Chapters 3-4 Summary

Thomas returns home, and Father asks him where he got the book, Emil and the Detectives. Father tells Thomas that Mrs. van Amersfoort is a Communist, that the author of Emil and the Detectives is a Communist, and orders him to return the book and not to visit her again. But when Mother is tucking Thomas in to bed that night, she tells him that Mrs. van Amersfoort and her husband helped to save people during the war, and that he could continue to visit her as long as Father did not learn about it.

During dinner, Thomas is "visited" by Jesus by seeing him "in the dark behind his eyelids." Jesus asks Thomas, "How's it going, my boy?" When Thomas tells Jesus that his father hits his mother, Jesus replies, "Well, I'll be! Has he gone completely off his head...