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