Leeway Cottage (20 page)

N
ina is already at the apartment when Kaj arrives
on Wednesday afternoon. She is sitting at the kitchen table with her parents. Neither of them is dressed for the street. Nina's arms are extended across the table toward them, palms up, as Kaj walks in. She is pleading with them.

All three turn to Kaj.

Nina says, “You heard?”

“Yes…”

“They won't listen.”

“How do we know this is true?” Ditte asks her son. “There have been rumors all summer and nothing happens.”

“Papa…” says Kaj.

“All I'm asking is, how do you know?” said Ditte.

“Your mother is my wife. She goes to church at Christmas and Easter. The Bings have lived in Denmark for two hundred years.”

“I won't go anywhere without your father,” says Ditte.

Kaj hears the chink in this wall. She didn't say she wouldn't go anywhere period. “What about Tofa?” Kaj says to Henrik.

“Tofa? Tofa is a Bing.”

“Tofa is a Jew. So is Mama.”

“So are you, then. Are you going somewhere?”

There is another pause.

“Maybe we are,” said Nina. “Right now, we have work to do.”

“What do you mean you have work to do?
You
can study anywhere.”

Henrik is joking, reflexively, because he can't think. But Kaj is listening. He looks at Nina, and suddenly understands what work she means. Shy little Nina has done more than talk; she is working for the underground. It figures. The students all think they're immortal.

There is another pause.

Kaj goes to the phone.

“Aunt Tofa?…Fine, thanks, but Mama isn't feeling well…That's all I can say right now, but I'm worried that you will not be well either. Do you understand? Can you come right over?…Yes. Good. As soon as you can.”

Then there is silence in the kitchen.

“I'm not going anywhere without your father,” says Ditte again. “We'll be all right here.”

“If you won't leave without him, he'll go with you.”

Kaj looks at Nina and adds, “Kjeld Bing has a sailboat…” He is thinking of Sweden. If he can get his aunt and his parents out of the house and hide them for now, they could sail to Malmö tonight. They must know someone who would take them in, hide them from the Swedish police. (But who? And how to arrange it? And what if they're arrested there and sent back? That would be worse than if they just stayed here.)

Kaj and Nina turn and look at Henrik. They know how profoundly he is a creature of habit. They know what comfort he takes in doing familiar things in the same way he always has. He gets up in the morning, he puts on the same slippers and sweater. He puts the same kettle on the same stove. His whole day is like that. It's a joke in the family that Ditte can't get him to go anywhere except the cottage in Nyborg. Where he has another sweater and pair of slippers.

“We'll discuss it at dinner,” he says.

 

That same Wednesday evening, Niels Bohr, the physicist, takes a postprandial stroll with his wife. They walk leisurely east from home toward a part of the Sydhavn where all the streets are named for musicians. A comfortable pair in their early sixties, they make their way along a colony of kitchen gardens where city people grow flowers and vegetables. Then, from an ordinary couple enjoying an evening walk, they quietly but suddenly become instead a pair of middle-aged refugees hiding in a garden shed full of spades and trowels and manure. At this juncture no one, including Bohr himself, is entirely sure if he has seen a way to make atoms do something that could change this war and all future wars, but very many people in the world of physics believe he is close. The British have gone to elaborate lengths to get word to him that they would move heaven and earth to get him out of Denmark if he would consent to go. He would not, however.

Bohr is well aware that the Germans have left him unusual freedom to work up to now, for their own reasons, and that sooner or later he would probably be in special danger for those same reasons. He has thought that a moment might come when his presence would be useful to Denmark. And now perhaps it has. He and his wife, thus, wait in the dark and chill and the smell of soil for the others whom the Resistance will try to smuggle out of the country tonight.

When the rest have come and it is full dark, these twelve or so, all in danger because of their brains or their politics or whom they are related to, are led from these garden sheds to the harbor's edge. They are made to crawl on hands and knees part of the way to stay out of sight. They board a little fishing boat, which, once they are safe below, slips north in the darkness through the narrow inner harbor, past Amelienborg and Langelinie and finally out onto the Øresund. After an hour, in midsound, the passengers are transferred to a Swedish trawler. In the small hours of Thursday morning they arrive in Limhamn harbor in Sweden and are taken to spend the rest of the night in the best-defended place their handlers could think of in Malmö: the cells at the police station. Bohr is out of Denmark but by no means safe. The Germans will know in short order that he has escaped, and would certainly rather have him dead than working for the Allies.

 

On Thursday morning, Henrik and Ditte Moss and Tofa Bing agree that they might consider sailing off to Sweden with Kjeld Bing, but it is too late. The Germans have ordered all pleasure boats out of the water. Even rowboats are to be carried one thousand feet inland and left there. They wish they had listened to the children the night before. Frightened and chastened, they are listening now.

In the seaside village of Hornbæk, on the northeast shore of Zealand, above Helsingør, there is a beautiful beach of powder sand. Parts of the coast there are not at all unlike Dundee, Maine, with fishermen's cottages and a small white church, and grander houses belonging to summer visitors discreetly ranked among dunes and under great shade trees. One of these summer houses belongs to a family called Bennike, great music lovers from Copenhagen. They once gave a memorable party to introduce the young pianist Laurus Moss to the cognoscenti. Laurus played a Chopin Ballade, the fourth, and people talked about it for years, the colors in his pianissimo. Later, Kaj Moss was briefly an unsuccessful suitor of the daughter of the house. On Thursday morning, September 30, Kaj pays a call at their flat in Copenhagen. Kaj has no idea in what regard the family holds him since Elisabeth made it clear that her affections lay elsewhere. This is not a comfortable visit for him to make, on any level. Still.

 

Later in the morning, but while there is still a sheen of normality on the Copenhagen day, Henrik and Ditte Moss and Tofa Bing, dressed for travel and each with a small suitcase, board a train for Helsingør. There are German soldiers in the station, and on the train, but nothing happens that hasn't happened a hundred times since the occupation began. Ditte and Henrik hold hands, and Tofa looks out the window, memorizing the landscape.

Her sister, who can sometimes read her mind, touches her and says, “We'll be home on Monday.”

They arrive uneventfully, and as they've been told to, find a certain café near the Helsingør train station, and order their lunch. There have been quite a number of families on the train north, for a Thursday, many with dark hair and clothes and anxious expressions, and through the café windows these can be seen passing, looking lost.

There were taxis at the station, but Kaj had warned them not to take one; they don't want to be traced to where they were going. This was after Kaj had subdued Henrik's insurrection in which he decided they should go back to Nyborg instead.

“The cottage is on the sea. If we have to we'll leave from there.”

“Papa—it's the wrong direction. You're not going toward Germany, you're going toward Sweden. Period.”

“But—”

“No.”

They have finished eating and paid their bill, and are wondering how long they can sit without attracting attention, when a tall young man with long brown hair, none too clean, and a remarkably prominent Adam's apple, approaches with a jaunty air.

“Henrik Moss?” he says. “I'm Per.” They shake hands all around. This is the eccentric oldest son of the Bennike family, whom none of them had met. He'd been in France “pretending to be a painter” (Elisabeth's phrase) before the war. He came home when Poland was invaded, talking vaguely of joining the navy, but he'd dithered; then Denmark was occupied and the military idled. Per had hung about Copenhagen rather enjoying life until his father quarreled with him about it; then he departed for Hornbæk and the empty summer house. He said he would write a novel.

Per has made many useful friends and acquaintances in cafés and bars from Gilleleje to Helsingør, while he waited for inspiration. He has a car waiting for them in an alley behind the restaurant.

“You have gasoline?” Henrik asks in surprise.

“No. A friend helped me convert it. It runs on hay.”

It does not run very fast. But it does run, and in a half hour's time they arrive in Hornbæk, at the back door of a handsome summer house on a lane on the inland side of the beach road. The houses on either side of it are shut for the season. Nevertheless, Per urges his guests to stay inside. He installs them in adjoining upstairs bedrooms, takes their ration books, and goes out to buy groceries.

 

In Sweden, this Thursday, Niels Bohr arrives in Stockholm. He is met by an intelligence officer of the Swedish General Staff and by Volmer Gyth, a Danish intelligence officer working with SOE, one of the Princes. Gyth and his colleagues escaped when the government fell, to continue their work from Sweden. Now Gyth's special charge from London is to get Bohr to England. He announces that an unarmed RAF Mosquito bomber will be in Stockholm Friday morning to take Bohr to safety.

Bohr says, “No,” politely but firmly. He is happy to be out of Denmark himself, but that is hardly the end of the matter. What will happen to the rest of Denmark's Jews? He isn't going anywhere until Sweden agrees to offer them all sanctuary.

Gyth, heart in mouth, takes Bohr to the home of some friends where he can spend the night. He installs one policeman inside the house, another outside the door, and a third patrolling up and down on the street beyond. He hopes it's enough.

 

In Hornbæk, in the house in the lane Granvaenget, the evening passes in quiet discomfort. Per cooks supper, and after they eat, they all listen to the BBC broadcast on the radio in his room. Everyone goes to bed early, and no one sleeps very well.

Friday morning Per is already gone when Ditte and Henrik get up. Tofa is in the kitchen assembling breakfast. When Per comes back, he has two more families with him.

“Mr. and Mrs. Moss, Miss Bing—this is the family Roth and the family Saloman. You'll have to introduce yourselves.”

Mr. and Mrs. Roth are Orthodox Jews. Mr. Roth wears a full beard; Mrs. Roth's hair is covered with a wig. The children, three girls and a boy, are wide-eyed and quiet, though they shake hands politely. They have spent the night in St. Olaf 's Domkirke in Helsingør, and have had nothing to eat since they left Copenhagen. Mr. Saloman is a classics teacher; his wife is a dentist. Their children are identical twin girls named Hanne and Inge. They are blond and extremely pretty and seem to speak only to each other.

 

In Sweden, on this Friday morning, October 1, Bohr is ushered in to see Ernst Gunther, Sweden's foreign minister. Minister Gunther expresses how glad he is that the famous Dane is on his way to safety and Bohr expresses that he isn't going anywhere until Sweden has promised to open its doors to the Danish Jews.

Gunther says, Well, of course, they could do that, if the Germans say it's all right. He will telegraph to Berlin for permission. It is very important that Sweden preserve her neutrality, which she cannot do while working one side against the other. This must be clear to Bohr…

When they've been ushered out, the handlers say, “Well now,” to Dr. Bohr. “London?”

Bohr is angry. He says no. Asking if it would be all right with the Reich if they rescue seven thousand Danish Jews is not what Bohr is asking for.

(Oddly enough, Minister Gunther never does get a reply from Berlin on this matter.)

No. No London. Aha. Then…what?

Bohr wants to see the king. And anyone else who can do something useful.

Oh. He wants to see the king. Meanwhile, there are plenty of German agents in Stockholm, and the longer he is here, the more people will know it.

 

After Per has sorted out where everyone will sleep—there is a sort of children's dormitory on the third floor where all the girls can go, and the Roth boy will sleep with his father—the morning passes tensely but rather pleasantly. The Roth children are fascinated by the house, and shyly thrilled when Per urges them to explore at will. They go in and out of closets, they emerge wearing Mr. Bennike's hats and shoes. Per goes out for more groceries; this takes time, as he has to go to several different stores, so it will not be so obvious that he is feeding so many. Mr. Roth (they pronounce their name Rote, with a long
o
and a slight burr at the
t
) is rather frightened about Per, who seems to him blithe and feckless for one who holds their lives in his hands.

 

When Per comes in at lunchtime, he has fresh eggs from a neighbor's hens, among other things. Sylvie Roth looks as if she might cry at the sight. Per asks Henrik to come outside with him while the women make smørrebrød. He tells Henrik that there are strangers arriving on every train, but Gestapo Juhl, a detested Nazi from southern Jutland, has also arrived in Helsingør. “I have keys to other summer houses; I look after them for our friends. I think we should open them, don't you?” Henrik does. He says, “I'll go with you.”

While Per and Henrik are turning the summer houses into hideouts, in Stockholm, Niels Bohr is with the king.