The Last Pilgrim

by Gard Sveen

  She was listening to the conversation at the table with only half an ear, occasionally interjecting a remark, but mostly thinking about other things. She poked listlessly at her food and finally gave up trying to look interested.

  The Pilgrim, she thought. London. Imagine living—and loving!—in London with him. No Germans, just the two of them. For nearly two years she had managed to resist him, but it had eventually become too much. It had just been a matter of time before they fell into each other’s arms. One morning last fall they’d woken up in bed together. They’d had too much to drink with Number 1 in a safe house the night before. It was one of the few times she’d seen Number 1 since April of 1940, when she’d been questioned. He had seemed depressed and neurotic, but she hadn’t really been paying attention. The only thing she could think about was getting the Pilgrim into bed after Number 1 fell asleep on the sofa. And it had proved to be so easy. The Pilgrim said that he’d loved her ever since the first time they met at the Floris. Agnes was old enough to know that men often said such things, but she wanted to believe him, and he actually seemed to mean it.

  What a fine mess, she thought to herself now. Two men. The damned war. And she hadn’t seen the Pilgrim in two months. Two whole months without him. The first month had been almost unbearable. She’d had to sleep with Schreiner every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And no Pilgrim. Not a single word from him since March. And she couldn’t very well ask Number 1 where he was.

  Maybe it was best if he stayed away. Their relationship was sheer madness. It was suicide.

  The worst part was that she’d started to get used to the idea that they might never see each other again. For all she knew, he might be dead.

  “Darling, what is it?” Schreiner asked when dessert had been served. The lights had been dimmed, and the dance floor was crowded with women in evening gowns, a few men in tuxes, and the Germans in uniform.

  The chocolate cake tasted strongly of some kind of ersatz butter, no doubt whale blubber, which the chef had tried to disguise under a deluge of vanilla sauce that tasted nothing like vanilla.

  “It’s nothing,” said Agnes, pushing the cake away and reaching for Schreiner’s cigarettes. He held up his lighter, feigning concern and giving her a sheepish smile. As she took her first drag, she suddenly sensed that someone was staring at her. Without changing her expression she leaned back and squeezed Schreiner’s hand, which he had clearly placed on the table in the hope she would do exactly that.

  Agnes discreetly surveyed the various tiers, which were arranged in a horseshoe shape around the dance floor. Their table was close to the wall, so she didn’t have a very good view, but she remained convinced that someone was watching her. She was used to men staring at her, but this felt different.

  “Come on,” she said to Schreiner. “Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?” She stood up, pulling him with her. Although much could be said for Supreme Court Advocate Schreiner, he would never be described as a great dancer. In fact, he was terrible. But Agnes didn’t intend to dance with him for long. After a few bumbling rounds on the dance floor, with Schreiner’s hand indecently planted on her lower back, she spotted the man who was practically staring her down.

  He was sitting at a table on the other side of the room with a large group of German officers, a couple of civilians, and some young Norwegian women. His graying hair was slicked back and his tux was so new that the lapels gleamed. He sat there, motionless, watching her every move. Every time Schreiner swung her in the man’s direction, she met his gaze. Even through the haze of cigarette smoke hovering over his table, she could see that he looked terribly sad. Agnes tried to step back from Schreiner a bit so she could get a better view of her admirer. He looked a little gloomy for someone sitting in the Rainbow Club, but his face seemed to brighten every time she looked at him. And the German officers at his table wore insignia proclaiming ranks that Schreiner’s Teutonic acquaintances could only dream of. Something made her think that the officers were deferential to the man in the tux, and not the other way around. He might be a German himself, but that was of little importance. What mattered was that he was taking a discreet and yet obvious interest in her. This was an opportunity she ought to seize.

  When the music stopped they remained on the dance floor for a few seconds until Schreiner decided he’d had enough. Agnes was facing the man’s table, with her arm around Schreiner’s back. The man in the tux raised his glass, and for a moment it looked as if he might smile, but then he changed his mind. Agnes gave him a quick smile before Schreiner led her from the floor.

  Agnes felt disappointed at having to sit down at the table with the attorney again. This could be my big chance, she thought. That man over there is not just anybody. She lowered her eyes and evaded Schreiner’s attempt to start up a lengthy conversation. A few minutes later, the band took their second break of the evening, giving her just the opening she was looking for. While some people headed back to their tables, others went up to the bar on the uppermost tier. Suddenly Agnes had a clear view from her table to where the man in the tux was sitting. He met her eyes as he raised his glass. This time he did smile. Although the German seated next to him was clearly speaking to him, he kept his gaze fixed on Agnes.

  Finally, even Schreiner noticed that Agnes was exchanging glances with another man. He placed his hand on hers. She turned to look at the dim-witted Bjørg, who stared at her and frowned, as if she couldn’t understand how Agnes would be interested in anyone but Helge Schreiner.

  “You’re here with me,” said the attorney between clenched teeth. “Yet you’re sitting here making eyes at another man.”

  “Who is he?” asked Agnes, unfazed. She leaned across the table and motioned toward the other side of the smoke-filled room, where two high-ranking German officers had gotten up from the table and were now escorting their young dates over to the bar.

  Schreiner’s expression turned surly, as if he could read her thoughts. All she could see were the officers’ insignia and the patently attractive man in the tux. If you only knew, thought Agnes as she took his hand. He was twenty years her senior. If he’d looked in her purse, he would have found a cyanide capsule wrapped in toilet paper. She’d hidden it in her panties several times when she was panicked. Fortunately he was enough of a gentleman that he never put his hands between her legs until after she’d undressed.

  “It’s a tragic story,” said Rolf Jordal. “That’s Gustav Lande. Maybe you’ve heard of him? Lande’s wife died in childbirth a few years back. Now he lives alone with his daughter and all his money in that big house in Vinderen.”

  Agnes tried to hide her glee, but she felt goosebumps appear on her arms. She’d heard Lande mentioned several times at the countless NS meetings she’d had to attend over the past two years. Mostly it was just a lot of sentimental gibberish, but Agnes had understood that Lande was a man whom every Norwegian Nazi admired. He didn’t allow anyone to take advantage of him, not even the Germans. He’d helped the Party through difficult times several years ago when nothing was going Quisling’s way, and now he was apparently on familiar terms with Terboven and everyone who came to beg for the scraps from his table.

  So that was Gustav Lande smiling at her. His face had regained some of its spark. Though he wasn’t exactly handsome, he was far more dapper than Helge Schreiner.

  “You’re here with me,” said Schreiner, putting his hand on her thigh and squeezing so hard that it hurt. When she tried to move her leg away, he just squeezed even harder.

  “We’re going for a walk,” said Rolf, pulling Bjørg out of her chair.

  Agnes lifted Schreiner’s hand off her thigh. Strangely enough, he offered no resistance. This is an opportunity I can’t pass up, she thought.

  “Helge,” she whispered, squeezing his hand. “We can’t go on like this anymore. You know that.”

  She didn’t how he would react. Schreiner had been increasingly worried lately that his wife was getting more suspicious. As if she doesn’t know,
thought Agnes.

  His eyes filled with tears. It looked like he was about to cry like a boy. Amazing, she thought. Maybe she should try to hold onto him a little longer. Schreiner blinked and then apologized. But it was too late. Gustav Lande was already heading over to their table. Agnes felt her heart pounding under her black dress. As he approached, she saw that he was more attractive than she’d thought.

  “Would you mind if I invited your friend here to dance?” Lande asked Schreiner when he’d reached their table. Lande held out his hand to Agnes without waiting for a reply.

  She felt relieved when Lande’s hand grasped hers. But suddenly—as she had done so many times before—she wondered what the cyanide would taste like the day she got caught. Because surely she would get caught. No doubt it would taste awful, but it would spare her so much pain. Briskly she dismissed the idea, as if it were too dangerous to even contemplate, as if it might actually come to pass if she thought about it too long.

  “Isn’t he too old for you?” said Lande when they were out on the dance floor. The band was playing a waltz, probably requested, or maybe even ordered, by some German officer. He gave her a smile, well aware that he wasn’t much younger than Schreiner.

  They danced in silence for a while. Unlike Schreiner, Lande was a good dancer who confidently led her across the floor. Agnes stopped thinking about what would happen if he searched her purse and found the cyanide capsule. She stopped thinking about the fact that Schreiner might fire her on Monday. Instead, she closed her eyes, leaned close to him, and imagined that all this was over, that she was with the Pilgrim and not Lande, that her own mother was not her mother, that her father was still alive, and that she and the Pilgrim lived in a small house out in the country, maybe in Kent or out near Westerham Ponds.

  “I haven’t danced in years,” Lande said in her ear as the music was coming to an end. He smelled of aftershave and cigars and alcohol, but she almost found it attractive.

  “I couldn’t tell,” she said.

  “Would you dance the next tune with me?”

  Agnes nodded.

  “I have a strange feeling that I’ve seen you before,” said Lande.

  God have mercy, thought Agnes.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Maybe in my dreams,” said Lande. Strangely enough, she found his smile appealing, even disarming; it was as if he wanted to show her that he wasn’t dangerous. That she didn’t need to be afraid.

  Fifteen minutes later Schreiner was gone, and Agnes told herself that she didn’t need to be scared as she sat down at Lande’s table and conversed with an SS-Sturmbannführer about the importance of deporting the Jews from Norway too, in order to cleanse the country of all internal enemies. Lande kept his hand discreetly resting on her back the whole time.

  “You make me feel alive again,” he whispered in her ear. A shriek came from across the table as one of the young women burst out laughing in response to something one of the other guests had said. The German officers joined in, laughing in a boisterous and vulgar way that would have been more appropriate out in a field than here at the Rainbow.

  Agnes smiled and reached out to squeeze Lande’s hand. He looked away for a moment, as if he were embarrassed by what he’d said. Agnes studied his profile. Though he couldn’t be more than forty, his hair was already gray. His face was almost free of wrinkles, and although not exactly handsome, he was attractive and had nice eyes. Even if he is a Nazi, thought Agnes.

  A light rain was falling from the black sky as Agnes Gerner stood on her street. The cab she’d taken from the Rainbow had driven off, and Hammerstads Gate was utterly quiet. She’d been fumbling for her keys in her purse when she’d paused at the sound of an approaching car. Had it followed her here? The headlights only came on when the car was ten or twelve yards away. Though she still couldn’t find the damn key, she made it to the front door faster than she would have thought possible, considering how drunk she was.

  She looked over her shoulder and saw two faint lights from under the blackout headlights. Thank God. It wasn’t the Germans. They would never drive a Dodge—at least she thought it was a Dodge. But it wasn’t a taxi either. She made a futile attempt to hide her face under the brim of her hat, then turned back to the door to keep searching for her key. Through the faint sound of the rain, she could hear the car behind her slow down. Then it sped up again and disappeared.

  At last she found her key.

  She cautiously climbed the stairs to the third floor. By the time she reached the landing, she felt so tired she could hardly stay on her feet. For a moment she stood swaying in front of the door on which, for some reason, her mother had put up an expensive brass sign engraved with the name “Gerner.” Images from the evening whirled through Agnes’s mind: the glittering chandeliers, the way Lande smelled, the candid behavior of the German officers toward her, and the fear of what Schreiner might do, although that had gradually lost its hold on her. But most important of all: Gustav Lande, who had not once made a pass at her or pressured her for anything but the pleasure of her company that evening. When she said that she needed to be going, he didn’t try to stop her or persuade her to join the after-party at his villa in Vinderen. All he’d done, aside from paying her cab fare, was to stroke her cheek and thank her for a most enjoyable evening. Agnes had almost forgotten that Lande was a Nazi who had practically single-handedly saved not only Quisling’s career but the finances of the Party.

  When she finally unlocked the door to her apartment and stepped inside, she started to cry. In a strange way she’d been on the verge of tears ever since she’d leaned close to Lande when they danced for the first time and her thoughts had turned to the Pilgrim.

  Stop it, she thought. Stop it, you sentimental bitch. She bit the inside of her cheek, just as she’d done when that damn Christopher Bratchard made her shoot Bess. With quick, determined steps, as if she’d suddenly sobered up, she walked across the parquet floor and kicked off her high heels. Then she drew the blackout curtains in front of the two big windows in the living room. The light from the floor lamp next to the sofa hurt her eyes, as though reminding her that she mustn’t forget why she’d ended up at Gustav Lande’s table.

  Only when she turned around did she notice that she’d left the front door open.

  What was that?

  A sound.

  In the stairwell.

  A shadow fell across the floorboards in the entryway.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but stopped herself. The outline of a man filled the doorway. The light from the floor lamp didn’t reach that far, so it was impossible to see his face. No lights were on in the stairwell, and the entryway was pitch dark.

  My purse, she thought as the man took a step forward. I have to get my purse! But she was incapable of making the slightest move forward. It wasn’t Schreiner, and it couldn’t be Gustav Lande.

  “Didn’t you see me?” the man said quietly as he closed the door behind him. “I was sitting on the stairs right behind you.” He took off his hat and stood there, holding it in both hands.

  The familiar voice was like a punch in the stomach. He’d been gone for two full months, and now, on this very evening—this strange evening—he was standing there in her entryway.

  “Where have you been?” she said, speaking so softly she could barely even hear herself. Or maybe her words were just drowned out by the blood hammering in her temples.

  The Pilgrim’s face seemed to have changed over the past two months, just as everything else had changed. The last time he was here, sneaking in like a thief in the night, it was still winter outside, and the world had seemed impossible. But now mild winds were sweeping through the city, leaves were appearing on the branches of the birch trees, and there was a sense that all the evil would come to an end one day.

  He came over to stand in front of her.

  “You’re back,” she said.

  Suddenly he began kissing her. Then he tore off her dress.

  A
gnes practically bit him bloody, and she let him come as deep inside her as he could, as if she wanted only one thing, and that was to carry his child. Afterward, he lay on top of her for a long time. Their heartbeats seemed to merge into one, and she tried to hold on to him when he rolled off the sofa and went to find his coat on the living room floor. She studied his boyish, almost ungainly body as he rummaged through his pockets. When he found his cigarettes, he lit one without turning around.

  When he still hadn’t turned around after several minutes, Agnes got up. Only then did she notice how cold she was from lying naked on the sofa. She put her arms around him from behind.

  “You smell like aftershave,” he said in a low voice. “And it’s not Schreiner’s.”

  Agnes turned him around. His eyes were wet with tears. It was the first time she’d seen him cry. In fact, it was the first time she’d seen him show any emotion at all.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Are you seeing someone else?” he said. Agnes held his head in her hands. His face was still so handsome, so astonishingly symmetrical, almost feminine. Only the dark smudges under his eyes and a slightly distant look told her that something had happened. Something she didn’t know about, something she might not want to know about.