Disguise

by Hugo Hamilton

  ‘What else could you do?’

  When Gregor’s father returned from the war, he was depressed. Found it difficult to discuss things. He had terrible headaches, so the house often had to be silent. Gregor grew up as a quiet boy, making lists all the time, separate from other children.

  ‘They used to fight with him because he was so tall,’ she said. ‘But he was always a big softie. He could never stand up for himself.’

  As a child he liked looking at gardens. When they went for a walk together through the suburbs of Nuremberg, he would lead her on a trail mapped out in his head in order to pass by the best gardens. He liked growing things. He became a reclusive teenager, interested mostly in his music.

  Her husband was an accountant, a good man, with strong principles. Perhaps it was hard for people who came through war to adjust to life in peacetime. They overcompensated. They loved their son with too much force. Gregor’s father was a survival artist and she laughed at the way he sometimes made his family go through fire drills at the weekend. Maybe life was more about enduring than about living. She said her husband could not bear to see food going to waste and sometimes forced Gregor to eat up, telling him what it was like to starve and to live on ants. Gregor had to be spoon-fed until he was ten. She spent her life running after him with food, with his school lunch box, his jacket, his homework. She described how he often left his scarf behind or lost his coat on the bus, and each time, her husband bought him a new one, an even better one, with better lining and a detachable hood and more inside pockets.

  ‘He loves his son,’ she said. ‘He’s the only friend he’s ever had.’

  ‘I’ll speak to him,’ Mara said. ‘I’m sure he’ll come round. It’s just that he’s had so much trouble coming to terms with the fact that he’s an orphan.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘He’s adopted, isn’t that so?’

  Gregor’s mother looked straight into Mara’s eyes, blinking, unable to grasp what she had just heard. She paused for a moment, sighed, shook her head.

  ‘That’s totally untrue.’

  They looked at each other in disbelief. Now they really were talking about two different people. Gregor’s mother stared across the photographs and family artefacts spread out on the dining-room table. A lifetime turned into fake.

  ‘It’s a complete lie, Mara. I should know, I’m his mother.’

  ‘You’re saying Gregor made this up?’

  ‘His uncle Max made it up. He put all that stuff into Gregor’s head.’

  A mother’s word against that of her son. Mara put forward Gregor’s argument in his absence, describing in detail the story that she had got from him. The journey south on the truck with Emil, the long wait in the train station, the interrogation by the Gestapo. It all seemed to match in every aspect except for one essential detail. The child lost in the bombing. The replacement.

  ‘But he’s Jewish,’ Mara said. ‘He was rescued by your father. You adopted him in order to replace your lost son. Isn’t that why there was so much trouble with the Gestapo?’

  Gregor’s mother stared back, unable to reclaim possession of her own life. The rejection was too much to bear and there was hostility entering into her voice.

  ‘He’s no more Jewish than me, or his father,’ she said. ‘He’s German. He’s the image of his grandfather Emil. For God’s sake, look at the photographs. He’s a musician and a singer, just like Emil, isn’t that so?’

  ‘He told me that he came from the East, with the refugees.’

  ‘He can make up whatever story he likes. I can’t force him to go and visit his own father on his deathbed.’

  The truth left nothing to be imagined. The facts were incontrovertible, changing everything, dislodging the entire basis of Mara’s marriage. Maybe his story was more elastic, more redemptive. How often had she passed by the building in Berlin where Gregor died in the bombing. How often had they looked up at the windows where his mother lived during the war and lost her only child while her husband was away at the front. Gregor’s birthplace. His place of death. His moment of immortality.

  ‘But he was circumcised,’ Mara said. ‘As a baby.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ There was a cynicism in her voice. ‘I would have noticed, don’t you think?’

  ‘At birth,’ Mara said. ‘I thought he was circumcised at birth.’

  ‘Nonsense. That’s all part of the fabrication. He must have got that done to himself after he ran away. I thought he would have grown out of that fantasy by now.’

  ‘I don’t understand anything any more.’

  Mara cried openly, holding nothing back. She had spent all this time living with a ghost.

  Nineteen

  Driving back along the autobahn from Nuremberg, Mara became involved in a strange, disembodied argument with another driver. She had not been concentrating and must have done something stupid. The roads were wet, coming up to Christmas, dark early. She drove in a bruised and remote way. In silence, without the radio on so as to avoid the sentiment of music. Staring past the windscreen wipers sweeping off flakes of snow. Seeing nothing but the watery tail lights of trucks ahead and the crop of water rising up from their wheels. Aware only of how much her world had changed in the last forty-eight hours.

  Perhaps she had overtaken without indicating or maybe slipped in ahead without giving enough room. The offence was hardly worth mentioning, but the reaction was instant. Horn screaming, lights flashing right behind her. She slowed down and allowed plenty of room to pass. After you! she muttered to herself. Go ahead, pal, kill yourself. She remembered the funny phrases of her own father, telling her to be careful because there were always ‘other idiots’ on the road. What should she have said? Excuse me, I’ve just found out that my husband is a liar. He’s not an orphan after all. The driver came right alongside, just to hammer home the road courtesy lesson, long enough for her to see his face. A young autobahn idealist with furious eyes. Get off the road, you fucking asshole, he was shouting, or miming, with his mouth clearly pushed into the shape of a curse and his middle finger raised in supreme insult.

  There was a rage in the country. It was there on the autobahn, in the people’s hearts, in the newspapers and in the music. It was a time of self-loathing and self-accusation, a time when everything was being exposed and examined. The science of failure. The lonely momentum of truth. The guilt spreading horizontally, reaching into every heart and every home. Their shame was their identity. Their misery had become their poetry.

  At home, she felt exhausted, unable to conceal the distance in her eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Gregor asked.

  She didn’t know how to start. Or end. Waited until Daniel was asleep before she could work herself up to the right words. Looked at Gregor as though he had just walked in off the street and she had to ask him what he wanted in her home.

  ‘You can’t lie to me, Gregor,’ she said. ‘I can’t live with lies.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’ve met your mother. She’s told me everything.’

  Gregor reeled backwards, as though a door had slammed in his face. It took a moment before he could find the words to reply.

  ‘What? I don’t believe what you’ve just said. You went behind my back and spoke to her. That’s unforgivable, Mara.’

  ‘It’s all untrue, isn’t it? You’re not Jewish. You’re not an orphan. You made the whole thing up for some scabby reason I don’t understand. Just to make yourself look good or feel good, is that it? You lied to me, Gregor. And now I don’t know who you are any more.’

  Gregor did not reach for his guitar this time. He remained silent for a moment, clearing the situation in his own head before responding.

  ‘This is very unfair, Mara.’

  ‘I believed everything,’ she said, looking at the floor.

  ‘You went to see her. That’s such a betrayal.’

  ‘You can’t even speak about betrayal,’ she replied. ‘How can I
ever trust you? How can I believe anything you say, ever again?’

  ‘You have decided not to believe me,’ he said. ‘You’ve decided to believe her. What did she tell you? All lies, I bet.’

  There was a long pause. Mara went around the kitchen, clearing things away, stacking plates, doing things that had no urgency. Gregor sat at the table with the newspaper opened out in front of him, staring down, but not allowing any of it to enter. His credibility in shreds. His identity gone. The trapdoor underneath him had opened up and swallowed him.

  ‘She’s your real mother,’ Mara said. ‘Why would she lie to me?’

  He waited for a while in silence, only slowly realising how serious this was. She talked about a fraud. She accused him of destroying the family.

  ‘What am I supposed to tell Daniel when he grows up? That I married a con man who said he was a Jewish orphan? What will I tell everybody, all our friends? That you live in a fantasy?’

  ‘Tell them what you like, Mara.’

  ‘For whatever reason, you made up a story about being Jewish, because you couldn’t face up to the truth. You preferred to be the victim, is that it? You fabricated this story about being replaced as a child, so you could escape from our history, isn’t that so?’

  ‘Stop it,’ Gregor said. ‘If you continue like this, I’m leaving. I’m not going to listen to you accusing me like this.’

  ‘Answer the question then,’ she said. ‘Are you an orphan or not?’

  ‘She’s lying, Mara. Don’t you see it? I found out, believe me. She’s making this whole thing up. She never told him, her own husband. Now she can’t get out of it.’

  ‘It’s hard to believe that a mother would lie about her own child.’

  ‘There you go,’ Gregor said. ‘You want to believe her instead.’

  ‘Can I call her?’ Mara said. ‘Can you discuss this on the phone with her at least?’

  ‘No. I will not speak to her.’

  ‘You told me they were dead. You told me you had no relatives. You told me you were circumcised at birth. All lies, Gregor. You’re no more Jewish than I am.’

  ‘Is that all you married me for?’ he then said. ‘Because I’m Jewish?’

  They were throwing everything at each other now and it was difficult to see how they could find a way back from this confrontation. Soon they would fall over the cliff and bring the marriage to an end. Or maybe it was already over and they were merely justifying themselves to some invisible family tribunal.

  ‘You have to get your story right,’ she said.

  She was crying. A helpless burst of tears, full of fatigue. She sat down at the table opposite him, looking up every now and again to see him through a watery prism. He stood up and came round to her side, placed his hand on her shoulder. Tried to embrace her, but she didn’t want to be touched.

  ‘You see, there’s no proof, Mara,’ he admitted finally.

  She listened without looking up.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ he said. ‘I told you that. There’s no proof, only what Uncle Max told me. It’s her word against mine.’

  He went over his story again. His entire existence was in Mara’s hands, in her imagination, in what she agreed to believe and what she would dismiss. She held him like a porcelain figure, at her mercy, waiting to be dropped to the floor in tiny pieces. He placed the facts in front of her, holding on, desperately trying to save himself.

  ‘Let me ask you this,’ she said finally. ‘If what you say is true. If you were adopted and your mother saved you, then how can you treat them like that? How can you turn your back on them?’

  ‘Because they lied to me, Mara. Don’t you see it?’

  ‘Your father is on his deathbed and you can’t get yourself to forgive him. That’s not something you are entitled to do if you’re an orphan. You can’t be that cold-hearted, Gregor.’

  She could not understand the ruthlessness with which he had cut them out of his life. Was that part of the self-loathing? He had walked away and now she was afraid that he would also walk away from her and Daniel.

  ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘It’s over between us.’

  She uttered those terrifying words in the hope that they were not true. She desperately wanted him to contradict her, to give some explanation which would allow her to believe him again. He tried to disarm those terrible words by saying that they would soon get this behind them. He swore that nothing had changed between them and that he felt every bit the same about her as he always did. All that mattered was that they stayed together.

  ‘I’ll find you the proof,’ he said. ‘Give me time, Mara. I’ll get the proof, you’ll see.’

  He stood behind her and kissed the top of her head. He placed his hands under her arms and lifted her up from the kitchen chair. Her elbows were planted on the table and her fists glued to her cheeks, and they remained like that for a moment until he released the tension which had locked them in that position. Her face was indented with knuckle marks. Blotches around her eyes. She could hardly stand with the weakness in her legs, as if the truth was the only thing that kept people alive.

  He virtually carried her into bed. Left the light on in the hall. Took her shoes off and helped her with her jeans. And in that drowsy swirl of thoughts before she fell asleep, she turned to put her arm around him.

  ‘You looked so sweet, Gregor,’ she said, half dreaming, half crying. ‘You must have been such a sweet little boy.’

  And maybe it was too soon to spring to conclusions. What did it matter now? she thought to herself in a blur of emotions. Everybody needs an identity, a disguise, a story in which they can feel at home. He had managed to knock a good enough life out of that survivor body of his, whoever it belonged to. Was he not making good use of the name he was given by his mother, regardless of his true origins? Whether he was inhabiting the soul of a dead boy or a living boy, he had made it his own now. And maybe he was not unlike all other people in that respect, part human, part fabrication. Part ghost, part living being. Part real, part invented. Existing mostly in the minds of those around him, his family and friends, his fellow inhabitants in the city where he lived. He claimed a place in their imagination. A semi-successful, semi-failed individual with a complex narrative which was perhaps a little in the vein of fiction itself, something you want to believe rather than something you have been told to believe.

  Twenty

  She was sitting on the black-and-white chair in the bedroom when he announced that he was leaving. He had found and bought that chair for her in a basement junk shop. It had come from a notorious Berlin café which existed in the late 1890s and which was considered respectable only before noon. The chair was painted black, with striped upholstering and a grip for waiters built into the frame. The name Café Bauer was written underneath the seat and it was mentioned in the famous novel called Effi Briest. They had seen the film. It ran for years in the city. Its portent of family betrayal had not entered their minds then. But they could remember the remoteness with which the characters spoke to each other, and the heartbreaking voice of Effi, after she was banished by her husband, saying: ‘I hate your virtue.’

  Dressed in a towel after a shower, she sat sideways with her arm over the back of the chair. In the weeks since the revelation about Gregor’s identity, the innocence had been taken out of their eyes. The lightness had gone out of their language and when they reached each other with words, they were tinged with sharpness, accusation, doubt. Everything seemed to have been said before. They felt the weight of history dumped on them, subverting everything she believed, his lifeline, his survival, his entire credibility as a person. Each time they spoke to each other, the emptiness seemed to enlarge. Christmas was an impostor, a pageant re-enacted to postpone the inevitable.

  ‘You want me to leave, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Now you’re trying to blame me,’ she said. She was speaking in that laconic, disconnected tone, as though she was the only person left in the world. After all the
arguments, she spoke with exhaustion in her voice, not even looking in his direction but at the foot of the bed.

  ‘You want to be able to say that you were driven out.’

  ‘I can’t stay,’ he said.

  ‘The only way you’ll sort this out is by finding out the truth, by going to speak to your mother.’

  Mara had some problems with her health at the time, an ache in her joints, possibly from being bitten by a tick in the mountains that summer. She was on medication for it and sometimes had to stay in bed.

  ‘I’ve got this invitation to play in Toronto,’ Gregor said. ‘I think it would be good for us both if I went away for a while. I want to sort this out. I’m going to get the proof.’

  In the meantime, he had teamed up with a new band. He had met an Irish musician by the name of John Joe McDonagh, and there was some chemistry between them, going back to the basics with blues, jazz, folk. After a lacklustre response to Gregor’s compositions, he needed to engage in something more real. John Joe had come to Berlin in a cheap car bought in Holland, parked it outside a bar in Kreuzberg where it remained as a billboard where people left messages under the windscreen wipers until it was towed away.

  Why was he so impressed by John Joe? Was it the ability to celebrate? The instant friendship? The way John Joe placed his arm around Gregor’s shoulder when he asked him if he had ever heard of a song called ‘The Lover’s Ghost’. John Joe knew the song well, ‘but don’t ask me to sing it.’ Gregor felt welcome. He found a wildness inside himself, a longing to start all over again without looking back. That spontaneous energy around John Joe gave momentum to his life. ‘For a laugh’, on a late-night tour through city bars, John Joe dragged him and some other Irish musicians into a sex club. And once inside, they had nothing on their minds but more beer. John Joe even bought drinks for the three women who sat on bar stools in the reddish gloom. Then he got out his harmonica to play a tune. Over the sound of breathing and groaning on-screen in the background, he started huffing and bending the notes of a familiar train song, with a cigarette between his fingers. The rest of the musicians joined in like a strange band of missionaries, getting out their instruments and ripping into a frantic reel which was in complete contrast to the tired sexual signals all around them. The bar stools were pushed back. The women came to life. This small, moribund bar, where the decor had lost its decadence, was transformed into a country dance hall, heaving with perfume and perspiration and smoke. One of the women said afterwards that it was a long time since she had been swung around so mercilessly and now her yellow blouse was sticking to her back. John Joe yelped and they moved on again to the next bar.