14. On the Dark Path
Only now, entering the woods on the footpath, did Annemarie
realize how cold the dawn was. She had watched and helped,
earlier, as the others donned sweaters, jackets, and coats; and she
had peered into the night, following them with her eyes, as they
moved silently off, bulky in their garments, blankets in their arms.
But she wore only a light sweater over her cotton dress. Though
the October day, later, would be warmed by sunlight, now it was
gray, chilly, and damp. She shivered.
The path curved, and she could no longer look behind her and
see the clearing with the farmhouse outlined against the pale sky and
the lightening meadow beyond. Now there were only the dark
woods ahead; underfoot, the path, latticed with thick roots hidden
under the fallen leaves, was invisible. She felt her way with her feet,
trying not to stumble.
The handle of the straw basket scratched her arm through her
sweater. She shifted it and tried to run.
She thought of a story she had often told to Kirsti as they
cuddled in bed at night.
"Once upon a time there was a little girl," she told herself silently,
"who had a beautiful red cloak. Her mother had made it for her.
"She wore it so often that everyone called her Little Red Riding-
Hood."
Kirsti would always interrupt there. "Why was it called a red
riding hood?" Kirsti would ask. "Why didn't they just call her Little
Red-Cloak?"
"Well, it had a hood that covered her head. She had beautiful
curls, like you, Kirsti. Maybe someday Mama will make you a coat
with a hood to cover your curls and keep you warm."
"But why," Kirsti would ask, "was it a riding hood? Was she
riding a horse?"
"Maybe she had a horse that she rode sometimes. But not in this
story. Now stop interrupting every minute."
Annemarie smiled, feeling her way through the dark,
remembering how Kirsti always interrupted stories to ask questions.
Often she just wanted to make the story last longer.
The story continued. "One day the little girl's mother said, 'I want
you to take a basket of food to your grandmother. She is sick in
bed. Come, let me tie your red cloak.'"
"The grandmother lived deep in the woods, didn't she?" Kirsti
would ask. "In the dangerous woods, where wolves lived."
Annemarie heard a small noise—a squirrel perhaps, or a rabbit,
scampering nearby. She paused, stood still on the path, and smiled
again. Kirsti would have been frightened. She would have grabbed
Annemarie's hand and said, "A wolf!" But Annemarie knew that
these woods were not like the woods in the story. There were no
wolves or bears or tigers, none of the beasts that populated Kirsti's
vivid imagination. She hurried on.
Still, they were very dark, these woods. Annemarie had never
followed this path in the dark before. She had told her mother she
would run. And she tried.
Here the path turned. She knew the turning well, though it
seemed different in the dark. If she turned to the left, it would take
her to the road, out where it would be lighter, wider, more traveled.
But more dangerous, too. Someone could see her on the road. At
this time of the dawn, other fishermen would be on the road,
hurrying to their boats for the long day at sea. And there might be
soldiers.
She turned to the right and headed deeper into the woods. It
was why Mama and Peter had needed to guide those who were
strangers here—the Rosens and the others. A wrong turn would
have taken them into danger.
"So little Red Riding-Hood carried the basket of food and
hurried along through the woods. It was a lovely morning, and birds
were singing. Little Red Riding-Hood sang, too, as she walked."
Sometimes she changed that part of the story, telling it to Kirsti.
Sometimes it was raining, or even snowing, in the woods.
Sometimes it was evening, with long, frightening shadows, so that
Kirsti, listening, would snuggle closer and wrap her arms around
Annemarie. But now, telling it to herself, she wanted sunlight and
bird song.
Here the path widened and flattened; it was the place where the
woods opened on one side and the path curved beside a meadow
at the edge of the sea. Here she could run, and she did. Here, in
daylight, there would be cows in the meadow, and on summer
afternoons Annemarie would always stop by the fence and hold out
handfuls of grass, which the curious cows would take with their
rough tongues.
Here, her mother had told her, Mama would always stop, too,
as a child walking to school. Her dog, Trofast, would wriggle under
the fence and run about in the meadow, barking excitedly, trying to
chase the cows, who always ignored him.
The meadow was empty now, and colorless in the half light. She
could hear the churning sea beyond, and see the wash of daylight to
the east, over Sweden. She ran as fast as she could, searching with
her eyes for the place ahead where the path would re-enter the
woods in its final segment, which led to town.
Here. The bushes were overgrown and it was difficult to see the
path here. But she found the entrance, beside the high blueberry
bushes—how often she had stopped here, in late summer, to pick a
handful of the sweet berries! Her hands and mouth would be blue
afterward; Mama always laughed when she came home.
Now it was dark again, as the trees and bushes closed around
her, and she had to move more slowly, though she still tried to run.
Annemarie thought of Mama: her ankle so swollen, and her face
so pained. She hoped Mama had called the doctor by now. The
local doctor was an old man, brusque and businesslike, though with
kind eyes. He had come to the farmhouse several times during the
summers of the past, his battered car noisy on the dirt road; he had
come once when Kirsti, a tiny baby then, had been sick and wailing
with an earache. And he had come when Lise had spilled hot
grease, cooking breakfast, and burned her hand.
Annemarie turned again as the path divided once more. The left
fork would take her directly to the village; it was the way they had
come from the train, and the way Mama had walked to school as a
girl. But Annemarie turned to the right, heading now toward the
harborside, where the fishing boats lay at anchor. She had often
come this way before, too, sometimes at the end of the afternoon,
to pick out the Ingeborg, Uncle Henrik's boat, from the many
returning, and to watch him and his helpers unload the day's catch
of slippery, shimmering herring still flopping in their containers.
Even now, with the boats in the harbor ahead empty of fish,
preparing to leave for the day's fishing, she could smell the oily, salty
scent of herring, which always remained in the air here.
It wasn't far now, and it was getting lighter. She ran almost as
fast as she had run at school, in the Friday footraces. Almost as fast
as she had run down the Copenhagen sidewalk on the day that the
soldier had stopped her with his call of "Halte!"
Annemarie continued the story in her head. "Suddenly, as Little
Red Riding-Hood walked through the woods, she heard a noise.
She heard a rustling in the bushes."
"A wolf," Kirsti would always say, shivering with fearful delight.
"I know it's going to be the wolf!"
Annemarie always tried to prolong this part, to build up the
suspense and tantalize her sister. "She didn't know what it was. She
stopped on the path and listened. Something was following her, in
the bushes. Little Red Riding-Hood was very, very, very
frightened."
She would stop, would stay silent for a moment, and beside her
in the bed she could feel Kirsti holding her breath.
"Then," Annemarie would go on, in a low, dread-filled voice,
"she heard a grow!."
Annemarie stopped, suddenly, and stood still on the path. There
was a turn immediately ahead. Beyond it, she knew, as soon as she
rounded the turn, she would see the landscape open to the sea. The
woods would be behind her there, and ahead of her would be the
harbor, the docks, and the countless fishing boats. Very soon it
would be noisy there, with engines starting, fishermen calling to one
another, and gulls crying.
But she had heard something else. She heard bushes rustling
ahead. She heard footsteps. And—she was certain it was not her
imagination—she heard a low growl.
Cautiously, she took a step forward. And another. She
approached the turn in the path, and the noises continued.
Then they were there, in front of her. Four armed soldiers. With
them, straining at taut leashes, were two large dogs, their eyes
glittering, their lips curled.