Hugo Hamilton - The Speckled People - A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

My mother says I’m a dreamer and it’s true what they say about me in school. I’m the boy who lives a million miles away in outer space. She smiles at me with all her new teeth and says goodnight. But she’s the one who is dreaming and still hoping that some things didn’t happen at all, because she stays in the room after she’s switched off the light, just to stand at the window for a while before she goes downstairs again. The light from the street outside makes the branches of the trees blow across her face. It’s very quiet and she doesn’t say a word for a long time.

‘Nobody can force you to smile,’ she says.

‘What?’ I ask. But I know she’s not even talking to me, only to herself, as if she’s the last person left in the room.

‘They can make you show your teeth, but what good is that? Nobody can make you smile against your will.’

It’s hard to find out what she means sometimes, but I know that she’s talking about the bad film in Germany when the houses and trains were on fire. She’s standing there with the black and white branches moving across her face and across the wall behind her, as if she’s stuck on the screen, standing under the light waiting for somebody.

I know that she had lots of men who wanted to go out with her in Germany, but they were all ‘brown’, which meant that they were Nazis and she had to wait for something better. Ta Maria kept saying that it wasn’t a good time for men. I’m glad I’m not looking for a husband myself, she often said. I’d rather a soldier with a missing leg any day than one of those young house-devils in brown uniform. So my mother said no to them all. And then she always laughs and sings the song about the man kissing the dog.

Ich küsse Ihre Hand Madam, und denk es wär Ihr Mund.

Ich küsse Ihren Mund Madam, und denk es wär Ihr Hund.

I kiss your hand, Madame, and wish it was your mouth.

I kiss your mouth, Madame, and wish it was your hound.

So she waited and carried on working at the registry office in Kempen, until one day when she went on holiday with Marianne to the Eifel mountains and they both met Angelo. He was a good man. He was serious and had great humour. It was hard to know which of them he was more interested in at first, because he paid them both the same amount of attention. He had read the same poems by Rilke that they had also read. He was polite and eager not to leave either one of them out of the conversation. If he spent a morning walking through the fields with Marianne, then he would make up for it in the afternoon coming back with her younger sister. At night in their campbeds, they whispered about him as if he was the last good man left in Germany.

I know they were the best two weeks that my mother ever spent in her life, because she still likes to talk about them. And sometime later, she received a parcel from him with a scarf inside and a book. She was so excited about the gift that she went around and told everyone, even all the old people working in the registry office, until Marianne wrote to say that she too had got a scarf, and the same book. So then it was time to give way, my mother says, because that was Angelo and he married Marianne later on and never came home from the war.

And then she’s gone. The branches are still waving across the screen, but she’s downstairs again, clacking on the typewriter, putting down all the things that she can’t say to anyone, not even my father. Things you can’t say in a song, or a story, only on the typewriter for people to read later on sometime, on their own, without looking into your eyes.

She got a new job in Düsseldorf, working in the central employment office. She was glad to be in a city at last where things were happening and you could go to the theatre and meet new people. The office was run by an energetic man named Stiegler who arrived every morning smelling of aftershave, dressed in a lovely suit with the newspaper already read and folded under his arm. He wore good shoes and always had his hair combed. He greeted everyone by name and shook everyone’s hand, clasping it in both of his with great warmth. She was the youngest and the older women in the office said he was a good boss who liked a joke from time to time, unlike the crusty old boss that went before him. Herr Stiegler was human, they said, and not bad looking at all. He was modern, too, because even though he was married himself, that didn’t stop him flirting harmlessly now and again, just for the fun of it. And whenever it was somebody’s birthday, he made sure that it was remembered.

I know that she didn’t like the work very much, but Herr Stiegler praised her and said she was intelligent. He was good with compliments. And if she made a mistake in her typing, he would not shout or humiliate her in front of the other women, but instead just point to the misspelling so that she could quietly go and do it again. It was a matter of being obedient and efficient, however boring and senseless the work was. Even when she once made a big mistake and he should have been really angry, he just smiled and said quite honestly that it was pigs’ work. He expected more from her. And the way he said it was so inspiring that you could only vow to do better in future.

There was little contact with the other workers outside the office hours. They all went home to their families. So one evening, Herr Stiegler invited her out to the theatre to meet his wife. And Frau Stiegler was so kind and kept the conversation going afterwards over a glass of wine at a nearby cafe. They were cultured people, she discovered, and some days later, when Herr Stiegler noticed a book of Rilke poems in her bag at the office, he was able to discuss them with her and even went on to suggest that she should read a poet named Stefan George, a real German master. He said the greatest poets were also the greatest patriots.

In Düsseldorf she didn’t feel so much like an orphan any more. She was a grown-up now. At nineteen years of age, her other sisters envied her because she was able to do lots of new things, like going to concerts and watching the latest films that would take years to arrive in a small town like Kempen. She bought new clothes and changed her hair. The Olympia Roll didn’t quite suit her any more and she decided to wear it more casually, in natural curls that other women in the office said they would give their right eye for. Everyone admired her, even Herr Stiegler, though he didn’t comment openly. He waited until he found a big mistake in her typing and then he came right over to her desk and informed her that he was a little disappointed with her work.

‘But the hairstyle,’ he whispered, ‘that’s a big success.’

My mother says if we could all see into the future and tell what’s coming then it would be a wonderful world altogether. Lots of things wouldn’t happen at all. If you could tell the future then you could stop trains crashing into each other. She says the Germans are very good at finding out what’s going to happen and being ready for it because of all the things that have gone wrong before. But lots of things in this world still happen for the first time and sometimes people just don’t expect it.

Everybody must have known that there was another war coming. Herr Stiegler was away a good bit after that, setting up new recruitment programmes in various towns and cities in the region. It was all in the newspaper, too. The women in the office cut out a picture of Herr Stiegler, smiling and saluting along with leading figures in the Nazi party.

And then one day, he picked her out to set up an office in the town of Venlo, on the Dutch border. The whole thing had to be restructured and he would need a dynamic assistant. Out of all the women in the department, he chose her for this important job. She was very happy and a little embarrassed to think that the others in the office were giving her jealous glances. She got ready and took the train to Venlo and started working immediately with energy. There would be no more typing errors, she vowed. She got a small room at the top of the administration building where she would stay and it was nice to have the whole house to herself at night.