Hugo Hamilton - Disguise

He brought a map with him, and some money, but he forgot to bring any food, only water. Full of great enthusiasm he sped through villages, memorising the chain of names behind him. Cloud shadows raced alongside him on the road. He freewheeled into warm valleys filled with sunshine. Breezes pushed him up the hills and in his mind he invented bicycle sails, spinnakers that could send him speeding as fast as any of the cars that passed him along the way. Rain stopped him once or twice, soaking and stiffening his knees. But nothing could keep him from pressing forward on this mission. Up to a radius of around fifty kilometres he had cycled many times before, both on his own and with the cycling group. But this journey went far beyond that, leaving behind everything that was familiar to him, pushing on and on, repeating the words ‘find out’ in a flat musical cadence inside his head. The more he began to tire the more persistent the melody echoed.

‘ Find out, find out, find out, find out. ’

He found himself going in the wrong direction for a while and wasted an hour coming back to the road again. He blamed himself for not looking at the map more carefully. He had never learned to celebrate his own mistakes, only to be hard on himself, to regard everything with merciless self-scrutiny. His parents, his schooling, the history of his country had elevated fear of failure to extremes. He was taught to minimise exposure to error. Everything had to be mapped out. Consequences examined. For once he wanted to do something utterly reckless, to claim the right to make his own mistake, the freedom to be wrong.

Instead, he was worried about his own future, his ability to know what was right and wrong. He recalled some of the taunts of his father, phrases such as ‘waste of intelligence’ and ‘he’ll come to nothing’. Perhaps it was nothing more than physical hunger manifesting itself, lack of food translated into self-doubt.

He told himself that he would become a musician. It was the beginning of a journey of artistic endurance. He intended to be like his grandfather Emil, who was looked on as a waster in the family. He would claim the right to create something utterly useless. In fact, he would write that up on the wall of his bedroom as soon as he got home again. ‘ Do something useless today. ‘ Because music was failure turned into virtue. He would become a musician and travel around the world, free to play without regret.

It was evening by the time he reached the town where Uncle Max lived. He underestimated the journey, over a hundred kilometres. He was lost and confused by the rain. A car leaped out from the side of his watery vision and sent him skidding across the cobbles of a square. Losing balance, he hit the ground and saw the bike rushing away from him, with a terrible noise that caused more pain than his own injuries. The blood on his elbow meant nothing to him, only the sight of the bike lying on its side with the front wheel spinning.

A female motorist stepped out appealing her innocence, an instant outdoor courtroom in which he felt guilty, with nothing to say.

Gregor picked himself up, straightened up the bike, hastily checking that it still functioned. He was afraid the police would come and they would contact his parents, send him home again to face the ultimate failure, so he fled from the scene, limping, running, then jumping on his bike the best he could with the woman driver shouting behind him to come back.

He stopped by the wall of a graveyard to examine the bike more carefully. The journey was a disaster. This was the shape of his life from here on, running away and crashing. Until the woman in the car stopped again right beside him and got out, full of concern. He was afraid of sympathy. Afraid to give in to self-pity. But she asked to see the cut on his elbow.

‘Where are you from?’ she wanted to know. She wore a shiny black raincoat with a yellow collar and looked him straight in the eyes, understanding him in leaps, saying: ‘You’ve run away from home, haven’t you?’ She explained that she had a brother who ran away and never came back. Even changed his name.

She took him the rest of the way to where Uncle Max lived, with his bike in the boot of the car, stopping to get him some cake, which he ate silently in the passenger seat, staring ahead. He held the address, copied out neatly on a piece of blue paper. A shabby apartment block on the edge of the town, beside a foundry. The orange glow of the fires could be seen through the gate.

There was no answer from Uncle Max, but then one of the neighbours came out to bang on his door. His hearing wasn’t very good and he didn’t respond to the bell any more. When Uncle Max opened the door he looked tired, even shocked at this late visit. The neighbour told him not to play his TV so loud.

Gregor had always seen Uncle Max in a suit before. Now he was unshaven, wearing slippers. The apartment was a mess, with a window looking out over the yard of the foundry, where men worked with their shirts off in the heat, shouting to each other over the noise. Living alone in one room, with a sofa against one wall and a bed against another and a small TV on a table. Uncle Max turned the sound down and the football players continued to glide around the green pitch in silence. Shaking, turning away, looking at his watch, he hardly knew what to do with this visitor. He took out his handkerchief constantly to wipe his eye, stared out through the window at the glow from the foundry and then turned round like a condemned man.

‘I didn’t betray him,’ he said. Sitting down at the table, he placed his hands together in prayer almost. ‘I didn’t tell them anything. You must believe me, Gregor.’

The outburst was frightening. Gregor could not think of what to say in reply. He apologised for coming so late.

‘Thank you, for sending the record.’

Uncle Max could not recall any record.

‘The record with the music from Warsaw.’

Uncle Max turned away, examining his memory, his good eye rolling around, searching.

‘Would you like a drink?’ he finally asked.

He began fussing around, getting out a bottle of apple juice and pouring two glasses, then forgetting to hand out the drink.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

‘No thank you. I’ve eaten,’ Gregor said.

Uncle Max wanted to know how long the journey had taken and where he was going to stay the night. War language. Questions from a time of great distress and upheaval. Fear and pain which had slipped into his body, like a tropical disease entering through the soles of the feet.

It had been a mistake to disturb him. How could he ask any questions? He got up to leave again and said it was time he was heading back home.

But then Uncle Max became more rational. He looked at his watch and said Gregor could get a train, there was still time.

‘It’s been so long,’ Uncle Max said. ‘How is your mother?’

‘She’s fine,’ Gregor said.

‘I know why you’ve come,’ he said. He began to speak about Emil. He was rambling, saying things that Gregor already knew. Emil should have been an actor. ‘He would have made a great film star. He could make people think day was night.’

And then Uncle Max left one of his great silences.

‘Emil always went too far,’ he said. ‘With the women, with the Nazis. He wanted to see just how far his luck could hold out.’

Gregor had not asked a single question. He listened to Uncle Max weaving through his memory, spitting as he talked, then wiping his eye, then going in circles and starting from the beginning again.

‘We just wanted to survive, do you understand me? And have a good time. That’s what everybody wants, isn’t it? The place was full of women without men. They all wanted to hear Emil singing. They threw themselves at him. Emil brought gifts with him, meat and cognac. He was great on the black market. Nowadays, he would have become a successful industrialist or a property developer or maybe even an impresario, running a theatre company or a film company. Your grandfather would have been a millionaire if he had survived the war.’