The Redbreast

97

Oslo. 17 May 2000.

Harry checked his watch again. He flicked through a few more sheets until his eyes fell on a familiar name.

Schroder's. 23 September 1948.

… a business with good prospects. But today what I had long feared happened.

I was reading the newspaper when I noticed someone standing at my table observing me. I looked up and the blood in my veins froze to ice! He was somewhat run-down, I could see. His clothes were quite worn. He no longer had the erect, rigid bearing I remember. Something about him had gone. But I immediately recognised our old section leader, the man with the cyclops eye.

'Gudbrand Johansen,' said Edvard Mosken. 'You're supposed to have died. In Hamburg, rumour has it'

I didn't know what to say or do. I only knew that the man who sat down in front of me could have me sentenced for treason, or even murder.

My mouth was completely dry when I was finally able to talk. I said yes, I certainly was alive, and to gain time I told him I had ended up in the military hospital in Vienna with head injuries and a bad foot. What had happened to him? He said he had been repatriated and ended up in the hospital in Sinsen, funnily enough the same one I would have been sent to. Like most of the others he had been given a three-year sentence, and had been let out after serving two and a half.

We talked a bit about this and that, and after a while I began to relax. I ordered him a beer and talked about the building-supplies business I ran. I told him my opinion: it was best for people like us to start up something on our own since most companies refused to employ ex-Eastern Front men (especially the companies who had co-operated with the Germans during the war).

'What about you?' he asked.

I had explained that joining the 'right side' had not helped me much. I had still worn a German uniform.

Mosken sat there the whole time with this half-smile playing on his lips, and in the end he could not hold it back any longer. He told me he had been trying to trace me for a long time, but all the tracks ended in Hamburg. He had almost given up when one day he spotted the name Sindre Fauke in a newspaper article about Resistance men. That had rekindled his interest; he had found out where Fauke worked and rang. Someone had tipped him off that I was probably at Schroder's.

I tensed up and thought, here it comes. But what he said was utterly different from what I had imagined.

'I never thanked you properly for stopping Hallgrim Dale from shooting me that time. You saved my life, Johansen.'

I played this down with a shrug and an open-mouthed stare. It was the best I could do.

Mosken said I had shown myself to be a man of morals when I saved his life because I'd had good reason to wish him dead. If Sindre Fauke's body had been found, Mosken could have testified that I was probably the murderer. I simply nodded. Then he looked at me and asked if I was frightened of him. I realised that I had nothing to lose by telling him the whole story exactly as it had happened.

Mosken listened, focused his cyclops eye on me a couple of times to check if I was lying, and occasionally shook his head, but he knew well enough that most was true.

When I had finished, I ordered two more beers and he told me about himself. His wife had found another man to look after her and the boy while he was in prison. He understood. Perhaps it was best for Edvard Junior too, riot to grow up with a traitor as a father. Mosken seemed resigned. He said he wanted to work in transport, but hadn't got any of the driving jobs he had applied for.

'Buy your own truck,' I said. 'You should start up on your own, too.'

'I haven't got enough money to do that,' he said, with a quick glance in my direction. I had a vague idea where the conversation was leading. 'And the banks are not that keen on ex-Eastern Front men. They think we're all crooks'

'I've saved up some money,' I said. 'You can borrow some from me.' He refused, but I said the matter was closed.

'I'll add interest, of course. That goes without saying,' I said, and then he brightened up. But he was soon serious again and said it could be an expensive time until he really got going. So I assured him the rate of interest wouldn't be very high, it would be more symbolic. Then I ordered another round of beer and when we had drunk up and were on our way out we shook hands. We had a deal.

Oslo. 3 August 1950.

… a letter postmarked Vienna in the letterbox. I placed it on the kitchen table in front of me and stared at it. Her name and address were written on the back of the envelope. I had sent a letter to the Rudolf II Hospital in May in the hope that someone might know where Helena was in the world and send it on. In case prying eyes should happen to open the letter I hadn't written anything that could be dangerous for either of us and, of course, I hadn't written my real name. And I definitely hadn't dared hope for an answer. Well, I don't even know if, deep down, I wanted an answer, not if the answer was the one you might expect. Married and mother of a child. No, I didn't want that. Even though that was what I had wished her, what I had given my consent to.

My God, we had been so young. She had only been nineteen. And now, as I held her letter in my hand, it was all suddenly so unreal, as if the neat handwriting on the envelope couldn't have anything to do with the Helena I had been dreaming of for six years. I opened the letter with trembling fingers, forcing myself to expect the worst. It was a long letter and it is only a few hours now since I read it for the first time, but already I know it by heart.

Dear Uriah,

I love you. It is easy to know that I will love you for the rest of my life, but the strange thing is it feels as if I have already loved you for all of my life too. When I received your letter I wept with happiness. It…

Harry went to the kitchen with the manuscript in his hands, found the coffee in the cupboard over the sink and put on the coffee pot while continuing to read. About the happy, though also difficult and painful, reunion at a hotel in Paris. They get engaged the next day.

From here on, Gudbrand writes less and less about Daniel, and finally it seems as if he has completely disappeared.

Instead he writes about a couple very much in love who, because of the murder of Christopher Brockhard, still feel their pursuers' breath down their necks. They have secret trysts in Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Hamburg. Helena knows Gudbrand's new identity, but does she know the whole truth about the murder at the Eastern Front, about the executions at the Fauke farm? It didn't seem so.

They get engaged after the Allies have left Austria and in 1955 she leaves the country she is Sure will be taken over again by 'war criminals, anti-Semites and fanaticists who haven't learned from their mistakes'. They settle in Oslo, where Gudbrand, still using Sindre Fauke's name, continues to run his small business. The same year they are married by a Catholic priest at a private ceremony in the garden in Holmenkollveien where they have just bought a large, detached house with the money Helena received from selling her sewing business in Vienna. They are happy, Gudbrand writes.

Harry heard a hiss and to his surprise saw that the pot had boiled over.