CHAPTER SIX: NINNI

It was soon apparent that Liv could no longer be in the store since there were more and more soldiers stopping by. It was also utterly important that we continued our work on distributing the black propaganda, so we could not prevent them from coming. Mother had no time to stay home with Liv between standing in line for ration cards and patching the soldiers' old uniforms.

Again Anders was the one to give us the solution.

He offered to let his sister take care of Liv while we were at work. His family was wealthy, as his father was a successful bank director and they had 5 rooms in an apartment at Frogner; the very best neighborhood in Oslo. It was space enough for Liv to stay there with them during the days, and his sister was good with kids. We had no other choice than to accept the offer, even though we were skeptic about leaving her in the hands of a stranger.

Liv was a trusting young girl and a lovely spirit, but she did like to have familiar faces around her. We arranged for Anders and his sister Ninni to come over the first Sunday to meet Liv, so that she could get used to Ninni before she would be alone with her.

It wasn't just Liv that was taken by Ninni's fair appearance. I was struck by her beauty, no surprise there, her brother was also a very handsome man and I had expected his sister to carry the same fine lines. But seldom had I seen such strong eyes in a woman. It was like she saw straight to my soul and I almost felt embarrassed about having thought of her fine legs. She smiled as she knew my little secret.

Ninni; Nora-Anette Bøe was born in the spring of the Lord's year of nineteen twenty five. It was during the summer of forty three that I became close to Ninni. She took good care of Liv and my sister was very fond of her.

Ninni would take her out to play almost every day. They used to go to the Frogner park, at the northern end where they had not ploughed the soil to use for growing potatoes. Most green lungs in the city were used to grow food during these skinny years, but a few parks still had grass left for recreation.

"Hm… I'm sorry," Nick interrupted, "green lungs?"

He had no clue what Grandpa meant, and he was so thrown off that he had to ask. Greg was of no help, so he assumed Greg was just as lost but left it to Nick to play the dumb.

"Sorry," Grandpa answered, "we use that term on parks in a city. The parks are open space in an environment of concrete and traffic, and the green areas give the people in the city a place to breathe and relax."

Relaxation; Nick assumed they all needed a place to relax, even back then. Maybe especially back then?

When he and Greg wanted to get away to refill their batteries, they usually went hiking. Greg hadn't been especially fond of hiking to begin with, but Nick had introduced him to it. He had brought him bird watching, which Greg hated and they had never repeated that. Nick would have loved if they could do it together, but only if Greg really liked it. He had no intention of dragging Greg off to activities he didn't like.

Then they had gone rock climbing at Red Rock Canyon. At first Greg had seemed reluctant, but Nick persuaded him to at least try.

The idea came to him after one night he woke up noticing that Greg was watching him sleep. Greg had started kissing him and caressing him and through the kisses he could taste the saltiness of Greg's tears.

After some slow kisses Nick had finally gotten Greg to tell him what was bothering him.

Greg was haunted by the thought that maybe he had made the wrong decision when entering the alley the night Demetrius James had died. Maybe, if he had acted a little bit differently, Demetrius would still be alive. He was haunted by the thought that no one would ever trust him anymore, when it was painfully obvious he made questionable choices that could cost people their lives.

Nick hadn't been rock climbing for a long time, but he had enough experience to bring Greg to a easy spot for beginners and have them climb together. In this sport they needed to trust their partner completely. Nick climbed up first, while Greg fed him rope through the belay device. Nick had full confidence in Greg, both in rock climbing and in life that he would never let him fall.

Nick noticed his thoughts were taking a detour and focused on Grandpa's story again.

Liv would bring her red ball which she would play with for hours if Ninni let her. Ninni would always keep an eye on her, as well as keeping watch to see if any soldiers were in the area. If she ever saw anyone getting close, she would immediately call Liv to hurry up and they would walk up through Essendrops gate and up to Sørkedalsveien before getting to the Majorstuen crossing where there were huge crowds of people. There they could blend in like any young woman with a child.

As always, when they crossed Majorstuen, Liv was eager to take a trip on the tram or the city train; both intersected with all the major lines. Her eyes would shine when she was treated to a trip on one of the motorized transports and she would always take a seat by the window.

In the cold months I did sometimes take her on the train to the North Forrest and she would walk with me when I collected fallen branches from the trees to use as logs on the fire.

The winters had been unusually cold, mostly because the furnace oil was limited and we were only allowed to use fallen branches to make fires in the fireplace. There wasn't enough wood to heat up the houses during the long winters.

Walking outside all day looking for the wood gave us more light in a dark part of the year and we would always come home with some dry wood to use. We would only heat up the kitchen and we all used that room for all our doings. One can say many negative things about the war, but at least it brought us together.

From Majorstuen they would walk the few hundred meters up Kirkegaten towards Marienlyst and our apartment.

Ninni had a key to our apartment for easier access when she was taking care of Liv. She didn't use it when she arrived in the morning, but she always used it to lock herself in after being outside all forenoon.

Domestic work was not part of her duties, but she still made a habit of having coffee ready for me when I came home from work. When I say "me", I of course mean "us" as my parents were also greeted by this warm gesture. I also say "coffee" although the hot beverage we drank at that time did not deserve that name.

Coffee was not available during the war and we used whatever substitute we could get our hands on; usually Kafena, a Norwegian made substitute coffee we could buy in the stores. On special occasions though we used coffee made from burned peas. The coffee substitute didn't taste all that bad, once you had got used to it. It did however make me appreciate real coffee even more when I got my hands on it again after the war and I have always taken pride in using only the finest blend.

Every afternoon we would drink the Kafena and eat a slice of mother's bread. Normally we wouldn't have had such fine bread, due to the very small rations of flour, but because of mother's bad stomach we had an extra ration. She would use it to bake 2 bread's a week, only slightly diluted with fish flour. She didn't even need to use much of it, so there was hardly any bad taste.

Our neighbour, ms Laurtzen who worked at the vegetable stand, went back to the country every now and then. She would bring back butter, cheese and even dried meat for us to buy. All farmers had been ordered to hand in their butter churns, but the farmers came up with clever places to hide their churns when the soldiers came to collect them.

They would also manage to tap off the milk before handing it over to the authorities, so they had something to make butter and cheese from. They had enough to eat and even some left over to sell to the hungry city people. Some farmers made good money doing this.

We were lucky to buy from ms.Lauritzens father, who was in possession of one functioning churn and 12 milk cows. For three winters he helped us through the dark months, but the fourth winter he was ratted out by his landlord who came to him for some cheese. The landlord took the cheese, but still reported him to the Gestapo. They arrested him and sent him to Grini. It was a huge blow for ms. Lauritzen and she lost her spirit after that.

As I said, this was when I got closer to Ninni.

Ninni had a way of noticing other people, and while the rest of us didn't pay much attention to ms. Lauritzen, who's name was Magda Kristine by the way, Ninni saw her for who she was. It was one day when we were eating bread, this time with the sparse cheese we could get in the city, that Ninni mentioned something was wrong with Magda; something besides her father's arrest.

"There's something more there; she's weighed by a heavy burden," she said.

It wasn't until later that winter that I learned what was really wrong. She had befriended some young men dining at the restaurant down on Youngstorget Square where she stood with her vegetable stand. One man in particular was of interest. He was handsome, polite, and dressed in green. Within two months, she was pregnant with his child.

She wasn't the first to fall for a German soldier; she wasn't even the first to have a child with a German. But she was the first among my acquaintances. Tyskertøs they were called, the women who had children with the enemy. I had more than once seen examples of how these women were treated. They were shunned like the plague and even spat on. They were hated just as much as the Norwegian men choosing to join the NS.

The worst example I ever saw was a woman pushing her little boy in his tram. An elderly, elegant woman was walking towards her on the snowy pavement.

"Mother," the younger woman said, leaning forward to give the elder woman a kiss to the cheek, only to be rejected with a cold shoulder.

"Please," the younger woman continued. "Please, this is your grandson."

"He's no grandson of mine," the woman said and spat at the child staring up at her with wide blue eyes.

Through watching how Ninni treated Magda, I learned what an amazing woman Ninni was. She had a heart that was so big it's a wonder one woman could carry it. But Ninni was a strong woman, and she carried her heart with a head held high. She never cared that people would look at her for talking to, or befriending, the wrong people. She stood by Magda through the hard months of her pregnancy and she sat with her night after night when she cried herself to sleep after giving up her little baby for adoption.

I was drawn to her, not only to her long legs and narrow waist and broad hips, but more to her intelligence, thoughtfulness and compassion; and of course, to her crooked smile, freckled nose and slightly un-proportioned breasts. Yes, I am a man, I was attracted to her breasts and the fact that the two of them seemed to be different size's made me even more eager to see them naked, not to mention touching them.

"Dad," Lisbet interrupted, "I think this is where you shouldn't go into details!"

Her outburst made everyone laugh. Some time during the tale Lisbet had finished up what she was doing in the kitchen and came and joined them while the food was in the oven.

"Don't listen to her," Grandpa said, "She's always been such a prude. She probably thinks she was delivered by a stork. I remember seeing her pregnant so I know she did something at one time to make that beautiful grandson of mine."

"Grandpa," Greg shrieked as well. "I'd rather keep on believing I was delivered by the stork! Please!"

Nick laughed so hard he almost spilled his coffee.

"What?" Greg gave his boyfriend an angry look.

"You're such a hypocrite."

"Why?"

"You can do it as much as you want, but your parents can't?"

"Yeah, well, I don't want to hear about it! That's all."

"Hey! No more talking about sex this Christmas, okay?" Lisbet held up a hand to put an end to this discussion.

"Okay, I won't talk about sex," Grandpa promised, "just know that I didn't buy you on the black market."

TBC

A/N
tyskertøs German-slut