The Impostor (MacLehose Press Editions Book 9) Read online

  “So, you’re going to write the book?” asked Santi.

  “Maybe,” I said. “At least I’m going to try.”

  “The Spaniard’s got balls, man!” I heard him say, as though talking to someone else, then he went on, “Don’t sweat it. I’ll set up an interview with Enric today. I’ll go with you to meet him.”

  The interview took place some days later in Sant Cugat, a little town near Barcelona. Santi and I took the train and, from the station, we walked to Marco’s house, a top-floor apartment on the rambla del Celler in the new part of town where, from what Santi told me, our man had lived until some years ago with his wife and two daughters, and where he now lived alone with his wife. I don’t know whether it was she or Marco who opened the door to us, but I do remember that my first impression of Marco was unpleasant, a little monstrous: he looked to me like a gnome. A swarthy, balding, thickset, burly, moustachioed gnome who was constantly sitting down only to get up again to fetch papers and books and documents and, as he bustled between the dining room and a veranda whose picture windows gave onto a terrace open to the sunny skies of the summer afternoon, he never for a moment stopped talking about himself, about my sister Blanca, about the documentary he had made with Santi and about my books and my journalism, in an attempt to flatter me or to ingratiate himself.

  It seemed incredible to me that this walking whirlwind could be eighty-eight years old. Despite his diminutive size and the liver spots that mottled his skin, what was most striking was his ferocious energy and the youthful vitality radiated by his eyes, by his every gesture; he might not have much hair left on his head, but he sported a thick moustache without a single grey hair; pinned to the chest of his jumper, he wore a little flag of the Second Republic. His wife, whose name was Dani, shook hands with Santi and with me and chatted to us for a moment, though I don’t remember what she talked about because, listening to her and looking at her, I could not help but wonder what she must have felt, this tiny, gentle, smiling woman who was much younger than Marco, when the scandal erupted and her husband became the great impostor and the great pariah, what she must have thought when she realised that for decades he had deceived her just as he had deceived everyone. Then Marco’s wife left us. By this time, Santi had been pacing up and down behind Marco, attempting to stanch his unrelenting torrent of words in order to explain the reason for our visit. As I watched him, I felt a mixture of gratitude, admiration and pity: gratitude for his efforts to help me; admiration, because he looked like a lion tamer vainly trying to break a wild beast; pity, because, in order to make his documentary, he had had to put up with Marco day and night during weeks of shooting. As for me, the powerful physical revulsion I had initially experienced on meeting Marco became a powerful sense of moral disgust: standing in the dining room of his home, watching him come and go, with Santi chasing after him, I wondered what the hell I was doing here, and with all my soul I despised myself for having come to meet this shameless con artist, this out-and-out liar, this utter scoundrel, and for being prepared to spend weeks listening to his story in order to write my wretched book, rather than spending the time with my mother, a woman who, whatever my psychoanalyst said, had never hurt a fly in her life and, despite that, she still went to confession and took communion every week, and if there was anything she needed now that she was a widow, it was for her son to listen to her. I thought that Santi and Lucas Vermal were not simply brave, they were heroes. I thought that I was in no position to match their feat. I thought that, truth be told, I was as shameless as Marco, and in that moment, with a renewed sense of relief, I decided that I would not write a book about him for love or money.

  Of the remainder of that meeting in Sant Cugat I remember only two things, but I remember them very clearly. The first is that, to justify the trip, Santi, Marco and I ate at La Tagliatella, an Italian restaurant just opposite Marco’s house and that, to make up for having wasted their time, I paid the bill. The second is that, during the meal, while I wolfed down pasta arrabiata and drained large glasses of red wine, Marco unleashed on Santi and on me a torrent of shameless self-aggrandisement and absurd justifications (in which, I noted with some astonishment, Marco would sometimes shift from first person to third person, as though he were not talking about himself): he was a great man, generous, loyal and profoundly humane, a tireless fighter for good causes, and this was why so many people said wonderful things about him. “Be careful,” he warned me from the outset. “If you speak ill of Enric Marco, you are going to come across a lot of people who will tell you: ‘You don’t know Enric Marco: he is a truly extraordinary, amazing person with many great qualities’.” “Honestly,” he warned me later, “the day they broadcast the news that Enric Marco is dead, the plaza de Catalunya won’t be big enough to hold the crowds that will gather to mourn him.” This was how it was: everyone loved and admired him, his family worshipped him, he had dozens, hundreds of friends who, in spite of everything, had not turned their backs on him, people who were prepared to do anything for him. He had given countless demonstrations of courage and dignity, he had been a leader everywhere he went, in the barrio where he lived as a child, in the army as a young man and in his years in Germany; and later as a grown man: in the years of secret struggle against the Franco regime, in the university, in the C.N.T. – the anarcho-syndicalist union of which he had been secretary general during the 1970s – in FaPaC – the confederation of school parents’ associations of which he had been vice-president during the ’80s and ’90s – and also in the Amical de Mauthausen. Not that he had sought to be a leader, quite the contrary: he felt no need to be a leader, he was not an egotistical or conceited person, this was something he needed to make clear from the outset. It was others who had pushed him to accept leadership positions, others who had constantly pleaded with him: “You do it, we wouldn’t dare”; “You give the speech, you’ve got a way with words, you’ve got so much energy, and you’re so intelligent and you know how to charm and move and persuade people”. And he sacrificed himself and did as they asked. All his life he had been pursued by fame, by recognition, by the admiration of others, though he had always shunned them, admittedly with scant success. In such circumstances, it was not easy to be humble, yet somehow he had managed. For example, people seemed determined to see him as a hero, it had always been the case, it was a veritable mania; he, on the other hand, had always hated the idea, and had done everything in his power to avoid it, he did not like the idea of being put on a pedestal, being elevated, he had always been a modest, unassuming man. But the pupils and the teachers in schools where he gave talks when he was president of the Amical de Mauthausen would always insist he was, and sometimes would say, “Although you claim you’re not a hero, you are a hero; you are a hero precisely because you say you are not a hero.” And he would get angry and say “Enric Marco is not a hero in any sense. He is an unusual person, I agree, that much I will agree, but not exceptional. Honestly, the only thing that he has done throughout his life is struggle tirelessly, with all his might, oblivious to danger and to his own self-interest, for peace, for solidarity, for freedom, for social justice, for human rights, for the dissemination of culture and of memory. That is all.” This is what he would say to them. And it was true. He had always been where the need was greatest, had never failed to help anyone, nor to do and to promote what was good, he had always been an exemplary fighter, a model worker, friend, husband and father, and a man who had given his all for others. And how had he been repaid? With contempt, with silence, with the ignominious banishment that had been his lot since the scandal broke. Had he made mistakes? Had he said he had been imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp when in fact he had not been? Who has not made mistakes? Who had the right to cast the first stone? A lot of people, it seemed, because in his case it was not simply a single stone, but thousands, he had been stoned, he had been pitilessly annihilated and humiliated, he had been the victim of an unspeakable lynching. And it was true, he acknowledged, that he had made a mist
ake, but he had done so in a good cause. He had not lied, he was not a fraud or an impostor as people said; he had simply altered the facts slightly: everything he had said about the horrors of the Nazi regime was true and well documented, even if he had lied; everything he had said about himself was true, even if he had altered the setting. He had made a stupid mistake, because he had no need to fabricate a past as a resistance fighter and a victim of the Nazis, he really had been arrested by the Gestapo, he really had been a prisoner in Nazi Germany, in a prison rather than a concentration camp, but what was the difference between them? All this was also well documented, perhaps I had not watched Santi’s film? And then: how could the victims dare to say that he was not one of them simply because he had not been in a Nazi camp but in a Nazi gaol? He had said things that were not true, granted, he had embroidered or embellished or altered the truth a little, granted, but he had done it not out of egotism, but generosity, not out of vanity, but altruism, to educate younger generations about the horrors, to unearth the historical memory of this amnesiac country; he had been one of, if not the greatest advocate for the recovery of historical memory in Spain, the memory of the victims of the war and the post-war period, the victims of Franco, of fascism, of the Nazis, and when he joined the Amical de Mauthausen those who had survived the Nazi death camps were dead, or they were old and washed up, how was their message to be passed on? And who better than he to do so, since he was still young, he still had energy, and besides he was a historian? Did I know that he had studied history at university? Who better than he to give a voice to those who had none? Should he have allowed the last Spanish witnesses to the Nazi barbarism to remain silent, and everything that they had suffered be consigned to oblivion and the lessons of it be lost for ever? It was true that he, too, might have been a great historian, his professors at university had often told him so, but he had not wanted to be a historian. And did I know why? Because history is a cold, arid, lifeless subject, an abstraction devoid of any interest to young people; he kindled in them a love of history, he brought it to life: in the countless talks he gave, he presented history to schoolchildren in the flesh, living, breathing, never sparing them the blood, the sweat, the guts, he offered them history in all its colour, its emotion, its adventure and its heroism, he was history incarnate and he relived it for them, and thanks to his strategy, schoolchildren had acquired a knowledge and an understanding of the past. Was that wrong? Had he done something wrong? Why was he being condemned with no trial, no appeal? He had played a decisive role in the Amical de Mauthausen, he had advocated for the recovery of historical memory, he had taught a sense of history to teenagers, had fought for the rights of workers, for improvements to public education, for the freedom of his country, risking his life and suffering torture during the terrible years of the Franco regime, he had fought first for the triumph of the Second Republic and, during the war and the post-war period, against Franco, and this was why they were punishing him? Had he done no good in his life? Did he deserve such a punishment? Was it fair that he had been turned into a criminal? Surely there were genuine criminals for people to condemn? What about Kissinger? And Bush? And Blair? And Aznar? Anyhow, he had no intention of asking for forgiveness, he had done nothing wrong, he had committed no crime, he was not looking to be rehabilitated. This was something else he needed to make clear. He would have no truck with public redemption, he had no need of such things, the love of his wife, the love of his daughters and his friends were enough for him. He was not claiming that he would regain hard-won public recognition that had been stolen from him, the respect, the affection and the admiration of all, his reputation as an exceptional man who had made an exceptional contribution to understanding the past and to bettering humanity. No. He knew only too well that the world was indebted to him, but he had no intention of calling in that debt. All he wanted was to regain his voice, to take off the muzzle, to be allowed to defend himself, to tell the truth, or at least his version of the truth, to be able to tell it to the young and the not so young, to all those who had trusted him, acclaimed him, loved him. To leave his name unsullied for his family and be allowed to die in peace. This was all he wanted. And in this, I, who was a great writer, who wrote such wonderful books and articles, whom he knew and loved before he had even met me, because he knew and loved my sister Blanca, could be of great help. Careful: not only could I be of great help to him, that was the least of things; I could be of great help to everyone, by writing a book that recounted his true story.

  *

  “So . . .” Santi said as soon as we left Marco at the door of La Tagliatella and were walking back towards the train station, “what did you think of the old guy?”

  I waited until we were far enough away from Marco before I said, before I almost screamed:

  “A monster. A complete monster!”

  On the return journey to Barcelona I vented my feeling: I told Santi exactly what I thought of Marco. I told him that not only was he a consummate liar; he was a manipulative, obsequious, utterly unscrupulous parasite who wanted to use me to whitewash his lies and his misdeeds. I told him I had absolutely no intention of writing Marco’s story, because I thought he was a horrible person and because Marco was not a fiction, he was a terrifying reality, and what I needed was a fiction. I told him that, besides, it would be impossible to tell Marco’s story, and now I did quote Vargas Llosa and Magris and even Arrabal and his theory that a liar has no story, or that it is impossible to tell it without lying. I even told him that, even if it were possible to tell Marco’s story, it did not have to be told, it was an immoral act, because to tell it – and here I quoted Primo Levi and Teresa Sala – would mean trying to understand Marco, and to try to understand Marco was almost to justify him, and lastly I said – possibly quoting Anna María García – that the best thing anyone could do with this monstrous egotist was not to write a book about him, but leave him to rot in his ignoble isolation. Santi listened patiently, laughing now and then, making no attempt to dispute my arguments, vainly attempting to calm my rage with steady doses of Argentinian irony and, when we got off the train in Barcelona, he suggested we get a coffee.

  “Out of the question!” I said, almost shouting again. “Right now I am going to see my mother!”

  *

  At the end of that same year, “Ich bin Enric Marco”, the film by Santi Fillol and Lucas Vermal, was released in cinemas, and on December 27, there was an article about it in El País. It was headlined “I am Enric Marco”, and it read:

  “On May 11, 2005, the truth was discovered: Enric Marco was an impostor. For the previous twenty-seven years Marco had claimed to be prisoner No. 6448 from the German concentration camp of Flossenbürg; he had lived this lie and had made it live: for almost three decades, Marco gave hundreds of talks about his experiences of the Nazi regime, he was president of the Amical de Mauthausen, the association of Spanish survivors of the Nazi camps, he was awarded notable honours and medals and on January 27, 2005, he moved many of the members of both houses of the Spanish parliament to tears as they gathered in the Congreso de los Diputados to pay tribute for the first time to the almost nine thousand Spanish republicans deported to the Third Reich; for the rest, only the last-minute discovery of his deception prevented Marco, three and a half months after this spectacular performance, from outdoing himself by giving a speech at Mauthausen concentration camp in the presence of the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and other important dignitaries at a memorial for the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Nazi horrors. Many of you will remember the story, which was reported all over the world and filled newspapers with articles teeming with insults about Marco; one exception was the article by Mario Vargas Llosa entitled ‘Monster and Genius’. The first word is obviously accurate; so too is the second: it takes a genius to manage to fool everyone for almost thirty years, everyone including family, friends, members of the Amical de Mauthausen and even a former internee of Flossenbürg, who came to recognise him as a compani
on in suffering.

  “Genius, or something akin to genius. Because the truth is that it is difficult not to believe that a collective weakness facilitated the success of Marco’s deception. This, from the outset, was the result of two parallel and unassailable forms of prestige: the prestige of the victim and that of the witness; no-one dares question the authority of the victim, no-one dares question the authority of the witness: the craven capitulation to this double blackmail – the first, moral, the second intellectual – oiled the wheels of Marco’s deception. It was further helped by at least two other things. The first is our relative ignorance of the recent past generally and of Nazism in particular: although Marco promoted himself as a remedy for this national failing, in fact he was the finest proof of its existence. The second is perhaps less obvious. There can be little doubt that, at the moment, the greatest enemy of the left is the left itself; meaning: left-wing kitsch; meaning the transformation of left-wing discourse into a hollow shell, into the hypocritical, meaningless sentimentalism that the right call do-goodism. Moreover, in his public speeches, Marco succeeded in brilliantly embodying this prostitution, or this failure of the left; in other words: Marco’s lies satisfied a massive vacuous leftist demand for toxic sentimental fodder seasoned with historical good conscience. The implications of Marco’s case, however, are not simply political or historical, they are also moral. For some time now, psychology has maintained that we can barely live without lying, that man is an animal that lies: life in society demands a measure of falsehood that we call politeness (and which only hypocrites mistake for hypocrisy); Marco horribly exaggerated and distorted this basic human need. In this sense, he is like Don Quixote, or like Emma Bovary, two other great liars who, like Marco, cannot reconcile themselves to the greyness of their real lives and so invent and live out fictitious, heroic lives; in this sense there is something in Marco’s fate that profoundly touches us all, as there is in those of Quixote and Bovary: all of us play a role; all of us are other than we are; in some way, we are Enric Marco.