Hugo Hamilton - Disguise

‘They kept their mouths shut, mostly,’ Mara says. ‘They stared ahead and ignored it. Except for one man, who once said her attitude was disgraceful and that she should stay quiet. So she barked back at him and asked him what he would answer to all those questions. “You answer them,” she said. After they got off, another woman quietly came up to her and, without saying anything, shook her hand. Thorsten kept asking the same questions every day going to school, because he was fascinated by the sight of the soldiers and the dogs and the barbed wire and the lookout towers. But even more than that, he was obsessed with the strange answers that his mother gave. Eventually, an official came to the house one day and told her she was no longer permitted to travel on the S-Bahn. And it was not long after that that only special people could travel that close to the Wall.’

With the large doors open on both sides of the building, the farm almost looks operational again, as though the cattle are merely out in the fields and will soon be returning for the night. The sunlight slopes into these dusty, forsaken halls now, along the loam floor and through the empty pens, casting shadows. The air is full of sound memories, hooves, chains, clanging buckets, the lowing of cows and the whistling farmhands. The reimagined smells of dung and straw. Old leather straps and blinkers and cobwebbed harnesses still hang on the walls. At the centre of the doorway onto the fields, a swing has been erected on long ropes.

‘How do you think Daniel will manage in Africa?’ Gregor wonders.

‘He’ll be fine,’ Mara says. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘As long as they get all their shots.’

‘He’s got Juli with him,’ Mara says. ‘And she’s a tough one.’

‘Like a bodyguard,’ Martin says. ‘I don’t think Putin has a better security team around himself than that.’

Mara steps towards the swing and sits in the wooden seat. Martin stands behind her, ready to push. They fall into the roles of children without giving it a thought.

‘Remember that rash he got once,’ Martin says.

‘What rash?’ Gregor asks.

‘He got this terrible rash behind the knees,’ Mara explains. ‘Lasted for about a year. We took him to all kinds of specialists.’

‘Leprosy,’ Martin says.

‘I actually thought it had something to do with the hornet sting,’ Mara says. ‘Had to get him a dozen different ointments. We even tried acupuncture. In the end it just disappeared again. Complete mystery.’

Gregor becomes aware of how much has been lost by his former absence. He would like to claim back some of those details, but they don’t belong to him. She has used the word ‘we’ to incorporate Martin into those intimate family episodes, because he was there to help at the time when Gregor was abroad. Looking out into the fields at the stubble and the blonde rectangles of straw still waiting to be picked up and brought in for storage, he feels what is missing.

‘His outburst this morning,’ Gregor says. ‘There’s something he wants to get off his chest.’

‘He hasn’t mentioned anything to me,’ Mara says.

‘He’s never really forgiven me,’ Gregor says.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I feel it. There’s something on his mind,’ Gregor says.

‘You haven’t really talked much recently, have you?’

‘I thought we’d sorted everything out,’ Gregor says. ‘But there’s something wrong. I know he still blames me. I can feel it coming. From her, from Juli as much as from Daniel.’

‘He needs to go away and clear his head,’ Martin says.

‘Maybe Africa will change him.’

‘He’s just like you,’ Martin says. ‘He has to travel and discover himself. You’ll see. He’ll come back in a year’s time and the two of you will have so much to talk about.’

‘Maybe it’s better if he gets it off his chest before he leaves,’ Mara says.

She settles into the seat and begins to swing in and out. With the help of Martin, she sails into the open air. Her dress rises up in the breeze and she appears to go right out into the landscape with her bare legs pointing towards the lake. The ropes are very long, four metres at least up to the frame of the doorway, and she swings like a young girl defying all instincts for safety, feeling the narcotic, funfair rush inside her stomach. Out into the blinding sunlight and right back into the shade of the farm building, speeding back and forth through the entrance full of hovering dust and flies. Higher and higher with her eyes closed, as though she wants to continue going all the way up to the sun. Leaning back with the ropes in her hands and her feet stretched out in order to gain the maximum height. Returning with her hair going forward and knees folded so as to keep going, almost up as far as the heavy wooden beams crossing under the roof.

There was a frightening moment soon after Gregor left. Coming back from shopping one day, Mara parked across the street from the apartment. She let Daniel out and went around for the groceries, handed him one of the bags and before she had time to remind him not to cross, he disappeared. She heard the screaming tyres. Saw the car skidding. Daniel shivering and clutching the bag with both hands up to his chin, still waiting for the impact, almost smiling with fear for a split second. She smelled the burning rubber and ran out to grab him in a panic, even though she had all the time in the world now. The car had come to a stop at a slight angle. The driver sat with his hands on the steering wheel, unable to move, unable to speak.

She’s gone over these details a thousand times, trying to put them behind her. The dry mouth, speechless aftershock. Measuring and remeasuring the short distance between luck and disaster. The compound range of confusing emotions springing up between rage and passivity. The urge to kill the driver. Followed by an equal wave of guilt and compassion as he stepped out of the car and leaned over to be sick. The spectators raising their heads over the parked cars in judgement, converting the scene into a parable for their own children. And the sudden awareness of her own vulnerability. That cold feeling around the shoulders. She had dropped the keys out of her hand. Some of the groceries rolled under the car. Afterwards she discovered that somebody had made off with her purse, while she stood in the middle of the street lifting Daniel up in her arms and turned, out of sheer habit, to say something to Gregor, even though he was no longer there.

‘I thought you were watching him,’ she wanted to say, though she cannot remember if this was actually said out loud or only inside her own head.

Back in the safety of the apartment, she kneeled down and shook Daniel by the shoulders. Clenched her fist, telling him never to do this to her again. Then she cried and hugged him, saying: ‘I’m sorry, Mama didn’t mean to be cross with you.’

She wrote to Gregor and told him about that incident. They were in contact all the time, by letters and by occasional phone calls from Toronto. She would pass the phone to Daniel and allow him to speak to his father for a few precious moments, but there was nothing much to say at that remove. Gregor remarked on how tall the buildings were. How cold it was in the winter. But it was making no sense to Daniel that his father was away and not coming back soon. Gregor sent gifts for them on their birthdays. Mara assured him that Daniel was very happy and well taken care of. He spent time with her sisters, and Martin was also being very good to him, often inviting him to stay overnight with his family.

Daniel sometimes woke up at night, dreaming of hornets. She had to take him into her bed to calm him down, tell him the windows were all shut and there was no possible way that a hornet could enter the house. He heard buzzing. He imagined them hiding behind wardrobes and nesting in the curtains. Brightly coloured creatures with sickle blades ready to attack as soon as he went to sleep.