The Last Pilgrim (25 page)

Though his gaze was piercing, it wasn’t unfriendly. She wasn’t sure how to interpret it.

“I fully understand your view, Ms. Gerner,” said Seeholz. “And believe me, your mother’s new husband would have aspired to a good position in a government with Mosley as the British prime minister. I can almost guarantee that. But why did you decide to return to Norway? Why not Germany, like Ms. Mitford?”

Unity Mitford was one of Hitler’s biggest admirers, and her sister Diana was married to Mosley. They were Great Britain’s worst fascists—people for whom Agnes had the greatest contempt. Unfortunately, all of them belonged to the same social circle as her own mother. Seeholz seemed to have chosen to ignore the fact that Unity Mitford had tried to kill herself in Munich after Chamberlain’s declaration of war.

“Well, my mother sent me to Norway,” Agnes told him. She immediately regretted her remark, which sounded implausible, although it could just as well have been true.

The SS officer studied her, trying to meet her eye.

Only now did she notice how her pulse had quickened. Her veins felt as thin as threads, and her face had probably lost all color. Yet she managed to assume a confident expression and give him a little smile, the sort that no man, or at least not one like him, could resist.

“Excuse me,
Herr Brigadeführer
, but are you questioning my loyalty to Germany?” Agnes hastened to say before she could change her mind.

This time there was utter silence all around her. A tense silence that spread in ripples through the entire room. Even the pianist must have noticed because the melody he was playing faded away. A man standing next to Agnes nervously cleared his throat.

Brigadier Seeholz looked surprised, as if her response were the last thing he’d expected.

“My father’s family immigrated to Norway from Germany . . . in 1645. Perhaps that was before your own family arrived in Germany,
Herr Brigadeführer
?”

Seeholz gave her a long look. Someone clinked a glass. Someone else flicked a cigarette lighter. Seeholz frowned and exhaled through his nose, like a bull preparing to charge. Yet a smile seemed to be tugging at his lips.

“My dear Ms. Gerner. I like you,” said Seeholz. “You don’t try to appease me, and you’re not afraid of me. I can’t abide people who are afraid of me.” He gave her a smile that for the first time seemed genuine. Then he laughed, hinting that there was a real person inside that black uniform. Gradually sounds returned to the room, and the pianist began to play again. To Agnes, it seemed as if the whole place were relieved, as if the pianist were playing the loveliest of tunes, as if all this were no longer real.

“As a member of the NS, I was persecuted in England,” she quickly added, maybe to keep him engaged. She wasn’t sure. “That’s something you ought to know,
Herr Brigadeführer
. In Norway, on the other hand . . . Well, if you were to offer me a good position in Germany, I’d leave tomorrow.”

She smiled and placed her hand lightly on Seeholz’s, noticing that it almost immediately had the desired effect on him. He couldn’t resist flattery.
Men will always be men,
thought Agnes.

“Ah. Good. Very good,” said Seeholz, squeezing her hand. “Please don’t take offense, Ms. Gerner.” He put his hand on her shoulder. His hands were not the sort belonging to a man who held a desk job. They were rough and dry and felt like sandpaper against her skin.

“I’m merely curious, by nature. England wouldn’t be the right place for me either,” he said. Then his face lit up with a smile. “At least, not yet,” he said, laughing at his own joke. Agnes felt another flood of relief wash over her. Then she noticed a fresh gust of wind coming in through the open front door.

“What pains me most about the English, Ms. Gerner, is that they don’t yet see that we should join forces against the Bolsheviks. If we don’t, we might all be defeated. It’s the Führer’s foremost goal, you know, to get all good people to stand together against that monster in Moscow and all his followers.”

The couple standing nearby gave him an approving nod. Before Agnes could come up with a reply, Seeholz shifted his attention to the stairway. Agnes and the others turned to look in the same direction.

Gustav Lande was coming down the stairs carrying a nightgown-clad child in his arms. For a moment Agnes was seized by an overwhelming sentimentality at the sight of the little girl. Lande had spent half the evening at the Rainbow telling her about his daughter.

“Ah, das schöne Kind,”
said Seeholz, reaching out to caress the girl’s cheek. Agnes stared at the skull with the SS emblem on the brigadier’s ring as his hand moved up and down.

The child pressed her head against the shiny lapel of her father’s tux.

“Cecilia, say hello to Agnes,” said Lande. Cecilia pressed closer to him, hiding her face for a moment.

“Hi,” said Agnes. “So you’re Cecilia.”

She nodded, her face still turned away.

“Hi, Cecilia. Can’t you sleep?” said Seeholz, speaking faltering Norwegian.

Lande bounced her up and down a couple of times and then whispered something in her ear. The child was attracting the attention of everyone in the room. A sigh passed through the crowd, as if Gustav Lande were showing them a newly acquired pet.

“I had a nightgown just like yours when I was little,” said Agnes. She had managed to make eye contact with Cecilia, and she saw an opportunity to reach even deeper into Lande’s heart. The child gave her a shy smile.

“All these people are going to have dinner with us tonight,” said Lande. “So be a good girl, Cecilia, and do as Johanne tells you.”

“Oh, let the child stay up,” said Seeholz, this time in German. His remark prompted laughter.

Cecilia whispered something to her father. Agnes noticed the maid standing halfway down the stairs. Her eyes rested on Agnes, making her feel uncomfortable.

Lande paused to think, then glanced at Agnes and gave her a wry smile.

“I’m afraid that won’t do, Cecilia. We’re just about to sit down to dinner. Johanne will put you to bed. And that’s that.”

Cecilia pushed her long brown hair away from her face and pointed at Agnes.

“I want that lady to read to me,” she said quietly before hiding her face against her father’s chest.

“Cecilia, sweetheart. We’re just about to have dinner,” said Lande.

Again she pointed, with that little smile on her face.

“Of course I’ll read to you,” said Agnes, casting a quick glance at the maid on the stairs.

Lande sighed in resignation, but something in his expression told Agnes that this was what he’d been dreaming of.

“Excuse us for a moment, Ernst,” he said to Seeholz.

“My dear Gustav, we have the whole evening ahead of us,” replied the brigadier.

Ernst,
thought Agnes as she climbed the stairs.
Gustav Lande and Brigadier Seeholz are on a first-name basis, and here I am on my way upstairs to put his daughter to bed.
She slipped past the maid without meeting her eye. Yet she was aware of the woman’s poorly concealed jealousy as she passed.

Cecilia jumped out of her father’s arms as soon as they got upstairs and walked between Lande and Agnes down the bright corridor. The child limped slightly, though it was not as bad as Agnes had imagined, given what Lande had told her at the Rainbow Club. The walls were covered with modern art that was actually far too progressive for a Nazi such as Lande. She caught herself wondering what his art collection was worth, just as they passed the open door to a bedroom halfway down the corridor.

“That’s Papa’s room,” Cecilia said as she hurried on ahead.

Lande laughed and shared a smile with Agnes.

“You mustn’t read too long, Agnes,” he said when they reached Cecilia’s room. “Two pages should be enough.”

“We’ll manage,” she said, giving him a gentle push toward the door.

“She’s so trusting,” he whispered. “I . . .”

Agnes held her finger to her lips. He took her left hand and squeezed it lightly. She sent him off with a smile that was only for him.

In Cecilia’s room the setting sun shone softly over the herringbone pattern of the parquet floor, which was visible between two large Persian rugs. The bookcases held an array of teddy bears and porcelain dolls. On the wall above the little desk, which stood between the windows that faced the garden and terrace, hung a photograph of a woman, perhaps in her early thirties. She was smiling at the photographer from under a wide-brimmed summer hat. Agnes saw at once how much the woman resembled Cecilia. The lovely nose, the arched eyebrows, the round cheeks, the small mouth.

“All right. What shall we read?” she asked.

Cecilia was already sitting on the canopy bed with her head tilted back and an old, worn volume of fairy tales in her hands. She held the book up toward Agnes, who sat down on the bed and spread the comforter over her. As Agnes leafed through the book, she caught sight of a name printed in childish script on the colophon page. “Sonja Bratberg” it said in big letters in the upper-right corner.

“Is this your mother’s old book?” asked Agnes.

Cecilia nodded.

“Is your mother still alive?” said Cecilia.

“Yes,” replied Agnes, thinking that it would have been best if her own mother had died and Cecilia’s had lived.

After Agnes had finished reading the story and the troll was dead, she stayed with Cecilia until the girl fell asleep. For several minutes she looked at the child, following her slumbering pulse until it merged with her own breathing, and then began stroking Cecilia’s hair. A cacophony of voices and a boisterous surge in mood rose up from the open terrace door below. The clinking of glasses and the clattering of silverware against three dozen china plates told her that the party had started on the first course. She could hear Seeholz’s coarse laughter mixed with the women’s shrill chatter. Fragments of German and Norwegian filled the room. Agnes drew the heavy drapes and, uncertain what would be best, left the door to the corridor ajar.

When she entered the large dining room, she was greeted as some sort of heroine. Women she’d met only half an hour before nodded and smiled at her. The men looked at her as if she were a born spouse and mother, and Gustav Lande introduced her once again, then proposed a toast in her honor. He had seated her right across from him, with none other than Brigadier Seeholz as her dinner partner for the evening. After the toast, Seeholz stated that never had he felt such anticipation as he awaited his dinner partner, who was delayed for such a noble cause. And Seeholz proved himself to be as deliberately charming as Agnes had suspected he would be. He entertained at least ten of the forty guests at the table with amusing little anecdotes from the field and witticisms that were sophisticated enough not to be considered inappropriate. He also praised the women in Agnes’s family to the skies. She put a good face on things. Several days earlier she had received the first letter from her sister, and she needed no reminder from an SS officer to know what an enormous sacrifice that entailed.

Every time she surveyed the table, her eyes met Lande’s. He looked almost ten years younger than when she last saw him. She reminded herself why she was here. For God’s sake she needed to be careful not to drink too much. There were limits, however, to how cautious she could be, because she didn’t want to arouse Seeholz’s suspicions.

When everyone had finished eating, she excused herself. Instead of heading for the bathroom, she went through the adjoining library and out the door to the terrace at the opposite end of the house. She needed to be alone to gather her thoughts and have a smoke. She sat down on one of the metal chairs.

How beautiful,
she thought, looking out at the garden, which was bathed in the last rays of sun from the west. These grounds, this house. A light breeze brushed her cheek. She took a deep drag on her cigarette and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the relief she felt at escaping Seeholz’s attempts to pin her down.

The door behind her opened.

That must be Gustav,
she thought, and slowly turned around.

But it wasn’t. The man came outside, carefully closing the door behind him. She vaguely recalled Lande introducing her to him over aperitifs. He was a short, thin man with thick dark hair slicked back with pomade, and she’d thought he was rather shy, although they hadn’t exchanged a single word.

“A lovely evening,” he said in almost perfect Norwegian. Though the slightest trace of a German accent revealed that he was not a native of Norway, he spoke Norwegian better than any other German she’d met. “We’ll soon have to put up the blackout curtains,” he went on without waiting for her to respond. He stared up at the sky, as if it were filled with hundreds of British planes.

If only,
thought Agnes.
If only they would arrive soon to free us all, to free me and the Pilgrim, so that I can prove to him that we’re not doomed, that this life belongs to us, to the two of us alone.

The man took a silver cigarette case from the pocket of his tux. Strangely, his jacket reminded her of England. Maybe he’d had it made there sometime before the war. How she longed to go back.

But she would never leave the Pilgrim. Not even if it meant dying.

Her heart lurched. She simply had to get hold of him tonight. She had to.

“A truly lovely evening,” said the man again, gesturing inquiringly at the chair beside her.

“Yes, it truly is,” she replied and motioned for him to take a seat.

“I must say that Mr. Lande throws a good party. My only quibble with the presence of so many officers is that there’s always too much dancing and singing as the evening wears on.”

Agnes laughed quietly.

“Don’t be fooled by Brigadier Seeholz. His job is to find enough prisoners of war to work in Mr. Lande’s factories. He’s also vulgar and shameless whenever there are no women present.”

Agnes shook her head. How could he say such things?

“Remind me which company you work for? I believe Mr. Lande told me, but I forget things so easily.” The young man, who couldn’t have been much older than Agnes, smiled at her. She cast a discreet glance at his hands. No SS ring, no emblems on the lapels of his jacket.