Hugo Hamilton - Disguise

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.

It was so easy for Mara to descend into bitterness. She discovered a cynicism creeping into her words. ‘Next thing you’ll be telling me that you’re Irish,’ she said. But that was not her style and she punished herself for saying it. Hard as it was, she would have to become more encouraging and stop Daniel from being infected by the negative atmosphere. She was determined not to let anyone see her sadness. Already, their friends were discussing the news, talking about the doubt over Gregor’s origins. Martin spoke to him about it and said he didn’t want to come between him and Mara, but he felt it was his duty as a friend to warn him.

‘You would tell me if I was being an asshole, Gregor, wouldn’t you?’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look,’ Martin said, ‘I want to tell you something. I have always had a suspicion that my mother was raped by my father. He was in the Russian Army and I have a feeling that at least it was not entirely voluntary on her part, that she went along with him because there was no alternative at the end of the war. I can remember him bringing us to Berlin once when I was small and she didn’t want to go. He insisted and when we came to the city to go shopping, she was crying all the time. Didn’t even want to get off the train, I remember. She’s never been back to Berlin since, even though we lived only an hour and a half away on the train. I asked her about all that much later, but she would never tell me anything. Maybe she knew it would turn me against my father.’

‘What are you telling me this for?’

‘I still have that suspicion,’ Martin said.

‘And so?’

‘Suspicion is all I have,’ Martin said. ‘What can I do about it? I can prove nothing. So I just have to live with it.’

Gregor waited for him to make his point, the advice of a best friend.

‘You can’t live your life on the basis of some hunch,’ Martin said, ‘that’s all I’m saying.’

But none of this had any impact on Gregor, other than to send him deeper into himself, making him even more of an outsider even within his own circle. Mara decided instead to try and pull him back. Rather than holding on like one of those Velcro women that musicians spoke about, she laid on the support. She went to see his new band playing, waited for him afterwards, in an empty hall, with the crew carrying the equipment out and a door banging in the background. With the roadies moving in and out behind them, she put her arms around him and told him that she loved him.

‘And there’s nothing I can do about that,’ she said.

At moments when they were discussing things at home, Daniel often stood in the doorway in his pyjamas, saying he could not sleep, so they had to snap out of their crisis and behave as though nothing was happening. She would turn to the boy with excessive kindness. He would tell a bedtime story with such enthusiasm that even a fairy tale sounded contrived.

And while Gregor put Daniel to sleep on that night, she sprang out of that dreamy, devolved mood which had slipped like a virus into her blood and stood up from the black-and-white bedroom chair. She got dressed and went into the kitchen to prepare the dinner. A discipline returned to her eyes. He had made the right decision. She was afraid of being alone, but she knew that with Gregor in the apartment, she was already alone.

‘You’re absolutely right, Gregor,’ she said when he came into the kitchen some time after. ‘It’s good for you to go to Toronto.’

Gregor was surprised by her sudden conversion, and waited for the twist. He expected her to reveal some new plan or admission that she had always wanted him to go away. She blessed his decision with a clenched fist.

She had prepared a beautiful meal. The table had already been laid with great style, because she didn’t want the parting to be like an escape or a banishment. But just as she was about to serve, placing small sprigs of parsley on the fish and readjusting the slice of lemon, the whole thing turned into a disaster. Reaching out to hand him two water glasses from the cupboard, one of them fell, shattering into a thousand beads all over the counter.

‘Jesus, I’m so sorry,’ she said, holding her hands over her mouth. ‘Oh God. How stupid of me.’

She tried to remove the glass from the plates, but there were too many tiny splinters unseen to the eye, hidden in the beautiful black-bean sauce she had made to go with the fish. Glittering diamonds mixed in with the rice.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it, Mara.’

‘I’m so fucking stupid,’ she kept saying. ‘God.’

‘No. Look,’ he said, ‘we can go out instead.’

‘I’ve ruined everything now.’

He cleared the plates away, dumping the lethal food into the bin, hoovering across the counter, while she got the woman next door to look after Daniel for the evening. The normal arrangement was that if they arrived home before twelve, they would drop in and pick him up. Gregor was such an expert at lifting the boy out of the bed with the blanket still around him. He was able to carry him out onto the landing and in through the hallway of their own apartment, then lay him down in his own bed without ever waking him up. He would slip his hand under Daniel’s neck, holding up his head, not allowing his arms to fall down. While Mara rushed ahead opening doors, he held his head to ensure that it was not exposed to the draught, sheltering his eyes from the light.

They chose a restaurant in another part of the city, a place where they had never been before. The disaster of the splintering glass changed to an accidental celebration. Mara spoke with renewed enthusiasm. And this time, her anger was beginning to turn into something else, into a kind of desperate loyalty to the story she once believed. If she could no longer hold on to the person she had loved, then she could at least carry on believing his story, as though the biography had always amounted to more than the person to whom it belonged.

‘I want to believe that you’re Jewish,’ she said. ‘While you’re away in Toronto, I’m going to go and meet your mother again. I’m going to go through the whole thing with her and get to the truth. If she’s hiding something, then I’ll find out.’