“It sounds terrifying.”
“It sounded simple to me, but it turned into a nightmare journey. The captain was
called Oskar Granath, and he was far from pleased to be made responsible for his
employer’s snotty little heir. We left Hamburg around 9:00 in the evening in late
June. We were just making our way out of the inner harbour when the air-raid
sirens went off. A British bombing raid—the heaviest I had then experienced, and
the harbour was, of course, the main target. But somehow we got through, and
after an engine breakdown and a miserably stormy night in mine-filled waters we
arrived the following afternoon at Karlskrona. You’re probably going to ask me
what happened to the girl.”
“I think I know.”
“My father was understandably furious. I had put everything at risk with my idiotic
venture. And the girl could have been deported from Sweden at any time. But I was
already just as hopelessly in love with her as Lobach had been with her mother. I
proposed to her and gave my father an ultimatum—either he accepted our
marriage or he’d have to look for another fatted calf for the family business. He
gave in.”
“But she died?”
“Yes, far too young, in 1958. She had a congenital heart defect. And it turned out
that I couldn’t have children. And that’s why my brother hates me.”
“Because you married her.”
“Because—to use his own words—I married a filthy Jewish whore.”
“But he’s insane.”
“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”
CHAPTER 10
Thursday, January 9-Friday, January 31