The Impostor
Page 40
“Is it important?”
“In theory, no, but in practice, yes,” I said, “at least to me. It’s one thing if, like a gift from the gods, Marco found a name in the register that he could use to shore up his deception, it’s a very different thing if it’s a gift he gave himself. As far as I know, Marco didn’t fabricate any evidence; this would be the first, or the only piece. I want to know whether one night, after he got back from Flossenbürg, he locked himself in a room in his house and, on his own, without a word to his wife, he very carefully faked the proof that he needed. And do you know how we can find out? It’s simple, we just compare the photocopy with the original, which shouldn’t take too long; now all we have to do is find it.”
As we went up to the first floor, Raül whispered: “Jesus, you gave me a shock. Can you imagine if Marco really was here?” On the first floor, near the entrance to the exhibition, there was a desk and behind it, an attendant, and behind the attendant there was a bookcase containing books and DVDs about the camp. Since I don’t speak German and neither does Raül, I asked the attendant—a man with bulging eyes, a pointy nose and a drooping moustache—whether he spoke English. He didn’t, or very little. Despite this, I tried to explain to him in English what I was looking for; naturally he didn’t understand me. I took out the photocopied page from the register bearing Moner’s name, pointed to it and repeated the word “archive.” The attendant finally seemed to understand and gestured to the floor below while he babbled something in German. Assuming that this was where the other facsimile registers were kept, or this was where the archive was, Raül and I headed back downstairs. We did not find the other registers or the archive. We went back upstairs and once again I tried to explain, slowly and enunciating clearly, what I was looking for, and halfway through my explanation he handed me a form and a pen. The form was written in English, but it had nothing whatever to do with what I was asking. I stared at the attendant, confused, and at that moment, as Raül was saying something I didn’t hear, I realised that the attendant looked just like Sig Ruman, a German comedian who had been famous in the Thirties and Forties, appearing in the films of Ernst Lubitsch. I had started writing my name on the form, I don’t quite know why, when I heard the attendant mention a name that was familiar.
“Yes, yes,” I said, looking up from the form and nodding forcefully, “Ibel, Johannes Ibel.”
The attendant gestured for me to wait and, with grave seriousness, picked up the telephone and made a call. While he was talking, Raül asked:
“Who’s that?”
“Ibel? The historian in charge of the archive. I should have asked for him from the start. He’s a friend of Benito Bermejo.”
When he replaced the receiver, the attendant pointed to a window through which we could see the old camp headquarters and rattled off another screed of German, in which I could make out only two names, one male, Johannes Ibel, the other female, Anette Kraus.
Raül and I walked quickly across the Appellplatz towards the entrance of the camp while I talked about the mess we’d made with the attendant.
“The mess you made,” Raül corrected.
“The guy looked just like Sig Ruman,” I said, or rather I thought aloud.
“Who?”
I explained to Raül who Sig Ruman was, mentioned Ninotchka and To Be or Not to Be.
“You’re a freak,” he said.
The archive was accessed via a side door in the old command centre. We pressed the buzzer on the intercom and someone opened the door. At the end of the corridor, a girl in her twenties was waiting for us, smiling; she was thin, with pale eyes and chestnut hair pinned up; a green neckerchief all but hid her throat. As she ushered us into her office and gestured for us to take a seat, she explained in impeccable English that she was Anette Kraus, assistant to Johannes Ibel who happened to be in Dachau that day; she also offered to help us with whatever we might need. Sitting opposite our hostess in that huge office with its vast windows overlooking the entrance to the camp—an office she probably shared with various other people, though just then there were only the three of us—the first thing I asked was whether she minded if my son filmed us; Anette Kraus smiled and said no. So, while Raül began recording, I told the woman I was a writer, and that I was writing a book about Enric Marco. Obviously, she had heard of Marco, but hadn’t met him as she hadn’t yet started working at the Memorial during the time he was visiting or when the scandal broke. She asked me what kind of books I wrote.
“Novels,” I said. “Sometimes novels with fiction and sometimes novels without fiction. This one will be without fiction.”
“Of course,” she said, “Señor Marco will be supplying the fiction for this one.”
“Exactly,” I said.
The woman seemed happy to be able to help, so I spent some time talking to her while Raül filmed us. In response to my questions, Anette Kraus explained the workings of the archive, the history of the camp and the Memorial, she told me about the database Johannes Ibel had created, and gave me some bibliographic information, clarifying certain details and dates. When the interview was over, I told her I had one last request.
“What’s that?” she asked, smiling into Raül’s camera.
I took out the photocopied page of the register bearing the name Enric Moner, the name that, from the way it was written, looked very like Enric Marco, explained my problem and asked whether I could see the original, or the facsimile of the original, to check whether Marco had altered the photocopy or not.
“Of course you can see it,” she said.
She got up and left the office. While she was gone, Raül turned off the camera and we looked at each other anxiously. For a moment, I thought about Bruce Willis and his son saving the world.
“I’m sure it’s a coincidence,” Raül said.
“I’m sure it’s not,” I said.
After a few minutes Anette Kraus came back with a piece of paper which she set down on the desk between Raül and me and stood between us. It was a photocopy of the page I had requested; I set my photocopy next to it, Raül had forgotten to resume filming and the three of us leaned over the desk. The truth was immediately obvious. Marco had created a masterpiece: in the register the name was written not as “Moner,” but “Moné,” and our man had taken advantage of the providential accent to create a “c”; then, it had been a simple matter to turn the “o” into an “a,” and “n” into an “r,” and he had added the final “o,” such that, after carefully going over the name, it was as though what appeared in the register was not “Moné” or “Moner,” but “Marco”; furthermore, so that the manipulation would not be noticeable, he had also gone over the abbreviation “Span” (for Spanier—Spanish) next to the word “Moné” so that the letters of both would have the same thickness and look like they were written by the same hand. The three of us stared. Raul’s camera didn’t capture the moment, but I will never forget it.
“You were right,” said Anette Kraus, still smiling.
And, thinking of Marco, I thought, “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”
“He’s the fucking master!” blurted Raül, unable to contain himself.
And, thinking about Raül, I thought: “Yes. But he is also Enric Marco.”
Acknowledgements
Leonie Achtnich, Antonio Alonso, José Álvarez Junco, Joan Amézaga, José Luis Barbería, Montserrat Beltrán, Benito Bermejo, Mercè Boada, Francisco Campo, Montse Cardona, Enric y María Teresa Casañas, Julián Casanova, Manoli Castillo García, Blanca Cercas, Pepita Combas, Emili Cortavitarte, Juan Cruz, Ignasi de Gispert, Santi Fillol, Juanjo Gallardo, Anna María Garcia, Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, Xavier González Torán, Jordi Gracia, Helena Guitart Castillo, Johannes Ibel, Anette Kraus, Pau Lanao, Philippe Lançon, Frederic Llausachs, Loli López, Teresa Macaulas, Anna María Marco, Bartolomé Martínez, Bettina Meyer, Adrián Blas Mínguez, Llàtzer Moix, Adolfo Morales Tr
ueba, Javier Moreno Luzón, Marta Noguera, Jordi Oliveras, Gloria Padura, Carlos Pérez Ricart, Alejandro Pérez Vidal, Xavier Pla, Fernando Puell de la Villa, Jesús Ruiz, Margarida Salas, Antoni Segura, Guillem Terribas, Isidoro Teruel, Rosa Torán, David Trueba, Enrique Urraca, Lucas Vermal, Joan Villarroya, David Viñals, Carme Vinyoles.
Notes
If This Is a Man: In the U.K. If This Is a Man and The Truce are published in one volume translated by Stuart Woolf (Abacus, London, 1987). The passage referred to appears in “Postscript: The Author’s Answers to His Readers’ Questions,” p. 442. In the USA, these two books, translated by Ruth Feldman, are published as Survival in Auschwitz and The Reawakening (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, New York, 1985).
Outlaws: This novel was first published in Spain as Las leyes de la frontera (Mondadori Literatura, Barcelona, 2012).
“The largest operation in the east”: Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2006), p. 126, and Antony Beevor, La guerra civil española (Critica, Barcelona, 2005).
“The masses”: Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (trans. James Murphy).
“Because enduring the camps”: Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry (Verso, London, 2003), p. 81.
Or the case of Binjamin Wilkomirski: In the U.S.A. Fragments was published with the subtitle Memories of a Wartime Childhood.
“sacralisation of the Holocaust”: Peter Novick: The Holocaust and Collective Memory (Bloomsbury, London, 2000), published in the U.S.A. as The Holocaust in American Life (Houghton Mifflin, 2000). See pp. 200 and 280.
“he who plays a part in a historic event”: Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace, Book II, Chapter 4 (trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude).
as Isaiah Berlin puts it: Isaiah Berlin: The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1953).
Stendhal described a similar scene: Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma (trans. Scott-Moncrieff).
Adolfo Suárez could not have done it: Suárez, González, Aznar and Zapatero are all prime ministers of Spain since the death of Franco.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Javier Cercas is a novelist and columnist whose books include Soldiers of Salamis (which has sold more than a million copies worldwide), The Speed of Light, The Anatomy of a Moment, Outlaws, and the novellas The Tenant and The Motive. His books have been translated into more than thirty languages and have received numerous international awards. He lives in Barcelona.
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