The Klipfish Code (5 page)

"From the Vikings, right Marit?"

"Of course!" It was kinder to go along with his imagination. She doubted the chain they'd found was that old.

She knew the soldiers were watching them. She felt
their cold, constant presence—their eyes on every movement. In past summers, when her family had visited, she and Lars always ran straight to the shoreline and combed it for treasures. Once she found a small blue bottle. When she poured out the seawater, a tiny crab slipped out of its shelter. The bottle sat on her bedroom shelf along with seashells she'd collected over the years. She hoped it would all still be there when she returned home.

Lars trailed her as she walked along the shoreline. At the water's edge, a slick black film covered several pieces of lumber and sticks. The smell was pungent, not the natural odor of kelp, but of bombs and fuel.

"Marit, what's that slimy stuff?"

"Hitler's hair tonic."

"What's that?"

Some jokes were lost on little kids. "Oh, skip it. There must have been an oil leak from a ship recently bombed at sea."

A few meters away, a small mound moved amid the seaweed.

"What's that?" Lars asked.

She picked her way closer. "Let's have a look." Lars hung back. "Marit, maybe it's something poisonous."

A month earlier, when she'd walked from the pasture to the shore, she'd found two dead birds—a puffin and a
cormorant. The same black deadly slime had coated their wings. She'd asked Bestefar and he'd said there was nothing they could do. He also explained that the Germans expected the Allied forces to invade along the coast, so they bombed any ship or fishing boat that looked suspicious, leaving fuel on the water. The Germans were shipping iron ore from Narvik in the north to keep their war across Europe supplied with steel. To foil the German efforts, the British also planted mines in the harbors to blow up German vessels. "Everyone," he'd said, "seems interested in our coast."

Marit squatted beside the barely stirring mound.

"Oh..." Her heart broke. "It's a seal pup!"

The seal wasn't much bigger than a small dog, and it barked weakly, and then made a whimpering, mewling sound.

"We have to help it," Lars said.

The seal pup's coat was black with oil. Its whole face, even its eyes, were filmy. "Run across the pasture to the barn and grab an old blanket ... there's a moth-eaten one in the loft. Bring that one ... and I'll wait here. We'll wrap it up and carry it back to the barn. Maybe we can help."

But deep inside, Marit had her doubts.

Lars tore across the pasture.

Left alone with the seal pup, Marit talked to it softly for several minutes. She reached closer and gingerly
touched the seal's fur. A sticky black layer clung to her fingertips. She shook her head. "Poor
vesla.
"

"Poor 'little one'?" A deep voice startled her. "What have you found there?"

Marit jumped to her feet.

A lanky soldier with eyes as blue as Mama's stared down at her. How could the enemy look so much like a Norwegian? Around his waist, a leather belt was cinched tightly over his gray-green
jakke.
Along his chest a row of metal buttons sparkled, and above the top right pocket a metal eagle spread its wings.

She lowered her gaze to the seal pup. As angry as she was at Bestefar, she still reminded herself about his warning not to speak to the Germans.

The soldier bent closer and nudged the seal with the toe of his leather boot. The pup whimpered. "Ah, it's not only people who suffer. War has many unexpected casualties."

His manner was official, but beneath the uniform she sensed a human being, if that was possible. Then just as suddenly, he stiffened, as if he just remembered that he was in uniform, and adjusted the rifle on his shoulder. "And what are you doing here on the shore?"

She didn't answer, but glanced back toward Godøy Mountain, a backdrop of lush green that towered above the island's small farms and her grandparents' farmhouse and barn. In the distance across the vibrant green
pasture, Aunt Ingeborg hung clothes on the line and seemed to be looking toward them, surely worried.

"You Norwegians. Can't speak a word, can you?"

Like a mountain goat, Lars suddenly sprang over the pasture's edge and onto the rocky shoreline.

"
Halt!
" the soldier shouted, spinning in Lars's direction and drawing the revolver out of his holster.

"
Nei!
" Marit cried.

"Oh, oh." Lars held out the navy wool blanket and froze. His eyes opened wide at the sight of the revolver pointed at him.

"I see you two can speak," the soldier said. Then he pivoted and aimed his gun at the seal pup. "It will die soon enough," he said. "Better to put it out of its misery."

"Please," she begged.

The soldier stepped closer and knelt beside the pup. Marit covered her eyes, bracing herself for the inevitable. Lars began to cry.

Then the soldier stood up and stepped back. "It's dead already. I don't need to waste ammunition." He motioned to Lars with his gun. "You. We need the blanket. It's cold at night. Bring it here," he commanded.

Marit had heard that soldiers often entered houses and "borrowed" whatever they needed. She had a better word for it.
Stealing.

Lars's lips moved, but nothing came out. He had
frozen in place. The soldier stepped from one boulder to the next until he reached him. He took the blanket from Lars's arms, and then ambled along the breakwater to the lighthouse.

Before anything worse could happen, Marit pushed the rowboat back into the water and motioned for Lars to get in—and quickly. Halfway back to the pier, she stopped rowing and glanced back.

A line of black cormorants flew in formation over the peninsula. Seagulls filled the air with screeching as they circled and landed where the seal pup lay onshore. And in the distance, the soldiers kept a steady watch on the water.

Marit passed the summer days by scrubbing floors; feeding the goats; cleaning out every corner of the barn; gathering blueberries, lingonberries, and raspberries; and carding wool from neighbors' sheep, which Aunt Ingeborg earned in trade for jars of jam. Only at the general store on mail delivery days did Marit have free time to see Hanna and Olaf, and Kaptain, his growing puppy.

Evenings, they gathered in the kitchen around the radio. Norway's radio station now broadcast only German propaganda. The only news worth listening to was the British airwaves—the BBC. Even though the Nazis forbade listening to it, everyone did. Marit learned that King Haakon had fled the country and was in exile in
London. She was relieved he was safe, but that meant the Germans were now unquestionably in control. What did this mean for Mama and Papa?

Names that had meant nothing to her before now made her shiver. Terboven was one. Vidkun Quisling was the other.

"Quisling—that traitor!" Bestefar nearly spat. "A Norwegian Nazi! How dare he declare that resisting German troops is a crime? He's nothing more than a puppet of the Germans—with Terboven pulling the strings." He mimed a puppeteer pulling strings. "Look at him dance. He thinks he's so clever."

Marit heard speeches by Winston Churchill, England's leader, and by their own exiled king. On the BBC, King Haakon told Norwegians to stand strong and never to give up. His words were immediately printed on illegal presses and spread secretly across Norway.

One day she found a flyer on the road, blown about by the wind, and she read the king's own words over and over:

The Norwegian people's freedom and independence is the first command of Norway's Law, and I will follow this commandment ... the duty given to me by a free people.

Marit tucked the flyer in her blouse, as if the words were life itself. When a truckload of soldiers approached,
the flyer burned against her skin as she pretended casually to pluck and eat the wild lingonberries and raspberries along the roadside. With the truck's gritty dust in her mouth, she ran back straight to the barn.

She passed Big Olga's empty stanchion and climbed the wooden ladder to the hayloft. Flecks of chaff floated in the ray of light from the open loft door. The gray tabby barn cat lay on her side in the corner, nursing five kittens in the straw, her eyes closed as if she didn't know Marit was there.

Marit pulled the flyer out. Such valuable words—words someone had risked his or her life to print and circulate. She couldn't toss them away. She found the loose board, pulled it from its base, and added the king's words to a few shells she'd stashed there years earlier.

The cat opened one eye, watched her, and then closed it again.

A strange mixture of guilt and pride welled in her.

"You saw nothing," Marit said to the cat, which ignored her anyway.

Symbols started to appear around the island. Marit found them scratched in dirt on the road, other times painted over a German sign. The most common symbol was a large
V,
with an
H
in its middle, and a
7
in the middle of that:
Victory for King Haakon VII.
Other times, she found the words "Long live the king" carved or written on road posts and trail posts.

Marit started to wear a paper clip on her collar, just as she had seen others do at the general store. When Aunt Ingeborg asked why she was wearing it, Marit answered, "Mr. Larsen said it's our way of saying 'Let's stick together.'" After that, Aunt Ingeborg started wearing a paper clip, too.

One evening, as they sat listening to the radio, Lars was playing on the living room floor with a tabby barn kitten. "Just for a little bit," he promised, since Aunt Ingeborg refused to keep a cat in the house as a pet. He broke into giggles as the amber tabby pounced on the ball of yarn hidden in the crook of his arm.

Marit watched Lars and wished she could forget about the war as easily.

"What shall I name you?" Lars laughed. The kitten reared back in mock combat, then dashed at the ball of yarn again with his front paws. Lars shrieked with laughter. "You think you're tough, but you're small enough to fit in a teacup!" And it didn't take long before Tekopp, as Lars named him, became a house cat.

***

One evening, Aunt Ingeborg held a rucksack out to Marit. "Would you bring this to the pier? Bestefar is having engine trouble and he may not make it back for dinner. A little kindness will do him good."

Marit studied her feet rather than meet her aunt's eyes. She was reluctant to do Bestefar a favor.

"Marit, I know you and Bestefar don't always agree on things. But he's a good man. I hope you know that. He's extra busy now that the cod season has started. And with the occupation—nothing is normal. Everyone is affected."

For her aunt, she would do anything.

Cheerlessly, Marit crossed the wooden plank to Bestefar's trawler. Harbor currents jostled the boat, even though it was tied up securely with three ropes.

Hands in leather gloves, Bestefar was hammering a poster beside the door of his boat's wheelhouse. He glanced at the bundle she held out to him and nodded.

Marit stepped closer and read the poster aloud. "You shall not in any way give shelter to or aid the enemy. To do so is punishable by death."

"What's that about?"

"Another warning."

With disgust, she watched him hammer the last corner of the poster. Nazis forced their way into their country, and his response was to do everything they demanded. "Bestefar," she asked, her voice shaking with anger, "it says you can't aid the enemy. But
who
is the enemy?"

He avoided her eyes and whispered through dry lips. "Marit, I don't expect you to understand. You're young. If I don't post this, my boat will be confiscated."

"They'd take your boat just because you didn't post the warning?"

He nodded.

"But if every fisherman refused to post it, then the Nazis would have to take every boat..."

He studied her.

"...And soon they'd realize that there weren't any fish coming in to feed their armies. They'd have to let you go back to fishing then, wouldn't they?"

"It's not that simple," he said.

"Bestefar, you didn't even hear me." She'd never spoken so disrespectfully to her elders before. But how could she respect him when he had less backbone than a jellyfish? He made her want to spit on the floor of his deck. "What will they want next? That all the fish you catch raise their little fins and say 'Heil Hitler'?"

He didn't laugh.

And she wasn't joking.

Bestefar's face reddened as he raised one white eyebrow. "Enough. You have spunk, Marit. But remember"—he glanced toward the other boats tied up, as if to see if other fishermen were listening—"you
must
hold your tongue and keep your thoughts to yourself. Do you want something to happen to your brother, your aunt—do you?"

She stormed off his boat deck, knocking a bucket of salt water over in her wake.

When late-August mornings brought shivers, and yellowing birch leaves signaled the start of school, Marit made up her mind. She had to speak with Aunt Ingeborg. She and Lars had stayed on the island long enough. She refused—absolutely refused—to remain apart from her parents any longer.

Seated at her treadle sewing machine, Aunt Ingeborg worked the foot pedal. The little black machine with small painted flowers stitched rapidly through swaths of black fabric. Already hand-embroidered on the fabric were designs in threads as bright as flowering nasturtiums. Aunt Ingeborg bowed her head over the cloth, her fine eyebrows knit in concentration.

"Aunt Ingeborg, I'm sorry to bother you, but—"

"Good thing I bought all this fabric before the invasion. I've had in mind to start on a
bunad
for you, just as your grandmother did for me and for your mother."

Marit had always looked forward to wearing a
bunad,
the colorfully embroidered black wool vest and skirt with a white blouse worn at confirmation and on special occasions. Boys wore embroidered vests and knickers. Since she could remember she'd looked forward to the tradition. "Thank you, but..." Marit said sadly, "but I won't be staying that long."