The Redbreast(122)

Dr Werner Schumann. He was one of the founders

of Ullevål Hospital in 1885.’

‘And this?’

‘Jonas Schumann. Consultant at the Rikshospital.’

‘And your relatives?’

She looked at him in bewilderment. ‘What do you

mean?’

‘Where are your relatives?’

‘They . . . are elsewhere. Cream in your coffee?’

‘No, thank you.’

Harry sat down. ‘I wanted to talk to you about the

war,’ he said.

‘Oh no,’ she burst out.

‘I understand, but this is important. Is it alright to

ask?’

‘We’ll see,’ she said, pouring herself coffee.

‘You were a nurse during the war . . .’

‘At the Eastern Front, yes. A traitor.’

Harry looked up. Her eyes watched him calmly.

‘There were around four hundred of us. We were

all sentenced to imprisonment afterwards. Despite

the fact that the international Red Cross sent in an

appeal to the Norwegian authorities to stop all

criminal proceedings. The Norwegian Red Cross

didn’t apologise until 1990. Even’s father, in the

picture over there, had connections and managed to

get my sentence commuted . . . partly because I had

helped two injured Resistance men in the spring of

1945. And because I was never a member of the

Nasjonal Samling. Is there anything else you

would like to know?’

Harry stared into his coffee cup. It struck him

how quiet it could be in some of Oslo’s better

residential areas.

‘It’s not your past I’m after, fru Juul. Do you

remember a Norwegian soldier at the front called

Gudbrand Johansen?’

Signe Juul flinched, and Harry knew he had

stumbled on to something.

‘What is it you actually want to know?’ she

asked, her face taut. ‘Hasn’t your husband told

you?’

‘Even never tells me anything.’

‘Right. I’m trying to identify the Norwegian

soldiers who went through Sennheim on the way to

the front.’

‘Sennheim,’ she repeated softly. ‘Daniel was

there.’

‘Yes, I know you were engaged to Daniel

Gudeson. Sindre Fauke told me that.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘A veteran of the front and the Resistance whom

your husband knows. It was Fauke who suggested I

talk to you about Gudbrand Johansen. Fauke

deserted, so he doesn’t know what happened to

Gudbrand afterwards. But another soldier from the

front, Edvard Mosken, told me about a hand-

grenade exploding in the trenches. Mosken wasn’t

able to account for all the events following the

explosion, but if Johansen survived it would be

natural to assume that he ended up in the field

hospital.’

Signe Juul made a smacking noise with her lips.

Burre ambled over and she buried her fingers in

the dog’s thick, wiry coat.

‘Yes, I can remember Gudbrand Johansen,’ she

said. ‘Daniel occasionally wrote about him, in the

letters from Sennheim and in the notes I got from

him at the field hospital. They were very different.

I think Gudbrand Johansen became like a younger

brother to him.’ She smiled. ‘Most men in Daniel’s

presence tended to behave like younger brothers.’

‘Do you know what happened to Gudbrand?’

‘He ended up in the hospital with us, as you said.

This was at the time when our section of the front

was falling into Russian hands and there was a

full-scale retreat. We couldn’t get any medicine to

the front because all the roads were blocked by

traffic coming from the other direction. Johansen

was badly injured with, among other things, a shell

splinter in his thigh, just above the knee. Gangrene

was spreading in his foot and there was a risk we

might have to amputate. So, instead of waiting for

medicine which wasn’t coming, he was sent with

the stream of traffic to the west. The last I saw of

him was a bearded face sticking up from under a

blanket at the back of a lorry. The spring mud was

up to the middle of the wheels and it took them an

hour to move round the first bend and out of sight.’

The dog had rested its head in her lap and looked

up at her with sad eyes.

‘And that was the last you saw or heard of him?’

She slowly raised the delicate porcelain cup to

her lips, took a tiny sip and put it down. Her hand

didn’t shake much, but it was trembling.

‘I received a card from him a few months later,’

she said. ‘He wrote that he had some of Daniel’s

personal effects, a Russian cap that I understood to

be some kind of trophy of war. The writing was

rather confused, but that is not at all unusual among

recent war casualties.’