Hugo Hamilton - Disguise

‘You seem like a respectable lad,’ the man said. ‘Why are you sleeping rough like this?’

Gregor told him that he was looking for work. The man smiled and asked more questions. Where was he from? Why were his parents not helping him out? Gregor told him that he was on his own now and had no parents. So the man offered to help him get on his feet in London. He said he could give him a place to stay until he got settled.

‘Look, I’ve got two sons of my own, travelling off somewhere in Australia at the moment. I’d hate to think of them lying around in railway stations.’

Gregor told him he was fine. But then he took up the offer when the man insisted. He had a politeness in his voice which Gregor felt he could trust. So he got into the man’s car, a Jaguar, Gregor remembers, and they drove to the suburbs where he lived in a large detached house, with well-kept gardens and Alsatian dogs patrolling the grounds. There was something welcoming about this wealth and he gave in to the luxury for once.

It was only when the man served him a meal in the middle of the night that Gregor realised how hungry he was and how fed up he was of toast and jam. He was given beer and the man drank whisky. Gregor was soon drunk and elated. He told some of the stories about Scotland, about the fly in the cornflakes.

‘I do nae think he ate any of it,’ he said, and the man laughed heartily.

Then everything went wrong. Gregor was tired, knocked out by the rush of luxury and kindness. It was warm in the house and he fell asleep in the chair. Maybe it was the feeling of being at home. He never suspected anything until he woke up lying on a bed, with most of his clothes off, down to his underpants. The whole thing was a trick. The man was on the bed beside him in his silk dressing gown, stroking Gregor’s chest.

‘Fuck off,’ Gregor shouted, pulling away. In his German accent, it was comical, not even remotely hostile.

‘Relax,’ the man said, smiling. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about. You’re a tired little monkey, I’m going to put you to bed now.’

Gregor got into bed, but then he found the man getting in beside him.

‘I’m not like that,’ Gregor said.

‘Nonsense,’ the man said. ‘Every boy is like that, only you have been denying it.’

The man was right. Gregor had had some encounters with other boys at school, on long weekends in the country. They sometimes ganged up to pull each other’s trousers down. And once or twice it led to things that would have counted as homosexual, though it was only experimental. A test to see which direction was right for him.

The man must have sensed hesitation. He slid his hand down to his groin and Gregor leaped away from the bed, though he didn’t get far because the man came after him and forced him back on the bed, face down, pulling off his underpants. The politeness was gone. Gregor could feel his erect penis and his balls behind him, like a soft, wiry brush or cleaning utensil from the kitchen, stroking across his buttocks.

‘My lovely German boy,’ the man said.

‘Fuck off,’ Gregor shouted. ‘I’m Jewish.’

The man stalled and backed off, allowing Gregor room enough to move away at last and pull up his underpants again. He stood there with the words echoing inside his head. He was transformed by them, untouchable, unafraid.

‘You’re lying,’ the man said. ‘You’re not even circumcised. Look.’

Gregor found himself having to back it up. He explained that he was an orphan. He told the story of how he had been brought from the East as a refugee. He explained that no Jewish boys would have been circumcised during the war. It would have meant certain death.

That calmed the situation down. Gregor continued his story, as much as he knew of it. And where the facts failed him, he began to make it up. He said he had no parents at all now, that his adoptive parents were dead. For a moment he wondered if it was a mistake to portray himself as a victim, inviting people to prey on him. Would it not have been better to say that he was a prize-winning boxer, to make up a story of how violent he could be? But he had said the right thing after all.

‘I thought you knew,’ the man said. ‘I thought that’s why you came here with me.’

‘No,’ Gregor said.

‘Then you’re very naive,’ the man said.

It was true. Gregor had ignored all the questions he should have asked himself. He had been preparing himself for living on wild mushrooms and dealing with wild animals. He was ready to rough it in the wild and knew how to trap a rabbit without weapons. Knew how to shoot and how to use a knife. But here in the city of London, he was a lost child. Alone, at the mercy of other people.

Gregor felt guilty and stupid to allow himself into this situation.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

And then the man became very polite again. He offered to take him back to the station. They got dressed and the night unravelled in the opposite direction again, back into the plush Jaguar with the wooden dashboard, back along the same route into the city. At Victoria Station, he offered Gregor money. Gregor refused, but he forced a few notes into his rucksack. Then he was gone again.

He was embarrassed using the money, but he continued travelling, this time around the west coast of Ireland. When the money ran out again, he made his way back to Germany and worked for a while in a car plant near Frankfurt. After six months he was off again travelling around Greece. Each time the money ran out he went back to Germany to work in one of the cities again, anywhere but Nuremberg, until he had accumulated enough to travel again. He was in Turkey when the Berlin Wall went up. He was back in Munich when the Cuban Missile Crisis blew up. Drifting back and forth for a number of years like this, meeting people, in and out of relationships, discovering as many countries as possible including Morocco and Spain, until he eventually decided to make his way up to Berlin in the late summer of 1967.

He had heard that things were happening up there and on the train to Berlin he met some young people in the same carriage who were excited about going there also. He drank beer with them and they gave him an address where he could stay in the city. Tell them you’re a friend of Lutz von Blessing Doehm, they told him. He thought it was a joke, but then he arrived at the apartment and was given a place to stay on the floor of a commune that later became quite famous because the apartment was owned by a well-known writer. A young man who introduced himself as Fritz came down the stairs to tell him he could stay as long as he liked. There was music playing all day and all night. It was hard to sleep. Everybody was stoned. He never met anyone called Lutz. Instead, he met Martin who had also run away from home under a cloud of anger and resentment.

‘I’m not German really,’ Gregor told him. ‘I’m Jewish, from Poland originally.’

‘Welcome to the club,’ Martin answered. ‘I’m half-Russian myself. My father was an officer in the Russian Army.’

Berlin was the place for everyone to begin afresh.

He feels at home here, in this orchard. Is there some distant memory of starting his life in a place like this? Or does everyone get that when they pick apples on a warm day when the summer has spilled over into extra time? That feeling of being connected to the earth in an unbroken chain going all the way back in time, doing what people have done here in this same place for hundreds of years.

The trees are old. Planted long before the war. They must have seen a few things, when this landscape was a battle zone and the farm became a last line of defence. The Russians in the nearby woods and the Germans holding out in the farmhouses. The trees would have witnessed the barn at the far end burning down with the young horses inside. They would have heard their screams. They say the apples from these trees have a unique flavour. Some of the trees are so gnarled that it’s a wonder how they can still deliver the sap to all those distant branches. They are too old to be pruned. And this year has been so dry, the branches are so frail and laden down with fruit that they crack at the touch. Even with no wind, the larger beams sometimes break off overnight.