cornflakes. The boy chased the fly away with his hand and then examined his cornflakes for a long time before he said: ‘I do-nae think he ate any of it.’ The others grunted, but Gregor laughed out loud. He kept on repeating it like somebody with learning difficulties.
‘I do nae think he ate any of it,’ he said slowly. They stared at him as he learned the joke off by heart.
He had trained himself to live on nothing. His father would have been proud of him. When he started running out of money, he lived on tea and toast, and jam. He did not allow himself to phone home or ask them to send money. He was determined not to fall into that trap, so he made his way down to London to try and get a job.
He found London dreary. He could not afford accommodation, so he slept in Victoria Station. He started looking for work, knowing that he could go back to Germany any time to work there. But he wanted to live in a foreign place, without support. It was a mission of survival, sleeping in one of the alcoves of the station every night, and in the morning, putting his stuff in a locker to continue looking for work. He managed to get a job on a building site, but he got fired at the end of the day because he was so thirsty and kept going away to the tap for water. He was not really a worker like that. If only he could play music, but nobody wanted to hear his songs.
He saw a rat once or twice, but that didn’t bother him. He slept in his clothes with his empty wallet and his passport in his trousers where he would feel it most if somebody touched him while he was asleep. He trained himself to detect the proximity of another human being, even in sleep. If somebody stared at him for a moment too long, he would open his eyes. The presence of a person nearby would wake him up. If there was no danger, he would go back to sleep again in an instant. He lived the way that his father had imagined for him, ready for the worst. And one night, curled up in his sleeping bag on the floor, monitoring the sound of trains echoing in his head and the sound of London voices drifting past, he woke up with a man standing right next to him. A well-dressed man, carrying a briefcase.
‘You seem like a respectable lad,’ the man said. ‘Why are you sleeping rough like this?’
Gregor told him that he was looking for work. The man smiled and asked more questions. Where was he from? Why were his parents not helping him out? Gregor told him that he was on his own now and had no parents. So the man offered to help him get on his feet in London. He said he could give him a place to stay until he got settled.
‘Look, I’ve got two sons of my own, travelling off somewhere in Australia at the moment. I’d hate to think of them lying around in railway stations.’
Gregor told him he was fine. But then he took up the offer when the man insisted. He had a politeness in his voice which Gregor felt he could trust. So he got into the man’s car, a Jaguar, Gregor remembers, and they drove to the suburbs where he lived in a large detached house, with well-kept gardens and Alsatian dogs patrolling the grounds. There was something welcoming about this wealth and he gave in to the luxury for once.
It was only when the man served him a meal in the middle of the night that Gregor realised how hungry he was and how fed up he was of toast and jam. He was given beer and the man drank whisky. Gregor was soon drunk and elated. He told some of the stories about Scotland, about the fly in the cornflakes.
‘I do nae think he ate any of it,’ he said, and the man laughed heartily.
Then everything went wrong. Gregor was tired, knocked out by the rush of luxury and kindness. It was warm in the house and he fell asleep in the chair. Maybe it was the feeling of being at home. He never suspected anything until he woke up lying on a bed, with most of his clothes off, down to his underpants. The whole thing was a trick. The man was on the bed beside him in his silk dressing gown, stroking Gregor’s chest.
‘Fuck off,’ Gregor shouted, pulling away. In his German accent, it was comical, not even remotely hostile.
‘Relax,’ the man said, smiling. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about. You’re a tired little monkey, I’m going to put you to bed now.’
Gregor got into bed, but then he found the man getting in beside him.
‘I’m not like that,’ Gregor said.
‘Nonsense,’ the man said. ‘Every boy is like that, only you have been denying it.’
The man was right. Gregor had had some encounters with other boys at school, on long weekends in the country. They sometimes ganged up to pull each other’s trousers down. And once or twice it led to things that would have counted as homosexual, though it was only experimental. A test to see which direction was right for him.
The man must have sensed hesitation. He slid his hand down to his groin and Gregor leaped away from the bed, though he didn’t get far because the man came after him and forced him back on the bed, face down, pulling off his underpants. The politeness was gone. Gregor could feel his erect penis and his balls behind him, like a soft, wiry brush or cleaning utensil from the kitchen, stroking across his buttocks.
‘My lovely German boy,’ the man said.
‘Fuck off,’ Gregor shouted. ‘I’m Jewish.’
The man stalled and backed off, allowing Gregor room enough to move away at last and pull up his underpants again. He stood there with the words echoing inside his head. He was transformed by them, untouchable, unafraid.
‘You’re lying,’ the man said. ‘You’re not even circumcised. Look.’
Gregor found himself having to back it up. He explained that he was an orphan. He told the story of how he had been brought from the East as a refugee. He explained that no Jewish boys would have been circumcised during the war. It would have meant certain death.
That calmed the situation down. Gregor continued his story, as much as he knew of it. And where the facts failed him, he began to make it up. He said he had no parents at all now, that his adoptive parents were dead. For a moment he wondered if it was a mistake to portray himself as a victim, inviting people to prey on him. Would it not have been better to say that he was a prize-winning boxer, to make up a story of how violent he could be? But he had said the right thing after all.
‘I thought you knew,’ the man said. ‘I thought that’s why you came here with me.’
‘No,’ Gregor said.
‘Then you’re very naive,’ the man said.
It was true. Gregor had ignored all the questions he should have asked himself. He had been preparing himself for living on wild mushrooms and dealing with wild animals. He was ready to rough it in the wild and knew how to trap a rabbit without weapons. Knew how to shoot and how to use a knife. But here in the city of London, he was a lost child. Alone, at the mercy of other people.
Gregor felt guilty and stupid to allow himself into this situation.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
And then the man became very polite again. He offered to take him back to the station. They got dressed and the night unravelled in the opposite direction again, back into the plush Jaguar with the wooden dashboard, back along the same route into the city. At Victoria Station, he offered Gregor money. Gregor refused, but he forced a few notes into his rucksack. Then he was gone again.
He was embarrassed using the money, but he continued travelling, this time around the west coast of Ireland. When the money ran out again, he made his way back to Germany and worked for a while in a car
