Disguise. Hugo Hamilton

getting a lift. Two eccentric figures, one with his bashed-up doctor’s bag and the other with his guitar case, imagining the dreamy heat inside the cars going by. Motorists staring at them with those vacant, alarmist expressions as they passed by. They waited for like-minded people who might take pity on them and kept an eye out for cars like the one-stroke DCV, or the Renault 4, or the Volkswagen; high-mileage, proletarian vehicles that had become a symbol of new, alternative life. They had almost given up hope when a car suddenly pulled up ahead of them. At last, they said, picking up their bags and running towards it. But they stopped short when two men hopped out of the car and confronted them with handguns and badges.

      ‘Drop your bags,’ one of the men shouted.

      They were ordered to step over the rail into an adjoining field. Within seconds, Gregor and Martin found themselves walking away down a slope with the men shouting orders, pointing guns at their backs. It seemed like such a calm place, with crows in the trees, the autobahn out of sight, like a river in spate behind them, and the winter sky fading to an icy blue.

      ‘Take off your coats and throw them to the side,’ the policemen demanded.

      Martin did as he was told and threw his anorak away.

      ‘And that stupid fucking hat,’ one of the men bawled at Gregor.

      Gregor refused to take off his hat, or his coat.

      ‘What’s all this about?’ he demanded, turning round towards the policemen.

      The policemen directed their weapons at Gregor. He had been turned into a suspect by them, but his refusal took on a moral momentum, contradicting their unspoken accusations. Underneath the hippy clothing, there was a need to assert his identity in public, without any shame, without any doubt. This was the moment for it. He smiled, like a flashlight shining through his black beard, while the officers waved their guns and screamed at him to turn away, using the word ‘asshole’ in every phrase. Gregor then became serious, withdrew his smile and stared straight at the officer, telling him that he was refusing to take off his coat in the middle of winter.

      ‘You won’t get away with this any more,’ Gregor said. ‘I’m Jewish.’

      It was like a grenade going off. He was saying it for the first time with great confidence. Everything changed. It was clear that Martin and Gregor were no terrorists. This was just a routine piece of opportunism, two thug policemen deciding to humiliate two free-living hippy wasters. But now it was all going wrong for them. The officers began to shrink back, looking at each other for reassurance. Out there in this ravine with the sound of civilisation so close by along the autobahn, they were asked to stare into the eyes of history. One of them continued bawling out orders for a moment, but the other began to weaken and said it was OK, all they needed was to see identification. Martin and Gregor showed their student ID cards and the policemen backed off, out of that history lesson as fast as they could.

      When they got back to Berlin, Martin laughed and said it was the best one he had ever heard yet. He embraced Gregor again and again and said he had ‘saved his ass’ out there on the autobahn. Martin had been carrying an almighty knob of hash, enough to land him in jail and disqualify him from ever working in a legal practice if he had been caught in possession. He had told Gregor nothing about it. They had a fierce argument over it, with Gregor asking how Martin thought he could smuggle such a thing all the way through the GDR when people were searched so thoroughly every time that they had to lay out every spoon, every pencil, every item of clothing on a table by the roadside. Women often had to undergo the humiliating ordeal of displaying all their clothes, item by item while the East German border guards examined it all with great fascination. How did Martin think he could get away with carrying hash through that frontier?

      ‘You’re my guardian angel,’ Martin said.

      He kept repeating the story that evening, laughing in irrational bursts. ‘Wait till I tell everybody about this,’ he said. ‘There we are getting searched on the side of the autobahn and Gregor saves the day by saying he’s Jewish.’