repeated the request in German. No one answered. “This is advertised as a bilingual tour, but so far, I have not had to use both languages.”
Pix looked at the itinerary sheet. The bus trip would take them through a “wonderland of waterfalls and mountains,” after which they would arrive at the hotel, “famous for its spectacular location and folk museum.” After dinner, there would be a “program of traditional Norwegian folk dancing and music performed in native costume.” The tour did not leave one at a loss for things to do. What with admiring the view, touring the museum, eating, and then clapping along—or whatever one did to the sounds of a Hardanger fiddle—it could be a very late night indeed. Pix sighed. At least Jan wasn’t making a lot of inane comments, and the scenery was breathtaking. The waterfalls cascaded down the mountains in one long, sheer teardrop. They were passing through a beautiful densely
wooded forest now and Jan picked up the microphone, resuming his position in the aisle.
“During the war, the Germans literally blew up Voss, and to this day, no one will buy wood cut from around here, because no factory will cut it. There are still so many bullets and pieces of metal embedded in the trees that it would break the machinery. Soon we will be coming to Tvindenfossen, a nice waterfall, and you can all take some pictures.”
Ursula raised her eyebrows at her daughter. “Now we know why Jan wanted to be sure there weren’t any Germans on board. Whenever I’m in Norway, I always feel as if the war ended only a short time ago. The Occupation was a terrible time.”
The bus was stopping.
“Do you want to walk up to the
“I think I’ll look at it from the parking lot and eat whatever this is at one of those picnic tables. You go and take a picture.”
Pix had brought her camera to Norway as part of the disguise and also in case she needed to record something. She got out, following the rest of the herd up a well-worn path to look at the falls. They were not so dramatic as the one she remembered from Flam, but steeper, starting far up in the mountains. She waited until almost everyone had gone to eat their lunches, so she could get a shot without people posing in front. Jennifer Olsen had apparently had the same idea and they walked back down together.
“Thank you so much for last night. I know I would have been fine in my room, but I was feeling a little shook.”
In the light of day, Jennifer looked much less exotic than she did at night. She was wearing jeans, running shoes, a turtleneck, and a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt had NO PAIN, NO GAIN in script letters across the front.
“Well, you won’t have to worry about anything happening tonight,” Pix said. “The odds of something like that
occurring twice in a row, or even in a year, must be infinitesimal in Norway.”
“True. The funny thing is, I’m always looking over my shoulder at home. I live in Manhattan, but, knock wood, nothing has ever happened. I come here and…Well, I’m just going to put it out of my head. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the trip with negative thoughts. It’s been wonderful.”
Pix wished she could shelve her negative thoughts. Even the beauty of Norway couldn’t blot out the image of Erik’s death and Kari’s disappearance. She wasn’t here for pleasure and she slowed her pace. Jennifer, traveling alone, might have observed more than, say, Carol Peterson.
“But I understood there was trouble earlier in the trip—a staff problem?”
Jennifer stopped in the middle of the path. Her face darkened. “It was horrible. All some people could think about when someone was dead was having to carry their own luggage.”
“Dead?” It was easy for Pix to sound alarmed.
“We don’t really know what happened. Kari and Erik were a young couple working for Scandie Sights—doing what Anders and Sonja do now. They ran away to get married and somehow he was swept into a river and drowned. Her body hasn’t been found yet.” Jennifer sounded very sure that Kari had drowned, too. Pix felt her stomach turn. Could it be just that? The two of them running off and then a terrible accident? But what about Kari’s last words to Marit, the words that had been interrupted?
“Such a tragedy,” she said inadequately.
“Yes, life’s a bitch,” replied Jennifer, walking rapidly now, as if she feared all the food would be gone. Pix felt a little guilty as she sat down next to her mother and opened the box lunch. So much for helping Jennifer avoid negative thoughts.
“You have seen Tvindenfossen and now we have the Tvinde River.” On the way again, Jan had resumed his
role, after eating his lunch alone. “It’s a very good salmon river, and in Norway, anyone can fish anywhere— even private property is open to the public—but you need to ask and maybe pay a small fee, about ten kroner. There’re plenty of places to fish for everyone without overcrowding. Norway has so many lakes that we figure there are about two fishermen for each one. We fish all year long, and Lake Vangsvatnet, the one we just left in Voss, is the site of a large ice-fishing festival every winter. Not for people with thin skins.” Somehow Jan managed to make all this sound unrehearsed. A kind of stream of consciousness, like the waters rushing past them outside. He gazed out the window, thought of something, and spoke. “We have a legend about the Tvinde River, too. If you drink its water every day of your life, you’ll never get old. It’s just a legend, of course.” He sounded disappointed.
“No thank you,” Ursula announced firmly. “One of the pleasures of being old is that you don’t have to be young again, especially a teenager.”
Pix and her friend Faith tended to think that their lives were destined to be an endless repetition of junior high school, so this was good news, but Pix did wonder what her mother was referring to. She’d always imagined her mother’s adolescent years as happy times—picnics in the countryside, rowing on the river. She realized that whatever Ursula might be recalling was obviously not in the family photograph albums.
The rest of the ride was quiet and Pix spent the time thinking about her fellow Scandie tourists. The Bradys, the Petersons, the Dahl sisters, the French cousins, and Jennifer Olsen had all been on the tour since the beginning. They seemed to be a run-of-the-mill group, maybe a little heavy on the Scandinavian surnames, but from the look of the list, half the tour seemed to be in search of roots. Pix remembered Marit telling her that in the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth, almost 900,000 Norwegians emigrated to North America because of the growth in population in Norway and scarcity of
resources. At one time or another, almost everyone has had a cousin in Minneapolis or Brooklyn.
Jan was talking about the Stalheim Hotel as the bus climbed up the steep road. “It’s the fourth hotel built on this spot. The first one was erected in 1885. The N?roy Valley, which you will see far below you when we stop, and the surrounding area have always been a favorite place for holidays. The kaiser liked it so much, he came twenty- five summers in a row.”
“The kaiser is not quite the villain on the west coast as he is elsewhere,” Ursula whispered to Pix. “I’ve been to these places before with Marit and it’s kind of like ‘Washington slept here.’”
“But why?” Pix was puzzled.
“Oh, he was always giving stained glass to the churches or statues to towns, even helping to rebuild an entire one in the case of Alesund, after a fire destroyed it. Benevolent. Had to keep his vacation land pleasant, and he really liked to fish and hunt.”
Pix was listening to Jan; surprisingly, she found it pleasant to be picking up these tidbits of information.
“Finally after the first three buildings burned down, they got smarter and built the present hotel out of concrete in 1960.” It was painted red and appeared not unattractive, Pix thought. And given its location perched on the mountaintop, putting out a blaze would prove difficult. Jan had a few more morsels. “The same family, the Tonnebergs, has been running it now for sixty years. During the war, the Germans took it over.”
Of course, Pix said to herself, and she began wondering if there was a particular reason why Jan was so intent on refreshing their memories. Had his family suffered a particularly severe loss?
“They used the hotel for one of their
He didn’t elaborate and Pix felt a chill. Not exactly what she wanted to hear about the place she would be
staying, although the wartime structure was in ashes far below the present foundation. Her mother was looking out the window as the bus pulled up to the entrance and she turned to speak to Pix.
“You should go see the houses in the folk museum if there’s time. I’m sure you remember the one in Oslo,
