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

Then we all had to split up. My mother took Maria and Ita on the train to see Tante Elfriede in Rüsselsheim and, after that, all the way up to Salzburg to see Tante Marianne and to meet all the writers and artists who came to visit there. My father took Franz and me to see the Drachenfelz and he was happier than he had ever been in his life before because it was like being on his honeymoon. We sat on a boat going down the Rhine and he talked a lot, much more than ever before, pointing at the mountains and telling us about how he met my mother. He wanted to explain everything and we had to listen. We drank lemonade called Miranda and had our dinner on the boat, watching other boats passing along beside us, some of them flat with lots of coal heaped up on them. The river was so wide it was like an autobahn with boats going up on one side and down the other.

It was evening by the time we got off the boat and started climbing up the Drachenfelz. We went up the steps and then walked along the path. My father was limping and it wasn’t long before we slowed down, because it was very steep. We stopped to take a rest and turned around to look at the river below us with the ships still going up and down slowly without a sound, almost like toy boats. After a while, we continued back up the hill again but we were hardly moving at all. My father took off his cravat and put it in his pocket. He opened his shirt and you could see his white neck inside. He took off his jacket and carried it on his arm instead. But then he stopped to ask us if we still wanted to go all the way to the top. I knew how much he wanted to see the hotel again where he stayed with my mother. I knew it was a place you could not talk about, only see with your own eyes. He wanted to go back and see if it was still the same. And maybe then he was afraid to go back and find that it was not the same.

‘Are you hungry?’ he asked.

‘No,’ we said.

We carried on for a while, but then he stopped again and sat down on a bench as if his legs couldn’t carry him any more. There wasn’t far to go, but instead he started talking and telling us things that he had never told us before. He said it was not true that he had rescued my mother because it was the other way around. If it wasn’t for her he would have joined the priesthood like his brother Ted. He said he once went to Rome to pray and ask God whether he should be a priest or get married. He went to see an Italian doctor who could hardly speak to him and used his arms a lot. The doctor said he should get married, because getting married and having children was the only way of getting rid of a limp. My father thought it was like God talking in broken English. He even cried and the doctor had to put his hand on his shoulder. Then my mother came to Ireland and rescued him from the priesthood. And that’s why he could not go up to the top of the Drachenfelz without her. After that he was quiet and said nothing all the way back on the train to Kempen.

That night, back in Ta Maria’s house, I was trying to get to sleep and I thought of what it would be like if we all came to live in Germany instead and all had the same language. Nobody would ever call us Nazis. My father would have lots of friends and my mother would have all her sisters to talk to. My father would be more German and my mother would learn how to argue and make the rules, like her youngest sister Tante Minne. I lay there and saw different shadows on the wall. I was back in the black and white film that made my mother so afraid.

‘Please God, help me to get out of this,’ she wrote in her diary.

She didn’t know what to do any more. At night she prayed on her knees and walked up and down in her room. She was afraid of what was going to happen to her now. She was back in Düsseldorf, but she had nobody to speak to. She wanted to go home to Kempen, but she was afraid to make trouble for Ta Maria and Onkel Gerd. They had no money and they couldn’t support her. She was afraid of being a beggar with no work. She saw Stiegler in the office every day in his suit and she could smell his aftershave. She had not learned the words to describe what happened to her in Venlo. She could not trust any of the women in the office and she didn’t know how to go to the police either, because Herr Stiegler had lots of friends in the Gestapo and the Waffen SS. He could accuse her of not helping Germany and then she would be taken away instead. In the end, the only person she could go to was Stiegler himself, because she was only nineteen years old and sometimes you think the person you’re most afraid of is the only person who can help.

One day, she had the courage to go straight up to his desk after work. The typewriters were all silent. Herr Stiegler sat looking out the window while she spoke.

‘I’m glad you told me this,’ he said.

Then he asked her to go home, back to her apartment room. He told her to wait there for him and not to say a word to anyone. He would come and discuss it with her there. He said there was nothing to worry about because he would personally see to it that everything was all right. She was afraid it would start all over again. She could not let him come near her. But he was so calm and so confident that she began to think everything was fine. She knew everything was going wrong but she wanted to believe it was right. As if it was easier to believe a lie. She went back to her apartment and paced up and down the room that night, wondering if she should just run away, just go and start again in a new city where nobody knew who she was.

It was about midnight when Stiegler came to her apartment. She heard his footsteps on the stairs. He was very quiet because there were neighbours living in the other apartments. He entered her room carrying a pouch under his arm that was black and shiny, with a rubber band around it. He told her to lie down on the bed and sat beside her. He held her arm and asked her where all the smiles were gone. He held her chin with his thumb and forefinger and told her to relax, it would only take a minute and then everything would be all right again. This was the solution. He would give her a small injection that wouldn’t hurt at all. It might make her feel a little nauseous afterwards, but that would all pass over and she would be full of smiles and dimples and going out to the theatre again. She wanted to know what was in the injection and he said it was a simple preparation, made of purely natural ingredients like vinegar and alcohol. He was already rolling up her sleeve and rubbing a little swab of alcohol on her arm. He said he had received it from a very good doctor that he was friendly with. It would make her strong. It would wipe away all the sickness and disgust. It was an injection against disgust.

‘There we are,’ he said, like a real doctor.

He was very kind and very polite. He sat with her for a while stroking her forehead and there is no defence against kindness, my mother says. He kept saying he admired her strength and her courage. He said she was very brave and very beautiful, a real German woman. She could smell the cognac on his breath. Then she fell asleep and when she woke up, he was gone. She felt dizzy and sick. She tried to stand up, then she kneeled down, and then she lay on the floor as if nothing mattered any more. Even though she vomited everything up and her stomach was empty, the pain kept getting worse. She left the room and staggered to the bathroom in the hallway, holding on to the wall as if she were on a ship. She tried not to draw any attention to herself, and then she started bleeding and crying silently at the sight of her own blood all around her. She was afraid that one of the people in the other apartments would come out and find her there.

Stiegler came back some hours later. He found her lying on the floor of the bathroom. Her face was white and he could hardly wake her up any more. He was worried that something might go wrong, that she might die maybe and then he would have to explain himself. He had to do things quickly now. There was no time to clean up the blood in the bathroom. He dragged her back to her room very quietly so as not to wake anyone up. He left her on the floor and packed her belongings quickly into a suitcase. He lost no time on this and went straight out to arrange for a car to come and take her away. He had already discarded the needle and the doctor’s pouch in various bins around Düsseldorf. When the car arrived, he got the driver to come up and help carry her down the stairs.