The Speckled People

The Speckled People
Hugo Hamilton

‘This is the most gripping book I've read in ages … It is beautifully written, fascinating, disturbing and often very funny.’ Roddy DoyleThe childhood world of Hugo Hamilton, born and brought up in Dublin, is a confused place. His father, a sometimes brutal Irish nationalist, demands his children speak Gaelic, while his mother, a softly spoken German emigrant who has been marked by the Nazi past, speaks to them in German. He himself wants to speak English. English is, after all, what the other children in Dublin speak. English is what they use when they hunt him down in the streets and dub him Eichmann, as they bring him to trial and sentence him to death at a mock seaside court.Out of this fear and guilt and often comical cultural entanglements, he tries to understand the differences between Irish history and German history and turn the twisted logic of what he is told into truth. It is a journey that ends in liberation, but not before he uncovers the long-buried secrets that lie at the bottom of his parents wardrobe.In one of the finest books to have emerged from Ireland in many years, the acclaimed novelist Hugo Hamilton has finally written his own story – a deeply moving memoir about a whole family's homesickness for a country they can call their own.

The Speckled People

Hugo Hamilton

‘I wait for the command to show my tongue. I know he’s going to cut it off, and I get more and more scared each time.’

Elias Canetti

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u853e3e37-ec76-5a12-9831-fd58272153db)

Title Page (#u0e908caa-c6f6-53e5-aba6-0ad3fbe5d084)

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One (#ulink_9c7beb47-266a-5206-8988-72337d31fa8e)

When you’re small you know nothing.

When I was small I woke up in Germany. I heard the bells and rubbed my eyes and saw the wind pushing the curtains like a big belly. Then I got up and looked out the window and saw Ireland. And after breakfast we all went out the door to Ireland and walked down to Mass. And after Mass we walked down to the big green park in front of the sea because I wanted to show my mother and father how I could stand on the ball for a count of three, until the ball squirted away from under my feet. I chased after it, but I could see nothing with the sun in my eyes and I fell over a man lying on the grass with his mouth open. He sat up suddenly and said, ‘What the Jayses?’ He told me to look where I was going in future. So I got up quickly and ran back to my mother and father. I told them that the man said ‘Jayses’, but they were both turned away, laughing at the sea. My father was laughing and blinking through his glasses and my mother had her hand over her mouth, laughing and laughing at the sea, until the tears came into her eyes and I thought, maybe she’s not laughing at all but crying.

How do you know what that means when her shoulders are shaking and her eyes are red and she can’t talk? How do you know if she’s happy or sad? And how do you know if your father is happy or whether he’s still angry at all the things that are not finished yet in Ireland. You know the sky is blue and the sea is blue and they meet somewhere, far away at the horizon. You can see the white sailing boats stuck on the water and the people walking along with ice-cream cones. You can hear a dog barking at the waves. You can see him standing in the water, barking and trying to bite the foam. You can see how long it takes for the sound of the barking to come across, as if it’s coming from somewhere else and doesn’t belong to the dog at all any more, as if he’s barking and barking so much that he’s hoarse and lost his voice.

When you’re small you know nothing. You don’t know where you are, or who you are, or what questions to ask.