The Second Winter (6 page)

The rumble of its master’s voice didn’t soothe the rogue dog. It lifted itself onto its front legs. Its eyes became vicious, shiny slits.

“Old man Karl —” Fredrik muttered, alighting upon a distant memory. “He was a bastard, a real bastard, did I ever tell you that story? He used to invite the younger boys upstairs to play with his model ships — boys too little to cut his flaccid pecker off and stuff it down his throat. I tried to tell my father, but he always treated me like a fool — he wouldn’t listen —”

When the dog pounced, Fredrik read the fear in its eyes even before its feet left the ground, and he knew that the hesitation would cost the beast its life. He sidestepped, caught the dog by the neck. Its fangs gnashed, but before the dog was able to bite, the farmhand snapped its windpipe, hurled it to the ground, crushed its spine beneath his knee. The dog let out a strangulated yelp, then went limp. When Fredrik stood again, both he and the pig examined the carcass with the same dispassion.

“Too bad,” Fredrik muttered. He was still catching his breath from the exertion of the brief fight. “You were a good dog to have around.” Then he shrugged, turned his attention to the wounded pig. “Come on home now,” he said to the pink animal. He recognized the jagged bite of the gash in its neck. He had seen the same markings in the broken skin of the fowl and foxes the dog brought into the house from time to time. He untied a rope looped around his waist. The cold wind nipped his hands.

When he approached the pig, it took an uncertain leap away from him. Perhaps the animal remembered the farmhand’s rough fingers, the pinch of his huge, powerful thumbs. It lost its balance on the uneven ground, and its front legs folded. As if it wanted to pray, Fredrik thought. And this made him smile. Then he grabbed the pig by its neck. The rope whistled as he cinched it tight. The pig squealed.

“Get up,” Fredrik said. “Or I’ll kill you here. Understand?” He gave the rope a fast jerk.

The pig bleated but acquiesced. It followed him into the wind. Sleet pelted its face. It cried. Exactly like a baby cries. With every hobbling step, it expressed the pain that was shooting through its body. Fredrik understood — it was pleading with him.
You’re going to kill me anyway, aren’t you, farmhand?
You have a gun in your pocket. Why don’t you use it? Why don’t you kill me now and let me die a more noble death?
But Fredrik ignored the argument. As long as the pig had power enough to walk, he would take advantage of its strength. The animal could carry itself to the slaughterhouse. That was what all the animals did. If he killed the pig now, he would have to lug it back to the farmhouse, almost a mile away, over the crest of the hill. He gave the rope another sharp tug. The pig shrieked again.

“Hurry it up,” Fredrik said. “You don’t realize how cold it is out here when a man’s coat gets wet.” When they left the loose shelter of the copse, the wind grew stronger. His feet sank into the mud.

From a distance, over the knoll, Fredrik was able to see that they had a visitor. A black Citroën was parked in front of the cottage the Nielsens provided for him as the caretaker of their farm. Recognizing the car, he started forward more quickly. Amalia was at the Nielsens’ house, where she helped with the sewing and cleaning. Normally, Oskar, eighteen years old, would have been outside, completing his chores, but he had woken this morning with another headache. So it would be yet one more day where seventeen-year-old Amalia would carry more weight than her older brother — and Oskar was the only one at home. Fredrik wondered what his son would say to Johan Jungmann in his absence. Oskar couldn’t be trusted, not in a situation like this.

When he reached the cottage, Fredrik hitched the pig to the fence at the front, then climbed the stairs. The porch shook under his weight. He pushed open the door, and the rush of wind receded into whispers. His grandmother’s elaborate
clock — one of the few heirlooms that had followed him to Jutland in the years after his father had tossed him from the family’s house in Copenhagen — ticked audibly from its station on the wall in the cramped sitting room. The fire had burned down to coals. Of course Oskar hadn’t thought to stoke it with another log. Fredrik threw an angry glance at his son, who was standing at the stove in the kitchen, then pushed past Jungmann to the hearth without a greeting, as if he weren’t there at all, chucked a couple of wood scraps onto the grate. They had torn one of the barns down the month before, and ever since they had had enough fuel to burn. Losing the second barn hadn’t meant much to the farm, not since the Nazis had appropriated half their livestock at the end of August.

“I was just leaving,” Jungmann said. He had been fastening his coat in the vestibule when Fredrik entered. His hat was already back on his head. “Your boy told me that I missed you.”

“What else has he been telling you?” Fredrik demanded.

Jungmann removed the black homburg, revealing a balding pate. “He’s a polite boy, Gregersen. Polite but tight-lipped.”

“What have you been asking him, then?” Fredrik approached the smaller man. The front hall was narrow. When the councilman took a step in retreat, his coat scraped the wall. “You don’t have any right to come inside. Not when I’m not home.”

“You have something here you don’t want me to find, Gregersen?”

Fredrik wiped his long nose with the back of his hand. His nostrils were running from the cold. He could still smell the pig’s blood on his fingers. “The last time I saw you, you were sitting at dinner in the Café Albert, eating sausages and mustard with a bunch of Krauts. You were the only Dane at the table, but I still had the impression you were brothers.”

“If I don’t talk to them, they only make the rules without me.”

Fredrik grunted.

“I don’t expect you to like what I do.”

“It surprises me,” Fredrik said, “how much you seem to like it yourself.”

The councilman considered the taller man through dark eyes. He had anticipated Fredrik’s animosity, but the farmhand’s wit was a small revelation. “Perhaps you are harboring fugitives here —”

“I can smell my tea on your breath,” Fredrik said. He swiveled to take a look into the kitchen. Oskar had left the stove and wandered into the doorway. He was tall like his father, but his shoulders were narrow. Fredrik scowled. The boy was so lanky that he wore his sweater like a dress. His chest was concave.

“I offered him a cup of tea,” Oskar said. “He was sitting for fifteen minutes.”

“Biscuits, too?”

Oskar shook his head.

Fredrik returned his attention to the councilman. “Fugitives? What do you mean, fugitives?”

“People have been crossing the border into Denmark.”

“Jews,” Fredrik said.

Again, Jungmann assessed the man in front of him. This wasn’t a political house. This farmer didn’t care a stitch for anyone, as far as he could tell not even his own two bastard children. Before this war broke out, he wouldn’t have been able to tell a Jew from a Chinaman. “I hear things. There are refugees in Aalborg.”

“And you think I might be harboring them? Here? In this little shack. With my son and my daughter already sharing a room, and me keeping warm with kindling I steal from the Nielsens —”

The councilman allowed himself a look around the modest cottage. “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here.”

Fredrik faced his son. “Put the kettle back on. You serve this commissar tea, and you don’t have any ready for your father?”

Oskar’s cheeks reddened. He shuffled into the kitchen again.

“What does bring you to my house today, then?” Fredrik demanded.

“There was a fire last night.”

Fredrik’s eyes dropped. He hadn’t had anything to do with the arson, but he had smelled the smoke, and he had snuck down the road far enough to figure out what was burning. He could easily surmise what Jungmann thought.

“Not half a mile from here,” the councilman continued. “Maybe you can tell me something about it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fredrik said.

“You didn’t notice the smoke?”

“All the way from Jepsen’s warehouse?” Fredrik asked. “Anyway, I was asleep.”

The councilman removed his glasses, polished the lenses with his sleeve. “I didn’t mention Jepsen or his property, did I?”

Fredrik looked away from the man, barely able to contain himself. “What kind of ass do you take me for, Jungmann? You think I wouldn’t look out my window?”

Jungmann took his time, returned his glasses to the bridge of his nose, fitted the gold temples around his ears. “You said you didn’t know anything about it —”

“And what would you have me say?”

“The truth, perhaps? I know the company you keep, and I know what you and your friends think of Jepsen. There was enough grain in that warehouse to see the German garrison through the winter. And barely half a mile from here —”
He gave the air a sniff. “You know, Fredrik, I believe I can still smell the smoke.”

“Do you really imagine,” Fredrik asked, “that I would be fool enough to shit in my own bed?”

“Your son told me that you were out late last night.”

Fredrik turned on the councilman. His arms were still loose at his sides, but his hands had tightened into fists. “I won’t have you come into my house, Jungmann, and interview my son without me here.”

“I thought maybe you would want to help us, Fredrik. The Gregersens are a respectable family.” This was true, Jungmann was thinking — they were. But they had disowned Fredrik years ago. Everyone in Aalborg knew that they had. This rough farmhand, a Gregersen! He continued to bring shame upon an old and venerable Danish family, even exiled to the north of Jutland. Still, it was worthwhile to remind this ruffian where he came from. Perhaps he had some vestige of filial duty left, and in any event he had more to lose than just his own tiny cottage.

“Get out of my house.” Fredrik’s voice remained calm, but there was no mistaking his fury.

“You would be wise to talk to me,” Jungmann insisted. “The resistance isn’t an illusion. German soldiers are getting killed. The brass will ferret out any rats until they find them. This isn’t something to play with, Fredrik —”

Fredrik grabbed Jungmann by the lapels of his coat. A single hand was large enough to cover the smaller man’s chest. He reached for the door with his other hand, yanked it open, then propelled the councilman outside. An extra push sent him tumbling down the stairs. Jungmann sprawled in the mud next to the dying pig. “You have my answer.”

Fredrik was about to slam the door when the councilman shouted back. “You have made a mistake, my friend.”

Fredrik stopped, spit a wad of mucus off the porch, then dismissed Jungmann with a snort. Again, he was about to slam the door, but now the pig, on its last legs, caught his eye. He let go of the door, started down the stairs. Misunderstanding his purpose, Jungmann scrambled out of the mud as Fredrik approached. The ground was slippery, however, and before he could escape, he lost his footing once more and fell, his arms splayed wide. His glasses got lost, and he had to dig for them. Fredrik reached past him for the pig. His fingers plunged into the gash in the animal’s throat. The dog had done most of his work. The pig squealed. Blood pumped onto the wet ground. Its front legs shook. Then the pig collapsed. The councilman pulled himself to his feet and slid to his car, as if he were skating on ice.

Fredrik didn’t wait for the Citroën to disappear. He hoisted the carcass onto his shoulder and headed for the barn.

At two a.m., there was a knock on the cottage door. Fredrik’s eyes shifted, glinted. The light inside the toilet room beside the kitchen emanated from a flame burning low in an old kerosene lantern. Shadows danced on the dirty walls, darkening his cheeks. Fully dressed — unchanged from earlier in the day — he was standing with one foot on the edge of the toilet, the lid closed underneath his boot. His left shirtsleeve was rolled up, above the elbow. A glass syringe with a shiny chrome plunger was sunk into a vein. There was another thump on the front door. Upstairs, Oskar rolled over in bed. Amalia’s breathing sounded through the ceiling, raspy, disturbed. Fredrik didn’t overreact. He slid the plunger into the tube, emptying the remaining amphetamine into his bloodstream, then gently withdrew the needle. A drop of blood followed the tarnished steel onto his forearm. The wall of the vein was shot — this hole would never heal again. A sharp, metallic pain traveled the length of his arm, lodged itself in his shoulder like an infection. A taste of clay coated his
throat. The coarse particles of the stimulant flushed through his body like clumps of rust dislodged from a disintegrating bar of iron, snagging his organs, shredding his nervous system, then like fragments from an iceberg, cold, melting as they reached the darker recesses of his brain. Shivering, he wiped sweat from his lip, finally rolled his sleeve back down. A man’s voice seeped through the front door, as soft as a whisper.
Fredrik
.

The farmhand let himself out of the toilet room. His boots thudded across the floor. He yanked the door open. “Shhh.” His command was curt. As dark as the house was, it was even darker outside. The rain was an inky blur beyond the edge of the porch. “You’re early,” he said, peering into the eyes of the man at the door.