HUGO HAMILTON AUTOBAHN

On the Autobahn outside Frankfurt. November. The fields were covered in a thin sheet of snow.

Chunks of gray sludge clung to the wheel guards of trucks. Tires ripped along the road. I had my thumb out. I was wearing an overcoat that I’d got from an uncle who was twice my size; it fit me like a house. When a car pulled up, it felt like a bright moment of luck, but then the driver got out and pointed a gun at me.

Polizei.

He was wearing a dark-green leather jacket, and I remember him being shorter than me, stocky and overpowering. He was bald, and maybe that reminded me of my father. His eyes were full of aggression. He stood with his gun pointing at my face, and I felt a familiar weakness in my stomach as he told me to drop my bag and keep my hands out of my pockets.

He wanted to know where I was going.

“Munich.”

“Why Munich?”

“I live there. I have a partner and a baby there. I work in a printing firm.”

He asked for proof of identity, but I had none with me. I told him I was Irish, and he crouched down to empty my bag: a half-finished sandwich, a Teddy bear, the book I was reading. The Teddy bear had a yellow tag with the name of the manufacturer clamped to one ear. The cop flipped through the book and threw it on the ground beside the Teddy bear. Then he stood up and asked me where I was coming from, so I told him I’d been in Frankfurt, visiting a friend—we were starting a band together.

He bore a look of extreme suspicion. The book I had brought with me didn’t help. It was the latest novel by Heinrich Böll, a writer who was seen by many in the right-wing media as an enemy of the people.