To Siberia (17 page)

He knew I would come. I straighten up and see a shadow a few meters away and I jump, but he says:

“Hi. I rather expected you earlier.”

“It wasn’t easy to get away, and I didn’t want to start before it got dark.” It is hard to talk, I’m still panting.

“That was good. Did you come along Skagensvejen?”

“There’s German traffic on Skagensvejen, I took the coast road and then walked along the beach. No one saw me. I didn’t meet a soul, only a crowd of seagulls. But maybe seagulls have souls. It’s curfew now, after all.”

“You had to cross the brook, then. It’s deep there this time of day.”

I start to laugh. “I know that,” I say.

I can see him better now, his black hair, the dark shadows around his eyes, and he can see me.

“You’re soaking wet,” he says. “Come on.”

He takes my hand and leads me through the darkness. His feet know the way so well he doesn’t stumble even once though the path turns sharply and goes up and down, he goes first and I follow, it is like a dance through the marram grass and reeds until the still darker shack is right in front of us, and his hand is dry and warm around mine. He pulls the blanket aside, we bend down and go in. It is impossible to see anything. He lets go of my hand and searches in the dark while I stand bent over waiting, my teeth chatter again, and then I hear the scrape of a match. It lights up and
Jesus lives
is embroidered over the window and on the wall hang Lenin and Jesper and me. I have not been here for four years. Everything is the same except for the paraffin lamp, which is new. He takes off the glass and lights it, then he blows out the match and throws it on the sandy floor before putting the glass in place on the lamp again and adjusting the flame. He hangs a gunnysack over the embroidery in the window so no light can shine out and then he turns to me.

“Hey, you’re damned freezing, Sistermine. We must find you something dry.”

“It’s all right, I’m fine.”

“Rubbish.” He rummages in a heap in the corner and finds a woolen sweater and an old pair of trousers he has used for fishing.

“Sorry, this is all I’ve got.”

“That’ll do fine,” I say.

The clothes smell faintly of fish and salt and Jesper. I do not know where to change. There is not much room in the little shack, the lamp lights up the whole of it, and I am wet right through. Jesper just sits there unthinking as usual, and it would be too silly to go out into the dark again. I don’t want to anyway, so I turn my back and take off my jacket and pull my dress slowly over my head. I unfasten the bra and lay it all in a heap on the floor while I try to avoid Gestapo Jørgensen’s gaze. I can’t quite do it, I shut my eyes and then Jesper says quietly behind me:

“I’ve got to go to Sweden tonight.”

I feel myself stiffen. Of course he must get away. He cannot stay in this shack long, he must have food and drink and someone must get it out to him. No one knows when the war will end, and as long as it lasts he must stay hidden. It’s no good. Sooner or later he would be caught. But it had not occurred to me.

I have been standing bent over to hide my body, but now I straighten up and turn around slowly as calmly as I can, I have the sweater in my hand and I try to stop my teeth chattering. I am frightened and determined. He is squatting down looking at his shoes and then he raises his head and sees me in the light of the paraffin lamp. His face is quite clear and the flame of the lamp flickers in his eyes and I have to look past him to Lenin on the wall, but Jesper smiles and looks at me without saying anything and then he says:

“You’re a good looker now, Sistermine.”

“Gestapo Jørgensen says we sleep together.”

I swallow, there is something in my throat I can’t get down so I swallow again, but it does not help. Jesper just smiles.

“But we don’t, do we.”

“No,” I say, and it is then he sees the wound on my face and the big blue marks on my arms. He gets up.

“Did Jørgensen do that?”

I do not reply. He takes the few steps toward me slightly bent under the roof, I swallow and drop the jumper.

“Hell, the swine,” says Jesper and raises his hand to touch the wound with his fingertips carefully. I lean my cheek against his palm, lightly at first and then harder and we stand there and he leans his forehead against my temple, his shirt just brushes my bare breasts, I meet him, I do not breathe, and he says:

“You’re freezing.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a sweet brave sister.”

“Yes,” I say.

He bends down carefully with my cheek in his hand and picks up the sweater.

“You’re freezing,” he says.

J
esper takes the photograph of the two of us from the wall and leaves Lenin hanging there.

“I’m taking this with me. If they ever find the shack they’ll think it’s the headquarters of the Communist Party. But
we
mustn’t be seen in such company,” he says, “you in particular,” and he puts out the flame of the paraffin lamp, and we bend down and go outside into the night and stand there until our eyes are accustomed to the dark, and then we start walking along the beach. He has the photograph in one hand and his shoes in the other. I carry my wet dress and jacket in a bundle under my arm. We walk the whole way without saying anything until we have to go into the shallow water before the reeds and the stream that runs out past the reeds, and it is still high tide. We roll up our trouser legs and wade. Jesper stops when we get near the stream outlet.

“It’d be pretty silly to get wet now,” he says. “Wait here.”

He wades off into the reeds, I hear splashing in there, but I can’t see anything before there’s a rustling again, and only then do I see his bare head faintly and he is standing in a rowboat poling his way out. It must have a flat bottom, for it’s floating in the shallows.

“You didn’t know about this, did you?” he says.

“No.”

“It was on the wrong side, though. The owners will have to wade for it now. I’ve made use of it a lot.”

He poles it right up to me, and I put the bundle of clothes into the boat and get in, and he pushes off with the oar and we glide over the brook until we scrape the bottom on the other side and then we jump out, and Jesper pulls the boat into the reeds and hides it there. We go on to the beach in the ankle-high water. It’s darker than when I came. I cannot see farther than the back in front of me, but the water feels warm now, and I could go on for a long time in this way, just walking and walking and hearing the soft ripple of water around our ankles and never going in, but suddenly we are there. The sand is colder on our feet than the water was, it sticks to our wet feet when they sink into it, it irritates me, and I have to search until I find the bicycle. I’m quite cold even though I’m wearing the sweater, but I’m naked underneath.

“Here it is,” I say aloud. Jesper follows my voice and comes up. I brush the worst of the sand off my feet before pushing them into my shoes.

“If you hold the picture for me you can sit behind me while I cycle,” he says.

“Where’s the bike
you
had?”

“Somewhere else.”

He pushes the bike up the path and on to the road, I walk behind him. Once he stops and listens and we stand quite still.

“False alarm,” he says.

When we’re out on the road I roll up the dress and jacket tightly and put the roll under the seat, then I sit on the luggage carrier with the photograph in one hand and the other on the seat, and when Jesper sits down I take my hand from the seat and hold on to the underneath of the bar so as not to touch him.

He hears the pedal rubbing against the chain guard right away.

“
That
won’t do,” he says, and I have to get off again. He lays the cycle down on the road and gives the chain guard a hard knock, and when we ride off the bike makes no sound. All I hear is the faint hum of the tires on the gravel, I hold tight to the bar so as not to fall off, and I weep so quietly Jesper does not notice.

Near the Seaman’s School we hear the sound of a motorcycle, and we see the light of its lamp so clearly that we have time to get off the road and in behind one of the big dog rose bushes that grow so plentifully there. It’s a German patrol, we see the motorbike go slowly past and the helmet of the man sitting in the side car and the blunt barrel of the submachine gun barely poking up.

We crouch down waiting till we are sure there are no more coming. Silence falls again.

“Did you actually get as far as Hirsholmen that time?” I ask, voicing my thoughts. He knows what I mean instantly.

“No.”

“Was it too far?”

“Maybe. But what happened was that when I was halfway to the lighthouse I saw a cap lying on the ice all by itself with no one about. It really was a long way out to sea, and the uncanny thing was that it was so like the one
I
had. It just lay there in all that whiteness and I didn’t get past it even though I’d been determined to. I had to turn around, and I was frightened the whole way back. Much more frightened than I am now.” He smiles and he does not look frightened, and I am not frightened either, just empty.

When we get near the harbor we dismount, and Jesper pushes the bike for a while before leaving it against the wall of an alleyway between two houses in Fiskerklyngen.

“You’ll have to come and fetch it tomorrow,” he says in a low voice. I put the photograph under my arm and leave my dress and jacket under the seat, and then we go down by the last houses before the north harbor where the gas lamps are dark along the road and there are blackout curtains in all the windows and no light anywhere even though we are almost into town. There has been a curfew after ten o’clock for three years, but this is the first time I’ve been out in the dark so late since the Germans came, and it gives me a weightless feeling, as if suddenly there is no meaning to anything.

We walk alongside the water from Fiskerklyngen to the little bay where the north arm of the breakwater starts with big boulders in rows on the outside facing the sea, and then the windbreak all the way, and behind the windbreak the footway goes along the harbor right out to the lighthouse. But the lighthouse isn’t working and the boulders are in darkness and hard to balance on so I have to bend down and use my hands. It’s not easy when I have to take care of the photograph at the same time, I’m afraid of stepping between two boulders, stumbling and breaking my leg. We have to go on the outside because there’s a guard in a shed right in the harbor, and we won’t get past him, says Jesper. He’s right in front of me and whispers agonizingly quietly when he tells me how to move my feet. We are out of step, and there is a singing in my ears I cannot get rid of and I have to concentrate to hear what he says.

“Only twenty meters more now,” he whispers. I nod, but he does not see that, and after a while he crawls up in the shelter of the windbreak and peers over the edge.

“Come on up,” he whispers, waving. I crawl up and see what he sees. The harbor is still and dark. On the other side of the basin is the big house belonging to the rowing club where Jesper and some friends share a kayak. The building looks heavy and solid, and straight in front of us a pontoon sticks out. At the end of the short side a low speed boat is barely visible. I can see shadows moving in front of the boat and in the dark someone bends down to pick up something that might be a suitcase, but I cannot see who takes hold of it.

We climb over the windbreak and go down some stone steps and out on the pontoon. I am afraid the boards will creak in the silence. They don’t, but the people standing there hear us at once and turn around, and a man growls—
Damn it!
half aloud, but Jesper raises his hand and then they recognize him. I don’t know what I had expected, but when we get right up to them I see one of the men is Uncle Nils, and he says:

“You darned well made us jump, Jesper. We were only expecting one, you know.” He doesn’t look at me, he seems embarrassed.

“Sorry, I didn’t think,” Jesper says quietly. Uncle Nils turns to a man who looks like a fisherman, he wears a blue woolen sweater and a cap of the same material, he is tall and angry, and Nils says:

“Everything in order,” but the man doesn’t look pleased. He doesn’t look at me either, just stares at Jesper.

“Everything
is not
in order,” he says. “Where did that girl come from?”

“She’s my sister,” says Jesper. His voice is submissive.

“Is
she
to go as well? I haven’t heard anything about that!” I draw a louder breath than I intended, everything that was loose comes together again, the wound on my cheek pulses. They all turn towards me, Uncle Nils and the fisherman and what looks like a family. They come out from the shadows silently, and then I see it is Ruben and his parents and his sister, and Ruben smiles at me. But I do not care about him, I care about Jesper. I hold my breath and clench my fists. Jesper turns and looks at me as well, he tries a smile, but then he gets serious.

“No,” he says, “no, she’s not.”

“I should think not,” says the fisherman, mumbling something angry I don’t understand and turning towards Jesper, but now I couldn’t care less what he is angry about.