The Body in the Fjord (13 page)

“The newlyweds have disappeared and Mrs. Peterson doesn't look too pleased.” She laughed.

A cartoonist would have had a fine time drawing the mother-in-law with steam coming out of her ears, arms folded across her chest, jutting elbows like the spikes on a mace. Her voice carried across the room loud and clear. “You know very well what they're up to, and they can do that anytime. How often in their lives are they going to be at Kvikne's Hotel? I ask you that,” Roy senior didn't appear to have an answer and he wisely concentrated on his third helping of dessert.

“I thought they were going for more food. At least that's where they headed. We might just as well have gone to Thunder Bay like we always do, but I wanted to make this trip special. It didn't matter how much planning it took, and believe me, I had to give up a lot of things to do all that, but do they care? I ask you…. Roy, did you hear what I said!”

His mumbled reply was inaudible, whether from discretion or cake.

The Dahls giggled appreciatively. “It's been like this since the beginning of the trip—a contest—and I think Lynette is ahead.”

Pix thought of how the young woman had looked in the sauna at Stalheim and compared her with Carol, who had been going in rather heavily for boiled potatoes over the years. Lynette was definitely ahead in some departments, but the older woman had genetic guilt induction honed to a fare-thee-well. Pix would still say it was even money.

The Dahls were telling Ursula about their jobs. Erna was a hairdresser and Louise worked as a secretary in a lawyer's office. The dining room was beginning to clear. Sophie and Valerie walked by the table.

“Dancing in the lounge tonight. You must come,” Sophie urged. “
Très amusant, n'est-ce pas
?”

Ursula explained in fluent French that her dancing days were over but that she was sure her daughter,
la jeune fille
, would be tripping the light fantastic. The Dahl sisters also seemed inclined to join the merriment. Although she gave a pleasant nod to Mother's fait accompli, Pix had plans of her own. Dancing or no dancing, she wanted to work in another sauna. She had to have some time to herself to think about Marit's revelation, and the macarena was not apt to provide an opportunity for contemplation of this sort.

But first there was coffee in the Dragon Room.

The dragon style harked back to the decorated prows of the Viking ships, translating the fierce beasts and other creatures into romantic works of art, a nostalgic nod to the past. Tapestrylike weavings, more landscapes, and several huge paintings of Norsk legends hung on the room's warm red walls. But it was the carved furniture, wooden floor, and ceiling that gave the room its particular beauty.

“It's hard to imagine how someone could have done such intricate work,” Pix said to Erna Dahl. Jennifer Olsen, who had joined them, agreed. “Some people think it's really tacky—all these dragons and swirls, overdone, but I love it. Only in Norway.”

Erna was apparently about to add her own words of appreciation, having nodded vigorously at Jennifer's words, when they were distracted by a heated argument behind them. A coffee cup was slammed down on the table, hard. It didn't break.

“I started with nothing and nobody ever gave me anything. What these young people today want are free handouts. They have babies so they can get money from the government, and nobody wants to work!” It was Oscar Melling and his face was redder than ever. The fringe around his bald head bristled.

“All I said was that the Norwegian health-care system
could be a model for us. I'm not talking about welfare,” Arnie Feld protested.

“You don't know what you're talking about! That's your trouble,” Oscar blustered.

Don Brady walked into the fray. “Keep it down, Melling. We're here for a vacation.”

“Are you telling me to shut up?” Oscar was ready for a fight and even assumed a pugilistic posture.

“Yes, I am!” Don was red in the face now, too. Wives were appearing like magic from their contemplation of carved rosettes.

“Honey,” Marge said to Don, her hand on his elbow as Helene linked her arm through Arnie's and took a step backward. But equally by magic, Carl and Jan materialized.

“I thought you were going to buy us a beer, Mr. Melling.” Carl stood directly in front of the man, blocking the others.

“We get very thirsty talking all day,” Jan said. Both young men were smiling. Oscar muttered something and left with them, but not before casting a foul glance at his opponents.

“What do you suppose that was all about?” Pix was surprised. The group had seemed so friendly.

“I hate that man,” Jennifer said vehemently. “He's a bully and would say anything to get a rise out of someone. He's been a pain since we started.”

The rotten apple. Pix remembered Don Brady's remark at dinner at the Stalheim Hotel.

Carl was back, working the crowd, a word here, a word there, more smiles all around. At the end of a tour, the guides must have aching facial muscles for days. Jan was presumably hoisting some flagons with the troublemaker. Soon everyone was talking and laughing again. Oscar had been relegated to an anecdote: “The trip was wonderful, except for…”

The Dahl sisters excused themselves to titivate before
the ball, or, as Louise put it, “We'll just go freshen up a bit before the music starts.”

Pix finished her coffee. It was impossible to get a weak cup in Norway, and this should keep her wide-awake for the night's exploit. Searching their fjord cruiser for drugs or stolen oil-rig plans was not something she wanted to broadcast, however. So instead, she said to Jennifer, “I think I'll go and see if my mother needs anything, then look in on the dancing. After that, I want to find the sauna. It should be a great one here.” What she really wanted to do was head straight for the sauna, but she wanted to check out who was dancing, and there might be a chance to talk to some of the people she hadn't been able to talk to yet, or those she wanted to speak to further.

Ursula answered the door. Marit was sitting on the balcony; the flask and two glasses were on a small table. Marit was laughing. Nobody needed anything, especially not Pix. She didn't even bother to go in.

“
God natt, god natt
,” Marit called.

“Don't forget about getting on board the boat” was Mother's good night.

As if, Pix thought, her children's speech patterns having long ago invaded her own.

“I got my thriilll on Blueberry Hiilll.”

The music was blasting from the smoke-filled lounge and dancers crowded the floor. The air was warm and faces glowed, shining from exertion and alcohol. Pix wanted to keep alert and awake, although with all the coffee she'd drunk, she'd have to drink an enormous amount of beer to put a dent in the caffeine. By the end of the trip, her blood type would probably be arabica instead of B-positive. She ordered a Coke and sat down at a small table off to the side, where she was content to observe and not participate as tourists from every corner of the earth twisted and shouted their way through the group's next spirited number. It was an interesting rendition of the old classic. The female vocalist didn't sing at all like Chubby Checker and her accent occasionally made the English words sound Norwegian, but when she belted out “like we did last summer,” the dancers went nuts, gyrating even more madly. Thoughts of hip-huggers. Thoughts of blankets at the beach. Thoughts of youth.

Pix was surprised to see Oscar Melling back in good graces, or at least with some of the tour. He was panting away opposite Carol Peterson, who was managing to stay with the beat even as her eyes scanned the room for her wayward daughter-in-law and poor benighted son. Pix
could see Carol intoning the words over cups of coffee stretching endlessly into a future of neighborhood coffee klatches: “He was such a good boy, until he met up with her. Not that I'm criticizing, mind you, but…” Roy senior was talking to Don Brady. It was apparently a very serious subject. Their heads were bent close together and Don, who was speaking at the moment, had locked his fellow Scandie sightseer's eyes in his own intense gaze. Suddenly, the two burst out laughing. What on earth could they be discussing? Pix tried to think how she could move closer to eavesdrop.

The Hardings and the Golubs were, of course, playing cards, although the table was partially out the door—so they could hear each other. Pix wondered if they played for money. There was no sign of the bachelor farmers. No doubt, they stuck to their routines and had all gone to bed at what would have been sundown, to arise at sunup.

The number ended and Pix was debating whether to have another Coke or not. Skipping it meant a week's tuition for Samantha at Wellesley, where she was going to be a freshman in the fall. But Pix needed to have some reason for lingering and she had absentmindedly drunk the first small glass down while she was looking about. She ordered another one, wished she was on an expense account, and continued her surveillance.

The group played a slow number. Pix didn't recognize the song, but she did recognize the tempo. It was make-out music. All those couples in her teen years embracing on the dance floor, rocking from side to side, maybe taking a step to the rear or the front to provide a semblance of motion. “What fun is that?” her mother had asked. “That's not dancing! Why bother?” Pix, besotted over Sam Miller, two years older and two inches taller, had not explained. There were some things mothers would never get.

“All those dancing-school years with Miss Pat and Miss Nancy,” Ursula had complained. Yes, the adolescents of Aleford had been taught to dance properly. Girls wore
party dresses and white gloves. Boys had to struggle into suits and ties. Pix, with the arrogance of youth, had reminded her mother that people disapproved of the waltz when it was first introduced. “Nice eighteenth-century girls didn't dance that way.”

But Ursula had the last word. “Someday you'll be glad you learned to dance.” Many weddings, bar mitzvahs, and fund-raisers later, Pix was indeed glad she had.

The French cousins were dancing together. They had the air of professionals—impersonal smiles, eyes ahead, perfectly coordinated steps. They acknowledged her by dipping slightly as they passed.

Carol Peterson was still dancing with Oscar Melling, who was grasping her so tightly, Pix was sure the buttons on his sports shirt were embossing her flesh. She had changed from the brightly colored polyester pants suits she favored during the day to a wide-skirted floral-print cocktail dress—cruise wear. It was accessorized by matching beads, earrings, and several bangle bracelets. A white Orlon cardigan with plastic pearl buttons fluttered from her shoulders like a tiny cape, the gold-plated sweater guard threatening to choke her. She was chattering feverishly and Pix thought she heard her say, “You naughty man, you,” as they, too, passed by. Her hair, uniformly light brown, was styled in what Pix vaguely recalled as an “artichoke” cut from her youth. Carol's leaves were all firmly lacquered in place, down to the wispy ones over her brow.

Pix noted again that jogging and whatever else Jennifer Olsen did to stay in shape had paid off. She was wearing a cotton-knit dress that clung to her body. It was very short and Pix remembered the equally provocative night wear Jennifer favored. Her dancing style fit these fashions. She was twisting, but not grinding gears to the floor and jumping up again, as the jack-in-the-boxes surrounding her were. Instead, her whole body seemed to shimmy and slither seductively, pulsating with the rhythm. Pix didn't recognize her partner from the tour. She must have met
him at the hotel. He couldn't keep his eyes off her—and the slight smile on her lips clearly stated she knew it. More power to her, thought Pix. Over fifty didn't mean Ovaltine and early to bed these days. Well, maybe it meant early to bed, but not Ovaltine. Clearly, Jennifer was a boomer and proud of it.

Pix was beginning to feel as if she was watching a film, Fellini by way of Oslo. From the look of the crowd, intent on wresting every last drop of pleasure from their tour—they'd paid for it, after all—it would be many hours before she could count on slipping out of the hotel to search the boat.

And what if she did find something? Something Kari and Erik had also found out about. Something with which they confronted someone. Pix shuddered as she thought of the repercussions of such knowledge. If it concerned oil secrets, that meant big money, and the lives of two young Norwegians wouldn't count for much.

What a strange tour this was, though—secret compartment or no secret compartment. Kari and Erik's disappearance. Erik's death. Then after Pix's arrival, there had been the man on Jennifer's balcony and the swastika on the lawn at Stalheim. That reminded her of Marit's revelation. Did the war have anything to do with all this? She stared hard at the dancers, the Scandie Sights members in particular. There weren't any young people on the tour, with the exception of Roy junior and Lynette Peterson. Then came Pix. She hadn't been at this end of the age range for years. The check marks she'd been making on questionnaires were getting alarmingly higher and higher: 20-30, 30-40, 40-50!

So, a large number of the tour members would have been the newlyweds' age during the war, young people whose youth was clouded by fear and deprivation. The swastika had been meant as a reminder, a reminder of the war and the
Lebensborn
homes. All the Norwegian-Americans on the trip—had one of them come from Stalheim or one of the other homes, a
Lebensborn
baby? Had
there been memories of the war that were so bad, they had driven someone to deface the lawn—and maybe to something else? Something Kari and Erik had discovered? Pix thought of Jennifer. She was certainly bitter, and with ample cause. Had she come to Norway to seek revenge for her father, her grandmother, and now in memory of her mother? Her mother, who had always been homesick but had never come back? There were many Norwegians during the war who had stood by and done nothing. And there were those who hadn't been content to stand by, but who actively collaborated. Still, she hadn't mentioned anything about Stalheim, and it had been Pix's impression that Jennifer's family came from the east coast. But then the woman hadn't been explicit.

The swastika. At the time of the war, Norway had very few Jews, still didn't. Jews, monks, and Jesuits were not even allowed into the country under the 1814 constitution, which named the Church of Norway, Evangelical Lutheran, as the religion of the government. The prohibition against Jews was repealed in 1851. The monks had to wait until the end of the century and the Jesuits until some time in the 1950s. From Marit, Pix knew that not too many Norwegians actually attended church services, although they belonged to the church. It had also been a surprise to find out some years back that only about half of Norway's Jews had survived the war—those who escaped to Sweden at the very beginning of the Occupation, about seven hundred. Had the swastika been meant to symbolize collective guilt?

And what about the man in the beard on the balcony? A thief? All these beards. She was very aware of the photograph tucked away in her pocketbook, the picture of Sven and Hanna, Kari's mother and father. Hanna, definitely a
Lebensborn
baby. Kari had been deeply upset at the discovery. Marit had said Kari wanted to find out about her family and that she had agreed to help. Pix would have to ask her if they'd started to search, and if so, how? Poor Kari. To discover suddenly that both sides were a
mystery. She'd grown up with no knowledge of her father or his people. Did she want to search for him, too? Or maybe she had found him? The beards. Pix had discovered the name of their hirsute captain, Captain Hagen, but his first name was Nils, not Sven. Still, people changed their names. Captain Hagen? But if Kari had found her father, why would she and Erik have gone off? And surely she would have said something to Marit. Could this have been what she wanted to talk about?

Pix was tired. And muddled. The chanteuse was crooning “Dream, Dream, Dream” and the couples on the floor slowly swayed. Pix liked the Everly Brothers better. She was in a grumpy mood. Time to hit the sauna and sweat all the bad vibes out. Sonja and Anders were directly in front of her table. She couldn't get up without disturbing them. Their eyes were closed and they weren't moving at all, her arms around his neck, his about her waist. The music stopped and they broke apart, seemingly startled to find themselves at the Kvikne's Hotel and not whatever private neverland they shared.

Back on the job, Anders was polite and cordial. “Mrs. Miller, are you enjoying the music?”

Before she could answer, the drummer stood up, grabbed the mike, and exclaimed in several languages, “Time for everyone to wet their whistles. We'll be right back.”

Roy senior, looking none too pleased, reclaimed his wife, and Oscar, whose whistle seemed drenched already, presumably went in search of more.

“May I get you something?” Anders asked, and Sonja sat down next to Pix.

“That's very kind of you, but I still have some Coke, thank you,” Pix answered, realizing that in her effort to nurse the drink, she'd scarcely touched it.

“A beer for you?” he asked Sonja.

“
Ja, takk
,” she answered, and he walked away toward the bar to join the long queue already formed.

Sonja repeated Anders's question, but she broadened it. “So, are you enjoying the tour?”

“Very much,” Pix replied. “It's so beautiful. I loved being on the boat, watching the mountains and waterfalls. I hadn't wanted to dock, but this is lovely, too.” It was true. In the front of the ship, sailing along the fjord, she had felt so calm and all things had seemed possible. Kari would be found. There would be some sad but logical explanation for Erik's tragic death. Draw your strength from mountains. If true, then the Norwegians must be the mightiest people on earth. Well, at one time, she supposed they might have been, if pillaging and far-flung travel counted. Even now, with a system that cared for all, they had managed things quite well. But on land, lovely as Balestrand was, the dark thoughts came and she recalled herself to her task.

“Only I can't help but think of that poor young man, the one who was killed, and the girl who has disappeared. Those must have been difficult days in Bergen.”

Sonja's cheeks flamed, and it was not the warmth of the room, or Ringnes beer.

“Better to put it out of your mind. Yes, it was hard in Bergen, but Anders and I were there already and could start work right away, so none of the guests suffered too much.”

“I mean everyone must have been upset. I heard Erik and Kari were very well liked.”

“I wouldn't know about that,” Sonja almost snapped. Would have snapped if the soft inflection her accent gave to her words allowed for emphasis.

“They weren't well liked? But I thought…”

“
He
was a nice boy and we all thought very much of him. As for Kari, she did not deserve him. Last summer, he was always worried about what she was doing when he wasn't there. I was only with her a few times, but I knew the type. I don't know what the English word is for it—Kari liked to tease the boys, not that she wanted anyone but Erik. Oh no, she had him where she wanted—
with a ring through his nose for her to lead him around until she got the ring on her finger.”

Pix was taken aback at the vehemence of Sonja's tone. She asked her, “Was Erik one of Anders's friends, too?”

“No. Anders never met him. This is his first time working for the tour.”

Pix started to ask another question, but Sonja forestalled her. “You will enjoy the visit to the farm tomorrow. The farmer's wife makes pancakes for everyone and usually serves little cakes, too. Their goat herd is not too far away. You can get some nice pictures.”

Anders sat down with the drinks and Pix realized that the girl had seen him approaching before Pix had.

“The band is going to start again soon. Have you ladies been having a nice chat?”

Neither lady said a word; then both said yes at once. Sonja burst into giggles and seemed once more sweet and unaffected—just like Pix's notion of Kari.

Carl and Jan stood in the doorway. No rest for the weary, Pix thought. Tour guide was not the job for her, although she had been functioning as such unofficially for years during every family vacation. “And now you will see the famous Anasazi cliff dwellings, where we will spend some hours walking in their footsteps….” Carl and Jan didn't have to cope with the “Oh, Moms” that greeted her efforts. Maybe being on a payroll wasn't so bad.