–5–

Yes, my father’s purpose in life was also to torture me. He never beat me, but he liked simulating fights so he could hurt me. His favourite method was asphyxiation. He’d immobilise me with the weight of his body and only get off when my face started going purple. To make me ‘a man’, he’d get me into an arm lock and wait until I begged him to stop. Once he broke my finger, which was only diagnosed two days later because he kept insisting that it was nothing and that I was being a ‘pansy’. My mother thought it was all normal. ‘Boys’ games,’ she’d say. But nothing hurt me as much as the three words he fired at me one night.

As you know, it’s common for children to wonder, at some stage, if they really did come from their parents. This adoption fantasy haunts boys and girls alike, and they will often try to assure themselves of their family identity. In my case, I did it indirectly by asking questions about the circumstances of my birth. I bombarded my mother with questions about the day I was born, the hospital she’d had me in, her first impressions of me — things like that. I also liked to see photos of myself as a baby. This all reassured me, but not enough to erase my doubts. And, whenever I could, I’d trot out my questions again.

It was after one of these question-and-answer sessions that my father decided to make his move. ‘Let me tuck him in,’ he said to my mother as he picked me up. When we got to the bedroom, he put me in bed, covered me, and sat down next to me. He stared at me for a few seconds and then, without moving a single muscle in his face, said, ‘You are adopted.’

I cried all night long until I heard the first sounds of the morning lashing at the window. My anguish manifested as an asymptomatic fever that increased at nightfall. Without a clear diagnosis, the doctor said I’d caught a virus. My mother tried to comfort me, but I fled her embrace. I came up with excuses and took refuge in my bedroom. I felt betrayed by her. Why hadn’t she told me? There was, however, an underlying question, which was impossible for me to formulate at that point: what to do with my love for that woman who was no longer my mother? I could, of course, have asked her if it was true that I wasn’t her son. Why didn’t I? It was out of resentment (I felt betrayed, as I said), but also for fear of what she might say. I think I was afraid I’d die if I heard her say, ‘It’s true you’re not my son.’

Any other father would have taken pity on me. But not him. On the contrary, he took the opportunity to gloat. At the dinner table, he turned my game around. He provoked me with general-knowledge questions, which I didn’t answer. ‘Now, now, someone’s got the smart-aleck’s tongue,’ he taunted. My mother begged him to let me be, to which he replied that he was only joking, trying to cheer me up. At one such meal, in the middle of one of his little performances, he said to my mother, ‘Can’t you see he’s acting all la-di-da? Come on, spit it out. What’s the capital of Hungary — Bucharest or Budapest?’ Angrily, I answered, ‘Budapest, you idiot. You’d know if you’d read The Paul Street Boys. But you don’t read anything. Only Mummy does.’ For my pains, I got a glass of water in my face. ‘Get out of here before I give you a whipping,’ roared my father, while my mother cried, mortified. That same night, my father came into my room and, after lecturing me on the respect that children owe their parents, started to tell me the tale of my adoption. ‘The only reason I’m not going to punish you is because I understand how you’re feeling about the adoption. You haven’t asked for any details, but I’m going to tell you anyway. You’re actually the child of a domestic we had the first year we were married. She asked us to look after you for a while, until she got back from holidays, but she never showed up again. She still might come back. But don’t worry. Mummy and daddy won’t let you go. Goodnight. Sweet dreams, son.’

Can you imagine my terror? No, you can’t. No one can.

My anguish lasted about a week. One morning, my father and I were sitting at the breakfast table when, without lifting his eyes from the paper, he said, ‘It’s interesting how living together can make people alike. Even physically. You, for example, have her eyes. Your mother’s. Your eyes are the same; everyone says so. When you were a baby there was no similarity.’ He folded the paper, placed it on the table, took a sip of coffee, and only then, after all those gestures, did he look at me. ‘We’d best keep this adoption story between us. A father–son thing. A man’s thing. Your mother wouldn’t understand. It’s part of the training you need to learn to deal with life’s difficulties. Come here and let me give you a hug.’

My eyes were my mother’s; I was no longer in doubt. My eyes …

He’d said that living together made people alike. But he’d also referred to the time when I was a tiny baby. Most adopted children are adopted when they are very small, I know, but that phrase — ‘When you were a baby’ — made me feel certain that I was their natural child and not adopted. It’s still a fragile certainty, even though I have become very much like my mother. Could this be through having lived together? But I didn’t live with her for very long, when all’s said and done …

I let my father hug me, in a mixture of relief and rage, without asking what had led him to torture me like that. It wasn’t necessary. It was already clear to me that we were enemies. After the relief and rage came a feeling that could be defined as gratitude. I was grateful to my father for having put an end to my agony, even with all his ambiguity. There’s an explanation for this: those who are tortured also feel gratitude toward their torturers when they stop maltreating them.