The Second Winter (35 page)

When the door swung open behind him, Fredrik swiveled clumsily, but he didn’t let go of the policemen — he only gripped him tighter. Pedersen and Steen burst into the station house. Fredrik acknowledged them with a grunt, then returned his attention to the policeman, crushing him to the desk beneath his elbow. The tip of his knife formed a pointed depression in the soft skin of the fat policeman’s cheek. “Keep an eye on the street,” he thought to tell the two men as they jostled inside. “Make sure no one else joins us.” Beneath him, Brink’s eyes were open wide. Spittle was bubbling from his lips. His face was turning red. He wrapped his hands around Fredrik’s arm, struggled to free himself. Perhaps he was trying to say something. Fredrik gave his throat a little slack.

“For god’s sake, Fredrik,” Brink gasped. “Have mercy.”

“Suddenly there’s a god who cares if you live or die,” Fredrik said.

“You can’t let him live,” Pedersen said.

“What?” Fredrik turned slightly, brought Pedersen into view. As obvious as it was, this eventuality had not occurred to Fredrik as he had contemplated this confrontation.

“Please, Fredrik.” Brink fought for his breath. His face had become scarlet. His eyes were bloodshot. “Please — we’ve known each other for twenty years.”

“Have we?” Fredrik renewed his grip on Brink’s throat. “We’re strangers, Lars, complete strangers you and I. You never knew a thing about me.” The man underneath him writhed and kicked his legs, then at last gave up. His body went limp. A raspy moan emanated from his chest.

“If he lives,” Pedersen said, taking a step forward, “the three of us die.”

“Hang on,” Steen said, grabbing his friend by the elbow. The smaller man’s face was stricken with panic. He had known
what they were planning, but he still wasn’t ready for it, not when he saw what it meant.

Pedersen shook himself loose from Steen, bent to pick up the policeman’s Luger from the floor. “It must be done — let’s get on with it.” He sniffed the Luger, as if this might inform him if it was loaded. “You think he would spare us? Look what he plans to do to Vilfred —” He slid his finger over the trigger. “He will throw us to the wolves just as easily if we let him go.”

“Please, Fredrik,” Brink pleaded, “please. I won’t turn you in. I won’t —”

Fredrik blinked. His grip tightened, then loosened again. “I can’t,” he muttered. He shook his head. “I can’t do it.” When he twisted enough to face his two accomplices, the tip of his knife carelessly squeezed a drop of blood from the policeman’s cheek. “My son calls this man uncle.”

In that same moment, the policeman made one last, desperate attempt to free himself. He reached for a second pistol, hidden beneath his shirt, and he was quick enough to draw it and even to grasp the butt in the palm of his hand. Before he could find the trigger, though, Fredrik had slammed his arm backward, and once again he immobilized the weaker man with his elbow. Their eyes met. Pedersen had time to ratchet back the hammer and draw a bullet into the Luger’s chamber. Steen took an uncertain step up the short set of stairs, raised a hand toward Fredrik as if to grab his arm.
Wait, wait a moment —
“God damn it,” Fredrik said.
“God damn it.”
He tightened his grip on the hunting knife. “You had better go get your friend,” he said to Pedersen. “If you stay, by god I’ll kill you, too, for this.” Then he was alone with the blubbering policeman. His fingers were as white as dried bone as the blade drew a line of blood, even whiter, like snow, as the cold, gray steel sank into the other man’s throat.

Two minutes later, Pedersen and Steen were leading Vilfred Thiesen through the village in a mad dash. Muffled on the frozen ground, their footsteps receded into the wind. Fredrik started down the street in the opposite direction. The same hands that had just stabbed Elke Brink’s brother were shaking uncontrollably. He shoved them into his pockets as if they didn’t belong to him, bent his head, continued on his way home to the Nielsens’ farm.

Polina lay still beneath the covers. Amalia was warm in her sleep. Polina didn’t mind her sweat. The room was cold, and she was grateful for the heat. Without their father at home, Oskar and Amalia had chosen not to light a fire. They knew how little coal they had left and how precious the remaining wood was. Anything they burned, Oskar himself would have to replace. For him, the fire wasn’t worth the effort. Polina’s eyes were open. She had long since become used to the lack of light. Outside, the sky was gathering weight, the earth was turning to ice. But beneath the covers, next to Amalia, she was safe. She listened to Amalia breathe. Across the room, Oskar was quietly snoring. Still, she couldn’t find sleep. She stared at the ceiling, and she waited.

When she heard Fredrik’s footsteps outside, her heart thumped against her ribs. He was moving quickly. His boots were slipping in the snow. The porch stairs creaked, then his boots pounded a hollow beat across the stoop. The front door swung open with a squeal. A current of cold air whipped
through the cottage, then just as quickly died. Next to Polina, Amalia continued to sleep. Her fingers tightened on Polina’s shoulder, that was all. Behind the sheet that divided the room in two, Oskar continued to snore. Polina barely breathed as Fredrik stumbled into the kitchen. His footsteps were heavy, and the bedroom door rattled in its frame. She waited as long as she could, then lifted Amalia’s arm off her and slid from beneath the covers. “Stay,” Amalia whispered. But when Polina turned to her, Amalia was still breathing softly, her eyes were still closed. Polina peered through the dark at the thin curtain, listened to make sure that Oskar hadn’t woken either. Then she let herself out of the room and tiptoed down the stairs.

She stopped in the front hall. She wasn’t certain what had brought her downstairs — she wasn’t certain yet what she intended. She glanced up the stairs behind her, then continued to the kitchen, where, unseen, she came upon Fredrik.

He was standing in front of the sink, running the taps, bent over the basin. Her footsteps were so soft that he didn’t hear her. She paused when she was close enough to see his profile. His expression was strange. His jaw was slack, his brow was wrinkled. His eyes were pained but luminous, even in the dim light. She had taken another step before she saw the blood on his arms. He had thrust his hands under the faucet, and the water spilling off them into the sink was as red as if he were emptying a bottle of wine. “Oh!” Polina gasped.

Fredrik twisted toward her, startled. “You —” He didn’t manage more.

Polina’s face reflected her concern. It was instinctive, almost primal. She closed the rest of the distance to him, grabbed his hands. “But now it’s your hands — your hands, you’re bleeding,” she said.

Fredrik pulled his hands from her, once again thrust them under the faucet.

“Let me see,” Polina insisted.

“Leave me alone,” Fredrik said.

“Please,” Polina said. “Let me help you, let me see.” Her hands joined his under the water.

Fredrik extended his forearms into the stream. “It’s not my blood.”

This stopped her. But she didn’t let go of him. She continued to wash his hands and wrists with him, until they were clean. As she ran her fingers over his forearms, his eyes darkened, then closed. His arms became limp, and he let her scrub the blood off him without his help. His body, she realized, was quivering. She thought to ask him what had happened, but she couldn’t find her voice. When she sought to pull his hands from underneath the faucet, he wouldn’t let her. They were thoroughly rinsed now, but he wanted to wash them more. Then, beneath the water, his fingers began to intertwine with hers. Her heart pounded in her chest.

“You have to leave me alone,” he said.

“I don’t want to,” she managed.

“You must,” he said. His body continued to tremble, but he had found his resolve. His fingers released hers. His arms stiffened. “You must,” he repeated, turning on her. “Do you hear me?” He yanked his hands free. “You must!”

Polina took a step backward, remembering how he had struck her before.

“You’ve seen who I am now,” Fredrik said. “You’ve seen what happens when I touch something.”

“You’re not who you pretend to be,” Polina said.

“No?” Fredrik’s eyes narrowed. He stood away from the sink, reached a wet hand into his pocket, pulled out a handful of
coins. “How much does it cost,” he asked, “to pay you to leave? Eh? What’s your price? Do you charge the same on the way out of a bed as the way in?” He rattled the coins, then thrust them toward her. When she didn’t take them, he grasped her by both wrists, forced them into her hands. “What’s the matter? My money is as good as anyone else’s, isn’t it?”

Polina stared at the coins long enough to count them. “Is that really who I am to you?” she asked, throwing his own words back at him.

Before Fredrik could answer, there were footsteps on the stairs.
What is it? What’s going on down here?
The shadows shifted, and Oskar appeared in the doorway. Polina let the coins drop, and they were still skittering across the floor when the flat of her hand swiped Fredrik’s cheek. She had slapped him so quickly that he didn’t have time to react. His head jerked sideways on his neck, but only a little. The smack resounded through the kitchen. “What is this?” Oskar asked, taking a step closer.

“Get out,” Fredrik growled. “Do you hear me? Both of you. Leave me alone. Get out!”

When Polina turned, Oskar was unable to make sense of the bloody handprints that stained her nightshirt. She pushed past him. Her bare feet slipped on the stairs.

“You, too,” Fredrik said, facing his son. “Now.”

Oskar hesitated, then followed Polina from the kitchen. The water was still running in the sink as he climbed into his cold, lonely bed. “What happened?” he asked into the dark, but Polina didn’t respond. He listened to her breathing quietly beside Amalia, who was snoring softly, somehow able to sleep. At last, downstairs, the faucet stopped whining. Fredrik’s footsteps crossed the house to the toilet room. A drawer slid open. The night fell silent as he filled his syringe. Oskar closed his eyes.

Polina let Amalia drape an arm over her shoulder. The girl’s clammy fingers settled on her breast, and for some time she counted the beats of her heart in the rough fingertips, with the same measure of precision Fredrik applied to the tally of the figures in his notebook. A sweet, foreign scent teased her nose. It was almost dawn before she placed it. A faded red butterfly, cut from an old scrap of construction paper, floated in the dark in front of her, just beyond her reach, leading her slowly but inexorably into another room — a room, slowly shrinking, empty of everything but shadows, a box, once shrunk, containing nothing but pale dreams.

Jutland. December 29, 1941
.

The blade of the shovel sank into the snow. A layer of ice cleaved off in a chunk, revealing a stack of firewood trapped beneath. Oskar used the shovel to loosen a log. The handle vibrated, but today his cut, bruised hands didn’t complain. Fredrik was gone from the house. At midday, Oskar had slipped into the master bedroom and searched his father’s closet for his gloves. He had found them shoved into a pair of boots like used socks. Wearing them made an enormous difference, and he was making good progress. The log separated from the ice, and he started on another. They had burned almost everything else, and the Nielsens were running low, too. Now even this stack was almost gone. In the next week they would have to chop some more from the branches stockpiled at the side of the barn.

“You should use a pickax for that. Not the shovel.”

Oskar hadn’t noticed his father approach. Taking a short-cut across the field from the road, Fredrik had reached within
a few yards of him without Oskar hearing. At four, the light was already fading, a heavy sky was descending toward the ground. His father was wearing a new wool scarf around his neck, which he had wrapped over his face to protect himself from the wind. His hands were deep in his pockets, his shoulders were hunched against the cold. Oskar returned to the task in front of him. The shovel was doing the job well enough. “I’m okay,” he said.

“Give me the gloves,” his father said.

Oskar continued working, until his father was standing in front of him. When he stopped, he propped the shovel next to him, held the handle in a loose grip. “I’m okay,” he repeated nonsensically.

“I’ll go feed the pigs if you want to keep working here,” his father said. “You haven’t fed them yet, have you?”

Oskar shook his head. “I’ve been busy today. There was a lot to do with you gone.”

“Give me the gloves,” Fredrik repeated. “And the shovel. Come with me, get the pickax for that, it will work better.”

Again, Oskar shook his head. He tightened his hands on the shovel, then picked it back up, shoved the blade into the woodpile. “My hands are hurt,” he said, grunting. “I need the gloves.”

Fredrik studied his son.

“You can use the bucket to feed the pigs,” Oskar said, in between thrusts. “That’s how I always do it.” He expected his father to say something else, but he didn’t. He expected the back of his father’s hand. These were Fredrik’s gloves after all. In the morning, this was their routine — to leave the house together, to pick up their tools, for Fredrik to stop and pull on his gloves while Oskar began his chores without any. It was something that they never once spoke about, this disparity. But Fredrik simply watched his son work. Then he started
toward the barn, his hands still in his pockets, his shoulders still tensed against the cold. “How much is left?” Oskar called out after him.

Fredrik stopped. “What are you asking me?”

“How much have you spent already?”

Fredrik didn’t respond. Finally, he continued to the barn. The pigs were waiting for their dinner, and this was a farm, there was more work to be done than could be performed by a single man in a day.

Oskar paused long enough to see two billows of his father’s breath steam through the new wool scarf, then he lifted the shovel again. He put his back into the work. Icy sweat gathered on his brow. His hands perspired and bled inside his father’s gloves. And in a few minutes more, the rest of the woodpile was unearthed from the snow.