The World According to Bertie - Alexander Hanchett Smith [5]
‘Yes. People who have Ganser’s talk just round the edge. Dr Ganser identified it and he called that aspect of it the Vorbeireden. They may not know that they’re doing it, but their answers to your questions will always be just a little bit off-beam.’
Pat looked at her father in astonishment. ‘How odd! Why?’
Dr Macgregor spread his hands in a gesture of acceptance. ‘It’s probably a response to intolerable stress. Reality is so awful that they veer off in this peculiar direction; they enter a state of dissociation. This poor man in the report had lost his job, lost his wife, lost everything, in fact, and was being pursued by the police for something or other. You can imagine that one might start to dissociate in such circumstances.’ He paused. ‘Anyway, you’re home.’
He smiled at Pat, and was about to ask her what sort of morning she had had. But then Pat said: ‘Remember Bruce? I saw him this morning. Or at least I thought I saw him.’
‘You thought you saw him?’
‘It may not have been him. Maybe I just thought that it was him. Maybe it was somebody who was just dressed like Bruce.’
‘How interesting,’ said Dr Macgregor. He looked thoughtful. ‘Fregoli’s Syndrome.’ He added quickly, ‘I’m not being serious, of course.’
But Pat was interested. ‘Who was Fregoli?’
‘An Italian clown,’ said Dr Macgregor. ‘An Italian clown who never had the condition bearing his name.’
4. Some Words of Warning
‘Yes,’ said Dr Macgregor. ‘Fregoli came from Naples, or somewhere in those parts. He found himself in the forces of an Italian general sent to Abyssinia back in the late nineteenth century. The Italians, as you know, bullied Abyssinia . . .’ He tailed off. ‘You did know that, didn’t you?’ Pat shook her head. Her father knew so much, it seemed to her, and she knew so little. The Italians bullied Abyssinia, did they? But where exactly was Abyssinia?
Dr Macgregor looked away, tactfully, as any sensitive person must do when he realises that the person to whom he is speaking has no idea where Abyssinia is. ‘Ethiopia,’ he said quietly. ‘Haile Selassie?’ He looked up, in hope; but Pat shook her head again, in answer to this second query. Then she said: ‘But I do know where Ethiopia is.’
That, at least, is something, he thought. And he realised, of course, that it was not her fault. His daughter belonged to a generation that had been taught no geography, and very little history. And no Latin. Nor had they been made to learn poetry by heart, with the result that nobody now could recite any poems by Burns, or Wordsworth, or Longfellow. Everything had been taken away by people who knew very little themselves, but did not know it.
‘Ethiopia used to be called Abyssinia,’ he said. ‘And the Italians had skirmishes with it from Somaliland. In due course, Mussolini used this as the casus belli for later bullying, and he invaded them. The world stood by. The Ethiopians went to the League of Nations and begged for help. Begged. But they were little men with beards, and it took some time before anyone would listen. Little dark men with beards.’
They were both silent for a moment. Pat thought: he makes it all sound so personal. He thought: we have all been such bullies; all of us. The Italians. The British. The Americans. Bullies.
Pat looked at her father. ‘Mussolini was the one they hanged upside down, wasn’t he?’
He sighed. ‘They did.’
‘Maybe he deserved it.’
‘No. Nobody deserves it. Nobody deserves even to be hanged the right way up. Whatever somebody does, however bad he is, you must always forgive him. Right at the end, you must forgive him.’
For a moment, they were silent. He felt like saying to her that there were people, right at that moment, somewhere, even in advanced countries, who were awaiting capital punishment; people whose days and hours were ticking away under such sentence; such was the hardness of the human heart, or of some human hearts. But he did not say it; instead, he looked up at her and smiled.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Our friend Fregoli impressed this Italian general – and can’t you just imagine the splendid uniform that