One day he got a letter. Annie wrote that she couldn’t come to his hideout in Krakow, but she had managed to get something that could be very helpful to him, namely a passport and a paper with an invitation to visit a company in Sweden. She had managed to organize that at her job.
Orge looked at the paper and thought: Sweden? Was that where his future lay? He had to leave in any case, leave Krakow and Poland. He had to go to Sweden. Annie was right.
He asked whether his companion wanted to join him, but the man said no. Orge had to go to the station on his own; just before the train arrived, his friend showed up with a farewell present, a large sausage.
And so Orge traveled to the port city of Gdynia with his entire possessionsa sausage and a cardboard box of clothes. He had just enough money to buy a ticket on the Mariehamn. With his last coins he bought a meal at the large smorgasbord. He went up to it and didn’t know what to order. In the end he took a plate with herring and potatoes.
‘Why don’t you try something else?’ the waiter asked after Orge had finished off his plate. ‘Don’t you like Swedish meatballs?’
Orge, who didn’t know that you could take some more, that you could eat as much as you wanted at a smorgasbord, got up and got himself another portion, but nothing tasted good any more. That wasn’t because of the food but because of him. He was beginning to lose his appetite. A storm came up during the night. Everyone got seasick and Orge went out onto the deck to get some fresh air. Some horses on their way to Sweden got the worst of it. They were so sick that Orge was afraid they would die. The storm didn’t abate until they reached the Stockholm archipelago, and when Orge went back up on deck to check on the horses, two of them were dead. He was standing near the dead horses when the police came on board and asked for his passport. He showed it along with the paper inviting him to visit the Swedish firm in Sundbyberg. The police gave it a good look.
‘So you’re here on business?’
‘Yes,’ Orge answered.
And that’s the way he came to Sweden. Thanks to the passport and the paper that Annie had organized for him, he could enter Sweden at the city dock in Stockholm and on the same day go to the refugee office at Norra Bantorg. He was immediately transferred to police headquarters on Bergsgatan.
‘Please have a seat,’ said the policeman to whom he was sent the same policeman he had met on board. But this time he didn’t look so friendly.
‘So you’re not here on business. You’re a refugee?’
‘Yes,’ answered Orge.
‘You lied to me this morning?’
‘Yes. What would you have done in my place?’
‘I’m the one who asks questions here, not you. What are you actually? A political refugee or a Jew?’
‘Both of them.’
‘Both. That’s a bit too much. Where do you come from?’
‘Right now I came from Poland, where I also was living illegally.’
‘Okay, so in that case we can’t send you back. They wouldn’t let you in. But we could send you back to Germany.’
‘Yes, you could do that,’ Orge said, ‘but I wouldn’t stay there long. They’d kill me on the spot.’
‘But maybe we won’t have to go that far,’ said the policeman.
Translated by Peter Stenberg and Lena Karlström.