Chapter 6

Jonas called her before leaving for school. Since this was the first real snowfall of the season, he figured the kids would be a lot more interested in snowball fights than in English grammar, which was OK with him. He was itching to get his skis on. It was 45 minutes uphill skiing from his house out on Fillene to the high school, and he relished the challenge. “Got plans this evening, honey?” he asked. Gerd laughed. Of course she had plans: she was going to update her blog – hadn’t done it in several days – break open the new packages of Gustave Sennelier Extra-Fine acrylic paints that she had picked up last week in town, discover what Nurket’s true name was. Oh, she had plans.

“Come on over if you can,” she said.

It was still snowing, but much more gently. Gerd wasn’t even out of bed yet, but she could smell the snow. She made a bet with herself: if more than 30 cm. had accumulated, she would open her last package of Brazilian Bourbon Santos coffee. If less, she would make do with Ali Kaffe.

If she leaned out her bedroom windows to the southwest, she could see the little bay called Sandvika. Not very imaginatively named: it literally meant “Sandy Bay.” Very descriptive, though, because there was indeed a little beach there in this improbable spot facing the wrath of the ocean. Of course, it wasn’t always a beach: some years she had nothing but boulders. Gerd loved it whether sandy or rocky; it was – in her opinion – her very own private spa. That her actual property line ended 25 meters inland from the beach meant nothing.

This morning she imagined the view would be a Norman Rockwell winter wonderland. Shades of white in all directions: blue, purples, yellows, greens, even pinks. To paint snow was one her biggest artistic challenges. Snow in January was a totally different proposition from snow in March. She sniffed the temperature: still not very cold. Maybe 4 below zero. A blond furry ear was followed by a black nose peeking out at the foot of her bed – guess who had taken advantage of her artistic stupor last night and availed himself of the opportunity to crawl into bed with her. Gerd knew she was supposed to shoo him off right now or she’d still have him in bed when he weighed 40 kilos. Ah well, the bed was big enough for all three of them – Bamse never came upstairs. Gerd realized that she was not going to search for Nurket’s original owners. Anyone who would abandon a dog on a cold, uninhabited island didn’t deserve a dog.

After a brief breakfast accompanied very nicely by Brazilian coffee, Gerd pulled on some leggings, a long-sleeve T-shirt, warm pants, and a sweater. Her ugly orange parka (a present from Jonas so her cadaver could easily be found in the snow) was in the downstairs closet with her brand new ski boots. These modern boots were a marvel: so light and soft that they were practically slippers. She dug out a hat and some mittens as well, grabbed her phone, and called Nurket.

There was enough snow to ski on. Because they hadn’t had any snow to speak up so far this winter, her skis were still way in the back of her large shed. Blue wax was probably the right thing – did she have any? Gerd rummaged around in some drawers in the old bureau in the shed and pulled out a few sticks. Sure – plenty of that. Last winter had been so mild she had mostly used red wax, yuck. She did a 60-second ski wax job, found her poles, and tested the glide. She set off.

The creek from Dyrevann in the middle of the island ran almost parallel with shore here. It probably wasn’t frozen yet, but it was so narrow that she could easily take her skis off and jump over. Gleeful as a child, Gerd pushed hard with her poles and slid down the gentle slope toward the quiet ocean. Nurket hopped and barked behind her. Near where the beach would be in summer she paused and looked around. A few rocks along the shore were still visible, but most were sleeping under the quilt of new snow. The sun had just risen, but since it was still overcast and snow was falling, she couldn’t see it. Painter’s light, she thought. Diffuse, erasing edges and contours, making objects recede or become mere suggestions of lines against the blue-grey light.

Light.

Gerd and Nurket skied along the south coast of Lyholmen all the way to Forliset, a peninsula that stuck out into the ocean like an angry finger of red granite. Now Forliset was all but covered in white fluff. She had to turn her skis sideways to climb the Forliset hill and then balance precariously along its narrow top while she made her way nearly to the tip where granite, ice, and snow met the ocean. The thought of Nurket made her turn back; he didn’t have enough sense yet not to fall in. An hour later they had crossed the island through the “forest” and around Dyrevann, which did not show signs of freezing yet. They made it home, panting, tired, and happy.

The snow had intensified on their trip and was coming down in truckloads. Because of prevailing winds, her front porch was almost always snow free, but it was beginning to pile up along the north wall of the shed. She went in, removed her skis, and thought about shoveling a path between the two buildings. No, probably not necessary yet, but she had better bring the good shovel up to the porch in case it was meters deep tomorrow. Would Jonas need her to shovel a way for him? No, he’d bring his skis in the boat. He could ski up the path.

Gerd wasn’t so much hungry as what the south coast folks called “sjesken,” or “snack-hungry.” She wanted to bake something savory. Maybe pastries with some kind of filling? She had frozen the leftover chicken from last week. There wasn’t much – especially after she had fed a large part of it to Nurket – but it would be enough. It was made with rosemary and pink French pepper. She’d need some vegetables to go with it, perhaps some leeks and onions? The leeks looked pretty much expired, but she had two kinds of onions and plenty or garlic.  She took out the chicken to defrost and made the pastry. A bit of dried tarragon in the pastry – that would be good. She put the pastry in the refrigerator for the time being and went back upstairs to her “great room.”

The stairs of her two-story house were in the center of the building. At the top landing, going right would take her to her bedroom and to the left there had originally been two smaller bedrooms. One of the first things Gerd had done with the house was to tear down the wall between those two as well as the wall toward the stairs and install two ceiling skylights. The light here was fantastic: she had windows on three sides, and the skylights in both slanted ceiling panes gave her perfect light for weaving and painting in almost any weather.

She had two looms in her “great room” studio, both well over 100 years old. The biggest one, the one on which she wove her signature fabric for the luxury coats and wraps, had a full 8 pedals and one of the more complex set-ups she had ever worked with. All afternoon and evening yesterday she had struggled to set it up to her satisfaction. At this time of year she was completing the orders for the fall collections – a bit late, actually. Her favorite designers in Milan and New York were screaming for delivery of the fabric; their fall shows were in May. Her pink-and-petroleum coat fabric would be an unexpected addition to the line; she had finished the 12 she had promised them before Christmas. 12 bolts of her kind of fabric would make 60-80 coats or wraps that would most certainly sell retail for over 20,000 kroner each. She would get an average of 30,000 per bolt for a total of somewhere around 360,000 kroner. It wasn’t truly the money that mattered to Gerd although such recognition was nice. In fact, this so-called success had gotten a bit out of hand. She resolved to be even more exclusive next season and produce maybe 70% of what she had done this year. One couldn’t flood the market with Gerd Ljoset creations after all, she grinned to herself. The new weft she had set up yesterday was a sudden inspiration; perhaps she would let Tonje have the fabric. Tonje Hjerte was a Storesand seamstress and budding designer who was trying to break into the middle market: somewhere in the 2000-4000 kroner range. If Gerd made this fabric a bit looser than usual, it could work well as all-year wraps, and wraps were so fashionable these days. Tonje could design and sew them before the summer tourist rush and, given the strong likelihood of lousy weather and bored tourists with their wallets open in their Louis Vuitton purses, she could start to make a name for herself. Gerd smiled: this fair trade system really worked. Fleece the rich and satisfy the status hunger of the middle class, and then turn around and use the profits to weave beautiful, non-label fabric for the poor, who sewed their own coats.

Her second loom was set up for a summer fabric. Just like Nurket, she thought, this fabric needed a name. She would be doing linen. Most linens were earth-tones: flax, wheat, mushroom. She wasn’t sure. Golden yellow, maybe, with that translucent green of the first baby birch leaves. No hurry. Art came when it wanted to.

Looking at the skeins she was going to use on the big loom, she was again reminded of water and of Einar. She turned and descended the stairs. Her living room stretched the entire width of the house, east to west. Four double windows flanked a wide double door out to her patio and rose garden. Right now the rose bushes were little humps almost swallowed up by the white blanket, but roses did especially well if they had been given a good, long sleep under a snow quilt. To the left of the stairs (coming down) were her sofas, love-chairs, chaise-lounges, an ancient rocker, and several overstuffed chairs. And a huge, local stone fireplace. On her right was a dining table that could seat 12 comfortably and beyond that, her “office.” The office part of that side of the room held hand-looms, rose-painted chests, some bureaus, and an antique roll-top desk which was the electronic nerve center of the house. Only one of her own paintings on the walls; all the others she had acquired from various artists she admired.

Gerd went to the roll-top desk and slid back the top. She loved the slithering sound it made as the cover disappeared into some mysterious place. Inside was a state-of-the art Lenovo laptop, tricked out with every piece of software she could download. Originally, she had had to have a satellite connection here at the house, but a few years ago the cable had been laid (she had had something to do with that) to the island, guaranteeing up- and downstream speeds most teenagers on World of Warcraft could only dream about. Gerd pulled up her ergonomic chair and logged on.

Her main blog was just called “Up.” Two letters, no by-line. In her blog, she mused on everything from politics to fishing, and she had over 6000 subscribers to her RSS feed. Today, Gerd wanted to reflect on the long arm of history and, maybe, original sin. She wrote:

How easy it is to find yourself on the wrong side of the line. One wrong smile, a hand out to the wrong person, and you can wake up one day labeled “traitor.” My grandfather told me once of a friend of his who, in a fit of patriotism and generosity, packed his few possessions and headed to Finland in 1939. It was summer and the birches were green canopies. They were to fight back the invading enemy, the Reds. The gallant defenders were vastly outnumbered, but the Soviets had lost most of their senior command in Stalin’s purges. Inexplicably, the skirmishes dragged on. Winter approached with its icy breath. The boys had nothing but summer uniforms. They froze and starved. By spring 1940, the Mannerheim line had held. Some made it back to Sweden and to Norway, many remained as mute skeletons in the breathless woods. My grandfather’s friend did come back, but when he did, nearly senseless from starvation and marrow-cold, the Reds had joined the Allies and he, who had fought them, was shunned as a collaborator. He never recovered. Until he died in the 1980s, he was spoken of as “that one, you know. The traitor.” He fought for love and lost all.

Feeling that this short paragraph summed up her emotions as well as she was able to put it, she googled her local paper, the Storesand Courier. One of the many jokes about this renowned newspaper had to do with a courier being supposed to run, while the Courier could barely crawl.

Gerd was looking for names from 60 years ago.

After some misspellings, she found Alexis Dupreux. In 1939, his name showed up among 11 who had been rescued when their French fishing vessel had gone aground outside Ørneredet. In 1948, he was a hero of the Resistance. In 1983, his funeral merited a small obituary. The 1948 article included a photo. The caption read Alexis Dupreux, Frank Åge Samuelsen, and Einar Iversen. Tante Anita had mentioned someone called Gunari, but she got no hits on that name.

Daylight was fading already. Gerd realized she had been so caught up in her research that all thought of making food had vanished. Nurket barked.

Nurket was doing a strange dance by the kitchen door. He whined and was almost growling. What was out there? They did have a few white-tailed deer on the island in summer, but in winter the somnolent seagulls were the major game. And Nurket had never seemed to have a taste for seagulls. Maybe he just needed to pee.

Gerd opened the door and Nurket was off like an arrow. Gerd shouted “Wait!” to no avail. She pulled on a sweater and her parka and set off after him down the path.

Instantly, she was enveloped in snow thick as fog. It was coming from all directions and daylight was disappearing by inches. She should have brought a flashlight. Gerd wanted to shout the dog’s name, but what was it? It certainly wasn’t “Nurket.”

She floundered down the path and into the clearing. No clearing now; the expanse was a wall of snow. She felt her way along the stone fence. “Nurket! Come back!”

Gerd heard barking ahead. The boathouse? She stumbled over briars and rocks that loomed up unexpectedly in the swirling snow. An indistinct shadow of a squat building began to take shape and the barking sounded closer. There was someone there!

Someone with a long, hard something lifted up high and brought crashing down on something soft, something that went crunch. Nurket howled as if in pain. Gerd shouted “Stop!” she looked around for a weapon or something to defend herself with, but there was nothing. “Stop!”

She was gaining on the sound, heedless of danger. In her flight to save the little dog, she nearly stumbled over the prone figure in the snow. Someone was lying at the edge of the near-freezing waves. She located Nurket, whining next to the bundle.

What the hell was going on? Who was attacking and what and why?

Gerd bent over the fallen shape in the snow. With a shock, she recognized the white beard of Los Joacim. She put her ear close to his mouth: was he dead? No, he was breathing, but only barely. Phone – call 911.

She didn’t have her phone. When she rushed out of the house, she hadn’t thought to bring it along. How could she move all 100 kilos of Joacim Corneliussen?

The spare wheelbarrow in the boathouse. Gerd yanked on the door – it was never locked; nothing normally was on the island – and felt her way through nets, crab-pots, and assorted ropes and gear. There was the wheelbarrow. She pulled it out toward the door and over as close as she could get it to Los Joacim.

Gerd was a small woman. Well, short, if not exactly small. How do you get 100 kilos of a slack body into a wheelbarrow? She hauled, pulled, and pushed. Got at least most of him in and started pushing. Wheelbarrow in the snow? She almost cried. She couldn’t budge it, nor him. Pull, that was it. Gerd made herself into a horse in harness and pulled the enormous weight behind her. Nurket gave encouraging barks.

After an eternity of pulling and swearing, the house came into view. How to get him up the stairs and into the house? There were some 2x4s in the shed; she could make a ramp. With this improvised entry, Gerd was finally able to pull Los Joacim’s body into the warmth of her kitchen. She dragged him toward the living room and collapsed on top of him, exhausted.

Joacim was mumbling something. He was alive! “What did you say? Don’t worry; I’ll have help here shortly,” Gerd said inanely.

“Skulle ha sagt …,” said the pilot.

“What?”

“Jeg skulle ha sagt noe.”

“Don’t tire yourself out, Los. I’ll get you to hospital and they’ll fix you up right as rain.”

“I should have told,” he repeated. “I should have said something.”

Gerd searched frantically for her phone. Found it at her desk where she had so peacefully and self-righteously been writing her blog. Her frozen fingers dialed Nanna.

“Hei Gerd, are you loving this snow? It’s about time,” Nanna’s cheerful voice boomed out.

“I would, except I have a problem.”

Nanna instantly switched tone. “What’s the problem?”

“Nanna, I found Los Joacim unconscious down by my boathouse. I have him in the house now, but I think he’s very poorly. Is there any way you and Peder could make it over here?”

“Joacim? Unconscious? What on earth was he doing out? Well, never mind. We’ll be there right away. Can you take his pulse?”

“Nanna, I’m bad at emergencies. I don’t know how to take a pulse. All I can say is that he is alive. Please come as soon as you can.” Gerd hung up.

The old pilot looked uncomfortable on her floor. Gerd pushed and pulled to straighten his legs. She ran into the spare bedroom to get a pillow and some quilts and covered him as best she could. She lit the fireplace. At least he would not die cold.

She soon heard feet stomping on her landing. Nanna and Peder, both looking like they had thrown on every conceivable piece of clothing they owned, pushed open the door and came in. Nanna went directly to the old man on the floor while Peder hung back in the kitchen.

“Where did you find him?” he asked Gerd.

“In the rocks by my boathouse.”

“Good thing you were there. Do you think he had a heart attack?”

“No.”

“Peder, can you call the hospital helicopter service?” It was nurse Nanna, giving orders. Both Gerd and Peder sprang into action at the sound of the authoritative voice. Peder pulled his phone out of one of the myriad pockets of his parka. “What’s the number?”

“370-9050,” said Gerd, who somehow dredged that particular number out of the crevasses of memory. Peder dialed and gave the phone to Nanna. A lot of very uncomplimentary language ensued. Nanna threw the phone on the floor.

“They say,” she mimicked, “that they can’t fly in this terrible weather and endanger their delicate asses. They have to wait until the county central command gives them permission, which will be in the next century sometime.”

“I’ll get the boat.” It was Peder, not at all uncertain. Nanna smiled at him, and Gerd saw in a flash why they were a forever couple.

“Please do.”

Peder took off without a goodbye. Nanna looked at Gerd.

“He has a gash across his temple that doesn’t at all look like he fell down on the rocks. His left arm is broken. I won’t remove his clothes, but I’m willing to bet he took a hit to the kidneys as well. What the hell is going on, Gerd?”

Gerd sank down into a chair. “I wish I knew. Since Einar died, it has all been piling up. People are muttering. I ran into Tante Anita last night and she was going on about evil and some kind of poker club. None of it makes any sense. The librarian told me Einar died of methanol poisoning, but you know he never touched the hard stuff after his wife died. Some EMT said they found sand in Einar’s spare gas can in his boat, as if someone had wanted him to be stranded. And Los Joacim has been acting strangely, walking the island at all hours and talking to himself. All the old folks talk about the war, but it ended over 60 years ago. I don’t know anything, Nanna.”

Nanna observed her friend closely. Even if she knew as a nurse that old scars never really healed, she wasn’t about to say so. She turned to more practical matters.

“How do you propose we get this old man down to the dock so Peder can take him in?”

Gerd was relieved to be able to do something.

“I’ll get the sled from the shed. It’s plenty big enough.”

After some heaving and muttering about goddamn stairs, they got Los Corneliussen’s still breathing body into the sled and down the path to the dock. As they were about to manhandle the body into Peder’s waiting boat, he seemed to come alive.

“I should have told! I didn’t. I’m a coward. Forgive me, oh God,” the old man shouted and collapsed into his delirious state. The three looked at one another. Peder started the engine.

“Come with us, Gerd. He may need you at the hospital.”

Gerd felt a whine at her side. Nurket did not want to be left behind.

“OK. We’ll all go,” she decided and jumped into the boat next to Peder. Nurket followed. Nanna stayed. “If you need me, call me,” she said. They pulled away from the dock.

As they sped through the whirling snow, Gerd thought, “what happened during the war that still lingers? Was Einar really killed because of something that long ago? What endures sixty years?”