Born in 1939, I lived through all the 5 years of German occupation in Norway. Still vivid memories of nights spent in the cellar during bombing raids, marching soldiers and colons of vehicles on the dirt roads of our neighbourhood with mud pools where I could study the wonderful reflecting colours if a drop of oil had fallen into the water, and the structure of ice crystals in late autumn. One morning a steel fragment from a grenade shell fascinated me with its sharpness and strangely curved geometry. My mother let me roam in full freedom and I knew my ways. The grandparents lived a short distance from our house, it would take me perhaps an hour to get there on my short legs, but ten minutes on my father’s bicycle when he brought me along. He played tennis close to their home and I was placed on a very high chair from where I could follow the monotonous game. The colour of the broken bricks that covered the court and the precise white chalk lines that the marking machine left on the red ground, the sound of it and the sound of the flying ball to and fro, sometimes hitting the net making the playing men swear or laugh, the smell of apple blossom in springtime and ripe apples in the fall lingers in the air when I recall. He took me to his office in the city, where on the top floor he shared studio with other architects and engineers who planned and constructed gas stations for Standard Oil. There were large tables covered with drawings and the clever men built three-dimensional models where small cars were nicely parked beside the gas pumps, even small men and green sponge bushes made the scenery complete. There were drawers full of pencils and tools that I did not know the names of, but that he taught me seeing my intense interest. He cared for my education, carefully showed me everything. In the evenings he would read from the folk-tales of trolls and clever boys who managed to defeat the monsters. I sat on his lap and followed the text as his forefinger indicated every word. He explained the magnificent illustrations by the best artists at the end of 1800. I learned the texts by heart and corrected him when he tried to skip lines or woke him up if he fell asleep. Being a practising Lutheran puritan, he read from the bible and sent me to Sunday school where I was scared by the images of crucifixion and the tales of a revenging god. He practised the piano, and I followed the little tailed dots on their lines and could soon read the low and the high notes and know where to turn the pages. We went long trips on ski on Sundays and I assisted planting potatoes on the tiny garden lot we were granted in the community. The winding roads between the villas carried little traffic. The few private cars and trucks had large generators for burning coal or wood. I was sent to the nearest shop, alone two kilometres. Nobody was astonished to see a little boy on the roadside. I had to pass the brown house of Aunt Gertrud who would observe me from the kitchen window as she was preparing a sandwich for her old father sitting in the living room by the garden door. She waved and smiled and sometimes asked me in for a waffle. One day. On passing her house, she was busy killing a pig, helped by strong men who had tied the animal stretched out on a table in the garden. The pig's head hanging over the side and a white enamelled washbasin placed on the ground below. The pig screamed and struggled with the ropes and the strong hands before she cut its throat and the blood streamed into the washbasin as I stood watching how she cut it up and the men handled an axe and a saw-blade and more people arrived to get their part of the pig. There was a silence of agreement, no discussions, almost like trading something secret. The adults had secrets, I knew, because they lowered their voices and they said: Small kettles also have ears, meaning me. I was a small kettle. Yes, my name means kettle or helmet. They had secrets, because they had enemies that should not know about underground activities, secret radios made from crystals where they could catch signals from London. Messages were passed; people I had never seen turned up and disappeared. One day my father did not come home for dinner. My mother was heavily pregnant and came back from hospital shortly after with a baby-sister for me. So we had a new baby-girl without a name yet and a help-maiden called Lea and suddenly on a bright day somebody rang the door-bell. I ran down the steps and opened to four men in long, black coats and dark hats. It was still cold this last April of the Germans and they entered without me inviting them. They mounted the steps and scared my mother with a pistol. It was very real and I knew it was important and serious. They went heavily through all the rooms and sat down in our sofa and in our chairs without taking off their hats. I had been told that my father had left for the mountains to spend his Easter Holydays, and the Germans were shocked that a husband leaves his young wife with a newborn baby for his pleasures in the mountains. Yes, my mother said, some men are like that! They believed her and left. Afterwards there was some weeping in the kitchen, and the women consoled each other and I was hugged by them both for having been brave. They knew my father had escaped. He had been part of the Resistance and finally had to enter a freightwagon bound for Sweden. By May he returned. I saw him coming round the corner with no uniform, but his old ski anorak and knickerbockers, the knapsack on his back, filled with gifts for us all, bought in a free country with no restrictions. Two years later he was building a home for us close to the fjord.
