The Historians Read online

  Now Laura’s father offered her his arm. “I’m very happy to see you,” he said and patted her hand with his.

  In the dining room, three covers were set out. They set a place for her each night, though nowadays, she rarely came home. She felt a sting of bad conscience as she imagined the two men sitting here together each night, in silence, her place empty. She inhaled the familiar smells of their meals: candle wax, cigar smoke, old books or newspapers. Fresh bread.

  “So, how are you?” Her father poured her a glass of Riesling.

  “Good.”

  “How’s work?”

  “Good.”

  “Wallenberg going strong?”

  “Yes.”

  “It must be hard for him—all these moving parts, the change of direction—negotiating us out of what he negotiated us into.” Her father sounded curious.

  She shrugged and took a sip of her wine, even though she much preferred spirits.

  “Any trips planned?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t want to talk about Wallenberg or about work.

  Her father frowned at her brusqueness but let it pass. “The war is not finished yet, though. No matter how it plays out, there will be a new world order. One can only hope Sweden manages its balancing act until it’s over.”

  She wasn’t certain of her father’s feelings about Germany. He’d been educated in Berlin. In the beginning, he’d openly admired Hitler and the order and vision he brought, but then, who hadn’t? Everybody had been swept off their feet: the grandeur, the possibilities! Her father had seen Hitler speak live once. “He is magnetic,” he’d said. Even now, when the war appeared to be turning, her father was sparing in his judgment of the man.

  “I don’t get the Germans,” Laura muttered. “Look at Stalingrad. Hitler demanded they sacrifice themselves, no regard for the individuals. And they still follow him.”

  “Oh, Laura,” her father said. “Then you have never felt the power of a true cause. They’d die for him any day. They want to die for him. They are lucky to have a genuine vocation.”

  She wanted to tell her father about Britta, but she didn’t know how to approach it. Laura had brought Britta home once though she knew her father wouldn’t like her. When she was little, he had picked among her friends, pointing out “good friend” and “not good friend,” like you sort good apples from rotten ones. “People are simply destined for different things,” he’d say. Or—quoting the Bible—“Iron sharpens iron.” Britta had not been a “good friend,” although her father hadn’t been rude to her, just curt.

  Afterward, Laura wanted to apologize but wasn’t certain how to go about it. She felt disloyal.

  “You are lucky to have a father who thinks the world of you and wants to protect you,” Britta had said. “Mine always thought I was a tart.”

  Laura must have made a face, for Britta said, “Don’t worry. He didn’t exactly break me. I just wish . . .”

  She hadn’t finished the sentence, but there had been such longing in her voice that it had hurt to hear. Laura had hugged her.

  “Thanks,” Britta had said briskly, and she had never spoken of her father again.

  LAURA’S FATHER AND grandfather continued to discuss the most recent developments. Her father was the governor of the Swedish Central Bank and now talked about the other heads of central banks he had met on his latest journey—the big dilemma for them all being how to protect their nations’ gold—and their thoughts about the war. Normally, she’d engage in the discussion—that’s how they had raised her; discussing, debating, arguing—but today, she had nothing to say.

  The food was her favorite, sea bass with butter and new potatoes. Fish was a rarity these days. Rationed. She should eat. But she wasn’t hungry. She opened her purse to look for her cigarettes, but as she stared at the empty pockets, she realized she must have forgotten them on the train.

  “I ought to head home,” Laura said.

  Her father’s face was blank. “I’d like you to stay.”

  She shook her head.

  “Your room is still here.”

  “I have to get up early tomorrow, Dad,” she said, but what she wanted to do was to find Erik. She had to share the loss with someone who, like herself, had known and loved Britta.

  Her father kept looking at her but then nodded. “Alright. I’ll have my driver take you.”

  Private driving might have been forbidden since the war, but her father was exempt. She rose and kissed him on his forehead. He patted her on her back.

  “Come back soon, daughter.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  “I’ll walk you out,” her grandfather said.

  Dusk had fallen while they were having dinner. The house looked a sad gray with its blackout curtains. The paved entrance gleamed black in the faint light from the porch as if it had rained when they were inside.

  “What’s going on?” her grandfather asked, as they stood on the porch. Of course he would have noticed.

  “My university friend, Britta, died. She was killed. I found her today.”

  Her grandfather put his hand on her arm. She remembered how huge he had seemed to her when she was a child, towering over her. His booming voice had scared her. He’d been a general in the military; used to command. He’d ruled their house, too, until, one day, it became clear he no longer did and that her father had taken that role. Now he was smaller than she was, his hair tousled white, his blue eyes peering at her from underneath bushy white eyebrows.

  “She had been tortured,” she said. “Then shot.”

  “Tortured? Military connection?”

  Laura shrugged. Her grandfather saw the military in everything. “She was a history student. She wasn’t involved with the war.”

  “Most often, people are killed by those they know and love,” her grandfather said, forehead wrinkled. “Only, not everyone knows where to get hold of a weapon.”

  The car pulled up to the stairs. She kissed her grandfather’s cheek. “Don’t forget to turn off the porch light.”

  “Be careful,” her grandfather said and squeezed her arm.

  “It has nothing to do with me.”

  He shook his head. “I know of only three reasons why you would torture a person.”

  “What?”

  “The obvious one, of course—he wanted to find something out. Did she know something she shouldn’t have? Did she have any inappropriate connections?”

  She thought about Andreas saying he’d seen Britta with the leader of the SSS.

  “Or perhaps it was personal—someone wanting her to pay. An upset lover?”

  It felt strange to hear her grandfather say the word.

  “Or?”

  “Or he’s the kind who enjoys it.”

  DRIVING THROUGH STOCKHOLM at night felt eerie. All windows were dark, signs turned off, streetlights painted black. Shop windows were boarded over or covered by mounds of sandbags. Once, they met another car with shielded lights, just like on their own. A diplomat, perhaps, or some politician. The faint lights veered, and it was yet again dark. They drove on wet streets, crossed bridges under which water ran black. Cocooned in the car, it felt as if they were alone in a city of ghosts, normally inhabited by hundreds and thousands. When her father’s driver had dropped her off, Laura waited inside the door until the faint lights were gone. The sole of her shoe was coming off. Her father could easily get her a new pair, but, somehow, she took pleasure in interacting with Germany in bad shoes. This is your fault, she would think. Your doing. Not that the people of Germany would care. And the sole was going to come off any day now and she couldn’t see herself with wet feet.

  Erik had remained in Stockholm. If it had been her country that was occupied, she’d have wanted to go back. Not to fight, but to live through what everyone else was living through. But she’d seen him with both Danish and Swedish officials—perhaps he was serving his country in ways she didn’t know about. Everyone had secrets. A few times, he’d been at
the Grand Hotel. They’d both been accompanied and had merely nodded to each other. But that’s where she headed, thinking she would give it a try.

  They hadn’t spoken since university. It was how they’d left it, the five of them, three years ago. They had had the worst of fights, all of them screaming insults and accusations at one another. She wasn’t certain there was any going back. Too much had been said. Then, before they could try to make up, Matti was drafted and Germany invaded Norway and Denmark and Karl-Henrik left, too. The only one Laura had stayed in touch with was Britta.

  THE BAR WAS full of people, cigarette smoke thick beneath the meringue Swiss roof. People saved up cigarettes to be able to enjoy them on a night out. She loved the scent. She saw Erik before he saw her. He was wearing a dark suit with a gray waistcoat. A tie, too. She didn’t think she’d seen him in a suit before—he was more of a trousers and crumpled shirtsleeves kind of man. He was at the bar underneath the arches, leaning on the marble counter. He pulled on his cigarette, and the narrow, unshaven cheeks seemed hollower. His nose was blunt, his chin squared off and his brown eyes almost black. He always made Laura think of a policeman on the hunt, with his face worn and pale, bags under his eyes. Yet despite his disheveled appearance, he was strangely attractive. This impression of being a pursuer, a hunter, was reinforced by his lean frame—as if he never slept or ate—and a restlessness: his fingers tapped, his head jerked. Erik had grown up in Copenhagen, with his parents and five siblings, but, from what he’d told them, he had spent most of his boyhood zipping through the harbor looking for goods to steal, or beseeching sailors for cigarettes, getting beaten up by his father when found out. He was a couple of years older than the rest of their group, and had done a short stint in the military—“bloody brutes.” That he came to study at university was quite an accomplishment; but then, he was the only one besotted with history; the rest of them had ended up studying it for other reasons.

  Erik hadn’t been invited to the first nachspiel but had showed up anyway.

  Professor Lindahl had been unmoved: “Mr. Anker, I believe,” he’d said, when Erik had stood in the entrance to the vault and refused to leave, though the administrator had said the meal was by invitation only. “Why don’t you join us? It does seem appropriate. With Laura and Britta from Sweden, Matti from Finland, and Karl-Henrik from Norway, we now have all the Nordic countries represented.”

  Later, Erik had become the favorite. Professor Lindahl often turned to him for his view.

  There was a woman beside Erik, a blonde. He was trying to pick her up. He kept looking at her while drinking his beer . . . said something to her. The woman turned her shoulder. It made Laura laugh. A strange bark that got caught in her throat.

  He noticed her now. He looked behind her, as if to see who she was with, his whole face lighting up when he saw she was on her own. “Laura!” he shouted. Not a policeman. A friend. The blonde beside him glanced up, but now he didn’t notice. “Here!”

  She made her way to the bar.

  “For helvede, Miss Dahlgren,” he cursed. “It’s been much too long. Years!” He wrapped his arm around her, pressed her so hard against his chest she felt her earring pull out of her ear and kissed her cheek. He smelled of smoke and alcohol.

  Just like before, she thought. She touched her earring. It was still there.

  “What can I get you?” he asked.

  “Same as you,” she said.

  The beer was ice cold and the glass steamed. The blonde looked over her shoulder at Erik. She was busty, lips too red. A poor copy of Britta, Laura thought.

  To her horror, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked. Erik took one look at her, stubbed out his cigarette, grabbed her arm and his drink and guided her away from the bar to a table in a corner, where they sat down in the armchairs. He leaned forward, serious now.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Britta is dead,” she said. His hands on his knees twitched.

  “No.”

  She nodded.

  He looked her in her eye as if to verify it was true, then exhaled and leaned back. His mouth twisted. He rubbed his cheeks, his chin, then his head—first with one hand, then two. He looked as if he might cry. He broke off in the middle of the movement and forced himself to be still. “What happened?”

  “She was killed. I found her.”

  “You found her?”

  Laura nodded again. “She’d been tortured, then shot.”

  “Tortured?” His voice was hoarse. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  “Fuck!” he exclaimed. His eyes were large, his hair standing up. If he’d been alone, he would have thrown his glass, she thought. Broken it. A visual of a thousand shards down a wall.

  He looked away, blinked, grabbed his beer and took a swig.

  There was more; what she hadn’t dared to think through for herself, but that she had to say now . . . something that he would understand. She leaned forward, put her hand on his arm. “Erik, her eye had been gouged out.”

  He inhaled. A rasping sound. “What do you mean?”

  “Only one eye,” she said.

  She could see his mind working. He was thinking the same thing as her.

  “That’s a coincidence,” he said.

  It had to be, of course.

  “Andreas said he’d seen Britta with Sven Olov Lindholm, the head of the Swedish Nazi SSS before the riots,” she continued, speaking eagerly now, wanting to let it all out.

  Erik scoffed. “Britta with the Nazis? Never!”

  “That’s what I felt,” she admitted.

  “Why were you there?”

  “Andreas called me and said she was missing. Erik, do you know what she was up to?”

  “What do you mean ‘up to’?”

  “She was tortured,” Laura repeated, stressing the word. “I saw her . . . Her body was cut.” She had to swallow. “And then she was shot in the temple. Executed. There must be a reason.”

  “I haven’t seen her since we left university. I have no idea what was going on in her life now. If I ever did.” He lit a cigarette, his face still pale. “What do the police say?” He spoke with the cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

  “They don’t know anything. But Britta came to see me in early spring.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think she was frightened.”

  “Of what?” Erik caught her eyes through the smoke.

  “She didn’t say.”

  “That doesn’t sound like her.”

  She shrugged. She was certain.

  “What is he like, the policeman investigating?” Erik asked.

  “He seems thorough.”

  She kept thinking of the missing eye and of the god Odin. Odin had sacrificed an eye to be allowed to drink from the well of cosmic knowledge. He had gouged it out himself and thrown it into the water.

  “No sacrifice too great for wisdom,” Britta had said that afternoon, when Erik had finished telling them that story. “I’d do it. One eye for wisdom. Easy choice.”

  “Interesting.” Matti had leaned forward. “Traditionally, the eye represents insight. So, Odin basically exchanged one kind of insight for another.”

  “Mimir was the guardian of the well,” Erik had said. “The name Mimir means ‘the Rememberer.’ His wisdom was the wisdom of the traditions, their memories. Odin traded an everyday way of seeing things for another mode; that of history.”

  But Britta was dead. Whatever new wisdom she had acquired was gone with her.

  5.

  Jens

  In the hallway: “You’re late.” Kristina was dressed in a black silk blouse, wide silk trousers, her dark hair held back by a simple hairband, her earrings pearl.

  “Just a tiny bit.” He kissed her just as she turned her head and ended up kissing her ear, which left a bitter taste of hairspray or perfume in his mouth. She swept past him with a big smile on her face; he knew, even though he could only see her tall back in the shimmering blouse.
She turned in the doorway to wave at him to come.

  Jens inhaled and straightened up. The candlelit dining room floated with colored silk and cigar smoke. There was music: cool, smooth jazz. It was Kristina’s father’s apartment, but he and his wife were posted abroad.

  “Ah, the wayward young man!” Artur said. “Now we can eat.” Artur was Kristina’s father’s friend and her godfather. A former businessman, now retired; well mannered, a good conversationalist, he was invited to all Kristina’s parties. He was a gentleman: approachable, generous, always ready to laugh. Together, Kristina and her godfather were an unbeatable team. They could get the most reserved people to relax and leave feeling like old friends.

  Artur patted him on his shoulder. Jens smiled. Artur made the introductions: a colonel, thirty years Jens’s senior, a well-dressed army man with iron-colored hair above large ears and dreamy eyes—though there was little that was pensive about him, heading up, as he did, the command expedition of the land defense working for the minister. His wife was a large woman with white hair and round cheeks. Another Mr. and Mrs.: him, tall and sparse, serious face, a director at Volvo; his wife, dark-haired, same serious long face as her husband. Employed by the Scandinavian Bank, nevertheless. There was a delightful, smiling, dark-haired young woman in a suit who went by the name of Barbro Cassel; nonchalant eyes, smoking, a secretary at the German trade delegation. Kristina’s hand touched his arm.

  And then, from the kitchen, a German accent, followed by the voice of Kristina’s chef responding to what had been said or asked.

  Out came the envoy to the German trade delegation, Karl Schnurre, the person who showed up whenever Hitler had a message for the Swedes. Between two fingers, he held a piece of ham. “Köstlich!” he exclaimed. “Tasty.” He raised his hand above his head and dropped the meat into his mouth. A snake swallowing a mouse. “Ah, Jens!” he said, rubbing his hands together to wipe his glistening digits. “I haven’t seen you for a while. It’s working out with Günther, then?”

  “Ah, it’s true,” Barbro Cassel had appeared by Schnurre’s side, tilted champagne glass in her hand. “You are Günther’s secretary, right?”