The Impostor (MacLehose Press Editions Book 9)

by Javier Cercas

  Marco’s speech caused an extraordinary commotion. Newspapers, television and radio stations published or broadcast parts of it; some of those who heard him deliver the speech – relatives of camp survivors, journalists and high-level politicians – were moved to tears; others, like the Israeli ambassador, were incensed by a reference to his country in one of the customary points Marco made in his speeches: “We need an educational system that will teach history. There are modern concentration camps in Rwanda, in Sierra Leone, in Ethiopia, where children in their millions are dying. There were concentration camps in Kosovo. And it must be said aloud: unfortunately, they still exist in Guantanamo Bay, there can be no doubt they exist in Palestine, and in Iraq. How many times must we point it out?” No-one, in short, was left unmoved by Marco, who was carried from the Parliament in triumph, more than ever the champion or the hero or the rock star of so-called historical memory.

  Despite this resounding success (or rather thanks to it), the following months were a tense period for Marco. In addition to continuing his dizzying whirl of talks and conferences, he devoted himself to organising the contribution of the Amical at the events for the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Mauthausen, to be celebrated, as always, in early May, but at which the Amical was to play a much more important role than ever: with the support of the French branch of Amical, they wanted to mount an exhibition entitled “Images and Memories”; they planned to bring a great number of people from all over Spain to Mauthausen for several days and they were canvassing for two symbolic gestures that would mark the history of the Deportation: for a Spanish camp survivor to speak at the inaugural ceremony on behalf of the deportados, and for a representative or a member of the Spanish government to attend the ceremonies in Mauthausen. All of this may have been beyond the organisational capacities of Amical, an organisation that, though rapidly expanding, was still small, but its president devoted himself to the challenge wholeheartedly, prepared, as always, to compensate for a shortage of resources with man hours. However, the tension Marco suffered in those final months was not the result of future events, but of the past, which is never dead.

  One afternoon in early February, shortly after Marco’s triumphant speech to the Spanish parliament, one of his closest colleagues at Amical, a man named Enrique Urraca, took him aside when he arrived at the offices on calle Sils and told him that he had heard rumours that Bernito Bermejo was casting doubt on Marco’s claim to be a camp survivor. Marco did not even stop to talk to Urraca, he roundly dismissed the rumour, assuring Urraca that it was nothing but slander, that he and Bermejo had had a personal disagreement, that he should forget the matter entirely. That same evening, Marco telephoned Bermejo. The historian said he had found him out; Marco said things were not as they seemed, that he could explain everything, that he would be in Madrid sometime in the coming weeks and they would have an opportunity to meet and clear up the misunderstanding. Bermejo waited for Marco’s call, but in the weeks that followed our man did not go to Madrid, or if he went to Madrid he did not call Bermejo, nor did he offer an explanation and so, in mid-April, Marco received a fax from Bermejo urging him to explain himself as promised. Marco telephoned Bermejo again. He told him he could not go to Madrid, he told him that he was snowed under with work preparing for the commemoration ceremony at Mauthausen, he told him that he would not be able to see him or speak to him until he had emerged from the turmoil that he and the Amical were in, he told him to wait until then because at that point he would explain everything; Bermejo did not argue with him or try to persuade him, he simply said he thought Marco was making a mistake.

  Less than three weeks remained before the Mauthausen celebrations, and scarcely a few days before Marco’s fate was sealed.

  *

  Enrique Urraca was not only one of Marco’s closest co-workers at Amical, but virtually his private secretary. He was not a camp survivor but the nephew of a deportado. His uncle, Juan de Diego, had been a prisoner in Mauthausen, and Urraca considered him a hero, as he did his fellow-inmates. On the death of his uncle in 2003, Urraca joined the Amical de Mauthausen with the intention of keeping alive the memory of his uncle and his companions. Marco, who had only been president of the organisation for a month at the time, charmed him so completely that Urraca all but transferred the affection and admiration he had felt for his uncle to Marco. This explains why, in early February 2005, shortly before the tribute to the deportados at the Spanish parliament, Urraca dared to tell Marco bluntly about the rumours circulating about him; it also explains how Marco could so easily persuade him that the rumours were completely unfounded and he should forget about them.

  Urraca knew Bermejo, who had had a connection with his uncle, but this was not how the rumours about Marco had reached him. However, in late April, when the celebrations at Mauthausen were about to take place and the historian finally decided to expose Marco, he settled on Urraca as the most suitable member of the Amical to be told the truth. I don’t know why Bermejo chose Urraca: perhaps because he had a good relationship with him and believed him to be a decent, idealistic man; perhaps because of this and because he knew that Urraca was the closest person to Marco within Amical. What I do know is that on the evening of Friday, April 30, Bermejo telephoned Urraca; there were only nine days left before the events at Mauthausen, and only two before the annual meeting of Amical. Bermejo told Urraca what he had discovered. Urraca replied that what he was saying was impossible. Bermejo told him about the document that he had found in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then forwarded him the report he had sent to the Prime Minister. When he had read the report, Urraca had no choice but to accept that Bermejo was telling the truth. Then, Bermejo reminded him that, in a few days, Marco was scheduled to speak in the name of the deportados at the inaugural ceremony at Mauthausen and asked him a question: are you going to allow an impostor to speak in front of the Spanish prime minister and sully the memory of your uncle and of all the deportados?

  When he replaced the receiver, Urraca was a broken man. He could not believe what he had heard and read, he could not believe that Marco could have done what he had done; and yet, he had to believe it. In an instant, his whole world had collapsed, or that was how it felt. He did not know what to do. He was besieged by doubts. And then came Sunday, the day of the annual Amical meeting.

  *

  The Amical meeting that year was held on May 1 in Vilafranca del Penedès, a town some sixty kilometres from Barcelona. At first, everything suggested it would be a routine annual meeting: as every year, members would elect a new board of directors (Marco was elected president and charged with international relations, Torán, vice-president and Urraca a member of the board); as every year, a small monument was erected to the memory of local deportados. It was during the unveiling of the monument that some members began to realise that this was not going to be a run-of-the-mill meeting. While the ceremony was taking place, Torán was approached by the Amical delegate for Valencia, a historian named Blas Mínguez, who said he had just spoken to Urraca who had told him he was in possession of a report that cast doubt on Marco’s having been a camp survivor. Bewildered, Torán went to speak to Urraca; they were joined by other members of the board including Mínguez, who had just been elected. Urraca announced that what Mínguez had said was true, that he had the damning report at home, although at first he attributed it to the French branch of the Amical rather than to Bermejo, perhaps because he sensed that the historian’s difficult relationship with the Amical or with some of its members might discredit his findings. At the end of the meal, when the rest of the members were enjoying dessert, the members of the board held an urgent meeting to discuss the matter. Since they did not wish to arouse suspicions, the meeting was brief; Marco himself was present at the meeting and said only that Bermejo was conducting a personal vendetta against him and that the rumours he was spreading about his past were simply evidence of his antagonism towards the Amical and himself as president of the association
. The other board members listened in dismay, probably not knowing what to think beyond the fact that, whether it proved true or false, it was essential that Bermejo’s accusation be cleared up, so Torán asked Urraca to send her the report as soon as he got home.

  Urraca took longer than expected to send the report, as though he still had doubts about how to proceed, but eventually he sent it, and that night Torán read it. From what Torán understood, Bermejo’s report did not imply that Marco had not been in Flossenbürg or another Nazi camp, but that he had lied and that, in 1941, he had arrived in Germany as a volunteer worker, not as a deportado; nevertheless the charges were sufficiently serious to require Marco to explain himself as soon as possible. Accordingly, first thing on Monday morning, Torán summoned the members of the board to the office on calle Sils as soon as possible. The meeting took place at 7.00 p.m. that same evening, and those who attended remember it as dramatic, not only because of the subject of the meeting, but because of the dramatic way in which Marco dealt with it. Though perhaps the appropriate word is not dramatic, but melodramatic. As he spoke, Marco broke down, he seemed hysterical, desperate, capable of doing something desperate; in fact, some of those present felt that he was suggesting that he could or would do something desperate and that the suggestion was a form of emotional blackmail, a way of asking them to shield him.

  Marco spoke for some time, but he did not offer a clear explanation, nor did he admit his deception. All he would say was that it was true that in 1941 he had not left Spain clandestinely, but as a volunteer worker, because this was the only way he could think of to escape the constant hounding by the Francoist police; he also said that it was true that he had been in Flossenbürg, though for a short time, only a few days. As to the rest, he wondered aloud between racking sobs how he could tell his family, his wife and daughters, how he could tell them that not only had he lied about being a deportado, but that he had hidden the fact that he had another family, a wife and daughter about whom he had never said a word to them. This supplemental confession had little – indeed, nothing whatever – to do with the subject under discussion, nonetheless Marco decided to put it on the table, perhaps to elicit as much sympathy as possible from the board.

  Marco’s blackmail was only partly successful. The board’s first decision was to request that Marco resign, and Torán, who had only been elected vice-president the day before, became acting president. Next, they agreed that, when the time came, they would write a statement outlining what had happened, but for the moment they had to keep it secret at all costs, because not to do so would trigger a scandal that would ruin the Mauthausen commemorations and the achievement represented by the fact that, for the first time, a Spanish prime minister would attend the ceremonies and, also for the first time, a Spanish camp survivor would address the international community. Several of those present took it for granted that Marco would not now be the one to give the address at Mauthausen on behalf of the deportados, but in fact no decision was made, at least explicitly, perhaps in part because it was not yet certain that Marco had not been in a Nazi camp; in fact, he was not even forbidden from travelling to Austria two days hence to attend the meeting of the International Mauthausen Committee, of which he was a member.

  Marco accepted all the conditions imposed by the board without protest and left the meeting. Things, however did not end there: that night and the following day, Torán and other members of the Amical did everything they could, hurriedly and confusedly, to inform others involved in the Mauthausen commemorations of what had happened and to agree on a strategy. They telephoned camp survivors and relatives of deportados, spoke to the prime minister’s office, and perhaps the Spanish embassy in Vienna, and the following day organised an impromptu meeting with members of the Catalan government where it was decided that the most important thing was to salvage the events at Mauthausen and distance Marco from any involvement with them on the pretext that he was ill.Then, once it was all over, they would decide what to do.

  *

  On May 3, four days before the commemoration ceremony at Mauthausen, Marco and the treasurer of Amical, Jesús Ruiz, travelled to Vienna and on to Linz, a 25-minute drive from Mauthausen, where the International Mauthausen Committee, of which they were both members, was to meet the following day. They were joined on Wednesday morning by a third member of the Amical board, Blas Mínguez, the delegate for Valencia, who had driven to Linz; together they decided that it was best if only Ruiz attended the meeting of the International Committee while Marco and Mínguez waited for him at the hotel. When he returned that evening, Ruiz told Marco that the news had already reached the committee – in fact it was Bermejo who had contacted them – and that evening, over dinner, Mínguez demanded that he tell them once and for all whether he had been in Flossenbürg or not; Marco admitted he had not, neither in Flossenbürg nor any other camp. At that point, Ruiz telephoned the offices of the Amical and it was decided Marco would return to Barcelona the following day.

  On the morning of Thursday, May 5, our man landed at Barcelona airport on the first flight leaving Vienna. He would have arrived at Terminal B at about 10.30 a.m., because it was here, in front of Botero’s colossal sculpture of a muscular black horse, that more than two hundred people had gathered to travel with the Amical to Vienna to take part in the Mauthausen commemorations. Inevitably, Marco bumped into them. The group were completely shocked. The Amical board members accompanying the group knew what had happened in Linz, but they did not know that Marco had taken this particular flight back to Barcelona and had said that the president would not be attending the ceremonies because he had fallen ill. Marco’s sudden appearance created a commotion: people threw themselves at him, asked him what he was doing there, where he had come from, what had happened, why he was not going to Mauthausen with them. Marco brushed them off as best he could while Torán and other members of the board helped ward off curious bystanders. When he finally escaped, he walked away quickly, boorishly, without addressing a word to anyone.

  There was a curious atmosphere on the flight to Vienna, there were rumours among the deportados that the board of Amical, jealous of Marco’s prominence and eager to be rid of him, had plotted a coup and, just before the crowning moment of the great Mauthausen commemoration, had ousted its president.

  *

  On the morning of Saturday, May 7, Benito Bermejo flew from Madrid to Vienna. He was going to Mauthausen, as he did every year or almost every year around this time; but this time everything was different. He must have been worried, because no-one had told him what was happening at Amical; he believed that his report about Marco had had no effect and that, on Sunday, the great impostor would give a speech on behalf of the deportados in the presence of the Spanish prime minister and the crowds attending the inaugural ceremony. Just before he caught the plane, however, he bought a copy of El País, and, in a note about the Mauthausen celebrations, he read that Marco had flown back to Barcelona because he was indisposed; he felt relieved: he realised that his report had done some good and that things were being put right. When he arrived at Mauthausen, Bermejo encountered the delegation from the Amical who had already been there for two days and he realised that at least some of them were aware of the truth, though none would speak about it openly; though Bermejo may not have known it at the time, in the hectic days before the Mauthausen commemoration, the board of the Amical had organised a meeting to tell some of its members about Marco. On Saturday night, Bermejo had dinner with a group that included Anna María García, my colleague at the University of Gerona, the historian who, shortly after the Marco scandal broke, would advise me not to write about him (“The best thing to do about Marco is forget him,” she would say, “it is the worst punishment for that monstrous egotist”), and on the Sunday, he finally attended the commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of Mauthausen’s liberation.

  The event went off without incident. First there was a brief ceremony at the monument to the memory of the Spanish deportados, which
was attended by two or three hundred people including the Spanish prime minister. Then came the main ceremony, attended by several thousand people, at which the speakers included, among others, the Spanish prime minister and a Spanish camp survivor chosen to replace Marco, Eusebi Pérez, who read the speech that Marco had planned to read and which, despite what was later reported in the press, had not been written by Marco: it had been jointly penned by the board of the Amical to be read on behalf of all the Spanish camp survivors. This is all that happened that day at Mauthausen. Nothing more. Although some of those in attendance knew that the president of the Amical had been exposed, and half-whispered rumours circulated among knots of people, no-one officially unmasked Marco.