, Miriam, curiosity lighting up his face, then scrunches up his eyes and sticks out his tongue. Miriam hasn’t seen him; she’s too busy looking up at Sonja. Sonja can tell that she wants an answer to her question, but what can she possibly say, there is no answer, she can’t say what she fears to be true: They’ll be leaving without Ilse.
Miriam’s cold fingers holding Sonja’s hand, squeezing tight, tugging at her.
“Sonja?”
“I’m going to look for Ilse,” Sonja says. “Maybe she’s somewhere around here. Stay here. I’ll be back soon.”
The guard, he’d hit their mother with a rubber club when she hadn’t been able to explain Ilse’s absence at the checkpoint. They’d had to tell them everything, and everything they said had to match the information on the list, but there was one thing that wasn’t there, yet should have been; a large hole they couldn’t fill, questions they had no answer to. The guard was young, not much more than twenty perhaps, an acute glint in his eyes, on the prowl; he measured them up as he gazed at them, green uniform and black boots, German. He approached their mother,
stood directly before her; she didn’t flinch, only looked down, gripping the sack tightly. There was a long silence. His breath in their mother’s face. And then suddenly, without warning, he had screamed in her ear: “Judenschwein!” When her mother was sure he had finished she made an error of judgment. She lifted her head and met his gaze, for a brief moment looking him directly in the eye. Then there he was with the club. Quick as a flash he pulled it from his belt, lifted his arm, and brought it down across her face. Their mother fell forward, holding her forehead, blood trickling between her fingers. Miriam wailed. The guard turned around and gave a signal to the man at the checkpoint that they could carry on, he was done with them. He returned the club to his belt and walked over to the two other men in green uniforms, took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, and offered it to the others as they chatted and laughed together.
Sonja looks at them, her mother with her handkerchief, Miriam with her doll. They say nothing to one another. Her mother unfolds the handkerchief to find a clean spot to hold to her wound, pressing the fabric to her head.
What had Ilse been wearing when she’d run out the door the previous day? Brown coat, lace-ups, white wool hat. The crowd huddles together; Sonja goes from one person to the next asking if anyone has seen a young girl, all on her own, wearing a brown coat, a wool hat; she whispers the words. A woman with three children gathered around her points.
“She’s over there,” she says. “Over by the sick people.”
Sonja feels a stabbing sensation within. The sick people. Sonja hasn’t come across any sick people, not yet. But now, as she turns around, she can see stretchers being carried in. She doesn’t know quite what she hopes to find, whether it’s hope or fear that rises within her; she can’t work out what she sees.
A girl stands there with her back to Sonja. A brown coat and a wool hat, she’s all on her own, a few meters from a family sitting on two suitcases, motionless, like a statue that has been erected in the middle of the quay. Sonja runs, blood pumping through her body, forgetting for just a moment where she is, that she has to be careful, the guards in green uniforms, she mustn’t attract attention.
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