The Second Winter, page 7
“Yeah, that’s Johansson,” Fredrik confirmed. In the distance, next to the rowboat, another flame sparked. The fisherman was lighting a cigarette. As far away as they were, Fredrik could practically smell the burning tobacco. The last time he had seen the one-eyed Swede, the fisherman had given him a Gauloises, something he had taken from a fugitive whom he had run across the straits. The cigarette had been as fat as a small cigar. He started forward again, allowing Axel to take the lead.
Arriving at the fence, Axel steered them sideways for about thirty or forty yards, until he located a gap large enough to crawl through. There, parting a tangle of broken wires and rotted stakes, he directed Oskar through first, the old woman next. When he reached for the girl, though, Fredrik grabbed him by the wrist, gave it a savage squeeze, shoved the old man toward the hole formed by the fallen posts instead. The professor’s body was almost too battered to bend, but he was small and thin, and he fit through with only a little prodding. After that, Axel didn’t wait for Fredrik. He had understood his intention. He followed the old Jew to the other side, then herded the group forward without Fredrik or the girl.
The fleshy young woman didn’t protest. At first, she wasn’t certain what was happening. She watched her father and mother dissolve into pixels, then raised her eyes to Fredrik. The handsome Dane who smelled like sweat brushed the suitcases and packages she was carrying from her arms. They hit the soil with a quiet thud. His hands tightened on her shoulders. Still, the girl didn’t resist — she let this man whom she had dared to tease with an adolescent smile guide her downward. Then the gesture grew more violent. She slipped backward onto the wet soil. Mud oozed through her coat, through her clothes. The tall man didn’t immediately follow her to the ground. He stood above her, his chest heaving — long enough for the girl to imagine that the moment might have passed. But then he knelt beside her, a knee between her thighs, and the girl knew.
The dark swallowed the man whole — everything except his lips, which had turned as white as his teeth. His hand found her vagina, and a sound escaped from her own throat that the girl didn’t recognize. Her underpants tore with a rip. The huge man’s fingers were made of concrete. His breath was hot on her cheek. She closed her eyes, clamped her jaw, waited. A belt slithered through a buckle. Heavy fabric separated from buttons with a series of muffled pops. His hands settled into the earth on either side of her. In her confusion, she clasped this brute’s arms and pulled herself against him in an awkward embrace, as if she somehow believed that she could with tenderness entice this man whom she was holding to protect her from the beast who was on top of her. When the stubble on his chin dug into her skull, she twisted and tried to find his ear. Don’t, she whispered. Her voice didn’t belong to her. She had no idea what language she might be speaking. Please, don’t. But the stone fingers wrapped themselves around her neck beneath her chin.
And then a voice interrupted them. “Father?” And in that same instant, the world fell completely still. The wind whistled, seagulls shrieked. The man had stopped breathing. Footsteps approached, slick on the muddy ground. “Father — where are you?”
The fingers softened back into flesh. The man shifted. “Stay back,” he growled.
The flavor of her own oily hair permeated the girl’s mouth. When she opened her eyes again, the boy emerged from the shadows in a blur. His face was stricken with concern.
“What are you doing, Father?”
The man let go of her, but she could nevertheless sense the tension in his body. It felt to her as if he was ready to explode. “What you should be doing. Eh?”
“Axel says you must come now. He says we must hurry.”
The man considered his son. He yanked his trousers back up over his naked ass. Then at last he stood. The absence of contact left the girl suddenly cold. Her legs shook. The man lifted her off the ground, thrust her bags back into her arms. She lost her balance, but the boy gripped her elbow, managed to keep her upright. In the aftermath of her terror, even Oskar’s gentle touch sickened her, and she felt herself retch. Mud slid down her thighs. Silently, madly, she began to weep. Her clitoris was vibrating like a string stretched too taut on the neck of a guitar, and the incongruity of this dysfunction blinded her. As Oskar directed her through the gap in the fence, all she could see was a series of geometric blacks and grays. Rusty wires snagged her skirt, scratched her scalp, pulled her hair. On the other side, Fredrik gave her a shove. His hand dug into her back. She tripped, caught herself, followed the rustle of clothes into the dark. A minute later, they had rejoined the group. Her feet sank into sand. Tears streamed down her face.
She wanted to reach for him, but her father didn’t turn around. The old man’s jaw was clenched. His shoulders were stooped. He saw nothing farther than the droplets and smudges on his glasses. The pain that racked his body was long forgotten. His face was contorted by a series of deep, symmetrical creases into the picture of grief. At the sound of the huge Dane’s approach, his arms tightened around the leather satchel, which he carried now like a child against his chest. When his daughter bumped into him, he bent his head toward her enough to caress her shoulder with his cheek, but neither slowed. Once again, in the familiar presence of her father, silent sobs convulsed the girl’s body. Her father closed his eyes and squeezed his hands into angry fists so tight that his knuckles captured the silvery light of dawn like moonstones or pearls. They kept on walking.
The sun peeked over the horizon, casting a narrow orange finger all the way from Sweden to the wide strand on the Danish shore. Small waves crested, and the froth sank into the golden sand at Ingmar Johansson’s feet. When the crunch of footsteps broke the silence, the Swedish fisherman flicked his cigarette into the saltwater. It catapulted end over end in a fiery arc, then disappeared. The fisherman had lost his left eye in an accident with the rough edge of a fishing net some years before. When he blinked, the blind side of his face flinched, but it was only a sympathetic gesture — a remnant from the time when he possessed a second eye. He didn’t wear a patch. The wound had healed into a twisted whorl of skin. As Fredrik approached, it took a moment for him to understand that the fisherman was smiling — his was such a difficult face to read. “Another minute or two, and I would have left,” the fisherman said, with an accent that grated on Fredrik’s nerves. Smoke streamed from the fisherman’s nostrils.
“We had a rough night,” Fredrik said.
“So this is what you bring me? Only three?”
“You were expecting more?”
The fisherman shrugged.
“Any sign of the Germans?” Axel asked him.
The fisherman thrust out his lower lip. Fredrik thought that he looked like a fool. “A frigate passed by yesterday night. But it’s been quiet. I don’t expect trouble.”
“Put your bags in the boat,” Fredrik said to the Jews. But when the old man took a step toward the beached craft, Fredrik grabbed him by the shoulder, stopped him in his tracks. “Not that bag.”
“What do you mean?” the old man asked him.
“Put your bags in the boat,” Fredrik repeated to the old woman and her daughter. The girl tripped against the side of the dinghy, dropped her bundle on the deck. Her shin hit the hull with a loud thunk. Her mother scurried through the dark to her daughter’s side.
The giant’s hand, the old man realized, had gripped the leather satchel. “What do you think you’re doing?” he protested, wrapping both arms around the suitcase.
Fredrik stripped him of the bag without a word, sent him flailing backward toward the rowboat. The old man bumped into his wife, spilled onto the deck like a marionette. His head hit a steel fitting hard enough once again to tear the thin skin of his scalp. He scrambled back onto his feet. “You can’t — It’s stealing.” He was almost too dizzy to stand. His wife and daughter pulled him backward, restraining him from attacking the huge Dane.
“Shhh,” his wife said.
“Papa, don’t,” his daughter said. “Just don’t.” And the family watched helplessly as Fredrik weighed the small satchel with a shake.
“What are you doing?” the fisherman asked him.
Sensing an opening, the old man entreated the fisherman. “You can’t let him. He can’t just take our things.”
Fredrik glared at the little man. “Shut your mouth,” he told him. “Or I’ll shut you up myself.” The Jew’s bleating would attract the attention of the other fishermen who were also heading to their boats on the sound. It was dark, but they weren’t alone. Word had a way of spreading.
“You can’t take that,” the one-eyed fisherman said.
“Why not?” Fredrik asked.
“He can’t,” the old man repeated.
“Not until you pay me, anyway,” the fisherman said. He grinned, but the concern didn’t dissipate from his lopsided expression.
Fredrik grunted. He set the leather satchel onto the sand, knelt next to it, worked the brass lock in the dim light.
“You’ll never figure out how to open it,” the old man said.
This made Fredrik sneer. He slipped a finger under the clasp, flexed his arm, broke the satchel open with a quiet rip. When he pulled the bag apart, his breathing stopped. Beneath a few bundles of bills, the polished surface of a treasure of gemstones shimmered in the dim light. Reaching inside, a memory of his mother’s jewelry chest blinded him. Her favorite piece had been a chain of diamonds interlaced with strands of precious, uncut blue and yellow stones that she had worn around her fat neck on special occasions. The scent of her perfume teased his nose. As a child, the powdery smell had reminded him of the barbershop.
“We can’t take that.” Axel was standing next to Fredrik, peering over his shoulder. “You have to give it back to them.”
Fredrik’s fingers tightened on the jewels. He pictured the tiny cottage he shared with his children, the empty larder. When was the last time he had eaten a pat of butter without sneaking it from the Nielsens? In the last few months, he hadn’t been able to drink a simple beer without begging the barman to increase his tab. Oskar had outgrown his own clothes and was wearing his father’s castoffs — this was becoming evident to everyone in Aalborg. The pittance of a salary that the Nielsens paid Amalia barely had time to grow warm in his daughter’s palm before he had slipped it into his own pocket. What kind of life was this? The sharp edges of a few settings dug into his skin. Perhaps he could even return a handful of this plunder to the chest in his mother’s room in Copenhagen. Imagine the look on her face! Fru Gregersen would never forgive him for stealing her most cherished belongings one by one and selling them for the price of a few bottles of whiskey and a couple of trips to the wrong side of town. But the war was taking its toll on everyone. The family was being brought to its knees by the occupation — this same proud, entitled family of strivers who had disowned him. It was only a matter of time before there would be no more artwork or other valuables left for the Gregersen family to sell. His mother would have no choice but to curtsy and accept his charity —
“We can’t take that,” Axel repeated. “Close it up, Fredrik — give it back to them.”
“What?” Fredrik raised his eyes to Axel’s. Even on his knees, he was nearly as tall as his partner. “What are you talking about?” He grabbed a bundle of cash — U.S. dollars bound into a tight roll with an elastic band — flung the green paper to the fisherman, squeezed the suitcase shut. “This is mine.”
“You know we can’t, Fredrik.”
Unmoved, Fredrik lifted himself back onto his feet. “He wasn’t born with this suitcase in his hands, any more than I was.”
“How will we make the rest of the trip?” the old man asked him.
“Shhh,” his wife said.
“Without that, we won’t make it any farther. How can you expect us to make it without that?”
“Shush,” his wife said.
“Please, Papa.”
“Have I somehow fallen into your debt?” Fredrik asked the Jew. “Now get into the boat, and this man will bring you across the channel to Sweden. If it’s meant to be, I’m sure you’ll find your own way.”
“When Gustav learns of this,” Axel said, “he won’t send me any more Jews.”
The argument fell on deaf ears. After this, Fredrik would have no further need for Axel’s Jews. He tucked the bag under his arm. “It’s getting late,” he said. Across the strait, orange flames were burning in pockets on the black water. “We have a long way back to the highway.”
The old man broke free from his wife and daughter, rushed the tall Dane. “You cannot take that —”
“Get into the boat,” Fredrik repeated. The discussion was finished. With one hand, he hustled the Jew into the dinghy. The old man’s coat was soft on his fingers. Maybe he would take it, too, after all. He yanked it off his shoulders as the old man tripped over the hull.
“Leave him be,” the fisherman said. He was growing worried that he would have to dispose of a corpse. “He’ll freeze without the coat.”
Fredrik took it in any event, tossed it to Oskar. “Give me a smoke for the road,” he said to the fisherman. At his feet, the surf turned as blue as the stones in his mother’s necklace. A wave broke against the sand and swallowed his heavy boots. Behind the fisherman, the family of fugitives huddled together on a bench in the rowboat, unable to do anything except watch as the tall Dane tightened his grip on the satchel then waited, his shoulders hunched, for the fisherman to light his cigarette.
Then the three Danes were on their way again. Sunlight touched their necks as they retraced their footsteps across the beach, over the dunes to the pastureland that bordered the shore. Their shadows led them back toward the fence bordering Olaf Brandt’s property. The herbal tobacco singed Fredrik’s throat, but he smoked the dense Turkish cigarette to a nub anyway. The roots of his teeth ached in his gums. He tasted blood.
6.
The cigarette was a memory by the time they reached the road. Ulsted lay in the distance, a smattering of gray buildings with red tile roofs. The clouds had parted, and steam rose from the saturated soil beneath the insistent heat of the sun. Oskar was two paces ahead of Fredrik and Axel, aware of their footsteps behind him but of little else. In front of him, the cracked asphalt had dissolved into a blur. Fredrik sucked on his teeth, spit, narrowed his eyes as he took in his son’s lanky body, his bony shoulders. The boy’s yellow hair was clumped in greasy strands that could have been a girl’s braids. “You’ve been pretty quiet,” the tall farmhand said.
Axel peered at him from the corner of his eye. He wanted to make certain that the observation wasn’t meant for him. In front of them, Oskar didn’t seem to hear.
Fredrik resisted the impulse to grab his son, give him a shake. If it had been up to this weakling, the old Jew’s suitcase wouldn’t be tucked under his arm. All they would have to show for the night’s work would be the few crowns Axel had been promised. Maybe they would all three be inside Johansson’s boat, helping him row the Jews across the channel to Sweden. Maybe Oskar would be looking for a safe place for the old Jewess to squat and take a shit. “You have something you want to say to me?”
Oskar woke to the threat in his father’s voice. He had been far away in his own thoughts. What would happen to the family from Austria once they reached Sweden? The old woman had managed to lug her silver to the boat at least. His voice escaped from his mouth before he knew what he would say. “I thought that the Gregersens were a rich family.” Behind him, his father stopped walking.
“What was that?” Fredrik was incredulous.
Oskar felt his heart touch his ribs. After a pause, his father’s boots scraped the rough asphalt again, four or five steps behind him. The hair stood up on the back of his neck. “Your mother is a lady-in-waiting to the queen, isn’t she?”
“Fru Gregersen is no more noble than a whore,” Fredrik said.
“Your brother, Ludvig, is a bookkeeper at the palace.”
“My brother is softer than you are,” Fredrik quipped. “My mother still coddles him. Does it make him a stronger man if he counts the money in the king’s pocket?”
“And your father was one of the king’s huntsmen.”
“My father?” Fredrik choked. “I don’t speak ill of the dead, but my father was a bastard — what do you know about my father? So he took care of the king’s horse and the king’s spaniels. He also threw me out of his house when I was sixteen —” Not that Fredrik had blamed him, of course, when his father had finally lost patience. He hadn’t left him any other choice. In fact, Nils Erik Gregersen had been a weakling. He had given Fredrik so many second chances that Fredrik could hardly take him seriously anymore — after he had raided his mother’s jewelry box, after he drank all the liquor from the cabinet in the library, after he got one of the maids pregnant, after he beat up the mayor’s effeminate son and tossed his prized pocketknife off the overpass into the smokestack of a passing train. To Fredrik, it had almost felt sometimes that his father took a perverse pride in his errant son’s scandalous behavior, as if it befitted the scion of such a family and conferred its own status on him as patriarch. It had taken killing the Persian cat finally to force his father’s hand. Miav, his mother had called it. It was Fru Gregersen’s special pet — she doted on it, Fredrik had always thought, because it looked so much like her. He hadn’t meant to kill it — all he was trying to do was slip its pearl-studded collar over its fat head, maybe give its ribs a little squeeze. But then the cat had scratched him, and its neck had broken so easily. If he had buried the carcass in the bog or burned it in the fireplace, no one would have been the wiser. His real mistake had been to try to feed it to his father’s hounds. After that, his father had had no alternative. Sending him to Jutland to live on a farm and earn his own keep had been a fair compromise. His mother — who had herself discovered Miav’s gory remains on the summer porch — would have had him locked in jail. The fact was, though, however justified he may have been, Nils Erik had been a bastard, if a weak one. As surely as Fru Gregersen was a haughty cow and Ludvig a spineless sycophant who had never done an honest day’s work in his life. “What are you saying to me about my family?” Fredrik demanded.
