Pleasant conversation accompanied the dinner. No talk of murder, bombs, motorcycle gangs, dope, or fruitless interrogations with professional crooks. Irene felt safe and relaxed together with her family and her best friend.
When it was time for coffee, Tommy suggested that they go sit in the living room. He smiled at the twins and said, “I feel like telling you an absolutely true story from real life.”
They sat down on the sofa and armchairs around the coffee table. Through the glass top the warm-toned Gabbeh rug was visible, and Irene thought it went very well with the framed Miró print on the wall. At Tommy’s request they turned out all the lights and lit all the candles they could find.
The mood was cozy when Tommy began his story.
“This is both an exciting and very sad story. It begins in Berlin in nineteen thirty-two. The National Socialists, under the leadership of the great agitator Adolf Hitler, are about to take over all of Germany. The people are delighted and see Hitler as their great savior, freeing them from unemployment, poverty, and social injustice. Not to mention his skill at playing on their feelings that an unjust peace had been imposed after the First World War. There was a splendid breeding ground for Nazi ideas in Germany in the thirties. From nineteen thirty-three on the National Socialist Party was the only one permitted. Who would call for democracy, when a whole people rose up and marched in step? Books that were viewed as harmful to the national state were burned and authors were banned from writing. Only music approved by the state could be played. Movies and radio programs had to be censored before they could be broadcast. The schools put ideology on their curriculum, and the teachers who didn’t submit were purged. The Jews also had to be purged. The explanation was that they were active in a worldwide conspiracy that threatened everyone. All Jews had to wear a yellow star on their clothes. Gradually, systems were set up to transport them to huge death camps along with gypsies, Danes, homosexuals, Communists, Norwegians, Russians, Poles, Englishmen-”
“There were never any concentration camps! That’s just propaganda!” Jenny’s face was red with rage, visible even in the soft candlelight.
“Is that right? Who is spreading this propaganda, then?”
“It’s the. . Communists!”
“Who are the Communists of today that are so stubbornly holding on to this lie?”
“It’s the. . Soviet Union!”
“There isn’t anything called the Soviet Union anymore. No, Jenny, the people who were in these camps can tell you all about it. There aren’t many left alive today, but the ones who are still here can testify that it’s no lie. They speak for millions of people who never got out of the concentration camps alive. But even in their homelands there are groups today who deny what happened. It must be a bitter feeling for the Norwegian and Danish resistance fighters, who today are more than seventy years old, to listen to young neo-Nazis denying their horrendous experiences and the death of their friends.”
Tommy took a gulp of his coffee before he went on.
“But all this flourished at a later stage of Nazi Germany’s development. Back to Berlin in nineteen thirty-two. The National Socialists quickly gained strength. In the late twenties they had founded the Hitler Youth, a movement that aimed to make young people from the age of ten into trusted warriors for the Reich and the party. One dark January night a gang of five Hitler Jugend boys in their late teens was on the way to a meeting. They walked by a school and just as they passed by, a girl came out the gate. She was thirteen years old and her name was Rachel. The boys knew that she was Jewish and that her father was a bookseller. They forced her back into the schoolyard. There they took turns raping her. Four of them held her down while the fifth raped her. They kept on doing it until she started bleeding heavily. Then they got scared and left her lying there. Her father found her a couple of hours later. She lay as the boys had left her. Her eyes were fixed on the black night sky, and she didn’t respond when they said her name. Rachel would never respond again.”
Tommy fell silent and looked at his audience. Irene understood his intentions in telling the story and resisted the impulse to ask him to finish. Katarina looked like she was going to throw up. Jenny sat with a stony expression on her face, but Irene knew her daughter and could see from her nervously plucking fingers that she was extremely moved. Tommy took another deep breath and continued.
“You might think that since Rachel bled so heavily, she wouldn’t have become pregnant. But she did. Her father was in despair. His name was Jacob Uhr. He was widowed at an early age and had come from Poland when Rachel was little, to build a future for himself and his daughter in Berlin. He worked for his unmarried uncle in the bookstore. When the uncle died several years later, he left the bookstore to Jacob. The store wasn’t prosperous, but Jacob could support himself and his daughter comfortably. Until the rape occurred. Doctors came and went. Rachel lay in a coma as a result of shock and had to be cared for like a baby. Finally Jacob could no longer afford to pay the doctor bills and had to nurse Rachel himself as best he could. By then he knew that she was pregnant. A Jewish neighbor woman promised to help with the delivery.”
Katarina was so agitated that her voice broke when she asked, “But why didn’t the father report the boys?”
Tommy’s tone of voice was unchanged. “He did, right after the rape occurred. The police just smirked and winked knowingly at each other. And nothing happened. Nobody was interested in even looking for five purebred Aryans who had raped a lowly Jewish girl. Jacob Uhr should have been grateful that his miserable lineage was infused with a little noble Aryan blood.”
Jenny was pale as a corpse now, and her eyes looked unnaturally large in her hairless skull. She didn’t take her eyes off Tommy.
“Rachel turned fourteen. Two weeks later the labor pains started. For the next three days the thin little girl lay there trying to push out the baby. Jacob had help from the neighbor woman, who was used to assisting at childbirths. She was the one who saw when Rachel died. Jacob refused at first to accept it, but she screamed, ‘Now it’s a matter of seconds!’ She stuck her hands into Rachel’s womb and with the blood streaming down her forearms pulled out the little baby in a torrent of blood. At first Jacob didn’t want to look at the miracle that had cost his only daughter her life. But the midwife was a resolute woman. She bathed the screaming little mite, wrapped her up, and placed the infant in Jacob’s arms. Then she said, ‘Jacob Uhr. This little child is without guilt. Your daughter died that night in the schoolyard, and she never came back to us. But the child is alive and healthy. You have received her as a gift from God, instead of Rachel who was taken from you. The little girl shall be called Sonya, after me!’
“Then Jacob looked down into the baby’s dark sapphire-blue eyes. The little one had stopped crying and looked steadily at her grandfather. And in his heart a light was lit for the little life and he whispered quietly, so that only she could hear: ‘You will live. You will have a better life!’”
“Damn! What a damned shitty story you’re making up!”
Jenny had jumped up from her seat, and her eyes glittered with tears and rage. Tommy looked at her calmly. Without a word he pulled out a thin, worn book with a brown leather cover from the pocket of his jacket. At first Irene thought it looked like an old diary. When Tommy held it up to the light, she could clearly see an elegant monogram in the lower right corner of the cover. The gilt had flaked off, but you could make out the letters J. U. Calmly he said, “You can read it yourself. This is Jacob Uhr’s diary.”