Read The Body in the Fjord Online
Authors: Katherine Hall Page
“I thought of those thingsâof everything. I have told myself enough stories for many novels.” Marit sounded bleak. “I think I have spoken to everyone Kari ever knew, gone through her address book, reached friends of friends. Nothing. Everyone seemed genuinely puzzled about where she might be and what could have happened to Erik. The only thing left is the tour.
“Erik's parents have believed from the beginning that it was suicide after a quarrel, and they blame Kari. They are very religious people and Erik seemed rebellious to them, although it was only normal growing-up behavior. Now, perhaps they feel he has been punished. I cannot pretend to understand, only grieve for them. They won't talk to me any longer. But I don't agree. I knew Erik and I'm sure he wouldn't have taken his life. Kari and Erik were very happy together. As for a stranger, we do not have many of these random crimes in Norway, although I suppose it could have occurred. But why? They weren't robbed. No, the tour is the only hope, and I have such a strong feeling about it. Almost as if Kari herself is telling me what to do.”
She stopped, her lips set in a firm line. Pix knew there had never been any doubt about going on the tour. She'd just had to ask. This settled, or unsettled, the next question followed.
“Isn't it going to seem odd for us to be joining the tour so near to the end? Wouldn't we have waited for the next one? What did you say when you made the reservations?”
“Remember, Erik worked for this company last year, so I know a lot about it. Apparently, the most popular part is the fjord cruise. If there's room, they let people sign up just for those four days. You can leave either from Bergen or Oslo and meet the rest at Voss. You won't be the only ones, I'm sure.”
“Also, can you tell us exactly what Kari said when she called Friday night?”
Marit closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and recited from memory, a memory she had obviously been over many times. “She said the tour was going well. No rainâthey'd had rain with the first one and everyone complained. I asked her where she was and she told me she was about to get on the train to Bergen. She was in the main train station, Oslo S, not the smaller one at the National Theater. She said, âI don't have much time,
Bestemor,
and I'd like you to do a favor for me.' âAnything,' I told her. âCould you go into the top middle drawer of my desk, get my address book, and give me Annelise Christensen's phone number? No, waitâthey're boarding and I have to go. There isn't time. Call me with it tonight. The tour is staying at the Augustin Hotel; you know it.' I said no problem and that I'd talk with her later. âHow is Erik?' I asked, and she said, âHe's fine, but there's something elseâ¦. I can't talk now. I'll tell you tonight.' She hung up without even saying good-bye. At the time, I thought the train must have started to move, but now I think maybe someone came along, someone she didn't want overhearing what she was about to say.”
Pix nodded. “Two more things. Did she say anything about eloping? And who is Annelise Christensen?”
“I've told you everything she said as exactly as I can remember. And if she had planned to elope, I know she would have said something. But she never
would
have eloped. It was always her dream to get married in the
domkirken
in Tønsberg where she had been christened and confirmed. Erik, too. They spoke of it when you were here, Ursula, and we went to that concert there.”
“Yes, I remember. Kari was joking about how often she had been a bridesmaid lately. And you were reminiscing about your own wedding there during the war, wearing your grandmother's dress and drinking the toast with some sort of raw alcohol mixed with orange soda your father concocted.”
“And Annelise?” Pix persisted.
“She was at school with Kari and now she lives and works in Bergen. She hasn't been there very long, and you know how it is for us on the east coast. We cannot get used to the rainâand if you are not from Bergen, you are really an outsider to many people there. You know they always say Bergen, not Norway, when someone asks them where they're from. I think Kari wanted to see how Annelise was doingâif she'd found friends.”
“Why couldn't she just look her name up in the telephone book when she got there, or ask information? Why would she call you for it?”
“There are not so many names in Norway and there are as many Hansens as Christensens, I'm sure. That's why we put our professions as part of our names so often. Without Annelise's address, Kari would have had to call many A. Christensens, and she wouldn't want to bother people.”
Heaven forbid, Pix thought. Bothering people was another sin in this very polite society.
“I phoned Annelise after I spoke to Carl, the tour guide. I thought maybe Kari had been in touch with her some way, but she hadn't heard from Kari and was as surprised as I was that they had eloped. When the news of Erik's death came, she called right away. She, too, is worried about Kari, of course, and if she hears anything at all, she said she would let me know at once.”
Pix nodded.
“I think you're looking a little peaked, dear,” Ursula said to her daughter. “I'm sure Marit wouldn't mind if you took a short nap before we leave for the station.”
Pix was about to protest that, like her mother, she could sleep on the long train ride, but she closed her mouth when she felt the meaningful glance from Ursula hit her full force in the face. Her mother wanted to be alone with her old friend. To comfort, consoleâ¦plot?
“You can lie down in Kari's room. I'll show you.” Marit led the way out of the living room and down the
narrow hall. “The bathroom is just here.” She nodded at a closed door marked with the traditional heart.
Kari's room also overlooked the bustling Oslofjord, and the thin muslin curtains let in the sunlight. Pix noted the heavy roller shades, necessary at this time of year, when the sky could still be bright at midnight. The walls of the room were covered with blue-flowered wallpaper that Pix recognized as Laura Ashley. Kari was something of an Anglophile after working as an au pair outside London one summer. Bracelets and necklaces hung from an assortment of wooden pegs. A bookshelf held childhood books, in addition to her university texts. She was studying to be an occupational therapist. The shelves also held a piggy bank, photo albums, and a funny-looking troll. There was a full stereo system, stacks of cassettes and CDs, and headphonesâpresumably for Marit's sake. The antique pine bed was covered with a
dyne,
the down-filled comforter that served as bedding in Scandinavia, its crisp white cover changed, instead of a top sheet. Two fluffy pillows were at the head, and for a brief moment, Pix thought she might crawl in and pull the comforter over her head for a few minutes of blissful unconsciousness. But she didn't like to sleep in the daytime. It made her groggy, crankyâand she had a lot to think about after talking to Marit.
Most important, though, was the realization that here she was in Kari's room. What would Faith do in a similar situation? She'd snoop, of course. Pix felt fully justified in opening any and all drawers if it would give her a clue to where Kari might be and what could have happened. Kari's small chest of drawers was covered with framed photographs, makeup, a silver comb and brush set. Pix picked up a photo of Erik and Kari. They were wearing their student caps. Erik, twenty-oneâonly a year older than Pix's own son. The thought stabbed her and she put the photograph down.
She walked over to a print on the wall. It wasn't by an artist she recognizedâMunch or Kittelsen. It was of a small country house with trees, flowers, and animals, done
in a naïve folk-art style. Very charming. She couldn't read the artist's signature, so she took it down to get a closer look. Marianne Arneberg. Moving to replace it, Pix realized that something was taped to the back.
It was an envelope.
She lifted the flap and removed the contents. There wasn't much: a few letters, some photographs. One picture tumbled to the floor. It was of KariâKari arm in arm with a very handsome dark-haired man.
Kari with someone other than Erik.
But she was wrong. It wasn't Kari. It was Hanna.
The resemblance was remarkable. Mother and daughter looked almost identical. But the clothes were the giveaway. Hanna was wearing a long flowered dress, the kind love children made in the sixties from their Indian-print bedspreads. She had beads around her neck, as did the man in bell-bottom jeans. On the back, only one word was writtenâthe name Svenâand no date. The couple was standing in front of a Volkswagen Beetle parked alongside an olive grove. Olives did not grow in Norway. Not much of anything grew in Norway, where only 3 percent of the land was arable. It must have been taken in Italy, or France, some other place far from home. The two were smiling. Pix searched her memory for an image of Hanna. She had never seen her at this age. She had never seen her smiling so happily.
Pix felt relieved. The fleeting notion that Kariâwith a secret love other than Erikâmight not be who she seemed had made Pix feel unsteady. She knew she was on unfamiliar turf, but that this turf might suddenly suck her down into some sort of underground even more complicated than what was presently before her eyes was frightening. She reminded herself that Kari and Erik were students, good
students, in love, planning for the future. Honest, loyal to each other.
She looked at the letters and the other photos. More pictures of Hanna. Hanna and a baby, Hanna and a toddlerâHanna and Kari.
The letters were written in a childish hand, the script rounded. Pix could recognize only a few of the Norwegian words.
“Kjære Mor og Far”âmor
meant “mother”; “grandmother” was
bestemor
, your best mother, an appellation Ursula heartily applauded.
Far
meant “father.” “Dear Mother and Father.” The letters were signed “Hanna.” Hanna writing to her parents from some early trips with friends or her school? She'd drawn a little horse in the margin of one, a garland of roses in another.
Why weren't these pictures framed and on Kari's bureau with the rest, the letters in the big antique wooden box, ornately painted, that Pix had discovered held postcards and other letters? She thought a moment. There had been some photographs on the mantel in the living room, their silver frames well polished, like everything else in the apartmentâMarit and Hans's wedding picture, Kari's graduation photo, Hans's and one of Marit's parents. But none of Hanna. Marit didn't seem the type to be ashamed of her daughter's suicide. Was it too painful to be reminded of what might have been? Or something else? Whatever it was, Kari had kept these links to her mother hidden. Pix imagined her sitting on the bed, reading the letters, looking at the faces, wondering. Long ago, a two-year-old would have asked many questions. Where did
Mor
go? When will she be back? How had her grandparents answered them? And
Far
? What about him?
There was a gentle knock on the door and Pix jumped a mile. “Pix, are you awake? We have to get ready to leave soon.”
Marit pushed the door open a crack. Pix shoved the envelope under the pillows. She was glad she was sitting on the bed and she hoped Marit wouldn't notice the picture
was off the wall. She answered quickly. “I'll just wash up and be right with you.”
“Fine. You don't need to hurry too much. I have your tickets, but Ursula thinks it would be better to get to the station a little early.”
Pix knew what this meant. The Rowes considered being on time being wherever you had to go at least thirty minutes before. If this meant driving around a neighborhood until the doorbell could be rung precisely on the hour, then so be it. It was a trait Marit and her compatriots shared. In Norway, on time meant on time.
The moment the door closed, Pix put everything back in the envelope. It had been frustrating searching the room when she didn't know the language. The letters and postcards in the box might have revealed something. On impulse, she took the photo of Hanna and Sven out of the envelope. She also removed the one of Kari and Erik from its frame and put both pictures in her wallet, tucked behind her passport. It seemed like something Faith would do. She smoothed the bed, fluffed up the pillows, and hung the picture back on the wall. It looked exactly the way it had before Pix had entered. Faith would have done this, too.
Â
Ursula Rowe was sound asleep. Sitting across the aisle, Pix felt a pang. Her mother looked so vulnerable, her mouth slightly open. With her dark, lively eyes closed, she looked like the old lady she was. Pix had been dozing, too, but fear of drooling in public and troubled dreams had kept her from real sleep.
The sunshine of Oslo had given way to gray skies as they crossed the Hardangervidda. When he punched their tickets, the conductor had cheerfully assured them they would see much nature on the five-and-a-half-hour trip, but Pix was finding the vast empty stretches of landscape bleak and forbidding. It was also unsettling to plunge constantly in and out of the strings of snow tunnels, necessary to keep the line from east to west open during the harsh
winter. The
vidda
was the site of that horseback trip Marit, Ursula, and a group of Marit's friends had taken so many years earlier. They had called themselves the “Cartwright sisters.”
Bonanza
was wildly popular in Norway at the time, as later
Dallas
proved to beâwell before the country became a Dallas itself.
After the horseback trip, Ursula had returned to Aleford, uncharacteristically restless and touchy. She had raved about the wild beauty of the
vidda
, the lakes, the reindeer. Looking out the window, Pix suddenly understood why her mother might have chafed at Aleford's tidy village green after this seemingly endless plain high in the mountains, so near to the skyâa sky whose horizon was broken not by trees but only an occasional hut,
hytte
, once used by herders, now by hikers, or converted to summer houses. Before the train, the paths that crossed and recrossed the
vidda
were well worn, essential connections between villages on the two coasts. Now the train eliminated the need, but the Norwegians were still walkers, taking pleasure in hiking across the lonely plateau from one isolated hut to another. She was seeing much nature. The conductor had been right.
Whoosh
. Another tunnel. The light flickered through the slats like a strobe. Pix closed her eyes.
Why did Kari and Erik have their passports? She had to find a moment to ask Marit when they struck up their “new” friendship tomorrow. It was the one thing that suggested they had planned to elope. Get married in Norway, then take offâfor olive groves? Or had they simply packed them the way one does all sorts of thingsâto be preparedâpenlites, rubber gloves, hair spray.
They were out of the tunnel. A red-faced young woman was having trouble negotiating a heavily laden food cart through the connecting compartment doors. Two passengers immediately leapt up to help her. Pix didn't think this would happen on Amtrak. The Norwegian state railway system was clean, tooâeven the bathroom.
Ursula woke up. “Coffee, don't you think? And maybe one of those pastries.”
Two coffees and two pastries, wrapped in plastic and tasting like train food everywhere, cost about what dinner at Legal Seafoods in Boston would. If they had opted for Cokes, it would have been dinner at Olives. The exchange rate was terrible and things cost the earth here. She'd have to stop converting to dollars or she might starve.
“We should be there soon.” Ursula moved over to sit next to her daughter. “Isn't it beautiful?” Pix was about to confess that she was not as taken with the view as Ursula and that perhaps it was her mother's fond memories coloring her opinions, when the sun broke through the dark clouds. Beams of light, so precise as to suggest the hand of some unseen Bergmanesque director, brought the surface of a lake in the distance to life, the colors of the moss-covered ground appeared, and a flock of birds took flight. A solitary hiker was silhouetted against the glow. It was beautiful.
“We had such a wonderful guide. We all loved him. Dead now, I should imagine. We all thought he was such an old man then, and he was probably only about sixty.”
The loudspeaker announced that Voss was next, and the message was thoughtfully repeated in several languages.
“I think I'll go make myself tidy,” Ursula said. “We'll be meeting the group soon.” She eyed Pix's outfit with approval. It was similar to what she had on herself, except she wore a skirt. Her daughter was wearing navy cotton pants, a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and a bright blue cotton cardigan. Pix normally liked to travel in jeans, but she knew her mother did not approve of women Pix's age wearing what Ursula persisted in calling “dungarees.” It was all right when they were in Maine on Sanpere Island, but not on a trip like this.
“I'll go after you.” Pix wanted to comb her hair and wash her face, too. The groupâshe wanted to look her best for them. First impressionsâ¦
While she was waiting, she realized that many miles away her family hadn't even had lunch yet. They'd be out of sync for the duration. She felt suspended in time, as if
she'd been gone from home for days, rather than a day. The trip across the
vidda
has produced strange sensations of total removal. She reminded herself she was a wife, motherâand daughter. Someone with responsibilities. Someone, a voice inside said, with too many.
What on earth was she doing here?
Â
It wasn't hard to locate the tour. An extremely tired-looking man with a mop of unruly blond hair and dark-rimmed glasses stood holding a flag with the Scandie Sights logoâa giant pair of binoculars with a snaggletoothed troll in one lens and Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid in the other.
“I'm Pix Miller, and this is my mother, Mrs. Ursula Rowe,” Pix said, noting that her mother had the cane out again.
He put the flag down and checked their names off on the list attached to the clipboard he was holding in his other hand. Pix wondered where the other guide was. Marit had said there were two.
“I hope we haven't kept you waiting,” Pix apologized, realizing as soon as she said it that since this was the train the people meeting the tour from Oslo were supposed to take, there was no way they could be late.
Her remark produced a smile. “I'm Jan Ekhart, one of your tour guides. You are on vacation now. You don't need to worry about things like this. There are still people getting off the train, and we won't leave for the hotel for fifteen minutes or so. Carlâhe's the other leaderâsaid they would hold dinner for us.”
Pix realized that of course most members of the tour, the ones who had started in Copenhagen, were already at the hotel. She also realized that she was at the station in Voss, the place where Kari and Erik had left the message with the stationmaster about eloping.
“What should we do with our luggage?” she asked Jan, eager to get inside the station.
“You leave it on the cart here”âhe pointed off to the
sideâ“and we take care of everything.” That sounded fine to Pix. Ursula's bag was as compact as her own and she could easily carry both of them, but it would be nice to let someone else do it for the next few days. They had put the Scandie Sights tags on but had failed to find a way to wrap the bright red Scandie luggage straps around their modest bags. The tags would have to do.
“Why don't you wait here,” Pix told her mother. “There's a bench by the door and you can keep an eye on Jan so he doesn't leave without me.”
“What are you going to do?” her mother asked. “Never mind. Just hurry. You can tell me later.”
Pix went inside. It was crowded, but since everything was conveniently translated, she soon found the information booth.
She was about to approach the genial-looking man behind the counter when she realized she didn't have a plan, or much time. She'd simply have to bluster her way through.
“Excuse me, but isn't this the place where that poor young man was last seen? You know, the boy who drowned and has been in all the newspapers? They're saying his girlfriend had something to do with it. She was here, too, right?”
The man looked startled. Maybe he recognized Pix's attempt at a complete personality change for the phony one it was. Or perhaps it was the southern accent she'd unaccountably found herself assuming.
“Seen? No, no one saw them here.”
“But I thought the papers said something about Voss. This is Voss, isn't it?” she said with the unsure air of a tourist about to find out she might have joined the wrong group and should be in Stockholm instead.
“Yes, this is Voss,” he told her patiently. Then, aware that she wasn't going to leave until she'd heard some detail about the sad case that she could use to impress her friends back home, he added, “They left a message here saying they were running away together to get married.”
“How on earth could they leave a message if no one saw them?” Pix asked plaintively. Could this possibly work?
It did. “We got the message by phone. They were already someplace on the road.”
Pix feigned excitement, which wasn't hard. Her first actual clue!
“And were you the one who spoke to the girl? What's her name? Karen? Something like that.”
For a moment, the man seemed to succumb to Pix's blandishments. He would be quoted someplace in the United States. He wondered if she lived near Minnesota and knew his cousin. “It wasn't Kariâthat's her name. It was the man, Erik. He just told me to write the message down for the Scandie Sights tour guides who would be arriving by bus to take the train to Bergen.”
“I never dreamed that things like this could happen in Norway.” Pix as Blanche DuBois continued: “It's such a calm and happy place. People are so kind.”
“Sad things can happen anywhere,” he told her solemnly. He was so nice, Pix felt a twinge of guilt as she thanked him, said good-bye, and raced for the door. She didn't want to miss the bus. Or dinner.