Norwegian by Night (17 page)

And so, before the end, there was a moment of grace.

In that moment, Sheldon raised the camera to his eye and took their picture.

The release of the shutter freed time to carry onward. Sheldon watched Saul step on the trip wire that set off the explosion that would kill his only child. He watched from a position in front of Saul and Eli Johnson, just off the footpath to their left.

When it happened, Herman came running up behind him and towards Saul.

The VC had packed the bombs with nails and ball bearings and — perversely — casings from American rifles they'd picked up off the ground from a previous battle.

All these items tore through Saul's legs, his groin, and his lower torso.

Before the pain registered on his face he collapsed, because there were no longer bones, muscles, or ligaments to hold him up. Lt Johnson's body came down on the side of the path, and would not be recovered by the team. Only his dog tags, in Saul's pocket, would make it back to the US, his parents, and the coffin they would be buried in.

Herman screamed and started to cry almost immediately. He grabbed Saul by the lapels of his shirt and, with the strength of the terrified, hoisted him onto his back, much as Saul had carried Johnson, and Donny had carried Mario, and men throughout history have carried one another.

The shooting began as soon as Herman started running.

No one looked at Sheldon any more. No one paid him any heed at all. Even Bill was gone.

Herman ran a full click through the jungle, into the tiny village, out to the boat. Ritchie was manning the M60 and firing wildly into the woods to provide covering fire, but he didn't know if there was even anyone there.

Trevor was still poised on the bench behind the Monk.

As soon as they were aboard, the boat started moving, and soon they were free of the land.

But it wasn't over.

The Monk turned the boat around so they could open it up heading downstream, and put more distance between themselves and whatever was in the bushes.

Herman stuck a morphine syringe into Saul's carotid artery and then stuck two pads on the femoral arteries of his legs.

This field dressing would keep Saul alive for three more days once the boat made it back to the port, but he would never regain consciousness.

Sheldon sat on the bench next to Trevor. There was nothing he could do for Saul — the son who had once stood on his lap to study his nose with the intensity of a scientist, and had put his fingers in his father's joyful tears.

He watched passively as the boat rounded a bend towards a line of wooden rafts. He opened his eyes wide as machine-gun fire from those same rafts started pelting the hull.

As the bullets came in, the Monk let go of the wheel.

Trevor, who was already coiled, sprang forward and grabbed it, steering them directly towards the first raft at ramming speed.

The Monk impassively walked to the bow of the boat, stood upright at the prow, and then raised his arms like a Brazilian cliff diver, or Jesus and the criminals on their crosses.

Ritchie eviscerated one of the rafts with the M60. Splinters and the red spray of blood made a small cloud around it as the base broke apart.

Herman worked on Saul, Trevor piloted the boat, and the Monk stood there, untouched by man or movement as Saul bled.

This was Sheldon's last vivid image in the dream. It was the one that woke him that night to talk with Mabel and ask his question. The one he still wakes with in the mornings. Somehow, the events of that day are not clear to him beyond this point. He knows the boat made it to safety. Saul was evacuated to Saigon, and died in the hospital. The letter was mailed as promised, and Rhea received her name. Trevor and Herman stayed on the boat until the end of their tour, and then went home.

The Monk never got shot. But one day, in another battle, he allegedly dived into the river and never came back up.

Chapter 10

They approach the small village of Flaskebekk over the port side, and Sheldon sails as close to the coast as he dares. He figures the coast guard won't be interested in a small craft skirting the shore, and that the physical dangers are minimised in case something goes wrong. The weather is not going to change, and the current is not strong.

He has no idea, of course, what is under the surface, but one of the great benefits of the jon boat is its shallow draught. While not an especially seaworthy boat, it is an easy one to pilot.

The rifles he needs are named Moses and Aaron. The cannons they are named after, according to the guidebook that Sheldon leafs through on the voyage, are located at Oscarsborg Fortress on an island not too far ahead, called Søndre Kaholmen. Evidently, on 9 April 1940, the Germans sent a 14,000-ton warship called the
Blücher
into the Oslo fjord to attack the capital, capture the king, and steal the national gold reserves. Though the fortress at Oscarsborg was poorly staffed and had limited defensive capabilities, it did have three 28-centimetre Krupp guns named Moses, Aaron, and Joshua, as well as a commanding officer who didn't mind the odds.

As the ship came into the sound near Drøbak, Colonel Birger Eriksen and the few men under his command engaged the
Blücher
at eighteen hundred metres with Moses and Aaron. They only fired two shots, but they were decisive. The first round penetrated the hull, setting off the German ordnance and oil drums, and the second made it impossible for the ship to return fire.

As the ship burned on, the secret torpedo batteries on the island fired, sinking her and all hands from a range of only five hundred metres.

It is argued that Oscarsborg gave the government enough time to escape and form a resistance in exile that put Norway officially in the Allied camp. Norway soon fell to the Nazi invaders, and the puppet regime took over. Seven hundred and seventy-two Norwegian men, women, and children, who were Jewish, were rounded up by the Norwegian police and the Germans, and deported. Most were sent to Auschwitz.

Thirty-four survived.

Few of the Norwegian police received any punishment, and some were even kept on to retirement. The Holocaust itself was not on Norwegian university curricula for decades after the war. It took more than fifty years for Norway to build a national memorial commemorating the events, and a few more before the Norwegian Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies was opened.

The entire event, it seemed to Sheldon, was spoken of as though by witnesses, not participants. And where Norwegian actions were suspect, they were too easily dismissed in the easy memory of victimhood.

‘The question,' Sheldon says aloud and looking south towards the Oscarsborg fort, ‘is whether we have enough gas to get there.'

The day draws on and on, and the sun never seems to move. Sheldon has never felt time pass so slowly. The entire journey from Oslo to just north of Drøbak is less than seventeen nautical miles, but time and distance on the water are a property of mind.

They sail for four hours before the small engine runs out of gas.

They drift for thirty more minutes as the rising tide brings them gently to shore in a small, rocky bay surrounded by evergreens.

Sheldon considers the line of sight of passing boats, and ties the jon boat off at an angle where it will attract the least attention.

If it were made of wood, he would have sunk it.

If he'd had the strength, he would have pulled it to shore and hid it.

If he'd been younger, he would have plunged a knife into the heart of the attacker and saved the boy's mother.

But things are as they are.

Once safely on shore, with everything removed from the boat, Sheldon is winded. ‘Aren't you going to say anything?' he asks Paul. ‘You can even hit me if you want. I deserve it. I'm sure I do. I should have called the police the second I heard the fight upstairs. Never even occurred to me. Didn't cross my mind. I was too superior to the whole thing. I figured I knew what was what, and that this was all just going to play out with your mother running down the stairs and out to where someone else would look after her. I didn't open the door for her. I opened it for me. Out of spite. To prove to everyone that this is what you're supposed to do. Eighty-two years old, and I still think there's an audience for my actions. Can you believe it? I'm playing to an audience that died fifty years ago. I should have called the police, and if we'd been lucky they would have showed up on time.'

Sheldon is taller than the boy, but he does not actually tower over him. Right now, he is slightly stooped and weary from the voyage. His back curves. They become almost the same height, and Sheldon tries to look him in the eyes.

‘Is it a coincidence,' Sheldon asks, ‘that the older we get, the more we actually look like question marks? What I mean to say is this … I'm sorry. My best never seems to be very good. I've had a couple of moments. Not so many, though, when you consider how many chances I've had. I even missed Saul's birth.

‘I don't want to turn you in yet, do you understand? What if that guy is your father? He was in your apartment at all hours of the night, from the sound of things recently. He was probably there a lot. A boy like you doesn't go mute all of a sudden. You had to learn this. You've probably been terrorised for ages. I could drop you off and then he could rush out and say, ‘My son, you found my son,' and then I'd be handing you into the clutches of your mother's killer. What kind of a friend does that?'

Paul listens. Sheldon does not know why.

‘You hungry? You must be famished. Let's go borrow some food.'

Paul does not take Sheldon's hand, but he does follow. They move slowly, because the long hours of sitting have hurt Sheldon's lower back. Sharp pains jut down his left leg with each step, and he readjusts the satchel over his shoulder.

‘Let's call it a day. We're going over there.'

Sheldon extends his right hand and points to a lovely blue house close to the water. They are walking south, the fjord to their right. On the coast is a private metal pier for a boat that is not there.

Sheldon leads the boy around the front of the house, and looks for signs of life. There are no cars in the driveway, and few on the street itself. The house feels empty.

Together, they head around to the back again, and Sheldon shows Paul how to cup his hands while pressing his face to the glass. Paul doesn't actually do it, but Sheldon feels it is a valuable lesson, all the same.

No lights are on. The television is off. Everything is tidy and clean. Unmoved.

Sheldon walks a few more metres along the house to the back door, which lets out to the backyard and down to the pier. He presses his face against the window one more time, still sees nothing of interest, and decides to call it.

‘So this brings us back to Lesson One,' he says to Paul.

Putting the satchel down on the wood porch that lets into the kitchen, Sheldon takes out a hammer and, without comment, smashes the glass window-panel next to the door handle.

He pauses for a moment, listens carefully, and then says, ‘No alarm. That's helpful. Now watch your step. There's glass there.'

In an Eames-era-inspired living room of fine Scandinavian and mid-century American furniture, Sheldon finds a magazine cradle with maps and the local bus and train times, which he gathers up and brings into the kitchen for review as he starts the water boiling for pasta.

Finding a good area map, he unfolds it delicately across the tabletop and, using the dry tip of a wooden sauce spoon, he points to the Glomma, tracing the blue meandering line up a few centimetres to Kongsvinger.

‘That's where we're headed. I've never actually been there, but I've seen a photo of the place on the refrigerator door in Oslo. So I'm pretty sure we can find it.' Sheldon starts tracing an overland route. ‘I never knew this country had so many lakes. There's a lake everywhere.'

With the boiling water, Sheldon makes some instant coffee for himself and pours it into a glass from IKEA. He opens the cabinet to the left of the sink, finds a box of fusilli, and dumps the whole thing into the pot. He has no idea how much a hungry child can eat, and he's curious to find out. He finds a can of tomatoes, some salt and pepper, some garlic powder, and, with the nuanced expertise that only a grandfather can summon, he combines them into a concoction that only a child could eat.

For himself, he adds three heaping teaspoons of sugar to his coffee, and then comes back to the table, where Paul has grown transfixed by the maps.

‘We're going there,' Sheldon points, ‘but the issue is how to get there. While I can barely make head or tail of these timetables here, what is clear is that almost all buses getting you from Drøbak to Kongsvinger seem to pass through Oslo. And I don't want to go to Oslo. I want to avoid Oslo. Oslo is where we came from. So now we're stuck again. We could hitchhike, but I hardly think that's inconspicuous, and the chances of a police car coming by and finding us is higher than I'd like. We still can't rent a car. I suppose we could borrow one, but let's consider that a last resort. What I'm saying is … we have some thinking to do.'