As Time Goes By by Michael Walsh Read Free Book Online

would have suspected he had such courage in him? You cannot always tell a hero by his looks."
    Talk of home made Ilsa reminisce. If she closed her eyes, hearkened to the sound of her mother's voice, and inhaled the smells of her mother's kitchen, she could almost imagine herself back in Oslo.
    "Tell me of home, Mother," Ilsa requested.           
    Inghild smoothed her dress. "Some of us are here in London, of course," she began. "Liv Olsen, who lived down the street, is with her husband, and Birgit Aasen—you remember Birgit, you used to play to gether when you were little—is living in America now. Bay Ridge, I think they call it."
    "I remember her," said Ilsa. "We used to walk down to the Parliament building and pretend we were the King's most important councilors."
    "Someday you may be," said Inghild. "We arrived in June of 1940, after the King saw that resistance to the Nazis would be futile, and that the government could fight on more effectively from London. Many more stayed behind, though, and even now are working day and night against the Germans. Do you remember Arne Bj ø rnov?"
    "Little Arne, who asked if he could take me to the picture show?" said Ilsa. "He was so nervous. He must have thought Father was going to bite his head off. I would have gone with him, too, if he hadn't run off like that, as though a ghost were chasing him. And all because Father asked him, 'Young man, what are your intentions?' He was only thirteen!"
    "That frightened little boy has grown up to be a very brave man, Ilsa," said Inghild. "Thanks to Arne, the people have refused to cooperate with the edicts of the German commissioner Josef Terboven, and they simply ignore the proclamations of the Nasjonal Samling, which is the only legal political party. The traitor Quis ling's establishment of martial law last September has only increased their will to resist, and the ranks of pa triotic saboteurs and spies grow every day. The Ger mans are frustrated and furious, but what can they do? They can't kill us all—and to really conquer Norway, they would have to."
    Ilsa was thrilled to hear about her friends; now it was time to tell her mother about her own activities. "Ber ger wasn't the one who helped us get the letters of transit, Mama. Another man got me—got us—out of Casablanca."
    Inghild caught the change of mood in her daughter's voice. "Us?"
    "Yes, us," admitted Ilsa. "For two years, I have been married to Victor Laszlo."
    "Married!" exclaimed her mother, all other thoughts driven from her mind. "And to Victor Laszlo! All Europe knows and honors his name. This is wonderful news!" Inghild kissed her daughter, her heart bursting with pride; if only Edvard were here.
    "I could not tell you of our wedding in my letters," continued Ilsa. "For his safety, and for mine, we have told no one. It was too dangerous—for both of us. But it was not Victor who got us out of Casablanca, either. Someone else did. Someone I need to talk to you about."
    Ilsa paused, unsure how to begin. "Mother," she began, "is it possible to love two men at once? Really love them, each of them, with your whole heart and your whole soul, as if your own life depended on their very existence? If it is, how do you choose? Must you choose?"
    Ilsa clasped her hands together tightly. She was sit ting very close to her mother and felt even closer. "Is it possible when one is so very different from the other?" she went on. "When one appeals to the best side of your nature, and the other appeals to the very core of your nature itself?"
    She sat expectantly, dreading and desiring the an swer; not knowing what she wanted to hear.
    Inghild considered her words carefully. If she was surprised tolearn ofher daughter's marriage and then, hard on its heels, of her dilemma, she did not let on. "Why don't you tell me about him, Ilsa?" she said.
    This was the speech she had been rehearsing in the taxi, only she hadn't known it then. "His name is Richard," she replied.