ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author recollects the memories of his early life. In the autumn of 1938, the author's father was hit by his first breakdown. Running along the platform in Berlin to catch the Warsaw express that had already begun to move, he suddenly collapsed and was taken to hospital. An embolism in his leg was diagnosed and he was brought to Warsaw on a stretcher. A couple of months later, in the early summer of 1939, the author's father came to Brighton, and after talking to the headmaster, took the author out to dinner at the opulent but gloomy red-brick and terracotta Metropole Hotel. Many of the author's contemporaries have been scandalized by the author's father's seeming disregard of the looming disaster. At the end of June 1939, author's father boarded the Berlin-bound night ferry train with the author, cheerfully enough– he had digested his anxiety.
