We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance (16 page)

Jan's luck was still good when it took him to that door. Marius
Gronvold was a very unusual man. He was in his early thirties then, still a bachelor, a short strong stocky man with the face of a peasant
and an extraordinarily alert and well-stocked mind. His occupation in
those days was typical of this contrast: he ran a small farm, and also
wrote for the Tromso paper. His hobbies were politics and Norwegian
literature. He knew the Norwegian classics well, and could recite in
verse or prose for hours together, and often did so to entertain himself or anyone else who would listen; and he was already a leading
member of the local Liberal party, and well on his way to becoming
the most prominent citizen in those parts: the sort of man, one might
say, who was destined from birth to become a mayor or the chairman
of the county council. With these politics and his love of Norwegian
history and culture, it went without saying that he was a member of
the local resistance group in Lyngenfjord, which was a branch of the
one in Tromso.

To speak of a resistance movement in a place like Lyngenfjord
might be a little misleading. There was an organisation, but there was
hardly anything it could do. There had never been time when Norway
was invaded to call up or train the people in those far-off northern
areas. The battle had been fought and lost before they had had a
chance to go and take part in it. Ever since then, they had been entirely
cut off from the world outside the German orbit. Their radio sets had
been confiscated, and the papers they read were censored by the
Germans. All that they ever heard of the fight that was going on from
England was in occasional whispered scraps of clandestine news
passed on from mouth to mouth from somebody who had hidden a
radio somewhere or seen a copy of an illegal newspaper. Yet men like
Marius resented their country's enslavement as deeply as anyone: even
more strongly perhaps because they had not done anything themselves to try to stop it. It lay heavily on their consciences that they had
not been soldiers when soldiers were needed so badly, and that brave
deeds were still being done while they could not find any way to test
their own bravery. Their organisation was really a kind of patriotic
club. None of its members had any military knowledge; but a least they could talk freely among themselves, and so keep up each other's
resolution, and help each other not to sink into the belief that the
Germans could win the war and the occupation go on for ever; and
they knew they could count on each other for material help as well if
it was ever needed.

This was the background of Marius's thoughts while he worked
on Jan's feet and fed him and kept him warm. The problem which Jan
had brought with him was not a mere matter of a night in hiding and
a little food. Probably Jan still thought, if he thought at all, that after
a good sleep he would get up and walk away; but anyone else who
saw him could tell he would be an invalid for weeks, and that walking was the last thing he would do. Marius, turning things over in his
mind, could see no end to the problem in front of him, except capture. Furuflaten was a tiny compact community of a few hundred
people; and it was on the main road and convoys of German lorries
passed through it day and night, and it had a platoon of Germans
quartered in its school. He could see the German sentries on the road
when he looked out of his sister's window. He could not think how
he could keep Jan's presence secret. Even to buy him a little extra food
would be almost impossible. Much less could he see how he could
ever nurse him back to fitness and start him off on his journey again.
But there was never the slightest doubt in his mind that he was going
to try: because this was his challenge; at last it was something which
he and only he could possibly do. If he could never do anything else
to help in the war, he would have this to look back on now; and he
meant to look back on it with satisfaction, and not with shame. He
thanked God for sending him this chance to prove his courage.

Jan was restless and nervous. He kept dozing off into the sleep which
he needed so badly, but as soon as he began to relax, he roused himself
anxiously. It was a symptom of his feeble mental state. He felt terribly
defenceless, because he could not see. He was afraid of being betrayed;
but if he had been in his right mind and able to see Marius's honest
worried face, he would have trusted him without the slightest qualm.

Marius, in fact, was watching over him with something very
much like affection: the feeling one has towards any helpless creature
which turns to one for protection. He had already promised his protection in his own mind, and in the best words he could think of, and
it upset him that he had not succeeded in putting Jan's fears to rest.
He wanted to find some way to soothe him and make him believe in
his friendship; and on an impulse, when the women were not listening, he took hold of Jan's hand and said very emphatically and
clearly: "If I live, you will live, and if they kill you I will have died to
protect you." Jan did not answer this solemn promise, but its sincerity had its effect. He relaxed then, and fell asleep.

He slept so deeply that even the massaging of his hands and legs
did not disturb him. His legs were the worst. Marius and his sisters
worked on them in turns for the whole of that night and the following day, trying to get the blood to circulate. Quite early, they invented
a simple test to see how far up they were frozen. The pricked them
with needles, starting at the ankles and working upwards. When they
began, the legs were insensitive up to the knees. Above that, the needle made them twitch, although even this treatment did not disturb
Jan's sleep. But as they rubbed the legs, hour by hour, they came back
to life, inch after inch, and showed a reaction lower and lower down.
Jan did not wake at all during the first night and day after he came
in. When he did, even his feet were alive and he woke with a searing
pain where they had been numb before. Hanna Pedersen gave him a
little food, and then he went to sleep again.

Although their efforts seemed to be succeeding, Marius and his
sisters were all afraid that there might be some better treatment for
frostbite which they had never heard of; and so it happened that the
first time Marius invoked the organisation was to ask for a doctor's
advice. He went first of all to Lyngseidet: a journey of twenty minutes by bus, which covered the whole of the distance which had
taken Jan four days. His object there was to talk to the headmaster
of the state secondary school, whose name was Legland. There were two reasons for seeing him: one was that he was the member of the
organisation who had direct contact with the leadership in Tromso;
and the other was that most of the people of Lyngenfjord were in the
habit of going to him when they were perplexed or in trouble. Herr
Legland was a patriarch, revered by all his neighbours. The more
intelligent of them, in fact, had all been his pupils, for he was an old
man by then, and his school served the whole of the district. It was
from him that Marius had learned his love of literature as a boy, and
he regarded him as the wisest man he knew. Besides, he was a patriot
of the old uncompromising school of Bjornson and Ibsen. To him,
the invasion of Norway was a barbarous affront, a new dark age. His
buildings in Lyngseidet had been requisitioned as a billet for
German troops: a symbol of the swamping of the nation's culture by
the demands of tyranny.

When Marius sought out this shrewd old gentleman and told him
his story, he gave his approval of what Marius and his family had
done, and he agreed with what he proposed to do. It went without
saying that he would give his help. At the bottom of all the ideas
which Marius had thought of up to then was the difficulty, and the
necessity, of keeping Jan's presence secret from the people of
Furuflaten. It was not that there was anyone really untrustworthy
there; but there were plenty of gossips. As soon as it leaked out at all,
the whole village would know about it as fast as exciting news can
travel; and then it would only be a matter of time before the Germans
found out about it too. Nobody would tell them; but living right in
the centre of the place, in the school, they had a good idea of what
went on there. They only had to keep their eyes open; it was a most
difficult place for keeping secrets. The houses are widely spaced on
each side of the river which runs out of Lyngdalen, and along the
road which runs close beside the shore. There are hardly any trees,
and from the middle one can see almost every house and most of the
ground between them. It would only need a few too many neighbours calling at Marius's house, out of curiosity or with offers of help, for the Germans on watch at the school, or patrolling the road,
to notice that something unusual was happening.

From this point of view, to get a doctor to come and look at Jan
would be very risky. Marius's house was the farthest up the valley,
and the farthest away from the road. The doctor would have to leave
his car on the road and go on skis for half a mile, all among the
houses; and of course as soon as he had gone, they would have
everyone up there kindly inquiring who was ill. If the worst came to
the worst, they would have to try it; but at present all they needed
was advice and some medicine, if there was any medicine that was
any good.

This meant sending a message to Tromso. If they asked the local
doctor, or got a prescription made up at the local dispensary, they
would have to say whom it was for, and have two or three outsiders
in the secret; but in Tromso inquiries like that could be made without anyone knowing exactly where they came from.

Luckily, the road to Tromso was still open, though as soon as the
spring thaw set in it would become impassable for two or three
weeks. To send a private car would be difficult, because the driver
would have to give a good reason for his journey at every roadblock
he came to; but people had noticed that the Germans never bothered
much about a bus. If it was one which ran a regular service on the
road, so that they knew it by sight, they usually let it through without questioning the driver. One of the local bus drivers was a member of the organisation. Marius and Legland asked him to do the job
and he agreed. One of the bus company's buses was put out of action,
and the driver set off in another to fetch a spare part to repair it.

The arrival of this man in Tromso was the first indication the
leaders had had that there was any survivor from Toftefjord. Legland
sent the driver to Sverre Larsen the newspaper editor, whose righthand man Knudsen had been deported. Naturally, his message was
only verbal. Larsen did not know the driver, and the organisation was
still more than usually wary and on edge. Larsen refused to commit himself, and told the driver he could come back later in the day. But
as soon as he had gone, he set about checking the man's credentials
through the organisation's chain of command; and by the time he
came back he had made sure that he was not a German agent, which
he very well might have been, and had already consulted a doctor and
a chemist about frostbite. Both of them said there was nothing to be
done which had not been done already except to alleviate the pain,
and the chemist had made up a sedative. Jan got the first dose of it
that evening.

In the meantime, Marius had moved Jan from his sister's house
and hidden him in a corner of his barn. He knew it would not make
any difference where he put him if the Germans came up to his farm
to search, but at least the barn was safer from casual visitors and family friends. These were a constant worry. Jan had come to the house
on a Saturday. On a fine Sunday in spring the people of Furuflaten
are in the habit of skiing a little way up the valley by way of a constitutional; and that Sunday the valley was full of Jan's tracks, which led
in the end, plainly enough for anyone to see, up to Henna Pedersen's
door. For anyone to go about on foot was unheard of, and foot tracks
instead of ski tracks were the very thing to set people talking. To forestall inquiries, Marius went out and inspected his farm early that
Sunday morning, leaving his skis at home, and mixed up his own
footsteps with Jan's. He thought out some story to explain why he
had done such an eccentric thing. It was a thin story, but good
enough to put people off the idea that the tracks had been made by
a stranger. They would merely think that the man of the house had
taken leave of his senses.

At that stage, the Gronvold family were the only people in
Furuflaten who were in the know: Marius, his three sisters and the
two small boys, and Marius's mother. Hanna's husband was away at
the fishing, and Marius had the added worry of having no other man
in the family to talk to. His sisters never relaxed their efforts to nurse
Jan back to health; but women in the far north are not often consulted by men in matters of opinion, and Marius could not help being
aware that Jan's sudden arrival had been a serious shock to them all.
His mother, in particular, was far from strong, and he was seriously
troubled by the strain which it put on her. In fact, it must be a terrible thing for an elderly woman to know that her family is deeply
involved in something which carries the death penalty for them all if
they are caught. At one moment near the beginning she was inclined
to oppose the whole thing, though of course she had no clear idea of
the only alternative; but Jan had told Marius by then about his father
and sister in Oslo, and Marius put it to her from Jan's father's point
of view. "Suppose I was in trouble down in Oslo," he said, "and you
heard that the people there refused to help me." In these simple terms
she could see the problem better. It made her think of Jan as a human
being, a Norwegian boy very much like her own, and not just as a
stranger from a war which she had never quite understood. She gave
Marius her consent and blessing in the end. Yet it is doubtful whether
she ever quite recovered from the nervous tension of the years after
Jan arrived there: for the strain did not end when Jan finally went
away. Till the very end of the war the risk remained that some evil
chance would lead the Germans to discover what she and her children had done. In the upside-down world of the occupation, the
Pharisee was rewarded, and the good Samaritan was a criminal.
People who acted in accordance with the simplest of Christian ethics
were condemned to the life of fear which is normally only lived by an
undiscovered murderer.