Almost Autumn

by Marianne Kaurin

  The tattooists were short of time. They were heavy-handed with their equipment, the numbers appearing crooked and knotted on his skin, his left forearm, a number that was now his new name, his new identity.

  They were assigned a card. On the left side information about each of them had been added to the blank sections. Isak stood with his card in his hand. So there he was, Isak Stern: forty years old, no gold teeth, naked and shaven, one man in a crowd of many others, some numbers on his forearm and a few words written on a single slip of paper. On the right were just three words: Date of Death. It had been left blank.

  He lies there in the freezing-cold bathroom where they’re to spend the night. Isak exhales slowly through his mouth in short wheezes. He draws air in deep through his nostrils, holding it for as long as he can in his lungs before letting it filter out between his lips. He can feel his smooth head against his forearm, sense the questions that linger and quiver within him, uncertainty, nausea. The toothless mouth, the prisoner from yesterday, his words, he must remember them. Never let them see that you’re sick. Pretend that you’re in good health. Never answer yes. Never no. Only answer when there’s no chance at all of getting away without doing so. Never run, even if you’re ordered to. If you run, they’ll shoot you for attempting escape. Forget where you come from, forget who you are, forget that you were once human.

  He has to use his instincts now. Work with his intuition. Sniff out the way forward. Hunt. He has to become an animal.

  DAYS. SIX HAVE PASSED SO FAR. ILSE has remained inside the red room. She has sat on the edge of the bed or curled up under the duvet and stared up at the ceiling. Occasionally Einar Vindju has opened the door and looked in on her. He never says much, just brings her something to eat, placing a plate on the bedside table and closing the door behind him. The rest of the time she has been left to her own devices. The four red walls, the coving on the ceiling, she knows the pattern inside out, the silence of the room allows for so much other noise to intrude, so many thoughts. Mum. Miriam. Sonja. She can hear their voices, their breathing, the wrinkles around her mother’s mouth, she can picture them so clearly, she’d told her that she hated her, had screamed it in her face before leaving, she can’t, it’s impossible, can’t think about that now. She closes her eyes, lies on the bed, and there they are, at home, the whole family. The crowded apartment, the living room, the windows, the sounds of the street outside, the smell of food, her mother’s cooking.

  On the first morning Einar had come in to see her, telling her that he’d be gone for a few hours.

  “Keep away from the window,” he had said, placing a tea plate with two slices of bread on the bedside table. “Nobody can know that you’re here, you see.” He smiled. Drew a match, lit a cigarette, blew smoke rings inside the room.

  It was so silent after he left. No sound from the neighbors, no commotion from the stairwell, no crying or shouting children. It was so different from what she was used to. As if she were all alone in the huge tenement building, as if there weren’t a single other person on any of the other floors. She lay in her bed, her body aching. After a few hours she got up. She should be quiet, Einar had told her, but without thinking too much about it her legs began to move. She stalked her way around, first in the red room, from the bed and over to the wardrobe against the wall, opening the doors and peering inside: empty shelves, a few clothing hangers on a rail. She closed the wardrobe door. She opened the door that led into the hallway, darkness, doors, so many doors, all closed; she walked toward the entrance. The glass door into the parlor, she coaxed the sliding door open carefully, pushing it to one side and staring into the large room. There were painting things everywhere, it looked more like a studio than a room in a house, the scent of chemicals tearing at the inside of her nostrils. On an easel by the window stood a half-finished painting: a plump, naked body in shades of blue. She ran a hand over the picture, felt the way the paint had been applied in thick layers in certain sections. The sunlight beamed through the large window and spread throughout the room, the sky outside a bright shade of blue. In a few hours it would be dark.

  She walked back along the hallway. How many rooms could there be here? Eight doors. Did he have eight rooms?

  There had been others here before her, he’d said, as if it were some kind of hotel that he was running. Who were they? Young girls like her? Others all on their own? Other Jews?

  Hermann Rød. He still hasn’t come. She had waited for him on the first day, on all the other days after that too, waited and hoped that he would appear, but it has been quiet. She wonders why he hasn’t been, why he’s dropped her off here and left, sent no word; he had said he’d be back. She asked Einar about it, if he’d heard from Hermann; he didn’t reply, instead simply shrugging his shoulders and hurrying out of the room. On the first day Einar had been gone all day long. Now he’s back again, in the apartment, all the time. He sits in the kitchen. Smokes. He never opens the front door when anyone knocks.

  She lies on the bed with her nose buried in Hermann’s sweater; it still smells like him, soft and boyish.

  The door into the hallway is open and suddenly she hears a voice, Einar, he’s on the telephone in the kitchen. She tries to make out what he’s saying, he speaks in hushed tones; the only word she can make out is “turnip.” Turnip? Was he running some kind of black market operation? She closes the door, once again returning to the bed.

  “Ilse,” Einar says from the doorway, walking over and sitting beside her on the edge of the bed. “I need you to listen carefully. In one hour you must go out onto the street. You will walk to Frognerveien and stand in front of the grocery shop. Stay there and look in the window until a man approaches you and introduces himself as Andersen. He’ll ask you if you are Inger, and you will say yes. The man will take you somewhere else.”

  He takes a deep breath.

  “Do you understand everything I’ve told you?”

  “Yes,” Ilse whispers, looking at him. “I understand.”

  Outside it has started to grow dark. The streets are wide open and empty, the sidewalks shining in the light drizzle. She crosses the street and the tenement building looms behind her. She can see Einar at the living room window, no more than a vague shape, a gray body up there above her. The rain falls softly on her forehead; she keeps her eyes to the ground as she walks. She doesn’t know the area well; the names on the street signs still seem foreign to her. Einar has given her clear directions, his words linger in her mind; according to what he had told her she should almost be there, but what if she were to make a mistake? What if she hadn’t been listening properly?

  Frognerveien, she spots the road sign. She needs to take a left here and follow the road upward. The shop is on the left side of the street, she searches for it in the gloomy, dwindling light. Twenty meters farther she spots a white sign hanging over a doorway.

  She stands in front of the shop window and peers at the meager selection of goods advertised. Fish skin shoes. Cowberries from Voksenkollen. Do you have old sheets at home? They can be transformed into children’s clothing. The shop. Her father. Suddenly she pictures him behind the cash desk, the scent of brown paper, the sound of Sonja behind the sewing machine.

  A man in a brown coat crosses the street. She stands still, hearing the way his galoshes slap against the asphalt, noting every step as he approaches her; he’s right behind her now. He stops there; she can hear the sound of his breathing, the scent of tobacco.

  “Now then, miss, are you standing here and dreaming of better times?”

  She doesn’t turn around. She stands motionless, as if she were a doll on display in the window, an extension of the darkened grocery shop.

  “May I offer you a cigarette, miss?”

  She doesn’t move an inch. Wishes that he would go. She can’t stand here and make small talk, not now.

  “Do you live around here, miss?”

  He could be Andersen. Maybe he just wants her to turn around so he can ask her if she’s Inger
, maybe all he wants is eye contact with her, just so he can explain who he is?

  She turns her head slightly, looking at him. A young man; he smiles at her.

  “Where are you off to, miss?”

  What should she say? She stands there with her mouth half open and gazes at him, waiting for him to utter the magic word: Andersen. He stands there. Still smiling. But he doesn’t say it.

  “Now then, what do you say, miss? Would you like a cigarette?”

  At that moment she catches sight of something else. A shadow, something dark, on the opposite side of the street, half concealed behind a tree.

  “No, thank you,” she says, giving a cautious smile. “I need to go home now.”

  She turns around and walks in the opposite direction, crossing the street. Just as long as he doesn’t follow her, as long as he continues on his way. She listens for the sound of his galoshes, stops for a moment to hear more clearly. Yes, there’s someone walking behind her. She turns to see whether it’s the young man. It’s not him. It is the man she had just seen standing by the tree. She stands still; she can hear him getting closer; she doesn’t turn around before she hears his voice.

  “Inger?” he whispers.

  She nods. He takes her arm in his own, as if they were father and daughter, out together in the evening drizzle, making their way home. He doesn’t say another word, simply walks and stares into the distance. It is as if he has no face, no voice, only a body that guides her through the wet city streets. They turn onto Kirkeveien, Frogner Park just across the road from them, dark and quiet like a gaping black hole. They pass by Kirkeveien 23, the same building, it’s quiet there now, a few guards out smoking under the shelter of a small roof.

  Farther up the street they turn right. Middelthuns gate, he stops outside a brown door, rings one of the bells, Wesnes written beside it. Behind the frosted glass of the front door Ilse sees a shadow approaching, closer and closer. The door opens, revealing a woman wearing a white apron, her fair hair pinned up neatly. She sticks her head out.

  “How lovely to see you!” she loudly announces in a Bergen dialect, glancing momentarily around them in the street. “Come in.”

  Once inside, everything unfolds as if in a silent film, facts exchanged swiftly, as if Andersen were delivering a package, something changing hands, traded goods.

  “Very well,” the woman whispers, giving Andersen a sign and pointing behind her. He creeps down a set of stairs, opens a door, and disappears out into what looks to be a backyard.

  “You come with me,” the woman says to Ilse, her tone gentle, caring. “My name is Ellen.” She takes Ilse’s hand and leads her up to the next floor.

  Two broad doors lead into the apartments upstairs. She opens the door to the left and lets Ilse in first.

  THE ROOM IS SMALL AND CRAMPED, square, the air stale, cool and raw. If he stands against one wall, he can walk exactly four steps before having to turn back around. Hermann does exactly this. He walks four steps, stops, and turns around. High up on one wall is a narrow opening, a tiny window. It is closed, and in front of the glass are bars, closely spaced; it would be impossible to slip a hand through. If he stands directly underneath the window, he can take exactly four steps before he bumps into the door. He starts pacing, one, two, three, four, lays his hand against the cold steel door, turns and walks in the opposite direction, one, two, then stops. He stands in the middle of the room, his arms by his side, feels their weight, the way they hang by his body, the faint prickling sensation within them. He feels the numbness, the anxiety. They could be back any minute. He mustn’t talk.

  Ilse. She had been sitting on the bed when he left. He is still wearing the same clothes now, he was supposed to go back, he had promised her, she’s waiting for him—Einar, he hasn’t managed to get word to him.

  He had walked all the way home after taking Ilse to Frogner that day. There was nobody outside the building, nobody in the backyard, he let himself in and started making his way up the stairs, a light jog, taking several steps at a time. Just as he was about to reach his front door on the third floor, he heard a sound, a voice. He turned around. Ole Rustad stood on the landing between the third and fourth floors, leaning over the railing and waving his arms, whispering something, fast and impossible to fathom.

  The door to the apartment opened. Ole Rustad vanished.

  “Hermann Rød?” The voice was high-pitched; he recognized it.

  The policeman shoved him inside the apartment.

  His mother and father stood beside each other in the living room, clothes and blankets all over the floor, furniture in all the wrong places. The policeman with the high-pitched voice and a man in a gray coat and heavy boots stood in the middle of the room.

  “We’re looking for Ilse Stern,” the policeman said. “We strongly suspect that you have something to do with her disappearance.”

  Silence. The policeman coughed.

  His mother was in her apron, she avoided his gaze; his father was in his undershirt, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “I’ve told them, Hermann, that you’ve been with that painter in Frogner, that you take evening classes, that you were there all day yesterday.”

  His father walked over to the sofa, leaned over, and pulled out one of the paintings. His alibi. He hadn’t ever expected it to be a credible one, he couldn’t even draw a straight line, yet there stood his father, holding the picture, showing it off, just as Hermann had done himself all those times he’d come home to his parents.

  “What’s his name again, Hermann? Tell them, Hermann, what’s his name?”

  Møllergata 19. They’d driven him there, escorted him out of the backseat and into the building, down into the cellar, along the narrow corridors, down into the darkness, into a cell, closed the door. He’d come up with a name, a different address. But Frogner, how many artists lived there, how long would it take the police to form a list, look them up? They’d already been at Einar’s door, on the same day that he was supposed to meet Ilse to go to the pictures. He imagines Einar’s apartment, someone breaking into the yellow room, tearing away the thick blankets that blacked out the windows, daylight breaking through and illuminating everything inside the room: the typewriter, the wireless in the dark brown box, the piles of paper, Ilse in the neighboring room, the whole universe they’d established there—he pictures it all, exposed.

  Now he lies on a bench and stares up at a point on the ceiling. There’s a crack up above him, a long line that inches toward the center of the room. For a moment it is as if he is lying in his own bed in the living room at home, lying there and staring at the ceiling before finally drifting off to sleep, so many nights spent the same way, motionless, tense, just staring upward.

  Nobody has spoken to him for several days. He suspects this is part of the game they’re playing with him, breaking him down, eradicating any trace of resistance—then all that remains is to launch their attack, gorge themselves, extract the confessions from him one by one. He recalls the day he had met with Einar and heard that they’d brought in the death penalty. Would they implement it now; was all of this worth dying for?

  Einar would no doubt say yes, but what about him? He twists and turns, his pulse rate increasing, his head thumping. He has to keep quiet. Just a few more days, so Ilse can get away. Einar must know that something has happened, but just a few more days, he has to keep his mouth shut.

  He drifts in and out of light sleep, escaping into a dream before being roused by the sound of footsteps in the corridor, keys. He stands up and stares at the door. He watches as it opens, hears the creak of the hinges. They’ve come to fetch him. He holds his breath. Tenses his muscles until they burn. Seals his lips.

  DAYS AND NIGHTS. DAYS AND NIGHTS. How many have passed? Time is erased, the hours merging into one another like sticky shadows, filled with minutes and seconds, thoughts back and forth. Unease. Ilse has been sleeping in a small maid’s room just off the kitchen. A narrow bed pushed up against one wall, a bedside t
able, a window facing the backyard, a mirror over a chest of drawers.

  “Do you like reading?” Ellen had asked her on one of her first days there.

  She had brought her a book that had been left there by her daughter, who had married a few years ago and since moved out; it was curling at the corners and smelled dusty, a romance novel. Ilse had allowed her eyes to rest on the pages of the book, reading the same words over and over again. When she reached the final page, she closed the book and couldn’t recall a single word of what she had just read.

  She can hear Ellen in the kitchen clattering pots and pans, the sound of running water, glasses and plates clinking against the bottom of the sink. So similar, these sounds. It could have been any old kitchen. Her mother, leaning over the sink, drying the wet dishes with a blue-checked tea towel, stacking them on the shelves above the kitchen table.

  Ellen brought her meals. On the first day she had asked Ilse if she wanted to join her and her husband in the kitchen. The prospect of sitting at the table for a whole meal was too much, she couldn’t face it, she was so tired, lifeless. Ellen placed a plate on her bedside table, patted her lightly on the head, and closed the door behind her as she left the room. Ilse had taken one bite and had promptly fallen asleep. When she woke again several hours later, the food was still there, a few cold potatoes and a rubbery piece of fish.

  Days and nights. It must have been over a week now. Just how long will she be here for?

  One evening she stood in front of the mirror. It was old and distorted, and everything looked crooked in the wobbly glass; her cheekbones rippled, Hermann’s sweater draped over her body like a loose curtain. Was this Ilse Stern? A skinny, empty body, indistinct features staring back at her. She thought about all of the effort she had gone to, all of her attempts to improve her appearance, Vaseline on her eyelids, a warm cloth over her face twice each day, the two balls of yarn she’d placed inside her tight-fitting, childish undershirt. And now?