I found the place where my mother spent the last days of the war, the garrison she was transferred to on the edge of a small town in Bohemia. Nothing had changed much in the intervening years, only that the garrison was now occupied by the Russian military, a large red star over the gates. I took some photographs from the outside, remembering how my mother described the last days of the war, trapped in the garrison, with the Russians advancing by the minute. The commanding officer has got to wait for the phone call from Berlin to say the war is over. They finally get on the trucks, they bring the Czech prisoners with them. The Czech resistance fighters have agreed to escort the Germans back to the border at Eger, where the handover will take place.
I took photographs of the roads.
The trucks merge into the stream of people on the move. They pass by an ambulance overturned, some bodies lying around. The trucks lurch forward. The roads are slow. Behind them, the Russian armoured cars are catching up, no more than a few hundred metres away. The Russians doing their best to reach the fleeing German trucks, crossing through the fields to cut them off. The ground is holding everyone in place, everything is delayed by the suction of the earth. The fields are full of mud. It has been raining heavily in the past month. Mud on wheels, mud on boots, mud splashed up in faces. Everyone travelling at the speed of mud. They seem to be stuck in this ratio, unable to move forward, the German trucks only slightly ahead, the Russian vehicles within sight, within shouting distance.
I took photographs of the place on the border where the Germans surrendered their weapons to the Czech soldiers in return for the freed hostages. The place where my mother saw a huge mound of helmets and discarded uniforms nobody wanted any more.
When I got to Berlin, it was hard to grasp all that change. The whole century seemed to have shrunk into a few short months – the war comes to an end, Berlin is divided into four zones, the Russians cut off their zone, they blockade the city, the Americans rescue the people of Berlin by flying in food relief, the Berlin Wall goes up, the world stands still, an artist sweeps the street, a revolutionary figure is shot down on the main shopping street riding his bike, the Lord Mayor of Berlin is kidnapped, David Bowie comes to live in the city and writes a song about a couple kissing by the wall, a film is made about a man flying over Berlin in the form of an angel, crowds gather to say they are the people, the Berlin Wall comes down, the earth begins to rotate again, everyone on the streets, the wedding of the world was in full swing.
The confetti, the bottles, people embracing, lovers on every street. Multiple spontaneous weddings breaking out all over the city. It was hard to get a place to stay. I found a room where people kept coming and going all night, celebrating without end, a couple mistook me for an empty bed. I found the café where Helen stole the spoon. I found the place on the grass where she sat eating a tub of quark. I went back to the place where we stood looking across the wall. Everything was already being dismantled like a stage set, ready for the next production. The city was being spray-painted, grand architecture covered in graffiti, history being brought up to date. I kept hearing the song about standing by the wall, the song about us being us. This was our wedding, our wall wedding.
It has become part of us now, that condition of arriving and not arriving. Going away. Returning home. Waving. Embracing. Looking back. Not looking back. That feeling of elsewhere inside us, the places we miss, the people we love, simultaneously close and far away on the other side of the world.
The Canadian immigration authorities granted our visa. The consultants at the hospital had given me the all clear, they wrote to the embassy on my behalf to assure them my condition was under control. All we needed to obtain our landed immigrant status was to set foot on Canadian soil. We had six months grace to complete the transfer. We didn’t tell people we were going. We didn’t want them to think we were running away. The plan was to slip out quietly, as though we were going on holidays, the way my mother came to Ireland on holidays and stayed for the rest of her life.
We had a small bit of money left from the sale of the house to get us started in Toronto. Helen went ahead with the children. I stayed in Dublin to get a few things wrapped up. I was no good at leaving. I started writing a book. My silence began to dissolve. I found a language to be heard in.
The book is about a woman making her way home at the end of the war. The roads are filled with refugees. The sun has come out and things quickly begin to dry. The chestnut trees are in full bloom. It’s spring. The war is over. Celebrations have broken out all over the world. Time has begun to move forward again. Cracked chunks of mud are falling from the wheel rims. Large sections of mud imprinted with the design of tyres, tracks left behind in endless directions. People brushing mud off their coats, rounded crusts of mud from shoes stamped on the ground. There is a cloud of dust over the crowded roads, a human stream, moving slowly, families, children walking, carts piled with possessions, vehicles being repaired and pushed to start again. Everybody is on the move. The woman has a long way to go, many things preventing her getting home. At one point, she stands on the roadside watching American army vehicles going by. The exhaust fumes make her cough and turn away. One of the trucks comes to a stop. The soldiers ask her where she is going. They help her into the back of the truck. They give her chocolate. She smiles and agrees to sing a song for them.
I write every day, sometimes late at night. I live on porridge. I sleep in my clothes.
Anything to get them back.
We can face what we lost. What we left behind. We can start again, make up a new story for ourselves. We can invent new ways of telling who we are and where we come from. We can speak our way home.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following people for their generous support and encouragement. Nicholas Pearson, Peter Straus, Petra Eggers, Cathy King, Christine Popp, Grusche Juncker, Karsten Roesel, Jordan Mulligan, Iain Hunt, Michelle Kane, Mary Byrne, Hans Christian Oeser, Joe Joyce, Kate MacDonagh, Terence Herron. Special thanks also to An Chomhairle Ealaíon and Aosdána for their ongoing support.
Also by Hugo Hamilton
Surrogate City
The Last Shot
The Love Test
Dublin Where the Palm Trees Grow
Headbanger
Sad Bastard
The Speckled People
The Sailor in the Wardrobe
Disguise
Hand in the Fire
Every Single Minute
PLAYS
The Speckled People (adaptation)
The Mariner
Every Single Minute (adaptation)
About the Author
Hugo Hamilton is the author of a bestselling memoir, The Speckled People, the story of his German-Irish childhood in Dublin, where he was prohibited by his revolutionary father from speaking English. He has written nine novels, two memoirs, a collection of short stories and three stage plays. His work has won international awards, including the French Prix Femina Étranger, the Italian premio Giuseppe Berto and a DAAD scholarship in Berlin. Hamilton is a mamber of Aosdána and lives in Dublin.
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