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

On the second night, Herr Stiegler came back to the office because he had forgotten something important. She heard him downstairs. He was very polite and came up to her room, just to make sure that she didn’t get a fright, hearing somebody in the office below. It was only him, he assured her. When he tried the handle of the door and found that she kept it locked at night, he laughed and said she had nothing to fear. But even then she didn’t open the door, because it wasn’t right to let a man into her room at night.

Herr Stiegler went downstairs to look for what he needed. And afterwards he came back up once more to speak to her again through the door. He said he had forgotten to mention it before but that he had brought something for her, just something small, a book of poetry. It was Stefan George. She said thank you very much, it was very kind of him, but that she had already gone to bed and she hoped she wasn’t being rude by waiting for it until the morning in the office. So then Herr Stiegler said he just quickly wanted to point out a line or two in the book.

‘My wife is downstairs,’ he said. ‘I better not keep her waiting.’

‘She’s here, in Venlo?’

‘Of course,’ Herr Stiegler said.

So then she had to get dressed quickly and open the door. And before she knew it he was in the room, reading out one of the poems and telling her what it meant. She was nervous and didn’t like the way he talked about the poetry. He was breathless. She was afraid that Frau Stiegler would suddenly come upstairs and there would be trouble.

‘I must ask you to leave now,’ she insisted, but he just smiled at her and asked what she was so afraid of.

‘Come on,’ he said. He put the book down and stepped towards her. She could smell the cognac on his breath as he put his hands straight on her waist. She tried to push him away. She tried to remind him that his wife was downstairs waiting.

‘Frau Stiegler …,’ she kept saying, but that didn’t stop him.

‘Come on, Fraülein Kaiser, don’t make such a big fuss,’ he said. And then she was afraid because she knew what was coming but she couldn’t stop it.

I can see the branches dancing across the street light outside. I can see them swinging from side to side along the wall in my room. I can hear my mother clacking downstairs on the typewriter, putting everything down on paper for later. She can’t stop what’s happening, but she can write it down instead, how she struggled to keep Herr Stiegler away from her. All she could think of doing was to call through the open door, down along the empty corridor.

‘Frau Stiegler,’ she shouted. ‘Upstairs.’

But that made no difference, because she realised at last that his wife was not there at all. He had come alone. The whole building was empty and there was nobody she could call for help. Herr Stiegler had planned it. Maybe he had even planned the whole office expansion for this. She said she was an honest woman. She threatened that she would go to the police, the Gestapo, but he didn’t seem to care. Nothing would stop him, not even when she started screaming and she could hear the echo of her own voice going through the whole building. There was nobody to hear it. Then he just slapped her across the face, twice, very hard, for making such a big pantomime out of it all. Her face was stinging and she got the salty taste of blood.

‘You have to be able to make a sacrifice,’ he said.

And that was the worst thing of all, that he accused her of not being able to make a sacrifice. So then she started crying helplessly, because she knew that he was much stronger and that she was trapped now and could not stop him doing what he wanted. There was nothing more that she could do to resist. She repeated the silent negative in her head again and again until it was over. Then Herr Stiegler said she should smile.

‘Give me a little smile,’ he kept saying afterwards, but she couldn’t. And then he forced her to smile. He ordered her to smile. He put his fingers up to her mouth and pushed her lips apart so that she had to show her teeth.

There was lots of ice on the road and it was still dark as we went down to Mass. The street lights were still on and I could see a shine on the road where the ice was slippery. My mother told us to hold her hand, Franz on one side and me on the other. And when we were crossing the street, my mother suddenly pulled her hand away and fell forward. I heard her falling and I heard a click when her mouth hit the ground. Franz fell, too, at the same time and he was sitting down in the street. I tried to help my mother to get up, but she stayed there on her knees, looking around as if she didn’t know where she was, as if she had just woken up in Ireland for the first time. She said nothing. She was looking for something, feeling the ground with her hand in the dark as if she was blind. She took out a small white handkerchief that she sometimes wipes my face with at the last minute before going into the church. She started picking things up and putting them into the handkerchief.

‘Mutti, are you all right?’ Franz asked, because he was the only person who could speak. My mother nodded and put her hand on his head. But when she stood up I could see that there was blood in her mouth. I could see that she had no front teeth and no smile. She put her hand over her mouth and we started walking again, very slowly this time. And when we got to the church we didn’t go to Mass at all. We just blessed ourselves and said a quick prayer and then a man came to take us home in his car. All the way home the car was skidding over to the side and the man said it was lucky there were no other cars on the road.

My mother smiles at me with her new teeth and says it’s all forgotten now. Everything can be repaired, she says, except your memory. A lot worse happened to other people, things we should not forget. The Germans broke their teeth, she said. But you can’t be thinking about things not happening. You can be careful to make sure it never happens again, but you can’t be still trying to stop things after they’ve happened. She laughs and smiles again, with her eyes, too, this time. And then she starts singing the song about the man kissing the dog.

My father took over the Kinderzimmer . That’s the room we play in and keep our toys in, the room most people call the dining room. It’s the room with the mashed potato still on the ceiling. Now my father says he’s going to start a new factory and he needs a place where he can make things. First of all he built a workbench in one corner that’s so heavy it can never be moved again. It has a vice at one end and lots of space underneath for spare pieces of wood that might be needed later. Then he made a press on the wall where he could hang up lots of tools like chisels and a saw and a wooden mallet. And before you start buying anything like wood or glue or screws, before you even start measuring and sawing, you have to have an idea. You have to draw a plan.

My father has great ideas for things that are badly needed in Ireland, like Wägelchen . They have lots of them in Germany, my mother says, but none in Ireland. So he drew a picture of one that looked just like a box with lots of measurements. He can see it in his head. He can see exactly what it will look like when it’s finished, a German boxcar with stickers of forests and mountains and fairy tales stuck on to the sides. He calls it the prototype and we’re allowed to watch while he works every evening after he comes home.

‘Is it for us?’ Maria asks.

‘Yes and no.’

‘Is it for Ireland?’

‘Yes and no.’

He keeps frowning as he works. He has to concentrate hard and you can see the tip of his tongue coming out the side of his mouth. He says you have to measure everything twice because you can only cut once. Then you see the sawdust falling on the floor like snow. You see wooden curls falling like blond hair. There are some thin, cut-off pieces of wood, too, that look like swords for us to fight with. Sometimes you can hear him whistling a tune as he works every night until it’s very late. Even long after we go to bed you can still hear the sound of the hand-drill squeaking and sometimes the mallet banging, until my mother goes into the Kinderzimmer to put her arm around him and tell him the world wasn’t made in one day either and there’s plenty of time tomorrow. But he still wants to finish one more little thing and after that it’s quiet again with everyone asleep.