The Speckled People

by Hugo Hamilton

  Outside the church the next day, Miss Ryan stopped to speak to my mother again and asked if she wanted to borrow the money to go back to Germany. There would be no rush in paying it back, she said, but my mother shook her head. They were whispering for a long time until all the people had left the church, until Miss Ryan told my mother to go home and have a think about it. But my father didn’t want that. He says you can’t borrow money from the neighbours and he doesn’t want my mother to go home on her own because she might never want to return.

  My mother said it was time to stop dreaming. Instead, she asked her sisters to send over lots of books and magazines about Germany so that she could tell us what was happening there. She showed us the pictures of people running through the streets with suitcases. She explained how the Russians had put up a wall right in the middle of Germany and there was nothing the British or the Americans could do except watch. There was lots of barbed wire and tanks in the middle of the streets. There were people climbing out the window and letting children down slowly on ropes. And when the wall was built, people still tried to escape to the other side but they were shot and there were pictures of them lying on the ground bleeding to death and nothing anyone could do to help.

  Onkel Ted came to talk to my mother because she didn’t know what to do. She told him that Miss Ryan offered her money to go back to Germany and that she would not have to pay it back or ever mention it again. There were two Miss Harts and two Miss Doyles and two Miss Ryans, and they always went to Mass in pairs on Sunday. The Miss Ryans said they had set aside the money as a gift, but my father didn’t want money from the neighbours. After dinner and after the sweets in Onkel Ted’s pocket, we went to bed and they sat in the front room until there was nothing more to say about it. I heard my father taking out the cognac and putting on some music. It was the record of the two women doing a duet in French. I could hear the sound of the two high voices, like two sisters singing together. I thought it was like the two Miss Ryans going up the stairs together, arm in arm, up one or two steps and then back down two steps, then up three or four more and back down two, until they finished on the landing at the top with their arms around each other, saying goodnight and lying down softly in their beds.

  After that, Onkel Ted was only afraid that my mother was homesick so he started sending her more books and pieces about Germany cut out of newspapers. He wrote long letters, too, in German and she wrote letters back, but my father said that had to stop, because he didn’t want Onkel Ted to be her friend for life, only himself. He didn’t want anyone to know more about Germany or to read any more books than he did. He was able to read five books at the same time with a bus ticket sticking out of each one, but Onkel Ted was able to read so fast that he didn’t need a bus ticket and a book still looked brand new when he passed it on to my mother. My father didn’t like my mother reading books that he didn’t read first himself. He didn’t like her talking too much to the neighbours either or getting friendly with people in the shops or going to coffee mornings and getting ideas from other people, only Catholic ideas. He was afraid she would not listen to him any more. He started slamming all the doors in the house because he didn’t like anyone else calling her Irmgard. And one time there was a French woman living on our street who kept dropping in and talking to my mother. Even though they were from different countries, they had the same questions and the same answers when they talked. She wanted to become my mother’s friend for life, but my father stopped all that because she was talking about going back to France to get a divorce from her Irish husband who was friends for life with other women. That was the worst thing that could happen, if Irish people started getting French ideas. That would be the end of the family. That would be the end of Ireland, he said.

  Then Onkel Ted sent Eileen Crowley out to talk to my mother instead. Her father PJ had a good business in Dublin, but his shop had to close down when he lent a friend some money and never got it back. They went into debt and had to sell everything and move house. My mother knew how bad that was, because her father had to close his shop, too, in Kempen. It was bad luck. My mother saw it as a failure, and Eileen would never call it that. They had different ways of seeing things. Even different words that led to misunderstandings. Maybe there was no failure in Ireland, only bad luck, and maybe there was no bad luck in Germany, only failure. They were friends, and Eileen was good at helping people out of trouble. My mother didn’t want our family to be a failure, because this was the last chance she had in her life. It would be her own fault if she was back on the streets of Germany with suitcases and children, like the people running away across the Berlin Wall. The family was a good story to hide behind and so she said it was time to stop dreaming. She went over to the Miss Ryans to put an end to it once and for all. She told them it was very kind of them to offer the money, but there were other people who might need it more, people who had nothing even to dream about, people who had nowhere even to be homesick for.

  After that, everything was back to normal. The doors stopped slamming and my mother started writing in her diary every day because that’s your only real friend for life. She collected lots more pictures of what happened in Germany. In some places, she said, the wall went right through the middle of a house, so that the back of the house was in one part of Germany and the front of the house was in the other. She showed us pictures of all the planes bringing food to Berlin and pictures of John F. Kennedy in the city. She said it was great to hear John F. Kennedy saying that he was a Berliner, because most American people were afraid to be German and changed their names from Busch to Bush and Schmidt to Smith and maybe you can’t blame them.

  Every day we played with the puppets and my mother said we would put on a play for our relatives and invite all the neighbours, too. We stayed inside to practise the play about the dog barking at the waves. There was even a book in our house about staying indoors. It was about what to do if an atom bomb fell anywhere near us like it did on Hiroshima. There would be nuclear radiation all around the streets. The radiation was always shown with red dots, like a disease in the air. It explained how to build a nuclear shelter, how to put sandbags in all the windows so you could stay inside living on tins of beans for a few years until the red dots were all gone again.

  One day, Eileen brought Franz and me up to the top of Nelson’s Pillar and my father said nothing, even though it was something the British left behind. When we came home, Onkel Ted was there with sweets in his pocket and we told him that we were going to put on a play for relatives and neighbours. He said it was a very fine idea and Eileen said we were full of talent. At the dinner table that night, my mother told a story about a family who had a puppet theatre under the Nazis. The father was afraid to say anything against Hitler. He was afraid that the children would go out and there would be trouble if they repeated what he said on the street. So every day they put on a puppet show in the evening after dinner, just for themselves. He would go in behind the puppet theatre with his children and make up story about a very bad man named Arnulf. And at the end of every play they always had to find a way to kill Arnulf, so that the other puppets were safe again.

  ‘Remarkable,’ Onkel Ted said.

  He nodded his head slowly and said it was a great sign that people had courage. He had read lots of books about people like that, books that make you feel strong. There are no German songs that make you feel strong in your stomach but there are stories like that. Eileen was nodding because she was chewing a toffee in her mouth and my father had nothing to say either. They all just quietly swallowed the story and the room was silent.

  My mother tells stories like that because there are other stories she can’t tell. When it’s silent, she thinks of all the things she has to keep secret. She wishes that she could have resisted more. For a minute, she sits there and everybody is waiting for her to tell another story. She is thinking about how she is trapped in Ireland now and how she was trapped in Germany once, and how nothing has changed. She wishes that she had
thought of the puppet show killing Arnulf.

  My mother was back in Düsseldorf, back in the same office, working as if nothing had happened. Nobody asked questions and she had no idea who to talk to now. One night, Stiegler even invited her out to the theatre again with his wife, as if it was all fine, as if the world could just go on as before. Frau Stiegler kissed her on the cheek as always, and it was like a cosy family, with everybody very happy not to say a word that might make things uncomfortable. My mother can’t remember what the play was. She can only remember the lip biting and the helpless anger. She was thinking only about what happened in Venlo and how she wanted to go away and work somewhere else in a different place. She wanted never to see Stiegler again. She wanted a new life, maybe even in a new country. She even thought of running away and going into hiding because of the shame she might bring to her family if the story came out. She sat in the theatre with Stiegler in the middle and Frau Stiegler on the far side, dressed with a scarf made of fox, with fox eyes and fox paws hanging down. It was only at the interval, when Herr Stiegler left them alone for a moment, that my mother had the courage to say something.

  ‘I think there is something you should know,’ she said. ‘About your husband.’

  So then Frau Stiegler stared and listened to what happened in Venlo. It was hard to describe it in words, but my mother said Herr Stiegler must have planned it all and she could do nothing to stop it.

  ‘What?’ Frau Stiegler said, and it was like a little bark that the fox on her shoulders was making. She had angry eyes and my mother thought at last that there was somebody on her side again. Everything was going to be put right again. But, instead, Frau Stiegler looked at her with vicious eyes. The fox, too, as if they were not angry at Herr Stiegler at all, but at her. Maybe my mother was too polite. Maybe she didn’t have words bad enough in her head to describe what happened to her. She didn’t have a way of telling things that was ugly enough to describe Herr Stiegler and what he did, because Frau Stiegler just turned on her instead. It was as if she had started it all and Herr Stiegler was innocent. As if she had brought it all on herself and he could do no wrong.

  ‘If I hear another word of this,’ Frau Stiegler said, ‘if you say a single word to me or to anyone about this, I will call the police instantly. I will not have my husband’s reputation destroyed like this before my own eyes. Herr Stiegler is a good man, a respectable man, and how dare you even think up such a thing.’

  They even sat through the end of the play and afterwards had the usual drink in a nearby cafe, but there was nothing more to say.

  My mother is a dreamer and sometimes she just sits and stares, hoping that she will still find a way out, something she can say, some clever way that she can escape even now. She stays in the past for a few minutes and doesn’t hear you sometimes when you speak. She’s still thinking of running away.

  Very late one evening, an envelope was dropped in the door. It was addressed to my mother and, when she opened it, she found it was full of money. There was no note going with it to say who it came from, but my mother knew immediately. She also knew that my father would not allow it and the trouble would start again and all the doors in the house would be banging. So she put the envelope away and said nothing. Next day she went straight over to the Miss Ryans to give the money back. She said it was so generous of them, but she could not accept it because that would be the end of the family and the end of Ireland. Then the Miss Ryans both stood at the door and shook their heads.

  ‘What money?’ they said.

  They looked at each other and said there was some kind of mistake. Money in an envelope didn’t automatically mean it came from the Miss Ryans. They don’t go around dropping money into people’s letter boxes before they go upstairs and lie down softly in their beds. My mother asked if it wasn’t the Miss Ryans who dropped the money into her door, then who was it? So the Miss Ryans scratched their heads and thought about it for a moment and said the money probably came from God.

  There was no way out but to bring the money back home again and there was nothing my father could do about it. My mother told him the money came from God and you couldn’t give it back, unless he wanted her to put it into the poor box in the church, but he didn’t want that either. There was no slamming doors this time, but he said she was still not allowed to go back home to Germany on her own. He said he had lots of cousins in America and South Africa who couldn’t come home to Ireland any time they liked. So she put the money away and said she would wait until there was enough for all of us to go to Germany together. Then everything was all right again and everybody in our house was dreaming and saving up money in jars.

  My mother helped us to get everything ready for the puppet show. My father said we could use his desk-lamp as a spotlight. Onkel Ted came and Tante Roseleen and Tante Lilly, as well as Eileen Crowley and Kitty from Cork. Tante Eileen came up from Skibbereen with Onkel John this time, because he was attending the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis and he knew all about politics. Anne was there and so was her brother Harry, and everybody was afraid of him going to the Congo, because the only thing the Irish army was good at was keeping the peace. Lots of the neighbours came, too, like the Miss Ryans and the Miss Doyles. There was a whole table full of sandwiches and cakes. People brought lemonade and there was even wine and whiskey and bottles of black beer.

  All the chairs and seats in the house were brought into the Kinderzimmer and lined up in rows. My mother helped Maria to tie a box of sweets around her tummy as a belly tray, so she could go around offering them to the audience. Ita was sitting on Harry’s knee trying to comb all his hair forward, and Tante Eileen from Skibbereen was showing everybody how to light a new cigarette from the old one. And when they were all sitting down, my mother closed the big wooden shutters on the window and switched on the spotlight. It was like a real theatre with people coughing in the audience and trying to stop making noise. My mother got in behind the puppet theatre with us and when everybody stopped talking and coughing, Franz pulled the string to open the curtains.

  ‘Have you seen the dog?’ Kasper said.

  Then Ita suddenly started talking back to the puppets, because she believed everything they said and my mother had to put her head out and tell her to be quiet and not give away the ending. We continued and it was all in German, so nobody could understand what was going on except Onkel Ted and my father. Everybody else was in the wrong country and couldn’t rescue us.

  There was a man called Arnulf, like the story my mother heard about in Germany, and he would not let any of the other puppets speak. All the time, Kasper was walking along and meeting other puppets like Hansel and Gretel and the grandmother and the queen and the king and other puppets that we made up ourselves with papier mâché. But none of them could say a word to Kasper, because Arnulf said they were not allowed to speak to him. Kasper asked them where the dog was, but they were all afraid to say anything in case Arnulf would come and punish them. So then Kasper had to find a way of killing Arnulf so that all the other puppets could speak again. And when Arnulf was dead with his head over the side of the theatre, my mother switched on the hairdryer and the blue scarf started blowing across the stage. Then Kasper came to the seafront and found the dog barking at the waves. That was the end and when Franz pulled the curtain closed, the audience clapped for a long time.

  Twenty-three

  It’s a long way to go to Germany. You have to go on two different ships and five different trains. My father shows us the tickets and my mother counts the luggage lined up in the hallway, six suitcases and four children. She laughs and claps her hands because we’re going home and everybody is so excited that you feel nearly sick in your stomach. First you go on the ship to Holyhead. You go across the gangplank and my father laughs at the sign over the door that says ‘Mind your Head’ because it’s like a warning to anyone who leaves Ireland to be careful, not to forget where you come from or do anything stupid. Outside on deck you can see the lighthouse going by and the land m
oving further and further away until it’s out of sight. Maria wants to know if we’re going to get seasick, because the ship is moving from side to side and you can’t walk straight. The seagulls keep following us even though it’s dark now and there’s nothing more to see except some yellow light from the ship on the water. At night you take the train to London to see the black taxis. And the next morning you take another train and another ship to Holland and three more trains after that until you’re in Kempen and we’re back in my mother’s film.

  They were waiting for us at the window. Ta Maria came out and threw her arms around my mother for a long time without a word. Then it was Tante Lisalotte’s turn and she wouldn’t let go. They stood outside on the street, hugging and looking at each other up and down, again and again, and they just kept saying ‘ja, ja, ja’ and ‘nein, nein, nein’ as if they didn’t believe their own eyes. The suitcases were forgotten on the ground. They shook hands with my father and called him Hans, as if he was going to be German, too, from now on. They knew all our names, but they kept saying ‘Ach, Du lieber Himmel’, as if they thought my mother had only gone away to Ireland for a few days and come back with four children.

  Then it was time for coffee and we were sent over to the Kranz Café to get cakes. The smell of baking was like a warm pillow in your face when you walked in the door. All the women in the Kranz Café asked us questions and said we had soft voices, like German children long ago before the war. They said we were the long ago children with good manners and straight backs and no chewing gum. The cake was wrapped in the shape of a church so that the paper didn’t touch the icing on the top. They told us to hold the parcel flat so that it would arrive on the table the way it left the café, and Ta Maria even had the same silver trowel that my mother has, so you could lift a slice on to the plate and make sure it had never been touched by human fingers.