Chapter 10

Jonas had stayed glued to her side all weekend. They had had long talks about jealousy, possessiveness, and what being a couple meant. No resolution. “You don’t own me,” had been a refrain. “Can you commit to me?” had been another.

Finally, they had come to some kind of agreement.

Gerd:     “I want to be free. I don’t want to be constrained by someone else’s desires or wishes.”

Jonas:    “I want freedom, too. And I want your freedom. But I need to know, for sure and for certain, that you won’t open yourself to anyone else.”

Gerd:     “So you want to put chains on me.”

Jonas:    “No. I want to know that you want fidelity.”

Gerd:     “Does this just have to do with sex?”

Jonas:    “No,” hesitantly, then “Yes.”

Gerd:     “I can easily promise you that I won’t sleep with anyone else without telling you first.”

Jonas:    “I want that you only want me.”

Gerd:     “I only want you.”

It went round and round. “We humans want both,” thought Gerd. “We want certainty and security and we also want to just pack up and leave.”

Jonas thought, “I want her to lean on me, rely on me, need me. I want to be the one she turns to.”

Sunday morning, out on top of the Forliset peninsula, he had proposed marriage, again. She was not convinced.

“What does marriage do for us, my love? Marriage is a legal condition of inheritance and the right to dispose of property. Do you want to inherit my house?”

No, that was not what he wanted. “I want to put a ring on your finger as a sign to all other men to keep away.”

“Like the ring in the nose of a bull.”

“No. As a signal to the world that you have chosen me.”

“You know, in the old days, people didn’t parade their wealth for all and sundry. They kept their treasures to themselves.”

“So I’m a fool. Sue me.”

Gerd smiled. “Honey, let me tell you this. Since I met you there has been no other. I don’t even dream of Fher Olvera anymore. You are my man. I respect you, I rely on you, I trust you. I even love you and by god I desire you. Will that do?”

It would have to do. Jonas embraced her hard out there on the tip of the granite peninsula. His thoughts were churning. “I could force her,” he thought. “I’m bigger and stronger. I can force her submission. But I cannot force her free choice.”

They made their slow way back across the peninsula. At Dyrevann, Jonas stopped and laughed out loud.

“What?”

“I’m such a male animal. All I have been thinking about since we left the house is how I can get you horizontal.”

“Hah! And I was thinking about plants.”

“Plants?”

“Yes. I was thinking about the properties of all the plants sleeping under the snow that we don’t know and can’t use.”

“Don’t you ever think of sex?”

“I do. A lot. As you found out last week.”

A look from Jonas told her he did indeed remember, and fondly.

They made their way across the island, following paths that existed more in memory than in reality. The path Gerd was leading them exited at the soccer field, next to nyhusene. Six nearly new houses had been constructed by a company that had gambled on six or more families wanting to “return to their roots” and build lives on the island of Lyholmen. The houses had been bought, but not by anyone who could manage to live there. One family had tried, a couple and two kids, but after last winter’s storms and isolation, even they had packed it in. Sometimes relatives or friends of the owners stayed there for a while. At this point, there was nobody. The houses were empty shells, cold and dark.

“What time is it?” Gerd asked Jonas, who glanced surprised at his watch. “12:45.”

“Let’s go out and say hello to the Gundersens.”

“Who?”

“There is a family that lives way out on the east tip. I had a visit from their two daughters yesterday. I’d like to say hello.”

That was unusual. Gerd saying hello to anyone and expecting to be invited in for coffee and cake was not at all normal. Perhaps something to do with hormones. Jonas nodded his head and they trudged up the snow-covered asphalt path toward the east side.

Over the hill, they descended on the cozy red house that was a café in summer. No one lived there in winter.

“There are people living out here at this time of year?” Jonas was doubtful.

“There are. See that cement dock over there? That’s the Gundersens.”

“Never heard of them.”

“They keep pretty much to themselves. They arrived in May last year. I think the dad is an accountant with Fidelity. They have twin daughters, 15. Peppi and Kaia. The girls showed up on my doorstep yesterday, skipping school.”

But the Gundersen house was dark and the boat was gone from the dock. It was quiet and beautiful out on that side of the island, big trees, some arable farmland (hadn’t been farmed in 100 years), great anchoring. There was still enough snow to ski on and Jonas and Gerd wished they had brought their skis. But they hadn’t, so they trudged through the ankle-deep snow back to the asphalt path. They made it as far as Nanna’s.

Nanna and Peder lived on the second floor of their white, wood-sided house, roofed in red tile. Downstairs in the back was Peder’s woodshop; he was an excellent carpenter and carver. Gerd had bought the larger of her two bedroom dressers from Peder. It was made from local oak and so finely made that not a single joint showed. Gerd saw Peder as a fellow artist although Peder laughed at the idea in his quiet way.

The front room downstairs held a long counter, shelves, freezers, and a huge walk-in refrigerator. In the summer months, usually from May through September, Nanna ran a small general store. Since their house was the first the tourists came to as they got off the ferry, she had brisk business in ice cream and sodas on sunny days as well as everything the tent campers would need no matter what the weather. Right now the only things on the shelves were canned and paper goods. The store was closed, but if anyone ran out of toiletpaper and the weather was too bad to make a run to town, Nanna would always open the till and accept a few kroner. Her “St. Johannes Day fund,” she called it.

Nanna had been in Storesand with her 10-year old daughter Elise on a brief vacation from her nursing job in Gudbrandsdalen when she met Peder. Peder and a recently divorced buddy from Copenhagen were camping on the fields variously called the St. Hans fields, the Granary, or simply “the grass” by different locals. The buddy was tall, dark, handsome, and drunk. Peder won the blond cheerful woman with his slow smile and his patient way of teaching Elise to row. Neither had been on Lyholmen before and both fell in love with it. When by a strange turn of events the ramshackle house near the ferry came on the market a couple of years later, Peder took out his life savings from the bank, got a job at a marina in town, and proposed marriage to Nanna. Elise was the one who said yes. The little family had moved in and Elise had finished high school in town. Jonas had been her favorite teacher.

Peder was inland helping a farmer with a hay bailer that wouldn’t run and Nanna was alone. They chatted about this and that for an hour – even Nanna couldn’t ruin the requisite coffee. In the middle of Nanna telling a hilarious story about her dour neighbors in Gudbrandsdalen, where she had grown up, Gerd’s cell rang. She looked at her ringing pocket, surprised. It was the hospital; Gerd had given them her number when she and Peder had brought in Los Joacim. She listened for a while, made some noises, and said “Will tomorrow around noon be OK?”

To Jonas and Nanna, she said, “Joacim is ready to come home, but they said he ought to have someone look after him for a week or so. He doesn’t have any family I know of. Do you think we should hire a nurse?”

Nanna laughed and pointed at herself. “Hire a nurse? You have one right here. Of course I’ll look after him.”

Great. Gerd called the hospital back and told them. That seemed to satisfy everyone s and Jonas and Gerd made their slow way back to her house, arm in arm.

That evening, Gerd was weaving her petroleum and salmon coat fabric for Tonje Hjerte upstairs in her studio, Jonas occupying the only comfortable chair in the room, reading. He had found some history books in one of her bookshelves (Gerd never got rid of a book – she even still had her university textbooks) and had picked up an old, small monograph about local Resistance history. One chapter mentioned Storesand, not a major player in the drama of occupied Norway. He read aloud to Gerd:

Resistance was mostly individual in South Coast County. There was little to no Milorg presence. However, there was a Nazi HQ of sorts in Storesand. Storesand was probably chosen over Hanvsheia, considerably bigger, for its protected, deep-water harbor. The German fleet had lost a warship somewhere in the vicinity; it was never found. However, as was their practice, since they couldn’t find any guilty parties, they instituted a general reign of terror over the meek population of Storesand in the spring and summer of 1942. Fathers and sons were hauled in for “questioning;” some survived to tell of the brutality. It was rumored that the Nazi commanders – little more than boys – gave a few select “individual of interest” a choice: turn collaborator or we’ll execute your entire family. Most saw this as another empty threat since the poor and hungry German soldiers couldn’t eat without the bounty of the sea gathered for them by the populace. But both documents and mouth-to-ear stories told of some who did turn informer. Three names that were not revealed until the late 1950s were Gunnar Katte Jeltzen, Petter Tønnesen, and Ingrid Smestad. Tønnesen and Smestad were tried in 1959 and convicted of crimes against the state; Jeltzen had committed suicide in 1952.

Stories of patriotism and sacrifice also abounded, some documented, some not. Many of them involved the border guides who helped transport suspected patriots to neutral Sweden. One of the most involved border guides was not discovered until the 1980s; he had kept himself so well hidden. This was the famous Oswald Kampainen, a veteran of the Finnish Winter War of 1939-40. Kampainen, a naturalized Swede, showed up on the official labor union rolls as a woodcutter in Storesand in 1948. How he had made it back across the Mannerheim line, into Sweden, and then into occupied Norway is not known. When identified and discovered in Oslo in 1989, Kampainen refused to talk. But others talked for him. It is told that he made perhaps 20-30 border runs with the “transport” from Norway to Sweden. One man who spoke up for Kampainen was Einar Iversen, a fisherman on an island outside Storesand. “We called him “the woodsman,” said Iversen. “We were maybe 20 men in 1943 and the Nazis were on our trail. Kampainen hid us in the hills, found us food where there was none, and kept up morale. He deserves the King’s medal, to be sure.”

Gerd had only been half listening. Now she looked up, “Did you say Jeltzen? That unpleasant man who says he is a police detective called himself Jeltzen.”

“There must be hundreds of Jeltzens,” said Jonas, “ but it might warrant looking into for all that. If that asshole ever approaches you again, I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”

Gerd smiled crookedly. Jonas was the most peaceful of men; he didn’t even squash a spider. Still, his overprotectiveness might be smothering at times, but it also gave her a deep sense of security. The evening passed uneventfully.

“Let’s get married,” said Jonas again apropos nothing in the middle of Monday morning breakfast. Gerd choked on her mouthful of eggs and bacon.

“Didn’t we talk about this already?”

“We did, but you didn’t say yes,” he replied as calmly as if they had been discussing the weather and went back to buttering toast.

Gerd was not at her best in the mornings and her brain was pretty much mush until her third cup of coffee. She poured herself one more.

“I don’t want to move to town.” Jonas was elated. She was softening.

“Of course not. I’ll move out here with you. We’ll keep the house on Fillene. I’ll rent it out.”

Done deal, was it? “Hmmmm,” was all Gerd could say. She finally looked up to see his brown eyes crinkle at her. “OK, I’ll think about it.”

Jonas wasn’t going to push his luck any further and just smiled. He was running late and got up to find his outer gear for the 10 minute trip into town. The day was overcast, but they hadn’t had any more snow. He kissed her, gently and thoroughly.

“My 12^th graders have Norwegian essays due today,” he told her. “I’m sure I would be very bad company. Should I plan to stay in town?” He wanted to give her space and time to think. Perhaps time to miss him.

Gerd smiled and reached for more coffee. “Of course. I’ll go get the nets and then check on Joacim and Nanna. Hope he hasn’t driven her crazy yet. He’s a bit of a curmudgeon.” To put it mildly.

After Jonas had left and she was feeling more or less human, Gerd whistled for Nurket and the two of them headed for the boat. It was a dreary day, low clouds, no wind, perhaps +2 or 3 Celcius.

The catch was small, but there were seven 1.5 kilo ocean trout that would fetch a stellar price. In addition, her beautiful nets had caught two plastic milk bottles, some stray vinyl rope, and a brown glass bottle. Gerd was irritated. Did people think the ocean was a garbage dump? All the way to town and Fiskebrygga she brooded on how people these days just threw things away without a thought. Nurket said nothing, sensing her state of mind.

She kept back one of the 1 kilo trout. She had a metal container that fir that size fish perfectly and she wanted to start a rakørret (brined trout) for Jonas. On her way home, she stopped at the postmistress porch to pick up the Storesand Courier from her porch and walked up to Los Joacim’s house.

Joacim was sitting up in bed, being unusually pleasant to Nanna, who was making him a sandwich.

“Hei, los, how are you feeling?” Gerd asked the old man, who actually didn’t look the worse for wear.

“Well, I think I’ll live,” the old pilot admitted. “Looks like I can’t get rid of her.” He inclined his head at Nanna. The latter brought a tray with two cheese sandwiches, one goat cheese and one Jarlsberg, a cut-up apple, and a tall glass of milk.

“Now be good and eat, los,” she said. “You have to keep up your strength.”

Gerd laughed at the dismayed look of the once-powerful pilot. He didn’t dare say it, but this was food for 5 year olds.

They chatted a while and Gerd and Nurket took their leave. Back home, she cleaned the trout, mixed 60 grams sea salt with a pinch of sugar, and covered the fish with a cutting board Jonas had made for her that fit the container without a millimeter to spare. To the right of her front door, she had set aside one solitary rock that weighed exactly 1 kg. she weighted down the fish with the rock and placed it all on her front porch, sheltered from rain or snow. The temperature was perfect; a few degrees above zero. If it dropped considerably, she would put it in the shed. She sat down with more coffee and the Courier.

Like everyone else, Gerd read the paper in a specific order. First “Bekjentgjørelser” (Announcements). This was where you would find out about planned blackouts (as opposed to non-planned ones), the agenda for the city council meeting, etc. Then the obituaries. She didn’t recognize any names; that was good. And then today’s amusement, the “for sale” section.

“For sale, a wedding dress size 48, worn twice. I never want to see the thing again.”

“For sale, 9.9 hp Mercury outboard motor. Runs occasionally.”

“For sale, a well broken-in baby carriage. My husband had a vasectomy.”

The journalistic merits of the Courier were not spectacular, and Gerd usually skipped lightly over today’s stories. However, one half-column on page three caught her attention. A power boat had been found drifting outside Treungene. The owner had been identified; he seemed rather sorry that they had towed in his boat. Probably the insurance payment would be worth much more than the boat. He told the paper that he had had a dog with him. The dog had probably drowned when they hit the underwater skerry. He didn’t seem to care very much.

Gerd looked at Nurket dozing by her feet. No, she was not going to attempt to trace his owner. He had an owner now and it was her.

Continue weaving? Start a new painting? She decided that she needed a walk and that the halibut she had frozen a couple of days ago could use good homes. Did Nurket want to come? When did he not?

She brought her gifts to Tanta Anita, who was delighted and to Gamlefru Andresen, likewise. Declined Mrs. Andresen’s offer of sherry, which the old lady didn’t seem to mind. More for her. She didn’t see Jutta or Henrik, but since Henkie was a fisherman, giving them halibut was a bit of coals to Newcastle. She heard loud male voices up at the old school house, and Nurket barked.

Peder was face down into some kind of machine while Jon Eirik and Per Christian cheered him on. Jon Eirik had inherited the building that had been used as the island school up until the war and he had moved in with his lover Trond. 33 years old and already a renowned architect, Jon Eirik Nissan had had enough of Oslo in-fighting and politics, and had been glad to escape to the remote island. Trond, a baker who could get a job anywhere, joined him soon afterwards. The sound of Trond opening up his motor at 4am as he left for work always woke up Nanna, but she tolerated it cheerfully. Per Christian was the baby of the trio, barely 21. He was not sure he was gay but thought he might be. PC, as they called him, came from a harsh family of Trondhjem elite; he had left home as soon as legally possible. PC hadn’t found his calling yet, but the steadying influence of Jon Eirik and Trond was beginning to have an effect. PC was enrolled in three online courses from the open university: American literature, remedial math, and art history.

“Hei Gerd, come over and see what we found!” PC’s voice was enthusiastic. “That’s an adorable dog; what’s her name?”

“It’s a he and he doesn’t really have a name yet,” Gerd smiled. “For now I’m calling him Nurket. What is that monstrosity?”

Peder surfaced, closed the lid of the machine, and yanked on a starting rope. The thing shuddered and came to life. Nurket backed off, barking.

“It appears to be an antique snow blower,” said Jon Eirik, grinning at PC’s obvious delight. “Too bad we haven’t had much snow yet.”

“Oh, but we will, for sure,” said PC. “And when we do, I’ll be the one you’ll thank for keeping the road open.” Lyholmen didn’t actually have a road, but the asphalt path running most of the length of the island was called that. The road.

The noise was deafening and both Gerd and Nurket would prefer more quiet. She handed a bag of three halibut fillets to Jon Eirik. “Ask Trond to bring some potatoes from town,” she recommended. “Man does not live by bread alone.”

They thanked her repeatedly. Peder accepted a package as well and that left one. The small woman and the soon-to-get-bigger dog continued up the hill and down again toward the Gundersen house.

It was about 2pm and the girls would not have returned from school yet. Gerd was hoping to catch Eva Gundersen alone. She did. Gerd knocked on the door and Eva answered. She didn’t seem to want to invite them in, but when Nurket lay down and contrived to look pathetic, she relented.

It was dark inside the old house. Gerd had noticed rotten boards on the outside, but the inside was neat. She could not see a TV nor even a radio. Mrs. Gundersen started boiling water for coffee, the old-fashioned kind.

“I’m sorry about Einar Iversen,” the gaunt, mousy-haired woman told Gerd.

“Yes, it was really sad.”

“I didn’t know him, but I remember my father mentioning him a few times.”

“Really? Was your father from here?”

“No, he came from Finland, but he was in Storesand during the war. I have some old photographs, would you like to see them?”

Gerd would. Eva Gundersen soon returned with a heavy, old photo album.

There were pictures of Storesand and many from the big and small islands, including Lyholmen. The trees were so much smaller! A few pages later in the album, she saw someone she thought she recognized.

“Is that Joacim Corneliussen? Goodness, but he was a handsome man in those days,” Gerd asked Eva.

“Yes, it is. And that is Einar Iversen next to him.” Einar at 18 or so was tall, dark-haired, and rather rakish. “And that’s my father, Oswald.”

Gerd studied the photographs a long time. They were back-and-white and faded, but she could still make out a large, dark man in the background.”

“His name was Oswald?”

“Yes. Oswald Kampainen. I was Eva Kampainen until I married Andreas.” Eva pointed to another photo. “That is three of the men my father guided across the border during the war.” Gerd recognized Joacim and Einar. “Who is the third?”

“I can’t remember his name. My dad may have told me, but I didn’t pay much attention to all this war stuff,” Eva smiled apologetically. “I think he was a Frenchman.”

A small photo toward the back of the album showed a blond man with a tiny wife posing for the camera.

“Do you know who they are?” asked Gerd.

“Not really, but it may have been the guy who committed suicide. Hanged himself, dad said,” Eva offered.

Eva Gundersen was starting to act a little nervously. “The girls will be home soon,” she told Gerd. They come back with the 3 o’clock ferry. Gerd wisely decided not to tell their mother that the girls had spent Friday ditching school. She got up to leave.

On her way out, Gerd opened the big closet where she thought she had hung her parka. Wrong closet. This one was filled with shotguns, new and old, and there were two leather whips in the corner. Were those handcuffs?

Eva came out from the kitchen and saw Gerd staring. She hurried to close the closet door and open the one where she had put Gerd’s anorak. Gerd turned to Mrs. Gundersen.

“Is your husband a hunter then? I thought I saw a deer rifle,” she said levelly.

“No, he isn’t,” replied Eva with no expression. “Guns are just his hobby.” Both women pretended that they had not seen the whips.

As she turned to go down the wobbly wooden stairs, Gerd made a decision. She made the older woman repeat her cell number three times. “Just in case you’d like to chat some time.” Not likely.

Nurket and Gerd were quiet on their way home. The Gundersen home was disturbing. Kaia had shown up with a black eye, their mother wore a turtleneck sweater under her house dress even though the house was not at all cold, and there was no earthly reason for an accountant to have so many guns in the house in an unlocked closet. Gerd worried.