Making History

by Stephen Fry

  “Consarned thing,” he said, exasperatedly thumping the side of the lid with the side of his fist.

  “Charles Winninger!” I exclaimed excitedly, then instantly wished that I had held my tongue.

  Hubbard leaned forward with interest. “Excuse me?”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking aloud.”

  “No, no. Please . . .” Hubbard spread his hands invitingly.

  “I was just thinking of Destry Rides Again. Charles Winninger plays a character called Wash Dimsdale and he’s always saying ‘consarned’ this and ‘consarned’ that. I never heard anyone else use the word before. That’s all.”

  Hubbard looked up at Brown, who shrugged and shook his head.

  “It’s a movie,” I explained. “At least it was once. But you’ve probably never heard of it.”

  I saw that Hubbard had written down in a notebook the words “Destry” and “Wininger” followed by two large question marks. I suppressed a desire to correct the spelling and stared down at the table, which glowed as if new. There was a quality to it, how­ever, which suggested to me that it was not new, just very, very underused.

  “But you didn’t answer my original question, did you, Mike? Brunau. Tell me what you know about Brunau.”

  “What makes you think I know anything at all about it?”

  “You don’t?”

  “Never heard of the place,” I said.

  “Well now, that’s a start, Mikey. You know it’s a place. You know it isn’t a person or a shade of pink. That’s a good start.”

  Pants! Fell into that one, didn’t I?

  “I suppose I must have heard of it somewhere. In a geography les­son at school maybe . . .” I tried, fumblingly, to correct the sentence into something more American. “I mean, I guess I heard it in geogra­phy class, you know? In school some time. I guess so, anyways.” I winced inwardly at that last word. Overdoing it a tad.

  Hubbard didn’t seem to notice anything wrong, just continued with his gentle probing. “That right? So you remember where it is, this Brunau?”

  “Germany?”

  “Good. You’re doing good, Mike.”

  “Hey! You want your coffee black or with cream?”

  “Cream please,” I said, looking up from the table for the first time. Brown had unstuck the lid of the coffeepot somehow and was now delicately pouring thick black coffee into tiny little cups.

  There was an awkward pause as the social embarrassment of the handing round of sugar and teaspoons was completed.

  “Where’s Steve?” I asked, looking around the room. “Is he here?”

  “He’s around,” said Hubbard, taking an exploratory sip of coffee.

  “Can I see him?”

  “Great coffee, Don.”

  Brown nodded contentedly, as if he was used to receiving compli­ments on the quality of his brew.

  “I’d rather not talk anymore until I’ve seen him. Found out what this is all about.”

  “This is about you, me and Mr. Brown here having a little pow­wow, Mike. That’s all. Nothing to worry about. You were telling us that you thought maybe Brunau was in Germany?”

  “Well it sounds like a German name, doesn’t it?”

  “Let’s try you on the name Hitler, shall we? That mean anything to you? Hitler?”

  Maybe my pupils dilated, maybe they shrank. Maybe I caught my breath a fraction. Maybe my color changed. I know that I tried to sound casual and I know that the attempt failed.

  “Hitler?” I said, swallowing. “Where’s that?”

  Hubbard looked up again at Brown who nodded and took a small chromium box from his breast pocket. Placing the box carefully on the table between me and Hubbard, Brown returned to his standing position at the end of the table, placing his hands behind his back like an acolyte who has just performed a ceremonial ritual of great importance.

  I stared at the box as if expecting it to speak. Which was smart of me as a matter of fact, because, after Hubbard had pressed a switch on its side, that was exactly what it did do.

  There was background noise, the rustling of cellophane, the clink of glasses, the splutter of a match, the distant rush of traffic and other extraneous alfresco sounds, but essentially the box spoke. This is what it said, in two voices. Mine and Steve’s.

  me: You’ll think I’m mad, I know. But I’m supremely happy at the moment.

  steve: Yeah? How come?

  me: You wouldn’t understand if I told you.

  steve: Try me.

  me: I’m happy because when I asked you earlier, you told me that you’d never heard of Adolf Hitler.

  steve: That made you happy?

  me: You can have no idea what that means. You’ve never heard the names Hitler or Schickelgruber or Pölzl. You’ve never heard of Brunau, you’ve never . . .

  steve: Brunau?

  me: Brunau-am-Inn, Upper Austria. It’s not even a name to you and that makes me the happiest man alive.

  steve: Well that’s jake for you.

  me: You’ve never heard of Auschwitz or Dachau. You’ve never heard of the Nazi Party. You’ve never heard of . . .

  Hubbard flicked the switch once more.

  “So now we’re getting somewhere. Brunau is not in Germany, it’s in a region of Germany. It’s in Austria, Upper Austria even. That kinda narrows it down a little, don’t you think?”

  “If you knew all the time that I knew where Brunau was,” I said, “why did you string me along?”

  “Well now, I guess I could put that question another way, Mikey. If you knew where Brunau was all the time, why did you string us along?”

  “Then that’s stalemate, isn’t it?” I said.

  Hubbard looked into my eyes. I looked back into his and in the restful chocolate brown of them I tried to see what motive and what intent might be lying there.

  “And Hitler,” he said. “You know that Hitler isn’t a place. You know that it’s a man’s name. ‘Adolf Hitler,’ you said. Who might Adolf Hitler be?”

  I shook my head.

  “And how about Auschwitz? What’s that? A place, a person, a brand of beer?”

  I shrugged. “You tell me.”

  The look of sadness in Hubbard’s eyes intensified.

  “That’s not a good answer, Mikey,” he said. “That’s a terrible answer. We want you to help us. We want you to tell us what you know. That’s what this is about. It’s not about you trying to be smart.”

  “And what we want to know,” Brown’s harsher voice added from the end of the table, “is just who in tarnation you really are.”

  My heart had started to hammer heavily in my chest. “But you know who I am. I’m Michael Young. You know that.”

  “Do we know that, Mikey?” Hubbard’s voice was speculative, like that of an academic reflecting on the meaning of meaning. “Do we really? We know that you look like Michael Young, but we know that you sure as shooting don’t sound like him. We know that you sure as shooting don’t behave like him. So can we know, you know? Really know?”

  “Why don’t you take my fingerprints? That should satisfy you.”

  “We did that already,” said Hubbard.

  “And?”

  “You must know the answer to that,” Hubbard said gently, “or you wouldn’t have raised the issue in the first place, now would you?”

  “So, what then? You think I’ve had a skin graft? You think I’m some sort of clone? What?”

  Hubbard gave no answer, but opened a small notebook and went carefully through the pages.

  “How d’you make out with Professor Taylor?” he asked.

  “Make out with him? I don’t know what you mean. Like you, he asked me a lot of questions. He told me not to worry. He told me I should have some tests.”

  “Why do you th
ink Professor Taylor is over here?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “An Englishman in America, that’s a strange thing. What do you figure he’s doing here?”

  I thought about this for a while.

  “He’s a defector?” I suggested. “A European dissident, something like that?”

  “A defector.” Hubbard tried the word out. “And how about you? You a European defector too?”

  “I’m not European.”

  “You talk like a European, Mikey. Your parents are European.”

  I lowered my head in exasperation. “What are you suggesting? That I’m a spy?”

  “You tell us.”

  I looked at them both in astonishment. “Are you serious? I mean, what kind of spy would go to all the trouble of disguising himself perfectly as an all-American student, right down to the fingerprints, and then go around the place talking loudly in an English accent?”

  “Maybe the kind of spy who doesn’t know he’s a spy,” said Brown.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” said Hubbard, frowning slightly at Brown.

  “Look,” I said. “If you’ve spoken to Steve and you’ve spoken to Professor Taylor and to Dr. Ballinger and to anyone else, you’ll know that I banged my head on a wall last night and that I haven’t been the same since. That’s all there is to it. Bit of memory loss, speech gone funny. It’s weird, but that’s all it is. Weird.”

  “Then how come, Mikey,” said Hubbard. “How come these names Hitler and Auschwitz and Pölzl and Brunau-am-Inn?”

  “I must have heard them somewhere. In my subconscious. And for some reason the bang on the head brought them to the surface of my mind. I mean, what’s so bloody important about them? They don’t mean anything, do they? They aren’t of any significance. No one else seems to have heard of them.”

  “That’s right, Mikey. Outside of this room, I shouldn’t think there’s more than twelve people in the whole United States of America who ever heard those names in all their lives. I had never heard them myself until you mentioned them to Steve in the courtyard of that cozy little bar off Witherspoon Street this afternoon. But you know, when we played the recording back to some friends of ours in Wash­ington they damn near pooped their pants. Can you believe that? Damn near pooped their hundred-dollar pants.”

  “But why?” I ran my fingers through my hair in bewilderment. “I don’t understand why the names should mean anything at all.”

  Hubbard pricked his ears up at the sound of a car in the driveway. “Excuse me, Mike. I’ll be right back,” he said, rising. He left the room with a nod to Brown, closing the door behind him, and a few moments later I heard the front door open and the low murmur of voices in the hallway.

  Alone with Brown, who seemed disinclined to talk, I tried to work out what was going on.

  Professor Taylor. It must have something to do with him. If Europe and the United States were in a state of Cold War, and from every­thing I had learned that night they appeared to be, then Taylor might well be some kind of pro-American dissident. A sort of Solzhenitsyn or Gordievsky equivalent who had at some time managed to defect to the United States. Maybe from time to time he fed tidbits to the CIA or whichever organization it was that Hubbard and Brown worked for. Maybe Taylor had heard about this strange undergradu­ate student who had suddenly started talking like an Englishman and maybe he felt suspicious enough, after interviewing him personally, to recommend to his masters in Washington that this Michael Young be monitored and followed up.

  Yet how was it possible that they should be interested in the name Hitler? I placed my hands on my head and pushed downwards as if to force my brain to work. It made no sense at all.

  “Headache?” said Brown sympathetically.

  “Sort of,” I said looking up. “The kind that comes with complete confusion.”

  “All you gotta do is say everything you know. Leave it to us to be confused . . . heck, that’s our job.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, surprised by the friendliness in his voice. “I had sort of formed the opinion that you were Mr. Nasty.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, the old interviewing technique. Nice Cop, Nasty Cop. I got it into my head that you were the nasty one.”

  Brown smiled bashfully. “Well heckamighty, son,” he said in his cartoon Western accent, “I kinda hoped we were both nice.”

  The door to the dining room opened and Hubbard appeared. “Some people to see you,” he said, stepping back from the doorway.

  A middle-aged woman stood there for a moment, blinking in the light, and then rushed forward, arms outstretched.

  “Mikey! Oh Mikey, darling!”

  I stared openmouthed. “Mother?”

  She ran towards me, bracelets clacking. “Honey, we’ve been wor­ried sick ever since we heard. Why didn’t you call?”

  My arms full of her, her soft powdered cheeks against mine, I let her complete the long embrace. Her hair was dyed a bright gold, and the scent of her was alien in its richness and deep fruited perfume, but it was my mother all right. No question about that. I looked up over her shoulder and saw a man limp slowly into the room.

  “Christ,” I whispered. “Father, is that you?”

  The last time I had seen my father I had been ten years old. He had not been bald or frail or stooping. He had been strong and up­right and handsome and everything a dead father remains for all time in the memory of a child.

  He looked at me briefly. “Hello, son,” he said, and then turned to Hubbard with a nod.

  “You’re sure, sir?” said Hubbard. “Absolutely sure?”

  “You think I don’t know my own boy?”

  “Of course it’s Mike,” said my mother, stroking my hair. “What happened, honey? They said you were in an accident. Why didn’t you call?”

  Their accents sounded to me wholly American. I didn’t want to speak and frighten them with my own British voice. I searched for words that would sound neutral in accent. Words without too many r’s or a’s in them.

  “My head,” I said, in a low whisper. “Bump.”

  “Oh my poor baby! Did you see a doctor?”

  I nodded bravely.

  “Mr. Hubbard,” my father was saying. “Maybe you would now be kind enough to explain to me why you thought this might not be my son and why we were conveyed in the middle of the night, by government car, to a house like this, a house which has all the appearance to me of a . . .”

  “Why don’t we all sit down around the table and discuss this?” said Hubbard, and I thought I detected a hint of deference in his voice.

  My mother was gazing tenderly into my eyes and still stroking my head, perhaps feeling for the bump.

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, in the best American I could manage. Mom seemed more likely than Mother, Mum or Mummy. She smiled and shushed, leading me to the table like an ancient invalid.

  Brown meanwhile had returned from the adjoining kitchen with a larger coffeepot and a big round plate of biscuits.

  My father was wearing a severe frown and looked about him with mistrust. “I assume, gentlemen,” he said, “that there are listening devices planted in this room? I may well be retired from the services now, but you will know from my record that I have connections in Washington. In your department in Washington, Mr. Hubbard. I am happy to place on your covert tape my extreme displeasure at the outrageous way you are treating me and my family. What you think my son could have to offer you is a matter entirely beyond my comprehension.”

  “We would like to come to that, Colonel Young,” said Hubbard, licking his lips nervously.

  Colonel Young . . . I looked at my father again. I thought I had discerned a suggestion of Britishness in his voice, but no more than that hint of English that lingered till the end in the voices of Cary Grant
and Ray Milland, the sort of fruity drawl that also existed in the tones of grand, natural born New Englanders. He looked ill and old and I didn’t think I would have known him from the photo­graphs I had grown up with in my mother’s house in Hampshire or from the eight millimeter footage that she ran at Christmases or when she felt low and unloved.

  “First off,” Hubbard continued. “I would like to ask you, sir, and you, ma’am, if the words ‘Brunau’ or ‘Pölzl’ or ‘Hitler’ or ‘Ausch­witz’ have any meaning for you?”

  My father cocked an eye briefly at the ceiling. “None whatever,” he said with decision. “Mary?”

  My mother shook her head apologetically.

  Hubbard tried again. “I would like you to think very hard, Colonel. When you were still in England, perhaps? Maybe you heard the names there? Or saw them written down? This is how they are spelled.”

  He opened his notebook and passed it over to my father who looked at the words carefully.

  “The ending ‘au’ is common enough in Southern German and Austrian place names,” he said, with a thoughtful, Holmesian dip of the head. “Thalgau, Thurgau, Passau and so on. I am not familiar with Brunau, however. ‘Hitler’ means absolutely nothing. Nor does ‘Pölzl,’ I fear. ‘Auschwitz’ could be northeastern German, Polish even. Mary?” He pushed the notebook past me and towards my mother. I noticed that my father had pronounced the German words flawlessly.

  My mother stared at the words as if willing them to mean some­thing for my sake. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never saw these words before in my life.”

  Hubbard took back the notebook and sighed.

  “You are aware, no doubt,” said my father, “that when I sought asylum here in 1958 I was thoroughly investigated. My debriefing took more than a year and a half. Since that time my work for the American government has earned me the highest commendations. I hope you are not now questioning my loyalty?”

  “No, sir,” said Hubbard, a pleading note in his voice. “Not at all. I assure you, not at all. Please believe that.”

  “Well then, perhaps you would now be finally kind enough to tell me what this is all about?”