Kerttu is not in a particularly good mood. She has come to the dance without a partner. And Schorner would not let her wear her best dress either.
“You mustn’t stand out too much,” he said. “You must look like an ordinary young lass. You come from… wherever it is you come from.”
“Piilijarvi,” she said.
“But you don’t have a fiance, of course, and you’re staying with your cousin here in Lulea, and you’re looking for a job.”
She buys a bottle of soda and stands around at the edge of the dance floor. Two young lads come up and ask her for a dance, but she says, in a friendly way, “Maybe later,” explaining that she is waiting for her cousin. Drinking her soda slowly to make it last, she feels like a cross between a wallflower and an ice queen. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the man Schorner is trying to trap. Schorner had shown Kerttu a photograph of the lad. Axel Viebke.
Here comes Schorner. He has borrowed the depot manager’s Auto-Union Wanderer. Young boys hanging around the dance floor and sitting in the birch trees like a flock of thrushes gather round the smart-looking sports car.
Schorner, who has a quick eye for the leader of any flock, gives one boy a five- krona note to keep an eye on the car. He does not want it scratched. Or to find that some joker has dropped a sugar cube in the petrol tank.
Then he saunters over to the dance floor. He is in uniform. Those near him stiffen noticeably.
He buys a soda, but hardly touches it. Then he walks over to Kerttu and asks her for a dance.
“No thank you,” she says in a loud voice. “I don’t dance with Germans.”
Schorner’s face turns white and strained. Then he clicks his heels, marches over to the car and drives off.
Kerttu turns to look at Viebke. Stares hard at him. Gazes into his eyes. Then looks down. Then gazes back into his eyes.
He leaves his group of friends and walks over to her.
“Do you dance with boys from Vuollerim, then?” he says. She laughs, flashing her white teeth, and says yes, of course she does.
While they are dancing she tells him how she has moved to her cousin’s in Lulea while she looks for a job. Her cousin seems to have forgotten that they were going to meet at the dance and has not turned up. But that doesn’t matter as Viebke and Kerttu dance together all evening.
When the dance is over, he wants to walk her home. She says he can come part of the way. They go down to the riverbank. The leaves on the weeping birches will soon be turning yellow; it will not be long before summer is over. That is both sad and romantic.
Viebke says he admires the way she snubbed the German soldier who asked her for a dance. Who did he think he was, rolling up like that in his posh car!
“I hate the Germans,” she says.
She falls silent and gazes out over the river.
Viebke offers her a penny for her thoughts. She wonders if he has heard that three Danish prisoners of war have escaped from a ship in the harbour.
“I hope they’ll be alright,” she says. “Where will be safe for them?”
Viebke looks at her. She feels as if she is in a film. Like Ingrid Bergman.
“They’ll be alright,” he says, stroking her cheek.
“How can you be so sure?” she says with a smile.
And the smile has a trace of condescension in it. As if she thinks he is just a young lad at a dance who could not possibly know anything at all. Although in fact she is much younger than he is.
“I know,” he says. “Because I’m the one who’s hidden them.”
She bursts out laughing.
“You’d say anything to get yourself a kiss.”
“You can think whatever you like,” he says. “But it’s a fact.”
“Then I’d like to meet them,” Kerttu says.
Two days later she is sitting in Zindel’s Auto-Union Wanderer beside
It is a lovely late summer’s day. Haystacks stand in rows in the fields, and the scent of sun-warmed hay is lovely. In the meadows where the hay has been harvested, cows are grazing on the last of the late-summer grass. The car has to keep slowing down because farmers are out on the roads with their horses and carts. The rowan trees are laden with clumps of bright red berries. A father and his three daughters are on the way home from berry-picking in the woods. You can see from the way he is walking that the birch-bark rucksack on his back is heavy with fruit. The girls have small enamel buckets full of blueberries.
Kerttu and the Germans walk the last part of the way. The path runs through the forest and alongside some swampy meadows. Eventually they come to Viebke’s uncle’s hut, used by farm hands as a base at haymaking time. It is small and unpainted, but in the sunshine that day everything is beautiful. The hut gleams like silver in the middle of the clearing.
Schorner orders the others to keep quiet as he draws his pistol and approaches the hut.
It is only when he does this that Kerttu becomes vaguely aware that Viebke will feel that she has betrayed him. That had not occurred to her before. It had all been a sort of adventure.
Schorner and the other soldiers walk cautiously towards the hut. They go inside. After a short while they come out again.
“There’s nobody here,” Schorner says disapprovingly.
He looks accusingly at Kerttu.
She opens her mouth to defend herself. She was here only yesterday with Viebke and met the Danes. Nice chaps, all three of them.
At that very moment they hear voices not far away in the woods. Laughter. It is the Danes. Schorner and the others hurry back into the trees. Dragging Kerttu with him, he whispers that she should lie down and keep quiet.
Here they come, walking through the trees. Viebke and the Danes. He is so handsome with his curly hair and happy laugh. They have been fishing. Viebke is carrying a pike and three perch. He has threaded a switch of willow through their gills. He is holding a pipe in his other hand. The Danes are carrying fishing rods made of birch branches.
Kerttu’s spirits rise when she sees Viebke. Then her stomach ties itself in a knot.
Sonja on the switchboard transfers the incoming call to Martinsson’s mobile.
Martinsson has been out for a walk with the dogs. The afternoon sun is exuding warmth. Tintin and Vera are strutting around, exploring the parking area in front of the house. Vera is digging away eagerly at the woodpile, sending wet soil and moss flying in all directions. Some poor field mouse is no doubt sitting petrified underneath all the wood, its heart pounding, convinced that its end is nigh. Tintin waltzes off towards the paddock where the neighbour keeps his horses. They are used to dogs, and do not even condescend to glance at her. She finds a lovely pile of horse manure, guzzles down half of it, then rolls around in what is left. Martinsson decides not to intervene. She can put both dogs in the shower when they eventually come inside. Then they can lie in front of the fire to dry. She considers ringing Krister Eriksson and telling him how his pretty miss behaves the moment his back is turned. Joking about having made up her mind that she needs a holiday so that she can become a dog.
