Until Thy Wrath Be Past (29 page)

When Krekula drove down to Luleå, he had in mind that it was time to renegotiate the fee he was being paid for his transport services. Now that Swedish Railways have terminated their arrangements, the Germans will be totally dependent on road-haulage companies to supply their troops in Finnish Lapland and northern Norway. Krekula is also feeling the effects of people’s objections to the way he is placing his lorries at the Germans’ disposal. He wants compensation.

But the moment he jumps down from his lorry outside the depot, he realizes that there will be no renegotiation.
Sicherheitschef
Schörner is in Luleå. Krekula prefers not to have dealings with him, but when Schörner is in Luleå, which is often, he takes charge of every detail. The last time he was due to pay Krekula, he snatched away the envelope containing the money just as the haulier was about to take it. Krekula was left standing there, holding his hand out and feeling silly.

“Isak,” Schörner had said. “A genuine Jewish name,
nicht wahr
? You’re not a Jew, are you?”

Krekula had assured Schörner that he was not.

“I can’t do business with Jews, you see.”

Again Krekula assured Schörner that he was not of Jewish ancestry.

Schörner had sat in silence for what seemed an age.

“Ah well,” he had said eventually, and handed over the envelope containing the money.

As if he was not entirely convinced.

Now Schörner is a sort of powder keg on legs. All the setbacks the Germans experience on the battlefield, all the indulgence displayed by Sweden towards the allies, everything seems to be conspiring to create a minefield around him. Last week, for instance, he heard that three Polish submarines were lurking in Lake Mälaren just off Mariefred, and nobody was doing anything about it – not even the German government. He is calm, and flirts with Kerttu as usual, but there is a field of energy surrounding him, just waiting to go off. He is ready to explode. In fact, he is longing to explode.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister has expressed his worry about terminating the transport arrangements this way: “The final blows of a wounded beast of prey can be devastating.” Schörner is that beast.

But Kerttu notices nothing. Isak Krekula watches stony-faced as she purrs and churrs in response to Schörner’s flattery. Her chestnut hair sweeps over one eye
à la
Rita Hayworth. She is wearing a summery blue dress with white dots. The skirt is bell-shaped, and the waist is high. Schörner tells her she must be careful, or one of these days someone will eat her up.

Schörner has a soft spot for Kerttu. She has done him a lot of favours in recent years. Passed on bits of information she has picked up here and there. Just over a year ago a German transport plane with a cargo of machine guns had to make an emergency landing somewhere in the forest several kilometres inland. Kerttu and Krekula were in Luleå, and Kerttu took the opportunity to go to the hairdresser’s. When she came out, she was able to tell Schörner exactly where the plane had come down: the wife of the forest owner had mentioned it while having her hair cut. The landowner had not reported his find to the police. Perhaps he had hoped to earn some money on the side. The pilot and all the passengers had died in the crash. On another occasion Kerttu was able to tell Schörner about a journalist who had taken photographs of railway waggons full of German weapons. That kind of thing. Important and trivial. That is how it is with Kerttu. People want to tell her things. They want her to look at them with her greenish-brown eyes. It lifts your soul when a beautiful young girl looks at you. Schörner usually writes down the information she gives him in a little notebook. It is bound in black leather, and he writes in it with a pencil. Then he puts the notebook away in his briefcase. If the information turns out to be correct and is of use to the Germans, Kerttu usually gets paid. The time she told him about the German transport plane, he gave her a thousand kronor. That is more money than her father Matti earns in a whole year.

So she has acquired a tidy little sum. And she has not wasted it. She lives with her parents and does not have to pay for board and lodging, and she has lent money to Krekula, who has in turn invested it in his haulage business. Krekula is paid well by the German army. He does not ask many questions, and he delivers the goods to their destinations.

Now Schörner takes Krekula and Kerttu to one side and asks if Krekula is prepared to lend Kerttu to him for a little job.

Kerttu pretends to be offended and asks Herr Schörner if he does not think he ought to be asking her instead of Krekula. She is not Krekula’s property, after all.

Schörner laughs and says that Kerttu is an adventuress. He knows that she will want to do it.

Krekula says that Kerttu will make up her own mind, but of course he is wondering what it is all about.

“Ah well,” Schörner says. “The thing is that three Danish prisoners of war have escaped from a German ship moored in Luleå harbour. I want them recaptured.”

He smiles, winks and offers them a cigarette.

Krekula realizes that, behind his smile, Schörner is furious. The resistance movement in Denmark has become properly organized during the summer, and the Germans have been having enormous problems with sabotage and other anti-German activities.

Schörner knows only too well that ruthlessness must be met with ruthlessness. An eye for an eye. In Norway the Germans have escalated the level of terror imposed on the civilian population, which is essential to keep people under control now that the 25th Panzer Division has withdrawn to France.

“Someone has hidden them,” Schörner says. “There is a resistance movement here in Sweden as well. And I have a pretty good idea that a particular young man probably knows where those Danes are. And that young man has a weakness. He’s very fond of attractive girls.”

And he tells them what he has in mind. Promises them generous payment.

Krekula’s head fills with images. He pictures Kerttu coming back from her little outing with bits of straw clinging to her back and her hair tousled. But it is a lot of money. And Kerttu says yes without so much as a glance in his direction. What can Krekula do about it? Nothing.

Krekula is eighty-five years old. Lying on his back in the little room, he says to himself – as he has been saying to himself ever since – I couldn’t have stopped her.

He shouts for her again. Says he is thirsty. That he is still freezing.

She appears in the doorway with a glass of water in her hand. When he turns to look at her, she empties the glass in a single swig.

“You’ve always revolted me,” she says. “You know that, don’t you?”

Even as she is saying it, the doorbell rings. The police are outside. That little fair-haired inspector Anna-Maria Mella. With two men standing at the bottom of the steps. Mella asks if Tore is in.

Kerttu Krekula realizes that this is serious. The police say nothing about a warrant. Nor do they need to. Kerttu is furious. Absolutely furious.

“Are you mad?” she yells. “Out of your minds? Why are you harassing us? What do you want him for?”

And she stands there screaming as if someone had stuck a stake through her body while the police enter the house and take a look around.

“My boy,” she screams. “My poor boy!”

And when the police have left, she slumps down at the kitchen table with her forehead resting on one arm. She puts her other arm over the top of her head.

Isak Krekula is lying in the little room, shouting. Who the devil was that, he wants to know. Who was it? She does not answer.

I’ve landed on all fours on Kerttu’s draining board. Standing like a cat on the palms of my hands and the soles of my feet. I want to see this. Bloody Kerttu! There’s only the two of us in the kitchen. I accompany her to the open-air dance floor at Gültzauudden just outside Luleå. It’s 28 August, 1943.

There is a dance at Gültzauudden near Luleå. The Swingers are playing. “Sun Shines Brightly on Your Little Cottage”, “With You in My Arms”, “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and other popular songs. The mosquitoes and horseflies join in the “Sjösala Waltz”, and the telephone wires sag under the weight of the swallows, sitting in a row as if at the front of the stalls.

The young men are wearing suits finished with French seams. The girls are in home-sewn outfits with stiffened bell skirts. Everyone is slim and willowy in these straitened times of food rationing.

Kerttu is not in a particularly good mood. She has come to the dance without a partner. And Schörner would not let her wear her best dress either.

“You mustn’t stand out too much,” he said. “You must look like an ordinary young lass. You come from . . . wherever it is you come from.”

“Piilijärvi,” she said.

“But you don’t have a fiancé, of course, and you’re staying with your cousin here in Luleå, and you’re looking for a job.”

She buys a bottle of soda and stands around at the edge of the dance floor. Two young lads come up and ask her for a dance, but she says, in a friendly way, “Maybe later,” explaining that she is waiting for her cousin. Drinking her soda slowly to make it last, she feels like a cross between a wallflower and an ice queen. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the man Schörner is trying to trap. Schörner had shown Kerttu a photograph of the lad. Axel Viebke.

Here comes Schörner. He has borrowed the depot manager’s Auto-Union Wanderer. Young boys hanging around the dance floor and sitting in the birch trees like a flock of thrushes gather round the smart-looking sports car.

Schörner, who has a quick eye for the leader of any flock, gives one boy a five-krona note to keep an eye on the car. He does not want it scratched. Or to find that some joker has dropped a sugar cube in the petrol tank.

Then he saunters over to the dance floor. He is in uniform. Those near him stiffen noticeably.

He buys a soda, but hardly touches it. Then he walks over to Kerttu and asks her for a dance.

“No thank you,” she says in a loud voice. “I don’t dance with Germans.”

Schörner’s face turns white and strained. Then he clicks his heels, marches over to the car and drives off.

Kerttu turns to look at Viebke. Stares hard at him. Gazes into his eyes. Then looks down. Then gazes back into his eyes.

He leaves his group of friends and walks over to her.

“Do you dance with boys from Vuollerim, then?” he says. She laughs, flashing her white teeth, and says yes, of course she does.

While they are dancing she tells him how she has moved to her cousin’s in Luleå while she looks for a job. Her cousin seems to have forgotten that they were going to meet at the dance and has not turned up. But that doesn’t matter as Viebke and Kerttu dance together all evening.

When the dance is over, he wants to walk her home. She says he can come part of the way. They go down to the riverbank. The leaves on the weeping birches will soon be turning yellow; it will not be long before summer is over. That is both sad and romantic.

Viebke says he admires the way she snubbed the German soldier who asked her for a dance. Who did he think he was, rolling up like that in his posh car!

“I hate the Germans,” she says.

She falls silent and gazes out over the river.

Viebke offers her a penny for her thoughts. She wonders if he has heard that three Danish prisoners of war have escaped from a ship in the harbour.

“I hope they’ll be alright,” she says. “Where will be safe for them?”

Viebke looks at her. She feels as if she is in a film. Like Ingrid Bergman.

“They’ll be alright,” he says, stroking her cheek.

“How can you be so sure?” she says with a smile.

And the smile has a trace of condescension in it. As if she thinks he is just a young lad at a dance who could not possibly know anything at all. Although in fact she is much younger than he is.

“I know,” he says. “Because I’m the one who’s hidden them.”

She bursts out laughing.

“You’d say anything to get yourself a kiss.”

“You can think whatever you like,” he says. “But it’s a fact.”

“Then I’d like to meet them,” Kerttu says.

Two days later she is sitting in Zindel’s Auto-Union Wanderer beside
Sicherheitschef
Schörner. Two German soldiers are in the back seat. Their rifles are lying on the floor.

It is a lovely late summer’s day. Haystacks stand in rows in the fields, and the scent of sun-warmed hay is lovely. In the meadows where the hay has been harvested, cows are grazing on the last of the late-summer grass. The car has to keep slowing down because farmers are out on the roads with their horses and carts. The rowan trees are laden with clumps of bright red berries. A father and his three daughters are on the way home from berry-picking in the woods. You can see from the way he is walking that the birch-bark rucksack on his back is heavy with fruit. The girls have small enamel buckets full of blueberries.

Kerttu and the Germans walk the last part of the way. The path runs through the forest and alongside some swampy meadows. Eventually they come to Viebke’s uncle’s hut, used by farm hands as a base at haymaking time. It is small and unpainted, but in the sunshine that day everything is beautiful. The hut gleams like silver in the middle of the clearing.