The Redbreast(169)

enough to tell me everything, but I sat there,

nailed to the bench, incapable of doing anything

except listening and watching. And suffering. The

hypocritical liar! Even Juul knows very well who

Signe Alsaker is. I was the one who told him

about her. He can hardly be blamed. He thinks

Daniel Gudeson is dead, but she, she swore

fidelity unto death. Yes, I’ll say it again:

betrayal! And the Crown Prince has not uttered a

word. At Akershus Fortress they are shooting men

who risked their lives for Norway. The echoes of

the shots hang in the air over the city for a

second, then they are gone and everything is

quieter than before. As if nothing had happened.

Last week I was told that my case was

dismissed; my heroic acts outweighed the crimes

I had committed. I laughed until the tears flowed

as I read the letter. So they think the execution of

four defenceless farmers in Gudbrandsdalen is a

heroic act, one which outweighs my criminal

defence of the home country in Leningrad! I

threw a chair at the wall and the landlady came

up and I had to apologise. It’s enough to drive

you insane.

At night I dream of Helena. Only of Helena. I

have to try to forget. And the Crown Prince did

not say one word. It’s unbearable. I think . . .

97

Oslo. 17 May 2000.

HARRY CHECKED HIS WATCH AGAIN. HE FLICKED

THROUGH a few more sheets until his eyes fell on a

familiar name.

Schrøder’s. 23 September 1948.

. . . a business with good prospects. But today

what I had long feared happened.

I was reading the newspaper when I noticed

someone standing at my table observing me. I

looked up and the blood in my veins froze to ice!

He was somewhat run-down, I could see. His

clothes were quite worn. He no longer had the

erect, rigid bearing I remember. Something about

him had gone. But I immediately recognised our

old section leader, the man with the cyclops eye.

‘Gudbrand Johansen,’ said Edvard Mosken.

‘You’re supposed to have died. In Hamburg,

rumour has it.’

I didn’t know what to say or do. I only knew that

the man who sat down in front of me could have

me sentenced for treason, or even murder.

My mouth was completely dry when I was

finally able to talk. I said yes, I certainly was

alive, and to gain time I told him I had ended up

in the military hospital in Vienna with head

injuries and a bad foot. What had happened to

him? He said he had been repatriated and ended

up in the hospital in Sinsen, funnily enough the

same one I would have been sent to. Like most of

the others he had been given a three-year

sentence, and had been let out after serving two

and a half.

We talked a bit about this and that, and after a

while I began to relax. I ordered him a beer and

talked about the building-supplies business I ran.

I told him my opinion: it was best for people like

us to start up something on our own since most

companies refused to employ ex-Eastern Front

men (especially the companies who had co-

operated with the Germans during the war).

‘What about you?’ he asked.

I had explained that joining the ‘right side’ had

not helped me much. I had still worn a German

uniform.

Mosken sat there the whole time with this half-

smile playing on his lips, and in the end he could

not hold it back any longer. He told me he had

been trying to trace me for a long time, but all

the tracks ended in Hamburg. He had almost

given up when one day he spotted the name

Sindre Fauke in a newspaper article about

Resistance men. That had re-kindled his interest;

he had found out where Fauke worked and rang.

Someone had tipped him off that I was probably

at Schrøder’s.

I tensed up and thought, here it comes. But what

he said was utterly different from what I had

imagined.

‘I never thanked you properly for stopping

Hallgrim Dale from shooting me that time. You

saved my life, Johansen.’

I played this down with a shrug and an open-

mouthed stare. It was the best I could do.

Mosken said I had shown myself to be a man of

morals when I saved his life because I’d had

good reason to wish him dead. If Sindre Fauke’s

body had been found, Mosken could have

testified that I was probably the murderer. I

simply nodded. Then he looked at me and asked if

I was frightened of him. I realised that I had

nothing to lose by telling him the whole story

exactly as it had happened.

Mosken listened, focused his cyclops eye on me

a couple of times to check if I was lying, and

occasionally shook his head, but he knew well

enough that most was true.

When I had finished, I ordered two more beers

and he told me about himself. His wife had found

another man to look after her and the boy while