Hanna
Weeks went by with no sign of Per. I heard a fishing boat pull up alongside the hut one night, but no knock at the door came announcing his presence.
It sounded as if they were removing those heavy boxes from the hidden compartment and, sure enough, when I checked the next day, it had been emptied, leaving only the creels and the pile of nets in a heap in the corner.
I kept myself busy, mending Pappa’s creels ready for the spring and digging the little patch of ground behind the hut as it slowly began to thaw.
And then, at last, the day came when the sun reappeared.
I paused and leaned on my spade. Sensing the shift in the intensity of the light, I turned and raised my eyes to the hills across the water.
It was short-lived, a sliver of brilliance that crested the ridge for a few brief minutes.
The blood seemed to thaw in my veins a little with the knowledge that I’d made it through the darkness.
We have a word in Norwegian for the feeling spring brings. We call it v?rf?lelse, “springfulness,” and although it was there for but a fleeting few moments, it gave me the strength to hope for more.
*
The attack came a few nights later, on March 4.
I heard the distant boom of explosions echoing up the fjord, a sound I recognized only too well from almost a year before.
I scrambled from my bed to turn on the wireless.
Reports were sketchy, but I managed to find a BBC broadcast. British commandos, with the Norwegian Navy, had launched a raid on Svolvaer, a fishing port farther down the coast. I remembered Per’s words—there is some action planned.
But then the announcement dissolved into static, and although I searched frantically across the airwaves, I could find no more news.
I’d hoped it might be the start of a concerted fight back, but it turned out to be short-lived.
I later heard the raid had inflicted significant damage on German ships and factories in four towns in the area, destroying fish-processing plants used to produce glycerine, which the Nazis were using in the manufacture of explosives.
But then the strike-force had retreated.
The German grip along the fjord was strengthened in the aftermath of the attack, and a passing fisherman told me arrests had been made.
For a while afterward, there were no more nighttime visits to the hut, and the hidden compartment remained empty.
I worried for Per, fretting that he might have been captured.
One night, though, I heard the unmistakable tonk-tonk-tonk of a fishing boat’s engine again, coming up the fjord.
I set down the stocking I’d been attempting to darn, squinting at my clumsy stitches in the dim light of the lamp, and went to the window.
Sure enough, the boat had turned into the bay, and the heartbeat of the engine slowed as it pulled up alongside the hut, drifting the final few yards on the flood tide before dropping anchor.
I blew out the lamp, pulled on my coat, and slipped out onto the porch.
Three men were on the deck, putting out fenders and making the boat fast to the piers of the hut.
One of them straightened as he saw me and raised a hand in silent greeting.
I kept my voice soft, crouching to speak to him through the wooden slats of the balcony’s surround.
“I’ve not had word from the usual messenger,” I said, careful not to mention Per by name. There could be eyes and ears in the darkness, and I knew I was risking a lot even being out there.
The man’s face was in shadow but, in the moonlight, I saw him shake his head. “He won’t be coming back. Three of them were caught. He was one.”
I whispered Per’s name then, wanting to be sure.
“I’m sorry,” said the man. “We heard he was brave. He refused to speak, before they were executed.”
I gasped. We’d all heard rumors of how captured Norwegians had been tortured. My mind filled with horrible images, thoughts of what he might have endured, and my hands began to shake uncontrollably as I clutched at the edges of my coat.
“Sorry,” he said again. “But we have to be getting on.”
He turned away to help the others, and I heard the bolt securing the trapdoor beneath the hut being drawn back, then the sound of heavy boxes being heaved into the hidden compartment.
Once they’d finished, they began to untie the mooring ropes. The man looked up at me again. “You’re doing a courageous thing here. Even though we lose good people, we continue to fight to get our country back.”
“I want to do more,” I said, my shock at the news about Per making my throat constrict so the words came out as a harsh croak. “Will you tell them? Please? There must be other things I can help with.”
The anchor chain rattled as they pulled it in. “You take care of yourself now,” the man said.
“Please,” I repeated, my voice still low but filled with a fierce insistence. “Tell them I can do more.”
They pushed off from the piers of the hut, and the boat began to move silently with the tide.
When they were a little way off, I heard the steady beat of the engine start up again, and they made their way out of the bay.
I stayed there, frozen, crouching on the porch, bent double with grief until the last sounds faded away and the night was silent again.
I raised a hand to my cheek, remembering Per’s last kiss, and found it wet with my cooling tears.
I whispered his name into the darkness, and a moment later the lonely cry of a curlew sounded from across the water, as if in reply.
My body felt stiff and sore, and I had to use the wooden slats to pull myself up.
I moved indoors, not stopping to take off my coat as I lay down on the mattress and pulled the blankets over me.
Their warmth couldn’t thaw the bitter coldness in my heart that wasn’t just down to the chill of the night air.
I lay awake, staring into the darkness, feeling utterly alone.
*
A few days later, I was on the beach in the sunshine, picking up pieces of driftwood to use as firelighters, when I heard another engine on the other side of the skerries.
This was no fishing boat, and I could tell straightaway that it wasn’t someone who knew how to pick their way through the rocks.
There was the sound of metal scraping against stone and a loud cursing. I froze. The swearing was in German.
I hurried back to the hut and shut the door, peering out cautiously from one side of the window.
After a couple more failed attempts, the boat appeared and came steadily toward the beach.
I realized I needed to look as normal as possible, and to distract any attention from the hidden compartment, so I stepped outside again and picked up my hoe, as if calmly going about my work.
Beneath his greatcoat, the man wore a khaki tunic, drawn in at the waist with a black belt.
He jumped ashore, then pulled up his boat, his smart black boots crunching on the pebbles.
He gazed at the hut, taking his time, before sauntering toward me.
As he drew near, I noticed the badge on his cap—a silver skull.
He was a Gestapo officer, one of Hitler’s special enforcers.
Suppressing the fear that surged through my body, I clutched the hoe a little more tightly and made myself stand straight and tall.
“Good morning,” he said. He spoke Norwegian, with a strong German accent, and his tone was cordial.
He smiled warmly, but I didn’t relax a single muscle.
“I heard there was a young lady living all on her own somewhere on the coast here. Thought I’d come and pay her a visit.
You must be Hanna Kristiansen? I am Captain Heinrich Stolz. ”
My mind was racing. Where had he heard about me, and who had told him my name? I kept my face expressionless and made no reply other than the briefest of nods.
“A nice place you have here,” he continued, looking around at the hills and the stream, taking in the fish frame and the vegetable garden. “Your own little kingdom, eh? But you must get rather lonely with no company.”
“I keep busy,” I said, finding my voice. “And there is no one left. My family are all gone.” My instinct told me that denying the existence of my sister was safer than mentioning her, if he didn’t already know I had a twin.
“I’m sorry to hear that. But surely you’d have a better life in a town rather than out here in the wilderness.”
“I lived in Narvik. My home was destroyed. My father’s fishing hut is all I have left.”
He gave me an appraising look. “Ah, yes, Narvik. It was terrible the way the British inflicted such devastation on the town, wasn’t it?
” I was careful to show no emotion, sensing he was trying to get a reaction from me.
“Well, I do admire you. It can’t be easy, living here.
But at least now you have a visitor. Aren’t you going to offer me a cup of coffee? ”
Bile rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard as I set down the hoe and walked to the door of the hut, hearing the stones crunch beneath his heels as he followed me.
It was a relief to busy myself at the stove, giving me time to think.
It seemed he didn’t know about the hidden compartment, or surely he wouldn’t have come alone, and I would already have been arrested.
I knew I had to steady my nerves, to make him believe I was simply a loner who preferred to live a quiet life in the hidden bay.
He’d pulled up a chair and removed his cap, placing it on the table in front of him, where it sat like a silent warning.
He looked around the hut, taking in the arrangement of shells on the shelf, the rag rug on the floor, my mending basket, and my small collection of books.
Seeing it through his eyes, I was glad it was so evidently the habitat of just one solitary person.
I was careful not to let my glance stray to the sea urchin shell where the key for the trapdoor was hidden.