As Time Goes By (6 page)

"Yes, my
dear," said Inghild. "I may be only one
lone woman, but I can still fight for my country—and for my child. Each week I receive briefings from the King's new minister of defense. The government, it
seems, values my advice, although for the life of me I
don't know why."

Ilsa took her mother's still-youthful hand, the hand
she remembered so well from her childhood. "You
know why, Mother," she said. "You and Father were
always equal partners. He called you his other self, and
he trusted you like none other. Everything he knew you
knew, and our country was immeasurably the better for
it."

Inghild's eyes clouded at the memory of Edvard
Lund, but she shook it off, unwilling to let it intrude
on her happiness. "The Defense Minister told me that Berger might possibly be able to produce a
laissez-
passer
or letter of transit to get you out of Morocco, so
I sent word for you to meet him in a cafe. I forget what
it was called."

"Rick's Caf
é
Am
é
ricain," said Ilsa. "In Casablanca,
sooner or later, everybody comes to Rick's."

"Yes," said her mother. "I am so happy that Berger
was able to get you safely out of Casablanca. Ole was
a good boy, but always so skittish. Who would have suspected he had such courage in him? You cannot always tell a hero by his looks."

Talk of home made Ilsa reminisce. If she closed her
eyes, hearkened to the sound of her mother's voice, and
inhaled the smells of her mother's kitchen, she could
almost imagine herself back in Oslo.

"Tell me of home, Mother," Ilsa requested.
          

Inghild smoothed her dress. "Some of us are here in London, of course," she began. "Liv Olsen, who lived
down the street, is with her husband, and Birgit
Aasen—you remember Birgit, you used to play to
gether when you were little—is living in America now.
Bay Ridge, I think they call it."

"I remember her," said Ilsa. "We used to walk down
to the Parliament building and pretend we were the King's most important councilors."

"Someday you may be," said Inghild. "We arrived
in June of 1940, after the King saw that resistance to
the Nazis would be futile, and that the government
could fight on more effectively from London. Many
more stayed behind, though, and even now are working
day and night against the Germans. Do you remember Arne Bj
ø
rnov?"

"Little Arne, who asked if he could take me to the
picture show?" said Ilsa. "He was so nervous. He must have thought Father was going to bite his head off. I
would have gone with him, too, if he hadn't run off
like that, as though a ghost were chasing him. And all
because Father asked him, 'Young man, what are your
intentions?' He was only thirteen!"

"That frightened little boy has grown up to be a very
brave man, Ilsa," said Inghild. "Thanks to Arne, the
people have refused to cooperate with the edicts of the
German commissioner Josef Terboven, and they simply
ignore the proclamations of the Nasjonal Samling,
which is the only legal political party. The traitor Quis
ling's establishment of martial law last September has
only increased their will to resist, and the ranks of pa
triotic saboteurs and spies grow every day. The Ger
mans are frustrated and furious, but what can they do?
They can't kill us all—and to really conquer Norway, they would have to."

Ilsa was thrilled to hear about her friends; now it was
time to tell her mother about her own activities. "Ber
ger wasn't the one who helped us get the letters of
transit, Mama. Another man got me—got us—out of
Casablanca."

Inghild caught the change of mood in her daughter's
voice. "Us?"

"Yes, us," admitted Ilsa. "For two years, I have been
married to Victor Laszlo."

"Married!" exclaimed her mother, all other thoughts
driven from her mind. "And to Victor Laszlo! All Europe knows and honors his name. This is wonderful news!" Inghild kissed her daughter, her heart bursting with pride; if only Edvard were here.

"I could not tell you of our wedding in my letters,"
continued Ilsa. "For his safety, and for mine, we have told no one. It was too dangerous—for both of us. But it was not Victor who got us out of Casablanca, either.
Someone else did. Someone I need to talk to you
about."

Ilsa paused, unsure how to begin. "Mother," she
began, "is it possible to love two men at once? Really
love them, each of them, with your whole heart and
your whole soul, as if your own life depended on their
very existence? If it is, how do you choose? Must you
choose?"

Ilsa clasped her hands together tightly. She was sit
ting very close to her mother and felt even closer. "Is
it possible when one is so very different from the
other?" she went on. "When one appeals to the best
side of your nature, and the other appeals to the very core of your nature itself?"

She sat expectantly, dreading and desiring the an
swer; not knowing what she wanted to hear.

Inghild considered her words carefully. If she was
surprised to
learn of
her daughter's marriage and then,
hard on its heels, of her dilemma, she did not let on.
"Why don't you tell me about him, Ilsa?" she said.

This was the speech she had been rehearsing in the
taxi, only she hadn't known it then. "His name is Richard," she replied. "Richard Blaine. He is an American
from New York."

She went on to tell Inghild everything, starting with
how she had met Victor. About their brief life together
in Paris. About the report of his death. About how she
met Rick.

"I was in the Deux Magots one spring day, reading
the newspapers. Talk of war was in the air. My newspa
per got caught in a gust of wind. A man at the next
table retrieved it for me before it blew into the street.
'I believe this belongs to you, miss,' he said in English.
I thought he might be an American. He sat down at my
table. I didn't invite him, but he did anyway. Then I
knew he was an American. "The view is much better from here,' he said, and ordered us both coffee in the
worst French I ever heard. It made me laugh to hear him speak. 'Which is funnier,' he asked me, 'my ac
cent or my face?' After that, how could I ask him to
leave?"

"When a man makes a woman laugh," Inghild said,
"it is the first step to winning her heart."

"My heart!" exclaimed Ilsa. "I thought it was gone,
dead, along with Victor. I was alone, and very lonely. I didn't know what to do or where to go. I couldn't go
home to Olso, not after
..."

"Not after Quisling handed our country over to the Germans," supplied her mother.

"Not after you had left," Ilsa corrected her. "Not
after Father died." Her voice trembled with barely sup
pressed grief. "He suggested dinner that night, at La
Tour d'Argent. I said yes. It seemed safe. We dined.
The next day we danced. We went for a drive in his motorcar, and sailed along the Seine. We visited his
nightclub, La Belle Aurore. We watched the dawn
come up together, and it was very beautiful."

"You fell in love," said Inghild.

"I fell in love," Ilsa concurred. "Not with an idea
this time, but with a man. Richard opened up for me a
world I never knew existed, a world of romance and
passion, and..."

"The physical love between a man and a woman,"
said Inghild.

Ilsa nodded. "Rick brought me back to life. And then
Victor came back from the dead."

"How?"

Ilsa felt herself growing agitated and steeled herself. When an exhausted and emaciated Victor suddenly reappeared on that rainy, wrenching day in Paris in June
1940, their life together became little more than des
perate camouflage and unending flight as the Gestapo
hunted them the length and breadth of France. If it
hadn't been for that brave Algerian fisherman, who had
smuggled them in his sloop across the Mediterranean
from Marseille to Algiers, hidden under a load of stink
ing fish ... She shuddered at the memory.

"The Germans were approaching," she said. "Every
body knew it was only a matter of time before they
took Paris. The Czech government-in-exile had re
moved itself to London. Richard didn't want to leave,
although I begged him to. I knew he was not the unfeel
ing cynic he pretended to be. I knew he had fought against Mussolini in Ethiopia and against Franco in
Spain. The Germans knew his record, too; if he stayed,
he would certainly be arrested. I couldn't let that hap
pen to another man in my life. He wouldn't go without me, though. We decided to flee, together."

"But you didn't."

"I couldn't," said Ilsa, casting her eyes down. "The
day before we were to leave for Marseille, I got word
that Victor was still alive, hiding in a boxcar on the
outskirts of Paris. He was ill and needed me. Oh,
Mother, how could I not go to him? He was my hus
band."

Ilsa was crying now, the tears she had so long sup
pressed flowing freely. "I knew Victor had returned
when I saw Rick for the last time. We were in his club,
drinking the last of his champagne so the Germans
wouldn't get it. I made some excuse to leave and prom
ised to meet him that evening at the Gare de Lyon. I
never showed up. Richard boarded the train for Mar
seille with only a note from me, telling him I could
never see him again. I couldn't tell him why. I couldn't
tell him anything. It was the hardest decision of my
life. But what else could I do? Our work was more
important than my feelings. Even my feelings for Rich
ard Blaine. What did the happiness of two people mat
ter when the lives of millions were at stake?"

A look of ineffable sadness crossed her mother's
face. "You are speaking not of your husband," she ob
served, "but of his work. They are not the same thing."

Ilsa had never made that distinction before. "Yes,"
she admitted, "his work. I fell in love with his work
long before I met him. When we did meet, I could not
believe that a great man like him could possibly love an inexperienced girl like me. He was doing heroic
deeds for his country, and what was I doing? Studying
languages."

Inghild considered her next words carefully. "I have
not had the honor of meeting either of these two gentle
men, Ilsa. What is it that you love about each of
them?"

Ilsa told her. That Victor had taught her what love was: love of country, love of principle, love of free
dom, love of one's fellow human beings. That every
thing she ever was or had become had been because of
him. That he was an easy man to love, and Ilsa had
thought she loved him.

"What about the other man? Richard Blaine?"

Ilsa told her mother that Rick was everything Victor
was not. That he was cynical where Victor was earnest;
misanthropic where Victor was selfless. That he spoke
crisply, and when necessary, he acted brutally. That
he mocked where Victor praised, scoffed where Victor extolled. That even in his dinner jacket he carried with
him an aura of violence. That he was a hard man to
love, but that she knew she loved him.

Rick had also taught her what love was, another kind
of love: a carnal, physical, all-embracing love that
made her cry out with desire and joy. With Victor she was one of a multitude; with Rick the multitude van
ished and she was the only woman in the world.

"Which man do you love more?"

Wasn't it obvious? Ilsa threw herself into her moth
er's arms, sobbing on her breast. Inghild stroked her
daughter's hair fondly and whispered to her in the
same soothing tones she had used when Ilsa was a
child.