The Body in the Fjord

platter of open-faced sandwiches, smorbrod. Despite the gravity of the situation, Pix felt a twinge of pleasure when she saw her favorite, the bread hidden by rows of reker, nestled on mayonnaise, a bit of lettuce, a curl of paper-thin lemon on top. Reker were tiny, succulent shrimp, only available this far north. Next to these open-facers, she liked reker best straight from the boats where

they had been caught and cooked. One could buy them by the bag here in Oslo on the wharf in front of city hall and in the fish market in Bergen. It was the essence of being in Norway, strolling along a waterfront, eating fresh shrimp. But she doubted there would be any time for this in the days to come.

“The police call constantly. They keep asking if Kari has gotten in touch with me. I think they are watching the house, too, because they think I might try to hide her.”

Ursula came straight to the point. “But why? How could they possibly believe she is responsible for Erik’s death? Surely it was an accident!”

Marit shrugged. Her face now looked tired and the color faded. “Probably they don’t know what to believe, and the newspapers, television, and radio are full of the story from morning to night. Nothing better to do with their time.” Marit was disgusted. She paused. “They have dredged up the whole business with Hanna and it worries me that Kari, wherever she is, might be seeing it.” Marit had made it absolutely clear to them as they ate that in her mind Kari was alive.

“Oh no, that’s disgraceful!” Pix was indignant. Hanna had been only a few years older than she was. There had been one golden summer when Ursula brought both her children to Norway and they joined the Larsens, their various cousins, and their friends on an island in the middle of the Hardangerfjord. The children all slept in one big room, the attic of an old farmhouse. They were outdoors from dawn to dusk. Pix had worshiped Hanna. Hanna swam like a fish, could climb any tree, and her arrows always hit the target. She told the younger children wonderfully scary tales of the trolls who inhabited the woodlands and came alive at night, pointing out their faces turned to stone by the sun’s first rays in the mountains surrounding the fjord. Yet there was a dark side to Hanna, the night side of the trolls. She was moody and no one was ever sure what would cause her temper to flare. That summer was the first summer her parents became the same

kind of targets she trained her bow and arrow on. Again, she seldom missed.

It grew worse as she got older. Tonsberg seemed hopelessly conventional. It was the sixties and she craved new experiences. Some of them, she found through drugs. Then she met Sven and he became the most powerful addiction of them all. Throughout, her mother and father strove to stay with her, fearing a break, offering her any kind of help, whatever she wanted, trying not to be demanding. They never wavered in their love, even when it was rejected. Across the ocean, Ursula would read Marit’s letters and feel helpless. She went to visit her friend alone and came back visibly upset. “This will not end well,” she told her daughter, who was by then old enough to know what was going on.

Hanna took off with Sven. They went wherever their fancy took them. Marit and Hans received postcards and were grateful for them. Then the cards stopped. Hanna returned home eight months later, pregnant. Sven had abandoned her in Greece when he learned he was about to become a father. Hanna had thought he would marry her. Instead, he found another young girl and left. She was penniless and had to work to save money for a ticket home. She did not want to ask her parents for it. Maybe she wasn’t even sure that was where she was headed.

When Kari was born, at first it seemed that Hanna was happy. She insisted on doing everything to take care of the golden-haired baby, a baby who always smiled, especially when her mother picked her up. It brought the Hansen family together for a brief, very special time, later a time treasured like the salvaged beads of a favorite broken neck-lace—not enough to string, but put away to save forever nonetheless.

Hanna killed herself on Kari’s second birthday. She went deep into the woods, climbed high up into a tall Norwegian spruce, made a noose, and hanged herself. Some hikers found her.

Now all the old accounts were being resurrected. Had the daughter done something similar, convincing her lover to join her? asked the papers. Or was there some aberrant strain in the family that erupted in madness and Kari had pushed Erik to his doom, then killed herself—or run away?

“None of this is true, Marit. You know that.” Ursula was polishing off a smorbrod with a kind of ground meat patty and fried onions. “Stop reading the papers and don’t turn on the radio or TV. If there’s anything you have to know, the police or someone will tell you. Besides, you’ll be meeting us on the tour soon.”

“I know, but I just wanted to tell you what’s been going on.” Marit pursed her mouth. “It makes people feel better if they think others are worse off.”

Pix had never heard Marit speak so pessimistically. She thought of the questions she and Faith had raised. Now was the time to ask them. When they met Marit at the hotels the tour would be stopping at, they would supposedly be meeting for the first time and striking up a casual acquaintance. The tour. Marit’s call to Ursula had been a plea for Ursula to pose as a tourist, but the two women had quickly decided Pix would be useful. “You’ll be the hund,” Marit had told Pix earlier. “The dog—you know, like for the blind. You will be our hund, since we are now such old women and can’t do everything we once did.” Pix wasn’t sure how she felt about her new role, but it was true that, while in terrific shape, Marit and Ursula just might not be able to do things like the trip by horseback they’d taken across the vast Hardangervidda some thirty years ago.

The Mermaid/Troll tour. It reminded Pix of her first question—actually, two questions.

She had wondered from the beginning why Marit was adamant they join the tour to investigate, eliminating all other possibilities.

“You seem so sure that whatever has happened is linked to the tour. I know it was where they were last seen, but couldn’t the explanation for all this lie somewhere else? A situation with a friend, someone they know

at the university?” Pix was trying to ask her question delicately, avoiding words like drugs. She added, “Or a senseless attack by a stranger?”

“I thought of those things—of everything. I have told myself enough stories for many novels.” Marit sounded bleak. “I think I have spoken to everyone Kari ever knew, gone through her address book, reached friends of friends. Nothing. Everyone seemed genuinely puzzled about where she might be and what could have happened to Erik. The only thing left is the tour.

“Erik’s parents have believed from the beginning that it was suicide after a quarrel, and they blame Kari. They are very religious people and Erik seemed rebellious to them, although it was only normal growing-up behavior. Now, perhaps they feel he has been punished. I cannot pretend to understand, only grieve for them. They won’t talk to me any longer. But I don’t agree. I knew Erik and I’m sure he wouldn’t have taken his life. Kari and Erik were very happy together. As for a stranger, we do not have many of these random crimes in Norway, although I suppose it could have occurred. But why? They weren’t robbed. No, the tour is the only hope, and I have such a strong feeling about it. Almost as if Kari herself is telling me what to do.”

She stopped, her lips set in a firm line. Pix knew there had never been any doubt about going on the tour. She’d just had to ask. This settled, or unsettled, the next question followed.

“Isn’t it going to seem odd for us to be joining the tour so near to the end? Wouldn’t we have waited for the next one? What did you say when you made the reservations?”

“Remember, Erik worked for this company last year, so I know a lot about it. Apparently, the most popular part is the fjord cruise. If there’s room, they let people sign up just for those four days. You can leave either from Bergen or Oslo and meet the rest at Voss. You won’t be the only ones, I’m sure.”

“Also, can you tell us exactly what Kari said when she called Friday night?”

Marit closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and recited from memory, a memory she had obviously been over many times. “She said the tour was going well. No rain—they’d had rain with the first one and everyone complained. I asked her where she was and she told me she was about to get on the train to Bergen. She was in the main train station, Oslo S, not the smaller one at the National Theater. She said, ‘I don’t have much time, Bestemor, and I’d like you to do a favor for me.’ ‘Anything,’ I told her. ‘Could you go into the top middle drawer of my desk, get my address book, and give me Annelise Christensen’s phone number? No, wait—they’re boarding and I have to go. There isn’t time. Call me with it tonight. The tour is staying at the Augustin Hotel; you know it.’ I said no problem and that I’d talk with her later. ‘How is Erik?’ I asked, and she said,