The question seemed to open a tiny crack in his otherwise stony defence. Henry Alfred Lien took a minute to drink some more coffee before he answered. Then suddenly his voice rumbled on a fair distance.
‘There are evidently a great many who say they can’t explain why today. But I can. I have never been a Nazi for ideological reasons, or a man of ideology in any way really. In my youth, I flirted with the Liberal Party, but was not really politically active. In 1940, I believed it was set in stone that Germany would win the war and did what I could to ensure that my farm, community and country would suffer as little damage as possible. I entirely misjudged the situation and ended up as a NS section leader and spokesman, and could then not withdraw later without risking my life. In the last year of the war, I realized that we were hurtling towards an abyss and that it was too late to jump ship. I didn’t dare jump before the war was over, for fear of the Germans – and only hours after they capitulated, the Home Front was at my door. Believe me or not, the choice is yours. But that is the truth.’
I believed him instantly. Rarely did the people I questioned so openly declare themselves to be opportunists and cowards, without those words being mentioned, to be fair.
We sat in silence again. It felt as though we had touched on something interesting and I tried to push a little more. I pointed to the photographs on the wall and asked if the children were doing well. This proved to be another bull’s eye. Henry Alfred Lien sank even further into his chair before answering.
‘My daughters are both doing well, though I don’t see them as often as I would like to. But unfortunately I know very little about my son. Apparently he’s a lawyer and politician for the Labour Party in Trondheim now, and is said to be doing very well. And I have two grandsons, twins, who are nearly old enough to be confirmed. But I’ve never met them and their grandfather from Valdres will certainly not be invited to their confirmation.’
We were definitely onto something now. The stony crevices of his face were shifting. He stopped talking, but I could see that he wanted to continue. He lit his pipe, his hand still steady, and sat smoking in silence. His gaze drifted out of the window towards the mountains on the horizon.
‘The children, that’s the saddest part of it all. Had I not had a family, I would never have joined the NS. I wanted to secure the children’s future. I hoped that one day they would thank me for it. But it was quite the opposite. First of all, my choice created problems for them, and they never forgave me for that. It was hard enough to serve my sentence after the war, worried as I was about the family, but it was even worse to get out afterwards. For the first three years, my wife and I lived here together on the farm like strangers. We did the work together that we had to, exchanging only short messages where necessary. We slept in separate rooms and made our own food. When the children rang, it was to speak to her, and they hung up if I answered the telephone.’
Henry Alfred Lien stopped abruptly, but then continued after a short pause, when I nodded encouragingly.
‘Then my wife fell ill in 1953. It was terribly sad, but in a strange way it also marked a transition to something better. We started to talk again and I was able to show how much I loved her in those final years. She finally forgave me some months before she died, and, as was her wish, so did our daughters. The three of us sat together at her funeral. Even though it will never be the same, they do come to visit me now. And they have started to call me father again.’
‘Your son, on the other hand…’
He sighed and leaned his great arms on the table, which sagged slightly under their weight.
‘It’s hopeless. He sat on his own in the church at his mother’s funeral and has never set foot here again since. His sisters were nearly grown up when the war started and left home as soon as it was over, so perhaps it was easier for them. But my son was only eleven when the war came, and was still a youth when it was over. It wasn’t easy to be the son of a Nazi at high school in those days. And my son is like me: stubborn as an ox and slow to change. So I still hope for a miracle every time the telephone rings and every day when the postman comes, but I have stopped believing that he will forgive me.’
He suddenly pointed at the floor, his great, coarse hand trembling dangerously in the air.
‘I remember in the autumn of 1940, before my son turned twelve, he stood in the middle of the room and screamed at me, Father, you can’t do this to us or yourself. Hitler is a dictator, Nasjonal Samling are traitors and Germany will lose the war. What you are doing will only bring trouble. And he was right, of course.’
Henry Alfred Lien sat there and stared at the floor for a while, as though his son was still standing there. His eyes were fixed as his voice continued. The tractor was making very unsteady progress now.
‘I have sent him letter after letter, begging for forgiveness, without ever getting an answer. He put the phone down every time I tried to call, even after his mother’s death. Then one day in autumn 1960, I drove to Trondheim, found his house and waited at the gate with a present until he came home from work. But even then he did not want to talk to me. He said that Nazi scum would always be Nazi scum, no matter what age, and that he no longer believed a word I said. I stood there like a dog at the gate and stared at my son’s closed door for over an hour. Then I drove all the way home again without having resolved anything. Every time I drove over a bridge I thought that it would perhaps be just as well if I drove off it. And since then the years have passed with no change, and I have no idea what might make him change his mind.’
Henry Alfred Lien’s eyes turned reluctantly up from the floor. He looked me in the eye again when he carried on.
‘So that is the story of the greatest mistake of my life. I’m not a Nazi, never have been, and every day I regret that I pretended that I was during the war. I did it for my son’s sake and he will never forgive me. So I hope you can understand why I want to leave it all behind me now, and that under no circumstances do I ever want to be associated with the Nazis again. If my son saw any mention of that in the newspaper, all hope would be lost.’
I nodded with understanding. It was about half past one when I finally stood up to leave. It was a powerful story and I really wanted to believe that Henry Alfred Lien deeply repented his sins. And what was more, there was no stick of any sort to be seen. I did jot down, all the same, that he admitted that he had been in contact with other Nazis during the war. And that he did not have an alibi for the night when Falko Reinhardt disappeared, or the evening when Marie Morgenstierne was killed.
VI
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen was obviously an impressively fast reader. When I got back into the car, she suddenly had only fifty pages left to read of the thick book on nineteenth-century English literature. She continued to read these at the same time as having a rather interesting conversation with me while we drove back down the valley.
Then for the rest of the journey, we spoke uninterrupted.
She reassured me that nothing I told her about the case would ever get out, but hastened to add that she fully understood if I was not able to tell her anything about it, as was probably the case.
Instead we talked about Valdres and hiking in the mountains, which proved to be a shared tradition in both our families. To my relief she only read book number two, on French grammar and linguistic theory, for about five minutes while I filled the tank at a petrol station outside Hønefoss.
Miriam Filtvedt Bentsen was easily persuaded to stop for a bite to eat at a cafeteria shortly after, once it had been established that we would only be half an hour and would still easily be able to reach the party office on time.