The Second Winter (24 page)

Oskar’s blood ran cold. He rubbed the glass with his sleeve, tried to get a better view. The man remained still. Two minutes later, when his cigarette had burned low, he flicked it into the street. When it hit the pavement, it sparked then was extinguished beneath the heel of a polished shoe.

When the front door opened downstairs, Oskar was so distracted that he didn’t realize the girl had emerged from the house until it was almost too late. A chauffeur was helping her into the backseat of an elegant green limousine. Her face glowed like a ghost’s in the dark. The silk threads of her red dress shimmered in the light shining above the passenger seat. And then the driver had shut the car door and the girl was a barely visible silhouette etched behind a sheet of opaque glass.

The limousine’s weak headlamps lifted trees and shrubs out of the blackness lining the white granite carriageway, but there was no sign of the man from the train. The gates leaped starkly from the background. The asphalt beyond turned vaguely yellow. The taillights brightened then dimmed. Oskar watched the car until there was nothing left to see.

Copenhagen. December 26, 1941
.

It was still dark when Oskar woke. He was used to waking before sunrise on the farm, no matter how little sleep he had had. But the pitch dark in this room disoriented him. The fire had died during the night, and he couldn’t see a thing. With the windows blacked out, he had no sense of the time. He sat up on the side of the bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes. The house was quiet. A dank chill rose from the floor, and the air was stale with the odor of the cigars his uncle had smoked in the library downstairs the night before. He shuffled carefully to the window, found a gap in the curtains. Outside, dawn was only beginning to break. The dim light stung his eyes. Across the street, above the trees on the low bluff, the flat edge of the sound was lifting itself from the blurry haze of the sky. He let go of the curtains and found his clothes.

Tucking his shoes under his arm, he guided himself along the length of the wide corridor with a hand on the wall, then down
the marble staircase. The entire household was still asleep. Above his head, the chandelier’s crystals teased the dark. It didn’t occur to him to go to the kitchen for something to eat. He felt bad for not saying goodbye to Lise — she would wake expecting to find him there, and he knew how disappointed she would be when he was already gone — but he put his shoes back on and, grabbing hold of the satchel, slipped out the front door. Like that, he disappeared as quickly as he had come.

At the padlocked gates, he scanned the street for any sign of the man in the fedora, then hopped the fence. This early in the morning, the strand was deserted. A breeze was blowing a salty mist across the roadway, thick enough to wet his face. From Charlottenlund he had miles to walk. He could have taken the train, but it was early yet. Every now and again, he swiveled around to make certain that he wasn’t being followed. Otherwise, he kept his head down and tried his best to blend in to the gray morning. The long stretch of road in front of him hugged the coast as it meandered through the wealthier neighborhoods and small green parks and the rough edges of the woodlands and bogs on the northern outskirts of Copenhagen. The distant lap of waves accompanied him into the city.

When he reached the old town, the streets were still empty. The only people Oskar had seen since leaving Fru Gregersen’s house had been a pair of soldiers riding in the cab of a transport truck. The heavy vehicle had bounced over the uneven pavement, its engine growling. Oskar had taken cover inside a doorway and watched the truck rumble past, then started on his way again. Once he spotted the Amalienborg Palace, he knew that he didn’t have far to go.

When something squeaked behind him, he clasped the satchel, took a quick step sideways to hide himself against a wall. A silver-haired man on a rusting bicycle appeared out of
the mist. The elegant old man was just as startled to see him. He veered to the other side of the road, cycled past with his eyes averted. Oskar noticed how fine his clothes were — and then the bundle of painted wood strapped to the back of the bike. The old man must have ventured out to steal kindling from one of the piers along the water. He needed fuel to keep his house warm, that was all. Oskar continued past Nyhavn, followed the edge of the canal, crossed the bridge to the narrow alleys of Christianshavn.

His destination was a crumbling brick apartment building, so run-down that it was difficult to believe it wasn’t derelict. The front door was pulled shut, but the latch was broken. He pushed it open and, locating a name on the directory, entered the dim lobby. His footsteps echoed up the stairwell with the hollow ping of a stone dropped into a deep well. He climbed to the third floor, knocked on the door to the apartment whose address his father had given him. Inside, a pan clanged on the stove. A faucet was twisted off. Someone approached on the other side of the door. “Who is it?”

“You don’t know me,” Oskar said.

“Go away.”

Oskar hadn’t expected his nerves to flare. He took a deep breath. “Mika Rahbek?”

“So you can read.”

“Fredrik Gregersen sent me.”

There was a pause. “How do I know?” The man cleared his throat. “You sound like a kid.”

Three stories below him, Oskar heard the scrape of the front door. His scalp tingled. “My name is Oskar. I’m his son.”

“Fredrik’s son?”

Downstairs, leather-soled shoes scuffed the dusty tile floor. Oskar controlled his voice. “I came from Jutland yesterday.
Fredrik, my father — he sent me to you.” The footsteps began ascending the stairs. Oskar tightened his grip on the handle of the satchel. “Will you let me in? Please.”

Finally, the lock clicked. The door swung open a crack, and an oily, puffy, discolored face appeared in the gap. Bulbous, veiny eyes examined Oskar, flinty with suspicion. Oskar noticed the spittle on the man’s thick lips, the grizzled stubble on his fat chin. His pajamas were stained with coffee. He read the surprise in the man’s expression — he hadn’t expected Oskar to be so tall. “How old are you, boy?”

Oskar glanced over his shoulder. The footsteps had passed the first landing and were climbing to the second floor. “There’s someone on the stairs.”

Rahbek listened, then, his brow furrowing, pulled the door open and ushered Oskar into his cramped studio, shut the door behind him. “You were followed here?” He spoke in a whisper, but there was no mistaking his temper.

Oskar didn’t respond. He had kept his eye out for the man in the fedora, and he had been certain that the streets had been empty the entire way from Charlottenlund.

Rahbek slid the deadbolt into place and leaned his ear against the door. Oskar could barely hear the footsteps. They reached the third-floor landing, paused, then slowly continued up the stairs. And then, above their heads, a door opened and closed. “It’s old Fischer-Møller,” Rahbek whispered, as much to himself as to Oskar. “That’s who it is — old Fischer-Møller, out for his morning stroll.” He sighed with relief, faced his visitor. “Well,” he said, taking this son of Fredrik’s in. “So here you are. About what I’d expect, too — Are you old enough for coffee?”

Oskar nodded his head. “Yes, sir.”

“
Sir
—” Rahbek scowled. He wiped his sweaty hands on his filthy pajamas. When his shirt opened a couple of inches, his
belly jutted over the top of his trousers, pasty white and matted with long gray hair. “Do I look like a sir to you?”

Oskar didn’t know how to respond without seeming rude. He watched the fat man cross the narrow room to the stove. Rahbek filled a pot with water, struck a match to light the flame.

“Sit down.”

Oskar assessed the small, disorderly room. There was only a single chair next to a rickety table strewn with papers and other clutter — nowhere else to sit. In the corner, the bed was unmade. Otherwise the studio was unfurnished. Rahbek’s clothes were folded in loose piles across the floor. His books were stacked in teetering piles against the wall. There were cobwebs on the window, Oskar noticed, and even on some of the clothing, but none on the books. Rahbek encouraged him into the chair with a tap on its back, then pulled out another, collapsible chair for himself from beneath the bed. The weak light filtering through the window smeared the old man’s face with a layer of shiny grease.

“So tell me what you’re carrying in that bag,” he said, settling into the flimsy chair across from Oskar.

Oskar’s cheeks flushed.

“You’re holding on to it like your firstborn son.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Oskar admitted.

“Of course.” Rahbek found a cigarillo, half burned, on the edge of an ashtray blackened with tar. He tapped off the dead ash, stuck it into his mouth. “I have known your father,” he said, lighting the stub, “since he was shorter than you are now by half a meter. I don’t know how much he told you about me — Eh? But I was the one who bought his first piece of stolen jewelry.” He glanced at the stove. The flame was engulfing the small pot as if the pot itself had caught fire. “From Fru
Gregersen, did you know that?” Rahbek laughed, then began to wheeze, finally to cough. “From his own mother — he stole the jewelry from your grandmother, and he sold it to me. He wasn’t patient enough to wait for his inheritance — in his mind, it already belonged to him, I suppose. Well, the fact is, by the time he was twelve his parents were already threatening to disinherit him — maybe the way he figures things, he didn’t have any other choice —”

Oskar wasn’t certain whether the old man was joking. “We didn’t have much of a chance to talk,” he said, “before I left.”

“Anyway, it looks as if he’s up to his old tricks.” Rahbek nodded at the satchel. “It looks heavy.”

“There’s a lot of gold inside,” Oskar said.

Rahbek’s eyes lit, though dimly. “Is that right?”

“Bracelets, necklaces, chains. A few picture frames, something shaped like an egg —”

Rahbek licked his lips, and Oskar noticed how purple they were. “You know, you could be a target carrying something like that through these streets, eh?” He cleared his throat. “Of course you don’t have to worry about me, because I know your father.” Once again, he began to cough. When he took his hand from his mouth, the back of it was flecked with blood. “A man would have to be crazy —”

“Do you want to see it?” Oskar asked.

Rahbek harrumphed. “I’ll admit, I’m curious, yes, of course I’m curious.” When Oskar set the satchel down, the flimsy table rocked to one side beneath its weight. Rahbek stood to look inside it. “My god,” he muttered. He grabbed the bag, pulled it from the kid, lifted out a handful of jewels. “My god,” he repeated, “my god.”

Oskar watched him appraise the treasure, piece by piece. On the stove, the water started to boil. The pot rattled on
the flame. Realizing that he was wasting precious gas, Rahbek switched off the hob, then continued to examine the contents of the satchel. Five minutes later, he returned to the stove and ladled a spoonful of coffee grounds directly into two rusty steel cups, filled them with hot water, gave them a stir. The smell of coffee quickly replaced the stench of sleep in the small room. “You know what you have here, don’t you?” he said, sitting back down.

“It’s worth a lot, I think,” Oskar said.

“A lot,” Rahbek echoed. “Yes, it’s worth a lot.” He chortled to himself, then pushed one of the cups across the tabletop toward his guest. “I don’t have sugar or milk.”

“I like it like this,” Oskar said.

The old man grunted. “Dirty as piss, you mean?”

Oskar wasn’t certain how to react. “It will be my only meal today.”

“If you sell any of this,” Rahbek said, taking a quick sip of his coffee, “you can take a room at the D’Angleterre and eat as much as you want at the restaurant.”

Oskar took the information in. He had guessed that the jewelry was valuable, but he hadn’t expected a reaction like this. “Let me show you one more thing.”

“There’s more?”

Oskar reached into his pocket. He palmed the pendant, keeping it hidden beneath the plane of the table. He could see for himself how much more beautiful it was than the rest of the jewelry. When he lifted his hand, Rahbek’s mouth gaped.

“My god,” the old man whispered, smacking his lips. He reached for the pendant. It looked larger, finer, in his clumsy, fat fingers. “Where did you get this?” Rahbek met Oskar’s eyes. “Eh? Where did you get this?”

Oskar shook his head. “I can’t —”

“It’s the work of a master,” Rahbek said. “Look at the cut. This isn’t something from your grandmother’s house. Not even the Gregersens —” He turned the pendant over, grabbed a small magnifier from the clutter on the table, examined its back. “Russian,” he mumbled. “Look — the imperial crest of the Romanovs.” He set the magnifier back down. “Tell me, where did you get this?”

Oskar took a sip of his coffee. The grounds stuck to his lips.

“Ha!” Rahbek exclaimed, then leaned back in his chair. Oskar cradled his coffee, waited for the old man to explain. “Suddenly, you look exactly like your father. I see this — I look at you — and suddenly, there he is, Fredrik Gregersen, bringing me his mother’s jewelry to supplement his allowance. To spend it on girls, did you know that? Whores and drink.” The old man shook his head, remembering. “But not even the Gregersens, no, not even the Gregersens —” He held the pendant up to the weak light, let the sapphire’s refractions play with his eyes. “Russian,” he repeated. “No doubt about it.” He grabbed Oskar by the wrist. “Did all this jewelry come from the same place? You can tell me that, at least.”

“Yes.”

Rahbek nodded, sucked on his fat lips. His next swallow of coffee nearly finished the cup.

“So tell me, then,” Oskar said, “now that you’ve seen it — it’s worth something, I suppose — hundreds, maybe thousands — how much will you pay us?”

Rahbek blinked. Then he shook his head. If he hadn’t been belching, he would have snorted. His cheeks ballooned with gas from his bilious stomach. “Maybe you didn’t hear me,” he said, his voice distorted a little by the violence of the hiccup.