‘What do you think?’
She leaned back and looked at him. Torgny’s distinctive laugh resounded through the room, and both turned to look his way. He had sat down on a sofa with a glass in one hand and a bottle in the other.
Halina took a drag from her cigarette.
‘I know what I think.’
‘Who is it then?’
‘Olof.’
‘Olof?’
She nodded.
‘But he’s the only one who didn’t do anything.’
‘That’s precisely why.’
For a moment he recalled the first years with Alice. All the dizzying conversations that had enriched their writing. The dialogue that had now broken off and fallen silent. He looked at Torgny, who was leaning back in the sofa with his eyes closed. He never would have believed that anything Torgny had would ever arouse his envy. But now he felt it, a painful jealousy. To have a woman it was possible to talk with.
‘I was nine years old when the war ended and I was liberated from Treblinka.’
She pulled up her sleeve and showed him a row of tattooed numbers.
‘My mother was shot as soon as we stepped off the train, but my sister and I managed to survive for three years inside the barbed wire. Just before the liberation she died of exhaustion.’
Axel searched for words.
‘I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you.’
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Halina stubbed out her cigarette. All around them the partying continued.
‘The evil I saw in the camp was inconceivable. It’s impossible to understand how human beings can behave that way, how something like that can happen. But one thing I do know: many of the people working in the camps thought that they were doing the right thing; they didn’t consider themselves evil. They were driven by their convictions and believed that the men who made the decisions and gave the orders possessed the truth. Because who decides what is good or evil? From what angle must one look to get the right view?’
Axel refilled their glasses.
‘Perhaps by trying to see the whole thing through the eyes of an opponent.’
Halina snorted.
‘And you think that people are capable of that? If we were, the world wouldn’t look the way it does.’
‘But that wasn’t what your question was about. You asked how we should act.’
Halina raised her glass but set it down again without taking a drink.
‘I believe that what is most dangerous for a society is when people turn over their responsibility to others. When they stop thinking and acting for themselves.’
She reached for the napkin and drew a circle round Olof ’s house. She crossed it out with repeated strokes.
‘All those people who knew what was going on, who thought it was wrong but still did nothing, isn’t that evil? You Swedes, for instance, who saved your own skin by letting the German trains pass through to Norway and even fed the soldiers along the way. Your king who apparently wrote a letter to Hitler congratulating him on his successes on the Eastern Front. All your banks and companies that continued doing business with the Nazis and made tons of money and never had to answer for it later. Isn’t that evil? How many of the banks’ or other companies’ customers do you think care about that today? Or take Hugo Boss. He was the one who designed and sewed the uniforms of SS officers. That’s not something they use in their advertising.’
She drew small circles on the napkin.
‘I was only a child, and every day I waited for someone to come and rescue us. I was sure that if only someone found out what was happening, they would come for us. That’s what hurts the most, finding out afterwards that so many people just let it happen, even profited from it. Afterwards they simply switched sides and went on with their lives as if nothing had happened.’
Axel listened as she continued her story, how she travelled alone, exhausted and malnourished to Sweden on a hospital ship. How she lived at first in a sanatorium where she regained her strength and then went to live with her grandmother’s sister, who had managed to flee to Sweden only a few days before her friends and family were shut in behind the walls of the Warsaw ghetto.
‘And don’t believe that we were welcome in Sweden, not with a J for Jew in our passports. She was smuggled in on a fishing boat and never dared register here, not even after the war was over, although I tried to talk her into it. She died of pneumonia in the late fifties because she was too scared to go to the doctor. When I finally got her there it was too late.’
He recalled the government’s decision the year before the war broke out, even though he was too young really to understand and only afterwards grasped the cynicism behind it. A foreigner could be refused entry if it was suspected that the person intended to leave his homeland for ever. At the same time in Germany, the law was that a Jew could get an exit visa only if the person promised never to return. For an immigrant to be granted a residence permit in Sweden, financial guarantees were required, and at the same time Jews emigrating from Germany were not allowed to take their property with them. The opinion in Sweden had been clear. They wanted to prevent the risk that a great mass of fleeing Jews would come to Sweden. By the time the war broke out, Jewish immigration had almost completely ceased.
Halina fell silent and picked at the napkin. He wanted to put his hand on hers but couldn’t pluck up the courage.
‘Have you any other family in Sweden?’
She shook her head and took a gulp of wine. He watched her, fascinated. She was a survivor. And as beautiful as could be. He sat quietly and searched for something to say. Suddenly she shifted in her chair, as if she wanted to shake off what she had told him, let the conversation take another tack.
‘You know, they’ve tried this moral dilemma on a great many people. Almost no one puts Eva at the top of the list.’
‘Well, I’d say she’s most likely to be thought of as self-sacrificing. Nothing she does is for her own sake.’
‘But one thing is rather interesting. If instead of calling her Eva we give her a foreign-sounding name, the result is altogether different. I don’t recall the percentage, but a good number of people suddenly think she’s the one who is most in the wrong.’
‘Can that really be true?’
‘Yes, really. A foreign name is not an advantage, I can tell you that. A publisher I was in touch with who liked what I wrote told me straight out that I ought to write under a pseudonym if I wanted to get anything published.’
‘I don’t believe it.’
She said nothing, but looked at him for a long time. Then she gave a little smile.
‘You’re pretty naïve for someone who’s supposed to be so wise and so brilliant.’
‘I’m no more brilliant than anyone else; a rumour often grows larger than the source itself.’
A comfortable silence followed.
‘So are you happy?’
He smiled and thought it over for a moment. ‘That depends on what you mean by happy.’
She gave a little shrug. ‘Happy as in content with life, I should think.’
‘I don’t know. Are you?’
With a resolute movement she crossed her arms.
‘You never answer questions, do you? You just bat them back.’
‘Do I?’
‘You’ve just done it again! Is it so awful to let somebody get close to you?’
‘That depends.’
Her arms relaxed and she leant forward, resting her chin in her hand.
‘On what?’
It was so long since Axel had been challenged he no longer knew how to react. He felt both annoyed and excited. Annoyed because she was threatening his integrity, and most people refrained from doing that. Excited because she dared to do so, because she offered him a resistance that was worth countering.
‘Nowadays happiness is looked on as a right, almost as an obligation. There’s a great risk of being disappointed if one’s expectations are too high.’