He held it out to Jenny. She instantly put her hands behind her back. She looked at the little book as if it were a cobra ready to strike. Tommy didn’t take his eyes off her as he again spoke. “To make a long story short, with the help of the midwife Sonya, the little Sonya survived. A year later Jacob managed to get out of Germany. He found a job in a bookstore here in Göteborg that was also owned by a Jew. When he married a Swedish woman-Britta, a stubborn fisherman’s widow from the island of Hönö-he fell into disfavor with his employer.”
“Hönö! That’s where your summerhouse is! Is that where you heard this story?” Katarina seemed relieved to begin to divine an explanation for the awful things she had heard this evening.
Tommy smiled and went on, “Part of it. Both Jacob and this woman were more than forty years old when they met. She once had a son, but he drowned in the same shipwreck as his father, during a storm in the North Sea. So little Sonya became like a daughter for Jacob and his wife. But the Jews in Göteborg threw him out of their congregation. Jacob had never been a particularly religious Jew, so he converted to Christianity. Little Sonya was confirmed in the Swedish Lutheran Church. She had blue eyes and wonderfully shiny red hair. She was teased about it, but not because she was Jewish. Nobody knew about that; she didn’t even know herself. She knew nothing about her ancestry, but thought she was Jacob and Britta’s child. Jacob had told her only that he came from Poland, but not that he was a Jew. He never mentioned the time in Germany or what happened there. Britta knew, of course, but she didn’t say anything to Sonya either. She didn’t find out anything until Jacob and Britta died a few months apart, fifteen years ago.”
Irene couldn’t help exclaiming. The pieces had fallen into place and she understood how it all fit together.
Tommy nodded to her and smiled. “You’ve figured it out. But Jenny and Katarina couldn’t know about this, since they weren’t born yet. Sonya is my mother. Jacob and Britta, whom I always called Grandma and Grandpa, turned out to be my great-grandfather and his wife!”
Only Sammie’s faint snoring under the coffee table disturbed the total silence that had descended over the room. Irene couldn’t think of anything to say. Tommy had never told her about this. But really, why should he?
As if he had heard her thoughts he continued, “It was a shock for Mamma. She, who was confirmed and married in the Swedish Lutheran Church, suddenly found out that she was half Jewish and the product of a gang rape!”
Tommy fell silent and looked down at Sammie through the glass tabletop. When he spoke again, his voice was low and utterly serious. “Jenny, if you want you can borrow Jacob’s diary. It’s important that you understand why you and I can no longer be friends.”
Jenny’s eyes were wide with horror; her mouth stood half open, but she couldn’t utter a sound. Irene’s maternal heart writhed in sympathy, but she knew that this was between Jenny and Tommy.
He went on in a neutral tone, “You and Katarina attended the baptism of my children. We have spent vacations and weekends together. But because you have declared that you’re a skinhead, play Nazi music, and advocate what they stand for, you are the enemy of me and my children. Our mortal enemy, literally! When the persecution begins, one drop of Jewish blood in our veins will be enough to have us killed. Even the suspicion that there may be one drop is enough to kill us! And I’m one-quarter Jewish, my children one-eighth. We don’t have a chance. We will be killed.”
Jenny tried to pluck up her courage and screamed, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! We don’t want to kill anybody!”
“Yes you do, Jenny. What is it they sing in the lyrics to the music you like so much? Since you say you love that music, you also have to stand for what the lyrics say. ‘Death to niggers and Jews! Fight for a pure, Aryan Sweden!’ Sound familiar? And to show even more clearly what you stand for, you’ve also shaved off your hair,” he stated coldly.
“That was because of the band! Markus thought it would be cool if I dared to shave off my ha. . hair!”
The last word came in a long sob. She sprang to her feet, rushed up the stairs, and slammed the door. They could hear her crying loudly. Sammie woke up when she rushed off and looked around bewildered. He sensed that the atmosphere was charged, not at all as cozy as it was when he went to sleep.
Krister leaned forward, put his head in his hands, and groaned, “Good Lord, this has been one of the worst experiences of my life! I almost stood up and yelled at you to stop. But now you’ve put the decision in Jenny’s hands.”
“It’s not Jenny’s fault; it’s the fault of our forgetfulness. We forget what we want to forget, and the consequence is that we lose our history, and then we can’t learn from it. It’s an eternal cycle and everything is repeated,” said Tommy in resignation.
Irene’s mouth was dry when she asked, “Is this story really true?”
“Every single word. Do you want to borrow Jacob’s diary?”
Hesitantly, she reached out and took the little book with the dry leather cover. But she didn’t open it. Uncertainly she said, “My school German isn’t that good anymore. I probably can’t understand what he wrote.”
Tommy gave her a big smile and a shrewd glance. “No, you probably can’t. Because Jacob wrote his diary in his mother tongue. Polish.”
JIMMY OLSSON had emergency neurosurgery at two o’clock in the morning. The examination earlier in the day had shown a small hemorrhage between the meninges that had not been visible on the emergency X ray taken the night he was admitted to the hospital. Jimmy’s condition had deteriorated rapidly after he awoke at night with a splitting headache and began to show signs of failing consciousness. His speech had become slurred and his body was going numb.
SVEN ANDERSSON looked serious when he told Tommy, Irene, Birgitta, and Jonny about Jimmy. The superintendent said sympathetically, “The poor guy, it’s evident a blood vessel was leaking blood.”
Irene shuddered. Tommy looked angry when he said, “This is what really happens from hard blows to the head. In the movies the hero just shakes his head after a skyscraper falls on him, gets up, and quickly grabs his machine gun to mow down twenty gangsters!”
Jonny snorted, “Why don’t you tell it like it is: This is what happens when you go out on a job with a chick. It’s always the guy who has to take the worst lumps when things get rough!”
Irene was totally speechless, but she didn’t need to get into an argument. Unexpectedly the superintendent came to her defense. “If Irene hadn’t been there, Jimmy Olsson would be dead today.”
“Thanks to her, in that case. She got them into the situation! Nobody asked them to drive out to Billdal. The dames lured poor Jimmy away.”
The dames meant Birgitta and her. Irene knew that the accusation was groundless, but it still stung. She was the oldest, the one with the most experience and practice. All Jimmy had to do was follow orders and keep up with her. Was she to blame for what happened to Jimmy?
Andersson was bright red when he stood up, slammed his palm on the table, and yelled, “Shut up! Irene was doing her job, checking up on a possible lead to Bobo Torsson’s hideout! Damn it, nobody in this department has to run in to see me every time something comes up that needs to be investigated more closely. That would be totally inappropriate! You’re pros, after all!”
Wham! He slapped his palm on the table again, to emphasize what he was saying. Jonny was obviously unprepared for his boss’s outburst, because he said nothing. Andersson took a few deep breaths to try to control his blood pressure. More calmly he said, “No one could have known that those punks would hide an alarm in a stack of lumber! And there was nothing to indicate that there would be Hell’s Angels in Bobo’s and Shorty’s cottage. Jimmy and Irene ran into a damned unpleasant surprise at the site.”