The Body in the Fjord (12 page)

Marit looked as if she'd seen a ghost.

“A swastika?” she whispered. “At Stalheim?”

“Yes.” Ursula reached for her friend's hand. “What's wrong? What does it mean?”

“I can't tell you here.” Marit seemed very close to tears. “Meet me in my room. It's three oh seven.”

Puzzled, Pix and Ursula waited five minutes before crossing the lobby to the elevator. A Japanese tour bus had arrived and the two women were forced to wait for the next elevator. As soon as one had arrived, the group rushed on and there had been no more room.

“The Japanese are perhaps the most polite people on the planet, the most aware of social ceremonies. The only reason I've ever been able to come up with for their kind of lemminglike behavior abroad is that they're terrified of getting separated—or, worse still, getting left behind forever.”

“Like the North Dakota farmers.”

“Precisely.”

Neither woman had referred to Marit since she'd made her dramatic exit.

They exited the elevator into a deserted hallway and quickly went to room 307. Marit opened the door at their knock. She must have been standing just inside.

The room was spacious and had a comfortable sitting area. Ursula drew Marit next to her on the love seat. “Now, what is it?”

“It's so complicated and it was so long ago. Hans and I were going to tell you; then we thought it better to tell no one. We were trying to erase the past, and you can never do that.”

“What are you talking about, Marit?” Ursula's direct question hadn't worked. Maybe a second one would do it, Pix thought.

“The Stalheim Hotel was used in the war for something the Germans called a
Lebensborn
home. We had nine of them in Norway. They were breeding places for the world the Germans envisioned after the war. We Norwegian women were especially prized because of what they thought was our pure blood. That all the children we pro
duced with their soldiers would be tall, strong, and blond. After the Occupation, German soldiers were encouraged to father children with Norwegian women. It was their duty to the Reich. When they got pregnant, some of the women went to Germany. Some stayed where they were and had the children, yet that was very hard. You have to understand, I make no judgments of them, but others did, often their own parents, and it was terrible for them. Most went to have the babies in these homes.”

“But what would happen to all these babies? Who would raise them?” Pix asked.

“They were sent to Germany or in some cases adopted by parents here, people who were sympathetic to the Germans. We were not all in the Resistance, remember. Quisling had his supporters.”

“Why are you telling us this?” Ursula asked quietly. She had taken her friend's hand again when they had entered the room, and she still held it.

“After the war, the children who remained in the homes were claimed by their mothers or adopted by Norwegian families. Some of the children who had been sent to Germany were traced by refugee organizations and brought back here for adoption if the mother did not want them, which was usually the case. The fathers, of course, were known only to the mothers, and mostly their names were not recorded. The children were given two names at birth, a Norwegian one and a German one. They used to have mass christenings, twenty-five babies at a time. The babies were well looked after, but it was horrible—the whole idea and raising them like so many prize sheep. There is a story that one of the women soldiers assigned to Stalheim refused to be there and ended up at the bottom of the canyon.” Marit stopped speaking and seemed to be gathering energy to go on. Pix was trying to blot out the image of a body spiraling down, down to the river that looked like a snake.

“Hanna was a
Lebensborn
baby. She was born at Stalheim.”

“Oh, Marit, you should have told me years ago. It wouldn't have made any difference!” Ursula cried out.

“I know that, yet Hans and I thought it was something we shouldn't talk about. Nobody mentioned these children. Of course, our families knew we had adopted a baby. We knew when we got married that we couldn't have children. The war years were so hard and Hanna seemed like our reward for getting through them. No one asked us where she had come from, and she looked just like us. Not a very large gene pool,” she said, glancing at Pix.

“Did Hanna know?”

Marit nodded. “We were stupid there, too. We should have told her as soon as she was old enough to understand, first that she was adopted and later how—but we waited until she was fifteen. I sometimes wonder about how our memories work. She was eight months old when we got her, but she was always asking questions. Where was she born? Why didn't we have other children? When we made our first trip to the west coast and came by Stalheim, she was very small, but she cried and said the big mountains frightened her.”

Fifteen, Pix thought. Between the ages of her own Danny and Samantha. The time when adolescents are forming the identities that will travel with them throughout their lives, making the choices that determine the journey's path. Hanna must have been so confused. To find your mother was not your mother and your father not your father. And later she did virtually the same thing to her own daughter, not providing her with a father, then abandoning her.

“Nothing was ever right after that. We never should have told her,” Marit said bitterly.

“It would have come out,” Ursula said. “These things always do.”

“And Kari?” Pix was asking all the hard questions. “Did she know about her mother?”

“This winter, there was a show about the
Lebensborn
babies on television. Now fifty years later, it's out in the
open—all the problems these children have had, how they have searched trying to find out who they are. I wanted to change the channel, but Kari wanted to watch it. I had to leave the room, and she followed me out to the kitchen. Before I knew it, I was telling her everything. I thought she was old enough, that she could accept it. Kari is not Hanna. Emotionally, they are very different.”

“What did she say?” asked Pix.

“She said, ‘Then you're not really my
bestemor
?'”

 

Marit had wanted to lie down and reluctantly they'd left her, but not before she'd told them that Kari wanted to find her mother's family and that Marit had agreed to help her. “I don't want another grandmother,” she'd told Marit. “It's a matter of the truth. I have to find out the truth.”

Pix and Ursula were walking into the dining room at Kvikne's, passing through several pretty Victorian-style sitting rooms all oriented toward the view and, unlike most Victoriana, comfortable-looking—inviting couches, light-colored walls, and the drapes pulled back. Oil paintings, genre landscapes of what appeared out the windows, hung in tiers on the walls. The surfaces of many of the tables were crowded with bric-a-brac, potted plants, and dozens of signed photographs dating back to the hotel's early years. In pride of place stood those of the Norwegian royal family, starting with King Haakon VII, the Danish prince Karl, whom the Norwegians elected as their first constitutional monarch when they broke away from Sweden in 1905. He took a Norwegian name and reigned for fifty-two years. His grandson, Harald V, is king now. Small Norwegian flags on silver flag posts stood by the photographs. Bright red, with a blue-and-white cross off center, it seemed admirably suited to its surroundings, streaming out in a long banner from the porch at Kvikne's, picking up the breeze from the fjord, or flying high in front of most houses all over the country, plus being scattered
throughout Norwegian interiors as an indispensable objet d'art. The Norwegians are exceedingly proud of this flag.

“My God, Mother, did you ever see so much food!” It was the
smörgåsbord
to end all
smörgåsbords
. There wasn't one long table, but many—and side tables—one just for cheese, one for non-alcoholic drinks, a very large one just for desserts.

“Where should we start?” Pix was bewildered, a feeling intensified by the behavior of the diners, who were descending on the food like predators, the only variation being in motion: Some were piling their plates as rapidly as possible; others were circling quietly before pouncing.

“With a seat,” Ursula suggested, and led the way to the tables with the Scandie flags.

“We have the window seats tonight,” Carol Peterson called out triumphantly as they passed. Her table was full. There was to be no tête-à-tête for the newlyweds.

“Would you care to join us?” Louise Dahl asked.

“Thank you so much,” Ursula responded, and motioned toward the groaning boards. “It's hard to know where to begin.”

“We start with herring, then a plate of other fish—shrimp and
laks
—there's also
gravlaks
here. Do you know what that is? Fresh salmon is cured with dill and a mixture of salt, sugar, and white peppercorns, then placed under a weight for some days and—oh, maybe it's simpler if I come with you. Everything is delicious and you may not know what it is.”

“I don't want to trouble you,” Ursula protested.

“It's no trouble. I want to get some smoked eel before I have my meat course.”

“This is the food we grew up with and we still cook it, although nothing so elaborate as these dishes. Kvikne's is known for its
koldtbord
—that's what it's called in Norwegian, although most use the Swedish word,
smörgåsbord
. Anyway, it's the best food in the world to me! Let Louise show you what to do,” her sister, Erna, advised.

Pix was only too happy. She'd eaten her share of Nor
wegian food, but this was a whole new level. Even Faith would be impressed by Kvikne's.

“We start with the herring by itself, because it's salty and we don't fill our plates too full, so we can appreciate the flavors.”

And not look too greedy, Pix thought. Nothing in excess.

As they strolled by the tables, Pix was delighted to see how much the Japanese were enjoying all the Nordic variations on sushi.

“After your herring, I'd advise some
laks
and a little of this smoked eel, which is eaten with a bit of scrambled egg at room temperature. Maybe some shrimp, and the mussel salad looked good.” She then pointed out the enormous variety of cold meats, ranging from pâtés to slices of ham, salami, and roast beef. There were also
salats
—thinly sliced cucumbers with dill, cabbage with caraway, beets and sardines.

“The last course before dessert is hot. I'm not sure I'll have more than a meatball—they're made of veal and beef, bound with egg and bread crumbs, a little nutmeg, and fried in salt pork—but you should definitely have some
fiskepudding
.”

“
Fiskepudding
?” Pix had never encountered this particular delicacy before. Some kind of piscatorial Norsk dessert? They did have a sense of humor.

“It's a bit like a fish mousse. You just have to try it, and be sure to have some of the cream sauce with shrimp on top, and take some
tyttebær
—lingonberries.”

“Lingonberries!” Pix knew what they were—a kind of small Nordic cranberry. You ate them with reindeer meat.

Louise nodded vigorously. “You can't eat
fiskepudding
without lingonberries.”

Pix looked at Louise's angular body. She would have expected plump Erna to be the one interested in food, but here was Louise, her eyes shining with delight as she contemplated the notion of
bløt kake
—layer cake—and some kind of fruit
grøt
—compote—to end her meal. Es
sential Norwegian food names tended to be monosyllabic and atonal: Bread was
brød
, butter was
smør
, cheese was
ost
, steak was
stek
, and above all, fish was
fisk
.

“It's not a combination I would have thought of, but it works,” said Pix after polishing off her
fiskepudding
, cream sauce, lingonberries on the side. “They are not too sweet, not too tart, and the taste cuts the richness of the fish.” Since going to work at Have Faith, Faith Fairchild's catering business, Pix had picked up some of the nuances of food pairings, although not even the barest whisper of any food preparation. When Faith had offered her a job, Pix had made it clear that accounts or activities such as counting salad plates would be fine, but not even turning on an oven or stirring a pot. Faith had assured her friend that this was the furthest thought from her mind. She knew the Miller kitchen well, and from the look of Pix's cupboards, the family could have been mistaken for major stockholders in General Foods, et cetera. Many of the boxes had
HELPER
printed on the front.

“I'm glad you like it. We make it at Christmas. It was our mother's favorite dish,” Louise Dahl said.

Ursula noticed the past tense. “Has your mother been gone long?”

The two sisters put down their forks simultaneously. “A year this January,” Erna replied. They both still seemed devastated.

A household of women. Obviously, the two sisters had never married, and Pix had a hunch all three women had lived together.

“Your mother was Norwegian, then? You know so much about the food…” her voice trailed off.

“We are all three born in Norway, but Louise and I don't remember it very well. This is the first trip for either of us.”

“It's a shame your mother wasn't able to go back for a visit,” Pix commented. It had been her experience that every Norwegian-American not only longs to visit the land of his ancestors but considers it a sacred duty, as well.

“She didn't want to go,” Louise said sternly, and for a moment the conversation came to a grinding halt; then Ursula picked up the ball.