Almost Autumn Page 5

  The living room is dark; the door into the girls’ room is closed. Isak gets dressed in the kitchen. He pulls aside the heavy curtain just enough to see what kind of day it will be. It looks cold, sparkling—he dreads the first snowfall, it’s due any day now; he’s never liked snow. His breakfast awaits him on the kitchen worktop, packed up and ready for him to take. He never eats at home before work, never feels much like eating in the mornings, never feels hungry. Hanna makes him something in the evenings and packs it up for him to eat at work, and it’s not until then that he really feels like it. He slides his sandwich into his coat pocket, quickly glances at his reflection in the mirror, places his hat on his head, and quietly turns the latch.

  There’s something lying on the doormat. It’s white, a piece of paper; he almost steps on it. He bends down and picks it up—it’s an article, half a page ripped from a newspaper. The headline, the illustration, they seem to flash up at him. He stands for a moment with the paper in his hand, looking up and down the empty hallway.

  “Hello?” he whispers.

  Nobody answers. He places the piece of paper in his coat pocket and walks down the stairs.

  The air is crisp today. He feels the quivering of his pulse as the blood rushes through his body. Will it creep into his home too, this torment, those words, will it be even remotely possible to find peace, to breathe, to live? Must he start each day by filling a bucket with soapy water and standing outside in the cold to hurriedly wipe down the glass windowpanes? He’s started to get up even earlier than usual; every day he does his best to make sure that he is at the shop before the girls arrive, at least an hour in advance of them just in case there is anything to scrub from the windows. They shouldn’t be forced to face that. He had felt a jolt of horror pass through him the first time it had happened: Jewish scum brought the war to Norway 9 April. The large white block capitals covered the entire shop window. It no longer instills the same fear in him as it had that first day. Nowadays he simply fetches the bucket, an automatic reaction, no thinking, just washing: Jewish parasites, he scrubs until the words disappear; a Star of David, he pours soap on the cloth, creates a lather, sometimes he has to use his nails, scrape the words from the glass.

  Isak Stern tries to smile. He tries to be friendly. He tries to be the man he’s always been. Hardly any customers visit the shop these days and his accounts are beginning to drift into the red; it’s difficult to obtain stock, difficult to run an independent business. But Isak smiles, as often as he can. He may succeed only occasionally, he knows that, but he forces himself to be positive whenever Hanna asks him how he is doing; everything is just fine, he tells her. He can no longer look her in the eye when he does so.

  He stands on Beier Bridge and watches the cascades of water that drum against the smooth stones in the Akerselva River. The leaves of the trees are red and yellow and there is a light breeze in the air around him; spray rises from the water, a damp, suffocating vapor. He reaches into his pocket, his hands freezing cold, pulling out the page torn from the newspaper. The cartoon shows a man with black hair and a pronounced nose, his hands grabbing at coins, his fingers long and crooked, greedy. We are drowning in a flood of people who are a scourge on the communities in which they settle. Help us to stem the tide. Prevent our land from becoming Europe’s rubbish heap. The bridge trembles slightly beneath his feet as a man cycles past. Isak scrunches up the paper in his hand and casts it into the waterfall, watching as it is swallowed up by the frothing depths.

  It could be the new family on the fourth floor. The Kjølbergs moved in just before the summer after Mrs. Nilsen passed away; mother, father, and a boy around ten years old. Isak has noticed how they look the other way whenever he passes. Hanna told him about one occasion when she and Mrs. Kjølberg had both been hanging washing on their respective clotheslines in the backyard. Her son had wandered over to Miriam and had started talking to her. Without a moment’s hesitation his mother had been at his side, pulling him to her with a stern look while whispering: “They’re Jewish, Finn, you mustn’t talk to the likes of them.” The situation had alarmed Hanna; imagine saying such a thing to a child, she had said. And what had Isak done when he heard? He had stroked Hanna’s cheek and smiled. Imagine, he had said, feeling a wave of anger swelling within him, nausea rising in the pit of his stomach.

  He feels the same sense of rage now, as he approaches the shop premises. He knows that today will require all the effort he can muster to plaster on a smile. The girls usually arrive at eight o’clock, which means he has an hour; an hour to eat his breakfast, prepare the day’s orders, clean and tidy the shop floor, maybe polish the windows. An hour to calm himself down. And then, when the clock strikes eight, he won’t think about how the day started, but will welcome his daughters with a smile and open the shop to customers. If there are to be any, that is.

  He lets himself in, draws the curtains, and allows the bluish morning light to flood in through the windows that line the street outside. He sits on the stool behind the counter, motionless, staring into the room. It is as if everything crowds around him this morning, everything that he has worried about and tried to keep at bay, it all surges into the silent shop.

  He knows that he’s not alone. He knows other Jews with their own businesses in Oslo, and they all tell the same stories: customers who have stopped shopping with them, articles in the newspapers. It wasn’t long ago that the sewing machines had blazed through long lists of orders in the back room. There had been no shortage of customers, and many an evening he’d stayed on at the shop to get everything finished in time. He’d had the money to pay several seamstresses, to pay himself a wage; he’d even paid to have a cleaner. And now, what was left of it all now? They could only just cover the essentials, he and Sonja and Ilse too, more recently. This wasn’t what he wanted for them; in fact, it was nothing like it. They would receive a much better wage elsewhere, but he couldn’t let them work for nothing. He had decided to try to pretend that things would be back to normal before long, though he couldn’t do so indefinitely, and could barely sustain it as things stood. But the joy of having one’s own money, even very little, yes, that was a joy that he wanted his girls to experience. He should have taught Sonja to keep the books, but if he had then it wouldn’t have taken her long to realize that things weren’t as they ought to be. She’d start to worry, he thought; really it was better to wait.

  He had been struck with an idea in the summer and suddenly, without being able to explain why, he had found himself heading to the bank. There he had withdrawn every penny that he had successfully put aside before closing the account and taking his money home. He had also emptied the family’s safety deposit box. There wasn’t much in there: a few items of jewelry that Hanna had inherited from her mother, some valuables that his own parents had passed on to him. He had placed everything in a cigarette tin and had hidden it in the chest of drawers under a pile of his folded underwear. He hadn’t said a word to Hanna.

  He sits and gently taps the fingers of one hand against his sandwich. A coffee would be nice, he thinks to himself, a steaming hot cup of coffee, the good stuff, a whole pot. All of a sudden he catches sight of a piece of paper lodged beneath Sonja’s sewing machine, a sketch; it looks like the outline of a dress. His curiosity piqued, he gets up and walks over to Sonja’s sewing station to take a closer look. He can’t recall anyone having ordered such a garment, but it’s possible that Sonja has taken on a project that she hasn’t mentioned to him. The dress has an elegant trim and is tailored at the waist with a deep, plunging neckline. Quite old-fashioned, he thinks; it might be a new take on an older design, something the customer had found hidden away in a cupboard, perhaps. Sonja had stayed late at work over the past few evenings. He had noticed the way that she had often avoided meeting his gaze, somehow uneasy. He didn’t doubt that she understood more about things than he liked to imagine. Maybe he ought to bring up the subject of bookkeeping with her soon after all, then; to admit defeat when the numbers spoke fo
r themselves in black and white.

  The anxiety, the vulnerability, they had crept up on him. It had all started with the wireless. They had been instructed to hand in their radio set before anyone else. He had lugged the heavy Tandberg apparatus out of the living room and had handed it over to the authorities. They weren’t permitted to own a wireless, and soon the same could be said of the rest of the population too, but on that day, as he hauled the heavy wooden set around town, the order only applied to Jews. He had returned home to sit in the armchair by the window and the room had been silent; he could make out the faintest strains of music from the Rustads’ apartment above them on the fourth floor, a lively melody, he knew the words, hummed along, stared at the shelf where their own wireless had been for the past few years, now no more than a gaping hole in the room. Hanna eventually moved a vase there, but whenever he caught the sound of music from the floor above, the silence of his own home overwhelmed him. In the end he dismantled the entire bookshelf, placing the pieces in storage in the building’s cellar. Only the holes in the wall remain.

  In the winter they had received word that their identification papers were to be stamped with a letter J. That same evening he had sat in his armchair after the others had gone to bed, his papers in his lap, staring at the fat red symbol that loomed like a talon by his photograph. A letter, something and nothing; he had felt so utterly powerless, they could just as well have stamped his forehead. Even then he’d had his suspicions that things could only get worse.

  It didn’t take long; only a few weeks later they had been required to fill in a form. He had turned up at the police station to fetch the papers and had faced a long list of questions: nationality, citizenship, private address, religious affiliation. Everyone over the age of fifteen whose papers had been stamped with a J needed to fill in three copies of the same document. Isak had placed the papers in a drawer at the shop; this wasn’t the kind of thing that he wanted his daughters to worry about; maybe he could sort it out himself somehow, fill in the forms on their behalf. He practiced forging their signatures, Ilse’s childish scribble, Sonja’s soft script; he thought he might be able to make it work but Hanna had refused to allow him. They couldn’t forge signatures, it was only a few documents, it would be fine for the girls to fill them in. The family had gathered around the table at home.

  “What do I put for the last question?” Ilse had asked.

  He read the two final sentences on the sheet of paper. When did you arrive in Norway? Previous country of residence outside of Norway?

  “Just leave it blank,” he had mumbled.

  He unwraps his sandwich and takes a bite of the brown bread, chewing for longer than necessary, thinking. He has heard stories. People who leave everything behind, their work, their homes, uproot themselves in every respect. Many of them have made it over to Sweden. It’s one option. How would Hanna react to such a suggestion? Would she consider it, putting the girls through it; would he, for that matter? He doesn’t know how to go about it, where to begin, who to contact. It’s not the kind of thing that you can simply ask for more information about, not like a vacation where you identify your destination and hotel of choice. If he starts to look into this he has to know what he’s doing, and by that point the decision has to have been made. He needs to think it through, properly evaluate the situation before he involves Hanna in his plans. He’ll keep the girls out of it too, they shouldn’t have to worry about this kind of thing, he can do this alone.

  It’s a sunny day, he can see that now. Bright light seeps in through the windows. He enters the back room and fetches the sign to be hung in the display window: Do you have extra material at home? Your unwanted fabric can be transformed into a dress. Just as he hangs the sign in the window, he sees Sonja and Ilse approaching. It must be eight o’clock. He closes his eyes for a moment, tries to picture something pleasant, thrusts any thorny thoughts aside. And then, when he opens his eyes again, there they are, the very image he had attempted to conjure up: his girls, Sonja and Ilse. He feels the strain as he forces a smile, his jaw muscles quivering.

  “Good morning, girls,” he says as they step inside.

  ILSE WAITS OUTSIDE RINGNES BREWERY for the workers to head home for the day. Half hidden behind a tree, she doesn’t want Hermann to see her, but she just has to see him today, to see if he looks different, to see if he goes home or not, and if not, to see where he does go.

  Hermann hasn’t been to see her. It has been silent. Deafeningly silent. Ilse has sat in the kitchen each evening with one ear pressed up against the wall, listening. Footsteps from inside the apartment, echoes from the stairwell, someone coming up the stairs, another walking down, doors opening and closing, voices. Bolt upright, she’s held her breath with each sound, only to collapse once again when silence falls.

  Hermann Rød. She has tried her best to force him from her thoughts: his smell, his body, his hair, his voice, his hands, she’s tried to eradicate all trace of him, to lock it all away somewhere. But then there it is, yet again, spilling out without warning, oozing through the cracks like tiny, bitter droplets. She doesn’t want to be some kind of lapdog, lying there barking, begging, scratching at his door. He should come to her, he should ask for her forgiveness, explain himself, row seven, seats eight and nine, she really needs to stop mulling over it all. It’s been six days, seven, eight, fourteen now; the wait is agonizing.

  During those first few days she spent all of her time reading, thinking about just how smart and pretty she’d make herself, figuring out how she wanted to look and following all the book’s advice. Every evening she carefully applied Vaseline to her eyelids. On the first evening she had used far too much of the sticky salve and had spent at least half an hour in the kitchen with water and a washcloth, blinking erratically on account of the stinging sensation. She’s better at it now, she just has to close her eyes and apply a thin layer before fumbling her way to the bedroom. Every morning she sits in the armchair and places a warm cloth over her face while the others set the table and prepare breakfast.

  But there has been no word from Hermann Rød.

  Eventually she catches sight of him, walking her way, sauntering along as he talks to a boy in a gray jacket who is pushing a bicycle, both of them laughing. She can hear him chuckling; what can he possibly find so funny at this exact moment in time, why is he in such a good mood? Ilse follows them, keeping her distance though never so far away that she risks losing sight of him. The boy with the bicycle disappears down Thorvald Meyers gate. Hermann continues toward Birkelunden Park and halts at the tram stop, where he stands and gazes vacantly out over the park, his smile having faded. When the tram pulls up he enters the first set of doors. Ilse sneaks in through the doors at the back. He stands in the middle of the tram, she can see his arm through the crowd of people, his wrist; he holds on tight to the loop that hangs from the arched ceiling and she can see the sleeve of his jacket sliding down his arm. The tram judders through the district of Grünerløkka as it approaches the city center. He’s on his way to see the artist, he must be. Ilse doesn’t know where the artist lives, she doesn’t even know his name, but she can imagine him, an old man, tall, slim, dressed just so, with a mustache that curls up at the ends, slicked-back hair, and cloaked in strong cologne, ugh. Hermann has said so little about him. He told her that his lessons are in Frogner, and precious little else. I’m learning a lot, he told her, and nothing more. She’s questioned him several times, come on Hermann, tell me what he looks like, the artist, tell me what he’s teaching you—but he doesn’t want to, he squirms his way out of conversation, turns away, clams up, scratches his cheek, smiles, and asks her about something else, anything else.

  The tram pulls up at the stop by the National Theater. Two policemen board, both wearing dark uniforms, their voices booming as they force their way through the busy carriage. Ilse sees Hermann shake his head, lowering his gaze and hunching over then looking out the window before walking toward the conductor. Is he getting off? It looks li
ke it. She makes her way toward the doors at the back of the carriage, waits for the tram to stop by Palace Park, readies herself to disembark, yes, he’s getting off now. She hurriedly follows suit. Hermann continues along Drammensveien, following the tram tracks, moving quickly until he reaches Solli Square, heading in the same direction as the tram. He’s walking so quickly, she hangs back and watches him cut diagonally across the street and head down Bygdøy allé, his back as he walks away, his shoes against the asphalt. The tall tenement buildings are lined up as straight as an arrow in the dwindling afternoon light; there’s barely a soul to be seen. At a crossroad he turns right, glancing around him and hurrying along the pavement. He comes to a halt outside a door on the corner of a large white building; the street sign reads Frederik Stangs gate. He rings the top bell, stands outside for a moment, and then disappears through the door. It booms loudly as it closes behind him.

  Ilse waits. Her breathing is shallow, rapid; her pulse thuds. She approaches the door. There is a small sign next to the top doorbell that reads “E. Vindju.” She steps back and looks up at the fourth floor, the apartment on the right-hand side. An expansive window looks out onto the street and she can see a faint light emanating from within, more windows all in a row, all dark, and a curved, ornamental balcony protruding from the outer wall. How long do they usually spend up there? She could wait until he reappears outside, sneak back on the tram home behind him, or she could ring the bell, ask to speak to him, ask if he can come outside, or maybe even if she could go in. He’s so close to her now, only a few floors up from where she stands, nothing separating them but a staircase, a few doors. And yet still he seems so far away. She traces her finger up the row of doorbells, all the stairs, the doors, all the pending explanations, revelations. The leaves along the street have gathered in small mounds, dry, yellow, red, rustling against the asphalt. She won’t be a lapdog, she won’t scratch at his door, she looks up and back down the street, then up at the window, the light still visible, then heads back in the direction of Bygdøy allé.